French Toast Experiment!

We had lots of banana bread and blueberry/zucchini bread this weekend since our Littles are on a baking binge.  Thing #5 has now been informed of the 'secret ingredient' of the blueberry bread.  She is less-than-thrilled but she can't fight her love of the bread enough for it to make a difference.  Thank goodness!

As parents, we spend a lot of time staring into the pantry and the refrigerator/freezer thinking, "What do we have and what can we DO with it?" Especially with picky kids with very different tastes. 

We decided to use up our quick breads and make french toast with them!  We thought we'd share this idea with you.  I'm sure most of us don't need a lesson or a recipe for french toast, so we'll just leave you with a picture of our finished product to inspire you!

Well, maybe a quick reminder to add cinnamon and nutmeg with maaaaaaaaybe a little sugar to your whipped eggs.

Thing #5 insisted on making her own french toast - she chose blueberry zucchini bread only and she had a blast with the spray whipped cream this weekend!  Yes, they make an organic version!

So if you have have an abundance of quick breads piling up in the house - try this out!  You'll be a hero, I promise!

Grandma's Banana Bread

This is the banana bread recipe my grandmother made my entire life.  There is no better way of using up over-ripe bananas in my opinion.  We so often have brown bananas since none of us like them once they start to brown.

Up to bat:  Thing #5!  She was excited to make this with me but once we started, she wouldn't let me help.  Our little baker.  She's getting pretty good at this stuff!

So here it is, the family Banana Bread recipe that came from who-knows-where and everyone loves!

Ingredients:

• 1 1/4 Cups Sugar
• 1/2 Cup Butter, softened
• 2 Eggs
• 1 1/2 Cps Mashed VERY ripe bananas (3-4 medium)
• 1/2 Cup Buttermilk
• 1 Teaspoon Vanilla
• 2 1/2 Cups All-Purpose Flour
• 1 Teaspoon Baking Soda
• 1 Teaspoon Salt

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 400 Degrees
• Grease bottom of pan(s) - use (2) 8x4-inch loaf pans or (1) 9x5-inch loaf pan
• In a large bowl, beat together butter & sugar.
• Add to bowl:  eggs, bananas, buttermilk and vanilla; beat with electric mixer on medium speed until smooth. (also a great time to pick out any banana peels that children may have missed when peeling the bananas!  Yes, it happened.)
• Stir in flour, baking soda and salt just until moistened.
• Pour batter in to pan(s)
• Bake 8-inch loaves 1 hour, 9-inch loaf 1 1/4 hours or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.
• Cool 10 minutes
• Loosen sides of loaves from pans, remove and place on a cooling rack for about an hour before slicing.

Since we have so many over-ripe bananas in the freezer.... we may experiment with other things to do with this bread!  Stay tuned!

Pumpkin Pie (with recipe)

Thing #4 desperately wanted to make pumpkin pies this weekend, so we indulged him!  This comes at the perfect time for the season anyway, so we thought we would share our recipe with you!

I got our recipe from our local Co-op and it's always a hit!

This recipe calls for pumpkin puree.  If you want to used canned, that is fine too, but if you want to use fresh pumpkin (as we usually do) - buy 1 or 2 baking pumpkins, cut in half, scoop out the center (save the seeds for roasting later!) and lay flat in a baking dish with a bit of water in the bottom and bake at 400 for 35-45 minutes or until a fork is easily inserted into the flesh of the pumpkin.  Scoop the pumpkin out of the skin and into a blender to make your puree.  You would be surprised the added flavor this adds to your pies!

Ingredients:

• 1 3/4 Cups (or one 15oz can) pumpkin puree (can substitute butternut squash if you prefer)
• 3 Eggs
• 1 Cup Half & Half
• 1/3 Cup Milk
• 3 Tablespoons Maple Syrup
• 1 Teaspoon Vanilla Extract
• 1/2 Cup Sugar
• 1 1/2 Teaspoons Ground Ginger
• 1 Teaspoon Ground Cinnamon
• 1/4 Teaspoon Ground Cloves
• 1/2 Teaspoon Salt
• 1 9-inch Homemade Pie Crust or pre-made frozen pie crust
• Whipped Cream for Topping

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 400 degrees
• Put all ingredients into blender and blend until smooth - if you don't have a blender, you can use a large bowl and beat with a mixer.
• Pour into pie shell and bake at 400 for 15 minutes
• Reduce heat to 350 and bake for 40-50 minutes or until a knife inserted into the center comes out clean.
• Cool on a wire rack for 2-3 hours before slicing.

