RSS Feed

Chocolate-Filled Orange Buns

Posted on October 1, 2012 by Veronica

As you know, I’m a member of the Secret Recipe Club.  On September 14, one of our members, Daniel of The Haggis and The Herring, passed away suddenly and expectantly.  He had just made dinner for his family and bam.  He was gone.  I don’t know the details, but what a shock.  His wife was expecting their third child, and just thirty minute before he died he was telling his wife how much he loved her and how everything was going to be OK.  There are so many stories like this that make us realize how fleeting and precious life is, that you never know what to expect, and yet we are never fully prepared when caught by surprise.  Not even half-prepared.  It can turn your world upside down.  My heart breaks for his family.

Despite being in this club with Daniel, I was never in the same group and him and I don’t believe I ever visited his blog until he was gone.  I debated whether I should join the special tribute reveal with other members of the club, to remember him by posting a recipe from his blog.  I felt strange about it since we never once communicated while he was alive that I know of, but being in the same club, both being food bloggers, and now having read some of his blog, including the beautiful eulogy his wife shared when she announced his passing, I felt his life deserved to be commemorated this way, and I couldn’t not join the tribute.

I chose this recipe because these buns were very special to Daniel.  His grandmother made them while he was growing up and were his favorite sweet, but for a long time, he couldn’t’ find her recipe to duplicate them after she had passed away.  His aunt finally found a copy his grandmother had written in Spanish and she translated it for Daniel to make and share on his blog.  He was so happy to be able to finally enjoy them again.

I didn’t have orange blossom water, so I upped the amount of orange zest in the recipe to make sure the orange flavor still came through and I thought the orange and chocolate flavors were very nice.  I didn’t make these small like they should have been, so the amount of chocolate to bread was off, but they were still tasty. I loved how light the bread was, even when at room temperature. I took these pictures with room temperature buns so you can imagine how melty the chocolate and how light the bread is when warm. These aren’t very sweet, so I thought they were very nice as a breakfast treat with coffee. I brought them to work and they were gone in an hour-I couldn’t believe it. Either that means they are good, or people at work are starved for homemade goodies! I need to feed them more often, I think. :)

I hope that Daniel would be honored by this tribute to his life, and that his favorite buns have found their way into the hearts of others through his willingness to share his family heirloom recipe.

Chocolate-Filled Orange Buns

Printable recipe
Printable recipe with picture

4 eggs
½ cup oil
¾ cup sugar
½ cup milk
½ cup orange juice
2 tablespoons orange zest (from about two oranges)
1 packet (2 ¼ teaspoons) instant yeast (aka bread machine yeast)
6-7 cups all-purpose flour
1 (12 oz) bag semisweet chocolate
1 egg for egg wash
Confectioners sugar for dusting (optional)

In a large mixing bowl, combine eggs, oil, sugar, milk, orange juice, orange blossom water and rind. Whisk together. Mix the yeast with 4 cups of the flour and stir into the liquid mixture with a large spoon.  Continue stirring in flour until it is too stiff to stir, then turn it out onto a floured surface and begin kneading more flour in until the dough becomes smooth and elastic.  Roll into a ball and place in a greased bowl, turning once to coat in oil.  Cover bowl with a cloth and allow to rest in a warm draft-free place until doubled in size, about one hour.

To make the rolls, press a small handful of dough into a 3 x 3 square. place some chocolate at one end and roll it up. Place rolls on a non-stick baking sheet. (I put mine into two greased 9×13 baking dishes.) Cover rolls with plastic and let rise for 30 minutes or until doubled in size.

Preheat oven to 350F. Beat egg for wash and brush onto buns with pastry brush. Bake for 20 minutes or until buns are slightly golden-brown on top. Sprinkle buns with confectioners sugar when done. Buns can be frozen for later use.

Makes 24 large rolls, or 48 small.



