dessert

Birthday pie: lemon meringue

~ nancyruth ~ 11 Comments

My stepdaughter is having a birthday and then she’s going off to join the Air Force. Wow! It is tradition to have the birthday child to select the type of dinner and cake she/he would like for their celebration. This one likes pie. Apple pie, lemon meringue pie, pie! This year she has selected barbecue ribs (Hubby’s job to grill) and lemon meringue pie which is mine to make.

I have a French cookbook of the coffee table variety which has a wonderful recipe for lemon meringue pie with a lemon curd. That uses butter. I also looked at one of my British baking books which has both a lemon curd tart and a lemon meringue pie. Which to make?

I decide to go with the lemon meringue pie from Home Baking: Cakes, cookies, pies, pastries, bread (Paragon Publishing 2005). I am not following this exactly because…well, just because! Almost, but adding one more egg and one more lemon. Here are my ingredients:

  • single pie crust; I recently made a batch of the apple cider vinegar pie crust and have one disc in the freezer. I thaw this out.
  • 3 tablespoons cornstarch
  • 1 1/4 cups cold water
  • juice and grated zest of 3 lemons
  • 1 cup of sugar, divided
  • 3 eggs, separated

The pie crust needs to be pre-baked. i do not do this well. I want to buy some of those pie beans or some such to learn to do this better. But I have to make do with what is available. I do not have dried beans in the pantry. What to do? Last time I tried to pre-bake a crust I put a pot lid on it and this was not successful. It puffed up underneath the lid and the edges shrunk. This time I fit a disposable foil pie tin inside the pie pan and then put the lid on it. The recipe says to prick the crust all over and bake at 350 F for 15 minutes. I did this and then uncovered the crust and let it bake for another 10 minutes raising the temperature to 375 F. This worked nicely, light brown, no shrinkage.

20161020_214726222_iosNow for the filling. I do a nice mise en place. I have misplaced/lost the insert to my old-time juicer so juicing the lemons is not as fun or simple as it was before.

Mi the cornstarch with 1/4 cup of the cold water. Put the remaining water in a medium sized pot along with the lemon juice, zest and cornstarch paste. Bring to a boil, stirring, and cook for 2 minutes. Let cool slightly. Stir in 5 tablespoons of sugar and the egg yolks. I temper the egg yolks by stirring in a little of the lemon mixture first so as not to have scrambled eggs in the lemon pudding. Pour all of that into the pie shell.

Whip the egg whites until stiff and then whisk in the remaining sugar. I read up on meringues and later figured there should have been more sugar and I should have waited to put the sugar in and should not have whipped them so stiff. Anyway I then had to spread this carefully over the top of the pie. And since it was so stiff it did not spread easily.

Very lemony taste! I am not sure why the meringue cracked unless it was because i whipped the egg whites too stiff.  It was enjoyed by all!

Cherry Custard Tart!

~ nancyruth ~ 3 Comments

I confess this is an experiment. I long to make cherry cafloutis and have not been successful. I think it is the texture that is foreign to this mid-American palate of mine! And ever since I watched all of the BBC series As Time Goes By I have urges to make Custard Tarts which were Lionel’s favorite teatime treat.

The weather cooled off sufficiently for me to want to turn on the oven. What to bake? I dream of biscuits, cakes, pies…and custard tarts! I have a pie dough circle in the freezer and get that out to thaw. I go through my French Feasts cookbook looking for custard. There are lots to choose from. Questions flood my brain: do I pre-bake the crust? which custard cream can be baked? do I bake the cream in the crust? Should I make the whole recipe or half. I see that I and the son have marked the recipes on Page 456 with the amounts for half recipes.

I chose the creme patissiere (pastry cream). I chose to prebake the crust and possibly bake it again with the cream filling. I do not spend any time researching what to do through cookbooks or the internet. I roll out the crust and try to fit it to an 8 inch spring form pan. This was my first mistake: I should have used a regular 9 inch pyrex pie pan. Who knew?

I also decide to make a topping using canned tart cherries. I “melt” 1/2 cup apricot jam in a small sauce pan and add 1/2 can of cherries. Bring to boil and stir.

