Even in the midst of strawberry season, you didn't think my kids would let me stray long from the chocolate dessert cookbook, did you? I didn't either.
All of the kids enjoyed this, although one of my big sons griped about the nuts in the streusel. My response to him was something to the effect of "Suck it up, sweetie."
Chocolate Dessert #9:
CHOCOLATE BANANA SPLIT STREUSEL CAKE
1 stick butter or margarine, softened
1-1/2 cups granulated sugar
2 large ripe bananas, peeled and mashed
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tsp vanilla extract
4 eggs
2 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup sour cream
Chocolate Streusel Filling:
4 tbsp butter, melted and cooled
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup flour1 cup chopped pecans or walnuts
1/2 tsp ground allspice
1 cup chocolate chips (which I did not use)
Powdered sugar
Preheat oven to 350F. Beat together the butter and granulated sugar until well mixed, 1 to 2 minutes. With mixer on low speed, add bananas, cocoa and vanilla, beating until well blended. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Sift together flour, soda, powder and salt. Beat into cocoa mix alternately with sour cream until just combined. Spread 1/3 of batter in the bottom of a greased bundt pan. Top with half the streusel filling. Spread another third of the batter over the streusel, top with the remaining filling, and finish with the balance of the batter. Bake 50 tol 55 minutes, until the cake tests done. Let it cool for about 15 minutes in the pan, then turn it onto a rack to finish cooling. Sift powdered sugar over the top of the cake to serve.
Note my confession that the recipe calls for chocolate chips, and I didn't use them. I thought this cake provided plenty of opportunity for a chocolate coma without the extra chips. Feel free to further enhance your own chocolate coma, however!
I also suspect you could replace all of the dry ingredients in this confection with a boxed mix, and come up with virtually the same results. I might do that the next time my kids beat me into making this. If any of you try it, let me know!
Tomorrow, Thor hosts "other dogs" for Dogs on Thursday. Hope you're all having a wonderful Wednesday. I'm working on sending my rain to some of you who are more needy, but putting steering rudders on clouds is proving to be tricky.
Well, I haven't been able to get to my garden yesterday or today. I'm pretty sure I've moved to Portland or Seattle, and no one told me. So, between thunderstorms, I stepped out my back door to take a picture of the garden.
It would seem that I need to get out there and collect some more lettuce, if the sky stops leaking...I wonder if there's a plumber who can fix that leaking *sigh*
Two years ago, my son Jeff laid this patio for me, using mostly stone I had around here. Wasn't it pretty? Of course, the hibiscus died over the winter, despite the fact that I brought them inside and kept them in my kitchen where they'd stay warm. Stupid tropical plants!
Coming up tomorrow: Chocolate dessert #9!
Greetings, fellow bloggers! I hope you all had a wonderful Independence Day weekend, filled with great food, fireworks, friends and fun. Now that I've recovered, I believe ours was all that, but it was certainly busy, at least on Saturday.Thor was not invited to this wedding. Indeed, the groom's father's dog was not invited, despite the fact that the groom's father owns the wedding site, so Thor's lack of invitation was not surprising. So we set him up to stay home alone, but, truthfully, since he's so old, we worried about him all day. I drove to Connecticut and back on Saturday, a total of 378.2 miles. It wasn't that bad (we only rolled through 2 speed traps on the entire trip, and I was a good girl - I rarely exceeded the posted traffic control signs by more than 7MPH - I promise). 
Best of all, our Datemobile got 20 MPG. Hmph. I guess that's what happens when you keep the speed below 75. But I digress.I told you Mark wanted to wear a suit. He was very happy when he realized that he matched his big brother Jeffrey. This is not a low doorway; Jeff is that tall, and he wasn't even wearing his shoes yet.
And both of my little boys looked wonderful!
Here's your first glance at my new dress. I was standing on a rock, so I was a couple of inches taller relative to Jeff than I am in real life. Not to worry, I beat the tarnation out of him regularly.
That trailer in the background was the porta-pots. I have to compliment the groom, he found a nice portable facility. It even had a hand washing station. Trust me, I was very relieved.
The groom's brother had no trouble finding 2 of the prettiest girls at the event - my daughters.
The ceremony was held at the end of the family's dock. Now, you all should know that this lake is only 1/2 mile or so across, so the dock is really not that big. Still, motor boats were circling the area, and applauding for the bride and groom. It was very nice for them.
The groom's cousin's husband (is that enough relatives for you?) drove them in the boat, with the photographer, out to the granite rock in the middle of the lake for more photos. This picture was taken safely from the shore, with all the telephoto my camera could muster, then cropped, so you could get a glimpse of the fun.
During the group photos of the bride and groom with family, the groom made a big point of calling us for the photographer to take their picture with my family. That made me feel good (I handed the groom's Uncle Bob my camera so I could have a picture, too). And now you get a better look at my dress!