27 Comments

Posted in Bread, Breakfast, Sweets and tagged , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

September Foodie Penpals

Posted on October 1, 2012 by Veronica

*There will be two posts today, as it is reveal day for Foodie Pen Pals, and also a tribute to a special blogger that passed away last month. Check back at 11 CST for the next post!

The Lean Green Bean

I had a lot of fun this month with Foodie Pen Pals.  Molly got me as a match and she was so nice in her emails.  She didn’t just ask if I had any food preferences, she asked what I was interested in, and about my family, and if I had a dog.  She definitely was a good example to learn from about how to be a good foodie pen pal!

When my husband called me at work to let me know I got my box, I was so excited I left work early when they offered, just so I could come home and open it a little sooner!

Look! I got STUFF!  Let’s take it out of the box so you can see it better…

Homemade dehydrated peaches! Yum yum, great snack!

Homemade peach butter?! YESSSS!

Sugarless taffy that’s so good, even Dennis couldn’t tell it was sugar-free.  This is a local product in her area, and I love getting neat things like this from people’s hometowns.  Notice the warning at the bottom: “OVER-CONSUMPTION MAY CAUSE A LAXATIVE EFFECT.”  That warning made a really handy portion control monitor for me!  I make sure not to eat more than four per day.  I’m pretty sure if they put that warning on all candy, the obesity epidemic would decline rapidly. lol

A healthy Clif brownie bar. I didn’t think I liked it but it grew on me, and Dennis liked it from the first bite.  You just have to eat things like this without expecting it will taste anything like the real thing.  Clif bars are especially good for a healthy breakfast or snack on the go, and provide sustained energy.

Love the card she sent!  This is a real photograph affixed to a card..

I didn’t get any more pictures of the things individually but did take a pic of everything assembled after I’d already dug into a few things. :)

You can see I got a soup bean mix (the company that makes this is great–check it out and their products here) and a little packet of sparkly lotion, and soup bone dog treats!  I loved that she sent something for my baby. :)  There were three bones in the bag and it was perfect because we just so happened to be watching two other doggies when the box came.

Miss Weenie (I bet you can’t guess which one she is) and Jenny with my Jessie in the back.

I cut Miss Weenie’s bone down by 2/3 because I didn’t want her getting obese on my watch-lol!  It was still pretty fat for her mouth but she managed it.

‘

Jessie says, “Thank you, Molly!”

When Jenny abandoned half of her bone to spy on someone who was walking down the street, Jessie snuck up and gobbled the rest of it down.  You can see her hair sticking up along her spine because she was ready to do battle for it-LOL! She knew she was being a bad girl, but I didn’t realize what she was doing until after I took a picture and the bone was gone.  Thankfully I still had the 2/3 left from Weenie’s bone to give Jenny.  Jessie is such a hog! lol

As for that peach butter (it’s so delicious-Molly shared her recipe with me and you can snag it here), it made it’s way to some homemade biscuits…

And I followed the directions on the soup mix sort of, leaving out the canned tomatoes and adding ham, and we had a mighty delicious dinner of beans and cornbread…

Ellen, my Foodie Penpals match this month, sent me some pictures and a note she wanted me to include at the end of my Foodie Penpals post.

***

Veronica, I think I started using everything or close to it, the day I received my box.  It was like Christmas in Sept.   The treats were delicious, the candy is still chewy and I’m hoarding it, just for me.   So much of it is put away and already used.  I’m looking for the premium yeast, it’s not in my store yet, but I’ll find it.  Thank you so much for a fun package and for the fun emails before.
Ellen

Ellen’s goodies (she told me she’s a baker): yeast, crème bouquet, Vietnamese cinnamon, oatmeal candy, raspberry almond fudge cookies (in the blue tub in the back), whole nutmegs, vanilla beans, strawberry zucchini jam, bean soup mix (too funny we both got bean soup mixes!), Kansas honey, and a pack of white chocolate candy corn flavored M&Ms.

