TODAY's CASES:

• Chocolate Mashed Potato Candy
• Fruit Cocktail Cake
• Woolworth's Potato Soup

Chocolate Mashed Potato Candy -----Original Message----- From: Neena Sent: Saturday, July 02, 2016 11:21 PM To: phaedrus@hungrybrowser.com Subject: chocolate covered mashed potatoes Dear Phaedrus, I love your site and perusing old recipes that press the memory buttons. For years I have been trying to track down a recipe I made only once, as a little girl, when my sister and I were visiting Grandma Beber in Omaha, Nebraska. It was probably around 1970. My grandmother Lillian Beber was an artist. She would soon move to Miami to be near us, but we made a rare trip to Omaha and the house my father (a great cook and a food-lover, would have loved this site) grew up in. I don’t remember what my parents were doing that day in Omaha, but they left us with Grandma Beber, who decided we would all bake something together. She let my sister and I pick from an old recipe book she had. We looked in the index and she must have steered us toward a couple of interesting treats. Her specialty was cherry pie, but that may have been too ambitious for us. we chose chocolate-covered mashed potatoes because we had never heard of anything like that! It seemed crazy and we just had to try it. It came out well, in my memory, and tasted something like a Mounds bar, though my sister and I can’t recall if there was coconut in the recipe. Well if you could find that recipe or know of that cookbook, in my mind a plain blue hardback book with no pictures at all, I’d be amazed and grateful. Thank you for your site, Neena Hi Neena, Well, there are dozens of recipes for mashed potato candy that is dipped or coated in chocolate. Yes, there is usually coconut in the recipe. See: Cooks.com Sprinklebakes Just a Pinch In the Northeast, there is something like that called "Needhams." See: Needhams Candy I'm afraid your information is much too sparse regarding the candy and the cookbook for me to be able to do any better. Phaed Fruit Cocktail Cake -----Original Message----- From: Patricia Sent: Friday, July 01, 2016 10:55 PM To: phaedrus@hungrybrowser.com Subject: Find a lost recipe Hi I'm looking for a recipe I had between 1988 to 2000 ingredients where box yellow cake,fruit cocktail and cool whip you made the yellow box cake using the juice from the fruit cocktail after cake was was made you broke it up into pieces poured the fruit cocktail over it then iced it with the cool whip, it was a great summer dessert! I know I'm missing ingredients any help would be appreciated. Thank you Trish Hello Trish, There have been so many recipes that are similar to what you describe that it is very difficult to locate one particular one without the exact name of the cake and/or a detailed list of ingredients. On the simple side, there is a recipe called "fruit cocktail cake", that only has yellow cake mix, fruit cocktail, and cool whip. However, in this cake, the cake is not baked first and then broken up. Instead, the cake mix is mixed with the fruit cocktail and then the whole thing is baked. See: Fruit Cocktail Cobbler Cake On the other side is a "punch bowl cake", in which the cake is baked first and then broken into pieces and layered in a punch bowl with fruit cocktail, cool whip and other ingredients. However, those other ingredients are not things that one would usually forget - instant pudding, pineapple, coconut, nuts, etc. See: Cooks.com I did not find one that fit your description exactly. Phaed Thank you for trying Woolworth's Potato Soup From: Cheryl Sent: Friday, July 08, 2016 8:37 PM To: phaedrus@hungrybrowser.com I'm looking for Woolworths recipe for potato cheese soup. It was the best I ever had. No lumps of potato was in the soup. Hello Cheryl, I have a scanned partial copy of an authentic Woolworth’s Kitchen Manual It contains most of the savory dishes, but not many of the desserts. There is no recipe in it called “potato cheese soup”, nor was I able to find any mention online of a potato cheese soup served by Woolworth’s. The Woolworth’s Manual that I have does have a recipe for “potato soup”, which I have transcribed below. It does not have any cheese. This soup is made from 3/8” cubes of raw potatoes, so it will likely have some lumps of potato. Lump-less potato soups are usually made with mashed potatoes. This is a food service recipe for a large quantity (18 servings) of the soup. You’ll have to cut it down for home use. Local Woolworth’s stores may have sometimes changed recipes slightly from those in the manual. Your local Woolworth’s may have used mashed potatoes to make their potato soup and may have added cheese to it. Perhaps the recipe was changed after this recipe sheet was added to the book on 1/28/55. This is, however, the only Woolworth’s potato soup recipe that I have or that I could find. This is the best I can do for you regarding a Woolworth’s potato soup recipe. However, it’s not a complicated recipe. It’s a rather typical potato soup recipe. Your best bet to duplicate the soup you remember may be to just look for a simple potato soup recipe that’s made with mashed potatoes and that has cheese, then tweak it to your taste. Phaed Woolworth's Potato Soup Makes 5 quarts or 18 portions Step #1 Cleaned Potatoes 2 lbs (cleaned means peeled & washed) Onion 6 oz Salt 1 oz Water 1 quart Cut cleaned potatoes into 3/8 inch cubes. Chop onions fine. Combine with water and salt. Bring to a boil. Cover pot and simmer until potatoes are tender, about 10 minutes. Step #2 Butter 4 oz Shortening * 4 oz Flour 4 oz Fresh Warm Milk 3 qts 8 ozs Chopped parsley 1/4 oz Melt shortenings (shortening & butter). Add flour and blend with wire whip to a smooth paste. Add warm milk. Bring to a boil and cook until thickened - about 3 minutes. Add parsley. * A shortening such as Primex or M.F.B can be used. (Phaed note: I doubt whether you can find these shortenings because they were food service items. Your favorite shortening would work. You might eliminate the shortening completely and just use twice as much butter.)