And here's me and my beloved, cropped out of that photo, so you get a little better glimpse of my dress.
The bride and the groom's brother cooked all of the food, with some help from the rest of the wedding party. They had 100 people there! That's a lot of food! The bride also made her wedding cake. They had tents set up in case of rain, but it was sunny. A cold wind was blowing, I'm not sure the temperature ever hit 70, but the sky was beautiful. It was a nice day!
Last Friday afternoon and evening, we had massive thunderstorms here. Everyone around us lost power; fortunately, for whatever reason, the transformer serving the 7 houses on our block didn't go down. Thor was grateful.
We've been suffering thunderstorms every day since. This is how Thor gets through them.
Happy Thorsday, everyone!
Strawberry season isn't quite over yet. Seriously, it isn't. The girls and the little boys went out yesterday and got another 4 baskets of berries, around 30 pounds of the lovely crimson gems. Our food delivery also arrived yesterday, which included a case of bananas. No, I am not completely insane for buying a case of bananas. The 40 pound case of bananas only sets me back $20, everyone can eat them to their hearts' content, and if there are any left after eating and baking, they can be frozen for further use. Seems like the ultimate good deal to me. Anyway, back to the baking part...
STRAWBERRY BANANA BREAD
1 stick butter or margarine
1 cup greek yogurt
4 eggs
3 cups flour
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar2 tsp salt
2 tsp baking soda
3 bananas, cut in chunks
1 cup walnuts, chopped
1 cup sliced strawberries
Cream the butter and sugars until light; add the eggs one at a time, beating until well mixed. Add the bananas. Mix together the flour, soda and salt, and add half of the dry mix, followed by half of the yogurt, then the balance of each. Beat until well combined, then fold in the nuts and strawberries. Pour into 2 greased loaf pans, and bake 50 to 65 minutes, or until done. Makes 2 loaves.
And since both were gone by the time I got up at 9 this morning, I'd say that my sons liked them. Since the sons were not up when I got up, they'd say it was 3AM kitchen raiders who ate the bread.
Pictures of how the garden grows.
The left bed. Note the spinach at the left side; it's finally looking like something. Trust me, for a couple of weeks it's looked a lot like renegade grass. There's mesclun mix to the right of the spinach, and things which are supposed to become squash, zucchini and cucumber. The real farmers are just as cranky as I about the weather and lack of growth in the plants.
The right bed. That black seeded Simpson lettuce just keeps growing. I keep taking leaves off the bottoms of the plants, so they have short stalks there, but the leaves keep coming. They're great in tacos, sandwiches, on a plate, whatever. The guinea pigs haven't had any. The arugula is coming in next to it, and I'm still waiting for any real tomato progress. The onions are growing; following Paula's suggestion, I have yanked a couple of them to use in food. And the carrots! I pulled one to make sure they were OK, and while it was only about 3" long, it was delectable. I didn't share.
And look! My red leaf lettuce finally looks like something other than brown weeds!
How are your gardens growing? Happy Tuesday!
If there's anything better on a warm summer evening than ice cream, it's cheesecake. Strawberry cheesecake. When the kids went strawberry picking last week, they stopped at a local dairy farm on the way home (OK, they went a few miles out of the way, I admit it) and raved about the strawberry cheesecake ice cream they had. Of course, I thought that if the farm could do it, so could I. I had no recipes to follow, of course, but I've learned to wing it well enough.
STRAWBERRY CHEESECAKE ICE CREAM
1 pint strawberries, pureed
8 ounces cream cheese
1 cup sugar
1 cup cream
1 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
dash salt
about 1/2 cup coarsely chopped strawberries
Puree the strawberries in the food processor; add the sugar and let it sit in the processor for 15 minutes. Add the cream cheese, cut into 8 chunks, one chunk at a time. Process to combine thoroughly. In a bowl or pitcher, mix together the cream, milk, vanilla and salt; whisk in the cream cheese mixture. Whisk together, then add the chunks of strawberries and process in your ice cream maker until done. Let it freeze for a few hours before serving, if you can wait.
This was dubbed "delectable". Sadly, I used the end of our 3 baskets of strawberries for this. We shall see when (if?) the kids decide to go get more, since the girls were griping about the lack of strawberries in the house.
(Sabina, contact me here.)
I've said it before, and I'll repeat for the record: Pie is NOT in my DNA. I make a great pumpkin pie, if you can discount the store bought roll-it-into-your-own-pan crust which permits me to pretend I'm competent. But I'm getting ahead of myself, here.
The kids brought home three lovely baskets of strawberries on Wednesday afternoon. All of them participated in active free range grazing for the rest of the day.
For my dearly beloved and me, however, lunch was strawberry shortcake on Wednesday and Thursday (and likely today, also). Breakfast Thursday and today was just simple bowls of strawberries with cream (for him) or nonfat milk (for me - hey, that new dress has to fit next week!).