Rolls Ellen made with the Red Star Platinum yeast. Confession: I got those packets for free when I entered the fair this year!  I tried one too (actually, you’ll see what I used it in in my next post today) and loved how well it made my rolls rise.

Pumpkin pies Ellen made with some Vietnamese cinnamon. How pretty are her pies?  She also made a pumpkin cake with the creme bouquet in the frosting and cinnamon in the cake, but she said they ate the whole thing before she got a picture! lol

This is the last time I’ll be able to participate in Foodie PenPals until Haus is employed again, so I’m glad to got to go out with such a bang!  Thanks Lindsay for making this all possible–it’s the coolest project evah!

11 Comments

Posted in Foodie Penpals and tagged . Bookmark the permalink.

A Thumbful Thursday?

Posted on September 27, 2012 by Veronica

So I wanted to try something a little different today.  I have some thanksgivings, and those will be my “thumbs-ups.”  And I have some gripes, aka “thumbs-downs.”  This is something Karen used to do, a blogger I used to follow when I was a weight-loss blogger myself, which I thought was a fun way to share life’s blessings and curve balls, keeping both sides in check without becoming unrealistically positive or annoyingly whiny.  We all have our daily struggles and battles, and while I do like to focus on the positive most of the time, I also like to keep my blog as real as I am, and I’m not always a ray of sunshine. lol!  So let’s try this out…

Thumbs down: The Haus is still unemployed and it seems the longer he is, the tighter our budget gets.  Things keep breaking and they pretty much have to stay that way.  My car hasn’t moved from the driveway in almost a month.  Which means more gas money spent since his ginormous extended bed F150 guzzles it, which means less money available for fixing my car–vicious cycle.  My cell phone broke two weeks ago.  My CD player broke two months ago.  I started Body by Vi and my blender broke…so no more shakes.  (The irony of me finally saving enough to pay $100 for a month’s supply of shakes (that’s two shakes a day) and not being able to replace my blender to drink them is not lost on me.)

Thumbs up: I have a cheapo CD player I bought in 2004 that uses up batteries like nobody’s business, but at least I can still listen to audiobooks at work! Plus I have rechargeable batteries so that cheapo thing can just suck up the juice as fast as it likes…I’ll keep on keepin’ on with the rechargin’.

Thumbs up: The Haus finally has a job prospect that is promising.  PRAYER IS APPRECIATED!

Thumbs up: While typing this, I just won a used phone on eBay for a song!  Woot!

Thumbs down: I missed Aerosmith when they came to Wichita in 2003, I believe it was, and soon after became a huge, HUGE fan and kicked myself black and blue for missing the concert, which by my sister’s account was in-cred-i-ble.

Displaying my Aerosmith love during a night out with some girlfriends.

I didn’t think I’d ever have another chance to see them since they were old fogies-lol.  Several years ago I found out they would be in OKC, just a few hours from us.  I snapped up a couple tickets only to get a refund just a few weeks before the date because Steven Tyler had to have throat surgery and they cancelled much of their tour.

More Aerosmith love, this time decked out for my 80s themed 30th birthday party.

And now, now they are coming to Wichita for the first time in like ten years…and I just can’t go.  This is such a big deal to me that I would go to the concert over fixing my car, but there is just no money to work with.  Seriously a big bummer.  There may have been some tears.

Thumbs up: God brought a very special woman into my life during a time when we both desperately need each other.  We are both dealing with fertility issues and we met for lunch this week and it was just wonderful.  Wonderful.  She’s actually the sister of a best friend but I fought becoming friends with her because that’s what I do with everyone.  I hold them at arm’s length, scared to get too close.  I knew she had fertility issues, and I happened to run into her after she just had a miscarriage after trying for a long time, and the book I was holding in my hands when I saw her, I kid you not, was He Remembers The Barren.  It just was meant to be.  And now she told me that she might be able to get free Aerosmith tickets for us through the base (her husband is in the military).  I’m not holding my breath, but that would be icing on the cake.

