Friend Pat treated the Mexican Train group this delicious Lemon Bread last week. She was telling us how she used real lemon for the juice and the peel before we ate it. After one bite, I told her it was definitely worth all her hard work. She then told me it really wasn't that much work. Either way, it is definitely one who will want to try. The recipe makes 2 loaves. Enjoy one and freeze the other.
LEMON BREAD
2/3 cups melted butter
2-1/2 cups sugar
4 eggs
1 teaspoon almond extract
3 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup milk
2 teaspoons grated lemon rind
1 cup chopped nuts
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour two loaf pans.
Combine butter and sugar. Then add eggs one at a time, mixing well after each one. Add extract.
Combine dry ingredients - flour, baking powder, and salt.
Add dry ingredients alternately to creamed mixture with the milk.
Then add rind and nuts to mixture.
Pour into pans and bake for 45 to 50 minutes.
Prepare glaze while bread is baking so that you can pour it over the hot bread.
LEMON GLAZE
6 tablespoons lemon juice
2 cups powdered sugar
Combine and pour over hot bread.
Occasionally I make a dish that is just so fabulous that I have to sit down and share it with you right away. That means if I have already scheduled a post for the next day, it gets bumped to the next week or later in the week. That's what's happening today.
I had planned to share Friend Pat's Lemon Bread tomorrow. Now you will have to wait until Monday to see it. That doesn't mean her Lemon Bread isn't "out of this world" because it is. I just can't wait til next week to share with you the Olive Garden Chicken in the Slow Cooker that DIL Sara gave me.
I had the canasta group over and put it in the slow cooker to cook while we played cards. By the time they left, the house was really smelling good. I only used 2 chicken breasts instead of the 4 the recipe calls for because the chicken breasts I have are like 2 times bigger than normal chicken breasts you buy in the grocery store.
This recipe is definitely a "Keeper"! Oh! Another great thing - you can cook it using frozen chicken breasts. So if you forget to put out the chicken breasts to thaw in the refrigerator the night before, it's okay.
OLIVE GARDEN CHICKEN
4 chicken breasts, boneless and skinless
1 16 - oz bottle Olive Garden Italian Dressing (Lite)
2 teaspoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons Italian Seasoning
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon pepper
1/2 cup Parmesan cheese, grated
Spray the slow cooker with nonstick cooking spray for easy cleanup.
Place chicken breasts in the slow cooker.
In a bowl, place dressing, lemon juice, seasonings, and cheese.
Mix together with a whisk until thoroughly blended.
Pour over the (frozen) chicken,
flip the chicken
and continue pouring the mixture making sure both sides of the chicken get covered.
Cook on low for 7 hours.
Spoon the sauce over the chicken before serving.
We are back from our vacation in Northwest Arkansas and trying to get back to the old routine. Even though August was cooler than normal, it looks like September will be a little warmer than normal. We have finally gotten some rain this week after I think about 18 days without any.
I did manage to get my sewing room cleaner back in August so being able to get in the door has renewed my interest into sewing. I took a lap quilt I was making for Blankets of Hope ( church quilting group) with us and finished slip stitching the binding down. Since I have been back I made another one like my Sew & Quilt-in-One method. It turned out pretty. I am almost through sewing the blocks for another one and will get them sewed together this week. It is a new pattern and I plan to share it with you in a short tutorial next week. It sorta reminds you of a jigsaw puzzle.
I missed going to Hillcrest Thrift Shop last week because Blankets of Hope met at the church, but this week I was back on my Tuesday. I found a chocolate cake I was going to make that used a German chocolate cake mix, but when I looked to see if I had one, I saw I didn't. What I did have was several spice cake mixes. It didn't take me long to find a recipe to make using one of them. The recipe actually called for a yellow cake mix, but I thought it would be spicier using a spice cake mix.
APPLESAUCE SPICE CAKE
1 package spice cake mix
1 (3.4 oz) package instant vanilla or butterscotch pudding mix (I wanted to use a butterscotch one but didn't have one.)
1 cup applesauce
1/2 cup water
1/3 cup oil
4 eggs
1-1/2 teaspoons apple pie spice
Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Grease and flour a 10 or 12 cup Bundt pan.
In a large mixing bowl, mix the cake mix and pudding mix. Then add the applesauce, water, oil, eggs, and spice.
Stir on low til all ingredients are wet, about 30 seconds. Scrape the sides of the bowl.
Increase speed to medium and beat 2 minutes. Scrape the sides of the bowl again
and pour into prepared pan.
Bake for 55 to 65 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center of the cake comes out clean.
Cool 10 minutes in pan on a wire rack.
Remove from pan onto serving plate.
Cool completely.
Drizzle with Spice Glaze:
SPICE GLAZE
2 cups sifted powdered sugar
1 tablespoon butter, softened
1/2 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
2 to 4 tablespoons milk
Sift powdered sugar and then measure out 2 cups in a medium mixing bowl.
Add spice and whisk together to blend.
Add 2 tablespoons of milk to butter
and add to sugar. Stir with whisk til all the sugar as blended in.
Add additional milk as needed for the consistency you want. (I added one more tablespoon of milk.)
Pour over cooled cake letting the glaze run down the sides.
I love Debbie Macomber's books. Several years ago I read the whole Cedar Cove series. Having read the books, I enjoyed the series on the Hallmark Channel, but I didn't like how they changed the storylines.
A few years ago when I was in the library I saw a book, Knit Along with Debbie Macomber, the Cedar Cove Collection that contained some knitting patterns. In the back were some recipes and one of them was Peggy Beldon's Blueberries Muffins. I made them and of course shared them here on my blog.
