Janet Gaynor's Ice Box Cookies

Oh what joy, home in time for Desmond Carrington on R2 with nothing to do but listen in.

Got up early to get Janet's cookies in the oven. I broke my own rule and made them with spreadable butter. Mistake. They weren't all firm and crisp like they should be, but soft and chewy. Nice, but not as Janet would have wanted them. Still, my work chums gobbled them up in a flash, making appropriate noises and giving them double thumbs up.

Had a wonderful lunch with my mentor Hugh. As usual we laughed far too loudly, I had to calm down for fear of upsetting other people in the restaurant. The thing that really killed me was him recounting a story I had told him, with great embellishment. I don't think I have ever experienced this before. He asked me how my Second Life adventures were going and when I said I hadn't been on there for a while he was astonished. He said that last time we'd got together I told him all about dancing in the ballroom of the Titanic and an encounter with a sleazy man and a billiard table that was interrupted by a phone call from a Hawaiian. Well, he'd kind of got it right. What about the guy pole dancing in a Batman outfit though?!

It has reminded me that I did find it incredibly calming to wander around on my own in virtual reality and often ended up sitting under a fountain meditating. But it was a worse time waster than TV for a while there so I'd better not get back into it...

Janet Gaynor's Ice Box Cookies

I'm very excited about Olivier's Oscars party tomorrow. He has the whole thing on tape and a bunch of us are going to pretend we are watching it "as live" whilst chowing down on a few Silver Screen Supper specialities. I'm doing the canapes and cake and will report back on what we had on Sunday.

Janet was the first recipient of the Academy Award for Best Actress so I thought it would be a good day to mention that my lovely ex-housemate Grace made some Ice Box Cookes last week with modifications. She added 1 teaspoon of mixed spice and 100g sultanas and pronounced them to be "yumtastic!" She also came up with the genius suggestion that they be renamed "Janet's nicey icey spice box cookies".

Easy for her to say!

Silver Screen Sunday Extravaganza

What a FANTASTIC afternoon we had in Cardiff at the Silver Screen Suppers event. There was a lot of love in the house and a LOT of cream cheese too! Chefs Ruth C, Katharine and Anita rustled up tonnes of Silver Screen Supper foodstuffs and the guests wolfed the lot washed down with champagne cocktails and lashings of wine! It was a stardust sprinkled buffet table groaning under the weight of Greer Garson's Gucamole, Lana Turner's Simple and Easy Salsa, Anna Sten's Russian Sandwiches, Katharine Hepburn's Brownies, Janet Gaynor's Ice Box Cookies, Colleen Moore's Shamrock Salad and - my fave - Mae West's Pumpkin Pies. YUM YUM YUM.

Lots of guests came done up as their favourite film stars (Warren Beatty, Shirley MacLaine, a singing cowboy (not sure which one!), Cary Grant and Lauren Bacall to name but a few), Anna ran a fabulous film quiz and I gave a little 10 minute introduction to the project. Several people volunteered to test cook (email me at silverscreensuppers@yahoo.co.uk for a list of recipes) and there may be a chance for me to visit St Donat's - former holiday home of MARION DAVIES in Wales sometime soon.

The event was all in a very good cause - raising money for Theatre Versus Oppression - see http://www.theatreversusoppression.com/ and photos of the splendid food can be seen here - http://www.flickr.com/photos/fritzyritz/ or by clicking on the picture of the heaving buffet table in the side bar. I put on 3 and a half pounds - that's how GOOD it all was.

Oh and if you are wondering, I have put ROMY SCHNEIDER at the head of my post to welcome Joan and Bette's brand new bundle of joy into the world. She goes by the name of Romy so how can she fail to be fabulous?

Janet Gaynor's Ice Box Cookies

I have had a terrible few days. Disappointed in love (amazed at how low some people will go), disappointed in my handwashing skills (shrank a gorgeous vintage frock) and disappointed with Amy Winehouse's Beloved Camden Cobbles (ripped the heel off a favourite pair of shoes). Was feeling very down in the dumps until I checked my emails and found I had WON AN AWARD!

