The Lansdowne Letters: Food of the Angels

Easter Break in 1961 was a snowy one in Lansdowne House.
Even though my family was snowed in
and the Easter Bunny was delayed by the heavy snowfall,
we were having fun playing games, reading, and celebrating my father's birthday.
I remember that time as one of the happiest in my childhood.

Birthdays were always significant in our family,
and March was the month for birthdays, 
with four of us turning older within two weeks:
me (18th), Barbie (19th), Bertie (27th), and Dad (30th).

As a family we didn't have a lot of money for presents,
but each of us always had our favorite cake
and were excused from chores on our special day.

Back When We Wanted to Do Dishes!

Donnie dries dishes for the first time, while Roy stands by ready to advise.

Candid shots meant a startling flash.

Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada, Circa 1956

© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue

All Rights Reserved

My mother wrote letters as well as my father,
but many of hers have not survived.
We used to joke about Mom's letters when we were older,
because she usually mentioned what she was cooking.
This one was typical.

On Friday, March 31, 1961
My mother wrote to her mother-in-law
Myrtle MacBeath:

Dear Mother:
We are all fine.
I imagine it is beginning to feel
like spring on the Island.
The weather here has been lovely.

However one evening this last week
was very wintery
with lots of snow and a strong wind.
The drifts were over our waists.

Sara Margaret (MacDonald) MacBeath

Acadia University, Wolfville, Circa 1950
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved






Yesterday was Don’s birthday.
He loves the shirt you sent him,
and it looks very good with his bluish grey suit.

I made an angel food cake for him with your boiled icing.
It turns out well for me now since I have a candy thermometer.
However I think I should beat it after I take it off the hot water.
Do you?

We didn’t do much this week.
Uno was over for dinner on Sunday.
We had chicken and Boston cream pie.

We played bridge with the Mitchells on Tuesday night.
Mr. Mitchell and I won.

Last evening we played bridge with Duncan and Maureen.
Dunc and Don really put a licking on us.
The Mitchells are coming over to play bridge tomorrow night.

Don has started painting again.
He painted a very nice picture of the log church next door.
I like it very much, and it will make an interesting souvenir.

The Anglican Log Church

The corner of our home is in the middle left of the painting.

Lansdowne House, Northern Ontario, Canada

Painting by Don MacBeath, March 1961

© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue

All Rights Reserved

The children are all fine.  They like having Don as their teacher.
Louise says he is the most interesting teacher she has ever had.

Wikipedia

We have been doing a lot of reading lately.
Right now I’m engrossed in a huge book entitled
“The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,” by William Shirer.
I was telling Don it is giving me nightmares.











I hope that you had a pleasant Easter.
Don had forgotten all about it,
so we had to radio out for Easter eggs.

I must close now and get dinner going.
It doesn’t look as if the plane will be in today.
The visibility is practically nil.
And it’s snowing heavily outside.

With love,
Sara

Whiteout

Flickr ~ mdornseif   License

Hands down, my father's favorite cake was angel food cake with boiled icing.
It was a rare treat in our house because it was tricky to make,
especially in the North with no electricity.

The task involved a lot of beating
with an old-fashioned, hand-held egg beater.
Man, I hated hand-cranking that beater,
and if I did it a long time,
both hands would get sweaty, even blistered.
Beating it fast was an aerobic activity. 

Flickr:  Bre Pettis ~ Adapted   License





Angel cake, dubbed "food of the angels," is white and airy
because it contains no butter or egg yolks
and requires cake flour milled from a soft wheat.
It is baked in a tube pan because it rises five or six inches high.

       Angel Food Cake
          a.  in a tube pan               b.  on a plate
          Flickr ~ Bev Currie          Flickr ~ Bev Currie
           License for Both 

Because of the cake's delicate nature,
we had to tiptoe around the kitchen
so the cake wouldn't fall while it was baking,
and no one dared open the oven door
for fear of shocking the cake into collapsing.

My mother had to gently cut it with back-to-back forks
so the cake wouldn't compress into a spongy mess.

Regular icing wouldn't do, because it was too heavy,
so my mother always made Nana's fluffy white boiled icing.
Personally I thought the sweet, sticky icing
was the best part of the cake.
The actual "food of the angels"
tasted bland and felt too spongy in my mouth.

I wasn't alone in my love of Nana's fluffy white boiled icing.
We kids all battled over licking the whisk and the spatula and the pot.
The icing made perfect mustaches!
We loved to paint our upper lips, let the icing set, and lick it off!

My mother was a great cook and baker.
She never learned either skill because her mother
didn't want Mom underfoot when she was working in the kitchen;
so my mother learned to cook and bake after she was married.

She made sure that we all learned the basics
which for me included baking bread, making jam and pickles,
and turning out my father's favorite angel food cake with fluffy white icing.

Till next time ~
Fundy Blue


Bay of Fundy out of Westport, Brier Island
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue

All Rights Reserved

Notes:  

1.  The Island:

     We always referred to Prince Edward Island where my Grandmother MacBeath lived as "The Island."

2.  Uno Manilla:

     Uno taught at the Roman Catholic School on the Father's Island.  My father roomed with Uno before he was able

     to rent the forestry house and move us north.  

3.  The Mitchells:

     Bill Managed the Hudson's Bay post, and Rhea was his wife.