Thumbs up: we switched to an insurance plan through my work when Dennis was laid off, and it has been a big blessing in allowing us to get many tests & see doctors for diagnosing our fertility problem with very little cost to us.

Thumbs down: Unfortunately my prescriptions (I have five-two insulins, one thyroid pill, blood glucose testing strips and needles) are twice as much through this insurance, and with money being scarce these days, a $120 increase per month is a big deal.

Thumbs up: open season for switching insurance plans starts next month!

Thumbs up: I started selling my award-winning carrot cakes, and thanks to my cake money, I was able to pay for my prescriptions this month.  The irony that sugar money is paying for my insulin is not lost on me. lol

Thumbs up: Before I say this, I want to preface it with telling you that I consult with Dennis before I share anything about him or us on my blog and I don’t share anything he would be uncomfortable with.  In the case of our fertility issues, he actually has said he’d like to do a guest post from the male perspective when it comes to infertility to help other couples facing it, so he’s obviously pretty comfortable with the subject.  That said, I had several tests (still am wanting one for progesterone, though, as I suspect it’s low) and an ultrasound and it was a relief, and truthfully a shock, to get some good news.  I got an A+ and I didn’t even have to study-haha!  Our situation could be so much worse.  We are waiting on the results of one more blood test but it’s looking like natural supplements will be our main help and I’ve had a lot of positive feedback from women on twoweekwait.com that have overcome problems like ours with supplements alone and had children, so I’m cautiously optimistic even after all these years.  In this instance as well, prayer is so much appreciated!

(P.S. The irony of trying to get pregnant while my husband is jobless and I can’t even afford fix my car is not lost on me.  What can I say, I know it’s going to take a while and I’m not wasting any time!  At the same time, I know everything will happen the way it is supposed to, and I have faith it’s just all going to work out, whether it’s how I hope or not. :))

So that’s three thumbs downs and nine thumbs ups. There are very rarely any times in my life when my thumbs downs will beat the thumbs ups.  I don’t think there’s anything wrong with acknowledging upsets, allowing some complaint, as long as it doesn’t turn into the focus.  The silver lining is way too shiny to dismiss. :)

Your turn! What is a thumbs down for you right now, and what thumbs up cancels it out?

38 Comments

Posted in Thanksgivings. Bookmark the permalink.

Favorite Cornbread

Posted on September 26, 2012 by Veronica

With three different cornbread recipes on my blog already, you might think I was cornbread crazed since I’m adding another.  Well, I guess maybe I am.  Growing up, we practically lived off of beans and cornbread during the winter months.  Plain pinto beans with no spices save salt, and whole wheat cornbread that was dry, not sweet at all, and was perfect for absorbing copious amounts of salty butter.  It might not sound particularly tasty, but we loved it.  I think it was the magic of butter, which we surprisingly were allowed to consume without limits since Grandpa deemed it a healthy fat and Mom learned all her health-nut ways from  him.  So we loved our beans and butter, er, cornbread.

This cornbread is the antithesis of the cornbread I was raised on, and truth be told, the first time I made it I was completely aghast that Mel dared to call it cornbread.  This wasn’t cornbread, this was cake.  And her whipped honey butter? The frosting!

But everyone (I brought it for a chili day at work) loooved it.  I didn’t bring the honey butter the first year and at first, some were disappointed, but after tasting it said, “This doesn’t even need butter!”  It really doesn’t.  It practically melts in your mouth, it is so soft and moist.  I noticed when I brought the honey butter last year they barely touched it.  The cornbread is perfect on its own but if you really think you need some sweet butter, go to Mel’s blog for her unique recipe, which includes marshmallow fluff and is very good.