Dessert Wednesday night was Strawberry Bavarian Cream. 
I discovered it during last summer's great strawberry-fest; here's the recipe! You know I doubled it; how else would I have fed the hungry hordes? And I had a bit left over, which I hid in plastic cups in the fridge, and the little boys took outside for their picnic lunch Thursday.
So, last night I decided to step so far out of my element I might as well have been in China. I made strawberry pie. I know this is what you've all really been waiting for, pie, right?
This is from Bernard Clayton's Complete Book of Pastry, picked up at a used book sale in April. This is my first foray into that book, although I've been studying it, gathering my courage. For this recipe, he recommends using either a half-and-half crust, or a graham cracker crumb crust. Perfect! I can do crumb crust! It ain't pretty, but it's good! So, without further ado:
STRAWBERRY PIE
Crust:
1 stick butter, melted
1-1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs
1/2 cup sugar
Mix the three ingredients together, press into the bottom and sides of a greased pie plate, and bake at 350F for 10 to 12 minutes. Paula, for your baby, you can grind 1-1/2 cups almonds or hazelnuts (filberts) and use them in place of the cracker crumbs. Voila! Gluten free for Paula!
Filling:
1 quart strawberries
1 cup sugar
2 tbsp cornstarch
1/4 cup water1 tbsp butter
3 ounces cream cheese
Choose the best 25 to 30 strawberries and set them aside. Puree the balance, and cook in a sauce pan with the sugar. When it boils, make a paste of the water and cornstarch, and whisk them in; cook for 5 to 8 minutes, until the mixture thickens and becomes clear. Remove from the heat, whisk in the butter, and let it cool.In your food processor, cut the cream cheese into chunks, add 1 tbsp of the cooled strawberry mixture, and pulse until they are combined and smooth. Spread this in the bottom of the pie shell; it will be a thin layer. Hull the strawberries, and stand them, large end down, in the cream cheese mix. Spoon the cooled filling over them, and refrigerate until ready to use. Serve with whipped cream on top.
Notes: I made 2 pies at once, because if I was going to this much work, it was going to count. Besides, one pie is barely enough for 8 people for dessert, and that's my current population. The second one is still in my fridge; woe betide the person who tries to attack it before tonight's dessert. I actually used 67 strawberries between the two pies, but mine are 9" pie plates, so be aware: forewarned is forearmed. Also, please remember that pie is a foreign concept to me when I confess that I doubled 2 tablespoons of cornstarch and therefore used....2 tablespoons of Cornstarch! Thus, my filling is runny. We'll see if tonight's fares better after spending a full 24 hours waiting to be used. I do have to say that my dearly beloved has never had strawberry pie, and he loved this. Simply loved it. So did everyone else, so if you have time, try this!
Did you ever notice that a lot of things claim to be the "best ever"? I'm sure we've all tried about a gazillion recipes for the "best ever" something or other. However, I wanted to try another recipe from this book which I got at a used book sale in April (there was a coffee cake a while back), so Best Ever White Bread it was! Of course, I made some changes to the recipe so it could be mixed in the bread machine, swapped out lard for butter (I just don't need any more lard piled on my derriere, and don't tell me butter does the same, thanks), and added butter to the top. The result was pretty and tasty!
BEST EVER WHITE BREAD
1-1/2 cups milk
2 tbsp sugar
2 tsp salt
1 tbsp butter
4 cups flour
3 tsp or 6 tsp yeastadditional butter
Mix all ingredients except the additional butter according to my directions (see link on the sidebar to the right). After it rises about 15 minutes, split the dough into 2 pieces, and fit one into each of two greased bread pans. Let it rise until the dough reaches the top of the pan, then run a serrated knife the length of the bread no more than 1/4" deep, and let it continue to rise a bit longer. Just before you put it in the oven, lay slivers of butter in the cut, and bake the bread at 350F for glass or 375F for metal pans for 22 to 26 minutes, depending upon how dark you want the crust. Let it cool a few minutes before removing from the pans, and a bit longer before slicing.
Note: this bread can be left in the bread machine. Just before the baking cycle begins, melted butter can be drizzled over the top of it, if you wish.
And, Sabina in Australia, if you'll leave me your email address, I have some suggestions for bread for your husband.
Today, the boys are out strawberry picking. Look for more on that tomorrow, brought to you by Thor! (That presupposes I don't eat myself into a strawberry coma tonight.)
Best of all, our Datemobile got 20 MPG. Hmph. I guess that's what happens when you keep the speed below 75. But I digress.
That trailer in the background was the porta-pots. I have to compliment the groom, he found a nice portable facility. It even had a hand washing station. Trust me, I was very relieved.
I discovered it during last summer's great strawberry-fest; here's the recipe! You know I doubled it; how else would I have fed the hungry hordes? And I had a bit left over, which I hid in plastic cups in the fridge, and the little boys took outside for their picnic lunch Thursday.
