Sunday, November 20, 2011

A Family Project


When I was young, one of my aunts compiled a family cookbook.  She printed, assembled and gave a copy to all her siblings.  So, I grew up seeing my mom cook out of it as well as using it myself to make my favorite gingersnap cookie recipe.  Now that all of my cousins and I are adults, I thought that it was time to have a 2nd edition printed for the new generation. 

This is not THE family cookbook, but one that my mom one of my grandmas fill out for me.
I know that there are now websites where you can put all the recipes into a form and then the company formats the book and prints it up.  I, however, loved the homemade feel of the recipe book.  I plan on making all the books myself.  This is a work-in-progress...I am still collecting a few new recipes from my cousins(and taking out some old ones that were maybe space fillers in the first edition..exotic celery anyone?) and have not yet attempted to make the hard back book (though I have read about it extensively).  It is impossible to not be inspired to get in the kitchen when reading recipes so I decided to do some good old-fashioned baking recently.  I did start with my favorite gingersnap cookies but decided to branch out to something new, never done before by me: A pumpkin roll. It turned out amazingly, shockingly well. The batter went into a jelly roll pan (which is bigger than a regular cake pan), baked, dumped out of pan, rolled up with a dish towel in the middle while still warm, allowed to cool, unrolled, frosted, re-rolled and put in the fridge for a few hours.  Easy :)   No really, it was very simple. 

Adding the cream cheese frosting

Rolling the rolled cake back up, but with the filling
Hopefully, over the next couple months, I will be able to put together the new recipe books...and if not, I guess there is always the internet option!
A favorite recipe written by my grandma herself

4 comments:

  1. Such a great project! Elise and I were watching a Youtube video about pumpkin rolls last night and wondering if we were brave enough...they look so pretty sliced.

    We had a family cookbook years ago, with handwritten recipes photocopied and slid into page protector sheets. The oatmeal chocolate fudge is all kinds of splattered in my copy.

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  2. oh yeah, my moms had a jello accident occur on one of the pages--it's now pink through at least a few pages. Oh you guys could definitely do it! I was surprised at how easy it turned out to be.

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  3. <3 Deedle Dumpling Soup

    ...thanks for allowing my late entry. Now my future kids won't be like 'mooommm, why don't you have any recipes in here? can't you cook?'

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  4. Since you are a pro at the pumpkin roll, maybe you need to try the chocolate peppermint roll for Christmas on Pinterest.

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