Life This Week: March 11, 1940

Chocolate Pudding and Orange Butter Cookies

A Cake for "Bright Young Things"

If I had to pick one cake to represent England's carefree youth of the 20s and 30s, I'd have to choose a Fuller's Walnut Cake. It's mentioned in both Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited and Nancy Mitford's Love in a Cold Climate. That's a good enough pedigree for me! Turns out the original Fuller's Walnut Cake was two layers with buttercream between them, but the recipe I found was for a single layer cake. I'll definitely have to try it again. However, if you want something smaller and simpler than a layer cake, this recipe will work out just fine. It's subtly walnutty, not too sweet and delicious with a cup of tea and should definitely be eaten while curled up with an excellent book or DVD set. What an excellent way to spend Christmas vacation!

Vintage Movie, Vintage Recipe--It's Visions of Sugarplums!

If you're like I am and you get tired of all the "Christmas miracle" holiday movies, may I suggest Bachelor Mother?

Polly Parrish (Ginger Rogers) is a seasonal employee at Merlin's department store, wondering where she's going to find a job after Christmas. Due to an enormous misunderstanding, her boss David Merlin (David Niven) believes Polly is an unwed mother and can be convinced not to give up her baby if only she has permanent employment. While Polly gets to keep her job she also ends up responsible for a baby that isn't hers! It's really only a holiday movie in the sense that it's set around the holidays and it's more about the time between Christmas and the New Year than about Christmas itself (although it does start on Christmas Eve), but don't let that stop you. I don't think there are enough post-Christmas movies anyway. Bachelor Mother is available on DVD and will be on TCM December 20th at 10:15 pm (CST).

Dinner and a Movie: White Christmas, Visions of Sugarplums, and Exciting News

I love picking up old magazines at estate sales or antique stores. This December 1956 issue of McCall's is chock-full of great recipes, including Huntburgers and Polka Dot Pudding, which went perfectly with a viewing of White Christmas (1954). A couple of notes: next time, I'd use homemade marinara sauce in the Huntburgers, so that's what I've listed in the recipe. Secondly, the marshmallow ad has obviously used torched marshmallows, rather than the browned-in-the-oven variety (see my photo). Paul's hoping I'll make this again and let him take his propane torch to the unsuspecting confections.

Life This Week: December 5, 1938 and Visions of Sugarplums

My regular readers (hi, guys!) know all about "Life This Week," but if you're visiting from Visions of Sugarplums (more about that later), first, welcome to my blog. Second, "Life This Week" has been a regular Monday feature on The Past on a Plate for most of this year. I post when the issue for the corresponding week in 1938 has an interesting movie reviewed in it or features an interesting recipe, sometimes both! You can visit this week's issue by clicking the graphic above.