Food for Friday

 Cooking for one is not that exciting to me anymore.  Cooking in general is not all that exciting.  I can appreciate how much people appreciate a spouse who cooks for them.  My son does that for his family.  I used to cook for mine, but I was often criticized and my son remembers me as not that good a cook.  I was always in a hurry.  Back in the day I had a lot to do.

In the tradition of my mother, I am better at desserts than general cooking.  I bake. There are some easy low calorie desserts that I like to make.  I am sometimes surprised that everybody doesn't make them.  This time of year when I can use the oven again encourages baking.

So, peach or blueberry crisps are easy desserts. The crisp part is oatmeal, a little sugar, cinnamon, and some fat, maybe butter is my choice.  Mix those together.  In a baking dish (like a casserole dish, for example) I dump in some drained peaches or some frozen blueberries.  Cover with the crisp mix. Bake for about 30 minutes at around 350.  Easy Pea-sy Lemon Squeezy.  Serve with ice cream or frozen yogurt.

Raw Apple Fruit Cake

Almost everybody hates fruit cake these days.  The ones you buy in the store are the reason for that.  They don't taste good.  But, years ago my dad and his friend Elmo made a delicious raw apple fruit cake.  I have never made it, but this year I might.  I am including the recipe so that I can find it when I want it and for your possible enjoyment.

3 cups sliced raw apples

1 cup chopped dates

1 cup chopped nuts (walnuts or pecans)

2 large Tablespoons of butter (I am not sure what a large tablespoon is)

3 eggs

1 teaspoon cinnamon

3 cups flour

2 cups sugar

1 level teaspoon baking soda

6 tablespoons boiling water

Directions--

Cream butter and sugar and eggs dissolved in hot water and then add flour and other ingredients.

Place in round pan like a springform or angel food cake pan.  Bake at 300 or 325 until raised and then lower heat to 250 for an hour and a half. Cool and wrap in wax paper.  Best not served for a few days or weeks?

This was Dad and Elmo's recipe.  I am not sure where they got it.  It would have been at least before WW II because that was when my dad and Elmo were friends who lived near each other. They may have shared a rooming house when they were in college before the War.  Eventually my mom made the recipe every year and it is her scribbled copy that I am transcribing here. It is an old recipe.

Proud Momma

 My son doesn't really esteem my abilities.  He thinks that anything I can do, he can do better.  This is especially true in cooking.  I grew up and was married to a man who preferred meat and potatoes cooking.  It wasn't necessarily the only thing I could do, but I learned to fix what he would eat. And I always tried to throw in extra nutrition so I baked with whole wheat and added wheat germ, stuff like that.

These days my son is the cook for his family.  He does a pretty good job.  I claim that he learned some of that from me, but not to his face.  Still when he grew an extra lot of hot peppers this year, he decided to can them because his mom had done canning when he was a kid so it couldn't be that hard.  

He canned on Saturday.  He made his pots of pickled peppers as he said.  When he showed the cans to me he said wonderingly, "it wasn't that easy to can this many peppers." I thought, "yes, son, it isn't easy to can, just because Mom can do it, doesn't mean it was easy."  But, I also felt proud that my son canned 6 jars of peppers.

Yeasty Beasties

I learned to bake with yeast sometime through the years.  I didn't do it a lot.  Rolls at Thanksgiving and pizza crusts were the main yeast uses that found most appealing.  Baking with yeast requires time and care.  As a busy career woman, I found those things in short supply.  Also, I have struggles with weight and most yeast breads are delicious and not low calorie.

As a retired woman I have more time.  Isolating, I have a lot more time home alone.  I need to do different things, creative things.  Cleaning and sorting which I need to do a lot of, just don't float my boat, so to speak.  Being alone is sometimes or even often, depressing and I find that trying creative new fun things helps me to get out of the funk.

When I found some yeast at the grocery store, I got it, along with flour.  I once did a sour dough starter and I felt like it was a demanding pet.  I am not anxious to get back on the starter wheel.  I want to bake when I want to and leave it alone when I don't.

