From where do you obtain the recipes you prepare?

Mostly from cookbooks. I enjoy going to a restaurant and then trying to come home and recreate what I had. I find recipes from other people’s blogs as well as from websites. I also subscribe to Bon Appetit and have since I was in college(12 years now…yikes!)

How often do you cook a new recipe?

It depends. My husband is such a picky eater. I try to do new recipes if we are going over to someone’s house or if I go to Book Club.

Where do you store your favourite recipes?

My cookbooks are in a cabinet just for them. My magazines have yet to be organized and it is my big project for July. I also have a lot of recipes in a file on the computer.

How large is your recipe pile? Is it organized? If so, how?

My cookbooks are very organized and are arragned by baking, entertaining, everyday meals, fancy don’t make that often(like The French Laundry), fruits, veggies and other.

What is the oldest recipe in your “to try” pile?

Oh wow, I have no idea I have so many to try.

Are you ever going to make those recipes in your to try pile?

Eventually, yes.

Do you follow a recipe exactly or modify as you go?

I follow a recipe to the letter the first time I make it. Then from there it is fair game. In baking it is hard sometimes to mess with the fundamental ingredients but in cooking you can always mess around.

What is one new recipe that you’re scared to try?

I’ll try anything once.

Tag at least one new food blogger for this meme (“new” as in only blogging a few months).

Me…. I may have had this for a little while but I just only recently started taking it seriously….that and I don’t know anyone to list.

Growing up I don’t ever remember eating anyone elses baking except my mothers. She baked for all the neighbors. So when I would go over and play with the neighbor kids I was either eating my own mother’s cookies or store bought ones. So I really had no comparison.
So I went off to college and quickly choose banana bread one morning for breakfast. It tasted nothing like my mother’s and I chalked it up to just being bad cafeteria food. We had many local cafe’s and so one time while on a coffee run I bought a slice of banana bread. Nope, didn’t taste like hers. I repeated this process many times until I finally broke down and told my mom that no one makes banana bread like her. She just smiled and said that is because I make mine with Graham flour. What the heck was that I thought. My mom explained that it was a wheat flour that she could not actually find in Arizona so my aunt would have to send it to her(which is why we didn’t get banana bread all that often). You can find it quite easily now a days. I use Bob’s Red Mill Graham Flour.
Since it is what I grew up on it is still the way I like to make banana bread.

Graham Flour Banana Bread

1/3 cup shortening(don’t use butter…it isn’t the same in this recipe)
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 cup graham flour
3/4 cup all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 cup mashed ripe bananas
1 cup or more of chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 350 F
In a large bowl cream together the shortening and sugars. Add the eggs and beat well. Sift together the flours, baking soda, salt, baking powder and add to creamed mixture. Stir until mixed. Stir in bananas and walnuts.
Pour into well greased(and lightly floured) 9X5X3″ pan. Bake for about 50 minutes or until done.

Source: my mom

Reading other people’s food blogs is one of my favorite past times. Not only for the obvious reasons of oogling good food but it always reminds me of recipes I already had and forgot about or cookbooks that have collected a bit too much dust on the shelf. I swear that the The Candian Baker has all of my cookbooks. But one cookbook I do not have is All the Best Muffins and Quick Breads by Joie Warner. She had made a chocolate muffin that looked yummy and so I thought I would give them I try. I had a few changes to mine. I only had a half a cup of buttermilk left so the other half was cream. I did add 2 cups of semi-sweet chocolate chips and I baked them at 350F as the Canadian Baker suggested. Also be warned, this batter(or at least mine) was like tar…thick and sticky and kind of a pain to get into the muffin tins.

Chocolate Intensity Muffins

2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 1/4 cups sugar
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 large eggs
1 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup (4 oz) butter, melted
1 tsp vanilla
Confectioners’ sugar (optional)

Preheat oven to 400 F. Coat 12-cup muffin pan with vegetable spray, including top edges: muffins rise above the pan. (Coat thoroughly; these muffins have a tendency to stick.)

Add flour to large bowl. Sift in cocoa powder. Add sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt and thoroughly combine.

Whisk eggs, buttermilk, butter and vanilla in medium bowl until blended. Pour liquid mixture over dry ingredients and fold in with rubber spatula just until combined; do not overmix.

Spoon batter into prepared muffin cups, dividing it evenly. Bake for 20 minutes or until tester comes out clean. Carefully turn out onto rack. Using tiny sieve, generously dust tops of muffins with confectioners’ sugar if desired. Makes 12 muffins.

Source: All the Best Muffins and Quick Breads by Joie Warner, 1992

There is something about going to Costco that makes me go a little bananas. I have to full intent of just going in and getting a few things and then next thing you know….a cart full of crap…but discounted crap. Let us take my last impulse buy…bananas. Now, there is no way I can eat 4 pounds of bananas. I don’t like freezing them, they are not the same to me…but I can not pass up 4 pound of bananas for $1.30…I pay more than that for 3 bananas at the grocery store. So as they started to get black I had to figure out what to do with them. I didn’t want banana nut muffins and we did have banana cake at our wedding, so I thought I would give that a try. This is nothing like our cake at our wedding, but I wasn’t going for that. I made a simple cream cheese frosting to go on top of it. It made for a very moist cake. Oh and I used butter instead of shortening.

Banana Cake presented by The Olde Square Inn

Ingredients:
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1-1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup shorting or 3/4 cup vegetable oil
2 eggs
1/4 cup sour milk
1 cup mashed bananas

Cream together the sugar, eggs, oil, vanilla, sour milk and bananas. Mix together all dry ingredients, then combine sugar mixture with dry ingredients. Pour into 9 x 13 inch pan and bake at 350 degrees for 30 to 35 minutes. Frost when cool.

The Olde Square Inn
Mount Joy (Lancaster County), Pennsylvania