20160911_215721278_iosFor the “creme pat”:

  • 4 cups milk; I make this with 2 cups half-and-half and 2 cups water. The only milk I have in the house is almond milk and that has very little fat in it.
  • 2 eggs
  • 4 egg yolks
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 2/3 cup flour
  • 1/3 cup butter

Whisk the eggs, yolks, and sugar until pale. I don’t think mine got to pale. I used a hand whisk and not the mixer. I add about 1/2 teaspoon vanilla to add some flavor. Meanwhile put the milk in a heavy bottomed saucepan with the butter. And scald. To this I added the zest of one lemon to augment the custard for the cherries. Add a little of the scalded milk to the egg mixture and then return to the saucepan whisking constantly while adding. I then remembered to add 2/3 cup sifted flour to the egg mixture before I had added it all to the milk. I got that sorted out and this mixture gets cooked gently for 10 minutes. I whisked it a lot of that time to be sure it would be smooth. It came out nicely. I have too much pastry  cream for the little crust I had formed.

I baked the crust for 10 minutes with lid used for the baking blind. I have to get me some of those “baking stones” soon! Ugly, ugly, ugly! And not so crisp. The sides shrunk down as well. I have very little success pre-baking pie crusts. I put it back in the oven for 5 minutes without the lid in it. Now it looks a bit browner. Maybe it is okay. I decide at this time to just add the pastry cream and chill.

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The mistakes I made:

  1. not properly shaping and pre-baking the pie crust in the proper pan. This is not a short crust but a flaky crust that most of us Americans use for all pies.
  2. making too much pastry cream and not letting it cool before filling the pie crust.
  3. not cooking down the jam and cherries long enough to make a thicker sauce.

But how does it taste? Let’s find out.

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Nice flavors. The custard was loose. Perhaps more time in the refrigerator will set it better. I will find out tomorrow. The crust was nicely colored and crisp on the bottom. Good bake! I have lots of pastry cream leftover so cream puffs may be on the menu this week!

Banana cake: baking season returns!

~ nancyruth ~ 5 Comments

September has brought cooler weather. At least for a day or two. Never mind that the forecast shows 90s by the end of the week! Meanwhile I turn on the oven and bake a cake.

Ohiocook sends us over to the diabetic living website to check out dessert recipes. And there is this cake first thing: cinnamon banana cake with chocolate ganache: Cinnamon-Banana Cake

I have frozen bananas, cinnamon, whole wheat pastry flour, so here goes. I follow the recipe exactly except for the dark chocolate in the ganache because, for some reason, I don’t have dark chocolate in the house. Oh well, life in my kitchen must go on.

  • 2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour
  • 1/2 cup granulated sugar
  • 1/2 cup brown sugar
  • 1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 2/3 cup mashed bananas; I used 2 whole frozen bananas
  • 2 eggs
  • 1/4 cup canola oil
  • 3/4 cup non-fat milk; I used cashew milk
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla

Mix all the dry ingredients. Mix all the wet ingredients. Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients all at once and mix till combined.

Oh, you would have preheated the oven to 325 F  and have generously greased a Bundt cake pan. Spread evenly in the pan and bake for 45-55 minutes. Mine took 50 minutes. I thought it would take longer because of the frozen bananas but it was a good looking cake at 50 minutes. Let cool completely and then frost with ganache.

I had to rescue the ganache! The ganache was made with 3 ounces German sweet chocolate and 1/4 cup half and half. Melt the chocolate and stir in the half and half. Well, this was a grainy mess. Very unappealing! Somewhere I remember in my cookbook rambling that chocolate could seize and there was something the cook could do about it. The internet is a life saver for modern day cooks. In the olden days one could call up the grandmother or even ask a neighbor over the back fence what to do, but not in these times. So I put “rescue the ganache” into the search engine and voila! First aid arrived. All the sites said the same thing: heat up a low fat milk and slowly incorporate that into the split ganache. Something about water molecules, etc., would solve the problem. And it did!

Here’s the final product. It looks very much like the picture from the recipe website. How often does that happen?

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This cake is not too sweet and Hubby and the ganache complements it well. Yum!

Blueberry Pie

~ nancyruth ~ 1 Comment

Hubby and I took a Sunday drive to look around some of the local campgrounds to see if any looked inviting for weekend camping trips. It is the second half of the season for camping and I may or may not find a Labor Day weekend spot but it is worth the effort. In the rural areas of this small state there are farms and farm stands. We found one that also is a new winery with a wine tasting happening so we had to stop! And because they took “plastic” for payment I bought plenty of fresh locally grown produce and homemade preserves and a fancy bottle of wine!

They had only four pints of blueberries left so I bought two of them. Pie, I was thinking! I had two discs of pie dough in my freezer so this should be easy! Easy as pie! 🙂

I do not like to cook up the fruit before filling the pie crust. I also wanted to use just one pie crust and fold it over the top of the fruit so it looks rustic. I am not sure what that is called but I’ve always wanted to try it.