For Easter I baked some cinnamon rolls.  They were yummy.  They were very very rich.  Stuffed with calories, so I shared them with a family with a new baby.  Cinnamon rolls are easy in my book.  I would like to try some bread. French loaves or cinnamon loaves and then branch out from there.

I want to knead and prove and shape the bread.  I don't want a bread machine because I want to do it, the baking of the bread.  There is something creative, organic and fun about doing it myself.  I have talked myself into it.  Today I rise (or I hope the bread does)!

Hanukkah Coffee Cake

I made this recipe to serve my Thanksgiving guests for breakfast the next morning. It is a very good recipe and not only to share with you do I put it here, but the next time I want to find it, I know where to look.

Ingredients
2 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 TBSP unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, softened
2 large eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
8 ounces (1 container) sour cream

1. Grease and dust with flour a 9 to 10 inch tube pan with removable bottom. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. In one bowl combine 2 c flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. In another bowl mix nuts, 1/2 c sugar, cocoa and cinnamon.
3. In a large bowl, with medium speed mixer, beat 1 c sugar and butter until creamy and well mixed. Add eggs, beating well. Beat in vanilla.  Then beat in flour mixture from small bowl alternating with sour cream until just blended.  Scrape bowl to make sure everything is mixed in.
4. Evenly spread half the batter into the pan. It may require spreading as the mixture is not runny. Sprinkle 2/3 of the nut mixture from the other bowl on the batter in the pan.  Top with the remaining batter and sprinkle the rest of the nut mixture on top.
5. Bake 35 to 40 minutes or until wooden skewer inserted in center comes out with a few crumbs attached.
6. Cool pan on a wire rack for about 10 minutes. Loose cake from the side of the pan. Lift the removable side and allow the cake to cool completely before carefully lifting it off of the pan.

This made a dense coffee cake that was very good with a warm breakfast beverage like coffee or tea or cocoa.

And the magazine that I adapted this recipe from called it Jewish Coffee Cake because it was made by Jewish bakeries.  I thought Hanukkah sounded more in keeping with the season. But, in my head I call it sour cream coffee cake, because that is the unusual ingredient I would need to buy in order to make it.  You are welcome to call it something else.

Applesauce Coffeecake for Dawn

Because Dawn asked--
Applesauce Coffeecake
1 1/2 c whole wheat or unbleached flour (regular flour wouldn't kill you and would turn out the same)
1/3 c sugar or honey
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. nutmeg (skip if you don't have it)
1 tsp. vanilla
1/3 c oil or melted butter
1/2 c water
3/4 c applesauce
either--1/2 c chopped nuts and 1/2 c raisins or a chopped apple (I usually peel it first.)
Preheat oven to 350 degrees and get out an 8 inch square pan.  Here is the lovely part--mix dry ingredients in the pan.  Then add the wet ingredients to the pan, except the chopped apple or the raisin/ nuts.  Use a fork and mix thoroughly, scraping the sides of the pan several times to be sure that it is all mixed up. Stir in the raisin  and nuts or the chopped apple.  If you are fancy you can top it with a sugar cinnamon mixture before you bake it, but I usually don't bother.  Bake for 25 to 30 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean.  Cool it and enjoy. This is one of the recipes from the Mary's easy collection. (If you are really fancy you could put whipped cream or ice cream on top, but then it is dessert and not coffeecake.) 

This makes a dark moist cake that seems rich, but it isn't really too bad when you consider the small amount of oil and no eggs.

But repeat after me, this is not becoming a cooking blog, reading recipes is boring. (To me)

Red Earth Cake

I gave my family recipe for Red Earth Cake here. I had to find it because I had mentioned it here and people wanted the recipe. But, I can't see Red Earth Cake as anything I would want to bake. It has {shortening} and {coffee} not to mention {red food coloring} which are things I don't eat anymore if possible and certainly don't cook with these days.

But Dandelionmom was persistent in wanting that recipe. So I gave it to her and the rest of you. She baked a cake and took pictures and posted about it here. I can totally agree with her if memory serves correctly that the rocky road icing is the best part.

And thanks to ABM who taught me how to link so that I could give you this linky post.

