Ring Ring Ring Ring Ring Ring Ring Banana Bread!

Sorry, but the banana phone was out of service!

Everyone knows that the trick to really awesome banana bread is to use those bananas which are all spotty and really just past the point where you want to peel and eat them. It’s hard to time your banana bread craving to the availability of The Perfect Bananas.   Either they’re all yellow and perfect for slicing into your cereal bowl, or they’re perfect for cooking and you have No Time. So…..here’s a little trick.

Toss the bananas into the freezer overnight. (Also great for keeping bananas in that banana-bread-perfect state, once they’re all spotty, toss them in the freezer. They’ll turn black and look unappetizing, but trust me, they’ll work perfectly!)

Sooooooo, that’s your tip, don’t spend it all in one place.

You will need:

¼ pound (yes, pound) of butter (yes, butter) @room temp
½ cup raw sugar (it has more flavor, dagnabbit)
1 ¼ cup self-rising (unbleached) flour
¾ teaspoon baking soda
2 eggs
3 or 4 bananas
¾ cup of sour cream (oh yeah…)
1 teaspoon vanilla
¾ teaspoon cinnamon
3 shakes of ground ginger
1 shake of nutmeg

Start with the butter and sugar. If you’ve got the butter to about room temperature, it will cream with the sugar more easily. If it isn’t quite as soft as you want, DON’T MELT IT!

Just cut it into thin slices, and you’ll be able to blend it with the sugar to a creamy, slightly chunky mixture.

Once you’ve got that all creamed, add allllllll the other ingredients and fold them all together. If you’ve used formerly frozen bananas, you won’t need to mash them first.

If you haven’t (you naughty cook, you), then you probably want to mash them a bit before mixing them in. 

Butter and flour a loaf pan and pour all the gooey, banana-y goodness in.

Now if you’re like me and forgot to preheat the oven, this is a perfect time to turn your oven to 350 degrees(f) and wash out the mixing bowls and implements of cooking. Because hardened banana bread batter is a %#@% to get out!

Bake at 350 for about 45 minutes to an hour- I set the timer for 45 minutes and do the toothpick test. This is a pretty dense bread, so I actually let it cook for about 8 minutes after it passed the toothpick test.

This banana bread is great on its own, or slathered with butter, with a dab of whipped cream, or if you are so inclined, a serving of French vanilla bean icecream.

New Year's Resolution

I really don’t do New Year’s Resolutions. They always seem to be about depriving yourself, or making yourself different. How often have you seen anyone resolve to Like Myself The Way I Am, or Stop Trying To Make My Spouse Into Something They Are Not? No, people resolve to make up for perceived deficiencies. I’ll Read More Books, Go To The Gym, Lose 20 Pounds, Donate More To Charity, Volunteer More, Balance My Checkbook More Regularly, Quit Smoking, Stop Drinking, Make More Money, Meet Mr/Ms Right And Not Screw It Up This Time. Bah-humbug.

A study on teh intertubes ( probably not terribly scientific http://www.quirkology.com/UK/Experiment_resolution.shtml) , showed that typically 52% of people who make resolutions feel optimistic about their success in attaining the goals of their New Year’s Resolutions, really only about 12% actually end up succeeding. Now I’ll admit that I would buy a $1 lottery ticket with worse odds than that, but New Year’s Resolutions just seem like setting yourself up for failure on something you really care about. If you want to make a change in your life, make a change, but don’t tie it all up in one big giant all-or-nothing last chance.

All that being said…..this year I’ve got a New Year’s Resolution.

Someone I follow on Twitter who shall remain nameless (@Uncucumbered) had a really great resolution last year– to try a new barbeque sauce every month. Now how cool is that? There’s not even really any pressure, I mean if you fail it just means you don’t get to enjoy barbeque that month!

So, this year, my New Year’s Resolution is (drum roll, please) every month I will add some new dish to my cooking repertoire, whether it be a new recipe I find, or something new I just make up. I’m not saying any of these will be culinary masterpieces, but that’s not really what’s important here, at least not in my mind. And since it’s my resolution, off we go!

Here are the rules:

1. Every month I’ll cook something I haven’t made before, or
2. Cook something I have made before but in a totally different way
3. There are no roll-over recipes, so if I try 2 in one month, that doesn’t get me off the hook for the next month.

I’ve already done 2 new things in January, and I look forward to sharing them!