  • one pie crust, unbaked and rolled out to a 12 inch circle; I love the apple cider pie dough recipe here.
  • 3 cups blueberries
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 1 tablespoon cornstarch
  • 1 tablespoon lime juice; I read some time ago that lime is nice with blueberries so i thought I would try lime instead of lemon juice

Heat oven to 400 degrees F. Roll out crust and place in 9 inch pie pan. Mix the fruit with the other ingredients and pour into the crust. Fold the crust over the fruit filling. Bake for 35-40 minutes.

I also sprayed the crust with butter flavored cooking spray and sprinkled on some sugar before baking. I figured this would make a nice golden brown.

And here is the final product:

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The filling was a bit runny. This may be because I cut it when it was still warm. But it tasted good and fruity. The filling broke through the crust so I would not be able to pull it out of the pan to place on a serving plate. Did I roll the crust too thin? Hmmm?

Puff tarts!

~ nancyruth ~ 2 Comments

These are totally inspired by Lana-Once Upon a Spice and her Pie Week: “Pop tarts”. I have made homemade pop tarts with a short crust pastry before but this time I am using the one sheet of puff pastry that is leftover in my freezer. So they don’t end up flat enough for the toaster, so they are jam puff tarts! I love pie, any kind of pie. Well, I am not that fond of key lime or rhubarb, but just about everything else.

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The ingredients

Roll the pastry. I actually did not even have a whole sheet of pastry. I rolled it thin to about 12 inch square  on a floured surface. After thawing it, of course! Cut that into 4 squares, heaped a large tablespoon of the jam (technically not a jam or jelly or preserves, but a fruit spread), rubbed water on the edges and folded and crimped the edges with a fork.

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And I poked each one in the middle with the fork.

Before putting them in the oven at 425 degrees F for 15 minutes, I sprayed the tops with cooking spray and sprinkled on a very little bit of granulated sugar. I thought this would help them brown a little.

So does the water, cooking spray, and sugar make it five ingredients instead of two?

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Voila!

What to do with egg whites?

~ nancyruth ~ 4 Comments

20160504_214255930_iOSI have a cup of egg whites in my refrigerator taunting me to do something with them. I have these whites because Son made me a Parisien flan before he left for his job in Alaska. I showed him this  Parisien Flan from Nadia at Maison Travers and he made it for me! It was fabulous!

 

I’m thinking about a … (French word, meringue cake), it’ll come to me in a moment…Pavlova…Dacquoise! I describe this to Hubby and he looks at me with a blank face. I look through a few cookbooks for meringue recipes. Many of the recipes are for 2 egg whites with 2 cups of sugar, confectioners and granulated. That seems like a lot of sugar but sugar is important for the structure of a meringue. I have four egg whites so 2 cups of sugar will have to do. I suggest to Hubby that I could make espresso flavored meringue cookies and he says to go for it. I settle on adapting a recipe from Bakewise by Shirley Corriher. She explains the science behind the product. I do not have cream of tartar so must find a substitute: apparently 1/2 teaspoon lemon juice per egg white.

  • 4 egg whites
  • 2 teaspoons lemon juice
  • 3/4 cup superfine sugar; made by processing regular granulated sugar in the food processor for one minute
  • 3/4 cup confectioners sugar (I didn’t have a full cup!)
  • 1 tablespoon espresso powder
  • 1 tablespoon Hersheys Special Dark Cocoa powder
  • 1 tablespoon flour

First I beat the egg whites and lemon juice with all but two tablespoons of the superfine sugar until stiff peaks formed.

Mix the rest of the dry ingredients to sprinkle on top of the beaten egg whites and fold in until incorporated. I confess that I do not like folding. I always worry about mixing too hard and flattening the mixture.

This is to be piped or spooned onto parchment paper and baked in a 200 degree (F) oven for 1 hour and 45 minutes. My oven is too small. I have three pans of meringue cookies and enough to make a nine inch circle for a Pavlova. I made this planning to dump a can of canned cherries mixed with sweetened yogurt on top and have a fancy dessert.

I don’t like my pastry bag so I just put huge spoonfuls on the pans. I don’t get marks for prettiness! These are baking away forever in the oven and I am on the phone with my sister when the timer goes off. I have never made meringues before, yes meringue topping for pies but not meringues. Smart phones are wonderful. I show her the meringues as I take them out of the oven and she says they look perfect. Now to let them cool. But wait, Hubby went in and took one off the tray. Yumm! They have a nice coffee flavor. Now I am not sure if cherries on top of the circle is the best flavor combination.