Children are always closely supervised
While cooking and baking in the
Brownifer kitchen.  Especially
when fire is involved.

We let our whipped topping sit on the counter and come to room temperature while the pie was cooling, then spooned it into a piping bag to make the whipped topping look pretty :-) 

The kids have fun making this, it's nice and simple and though I'm not a fan of pumpkin pie, I'm told it's amazing! 

We doubled the recipe for two pies and had some filling left over, so we poured it into ramekins and baked it with the pies in the oven.  When it cooled, we sprinkled it with sugar and torched the sugar like you would for a creme brulee.  We have organic sugar that isn't very fine, so it didn't torch so well.  It was sort of a fail, but it tasted good and they ate it, so .... is it really a fail?  :-)

We'll be making plenty more of these this season, they go FAST!

Fluffernutter Cookies (with recipe)

Monday was Peanut Butter Cookie Day and Thing #5 loves any excuse to be in the kitchen baking!  She wasn't thrilled with plain PB cookies, and the 2nd recipe we tried was not to her liking.  Not sweet enough.  I linked to it, however, in case you want to give it your own try!  I think it would be delicious if you were detoxed off sugar!

No, the Fluffernutters were far more interesting to a 9-year old with the marshmallows :-)  I printed a recipe for her and she was ON it!

A couple of comments on the recipe first:

Yes, moving the marshmallows from the edge keeps them from getting chewy and sticking to the wax paper but .... if it happens, don't panic.  It's actually a nice texture and gives it a toasted marshmallow effect.

The 7 minute baking time....I think we make bigger cookies than most?  7 minutes wasn't nearly long enough in our oven.  The centers were not cooked.  We experimented and 12 minutes in the oven with a 5 minute resting time was what worked for what we wanted.  Big spoonfuls, I guess?

This makes a LOT of cookies!  Make sure you have time for baking or use two cookie sheets to bake at a time.

Don't skip the wax paper!  Your cookie sheets will be a nasty mess if you do! :-)

Ingredients:

Yes, organic marshmallows
exist!!!!

• 1 cup organic butter
• 1/2 cup creamy peanut butter (we used Adams)
• 2 tablespoons coconut oil
• 1 1/2 cups brown sugar (packed)
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 1 1/2 cup mini-marshmallows

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 350
• In a large mixing bowl, cream the butter, peanut butter, oil and sugar until light and creamy
• Add eggs, salt and vanilla and mix well
• Mix in baking soda and baking powder and gradually mix in flour until combined.
• Stir in chips and marshmallows.
• Drop spoonfuls of dough on parchment-lined cookie sheet about 2" apart (If any marshmallows are on the very edges of the cookies, move them into the middle or they will caramelize and get a bit crunchy)
• Bake for 7 minutes and let rest on cookie sheet 5 minutes before transferring to a wire cooling rack.
• Store tightly covered and room temperature

Octopus Hot Dogs

It's a kiddos weekend! We cater to their culinary requests as well, as organically as we can :-)

This is one of their simple favorites and I thought we'd share it here. No recipe per say, you know how to make mac and cheese! But I'll explain the hot dogs.

About an inch from one end, insert the tip of your knife and cut in half all the way down, turn and cut again, giving you four equal 'legs'. Then cut each of the four legs in half as shown, giving you 8 legs. Use the tip of your knife to gouge two eyes in the head of the hot dog. Once all hot dogs are cut and ready, drop into boiling water and watch the legs curl up. When cooked, serve on top of mac and cheese and watch the kiddos giggle!

Enjoy!!! And because this crunchy mama can't stand to feed kids nothing but hot dogs and pasta...a plate of fruit! It IS summer, after all!