Corn Bread

When I make chili, I almost always make corn bread and honey butter to go with it. A few weeks ago, it felt like fall for the first time so chili and corn bread were on the menu that night. Today is even colder and rainier (here at my house, anyway). I love this recipe for corn bread - it comes from "The Essential Mormon Cookbook." For the chili, I used this recipe. For the chili, I don't care for pinto beans, so I always substitute Great Northern.



Corn Bread

1/2 cup butter, room temperature
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 cups yellow cornmeal
1 1/2 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups milk

Cream butter, sugar, and eggs. In a separate bowl, blend cornmeal, flour, baking powder, and salt. Combine creamed mixture, dry mixture, and milk. Blend. Bake in a greased 8X8" pan at 375 degrees for 35 to 40 minutes.

And just in case you've never made it before, here is how to make honey butter.

Honey Butter

1 cube room temperature butter (try not to just soften it in the microwave - it works much better if the entire cube is a consistent temperature)
3-4 Tbsp honey

Put butter and honey together in a bowl. Beat with electric mixer until fluffy and well-combined. You can add a little more or less honey, it just depends on how sweet you want it.

Fresh Tomato Sauce

Do you have fresh tomatoes lying around? Probably you do. If not, your neighbor probably does. Go ask for some. This sauce is really fast, easy, and pretty healthy. Remember - olive oil is good for you!



2-3 pounds tomatoes, peeled and chopped (about 6-9 medium tomatoes)
1 medium green onion, minced (or about 1/4 cup yellow/white onion)
3 Tbsp fresh parsley or 1 Tbsp dried parsley
2 tsp red wine vinegar
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp sugar
1 1/2 tsp fresh basil or 1/2 tsp dried basil
1/8 pepper
1/4 cup olive oil
2 medium garlic cloves, sliced

About 3 hours or so before serving, mix first eight ingredients in a saucepan over medium heat. After these have cooked for about an hour, heat olive oil in a small saucepan. Add garlic and cook until golden. Remove from heat and remove garlic. Pour hot oil over tomato mixture and mix well (sometimes I keep this over heat for 10-15 minutes). Cover, remove from heat, and let stand 2 or more before serving. You can add a little water if it seems too thick.

Just prior to serving, prepare some type of noodles and re-heat sauce. Serve. This sauce is hard to mess up - I've used canned tomatoes mixed with fresh when I didn't have enough, different spices, chives instead of onions, etc. It's always turned out good.

Martha Stewart's Pancakes

Once I found this recipe, I've never bought pancake mix again. So good, but so simple!

1 Cup all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 Tablespoons sugar
1 large egg, slightly beaten
1 Cup milk
2 Tablespoons butter

Whisk together flour, baking powder,salt and sugar in a bowl. In a separate bowl, whisk egg, milk, and melted butter. Form a well in the dry ingredients. Then pour the wet ingredients into the dry and stir until barely moistened--stir as little as possible. In griddle or fry pan, melt 1/2 tsp. butter (I never do this--use pam instead or a nonstick pan). Pour batter in 4 inch circles. Turn the pancakes when the edges of the pancakes look dry and the bubbles in the middle of the pancake break open. Turn and cook on the other side.

Optional:
Scatter frozen blueberries or chocolate chips over the pancake batter once it is poured onto the griddle.

Garlic Rosemary Bread

This is one of my very favorite bread recipes. I got it years ago from a KSL cooking segment. I had a scare a couple of weeks ago and couldn't find my recipe. Luckily, KSL still had their copy archived, so I was able to get it. That little episode has recommitted me to posting my recipes! I've lost a couple of favorite recipes over the years, and it is so frustrating! So, my recipes may not always have pictures, but I do hope to do a better job of posting so I can have a digital record of my recipes--especially since my dilapidated little recipe box is bursting at the seams and getting more disorganized every day!

• 2 cups milk, lukewarm
• 1/3 cup sugar (5 1/2 tablespoons)
• 4 teaspoons active dry yeast (3 teaspoons bread machine yeast)
• 5 cups flour
• 1 tablespoon salt
• 2 tablespoons crushed rosemary
• 1-2 cloves garlic, crushed (I usually use 3-4--but I love garlic and have never ever used only 1-2 cloves in ANYTHING!)
  
• 1 egg white

Method:

Place warm milk in mixer bowl, add sugar and yeast and begin to knead on low speed. Slowly add 2 cups flour and continue to knead while adding salt, rosemary and garlic. Gradually add remaining flour to make a soft dough. Dough should be stiff enough to clean away from sides of bowl.