Someone's Grandma's Recipe, redux - Pancakes from Scratch

It’s really all Cheyenne’s fault, she was bragging about having pancakes one day and I started to crave them. I do feel compelled to note that Cheyenne is allowed to brag; she is a talented, smart, funny, beautiful, graceful and engaging young woman striking out on her own and she can brag about anything she wants. That being said, I was jealous that she had pancakes and I didn’t!

Now, I’ve always been proud of the fact that growing up, my mom really didn’t feed us pre-packaged anything. Food was made from scratch with fresh ingredients. I don’t remember how it came to be that I use pre-packaged foods, but I suspect it happened gradually, over time (like most bad habits form). Lately we’ve been trying to get away from the prepackaged food (I mean really, do you have any idea what is in that stuff??), but I don’t think I’ve ever made pancakes from scratch before.


Normally I use Bisquick, it’s easy, fast, and tastes fine. Unfortunately, I was out of Bisquick, and I kept forgetting to buy it. Not having any idea what went into a pancake batter if it didn’t come from a box, I consulted my good friend, Google, where I came across this little gem:


http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/good-old-fashioned-pancakes/Detail.aspx


A quick check of the cupboards revealed that I did indeed have all the ingredients required to make pancakes from scratch, so my adventure began! Because I have a hard time taking orders, you just know I had to change the recipe a little….


First I assembled my wet team, and set them out to achieve room temperature (it’s a really important step, don’t skip it!)

The wet team consists of:
1 ½ cup milk (increased from recipe by ¼ cup, because the batter seemed pretty stiff)
1 Egg (jumbo)
3 Tablespoons butter, melted (yeah, I mean butter, like real butter!)
½ teaspoon REAL vanilla extract (an addition from the recipe, next time I might try almond extract)






While the wet team was getting all cozy and room temperature, I measured out and mixed the dry team:

1 ½ cups flour
3 ½ teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt (reduced from recipe by ½)
1 Tablespoon Raw Sugar (recipe calls for white, I like the flavor of raw better)
2 shakes of ground nutmeg
2 shakes of allspice
(these last 2 were not called for in the recipe I found, but I’m a rebel, so I added them anyway)


After I assembled the dry team by putting them all in a large glass mixing bowl and mixing them together, I realized by wet team was still a little chilly. While waiting for them to warm up, I got bored, and I always get into trouble when I’m bored. In the freezer I found some frozen blueberries and though, “hrmmmm, blueberry syrup!”.

So, my Blue Team consisted of:

2 cups frozen blueberries
½ Cup of water
2 Tablespoons of honey
½ cap (perhaps a half teaspoon??) of the vanilla
4 shakes of ginger
1 tablespoon of cornstarch (melted in cold water)
About 2 tablespoons of raw sugar

Toss the blueberries in a saucepan and set to low-medium heat. Add the water, honey, vanilla and ginger. Once the berries begin to bubble a little (low simmer), you need to dissolve the cornstarch in a few tablespoons of cold water (just from the tap). I use my finger to mix it, because then I can tell all the lumps are completely gone. Weird (mostly unpleasant things) happen when you mix un-dissolved cornstarch into a hot mixture. This is the voice of experience, people, ignore at your peril.

Anywho, stir the dissolved cornstarch into the berries and crank up the heat a bit until you get a nice little low boil going.  You really only need for this to be at a low boil/strong simmer for a few minutes (a few, like 2), then you can shut off the heat and let it cool.


By now, your wet team has warmed up and is ready to come to the party (yes, I do watch too much Alton Brown, why do you ask??). So, make a little well in the center of dry ingredient mixture.

Add in the melted butter, milk and the egg (already beaten), then blend in until it is, well…. all wet. If you stir it too much the flour will glutenize and your pancakes will be a bit rubbery, so leave it a little lumpy. The reason I use a glass mixing bowl for this is because I can check the bottom of the bowl visually to make sure there are no large areas of unmixed flour.


You're now ready to commence cooking. I use a butter substitute for cooking pancakes. Butter burns too easily and cooking spray just don’t work as well for pancakes. I used my ½ cup measuring cup and only poured about ¼ cup (perhaps a little more) for each pancake, and came out with a baker’s dozen.



Dave has declared this pancake recipe “great!”, but wishes the blueberry syrup had been a little sweeter (it wasn’t very sweet, but I kind of liked that about it!).  I recommend turning on your favorite radio station and doing a little dancing and singing while you cook. I'm convinced it makes the food taste better.