The Breakfast That Almost Wasn’t

Breakfast is my favorite. Pancakes make breakfast. Without pancakes, breakfast wouldn’t exist without pancakes.

Although I do enjoy a good waffle or some french toast.

BUT!

When I wanted breakfast last week, I wanted pancakes. I wanted butter. Gosh darn it I wanted syrup!

I also was being quite lazy.

I whipped out the Bisquick and eggs and whatnot and I whisked myself up some pancakes. And then I saw it. I spied out of the corner of my little eye something that said orange extract. I grabbed my poppy seeds and I grabbed the orange extract and I poured both into my pancake batter. Three pours and flips later and I had myself a fine looking stack of pancakes. Syrup topped off my lovely concoction. “Wait a second! (I said to myself) What compliments orange? Chocolate!” So a sprinkle of cocoa was all it took.

I had an awesome breakfast.

The only thing is.. I forgot to take a picture of its awesomeness before I started eating.

:)

Four Dead Bananas

I love twitter. I have awesome tweeps. They actually pay attention to my 140 character ramblings. But when I throw out a question they are there to answer.

A few days ago I tweeted that I had dead bananas and didn’t have anything to do with them. I usually make banana bread but I craved something new. When one of my loooovely tweeps mentions Dorie Greenspan’s super awesome banana cake I immediately grabbed “Dorie” ( I call Baking From My Home To Yours by Dorie Greenspan “Dorie”) and checked it out.

And thus began my big bananaventure.

Classic Banana Bundt Cake

3 c AP Flour

2 tsp Baking Soda

1/2 tsp Salt

2 Sticks Unsalted Butter, At Room Temp

2 c Sugar

2 tsp Pure Vanilla Extract

2 Large Eggs, At Room Temp

~4 Very Ripe Bananas, Mashed

1 c Sour Cream or Plain Yogurt (I used sour cream)

Preheat oven to 350F

1. Butter a 9 to 10 inch Bundt pan

2. Whisk flour, baking soda, and salt together.

3. Beat butter until creamy.

4. Beat in vanilla, then add eggs one at a time.

5. Mix in bananas

6. Mix in half of the dry ingredients, all the sour cream, then the rest of the flour mixture.

7. Scrape batter into Bundt pan.

Bake for 65-75 minutes or until knife inserted into cake comes out clean.

Lemony White Icing

3/4 c Confectioners Sugar

2+ tsp Lemon Juice

Mix lemon juice into sugar, adding more juice until icing is thin enough to drizzle down the Bundt cake.

Bananas and lemons, you say?!

Uhh… YEAH!! Tart and tangy and sweet and moist and I can go on and on about this delightful combo but…

Let me eat cake!

:)

Cookie Fail?

I have been on somewhat of a kind of vacation of sorts.

I’m at my parents house. I’m on a break from summer break. I can only take so much of my college town.

I haven’t been cooking or baking or doing much of anything this week. Just taking it eeeeeasy. I did make chocolate chip cookie dough. I usually do about once a month. I think having chocolate chip cookies or at least dough around is a requirement for life.

While visiting my parents I have been eating my weight in cherries. My stomach hates me for it too. And it lets me know periodically during the day.

But. I figured having cherries around could be interesting. I cant very well let them go to waste. Duh. So I soaked some chopped up cherries in a little vanilla. Then I added them to my cookie dough.

YUMS!

The only drawback to the cookie is theyre ugly. I know this. They know this. Neither of us are going to skirt the issue. They aren’t pretty cookies. Not in any way, shape, or form. They wouldn’t look pretty to even the most abstract of abstracty artists.

I feel sorry for my yummy ugly cookies. Yumgly.

My cookies are yumgly.

:)

PPPR!!!

Penny pinching pantry raid was a success!
I came in under budget. And prooooobably would’ve come in even more under budget had I not craved fruits. But I think it was imperative to my diet at that point and a purchase was to be made.
I still have a lot left over actually. I CAN ONLY EAT SO MUCH!!
I think I underestimated my sparse pantry. I guess my pantry isn’t so sparse at all. I just need to learn to cook. I have the imagination of a baker not a cook. Geez.
The game plan from now on is to learn to utilize every last little thing in my pantry before I make a trip to the grocery. Weekly menu planning would be ideal. Maybe ill give it a test run while im still on summer break so I can become acclimated with it by the time school starts again.
It was fun though. Really great idea.
It taught me to really evaluate my purchases. It taught me to eat pasta and frozen veggies for every meal.


:)