World's best zucchini bread recipe

As with all great baking, use the recipe as a guide and your intuition as the final decision. Me? I just fill up the food processor with as much zucchini and apple as it will hold and go from there. Sometimes I use nuts, sometimes not. Sometimes I use yogurt or applesauce instead of oil. Once you've made this a few times, you will figure out what works for your family.

The best part is that Christopher thinks it's cake and eats it right up. I'm going to have to be one of those moms who sneaks veggies in, but that's another post altogether.

From Kevin's dear Aunt Lorraine, I give you Zucchini and Apple bread that will rock your world.

Zucchini Apple Bread

4 C all purpose flour
1 T baking soda
1/4 t baking powder
1 1/2 t salt
1 1/2 T cinnamon
1/2 t ground nutmeg
5 eggs
2 C sugar
1 C brown sugar
1 1/2 C vegetable oil
1 T vanilla
2 C shredded zucchini (about 3 medium)
1 C shredded apple (about 1 medium)
1 1/2 C chopped pecans

Combine first six ingredients, put aside. combine eggs, sugars, oil, and vanilla in a large bowl. Beat at medium speed until well blended. Stir in dry mixture. Stir in zucchini-apple mixture and pecans, stirring just until moistened. Spoon batter into 3 greased & floured loaf pans Bake at 350 for 50-55 minutes or until a wooden pick comes out clean. Cool in pans 10 minutes, remove to wire rack, and cool completely.

You can also do muffins for about 30-35 minutes and mini loaf pans for about 45 minutes.

Enjoy!

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Granola Bars

I'm posting this in between licking my fingers clean of the yummy goodness. My friend Kara brought a batch of these after Squeak was born and gave me the recipe as well.

You will want to make them right away and often after that. They are so incredibly good.

1 cup brown sugar

2/3 cup peanut butter (I have used creamy and chunky-both work well.)

1 stick butter, softened

1/4 cup molasses

1/4 cup honey

2 teaspoons vanilla

3 cups uncooked oats

3/4 cup of chips (chocolate or butterscotch or you could use raisins)

3/4 cup shredded coconut

1/3 cup wheat germ

1/4 cup ground flax seed

Heat oven to 350. Beat brown sugar, butter, and peanut butter till fluffy. Add honey, molasses, and vanilla- stir well. Stir in oats, chips, coconut, raisins, and wheat germ. Press into bottom of a 9x13 baking pan. Bake fifteen minutes. Put in the freezer to chill for 45 minutes or until firm. I then cut them into bars and store them in large Ziploc in the freezer.

Nothing to it, but oh so amazingly good. And from stuff I mostly have in my kitchen already.

You're welcome.

Shirley's Shoepeg Corn Casserole

One of the things I make each year for the Boo-Shamoopie annual Thanksgiving blowout is this Shoepeg Corn Casserole. I almost feel guilty printing the recipe because it is so stinking easy, that this part of the meal feels like a cop out on my part. But Boo's husband loves it, and I've been making it every Thanksgiving dinner for over a decade now.

If you need something to take with you to a dinner, this is super easy, impossible to mess up, and you can make it the night before. Just wait to add the Ritz crackers until you are ready to bake it, and remember that if you have a refrigerated Pyrex dish, you want to put it in the cold oven and let it heat up as the oven preheats. Lest your Pyrex shatter. Which would be bad.

Shirley's Shoepeg Corn Casserole

1/2 C chopped celery
1/2 C chopped onion
1/4 C chopped bell pepper (I use orange because it's pretty and I hate green ones)
1 can cream of celery soup
8 oz. sour cream
1 C grated cheese (I usually use cheddar, but have been known to just use a combo of whatever was in the fridge at the time)
2 cans shoepeg corn, drained
1 can French style green beans, drained
1 sleeve Ritz crackers
1 stick melted butter

Mix first 8 ingredients. Pour into a long, shallow baking dish (I use a 9x13, but I also don't measure very well, so I often am just dumping random amounts of the ingredients into a bowl until it looks good, so I'm not much help there, am I?). Top with crushed crackers. Drizzle melted butter over the top. Bake 45 minutes at 350 degrees.

See? Isn't that embarrassing? So incredibly easy, but I promise, people will love it. Unless your people are like my father-in-law, who doesn't like anything. But says he does. Well, he doesn't like this, or rice, or grits, or mushrooms, or several other things that appear on my table frequently. But he eats them anyway. Except mushrooms.

