Orange Cake

A straightforward recipe here. Wonder how the texture compares with the many other cake recipes from grandmother’s notebook?

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Yellow Cake + Fluffy Orange Frosting

Note the ‘McCalls’ written in the top left hand corner. This is one of several recipes in grandmother’s notebook which came from McCalls, the popular American women’s magazine.

The other McCalls recipes so far are:
Egg Rolls – Wrappers
Banana Bread

Find the full list of other McCalls recipes here.

One ingredient in the frosting recipe emphasises the American origins of this recipe – light corn syrup. I’ve never baked with this before in my life, and it appears that people in other British-influenced parts of the world may not be familiar with it either, if this query from New Zealand is anything to go by. As that webpage explains,

[Corn syrup] is used extensively in the manufacture of processed foods and beverages in the US, because it does not crystallize as readily as sugar and is generally less expensive (although it is also not as sweet as sugar).

It is available to consumers in the US in two forms — light, which has been clarified to remove all color (and which is essentially flavorless), and dark, to which caramel color and molasses have been added. Because of its tendency not to crystallize, it is often called for in recipes for frostings, candies, jam, and jellies.

If light corn syrup is not available, you can substitute a sugar syrup made with 1-1/4 cups sugar and 1/3 cup water, boiled together until syrupy.

Other recipes for light corn syrup substitutes can be found here and here. In recent years, high fructose corn syrup has come under intense scrutiny from critics of the processed foods industry, as you can read here and here.

One of the main brands of corn syrup in the US today is Karo, which started in 1902. Perhaps at the time of writing out this recipe, my grandmother would have been familiar with these images of Karo:

“B.P.”, if you haven’t already figured out, refers to baking powder.

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Cranberry Orange Pie

This one is interesting because of the use of ‘quick cooking tapioca’. I had always thought this was a western name for what is more commonly know in Singapore/Malaysia as ‘sago’ (here, ‘tapioca’ immediately brings to mind the entire root vegetable, not processed pearls). However a quick search on the internet reveals that sago and tapioca pearls are similar but not identical. Apparently they can be used interchangeably. I have no idea whether the ‘sago’ I have been eating in kueh-kueh all these years is technically from the sago palm or from the tapioca (cassava) plant!Incidentally, one of my favourite childhood desserts is sago pudding, which is not commonly sold at food stalls or restaurants. It’s so simple yet so delicious: chilled sago mounds sitting in a swirl of coconut milk and gula melaka sugar **yummmm**.

For a long time I didn’t realise that those chewy, ‘QQ’ pearls in bubble tea are actually made from tapioca too – humongous cousins of the teeny little sago pearls in sago pudding! Read more here about bubble tea pearls and the difference between American and Southeast Asian perceptions of tapioca/sago pearls.

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