Oh, how I wish I’d found this in time to share it for the Fourth of July! Alas! I did not own the Household Searchlight Recipe Book. Here’s hoping you will all find it equally instructive on the Third of August.
Firecracker Cakes: Trim crusts from a fresh Pullman loaf of bread. Cut in thin length-wise slices. Cut each slice in halves (no mention of which direction that should go in, incidentally). Spread with sweetened condensed milk which has been tinted with red food coloring. Roll like a jelly roll. Fasten with a toothpick. Roll in shredded coconut. Insert a few shreds of coconut in one end for a fuse. – The Household Searchlight
Really? We’re going to color condensed milk? Why not use strawberry jelly? Or rhubarb preserves?
Any way you slice this one, it sounds like a bad, bad idea to me.
hey, Twistie… I’m usually right there with ya on the food suggestions… but I find it charming that the cookbook (published during the Depression, I’d bet?) is trying to take easily available foods like bread and canned milk and make something festive. Unlike now, sugar used to be pretty hard to come by for lots of folks.
Still, I wouldn’t recommend serving it up as cakes to your friends and family!
Comment by Catherine — August 3, 2008 @ 11:30 pm