Knead 5 minutes. Remove dough hook, cover with plastic wrap, which has been sprayed with non-stick spray. Place in warm area and allow to rise until double in bulk.

FINISHING DIRECTIONS: Preheat oven to 350 F. Remove dough from pan and knead out excess air. Divide dough in half (if using bread machine portions - leave in one loaf). Roll each half into an eighteen-inch long rope. Place loaves on greased cookie sheet.

Using sharp knife, cut 1/4 inch deep diagonal slashes along length of loaf. Cover pan with plastic wrap, which has been sprayed with non-stick spray, and allow to rise until almost double in bulk.

Remove plastic wrap. Beat together egg white with 1-tablespoon water and brush tops of loaves. Place in preheated oven and bake for 20-25 minutes. Remove from pan to cool.

Makes 2 baguette loaves.

This bread makes great garlic bread and awesome croutons (just cut into bite-sized pieces and toss in some butter or olive oil, then toast in the oven until crunchy). It also freezes well. I often cut it into slices, then freeze it and get out individual slices when I need them--also really good toasted from the freezer, and dipped in balsamic vinegar and olive oil. I could go on and on, I love this bread!

Fruit Salsa and Cinnamon Chips

Hooray September is almost here and I will start cooking real food again. I can't wait for baking season to start. For now, though, I will enjoy the end of summer and all the fresh food that goes along with it. This recipe is an old Pampered Chef recipe. It is a great summertime recipe and actually works okay anytime of year. I have tried it with frozen strawberries and it worked just fine.


Fruit Salsa

2 medium Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored and chopped
1 cup strawberries, hulled and chopped
1 kiwi, peeled and chopped
1 small orange
2 Tbsp brown sugar
2 Tbsp apple jelly

Mix together chopped apples, strawberries, and kiwi. Zest (hopefully you have a microplane as this makes it so much easier) and juice entire orange and add both orange juice and set to fruit. Stir in brown sugar and apple jelly to fruit mixture. Chill.

Cinnamon Chips

1 pkg. flour tortillas
water
cinnamon/sugar mixture

Cut tortillas into triangle shaped wedges and spread in one layer on a cookie sheet (you will need more than one cookie sheet or to do this more than one time). Spray with water from a clean water bottle or use a pastry brush to spread a thin layer of water over the tortillas. Sprinkle with cinnamon/sugar mixture. Place in a 475 degree oven for about 5-7 minutes, or until the cinnamon mixture melts and the chip edges begin to turn a light brown.

Peanut Butter Cookies

Kate asked me to post my pb cookie recipe. My kids love peanut butter cookies, and this is our favorite recipe because it's more chewy than a lot of other recipes I've tried.

Peanut Butter Cookies

1/2 Cup butter
1/2 Cup peanut butter
1 1/4 Cups flour
1/2 Cup sugar
1/2 Cup brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp vanilla

Sugar (to roll balls in--I like to use sugar in the raw, or turbinado sugar)

Beat butter and peanut butter together on high speed for thirty seconds. Add 1/2 cup of the flour, the sugars, egg, baking soda, baking powder, and vanilla. Beat till thoroughly combined. Beat in remaining flour. If necessary, cover and chill dough till easy to handle.

Shape dough into 1 inch balls. Roll in additional sugar. Place 2 inches apart on an ungreased cookie sheet. Flatten by crisscrossing with the tines of a fork.

Bake in a 375 degree oven for 7-9 minutes or till bottoms are lightly browned. (make sure not to overcook if you want them chewy!)

Chocolate Marshmallow Popsicles

You should be warned that if you try these, you will probably never want to eat another Fudgesicle or Chocolate Creamie again. These are soooo much better. And quite easy.

1/2 cup heavy cream
1 cup half-and-half
1 cup milk chocolate chips
1 cup miniature marshmallows
1 tsp vanilla
pinch of salt

Combine cream, half-and-half, chocolate chips, and marshmallows in a medium saucepan. Stir over medium heat until the chocolate chips and marshmallows are melted. Transfer the mixture to a blender or food processor, making sure to scrape all the chocolate out of the saucepan. Add the vanilla and salt and puree for about 30 seconds. Pour the mixture into a popsicle mold or paper cups and freeze for at least three hours. If you are using paper cups, freeze until slightly firm and then insert popsicle sticks.

It's nice to invite some cousins over and share!