Back many many years ago there was a story that a woman asked for the recipe for a cookie she bought at Neiman Marcus. She thought she had been told $2.50, she was charged $250. She then got her revenge on Neiman Marcus by giving away said recipe. Keep in mind that this particular recipe went viral in the decades prior to social media. Per Snopes, this particular story dates to 1996/97 ish but there has been many forms and variations since at least the 1940s.
Here’s a fine example from a 1948 cookbook, Massachusetts Cooking Rules, Old and New, which lists not only the recipe for “$25 Fudge Cake” but also gives the following explanation for the name:
This friend had to pay $25 upon the receipt of the recipe from the chef of one of the railroads. She had asked for the recipe while eating on a train. The chef gladly sent it to her, together with a bill for $25, which her attorney said she had to pay. She then gave the recipe to all her friends, hoping they would get some pleasure from it.
One thing I find interesting about this particular version of the recipe is that it calls for Hershey (assuming milk) chocolate when I highly doubt that Neiman Marcus would use such a pedestrian ingredient. (Cue me getting sidetracked looking at the NM website and drooling over $600 shoes when the last shoes I bought came from the thrift store, but I digress)
Someday there will be a vaccine for Covid and we will go back to life. After church coffee hours were the best part of going to church and this Blueberry Buckle recipe by Eleanor Calvin of the Second Congregational Church of Newcastle, Maine is perfect for those.
This recipe for an Apple Topped Coffee Cake is from Evelyn Beauly & comes from The Village Cookbook edited by the Salisbury Ladies Aid of Salisbury, New Hampshire and published by the Salisbury Congregational Community Church
In 1744, the Rev. Jonathan Lee rode into this “wilderness” on horseback to become our first pastor. In New England tradition, our first Meeting House served as the center of political, social, and religious assembly. Our present Meeting House, built in 1800, remains as a living example of Puritan simplicity. The Congregational Church of Salisbury is part of the United Church of Christ (UCC), a denomination which was formed in 1957 with the merger of two church bodies – the Evangelical and Reformed Church and the Congregational Christian Church. Today the United Church of Christ includes almost 2 million people in nearly 6,500 congregations.
