Today we have some baking tips. As you may recall, I hate to bake but sometimes it winds up being a necessity.

For more intense chocolate flavor in chocolate-based recipes, substitute 1/3 to 1/2 cocoa powder for 1/3 to 1/2 of the flour that is called for in the recipe.

Have you or someone in your house made banana bread during the last many weeks of quarantine/staying home? I bet if not, you know someone who has. Baking, in general, has been one of the main activities people have had in common, but for some reason, banana bread appears to be number one on the list of things to make.

I finally got on the bandwagon yesterday. After returning home from my daily walk, I preheated the oven, began gathering up the ingredients when I realized I didn’t have butter in the refrigerator, only frozen in the freezer. It may be spring in most of the country but here in Arizona, summer is in full swing. We’ve hit the 100’s so it is important to only use the oven in the morning before the temperatures get out of hand.

What to do about the frozen butter??? I didn’t have time to wait for it to come to room temperature as needed for most baking recipes. The answer? Use the large holes of a box grater and grate that rock-solid frozen block.

Be careful as you get near the end, the warmth of your hands will warm up the butter and may cause it to slip. Keep turning it as you grate it to prevent that from happening.

And then when you get down to the last little bit, stop grating and use a knife to cut it up. I don’t want to be responsible for any flaps of skin being taken off anyone’s hands!

You then have the option of spreading out the shavings and leaving them out to quickly come to room temperature or you can put it in the mixer before adding any other ingredients (as I did) and beat it into submission.

My other tip for this basic banana bread is to use my favorite honey-flavored Greek yogurt instead of sour cream. I love sour cream, but for sweet recipes, I always sub out with the Greek Gods Honey Yogurt.

And if you were wondering if I might already have a banana bread recipe on this site … I mean, how could I not? This blog is over 10 years old after all. Here is the link to a very fancy banana bread recipe. Today’s is basic and basically delicious!

On September 16, 2009, when this blog was one-month-old, I posted a recipe for Zucchini Nut Bread. Today I’m posting an updated version. There were three large zucchini in the market box I purchased a week ago. I haven’t been inspired to use them until now. I found a recipe from the website Kitchn which used a few techniques I wanted to try on quick bread.

A quick note before I continue. I doubled the recipe, so the instructions tell you that the recipe makes four mini loaves but you’ll see that I end up with eight. That is why.

The first technique was to squeeze the moisture out of the grated zucchini. This is not a new technique, I’ve used it before, for example in this Zucchini Crostini recipe. I’d never thought to use the technique for a quick bread, but it makes perfect sense. It results in a lighter, less dense, less heavy bread. Below is a photo of how much liquid I removed, plus what was left in the wet towel.

Next, was the idea of replacing the usual cinnamon in zucchini bread with lemon zest. Less wintery, more spring and summery. You had me at Lemon!

Lastly, lay the bread on its side when cooling. The thought here is that the bottom of the loaf is the hottest part, so exposing it to more air (instead of trapping that heat between the rack and the counter -creating an unwanted steaming action) helps prevent the bottom of the loaf from becoming soggy. Brilliant! And it works!

If you look closely at the photo above, you’ll see that I cooled one loaf with the bottom on the rack. It’s true, the bottom crust was not as crisp as on the others. This recipe is a winner all around. Oh and that Zucchini Crostini is a keeper too. Be sure to bookmark them both for when you have a plethora of zucchini this summer.

Sesame Street’s Cookie Monster has nothing on my dad. The older he gets – the more cookies he wants. To me, it is out of control. I don’t endorse this at all. My sister, Sloane, does not have an issue with it and that is where the problem begins for me. My niece, Raina, is an amazing baker. Although she loves to bake, she doesn’t necessarily want to eat all she makes. That is where my dad comes in, he happily devours all her creations, especially the cookies. He fully supports her baking hobby, supplying her with butter, sugar, flour and the like to her heart’s content. Or so he claims, I know that it is actually to his heart’s content. In turn, Sloane brings Raina’s creations to Dad on a regular basis. Plus my kids give him a cookie subscription every Christmas, so he receives more cookies in the mail every other month.

Even during this current crisis of sheltering in place, my dad NEEDS his cookies. He’d run out of Raina’s cookies (because he goes through them like the general public seems to be going through toilet paper and bottled water) and he doesn’t have an order coming this month in the mail. You think the global pandemic is a crisis? No, this is the true crisis! He didn’t hesitate to ask me to run to the store to get him cookies! What? Really? Talk about an addiction. Putting your daughter’s health at risk so that you can munch away.

No, I didn’t do as he requested, instead I rummaged through my pantry, found a can of pumpkin puree and baked him up a batch of pumpkin-oatmeal cookies, even though I do not at all enjoy baking. When I delivered the cookies, along with other food I’d made for him, he informed me that he was allergic to oatmeal. Why have I never known this? I suppose because I don’t like cooked oatmeal, so the subject hadn’t come up before. He said he breaks out in hives if he has “too much” oatmeal, but that the amount in each cookie “should be okay”. Yup, he is such a cookie monster that he is willing to break out in hives to have his beloved cookies.

I’m sorry, I don’t have many photos of the process since, quite honestly, I was irritated while I was making these and hadn’t planned on blogging the recipe. It didn’t cross my mind until I had everything in the mixer. But I’m sure you’ve made cookies before, so a bunch of photos isn’t really necessary.

These last few weeks have been my favorite time at Trader Joe’s. Immediately upon entering you see and smell the peonies. At $7.99 a bunch, I can not resist. Even when the petals are falling off, they are the perfect still life. When I went to bed the night before, they looked perfect, when I woke up, this was the vision, still perfection.