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It is a bit squishy because it is not completely cool.

I still need to do something with the large circle. I serve wedges with ice cream and Hubby pours on a bit of Irish Cream liquor. Too much of this will make us fat and drunk!

Wheeler Sundaes and some thoughts on real ingredients

~ nancyruth ~ 1 Comment

Here are the ingredients for a Wheeler Sundae. Actually they are made with vanilla ice cream but we finished that container off!

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ice cream 009But first Hubby and I are so excited that we found Daisy Cottage Cheese in one of the local grocery stores. We had just about given up the search. We have been able to buy their sour cream but had not found the Cottage Cheese for quite some time. This hearkens back to our quest to eliminate additives from our food. We are not purists, although I sometimes wonder if we should be? Or if a reasonable weight loss plan would be to refuse to eat foods that one cannot recognize all the ingredients as real food. I am not the originator of this idea but I do think about it from time to time. Well pretty much at least once a day!  And now that spring should be on its way and the farmers’ markets should start to open, maybe we should? (There are a lot of shoulds in that sentence and I try to avoid shoulds.)

We had the girls over and this was exciting. They are in college and both were able to be home with us on this day. And it was a record warm day too! Ice Cream just seemed to be in order. So we pile into the car and go downtown looking for the ice cream parlors (are they still called parlors?) that we remembered being there. There were no more on Main Street. We weren’t fancying the newfangled frozen yogurt parlors so we went to another part of town looking for an ice cream restaurant that used to be there! But is no longer there. We could find NO ice cream places in our town!! What to do?

Looking across the street from the NO LONGER THERE place, I spy a grocery store. “Wheeler Sundaes”, I cry, and everyone agrees. Traipsing through the store we look for the ingredients: Spanish peanuts, vanilla ice cream, chocolate syrup (we have some at home actually), and whipped cream.

ice cream 006Hubby and I decided we would check the ingredients to the ice cream just in case there was a brand that had real ingredients. Most of our grocery stores have disappointed us with this. Several “naturally flavored” cartons had odd sounding ingredients and some even have High Fructose Corn Syrup. But we found a brand that was real! It was the premium product and I paid $1.40 more per carton than the others. Yes, we bought one carton of vanilla and one carton of Belgian Chocolate. Why not? This is Turkey Hill All Natural ice cream. We had not bought ice cream for the house for the longest time and now this is a marvelous find! Yea!

 

Here’s where the Daisy Cottage Cheese comes in. I am scanning the dairy aisle for a can of whipped cream (I told you we were not purists!) and I spy the Cottage Cheese. Hallelujah!! I pick up three cartons, I did not want to be greedy. Now in the refrigerator at home there was an unopened carton of a store-brand cottage cheese as well as a 1/2 carton already opened. Remember, we had been in the mood for Cottage Cheese and had given up our quest for Daisy brand.

We are clearly not purists for real food. Look at the ingredients for the Hershey’s chocolate syrup: high fructose corn syrup! AND I bought whipped cream in a can! There is something to be said for convenience. I usually keep whipping cream on hand to whip myself but not this time. I won’t be buying Hershey’s chocolate syrup again until they remove the high fructose corn syrup either.

Meanwhile the four of us enjoyed our Wheeler Sundaes and one girl noted that “this ice cream is good for us, right?”

Candied Orange Peel

~ nancyruth ~ 2 Comments

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You will never want to make this recipe unless it has some sentimental meaning for you. It is very labor intensive for a small amount of product. I remember my mom making this. I never watched her make it completely. Well, maybe at the very end when they get rolled in sugar, but not the process or the preparation. Well, also the part of removing the pith from our saved orange peels. I do not know which recipe she used. There are two or three possibilities in the notebooks of self-typed recipes and clippings from magazines and newspapers. I made these once before in my adult life but I don’t even remember which recipe I used. For some reason it occurred to make some this year so I set out to save orange peels. I looked up recipes and not many of them scrape the pith from the peel. That is the part I remember the most. I’m confused. But I carry on…

Jaques Pepin! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWr4kDoYNsQ

He knows to only use the orange skin and remove the pith. But he does it with a vegetable peeler. I never thought of that! This is an excellent thing to remember. I may be able to make candied orange peel every Christmas season. Yay!

Shall we proceed?