The other day I was in the library and decided to check out the cookbook section and saw another cookbook called Debbie Macomber's Cedar Cove Cookbook. Remembering how much I liked the muffins, I decided to check it out. I love how she "revisits" the characters and divides the recipes by the characters.
This recipe for Teri's Macaroni & Cheese was in the Dinner at 44 Cranberry Point with Bob and Peggy Beldon. (Remember they turned their home into a Bed-and-Breakfast.) Macomber said that Teri Polgar had given Peggy this wonderful recipe.
This is definitely comfort food at its best (as Macomber says). It makes a lot though so invite someone over to help you eat it. They will love you forever. You could make it gluten free too if you wanted. I use a gluten free pasta and you could use a gluten free flour for the flour.
TERI'S MACARONI & CHEESE
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) butter, plus extra for the pan
1/3 cup flour (I used whole wheat pastry flour)
2 cups whole milk (I used skim milk)
1/2 pound Velveeta cheese, cut into chunks
1/2 cup cottage cheese
1/2 cup sour cream (I used Greek yogurt plain nonfat)
Salt and pepper, to taste
1 pound elbow macaroni
Shredded cheddar cheese, for topping
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Butter (or spray) a 3 - quart casserole pan or several small oven-safe baking cups.
Melt butter in a medium saucepan over medium-low heat.
Sprinkle in flour; stirring until absorbed, about 1 minutes.
Slowly pour in milk; stirring constantly,
until incorporated.
Reduce heat to low and add Velveeta chunks,
stirring until melted.
Stir in cottage cheese, sour cream or yogurt,
salt, and pepper.
Meanwhile, cook macaroni according to package directions. Drain; place in prepared pan.
Pour cheese sauce over the macaroni and fold in.
Cover and
bake for 25 minutes.
Uncover, sprinkle with shredded cheese and
bake 10 more minutes or until cheese melts.
Call everyone to the table and be comforted.
My DIL Sara has been excited about pumpkin anything. She sent me a picture/recipe from Pinterest and told me I should try them. The recipe or at least the idea sounded familiar so I checked it out. The I sent her a response telling her I had already and a link to my post Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Muffins. (She made them as cookies though.)
Well, anyway, her interest ignited my interest. I know we still have a few days of summer left but fall decorator stuff is everywhere. Nothing else for me to do but start looking for recipes using pumpkin. (I was looking for recipes that combined pumpkin and bananas because we brought back a bunch of bananas from our week in Bella Vista, AR and I needed to make something with them, but I couldn't find anything I thought I wanted to try.) Since the cookie jar was empty I was looking for cookies or maybe muffins that I could try as cookies.
I found this recipe in my Heritage Country Harvest Cookbook of over 700 favorite recipes from the Amish in Northern Indiana. It must be a popular recipe because it listed two contributors - Mrs. Lester A Beechy and Mary H. Hochstetler. I have made a lot of recipes from this cookbook and I think several were Mary's. Anyway, back to the recipe for Pumpkin Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies. The recipe doesn't say how many cookies it makes, but using 4 cups of flour and 3 cups of oatmeal, I am sure it makes a gazillion - definitely more than I wanted to make. So I basically cup the recipe in half. I say basically because I decided to reduce the brown sugar by a fourth of a cup and because the original recipe calls for 1 egg and who wants to try to cut an egg in half, I decided to just use the egg white. I will share their recipe and then put my portions in parenthesis. How is that?
These have got to be the best ever cookie using pumpkin, oatmeal, and chocolate chips all together. Because of the pumpkin, I would not leave them out for many days. After three days, I put them in the refrigerator to keep them from molding. The only thing is, I don't like them as much cold. The pumpkin is not strong tasting at all. I would suggest, if you have cookies to spare and they are going to last a while, store them in the refrigerator and in the morning take out however many you think you might eat that day and let them come to room temperature. Then you will enjoy that moist, pumpkin and chocolate chip taste. The oatmeal, btw, makes the cookies taste like they contain nuts, but they don't. (I initially put the cookies in my cookie jar in a single layer with wax paper between the layers.)
PUMPKIN OATMEAL CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES (my version in parenthesis)
1-1/2 cups butter or shortening (3/4 cup butter)
2 cups brown sugar (3/4 cup brown sugar)
1 cup white sugar (1/2 cup sugar
1 egg (1 egg white)
1 teaspoon vanilla (1/2 teaspoon vanilla)
1 pint pumpkin (1 cup canned pumpkin)
3 cups oatmeal (1-1/2 cups old-fashioned oats)
4 cups flour (2 cups flour)
1 teaspoon salt (1/2 teaspoon salt)
2 teaspoons cinnamon (1 teaspoon cinnamon)
2 teaspoons soda (1 teaspoon baking soda)
1-1/2 cups chocolate chips and/or raisins (1 cup 60% cacao - chocolate chips)
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Cream butter and sugars. (I always slice the butter to make this process go easier.)
Add egg (white) and vanilla.
Stir in pumpkin.
Combine dry ingredients together in another large mixing bowl and
then add them to the mixture.
Add chips.
I used my cookie scoop that holds 1 tablespoon of water to scoop out the dough and placed it on an nonstick cookie sheet with 12 on the sheet. (I recently decided to invest - they actually were not expensive - new cookie sheets that are nonstick. I bought one and liked it so much, I went back to Tuesday Morning and bought another one. I love them so much and clean up is so easy.)
Bake for 10 minutes. (They will still be a little soft, but I baked the second pan for 12 minutes and I personally didn't like the result. They were a dryer cookie.) They don't flatten much.
Cool on wire rack. Store in single layer with wax paper between the layers. If you still have some after several days, you might want to store them in the refrigerator. Just remove and allow cookies to come to room temperature for the best flavor.