I feel like I have won an OSCAR as Matthew over at Movietone-News has awarded me a Kreativ Blogger award. Yowzer. Soooooooo chuffed. Apparently there are two conditions involved in accepting the award. First, one must list seven other blogs to receive the award, and secondly reveal 'seven things you don't know about me'. So here we go. My current favourite 7 blogs - click on the blue name to check them out for yourselves:

Silent Stanzas - wonderful poetry about stars of the silent era
Carole Lombard - my favourite single star website - just gorgeous
Allure - I'd like some please
Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog - one of the first blogs I ever read, and it still tickles me
Matilda's Delights - always something lovely to look at
Sassy Minx - my cheerleader
Kemp Folds - silly but I love it

And seven things you MAY not know about me:

1 - My hair IS longer than Anna Mae Wong's (see post from Oct 16th) - 25 inches long in fact, from centre parting to split ends.
2 - Like Marilyn Monroe in "How To Marry A Millionaire" I am far too vain to wear my glasses.
3 - I come over all peculiar if I ever see Fran Healy or Ricky Whittle on the telebox.
4 - I strongly dislike my best friend's favourite classic movie (she does not know this).
5 - The film I have watched more than any other is Gone With The Wind.
6 - I don't like to touch any tea towel unless it belongs to me.
7 - Janet Gaynor's Ice Box Cookies are my favourite thing to cook.

I shall now bask in the glory of being an award winner - how utterly, utterly lovely!

Janet Gaynor's Ice Box Cookies

I love this picture of Janet - she is looking so perky! Very much not how I am feeling but I may try and channel this kind of attitude tomorrow. It's going to be a big day.

The cookie dough is in the fridge doing whatever it does overnight in readiness for my important meeting tomorrow. It's going to be a scramble to get there in time as in the early afternoon I'm going to look at what may well be the answer to my cosmic order - a sunny studio flat in a leafy North London suburb.

Apologies to all the test cooks who have sent in feedback but haven't seen their verdicts on the blog yet. I've been a bit preoccupied with moving. Planets are realigning though and soon I will have the time and the head space to forge ahead with the feedback. Onwards mighty Silver Screen Suppers!

Janet Gaynor's Ice Box Cookies

Veronica over in Westbourne Grove had a go at Janet's Ice Box Cookies this week and sent me an evocative account of her mishaps. Firstly there was a misunderstanding in the late night shop where she went to buy the dates, as the shopkeeper kept thinking she was asking him what the date was.... Reminds me of a similar conversation I once had regarding avocados...

Veronica baked the cookies in three batches and I quote: "The first lot were a bit of a funny shape as the ‘banana-size’ rolls had got a flat edge from their overnight stay in the fridge. I re-rolled the rest of the ‘bananas’ so that they were round again. The second lot were a great shape but got a bit singed because I was drying my hair and didn’t hear the timer go off. The last batch were perfect … gorgeous golden brown circles! The phone rang while I was lying them out to cool and while I was yakking the dog licked them all!"

Naughty Tia! Still, her squeeze took all the singed ones off in a box and the dodgy shaped ones were devoured by a dinner party crowd on a boat and they were apparently enjoyed by all. She didn't say what happened to the dog-licked ones though...

Janet Gaynor's Ice Box Cookies

Much excitement in the Silver Screen Silver camp as I'm off to a big dinner party at the home of Gladys tonight. There will be not one, not two but three other celeb chefs there too. EEK. I am taking some Ice Box Cookies all wrapped up in cellophane as party favours...

Also this week we had a lovely piece on the Sassy Minx website - here is a link:

http://www.thesassyminx.com/girls-on-top/silverscreen-suppers/

and I will try and put a button on the side bar too.

RECIPE TESTERS NEEDED!

I'll be sending out the list of 100 stars and recipes that we plan to feature in the Silver Screen Suppers book at the end of the week to anyone who fancies testing one for us. Your name will appear in the acknowledgments so drop me an email at silverscreensuppers@yahoo.co.uk if you'd like to give one a whirl. A tiny taste of fame can be yours, and you'll get to sprinkle some stardust around your kitchen as you eat like the stars!

Janet Gaynor's Ice Box Cookies

Love that Tam O'Shanter!

I made a big batch of Janet's cookies for my Cinema Museum lecture and they were wolfed down by the lovely folk who came along. The lecture was lots of fun but I had a few technical problems. When my Greta Garbo clip failed to play I had to do the quote myself, "Gif me whiskey, ginger ale on the side. And don't be stingy baby." Ha ha!

I met some lovely people and had a chat after the event with a potential publisher for the book over beer, fish and a "little bit of chip".

Janet Gaynor's Ice Box Cookies

I have to say thankyou to Larry Hodges for this pic of Janet Gaynor playing table tennis. He has a whole website dedicated to celebrities playing ping pong. How fab.

Just a little report on the meeting with our possible publisher ES. I rustled up some Janet Gaynor cookies on the fly as I only had a day or so notice of our meeting. Luckily I still had two nice boxes from the cake supplies shop on Hoe Street. Imagine my horror when I passed it on the bus yesterday to see that it has not only closed down but has effectively been razed to the ground! Is there no need for elaborately iced cakes any more?

It is all systems go on the proposal. I have a LOT of work to do in the next week or so - writing. It is all very well cooking the dishes but it all has to be translated into words which isn't so easy. Plus I have the Joan Crawford and Hollywood Glamour lectures to work on, AND the cruise lectures. AND a job application. It's a good job I don't have a boyfriend any more! No time!

