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!

Cuban Sandwich Hoagies (with recipe)

I followed a recipe I found here to make the bread for our Cuban Sandwiches.  We wanted authenticity so I spent a Saturday perfecting this bread and making individual sandwich loaves.  This recipe will make 4 Cuban Sandwich Hoagies.

After three batches - I have to say that it turned out well WHEN I used the cornmeal on the baking sheet AND brushed each loaf with the water as instructed.  Both very important for the crispness Cuban Bread and to keep the bottom from becoming hard as a brick.  Yes...that happened!

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon active dry yeast
2 teaspoons sugar
1 1/4 cups warm water
2 cups bread flower
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons salt
1/4 cup lard (melted in microwave)
2 tablespoons warm water (to brush on loaves before baking)

Directions:

• Grease a large bowl, set aside
  
• In a large mixing bowl, dissolve the yeast and sugar in 1/4 cup warm water.  I've mentioned before how important it is to proof your yeast!  Let it sit in the water with the sugar for about 10 minutes and it's nice and foamy.  No foam - dead yeast!
• Measure 1/4 cup lard and place in a Pyrex measuring cup and heat in the microwave for 1 minute or until just melted.
• Add the rest of the warm water and the salt to the yeast mixture and stir until combined well.
• Sift all 4 cups of flour together in a small bowl
• Gradually add the flower mixture, a little at a time, to the wet ingredients in your bowl - mixing constantly.  At the same time you are adding flour, gradually pour in the melted lard.  keep adding a little flour and a little lard until all the lard is added.
• Continue adding more flower a little at a time (seriously - don't just dump it all in!  I did this on the first batch and it was way too much.)  Use leftover flour rolling out the dough.
• When you have sticky, elastic dough - turn it out onto a floured surface and knead until the dough is smooth and elastic.
• Put dough into greased bowl and turn a few times to coat the dough.
• Cover and place in a warm place for 45 minutes to an hour or until dough is double in size.
• Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface and divide the dough in 4 even pieces
• Spray a cookie tray or baking sheet with oil or grease however you normally bake.  Sprinkle cookie sheet with cornmeal.
• Shape each piece of dough into a loaf, placing it on the sheet 3" apart.  The shape of your loaf is up to you - we did ours on the sheets about 2 - 3 inches wide and about 9" long.
• Put cookie sheet (or sheets - we used 2) in a warm place and let rise again until loaves are doubled in size - about 45 minutes.
• Preheat your oven to 450 - place a pan of water on the lowest shelf of the oven.
• Use a sharp knife to cut a shallow seam down the middle of the top of the bread, leaving about 1" of uncut top on each end of the loaves.
• Brush the top of the loaves with water and place in your preheated oven on the middle shelf.
• After 5 minutes of baking, brush some more water on top of the bread.
• Total baking time for the loaves in our oven was 10 - 11 minutes.  Longer than that and the bottoms got really hard.  I also expected the loaves to get golden brown on top and overcooked a batch waiting for that color.  If your bread doesn't turn golden brown - it will still taste delicious.  Just watch the bottoms!
• When bread is done, remove from the sheet and place on a cooling rack.
• Slice as desired for sandwiches when the bread is cool.

Enjoy!

Homemade Hamburger Buns #1 (with recipe)

Jen is experimenting with homemade burger buns!  So this is attempt #1, we're naming it such because we're not 100% in love quite yet.  Tweaking and research must be done!  But just because we're going for knock-out amazing doesn't mean that these weren't good!  They were.

This recipe is quick and simple and even if you're not used to working with yeast breads, it's a breeze.

The recipe makes 6 large buns or 12 smaller buns - however you like to eat your burgers!


Ingredients:

• 2 tablespoons active dry yeast
• 1 cup warm water, plus 2 tablespoons warm water
• 1/3 cup olive oil
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 3-4 cups flour

Directions:

• In a mixing bowl, dissolve yeast in warm water with a pinch of sugar (this is vital - yeast needs to come to life and it loves to feed on sugar!  I always proof my yeast this way)
• Let yeast stand for 10 minutes or until it's nice and foamy as you can see in the picture - that means it's awake!
• Add oil, remaining sugar, egg, salt and enough flour to form a soft dough (I used 3 cups flour)
• Turn dough onto a floured surface and knead until smooth, about 3-5 minutes
• Divide dough into 6 pieces (or 12 if you're doing smaller buns), roll into a ball and flatten/shape each as you want your buns to be.  Ours were large - we like big buns and we cannot lie!
• Place each piece on a greased cookie sheet (or two if you need more room) - I spray my cookie sheets with coconut oil spray.
• Cover and let rest for 10 minutes
• Bake at 425 degrees for 8-12 minutes or until golden brown.
• Remove from pan and place on a wire rack to cool (this is important!  I didn't remove mine and as you can see below - the bottoms were over-done by the time we were ready to slice!  I blame the wine.)

Like I said, these were very good, even the over-done bottoms (my fault) didn't ruin them.  We'll be experimenting with recipes until we find one that we can honestly say is to die for.  But these are an excellent, quick and simple bun that even Thing #5 liked!  Our picky little Bite.

Try them with your next burger adventure and let us know how yours turned out!

Sour Cream Blueberry Muffins (with recipe)

Thing #5 loves to bake!  Seriously.  She asked Santa for her own baking set last Christmas.  He delivered and we all benefit!  She loves watching Food Network and doesn't like cooking so much as baking.  I think this is her brilliant plan to eat more sweets in this organic household. :-)  Good plan.

I found an amazing recipe online posted to one of the blogs we like to follow and decided to print it out for Thing #5 to try.  I made some recipe notes of our own at the bottom.

Ingredients:

5 tablespoons unsalted butter, cold is fine
1/2 cup sugar
Finely grated zest from 1/2 a lemon (previously: 1/2 teaspoon zest) (we left this ingredient out because Thing #5 is only 9 and .... we'll get to lemon zesting later)
3/4 cup plain sour cream
1 large egg
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/4 to 1 1/2 cups blueberries, frozen (we like our berries frozen when we bake - they hold their shape better!)
3 tablespoons brown sugar

Directions:

Heat oven to 375°F.

Line a muffin tin with 9 paper liners or spray each cup with a nonstick spray.

Melt butter in the bottom of a large bowl and whisk in sugar, zest (if using), sour cream and egg until smooth.

Whisk in baking powder, baking soda and salt until fully combined, then lightly fold in flour and berries.

Batter will be very thick, like a cookie dough. (truth!)

Divide between prepared muffin cups and sprinkle each with 1 teaspoon brown sugar, if you go over, don't worry, it will be delicious!

Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, until tops are golden and a tester inserted into the center of muffins comes out clean. (we use toothpicks)

 Let cool in pan for 10 minutes then the rest of the way on a rack.

Our Recipe Notes:

• We used paper liners and the blueberries leaked through - not a big deal, we were eating them at home and just used plates under each one.  But maybe the paper liners...not such a good idea.  It's also possible that Thing #5 put in a bit more blueberries than the recipe called for :-)  Hard to know.
• This recipe makes EXACTLY 9 muffins.  

The family's assessment?  DELICIOUS!  Thing #3 and Thing #4 scarfed them down and Thing #3 went back for more!  These didn't last long in our house :-)

Thing #5 was incredibly proud of herself!  "They're healthy, mom!  All organic!"  Well....sure. :-)