Anyway, after making this for others for two years and taking little tastes, I finally made it just for us for the first time last week when the temps were cooler and I wanted something to go with some ham & bean soup.  I have to say, I’m a convert.  Sorry, Mom.  This is definitely my new favorite and I have to tell you, Dennis is gaga for this stuff and he would never eat any of my cornbread before, not even Jiffy mix, which is similar to this, just not as soft.  The Lighter Northern Cornbread recipe on my blog is also crazy good, but it’s lower in fat and sugar so it’s not quite as melt-in-your mouth.  If you’re looking for some full fat goodness, I gotcha covered.

Favorite Cornbread

Printable recipe
Printable recipe with picture

1 ½ cups (6 ¼ oz) all-purpose flour
½ cup (3 oz) corn meal
2/3 cup (5 oz) granulated sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1/3 cup vegetable oil
3 tablespoons butter, melted
2 eggs, beaten
1 ¼ cups milk

Preheat oven to 350F.  Spray an 8×8 baking dish with oil; set aside.  Whisk together dry ingredients in a medium mixing bowl, make a well and add oil, butter, eggs, and milk into the center. Stir well until mixed (batter will be runny – don’t be alarmed!). Pour into prepared pan and bake for 35 minutes. This doubles perfectly for a 9X13-inch pan, but will have to be baked longer (start checking after 45 minutes-I can’t remember how long it took when I doubled it in previous years).

Recipe source: Mel’s Kitchen Cafe

25 Comments

Posted in Bread and tagged , , , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Basic Buttermilk Biscuits & Sausage Gravy

Posted on September 24, 2012 by Veronica

Happy Monday, my Cornicopi-cats! :)  Today I was just going to share my basic recipe for buttermilk biscuits, but I figured you can’t have biscuits without sausage gravy. OK, so you can, you can have them plain, with butter, with jam, with honey, but once in a while you gotta get your sausage gravy on.  Is it a custom where you live to eat biscuits smothered in sausage or country gravy?  If not, you must try it, at least once.  This is straight up comfort food for me.

I make my biscuits two ways, depending on how much time I want to spend on them.  The first way includes a little bit of folding the dough over and then cutting into rounds. This yields a taller, layered biscuit.  The second way is just dropping the dough onto a baking sheet, then patting it into place with floured hands.  Either way, they are soft and so tender–some seriously good eatin’.

Basic Buttermilk Biscuits

Makes 8-10 biscuits
Printable recipe
Printable recipe with picture

1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
½ tablespoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons cold unsalted butter
2 tablespoons vegetable shortening
¾ cup cold buttermilk

Preheat oven to 425 degrees and line a cookie sheet with parchment.

Measure the dry ingredients into a food processor or bowl and pulse once to combine. Pulse or cut in the butter and shortening until fats are the size of peas. Dump the contents into a bowl and stir in the buttermilk until dough is moistened.  You can pulse to combine in the food processor, but it is too easy to overwork the dough so I like to stir it in by hand.  At this point you can either 1) drop the dough in mounds the size of your choice onto prepared baking sheet. With floured hands, pat the tops and sides of the dough until they take on more of a shaped appearance.

Or 2) dump dough onto a floured surface and lightly flour the top.  Knead a few times (careful, don’t knead more than ten turns) and roll out to 1” thick.  Using a 2 ½” biscuit cutter or glass, cut out rounds going straight up and down without twisting the cutter, place on baking sheet, and brush tops with beaten egg if desired (this will make the tops golden but doesn’t change the flavor).  Bake for 10-12 minutes.  Serve warm with butter, jelly, or…

Suzie’s Sausage Gravy

Printable recipe
Printable recipe with picture

1 lb. good quality sausage roll, like Bob Evans
¼ cup all-purpose flour
2 cups milk
salt and black pepper to taste
Prepared biscuits

Crumble and cook sausage in large skillet over medium heat until browned. Stir in flour until dissolved. Gradually stir in milk. Cook gravy until thick and bubbly. Season with salt and pepper. Serve hot over biscuits. Refrigerate leftovers.

