Not so tricky tricks

My initial post on Betty Crocker's Baking's Believing (undated, but an address inside does not include a zip code, so it's from early 1963 at the latest) mostly discussed my confusion about the intended audience. Was it moms planning birthday parties for kids? Bored housewives planning overly-elaborate cookie displays for the bridge club or a swingers' party? Kids who wanted to entertain other kids who had an extremely high threshold for boredom? They all seemed simultaneously possible but also wrong. Today, I want to look at a few more recipes I picked out just because they made me say, "Huh." They don't seem great or terrible-- just like more work than payoff.

One of those is Trick Bits, described as a "Magic mix of sweet and salt."

I mean, sweet and salt can be a great combo. (I'm sure that's part of why I adore Reese's peanut butter cups!) I just can't really see the point of creating this particular mix, when it involves mixing four different flavors of cookie dough, cutting each into its own tiny shapes, baking, and combining the product of all that work with nuts-- especially when the cookies will likely start breaking apart and the whole mix will probably taste pretty uniform after a day or so of being mixed together anyway. (My guess is that it will all taste at least vaguely of peppermint, given that that's the most assertive flavoring in the cookie mix.) Why bother with all that work when Reese's peanut butter cups already exist in this world? Plus there's Cracker Jacks, kettle corn, and any number of other sweet-n-salty combos. Trick Bits just seems like unsatisfying busywork. The trick is convincing anyone this should actually be prepared.

Another recipe with a rather non-existent trick  is the Sleight of Hand Cake. There's certainly nothing wrong with a spice and nut cake topped with a browned butter frosting (except that it also contains raisins).

It's just that I don't see much of a trick. It's just a hand outline on a cake. I also have to return to my question about the intended audience for this stuff. I can't really see kids getting that excited about a spice and nut cake with raisins, and I can't see grown-ups getting too excited about a cake with a nutty hand silhouette on top (with gumdrops between the fingers, for some reason).

At least there's kind of a point of the next recipe: Secret Word Cupcakes. Kids like the idea of communicating in secret. There's a reason why disappearing ink and secret decoder rings feature so heavily in stories for and about kids.

But the idea for writing on the top of a cupcake with corn syrup and colored sugar, then letting it dry overnight, and then covering the rest of the cupcake with additional colored sugar, and then instructing the cupcake eaters to tip off the excess sugar so they can read the writing... Well, there are just too many places where this could go wrong for the plan to feel very useful... starting with the idea that people who would be intrigued by a secret message on top of a cupcake would be willing to wait overnight before they could eat the cupcake. And even if you do get the cupcakes set up with the secret writing before anyone eats them, kids with cupcakes are supposed to listen to instructions on how to eat them rather than just plowing on in and only noticing that you're trying to instruct them once it's too late? And if they do manage to listen and follow instructions-- will the excess sugar actually come off enough that the secret writing will be visible? If not-- that's a disappointment. And if so, then you've probably got colored sugar dumped all over the table, the floor, the kid's clothes, and probably somewhere that will not make any sense, but you won't find it until next Tuesday. Or maybe next October.

In short, I love this book for its amazing weirdness and impracticality. And also for reminding me that I'm happy that I never have to cook for kids.