Thursday, July 30, 2009

Banana Bread

I had a whole bunch of overripe bananas.
I hate to waste food so...
brilliant idea...
BANANA BREAD!!!
This recipe is from The Joy of Cooking

















I doubled the recipe. The recipe I am giving you
is for 1 loaf only. Line your 8 1/2 x 4 1/2 pan
with parchment paper.
Preheat oven to 350 F.
















Sift together 1 3/4 cups of flour, 2 1/4 teaspoons
baking powder and 1/2 teaspoon salt.

Blend until creamy:
1/2 unsalted butter, 2/3 cup sugar and 3/4 teaspoon
grated lemon rind.

Beat in 1 to 2 eggs and 1 to 1 1/4 cup ripe banana pulp

Add the sifted ingredients in 3 parts. Beat the batter
till smooth after each addition.

Add 1/2 cups broken walnuts.

As an added touch I covered the tops of the
dough with raw Hawaiian sugar. It gives it
a nice tecture.

Bake for 1 hour. Its easier to handle the next
day.


Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Blueberry Pie


There are two kinds of people in this world. There are pie people and there are cake people. I am a pie person. My son is a pie person too. He always has a birthday pie rather than birthday cake.

Blueberries are very special to me. We used to go pick bushels of them every summer when we'd go to Bethany Beach in Delaware. When I was pregnant with my son, all I did was eat blueberries. I told everybody that this baby is going to have blue eyes. And he does.

The pie is made the same way as the cherry pie.
Make the crust. Take four cups of berries add sugar and flour etc. And bake the same amount of time.

Thursday, July 23, 2009

Sour Cherry Pie


Sour cherries are hard to come by. They are ephemeral. I try to get them every year at the farmer's market. There's a lot of competition for them. One year a woman was standing at my usual sour cherry supplier's stand. She'd obviously been there a long time. The bell for the market hadn't been rung yet. When it did ring she bought every basket of sour cherries there were. I thought that was incredibly mean of her. I see her around once in a while and give her the evil eye.

We try to have at least one sour cherry pie a year. If we are lucky we have two.

The hardest part of making the pie is pitting the cherries.
I use only one crust and fold it over. This way we all believe
we are being virtuous calorie-wise.

Make 1 pie crust:
Take 1 cup of flour and a pinch of salt. Cut in 1/3 cup
of cold butter till it looks like very coarse grain.
Then add three tablespoons of ice water. Mix it up
to form a ball that sticks together. Don't over handle or
it will be tough. Chill for at least one hour.

Filling:
Pit four cups of sour cherries.
Add about 1 cup or more if you like
it sweeter of sugar. Mix in 1/4 cup of
flour. Let sit for 15 minutes.

Roll out the pie dough very thin.
Line an 8 inch pie dish with the dough.
Add the filling and cover with overlapping
dough. Bake in a 400 degree preheated oven
for 15 minutes. Reduce the heat and bake for
another 40 minutes.