Secret Recipe Club

30 Comments

Posted in Bread, Breakfast and tagged , , , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Thankful Thursdays #84: dirty dishes

Posted on September 20, 2012 by Veronica

Sometimes I feel like I’m being terribly monotonous, finding things to be thankful for in spite of everything that isn’t so great.  Not that my life isn’t fantabulous, because it is, but I think all of us take it hard when things aren’t going the way we had planned, expected, or hoped.  Well, today is another Thankful Thursday along the same vein, but light-hearted, so I bet you’ll forgive me for any monotony :)

I ran across this little poem on Facebook and it fits perfectly with my own thoughts on the matter, so I created a graphic for it since the only ones I found online were the work of artists and I didn’t want to steal their work for my blog.  I love finding sunshine in the shadows, and while dirty dishes aren’t very shady (lol), I still like this positive perspective on having a sink full of them.  I think I need this in my kitchen…maybe visitors will be more forgiving, especially if I have something tasty on hand to distract them while they’re dirtying even more dishes.

Note to self: make and freeze some cakes!

21 Comments

Posted in Thanksgivings and tagged . Bookmark the permalink.

Oatmeal Candy

Posted on September 19, 2012 by Veronica

I have already shared Grandma’s original recipe from 1890 for her oatmeal candy in her writing, but I have to share my updated version that I submitted to the fair. The original is good, like caramel with oatmeal in it, but with a little cinnamon and vanilla, it reminds me of a candy version of oatmeal cookies!

Like most old recipes, this one is simple. There are a lot of candies I’d consider better, but I love these for their old-timey-ness. They even taste old-timey and are truly delicious. If you are nostalgic for the days of yore, try these out.

Oatmeal Candy

Printable recipe
Printable recipe with picture

½ cup salted butter
1 cup light corn syrup
2 ½ cups light brown sugar
2 cups quick-cooking oats (uncooked)
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon cinnamon, plus more for sprinkling
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Powdered sugar, for rolling

Bring butter and corn syrup to a boil in a large saucepan. Remove from heat and stir in brown sugar, oats, flour, and cinnamon, and mix well. Return to heat and turn burner to medium heat. Cook slowly, stirring often, until mixture comes to softball stage, 240F.  Remove from heat and stir in vanilla. Pour into a 9″x13” buttered dish and cool completely, about 4 hours or more. Cut into squares, roll in powdered sugar, sprinkle with a little cinnamon, and wrap in waxed paper.

Veronica’s Notes: Butter was likely salted during the time this recipe originated, as it acts as a preservative, so that’s what I used. I used corn syrup, and though I’m not sure that’s what is meant by “white syrup,” it seems to work quite well. And while I know from personal research that quick-cooking oats did not exist until the 20s, I thought rolled oats to be too chewy and took the liberty of updating the recipe with quick-cooking oats, and adding in some cinnamon and vanilla. Those were probably expensive or maybe less common during the time Dennis’ great-great-grandmother was making this candy, but I hope I’m doing her proud with these additions since they are easily accessible now and add a nice flavor.

32 Comments

Posted in Candy and tagged , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Sour Cream Pound Cake

Posted on September 17, 2012 by Veronica

This month my Secret Recipe Club assignment was Making Memories,  and boy did I have a lot of fun searching Erin’s blog for a recipe I wanted to make.  It wasn’t that a recipe was hard to find, it was that there were so many I wanted to make!  Hers is the kind of blog you can just keep scrolling and scrolling though because it gets more and more addictive the more you read.  She has such fun things, like Booger Pie (I want to make this just to see the reactions I get when I ask people if they want some Booger Pie-lol), Texas Chicken Brittle, Pepperoni Pizza Crescent Rolls, and Unicorn Poop Cookies (something I’ve been wanting to make for months!! I’m enthralled with these cookies!).  Needless to say, it was harder to find recipes that I didn’t want to make.