Janet Gaynor Ice Box Cookies

Deep in the depths of the magical New Forest another batch of JGIBCs were cooked up. Early in the morning before most of my fellow writers began shuffling into the enormous kitchen for their herbal teas and barley cups I sliced and baked whilst in my kimono and slippers.

These were gluten free versions and although more crumbly than usual they were a nice mid morning snack sitting beside the fountain with the fish beneath our feet as we tried to write a surrealist poem. What a lovely way to get away from the hurly burly...

Janet Gaynor's Ice Box Cookies

I am living the high life at a stayingcool apartment in Manchester. "Deluxe Meets Pop" in the Edge - blime. It is SO fabulous with swanky furniture, blobby wallpaper and shag pile rugs that you could lose a puppy in. It is a "Forty Bottles" event. Marilyn is in bed in full make up and a leopard print scarf "doing some work". This is the way of a modern entrepreneur. This is the life I want and I shall get it too!

Made a batch of Janet Gaynor's IBC to take to the London Book Fair earlier in the week. Rosalind and Jimmy set up a production line for putting groups of 5 into little cellophane packages with gold ribbons and tailor made labels. They looked ace. As a "sweetener" for potential publishers they seemed to do the trick. Smiles all round when I plopped the cookies on the bargaining table! I am ashamed to say that as I was making the cookies in a slightly inebriated state having an animated conversation with Edmund I forgot to add the vanilla essence. They still tasted good though.

What on earth was Janet thinking when she listed the quantity though? I got over 120 cookies out of that dough!

Janet Gaynor's Ice Box Cookies

We are back to Janet's Cookies. It is ten past midnight and I have just eaten one. Fact is, I was feeling like a GOOSEBERRY here at Rosalind's place. The politics of relationships are very, very complicated and methinks it really is time to ship out to the sorority house in Walthamstow STAT.

Fact number two is that Janet's Cookies by my estimation were made on Wednesday and frozen overnight. Cooked on Thursday. Bagged up and taken to New York on Friday. Taken on to Washington D.C. on Sunday. Put in my luggage which left D.C. on Monday and arrived in London on Tuesday. The Cookies taste just as good tonight as they did on Thursday fresh out of the oven.

This is the power of Silver Screen Suppers! All the memories of the Summit live on in those little scotchbread circles of wonderment.
Rock and roll Janet Gaynor!

Janet Gaynor's Ice Box Cookies

Turns out that Ruth is not only slightly camera shy but is also extremely blog shy. I am writing this for the record in the hope that at some point she will add stuff in, if not delete all this and rewrite it to her own specifications for it is SHE that made the Ice Box Cookies and not I.

I am returned to the UK with several hundred JGIB Cookies and several Anna May Wong's teacakes. All DELICIOUS. I am dishing them out to Rosalind and Jimmy tonight and hopefully Charley tomorrow and the Chaw-Bacon on Friday. Happy is the man or woman who gets an item baked by Ruth...

Janet Gaynor and Cheese "Fondue"

Ahhhh, sweet victory after two debacles in the kitchen d'etting. Saturday dawned in a rather ominous fashion - well, mainly as I knew that I simply couldn't put off La Gaynor anymore. I felt her looking at me constantly. From every direction. In fact, showed a clip to les students this week and practically screamed when her sweet visage looked right back at me saying, "I know that this recipe is made of "american" cheese, but don't give up on me..."

Let us begin by saying that for Janet, "fondue" really means more of a souffle. or something. After a quick call to the grandmere (who is now officially going to be called before any attempt at a recipe out of the Photoplay book with its vague and "of course you know what i mean when i say 'warm' oven temperature"), I popped open a cold bottle of pinot grigio brought over by the nutty professor, and began unrwapping my sheets of kraft american cheese. The recipe did demand that it be shredded, but clearly american cheese in the 1930s was made of heartier stock than now. I attempted to chop it and ended up with a mound of clumpy, sticky, nay, rubbery velveeta. Only made more hilarious by the nutty professor constantly sneaking up and grabbing mouthfuls and muttering - "don't laugh". He claims to have grown up not knowing that there was any other kind of cheese until he discovered brie at age 25. I believe him.

Well, the results were not unedible (a step forward, no offense to the divine Anna May Wong) but nothing to dream about long term. Fluffy, light as air, and that peculiarly unique orange color that velveeta brings... I fell asleep dreaming about the future sss cooking show that would feature lya de putti making this dish, then ruth etting pulling out a can of cheese whiz in a confident manner demonstrating that modern conveniences can short cut just about anything.

Thus reinvigorated, I plan to attack Shirley's pecan bars again this week. Huzzah!!