Little House in the Kitchen

While I’m out recovering from surgery, I’ve asked a few friends to step in and fill my shoes.  I hope you enjoy what they have to share with you!  If you like what you see, stop by their blogs and tell them!

 

Hey everyone!  I’m Sarah and I blog over at Sarah Cooks the Books.  Books and food are the two main loves of my life (besides, you know, my husband. . .), and I’m really excited to share a recipe from a cookbook that ties into one of the definitive book series of my childhood:  the Laura Ingalls Wilder Little House books.  (You can find the cookbook here.)

A thing I love in books is when they go into a lot of detail about the food the characters are eating.  The Little House books are excellent for that; reading what these simple frontier people ate written in such vivid detail it makes me want to quit my job, hitch up some cattle, and give frontier living a try.  You can’t not want to partake in the breakfast feast described in Farmer Boy:  

“There was oatmeal with plenty of thick cream and maple sugar.  There were fried potatoes, and the golden buckwheat cakes, as many as Almanzo wanted to eat, with sausages and gravy or with butter and maple syrup.  There were preserves and jams and jellies and doughnuts.  But best of all Almanzo likes the spicy apple pie, with its thick, rich juice and its crumbly crust.  He ate two big wedges of the pie.”

. . .can I eat two big wedges of that pie?  Please?

Farmer Boy and These Happy Golden Years are two of my favorite Little House books, and the recipe I tried was from Farmer Boy. 

In the chapter called “Summer-Time,” Wilder describes how her future husband, Almanzo Wilder, and his siblings spend summer days picking berries to bring home for their mom to make into delicious treats: jellies, jams, preserves. . .and blueberry ‘pudding.’  This isn’t pudding in the traditional sense, but more of a cobbler.  There’s also a sauce that goes with this. . .but we’ll get to that later.

Since I don’t live in the pioneer times and I do have a stove, I altered this recipe a bit.  The original calls to cook this in a can in boiling water.  I opted for the stove.

Blueberry Pudding with Rose Water Sauce

Ingredients

For the pudding:

• 1 1/2 dry pints blueberries
• 5 Tbsp. butter, melted
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup milk
• 4 tsp. baking powder
• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1 tsp. cream of tartar
• 1/4 tsp. salt

For the sauce:

• 1 cup white sugar
• 3 Tbsp. butter, melted
• Pinch of salt
• 1 tsp. ground nutmeg
• 1-2 Tbsp. rose water

Preheat oven to 375°F.

Use two of the tablespoons of butter to grease the dish you’re using.  I used a 3-qt. dish.  You can also use a 9×13″ pan, but you’ll have to change the baking time.

In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the sugar, baking powder, salt, and flour.

In another bowl, whisk the milk, remaining butter, and eggs.

Mix the wet and dry ingredients together until well combined.  Carefully mix in most of the blueberries, saving some to sprinkle on the top.

Pour the batter into the baking dish and sprinkle the remaining blueberries on top.

Bake pudding for 1 hour.

Now, here’s a full disclosure.  I didn’t make the rose water sauce the way I’m going to tell you to make it.  I’m going to give you the recipe from the book.  Mine was pretty bad and tasted like rubbing alcohol.  So what you see in the picture isn’t what yours is going to look like.  Hopefully.

Simmer the sugar with 2 cups of water until it begins to thicken into syrup, about 10 minutes.  Remove from heat and stir in remaining ingredients.  Serve warm over the pudding.

Sarah is in the process of making recipes from every book in her extensive, ridiculous cookbook collection and is blogging her progress at Sarah Cooks the Books.  She also tweets random thoughts and ruminations as GarconMeansBoy on Twitter.