When I found the sour cream pound cake, I knew I’d hit pay dirt.  I had signed up for the pound cake competition at the fair this year and I had been tossing a few recipe ideas around, but hadn’t settled on anything yet.  I figured I’d kill two birds with one stone and choose Erin’s recipe for The Secret Recipe Club, then turn it into the state fair for judging.

558726_10151181371686480_1016180525_n

And I got 3rd place!  I made it look pretty ugly, but I guess taste trumps prettiness.  Sweet!  I did get my judging papers yesterday and the only negative thing they had to say was that I displayed it wrong, with the bottom-side-up.  Well, that’s because I didn’t think bundt pans were allowed for the pound cake category (I know now that they are) and this is the kind of cake that doesn’t dome on top so it’s not pretty to display top-side-up.  I also forgot the vanilla in the recipe so I wonder if I enter this again next year with the vanilla and put it in a bundt pan if it will get a higher score.  I might have to try it. :)

I got a white ribbon two years ago for my Condensed Milk Pound Cake, but honestly, I think this recipe trumps it.  The sour cream makes the texture so velvety soft and the flavor is just so good.  Pretty sure this is my favorite pound cake I’ve ever had so far!  Thanks for sharing the great recipe, Erin!

Sour Cream Pound Cake

Printable recipe
Printable recipe with picture

2 sticks (1/2 lb) butter
3 cups (1 lb 5 oz) sugar
1 cup (8 oz) sour cream
3 cups (12 ¾ oz) flour
1/2 tsp. baking soda
¼ tsp salt
6 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla

Vanilla Bean Glaze
1 cup powdered sugar
¼ cup heavy cream
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 vanilla bean

Preheat over to 325F and grease and flour a bundt or tube pan or two large 9″x5″ loaf pans (for loaf pans, preheat oven to 350F). Cream together butter and sugar. Add sour cream and mix.  Sift together flour, baking soda. and salt.  Alternately add flour mixture and eggs (beating well after each addition).  Add vanilla and beat to combine. Pour into prepared pan(s).

Bake 1 hour 20 minutes for bundt or tube pan, or 45 minutes for loaf pans, or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Invert onto cooling rack(s) and cool completely.

Whisk the cream into the powdered sugar, then mix in the vanilla and the seeds from the vanilla bean (split the bean and scrape the seeds out).  Stir in additional cream as needed for desired consistency. Drizzle over the cooled cake(s).

Note: 1 tablespoon vanilla bean paste may be substituted for the vanilla and vanilla bean.

Recipe source: Paula Deen, as seen on Making Memories



*Note: I now have an index for all my state fair posts, current and past years, here.

52 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized and tagged , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Kansas State Fair 2012 part 5: The Banana Bread Journey

Posted on September 14, 2012 by Veronica

If you’ve been reading my blog for any length of time, you know about my quest to beat my baking nemesis* this year in the banana bread competition.  Well, as you may also know, I didn’t place in the banana bread category at all this year!  But I wasn’t very disappointed.

*I don’t want to share the name of my nemesis here b/c she is actually a very nice woman (I met her the first year I entered the fair, 2009) and don’t want anyone to connect a negative feeling with her name, but I will tell you her initials are CW.  How funny is that?!

How could I not be disappointed, right?  I mean, I baked twenty-four different banana bread recipes.  You can see them all here if you don’t believe me–complete with every recipe I used.

I froze a piece of bread from each loaf.

And at the end of the baking, Haus and I tasted each bread to see which one was the best.

We used grading papers and agreed on one.

Then I couldn’t resist, and baked three more loaves.  With the last loaf, the recipe for which not coincidentally came from my Foodie Mama who has won multiple blue ribbons for it (yes, I was kicking myself for not making this recipe FIRST since I had it all along (hello, obliviox here!) and could have had a much shorter journey to find the best recipe), we decided we had finally found the best banana bread recipe.  And I made it for the fair.

Well, guess who else didn’t place?  Yup, CW.  So that is a big consolation.  If the woman who has won multiple blue ribbons and even BEST IN SHOW for her banana bread didn’t even place this year, could my banana bread really be so unworthy?

