Cookbook Challenge # 1 - Betty Crocker’s Old-Fashioned Desserts
My husband and I have a lot of cookbooks. Like, they almost fill a full-sized Billy bookshelf. Sure, astute observers may notice that not every single book in that image is a cookbook, but they for sure predominate.
It’d be one thing if we consulted them on a daily or weekly basis as we plan our meals, but we don’t. I have favorite recipes in a few of them, easily identifiable by spill-stained pages, but usually if I want to cook something specific I’ll just google “vegetarian chili” or “recipes with boneless skinless chicken thighs” or whatever. And at a guess, I’d say I’ve never made anything at all from at least half of them.
I feel a bit guilty about that, but somehow the cookbooks always stay on the shelf whenever I’m having a downsizing fit. And I think Marie Kondo would approve, because having them there to look at, and occasionally pull off the shelf and page through, sparks joy.
So one of my resolutions for 2026 is to begin cooking my way through this bounty. In a fit of nerdy hyperfocus, I made a list of all the cookbooks and randomized it. For each book, I’m going to try to cook two recipes, at least one of which is new to me. While the goal is to do a cookbook per week, I know I’m going to miss weeks here and there between travel, holidays, and life and general. Which is fine by me—this is supposed to be a fun project, not a chore!
And the randomly selected first book is Betty Crocker’s Old-Fashioned Desserts (1992). I picked it up off the bargain counter at the Border’s in Center City Philadelphia in ‘93 or ‘94, and I’ve often paged through it lovingly, admiring the color photos and the sidebars on baking history…but somehow I’d never actually MADE any of it.
My two chosen recipes were Eggnog Pound Cake and Maple-baked Winter Pears, which I combined into a single plate and served as dessert tonight after a simple dinner of chicken caesar salad and garlic bread.
Both turned out…pretty good. Nothing spectacular, but sweet and soothing. Old-fashioned, you might say. I might make the pear recipe again, since it’s a super-simple way to make something of a treat out of a fruit I’ve never much cared for in its raw state. As for the cake, it’s way better than any grocery store pound cake, but it lacks the rich buttery density and moistness of my mom’s favorite recipe (which is in one of those cookbooks on the shelf, and I dearly hope I either remembered to mark it or one of my brothers or sisters-in-law did in their copies).
Maple-baked Winter Pears
6 pears, pared, cut in half and cored (I used half this amount but the full amount of the sauce ingredients)
1/2 c packed brown sugar
1/3 c maple sugar
1/4 c water
2 tsp grated lemon peel
1/8 tsp ground ginger
Heat oven to 350. Place pears, cut sides down, in ungreased rectangular pan, 13x9x2 inches. Mix remaining ingredients. Pour over pears. Bake uncovered, 20 to 25 minutes, brushing pears occasionally with syrup, until tender. Serve warm.
Eggnog Pound Cake
1 c sugar
1/2 c butter, softened
2 Tbsp rum
1 tsp vanilla
5 egg yolks
1 3/4 c all-purposed flour
2 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
3/4 c milk
Heat oven to 350. Grease and flour loaf pan, 9x5x3 inches. Beat sugar, butter, rum, vanilla, and egg yolks in large bowl on low speed 30 seconds, scraping bowl constantly. Beat on high speed 5 minutes, scraping bowl occasionally. Beat in flour, baking powder, salt, and nutmeg alternately with milk on low speed. Pour into pan.
Bake 50-60 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes; remove from pan and cool completely.