4.  Duncan and Maureen McRae:

     Duncan worked for the Department of Transport, and one of his duties was running the weather

     station in Lansdowne House.  He and his wife Maureen were good friends with my parents.

  

5.  Painting:

     Both of my parents were painters.  My father preferred oils and my mother watercolors.  Unfortunately 

     the responsibilities of working and raising and educating five children made it difficult for my parents to 

     pursue their passions.  I am humbled by the sacrifices they made for my brother, sisters, and me.  

6.  The Rise and Fall of the Third Reicht:  A History of Nazi Germany:

     My mother was a secretary in the Royal Canadian Air Force toward the end of WW II.  Part of her job was

     to type letters informing families about loved ones who had been injured or killed.  She actually had to type

     letters to people she knew in her village of Smith's Cove, Nova Scotia.  Understandably, reading Shirer's account

     of the rise and fall of Nazi Germany was distressing for my mother.

     William Shirer, a journalist who reported on Nazi Germany for six years, based his book on captured Nazi

     documents, the diaries of Joseph Goebbels, Franz Halder, and Galeazzo Ciano, evidence and testimony from

     the Nuremberg trials, and a variety of media sources.  Published in 1960, the book was an award-winning

     bestseller, acclaimed by journalists but less so by academic historians, perhaps because of its journalistic rather

     than academic style.  Wikipedia  
     
     I tried to read it after Mom finished it, but I found it too dry as an eleven-year-old and quit reading it.

For Map Lovers Like Me:

Route Map for Austin Airways, 1985

with Lansdowne House West of James Bay

Nakina is near Geraldton.

Wikipedia

Location of Nakina

 Google Maps

Location of Smith's Cove, Nova Scotia

Wikimedia

Canada   Wikimedia

For Bakers Like Me:
(Actually I haven't had the guts to bake these for decades!)

Mom’s Angel Food Cake
Ingredients:
1¼ - 1½ cups sugar
1 cup cake flour
½ teaspoon salt
1¼ cups egg whites (10-12 egg whites)
1 tablespoon water
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon cream of tartar
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
½ teaspoon almond extract

Directions:
Use a 9-inch tube pan, with removable rim.  Do not grease.
Preheat oven to 325º F.

Sift twice 1¼ - 1½ cups of sugar.
Sift separately before measuring 1 cup of cake flour.
Resift the flour three times
with ½ cup of the sifted sugar and ½ teaspoon salt.

Whip until foamy the 1¼ cups of egg whites
(10-12 egg whites, 60 - 70º F, separated just before use)
with 1 tablespoon water and 1 tablespoon lemon juice.
Add 1 teaspoon cream of tartar
and whip the egg white mixture until stiff, but not dry.

Gradually whip in, about 1 tablespoon at a time,
the remaining ¾ to 1 cup of sifted sugar.

Fold in (by hand, gentle and firm, avoid breaking down
the cellular structure of the egg whites which have trapped air)
½ teaspoon of vanilla extract and ½ teaspoon of almond extract.

Sift about ¼ cup of the sugar and flour mixture over the batter.
Fold it in gently and briefly with a rubber scraper.
Continue until all the sugar and flour mixture is added.

Pour the batter into an ungreased tube pan.
Then draw a thin spatula gently through the batter
to destroy any large air pockets.

Bake about 45 minutes.
Remove when a toothpick
inserted in the cake comes out clean.

To cool, turn the tube pan upside down on an inverted funnel,
if the tube is not high enough to keep the cake
above the surface of the table.
Let the cake hang about 1½ hours until it is thoroughly set.
Remove it from the pan before storing.

Do not cut with a knife,
but use two forks back-to-back to pry cake gently apart.



Nana’s (Mom’s) Fluffy White Boiled White Icing:
Makes two cups

Ingredients:
2 cups sugar
1 cup water
2 egg whites    
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon cream of tartar 
OR a few drops of lemon juice and 1 teaspoon vanilla extract.

Directions:
Stir until the sugar is dissolved and bring to a boil
2 cups of sugar and 1 cup of water.

Cover and cook for about 3 minutes,
until the steam has washed down any crystals,
which may have formed on the sides of the pan.

Uncover and cook 238º F or 240º F
(as measured by a candy thermometer).
At that temperature the syrup will spin a very thin thread
on the end of a coarser thread
(when suspended from a spoon or spatula).
This final thread will almost disappear.

Whip until frothy 2 egg whites and 1/8 teaspoon salt.

Add the syrup in a thin stream, whipping eggs constantly.

When these ingredients are combined,
add 1/8 teaspoon of cream of tartar
OR a few drops of lemon juice
and 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract.
Continue whipping.

When the icing begins to harden at the edges of the bowl,
it should be ready to put on the cake.
Do not scrape the bowl. 

If the syrup has not been boiled long enough
and the icing won’t harden, beat it in strong sunlight.

If this doesn’t do the trick,
place the icing in the top of a double boiler
over hot water (not in),
until it reaches the right consistency for spreading.

If the syrup has been overcooked
and the icing tends to harden too soon,
adding a teaspoon or two of boiling water
or a few drops of lemon juice will restore it.

If raisins, nutmeats, zest, or other ingredients are to be added to the icing,
wait until the last moment to incorporate them.
They contain oil or acid, which will thin the icing.