While I won’t get my grading papers until Sunday (which means there might be a part 6 to this series next week, if the comments written on the grading papers are degrading enough…because really, only the mean comments are fun enough to share! lol), I have a few insights into why my banana bread didn’t place.

First, I put a lot of butter on top prior to baking.  This created a lighter stripe down the middle where the solids settled, and made it looked like it might be under-baked.  Judges won’t even taste something if it isn’t fully baked, so this could be a possibility.  I know it was fully baked as I stuck a toothpick in it, but they might have judged otherwise based on appearance.

Just some of the banana breads. Mine is third row back, second from the right (it’s kind of dark colored). CW’s entry is right in front of mine, a little to the left.

Second, and you might not believe this since I took so much time to find the perfect bread, but I didn’t buy my bananas early enough! I usually let my bananas ripen for at least a week, preferably two, before making them into bread because the more ripe they are, the more banana flavor you get.  I bought mine only five days before I had to bake the bread so I put them in a paper sack along with a tomato so the gas would make them ripen faster, and they were just barely speckled after five days.

Third, the judges might have been thoroughly fed up with me for refusing to listen to their advice of greasing the bottom only of the bread pan.  The first year they wrote the advice kindly, saying that the crust would be more tender if I greased the bottom only of the pan.  The second year they put it in caps with an exclamation point…or at least I remember it that way but I tend to exaggerate things, even in memory.  In any case, the advise seemed to have turned into a command.  But dude, I did try and my bread stuck and looked totally terrible and mangled by the time it finally came out.  Plus, the crust was totally hard and definitely NOT more tender.  Maybe I need a better pan?

Fourth, I think the judges might have contracted too-much-banana-bread-itis.  There were a lot of banana bread entries this year, possibly more in this category than any other.  And I know from experience that after tasting more than 15 different banana breads, they all start to taste terrible.  I nearly puked while doing my own taste test and started grading all the banana breads with C’s and D’s after a while.  This year no one got a blue ribbon in the banana bread category.  The judges only awarded a 2nd and 3rd place ribbon.  So I think my assumption is a fair one–they got the itis.

So there you go.  There’s probably a lesson to be learned here.  Like maybe don’t work so hard to accomplish a goal that doesn’t really matter?  Don’t lose sleep over something that isn’t going to improve your life because in the end, you might not actually accomplish your goal?  But hey, I had a lot of fun with it, and it’s a story I love to share because people always get a kick out of hearing I made 28 banana breads to find the perfect one.  Now I can add…”and then I didn’t place at all!” which kind of makes the story even better.  :)  I don’t have any regrets.  Well, except that I have definitely lost my taste for banana bread and may never bake another loaf again.  lol

Here’s to celebrating life’s victories…and it’s failures.  Sometimes they are just as fun.

I know you’re ready for the winning recipes and those will start next week!  Thanks for sharing in my happiness for this year’s successes and laughter over  the epic failures.

XOXO, V

32 Comments

Posted in KS State Fair and tagged , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Kansas State Fair 2012 part 4: Thankful Thursday #83

Posted on September 13, 2012 by Veronica

 

I’m killing two birds with one stone today! I’ve got a Thankful Thursday for you, and it’s also part of my Kansas State Fair series!

While on the way home from the fair on Saturday, I started to think about how many people helped me win those ribbons and realized I never could have done it alone.  Then I laughed out loud, realizing that in my head, I was preparing somewhat of an award acceptance speech, as if I had just won a music or acting award.  Well, baking may be small time but it’s a big part of my life and what I love to do so I figure, why not give an acceptance speech?

So here you are, an embarrassed and awkward impromptu acceptance speech to thank everyone who helped me win my ribbons.

XOXO, V

 

19 Comments

Posted in KS State Fair, Videos and tagged , . Bookmark the permalink.
← Older Posts
Newer Posts →