Papa does approve of The Pie, however, and I think you should click on over and remind yourself of said pie and how good it looks. It's something else you should add to your Thanksgiving table fo' sho'.

Haiku reflection on a new me

Guy and Lovely gave me a new mixer for Christmas. For 10 years, I have used my very basic Kitchen Aid 4 1/2 quart mixer for all my baking. I felt lucky to have a Kitchen Aid, but I knew that it was a little small for the amount and kind of baking I like to do.

There have been times that Guy has tried to talk me into buying the Professional 600 series mixer that I drooled over. The 6 quart one. Yum. But I just couldn't do it. I had a mixer that worked just fine. It seemed like such a frivolous purchase when I had something that already did the job.

Thank goodness for gifts. The new mixer is a power house, and I swear, I made the best pound cake I have ever made with it on its first run. The crust was absolutely perfect. The batter had room to breathe in that wonderful 6 quart bowl. I love it.

Since my old mixer didn't break, I couldn't see getting rid of it. It's a great mixer. So, we deemed it Lovely's mixer and set about teaching her how to bake.

Yesterday, I gave her a stack of cookbooks so she could pick out a cake to make.

She chose a Hot Milk Cake with Caramel Icing from the Jackson Junior League's Come On In cookbook.

Oh boy. I have never done caramel before.

We set our mixers up this morning and each made the cake. At the same time. Because I think the easiest way to learn it to get to do it yourself. We walked through the steps together and both had some really good looking batter to go into our respective ovens.

Tonight, we tackled the icing, but did it together instead of each doing a separate batch.

I am happy to report that it turned out beautifully. We were beyond proud of ourselves. We cut into Lovely's cake, that she made completely with her own two hands, and it was fantastic. My daddy would be in the kitchen with a fork, finishing off at least one of those cakes himself if he were here.

Now, if someone could just tell me how to clean caramelized sugar out of my cast iron skillet, I would be so thankful.

Tomorrow, we tackle some pajama pants with some cute pink flannel that her dad picked out for her. It's dadgum Home Economics 101 around here. From the woman who never considered herself very domestic. The woman who was going to be a rock star. Then the woman who was married to her job.

Y'all come by. I'll make you some biscuits. Things are different now.

************

Allowing for change
Allows you to find yourself
In comfortable skin.

Make sure you stop by and wish Jennifer safe travels and painless moving before she takes a Haiku Hiatus.

I'm just saying

There are a couple dozen pumpkin muffins in my kitchen right now.

I made them.

They do not suck.

That is all.

More hell than heaven cake

Tonight has to be the biggest baking disaster I have ever created. Girl shared a recipe for Heaven and Hell cake. It sounded so so good, and I was feeling up to trying something more than cookies or brownies.

Momma will know the first problem when I say that you start by making an angel food cake from scratch. Not my forte. But I keep trying. It didn't taste that bad, but it was the consistency of a thick whoopee cushion.

The devil's food cake turned out so moist and soft that it fell completely apart under the weight of the angel food rubber.

The best part was the peanut butter mousse. I wish that I had just tossed the angel food and spread the peanut butter mousse on the devil's food cake and dipped it in the chocolate ganache. But I didn't. I continued to try and assemble the cake.

The ganache poured off the top and onto the counters. The devil's food gave way under the weight of the angel food and squirted out the sides. A giant glop of it dropped onto Pupstar's back and onto the floor. As much as she shouldn't have chocolate, I was laughing too hard to stop her. Most of it was the peanut butter mousse anyway. She is still trying to lick it off her back.

Forgoing the refridgeration that was the last step because it was too far gone anyhow, I scooped some onto plates for us. True to form, Papa ate his in its entirety and gave a brusque, "What? What's wrong with it?"

I adore him.

Guy and I ate enough bites to determine that it was possibly the worst thing ever to come out of my kitchen and then gave up.

Now, all I have to do is figure out how to get it in the trash without spilling anymore on the dog.

~~~~~~~~~~

I decided this needed photos.










The angel food cake. Not looking too bad here.

Unfortunately, in about 10 minutes, they looked like this:









Rubber. Scary scary rubber cakes.










This is the oh so yummy peanut butter mousse.










The finished product before attempting to cut. You can see the lump of devil's food cake that are getting ready to squeeze out the sides.










And after cutting, but just before the ganache headed for the counter.

You would think I had never baked anything in my entire life.