Sweet Potato Squares

I think I've mentioned this recipe before, but I don't believe that I've shared it. When my H and I first thought about setting up our own homestead, we signed up for an organic gardening class at a local farm in NC (Frog Pond Farm in my side bar - I would highly recommend them for relevant classes and we'd be attending if we still lived in the area!). When we were there, Libby served us these sweet potato squares. They were delicious, so we all asked for the recipe. When she emailed it to us a few days later, I saved it to my hard drive and then forgot about it.

Fast foward to Oregon. We had quite a few sweet potatoes in storage, so I thought about this recipe. I pulled it out and lo and behold - discovered that it came from the Victory Garden Cookbook. I LOVE this cookbook! I've been using it as a gardening reference as we plan what we want to grow this year and if I'd just flipped through the sweet potato section, I would have seen this same recipe.

This is a spicy, moist and delicious snack cake. I've made a few slight modifications and Libby added the ginger which I think it just perfect for this snack cake. Give it a try!!

Sweet Potato Squares
Modified from the original included in 'The Victory Garden Cookbook'

1 cup whole wheat flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/8 cup oil
1/8 cup applesauce
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup splenda (or just use 2/3 cup of brown sugar - I was trying to save calories)
1 egg
1 large apple - peeled and shredded
1/2 lb sweet potato - peeled and shredded
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Stir together flour, soda, salt and spices in a small bowl. Mix oil, applesauce & sugar. Beat in egg. Add vanilla, apple & sweet potato to oil/sugar mixture and mix. Add dry ingredients and mix well. Mix in nuts. Spread in a greased 8x8 square baking pan. Bake for 40-45 minutes at 350 degrees. Cool before cutting into squares.

Delicious!!

Banana Nut Stuffed French Toast

Quite a few years ago, my mom received a CD-rom with Williams-Sonoma recipes on it as a gift. As I remember it, it was pretty cool because you could search for recipes based on the ingredients (like if you had a bunch of apples to use). Of course, these days, the internet serves the same basic purpose on a much larger scale. The problem with the internet searches is that unless you know the source of the recipe, you have no idea if it's going to be any good or not. With this Williams-Somona database - odds were, it was going to be delicious. I don't know if they still do it (I no longer receive WS catalogs), but they used to picture gourmet food with recipes in their catalog. I guess the idea was that if you needed a big roasting pan, or a special griddle, or a dutch oven, in which to cook the item, you'd be more apt to buy it if you were tempted by gorgeous food! I used to cut out the occasional recipe and I've still got them tucked away in my personal recipe cookbook for future use. I also happened to print out about 15 - 20 recipes from my mom's CD more than 10 years ago and I've been carrying them around with me from house to house. Until recently, I'd never used a single one! It was just one of these such recipes that I pulled out a couple of weekends ago to try for breakfast. I had a few bananas that were past their prime (and for picky me, that means brown spots of any kind!!) just waiting for a good opportunity to use them.

It was easy to assemble, simple to cook, and absolutely delicious to eat! The only downfall was the fact that the most important ingredient is one that pretty much cannot be local to me. If you live in the tropics, grow your own bananas and then give this a try!

The whole recipe serves 4, but I did half a recipe for the two of us and it was plenty of food.

Ingredients:
6 eggs
1/4 cup milk
4 very ripe small bananas
1/4 cup of coarsely chopped walnuts (I used pecans since that's what I had in the pantry)
1/8 tsp ground nutmeg
8 slices egg bread (I used whole wheat)
4 T unsalted butter (I used half this amount with good results)

Beat eggs until frothy and then stir in the milk. Pour into a shallow bowl or pan that is larger than the bread slices you are using.

Mash bananas into a small bowl. Mix in nuts and nutmeg. Spread it evenly over half the bread slices leaving a 1/4 inch border uncovered on all edges. Top with the remaining bread slices and press down gently to seal.

Place sandwiches in egg mixture and turn until evenly saturated on both sides.

In a pan or griddle big enough to hold all sandwiches, melt half the butter over medium heat. Add the sandwiches and fry until the underside is golden brown. Add the remaining butter (broken into pieces) to the pan and flip the sandwiches over onto the newly melted butter. Fry until golden brown.

Serve hot, dusted with confectioners sugar if you like. Excellent with warm maple syrup!

Unfortunately, I didn't think to take photos. I'm planning on making this one again in the near future. When I do, I'll take pictures!

Apple pie filling

Canned apple pie filling - absolutely yummy!

On Friday, a girlfriend of mine came over and we did some canning together. Even putting up the 'same old stuff' is more fun when you have company!

We started the day by picking apples. We hit up the first tree of tiny apples. Then we noticed that the other two small trees at the back of the property had two different types of apples on them. After a quick taste - we determined that these would be good 'pie' apples as well. We picked everything that was usable (mostly with scab) and they filled about half a bucket. Then we headed over to the two massive red delicious trees and picked a few of these as well.

