Cooking: Evidently Not Like Riding a Bike

Originally published in the Lebanon Reporter on November 3, 2005

A few weeks ago in this column I described a recent trip home to see my family and a late-night thumbing through of my mother’s recipe collection. One of the items I ran across was a three-by-five card with the newly-learned cursive handwriting of a much younger version of myself. This was a recipe for the very first thing I ever cooked – Strawberry Pizza.

I was about ten years old and visiting my grandmother who lived. We were watching a local morning talk show cooking segment. The Strawberry Pizza they prepared really caught my attention. I rushed into the other room to find paper and pencil to write down the recipe. Later that morning I asked if we could go to the store to buy the ingredients. She obliged me as Grandmothers always do.

That evening, to my amazement, the Strawberry Pizza turned out just as it had on TV. Over the next couple of years this became my signature dish, preparing it for family and friends. Not long after I became seriously interested in cooking and my television viewing habits matured beyond the TV talk shows to include Julie Child and Graham Kerr, the Galloping Gourmet. My repertoire expanded as well and I left behind the Strawberry Pizza of my youth.

Fast forward 30 years and there I was sitting cross-legged on the floor of my mother’s living room holding this very same recipe card. I had a vision of our family at home in the kitchen - Oliver in the highchair babbling his adorable baby talk while banging wooden spoons, Henry and I making Strawberry Pizza as I regaled him with stories of yesteryear, and Lisa’s playing piano in the next room creating a lovely soundtrack for our Hallmark moment.

I returned home with the recipe and a few nights ago I decided we would make the Strawberry pizza. I had told Henry what we would be doing after dinner and he seemed to think this sounded like fun. When the time came we prepared our mise an place - laying out all the ingredients as well as the recipe card. As I took a closer look at the recipe I noticed that there the instructions seemed to be a bit sketchy. Details like oven temperature, size of pizza pan to use, cooking time, etc. were curiously absent.

I figured it would all come back to me as I got into it so I forged ahead. The reality of what transpired that evening was a far cry from the culinary circle of life I had envisioned. There was no babbling baby in the highchair because he needed a bath and there was no piano music soundtrack because Lisa was, well, giving the baby a bath. Henry helped for awhile but then decided he would rather watch Shrek. Fine, I thought, I can adapt and go it alone and when the baby’s bathed and Henry’s lost interest in Shrek we can all enjoy a delicious slice of Strawberry Pizza and I’ll hold court telling tales of my boyhood.

Working my way through the recipe, things were not coming back to me as I thought they wood. The dough seemed too sticky, I couldn’t get it to spread out on the pizza pan, and when it was finally cooked and had cooled, it fell completely apart as I attempted to spread on the cream cheese topping. What’s going on here, I thought. How could I have worked from this recipe as a kid, had things turn out so well, and end up with such a total mess thirty years later?

With nowhere else to turn I am enlisting the help of you, dear readers, to help me salvage this childhood memory. The following is the recipe as it appears on my three-by-five card. I invite you to help me fix the recipe. The first person to send me an updated recipe that works will receive an eight-ounce supply of my soon-to-be-famous Hungry Hoosier BBQ Rub and my eternal gratitude. I’m sure it is the crust that needs work. It may be the quantity of the ingredients that are wrong or maybe it is the directions, or a combination of both. If you figure it out send me the updated recipe and I’ll include it in a future column, providing you credit, of course, I’ll set you up with the BBQ Rub, and immediately begin my eternity of gratitude. You can send me your updated recipe via email or by US mail to the Lebanon Reporter. Here is the recipe that needs repaired:

Strawberry Pizza

Crust

1 cup all purpose flour

1/4 cup powdered sugar

2 sticks of butter

Filling

1 bar cream cheese

1 box dream whip

1 cup powdered sugar

Topping

3 cups sliced strawberries

1/2 cup sugar

1. Cook crust 15-20.

2. Beat filling 4-5 minutes.

3. Pour filing on crust and smooth out.

4. Put on strawberries on top and chill.

Comments

[Christy]

Scott, I emailed you a recipe I had that is very similar. I have the feeling you might get a lot of responses, because it seems to be a popular dessert that I have seen many times at club meetings, potlucks, etc. You are gonna be sick from trying all those recipes!