It's an old-fashioned Christmas in the Rahmeyer store at 1022 Third Avenue. The Pfeffernuesse fills a broad-bellied barrel. Gingerbread oblongs are fronted by colorful cut-outs of Santa Claus, of angels and maidens. There are hearts of Lebkuchen, chocolate-frosted, and marzipan in many shapes and colors. Here is Spitzkuchen too, the German honey cake layered with a raspberry jelly, cut in small squares, and covered with chocolate.
Salted nuts, tin-packed, sealed against air, crisp and delicious, are the Lancaster Sun Tan. Maybe those nuts aren't the best we ever did eat, but at least for our money they are near the top of the heap. A United Nations combination of nuts: filberts from Turkey, cashews from India, big Brazil nuts from Brazil, almonds from California, pecans from Texas, and peanuts from Virginia.
The nuts are blanched first to remove their tight-fitted brown skins, then dry-roasted, next a brief dive into a caldron of hot peanut oil. From the oil boiler they are run to the processing bin equipped with a fan operation to draw out the heat. Here the salting is done and the nuts treated with a special dressing to keep their oils intact. Packaging follows immediately, and the nuts are shipped the same day as processed.
During the war these Lancaster, Pennsylvania nuts were stocked by post exchanges the wide world over. Put to the test, they proved to be perfect keepers for as long as six months. The Lancaster Salted Nut Company, thirty-three years in the business, have distribution east of the Rockies concentrated principally in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, New England, and Ohio. B. Altman, Fifth Avenue at 34th, is the New York City store handling the product. The nuts come in 1- and 2-pound tins, sun tan in color, holding mixed nuts plus peanuts at ＄1.60 a pound; a new tin, yellow-orange, indicates a mix without peanuts, this ＄2.19 a pound.
Candy-maker Blum of San Francisco turns to baking at the Christmas season to make fruitcakes and plum puddings for tens of thousands of people who think Christmas isn't Christmas without Blum's handiwork.
A treat—but really! Take the fruitcake —this is prepared with a fine vintage wine, the moisture sealed in by a process developed many years ago at the Blum plant. The cake contains less than 10 per cent flour, the rest fruit peels, fruits, nuts, and spices and so rich it should be served in the thinnest of slivers. The plum pudding is equally extravagant; moist, tender, rich, and aromatic. Pour brandy over, ignite, and present a masterpiece dancing with flames. The cake is made in 1-, 2-, and 3-pound sizes selling for ＄1.75 a pound. Puddings of 1 ½ pounds, ＄2.75, 2 ½ pounds, ＄5, 3 ½ pounds, ＄6.75, are wrapped in wax paper. There is a melon shape also, 2 pounds, ＄3.50, 3 pounds, ＄5. Available at all stores carrying the Blum products or write Blum's, San Francisco, California. In New York City, Lord and Taylor, Fifth Avenue at 38th, carry the items in their Blum shop, main floor.
Coffee, America's favorite breakfast beverage, is getting its flavor highlighted in a variety of new foods ranging from coffee-flavored milk, coffee-flavored soda, to coffee gelatin. Coffee flavor in candy is the current rave. Some of the new pieces are coffee hard centers, coffee creams, roasted coffee beans, these chocolate-dipped. The ground, roasted beans are used in cream fillings, in coffee pastilles, coffee nips, coffeeets.
Coffee concentrates are offered for flavoring in custards, ice creams, for fillings in pies, cakes, and éclairs. Coffee gelatin is the product of the Plymouth Rock Gelatin Company, located in Boston. The Poland Springs Company of Poland Springs, New Hampshire, is manufacturing coffee soda. A product catching on in the New England area is “Café Olay,” a milk drink made “peptivating” with a coffee concentrate. This is bottled like any milk, its color a pale coffee shade, its flavor like coffee when diluted half and half with whole milk. Coffee milk is made by several of the large New England dairies to deliver along their routes and to sell at fountains and groceries.
Some day try this coffee parfait created by New York's famous night club, the Copacabana, and served there to the lilting tune of “There's an Awful Lot of Coffee in Brazil.” For this, take little scoops of coffee ice cream to make layers in a tall parfait glass with glups of coffee cordial. And cordial they are, when you get these two together. The dark sweet liqueur boasting the concentrated coffee taste is called “Coffee Sport,” imported from the Virgin Islands by Jules Orteig, Ltd., selling in most New York liquor stores. At Sherry Wine and Spirits Company, 678 Madison Avenue, it retails ＄3.98 for four-fifths.
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