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Bisquick001Welcome to another week of the Mid-Century Menu!  Honestly, I am surprised this feature has gone one as long as it has.  I thought for sure that it would become too disgusting for us to continue, but Tom and I have persevered through all the stinky, nasty dishes and even found a few good ones.  One of these days I need to make a Best and Worst list of the Mid-Century Menu.  Sigh.  So many things to do.

In any case, this week’s menu comes out of Betty Crocker’s Bisquick Cook Book, published in 1956.  I love this cookbook, not just because of some of the crazy recipes, but for all the great pictures as well.  I think this is one of the better photographed cookbooks, just for the fact that they take a lot of pictures of the finished dishes.  With most of these older cookbooks you just have to use your imagination when it comes to picturing the end result of the recipe.  And that has put me off more than a few recipes, let me tell you.  I can imagine some pretty horrible stuff.

Of course, the pictures also have drawbacks.

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What in God’s name is oozing out of that waffle sandwich on the right?  What?!?!?  It looks like someone on the photo shoot was so nauseated that they threw up on a waffle.

“Awww, someone bring me another waffle, Bill just yaked on this one.”

“Should we clean-up the plate and reset everything?”

“Nah, the cream on the shortcake will run. Just throw it on top of the other one and we’ll pretend its filling.”

 Gah.

Another thing, has anyone else noticed that the picture of Betty Crocker has yellow eyes?  Yellow eyes, I swear to God, yellow eyes!  Just like Scut Farkas.

Anyway, all kidding aside, here is the dish I picked for this week.

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Really?  Really?!?!?  On what planet is a hot dog, cheese and ketchup considered pizza???  Even if you used chili sauce, it would be closer to chili than pizza.  Not even the dumbest 1950’s kid would be fooled by this. 

Pizza. Bah.

In any case, I was off!

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I got chicken hot dogs because they were less fat.  I didn’t think it would make that much of an impact in whether or not the boats actually tasted like pizza.

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Milk, melted butter and Bisquick.

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The dough, all stirred together.

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Here it is on the floured board after it kneading it 8 times.

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Here it is after being rolled out and divided.  I didn’t bother trimming the dough to make it even!

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The hot dog halves, all in place. 

And no, it isn’t pizza yet.

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Putting the cheese strips in place.  I thought they would be safer under the hot dog than on top of it.

Nope, not pizza yet!

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Ketchup on top of the hot dogs.

Still not pizza!

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Here they are, all boated up and ready for the oven.  You know, at first I thought this was going to be an easy recipe, but from the last picture until this picture took…me…forever!  They were so fussy!  Oh well, I suppose I shouldn’t complain.  At least they look semi-appetizing, which is a good thing after all that work.

And no, Sara, they aren’t pizza yet.

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Here they are, straight from the oven.  They don’t look like pizza, but you never know. I didn’t put pudding or even milk into the dessert and it came out with pudding on the bottom.  I was really confused, and I wondered if Bisquick was some kind of miracle ingredient.

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The first bite. 

“So, is it pizza?”

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“Nope,”  Tom said, “It’s not pizza, but these things are really good.”

I took a bite.  They were really good. Sickeningly good, actually.

But they didn’t taste like pizza. Nuts. I guess Bisquick isn’t magic after all.

The Verdict:

Pizza Boats:  Good, but not a bit like pizza. The biscuit is very rich and is a little sickening after the second one, but is still pretty tasty.  Would be a good party snack if cut into smaller pieces.

Hot Fudge Pudding Cake:  Really good.  How the mystery layer of pudding came about I have no idea, but it was really good. Tom ate himself sick on it, and didn’t care about the mystery.

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