A friend of ours had picked up some cool vintage cookery books for me at a garage sale, and they featured some kinda weird recipes that I just had to try – think baked bean bread – hatched in a blender, then baked in a bundt, and not too, too bad, actually – it’s just probably better for all concerned if you don’t tell folk what they’re eating until after they’ve et it – so many people eat with their ears.
I’ve gone back to the books – tho’ this time, I’ve looked to “Mary Meade’s Magic Recipes, A cookbook for the electric blender” by Ruth Ellen Church – which is still available, via resellers, on Amazon – including, it would seem ‘collectible editions’.
Harumph. I don’t need no collectible edition…
I have the revised and enlarged DELUXE edition from 1965, so there!
Sure, this book, deluxe or not, still contains some scary sounding stuff; I mean REALLY – were fried sauerkraut balls ever the hit of any party? I think not.
This is not one of those kind of recipes. The only bit o’ weirdness I came across was that it called for one tablespoon of “fat” – which I chose to interpret as one tablespoon of butter; no doubt one tablespoon of oil would work as well.
Simple ingredients, fast work to put together, and a mighty tasty end result – Rich will eat it without any added butter, tho’ I am kinda partial to a schmear o’ chive or jalapeño cream cheese – this is a recipe that deserves to be brought back in a big way!
INGREDIENTS
•2 cups flour
•1-12/ tsp baking powder
•3/4 tsp baking soda
•1/4 tsp salt
•1 tbsp “fat” – I used butter, but oil would probably be a decent option
•1 cup buttermilk
•1 egg
•1 cup brown sugar, packed
•1/2 cup nuts
Heat the oven to 350º.
Sift or whisk together the flour, baking powder, soda and salt in a bowl.
Combine the “fat’, buttermilk, egg and brown sugar together in your blender until smooth, then add the nuts and blend for an additional fifteen seconds. 
This will give you a ‘nutmeal’ kind of texture; if you’d like chunkier nutmeats, I’d suggest adding in with the sifted or whisked flour.
Pour the contents of the blender container into the flour mixture and stir together just until moistened.
Turn into a greased loaf pan (the original recipe calls for 9-1/2 x 5-1/2) and bake for 45 minutes, or until done. Check it, ‘cause mine was nicely done in forty minutes, and that was after compensating for my ‘hot’ oven.
Turn onto a rack to cool and enjoy.