RR 002Several oranges were consumed over the course of a few weeks. I dutifully scraped the white pith from the peels. I find a spoon is the best tool as a paring knife will cut through the peel instead of just scraping and of course it will also cut the finger tips if not careful.

I admit that I froze the peels after scraping the pith. That way they would not go moldy in the fridge waiting for me to get around to using them! This may be why the final product is not bright orange in color.

I slice these peels up, put them in a pot, and cover them with cold water. Once this comes to a boil, I will drain the pot, put in fresh cold water, bring to boil, and repeat this process so that there are three times the peels are boiled in fresh water. This process is to take the bitterness out of the peel but retain the essential oil.

After the third time drain the peels and put aside. Now we make a simple syrup with sugar and water. Use two parts water to one part sugar. I will use 1 cup sugar and 2 cups water. Bring this to a boil and simmer for 8-9 minutes. It won’t look syrupy but should have a constant boil. Then put in your orange peels. Swirl the pan so that all the peels are covered. Cook these for 45 minutes. I probably did not do this exactly right as mine don’t look syrupy here at the end of 45 minutes .

Drain your candied peels on waxed paper (I use parchment paper). Sprinkle with sugar while still sticky. Let dry.

I am not happy with the result.

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very limp looking

They do not stiffen up like I remember. How to fix? I am thinking of cooking them in a syrup a little longer.

 

 

This looks much better.

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syrupy looking after an additional boil

I continue to sprinkle with sugar until they look right. When very wet they absorb the sugar.

This is a sweet-tart confection. You can do a variety of things with it but we just ate it like candy. Just a taste of childhood for the Christmas season.

 

 

Cake Envy

~ nancyruth ~ 4 Comments

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My sister made the cakes pictured above. She also made a cowboy hat cake for a grandchild’s birthday but I could not find the picture.  She has a house full of people who can help her eat these cakes. I want to make cakes, fancy cakes, but I don’t want to eat the whole cake! And I would!

Someone at work brought in a Rachael Ray cooking magazine and I naturally looked through it. cake envy and rob roy 003And there was a picture and recipe for a German Chocolate Cake. I love German Chocolate Cake. I have it for my birthday each year. But it is a fussy cake to make so I usually have someone pick one up at a bakery for my day. But here was this cake and I was having a day off on Wednesday and I have one of those ½ year birthdays coming up this week so I made a cake.

A lot of people think this cake has its origins in Germany. It does not. It is made with a blend of chocolate with sugar already added developed by Samuel German in 1852. Recipes using this chocolate abound. It is all American and has the classic caramel pecan coconut frosting between its layers. Apparently the original recipe was published in a newspaper or magazine in the 1920s and it has been a classic American cake ever since.

In looking up the history of this cake I find that the recipe gets tweaked as in the number of eggs, whipping the egg whites separately or not, using cake flour, and even messing around with the type of chocolate used. The recipe from the magazine that I am using doesn’t call for German Sweet Chocolate but for semi-sweet and cocoa powder. But all the same, it is chocolate cake.

cake envy and rob roy 002Mise en place (I think I even pronounce this properly now).Preheat oven to 350 F.

1 ¾ Cup flour, 1 teaspoon baking soda, 1 teaspoon salt, ½ Cup cocoa powder. Whisk dry ingredients together. Melt 4 ounces semisweet chocolate with ½ cup water. Separate 4 eggs.

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Cream 2 sticks (1 Cup) butter in the mixer until pale. Add 2 cups sugar and beat until fluffy and light. This takes 3-4 minutes. Add egg yolks one at a time. cake envy and rob roy 006(This is a fussy part.) Now beat in the melted chocolate and 1 ½ teaspoon vanilla. Then add the flour mixture alternately with 1 Cup buttermilk. (This is how my Mom always mixed her Best Ever Chocolate Cake recipe, so this is not really fussy.) Mix that up all together until nicely blended. Good job.

cake envy and rob roy 014Fussy part coming up here. In clean dry bowl whip the egg whites for about 4 minutes until firm peaks form. Fold this into the chocolate batter.

Now we are set to bake. During all these minutes of whipping I have prepared the pans. These are 9 inch pans sprayed with cooking spray, lined with parchment, and sprayed again with cooking spray.cake envy and rob roy 013 cake envy and rob roy 015

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Now wash the dishes.

frosting 004 frosting 005 frosting 006Make the frosting: 4 large egg yolks, 12 ounce can of evaporated milk, 2 teaspoon vanilla, 1 ¼ Cups sugar, 1 ½ sticks butter, 14 ounce pkg of flaked coconut, 1 ½ cups chopped pecans. Whisk egg yolks and milk. Add the rest and cook over medium heat stirring constantly until golden and thickened. This will take about 12-14 minutes. Add nuts and coconut, remove to a bowl, let cool stirring occasionally for about 30 minutes. Frost cake.