Marti, a student in my series at Les Gourmettes, shared the recipe for the cake that I’m sharing with you today. After listening to my constant complaints about baking and my disdain for it, Marti handed me a printout from the January 2019 issue of Costco Connection.

The article is about the book The Gown, by Jennifer Robson. The story takes place during WWII. This one-egg cake recipe is one of Robson’s favorites because she imagines it represents the shortages of war and the community spirit of sharing that prevailed. And I imagine that Marti thought I might enjoy making this cake since it has so few ingredients and is simple and quick to put together.

Could Marti be right in that basic assumption? Let us see… Looks beautiful, doesn’t it? Look at those peonies, gorgeous!  But… what are they hiding?

Surely all is well, nothing to see here, move along. I mean, there is nothing to be suspicious about, peonies are edible after all. According to the Thompson and Morgan Edible Flower Guide, the petals taste lovely in fresh salads. I’m certain they would taste lovely on a slice of cake too.

Fine, I’ll remove the flowers for cutting.

Seriously! Is it any wonder I hate to bake?

I followed the recipe. I did substitute watered-down heavy cream for the milk because that’s what I had available and in the spirit of rationing, that seemed a fair way to go. Also, the recipe did not indicate if you were to leave the baked cake in the pan, on a rack, to cool completely or take it out after 10 minutes or any sort of instruction on that step. As such, I have added it to my recipe below. Maybe it would not have fallen apart if I’d let it cool completely. You can give that a try and let me know because I am not making this again, although it did taste quite delicious.

Marti, thank you for having faith in me, sorry to let you down. xoxo

On a side note: I do know a baking rule or two such as, always checking the expiration date on your baking powder before you use it. If it’s expired, run out and get another can. As you can see, I can’t blame my failure on that.

This may have been my favorite dish from Connor’s birthday dinner. I found the recipe on Saveur.com. It’s originally from Brigtsen’s Restaurant in New Orléans.

Baked in individual ramekins, this cornbread with jalapeño and shrimp is so much more than cornbread.

To make them hot and fresh: Just before serving. I cooked the shrimp mixture and set it aside, whisked together the flour/corn meal mixture, and set it aside. Then, combined the wet ingredients, covered and refrigerated that, all done in the late morning. Thirty minutes before we were to sit down at the table, I preheated the oven and put it all together. They were ready to serve at exactly the right time with very little last-minute effort.

And, of course, I served Harmony Boards for his dinner too. I’m creating and serving them every chance I get. It helps to practice before Kim and I make our new business venture official.

These birthday boards were fruit and cheese, with only a few slices of salami thrown in for good measure.

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I made this cake for Father’s Day. Isn’t it lovely?

But, as usual, I had a problem while baking. Seriously, what’s new?

This time around, I took extra precautions and not only greased the pans but also lined them with parchment rounds and floured the sides.  I was sure that everything else would work out perfectly. Nope.

The original recipe, which I am not going to reference here because there were too many problems with it, did not indicate the diameter of pans to use. Much of my bakeware is packed away. I had two 8-inch diameter pans and three 9-inch diameter pans at my disposal, so I decided to go with the 9-inch. That was a mistake numero uno. Since I wasn’t sure of the pan size, I should have checked the cakes much earlier than I did to see if they were cooked through. As it was, the original recipe called for the cake layers to be baked for 35 minutes. I checked them after 24 minutes and they were already overcooked and dry as the Sonoran desert.

Mistake numero dos was to not then soak them with some sort of orange liqueur or orange juice. I’m certain that would have helped. Instead, I figured that the frosting (there is a lot of it!) would be enough to compensate for the dryness. Again, no.

It’s a pretty cake and if you keep an eye on it while it’s baking, I’m sure it’s a delicious cake too. I served up the 5 pieces to my dad, Connor, Dave, Sloane, and myself and then I tossed the rest of it in the trash (after I picked all the fruit off the top and had that with my breakfast the next morning).  I believe I’ve made the corrections and compensations for this to be a tasty cake. If you decide to give it a try – let me know.

In the meantime, let me say, this is just another example of why …

I Hate To BAKE

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It’s no secret that I don’t like to bake. I considered buying dessert for the German-Swiss Dinner Party. At the last minute, I caved. I was inspired to make a gingerbread cake by the beautiful gingerbread-like towns in Switzerland and Germany.

As usual, my baking experience wasn’t great. I coated the bundt pan heavily with softened butter and then coated it with flour.

Unfortunately, some of the cake STILL stuck to the darn pan. This, right here, is why I hate to bake! I really should rename this website that. Hate2Bake.com. I just looked it up and the name isn’t taken. Hmmm.

It’s OK, it all worked out because I carefully lifted out the stuck pieces and gingerly put them in place. See what I did right there, gingerly!

Along with the gingerbread, I served Swiss Hot Chocolate with Asbach brandy from Switzerland.

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It would be nearly impossible to have a “summer fresh fruit week” without a pie or two…or three.

I’m so into the refrigerated pie crust that Connor turned me onto, that I bought a half-dozen boxes when I found them on sale at Safeway.

They are in the freezer and I’m “pie-ready” for the summer!

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I have one last recipe to share from the Friday the 13th Dinner Party, but it will have to wait until next week. I’ll post that and the party wrap-up on Monday along with the full menu and recipe links.

The reason it is put on hold is that I must share the recipe for the most beautiful pie in the world – in time for you to make it for the long Memorial Day Weekend.

Just in case you’re new here, you should know that I don’t enjoy baking. I’m not very good at baking. I have had and continue to have more than my fair share of baking disappointments and disasters. So much so in fact, that a while back I was contemplating changing the name of this blog to “Cooking Triumphs and Baking Failures.”  Not anymore, not after my spectacular and unexpected triumph in baking the most beautiful pie ever!

Are you ready to be blown away?  OK then, here we go…

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