I thought for the holidays it might be fun to write about a few family recipes. So I’ve decided to remind people about the Brenner Ridge recipe booklet, offer some recipes from my grandma Elizabeth (Brenner) Klamm, Aunt Carolina (Brenner) Renner, and a recipe from a cousin in honor of my mema Dessie (Kimsey) Anderson.
First, if you are interested in old recipes, I encourage you to download and look through the Brenner Ridge recipe booklet. My husband scanned it and I put it together and OCRed it, so you can read and copy and search the booklet. It has some traditional German recipes and some that were “modern” at the time it was written, but are now also old. Besides the recipes I’m going to put in this post, one of my favorites is the recipe for the all-important pickles, always on the table before meals when Grandma had company. Also hand-written into this copy is a recipe for Mexican Wedding Cakes from Carolina (Brenner) Renner, because she knew I liked them so much.
Years ago I copied out by hand my favorite recipes to save on my computer and make them easy to print. When I realized what bad shape the booklet was in, I decided it had to be scanned, and made available to more people.
I’m going to start with Grandma Klamm’s Coffee Cake. I can confirm that this is an authentic German food. We lived in Hamburg for 2 years and there it was called butterkuchen (butter cake). The only differences I noticed are they apparently used butter rather than shortening (I conclude that from its name), topped it with slivered almonds, and did not use cinnamon. The top looked similarly deformed so the sweet topping could sink in. I don’t think it’s necessary to have sugar in the dough, so you could use commercial bread dough if you wanted. In that case you might want to add more sugar to the topping. If you want to make the dough, use any recipe and add the sugar if you want. I have a bread machine and use the dough setting. The important part is not the details of the dough, but the topping.
COFFEE CAKE
(First make this):
Basic Sweet Dough:
2 cakes compressed yeast .
2 c. scalded milk (cooled to 80 degrees)
1/2 c. sugar
2 tsp. salt
2 eggs, well beaten or 4 egg yolks plus 2 Tbsp. water
7 to 7 1/2c. sifted Gold Medal flour
1 /4 to 1/2 c. shortening (depending on richness desired, any type)
Crumble yeast into mixing bowl. Add lukewarm milk. Stir in sugar and salt until dissolved. Stir in well beaten egg. Add 1/2 the flour. Beat with spoon until almost smooth and very elastic. Beat in melted and cooled shortening. Add most of remaining flour and work it in with the hand (possibly using the maximum amount) until dough is possible to handle. Mix well. Turn dough onto lightly floured board, cover; let stand 10 minutes to tighten up, then knead until smooth and elastic, round up, and set to rise in a greased bowl (cover with a damp cloth).
Keep at 80 to 85 degrees (out of drafts) until double in bulk. (About 2 hours). Punch down dough, round up into ball, and let rise again (covered) until not quite double in bulk (about 45 minutes). Punch down dough, may be divided into thirds and hot rolls made too.
For Coffee Cake:
Roll dough 1/2 inch thick and place in pie pan or cake pan and let rise double in bulk. (I take the scissors and snip all over the dough, then spread egg and rich milk over the dough).
Sprinkle lots of sugar and some cinnamon on top of dough and bake at 300 degrees until almost done just turning a little brown. Take from oven, spread cream and egg over top of sugar and cinnamon and put in the oven until sugar is browned. When sugar is crisp take it out of the oven and sprinkle a little water over the crisp sugar. This makes it syrupy.
Mrs. J. P. Klamm
Now for my beloved hot potato salad. The recipe in the book has potatoes and greens. Aunt Carolina wrote into my copy hot potato salad without greens. I remember this as being any green that could stand up to being wilted including dandelion greens. I see recipes online using romaine or spinach, but I would prefer stronger tasting greens such as endive or escarole or dandelion greens. This is also a traditional German recipe.
HOT POTATO AND ENDIVE SALAD
1 c. (cooked in jackets) sliced potatoes (warm)
1 small onion, minced
1 head endive or escarole, finely shredded
6 slices bacon, cut in small pieces and fried crisp
vinegar and salt and pepper to suit taste
Combine warm potatoes, onion, and bacon With 3 Tb of the drippings, vinegar and salt and pepper then add shredded greens. Mix thoroughly and serve at once.
Carolina Renner
Make hot potato salad by boiling potatoes in skins and peel and slice while still hot then add onion and bacon bits, vinegar and salt and pepper similar as above only omit endive or greens. Serve warm.
That’s from my paternal family. My maternal grandmother, Dessie (Kimsey) Anderson, made excellent candy. She made “real” candy, where you had to master the soft ball stage. Since I don’t have her recipes and never mastered “real” candy, my cousin Carolina DeBow gave me this recipe for fudge which is trivially easy. Carolina could make real candy too, but she gave me this recipe because of my inability to master candy… This recipe is in honor of my Mema.
This is probably a rather old recipe as well. It is sometimes called Eagle Brand Festive Fudge and the recipe as I got it still retains the brand of the condensed milk (but of course, never mind that detail). Eagle Brand condensed milk was introduced in 1856. The recipe is extremely easy and quick to make and always gets rave reviews. I prefer quality chips, namely Ghirardelli semi-sweet chocolate chips. I would not use milk-chocolate chips, but I do not like my sweets too sweet… Hard to find now, but my preference would be black walnuts.
Festive Fudge
3 cups (18 ounces) semi-sweet chocolate chips (or milk-chocolate chips)
1 (14-ounce) can Eagle Brand® Sweetened Condensed Milk (NOT evaporated milk)
dash salt
1/2 to 1 cup chopped nuts, optional
1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
In heavy saucepan; over low heat, melt chips with Eagle Brand® and salt. Remove from heat; stir in nuts if desired and vanilla. Spread evenly into wax paper or buttered foil lined 8- or 9-inch square pan
Chill 2 hours or until firm. Turn fudge onto cutting board, peel off paper and cut into squares. Store covered in refrigerator.
Note: Optical Character Recognition of old books is not perfect, so if you download Ridge Recipes and try to copy text, you will need to correct it. Also, I noticed the one I had uploaded last year I had not OCRed, so I have now done that and uploaded a new version that you can copy text from.