Red Earth Cake with Rocky Road Icing

Okay, okay. I was going to make you wait until Tuesday, but without further ado. Here is the best version of the red earth cake with rocky road icing that I found at Mom's this weekend.  She had a couple of versions. The other one involved instant coffee powder.  We both agreed that she stopped making it in about 1968.  It was a great cake to take on a picnic. When we moved to the country we didn't go on picnics much because who needs nature when you already live there?

Red Earth Cake

Ingredients:

4 Tsps. cocoa powder

1 tsp. red food coloring

1/4 c. luke warm coffee

1 1/2 c. sugar

1/2 c. shortening

2 eggs

2 c. flour

1/2 tsp. salt

1 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. vanilla

1 c. sour milk or buttermilk

Cream sugar and shortening. Add eggs and and sour milk gradually.  Then stir in flour, soda, salt.  Add cocoa, coffee and vanilla. Bake in a 9 by 13 cake pan at 350 degrees for around 30 minutes.

Rocky Road Icing

1 stick butter

4 Tbsps. cocoa powder

1/3 c. milk

3 c. powdered sugar

1 c. dry roasted salted peanuts

around 1/2 bag of marshmallows--either mini or the ever popular cutting big marshmallows into 1/4 pieces

Spread peanuts and marshmallows over the top of the cooled cake.  Cook butter, cocoa and milk to a boil.  Add powered sugar. While hot spread over the top of the cake with the marshmallows and peanuts on top.

Mom thought maybe this recipe came from relatives in Oklahoma.  Since my kid is allegic to red food coloring and I don't do well with peanuts I won't make this recipe, but have at it, if you must.

Turkey Soup

Thanksgiving is over and leftovers are either frozen or consumed. But, it isn't too early to think about that next turkey in your life. In my family Christmas is also a near occasion of turkey. Turkey feeds a crowd.

The best thing about turkey in my opinion is turkey rice soup. After the usable meat is cut off, we boil the carcass in a really big pot. Then my husband picks the bones from the meat. I don't do it because I always miss bones and on more than one occasion I have been accused of attempted homicide.

After the bones are gone. I chop up celery, carrots, and a whole onion. Usually I just cut up the celery and carrots we didn't eat from dinner and add a few, about a cup of each. Boil for a half hour or so. Then add about a half cup of rice and cook for another half hour, continuing to add water to the pot as needed. I add parsley, a shake or two, and sometimes basil or rosemary if the mood stikes me and salt to taste--at least a teaspoon. I shake in some pepper too, maybe a half teaspoon. It depends on how big the turkey and the pot are and how much I like pepper.

The result is the very best soup you will ever eat unless you leave in bones and choke and then perhaps it will be the last soup you ever eat. I guess you can see why there will never be a Hope Echoes cookbook. But if you are doing turkey for a Christmas gathering, don't forget to make the soup.

Banana Bread

For well over 25 years this has been my favorite banana bread. There were years when I baked at least one of these babies a week. Once upon a time I even thought of baking this bread and selling it to restaurants in Orlando, FL. But the urge went away.
I don't usually do a recipe blog, but here is my favorite bread--banana, delicious. The original recipe came from a Gold Medal Alpha Bakery Children's Cookbook, but I have altered it some over the years.
Ingredients--
1/2 cup sugar (can use brown sugar or honey if you prefer. You can also put up to 1/4 cup more sweetener if you like it really sweet.)
3 mashed bananas, very ripe
3/4 cup vegetable oil
2 eggs
2 cups all-purpose flour, (or 2 1/4 cups whole wheat flour or do half and half)
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup oatmeal, uncooked
1. Heat oven to 325.
2. Grease large loaf pan (9x5)
3. Mix wet ingredients with a wooden spoon, stir in dry ingredients, pour into pan.
4. Bake until a wooden pick inserted in the center comes out clean, 60 to 70 minutes.
5. Let cool completely before slicing.
Ths banana bread travels well. If it turn out too dry, cook less next time, or reduce the flour. I find that it turns out great for me every time I do it. Sometimes I add nuts. Enjoy.