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Snow Balls
1 cup sugar, 1/2 cup milk, 1/2 cup Crisco, 2 1/4 cups flour, 3 1/2 teaspoons baking powder, and whites of 4 eggs. Cream Crisco, add sugar gradually, milk, and flour sifted with baking powder; add whites of eggs beaten stiff. Steam 35 minutes in Criscoed cups; serve with stewed or preserved fruit.
A steamed white cake batter cooked in individual cups — closer to an English steamed pudding than to anything baked. The whole point is gentle moist heat, so the steamer setup matters more than the batter.
- Crisco means shorteningUse any solid vegetable shortening, 1/2 cup by volume. Butter works and tastes better, though the crumb will be slightly less tender and the colour less snow-white.
- "Criscoed cups"Grease six to eight 6-oz custard cups, ramekins or dariole moulds. Fill them no more than two-thirds; this batter rises hard and will dome over the rim otherwise.
- The steamer is the hingeSet the covered cups on a rack in a pot with an inch of simmering water, lid on, water kept at a bare simmer for the full 35 minutes. Boiling water that reaches the cups, or a lid that lets steam escape, gives a soggy base and a collapsed top.
- Cover each cupThe original assumes a fitted steamer. Cap each cup with a square of foil or buttered parchment so condensate from the pot lid does not drip onto the surface.
- Baking powderThree and a half teaspoons to 2 1/4 cups flour is generous by current standards but not a misprint — steamed batters get no oven spring and rely entirely on chemical leavening. Modern double-acting powder will do the job; 2 1/2 teaspoons is enough if you prefer less aftertaste.
- Egg whitesBeat to soft-to-firm peaks, not dry, and fold in two additions. Whites beaten stiff and dry break into lumps that steam into pale streaks.
- Yield and servingSix to eight small puddings. Turn out warm and serve with stewed rhubarb, plums, apricots or any preserved fruit with syrup; they are deliberately plain and want the acidity.
- DonenessA skewer into the centre should come out clean and the top should spring back. If you have used larger cups, allow 45 minutes.
A Calendar of Dinners was written by Marion Harris Neil and issued by Procter & Gamble to promote Crisco, which had been introduced in 1911 as the first widely marketed hydrogenated vegetable shortening; the brand name recurs throughout the recipes, and even appears as a verb — "Criscoed cups." Steamed cup puddings like these seem to have been common enough in nineteenth-century households, cooked over the range rather than in an oven, which mattered when oven heat was expensive to control and unreliable to judge. Calling them "snow balls" here probably points to their colour and shape, though the name was applied in period cookery to a range of dishes, including coconut-coated cakes, rice-coated puddings and apple dumplings. A whites-only batter would in any case give a pudding pale enough to justify the name.