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What Does this Label Lead You to Believe?

Ocean Spray 100% Juice

“Ocean Spray 100% Juice” means what, exactly?

Ruby Red Grapefruit, 100 percent juice, no sugar added. And the price is higher than an equivalent amount of refrigerated fresh 100 percent orange juice, so it must be pure grapefruit juice right? Wrong. It does not say “pure grapefruit juice” and it’s not.

If one reads the ingredients one learns that it contains grapefruit juice plus two other juices. Talk about deceptive labeling. I hope you are reading the labels in the “juice” section of the market. The only pure juices one can find these days are certain grape juices and most prune juices. All others, like 95 percent of the “juices”, are blends and “cocktails”, and are also spiked with high fructose corn syrup to help you get fat faster. Why? If I wanted soda pop or candy I can go to the soda pop or candy sections of the market. This is supposed to be the juice section, or it used to be anyway.

Be very careful when buying fruit juices. “Pomegranate juice” is mostly grape juice. “Blueberry” is mostly grape juice. Read the label and you’ll find that nearly all of them except grape and prune are not what they appear to be.

Refilling a Fountain Pen Ink Cartridge


As some of you know, I am a user of fountain pens. There are all sorts of fill mechanisms for fountain pens such as levers, pistons, converters, and cartridges. My usual method is to refill cartridges from bottled ink using a syringe.

From time to time, questions come up about how to refill cartridges so I decided to make a short video of the easy procedure.

I hope this was helpful. Please comment below if you have any questions.

Kriegskuchen (War Cake)

Back in 1963, my Aunt Annie, who was at that time 90 years old, gave me a recipe she had gotten from her mother for an unusual cake she learned to make as a child in Germany. She called it Kriegskuchen, which translates as “War Cake”. It was called this because it’s easy to make and does not require butter, or eggs, or oil, which are in short supply during a war. For those of you on a low-calorie or low-fat diet, or for those with an egg allergy, this is just what you were looking for.

Kriegskuchen (War Cake) 1

My mother made this cake often during the year all through the 1960’s and 70’s, and especially around Christmas. The flavor of the standard recipe is Christmas-like, but the recipe is flexible. I’ve continued the tradition for many years, and experimented a lot with variations on the original recipe. Around Christmas I bake and ship these cakes in various flavors to my friends and kids. I thought I’d share it here.

Kriegskuchen (War Cake) 2

All of these cakes are baked in a standard bread pan. The recipe I got from my aunt was in grams but my mother converted it all to more convenient units.

Original Recipe:

2 cups flour
3/4 cup cocoa (Hersheys)
3/4 cup sugar
2-1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/2 cup raisins, currants, or diced dried apricots soaked in water for 12 to 24 hours until they swell up.
1-1/4 cup milk (measure precisely)

Whisk together all the dry ingredients. Then add the milk and mix with a spatula until everything is wetted. The batter is thick and pasty so it takes some effort to fold and mix. The moisture content of flour varies so sometimes you need to add a tiny bit more milk. There should be no dry flour or cocoa visible. Then scoop it all into a greased breadpan and bake at 350F for one hour. Remove from oven and allow to rest for five minutes. Turn out on a cake rack to cool off.

Kriegskuchen (War Cake) 3

Next, we can get creative and have some fun with this cake. If you want a super chocolaty cake add one cup of chocolate chips to the original recipe, or add one cup of peanut butter chips, or 50/50. Adding a teaspoon of vanilla changes the taste. Omitting or reducing the cloves changes the taste.

Or, we can substitute other fruits for the currants/raisins. Elsewhere in my blog you will find a recipe for candied orange peel. Candied orange peel combined with the chocolate makes a heavenly flavor. If you really want to go crazy add candied orange peel and chocolate chips. Wow.

Or, we can omit the cocoa. For this variation, omit the cocoa, reduce the milk to one cup, and be sure to add one or one and a half teaspoons of vanilla. You can add just about any candied fruit you like. About one cup does the job. My son-in-law’s favorite is a version made with candied pineapple and no cocoa. For this, I purchase cans of small diced pineapple wedges and I candy them the same way as the orange peel recipe elsewhere in my blog.

Have fun with this low-cal, non-fat cake. Depending upon the ingredients, calorie count for the whole cake varies from 1,400 to 1,800 calories except for the super chocolaty chip version above that comes in around 2,900 calories.

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