I don’t know why I think of seven minute frosting as too fussy; here I’ve stood over the stove for twice that long stirring and stirring and stirring! While doing all this stirring, I think that I could have used the cold coffee from this morning to melt with the chocolate instead of water. I also wonder if I should have used my 8 inch pans. The recipe said the cakes may flatten some and they absolutely did. I’m also wondering what to do with leftover frosting because this sure looks like a lot, turns out I use it all after all.

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The next cake I bake will be a rainbow sprinkles with white frosting. I am making this from scratch this year instead of from the box. This will be one of the desserts for our Thanksgiving Eve Steak and Cake Family Feast. It is the favorite of my son-in-law and we celebrate his birthday then.

Let us eat cake! Then it will be back to cookies!

Dream job: test kitchen cook!

~ nancyruth ~ 1 Comment

Here’s a picture of the cats. banana bars 008

Just a random picture I decided to throw in.

I have gained 3-4 pounds since I have been back to baking and not deliberately thinking about calories, portion control, healthy foods, and not eating what is enjoyable. I will just have to start giving away the baked goods.

I finally found something enjoyable. I have been baking but have not been completely satisfied with the outcomes. I made that coffee cake and although it was nice right out of the oven with coffee on the lazy morning, it sat on the counter the rest of the week. Well, part of it did. I took half of it to work and my coworkers ate that half. But the rest just sat there. I admit I nibbled at the Crumble (topping) and sent pieces to work with the hubby but that was more like obligation. I baked bread which is fabulous right out of the oven spread with butter, eaten with dinner, but any leftover sits there in the breadbox. I was not happy with the sourdough bread that I made the other weekend, other than freshly baked. The loaf or boule did not rise well. I baked “Artisan Bread in 5 minutes a day” and this was fabulous right out of the oven too. But hubby and I did not gorge ourselves on it and now there is a small piece of this boule sitting along side the sourdough in the bread box. They are not light enough to use in a bread pudding type dish. I may just throw them in the freezer for breadcrumbs or croutons at some future date as long as I don’t clean out the freezer and dispose of them.

I HATE to throw away food!

Banana bars: This is another effort to bake through the KAF 200th Anniversary Cookbook. These are on page 356. Not willing to leave well enough alone, I use whole wheat pastry flour instead of regular whole wheat, and I add walnuts and leave out the poppy seeds.

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I chose this recipe because I had three over ripe bananas providing their fragrance to my kitchen. I am not sure what it is about KAF but here is another banana recipe that adds cornmeal to the batter.

So I mix all this up and spread it in the pan to bake. Just for fun, I sprinkle some Hershey Special Dark Chocolate Chips on top.

banana bars 010Voila, banana brownies! And these are tasty. I send half of them to work with hubby to prevent me from eating them all and gaining even more pounds!

They are tasty with a glass of cold milk.

This is all well and good but as I mentioned earlier I do not leave well enough alone. I am thinking “pumpkin”. I have about three-quarters of a can of pumpkin in the fridge. This is leftover from a pumpkin smoothie trial earlier this week. I can substitute pumpkin for the banana. Why not? I would need to add spices too.

So here’s “my recipe”. (There may be some pumpkin bar recipe out there so I am not really claiming to invent this. It is my adaptation of the KAF recipe.)

Cream one stick butter with 2/3 cup packed brown sugar and one egg. Add 1 teaspoon vanilla and the pumpkin. (an entire can or 3/4 of a can).Whisk dry ingredients together in separate bowl: 1 1/4 Cup all-purpose flour, 1 Cup whole wheat pastry flour, 1/4 Cup cornmeal, 2 teaspoons baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, 1/4 teaspoon ginger, and 1/8 teaspoon ground cloves. Stir in dry ingredients and mix just til blended. Now stir in 1/2 Cup raisins and 1/2 Cup chopped walnuts. Spread in 10 x 14 jelly roll pan that has been sprayed with cooking spray.

This batter was dryer and more difficult to spread and smooth than the banana bars. But with patience I managed to get it spread. I sprinkled it with chocolate chips and baked it in a 350 oven for 22 minutes.

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These have a slightly lumpier appearance and chewier texture. They turned out pretty good. Cool!