We started with applesauce and made 7 quarts using a mixture of apples. I washed and prepped the apples, my friend cored/sliced them. After we'd put them through the food mill, we discovered that the sauce tasted very bland. We added spices and sugar and doctored it up enough. Then we canned it.

While this was going on, we also were making apple butter in the crock pot which smelled just amazing (as usual!).

The next project was apple pie filling. While I was hunting down a good recipe, I discovered a little bit of helpful info about red delicious apples. They are eating apples only. They apparently have no taste when cooked - guess that's why our apple sauce was so bland - too many red delicious in the mix! Live and learn! Though, I would like to mention that while they may not be good for cooking, they dry just beautifully! We dried half a dehydrator of them and they are very tasty. So for from now on, our red delicious apples will be eaten or dried. In fact, I spoke to our neighbor about taking a clipping off her tree of yummy apples. I'm going to graft it onto one of our trees, so I think I'll do it on the red delicious trees since we have way, way more than we will ever eat!

Anyway, I found what sounded like a good apple pie filling recipe and we set to work. The water, sugar and spices went into a pot to boil. The cornstarch and lemon juice and a little more water waited on the counter. Then we peeled, cored and sliced what we thought were enough apples. All the while, the jars were in the dishwasher keeping warm. When the apples were ready, we dumped the cornstarch water into the pot and mixed it. It thickened almost immediately. Then we set about filling jars. We filled 5 quart jars with apples and topped them with the sauce. We had just enough sauce left over to fill an additional pint jar, so we sliced another couple of apples for that and set them all into the canner to process. Twenty minutes later, we had what you see in the photo above!

Then we canned the apple butter before shutting down the stove for the evening. What a day!

On Saturday, I threw the apple pie apples from the pint jar into a pan. While it was heating, I made pancakes. When the pancakes were ready, so were the apples, so I piled them on. HEAVEN!! Seriously, it was so incredibly good!! In fact, it was so good that on Saturday evening after a day of painting (different post!), I spent a couple of hours making another 7 quarts of the filling! I altered the recipe a bit to make it slightly spicier and to make enough to fill 7 quarts with each recipe. And, you can bet that I'll be doing a few more batches in the coming week. I think this is my favorite canning item so far!


The recipe:

5 1/2 cups white sugar
1 cup cornstarch
4 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
2 teaspoons salt
14 cups water
3 tablespoons lemon juice
~8 pounds apples

DIRECTIONS
1. In a large pot, mix sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt and 12 cups of water. In another bowl, mix cornstarch, lemon juice and 2 cups of water. Bring first pot to a boil and when apples are ready, add cornstarch. Cook until thick and bubbly. Keep simmering until all jars are filled.
2. Sterilize canning jars, lids and rings and keep jars warm.
3. Peel, core, and slice apples. Pack the sliced apples into hot canning jars, leaving a 1 inch headspace.
4. Fill jars with hot syrup, and gently remove air bubbles with a knife. Leave a 1/2 inch headspace.
5. Put lids on and process in a water bath canner for 20 minutes.

Makes 7 quarts.

blackberry cobbler recipe

I've had a couple of requests for this recipe, so I thought I share it here in case anyone else was interested. My husband found this recipe online from About.com in the southern food section...and it was delicious. We made it using 100% wild blackberries, so if you have cultivated ones that are even more 'perfect' then it'll probably been even better! (my comments in italic)

Blackberry Cobbler

Ingredients:
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1/4 cup cold water
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 tablespoon lemon juice
4 cups blackberries, picked over, rinsed & drained
1 cup flour (we used whole wheat pastry flour)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons butter, cold, cut in small pieces (we used Smart Balance sticks)
1/4 cup boiling water

Preparation: In a large bowl, stir together the cornstarch and 1/4 cup cold water until cornstarch is completely dissolved. Add 1 cup sugar, lemon juice, and blackberries; combine gently. Transfer to a cast iron skillet, about 8-inch. (we used a stainless, oven-proof casserole pan)

In a bowl, combine the flour, remaining sugar, baking powder, and salt. Blend in the butter until the mixture resembles coarse meal. Add 1/4 cup boiling water and stir the mixture just until it a soft dough is formed.

Bring the blackberry mixture to a boil, stirring. Drop spoonfuls of the dough carefully onto the boiling mixture, and bake the cobbler on a baking sheet (line with foil to avoid a mess) in the middle of a preheated 400° oven for 20 to 25 minutes or until the topping is golden. Serve warm with vanilla (goats milk) ice cream or whipped cream.

Oh, and as an update: the blackberry jam was WONDERFUL!! It's so incredibly delicious - all I want to eat is jam on bread...all day long! ;-)

The recipe for that was super easy. 5 cups of crushed blackberries (5 cups after washing & crushing), 7 cups of sugar & 1 packet of certo pectin. I followed the recipe that came with the pectin and it turned out perfectly! My only additional note was that I got a 1/2 pint extra than the recipe said I would (luckily, I'd sterilized an extra jar, just in case).