Sweet Potato Buttermilk Cornbread

Ingredients

1 cup wheat flour
1 cup cornmeal
¼ cup sugar or 3 Tb honey
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
¼ cup butter
1 egg
1 cup buttermilk
1 ½ cup peeled and grated sweet potato (raw)

Directions

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

In a large bowl, combine flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking powder and salt. Cut in butter with two forks, a pastry cutter or your fingers until mixture is crumbly.

In a medium mixing bowl beat egg until frothy. Stir in buttermilk and sweet potatoes. Pour mixture into flour mixture stirring just until blended. Pour batter into greased 9x9x2 inch baking dish.

Bake 20 minutes or until center springs back when pressed. Cool in pan on wire rack. Cut into squares and serve.

Notes from the Paula Deen Test Kitchen: A moist cornbread with a lovely flavor. Great to serve as a side to your slow cooker recipes. Flavor profiles worked best with pork and beef dishes.

I made this and Dad a few nights ago and I loved it!

Thai Coconut Soup

Wes and I have been on a Thai food kick lately. This recipe is DELISH... I'm not sure how healthy it is, but you'll love it! :)

http://www.ourbestbites.com/2012/03/quick-and-easy-thai-coconut-soup/

Quick and Easy Alfredo Sauce

I replaced half the cream cheese with gorgonzola and ooohhhh lala - DELICIOUS!

INGREDIENTS:

1/2 cup butter 1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese 2 teaspoons garlic powder

2 cups milk 6 ounces grated Parmesan cheese 1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper

DIRECTIONS:

1.

Melt butter in a medium, non-stick saucepan over medium heat. Add cream cheese and garlic powder, stirring with wire whisk until smooth. Add milk, a little at a time, whisking to smooth out lumps. Stir in Parmesan and pepper. Remove from heat when sauce reaches desired consistency. Sauce will thicken rapidly, thin with milk if cooked too long. Toss with hot pasta to serve.

Aunt Melanie's Sheetcake Brownies

Brownies
2 C flour
2 C sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 C cocoa
1/2 C margarine
1 C water
2 eggs
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 C buttermilk
1 tsp vanilla

Mix first 4 dry ingredients in a bowl.  Melt margarine and water in pan; bring to boil.  Stir into dry mixture.  Combine eggs, soda, buttermilk, and vanilla and stir into other mix.  Bake in sheetcake pan 10 min. at 350.

Frosting
1/2 C margarine
3 Tb cocoa
6 Tb milk
4 C  powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla

Melt margarine with cocoa and milk in pan over low heat.  DO NOT BOIL.  Add to other ingredients and mix well.  Spread over warm brownies.

Grandma Barbra Jensen's Sweet Dough Bread

My mom didn't spend a lot of time in the kitchen, as far as I remember.  Too many other demands on her time, I'm sure.  But she made this special treat to take to all our friends every year for Christmas.  This is close to what it looked like.  I just found her recipe and thought I'd share it with you exactly as she wrote it.

Mix together.... 1 1/2 c lukewarm milk
                         1/2 c sugar
                         2 tsp salt

Soak............... 2 pkg dry granular yeast in
                        1/2 c lukewarm water for 5 min without stirring.  Then stir well before adding.

Stir in............ 2 eggs
                      1/2 c soft shortening
                      7 - 7 1/2  c sifted flour

(Mix in first with spoon, then knead in with hands.)

After second rising, divide dough for desire coffee cakes.  Round up, cover, and let rest 15 min so dough is easy to handle.  Shape dough, let rise until light (15 - 30 min.) and bake according to directions for each type of coffee cake.

Cinamon Roll Ring - With scissors, make cuts 2/3 of way through at 1" intervals.  Turn each section out.









Christmas Braid - [Roll dough into rectangular shape.] Spread filling (My mom used canned cherry pie filling) down center of dough.  Make diagonal cuts on each side of the dough and lace opposite sides of dough across each other.

Ancient Grains Bread

I've updated this recipe once again and since I had two requests for it just this morning, thought I'd repost it, for anyone who is interested.

Ancient Grains Bread


2 C. warm water
1/2 C. warm milk
1 T. yeast
1/2 C. honey
1/4 C. molasses
3 T. butter, melted
1 tsp. salt
1/4 C. orange juice (or, any other 100% juice)
3 T. gluten flour
3 T. ground flax (your body can't digest flax in it's unground state)
5-6 C. whole wheat flour
1/3 C. sunflower seeds
3 T. sesame seeds
3 T. millet
3 T. quinoa
3 T. amaranth
1-2 T. chia seeds

Sprinkle yeast over warm water and milk in large mixing bowl.  Pour in honey and molasses.  Let it sit for 5 minutes.  Add butter, salt, and orange juice.  Stir to combine.  Add gluten flour, ground flax, and 2 C. wheat flour.  Stir until well combined.  Add all of the seeds.  Stir to combine.  Stir in as much flour as you can.  Then knead in more until it's nice and firm.  I've found that I use significantly more flour when I make this with my Bosch mixer, versus by hand.

 First, let it rise in a lightly greased bowl (after turning dough to get it lightly greased on all sides), covered for a good long while.  I usually give it anywhere from an hour to an hour and a half.  Then, punch it down and divide it in thirds.  Shape each half into a loaf and place in greased loaf pans.  Glass is better than metal--trust me!  Let it rise there for 45 to 60 minutes.  Or more, if you have a tendency to forget your bread, as I do.

Grease loaf pans and preheat oven to 350.  Bake for 30-45 minutes, if needed cover loosely with foil to keep it from over-browning (a.k.a. burning) and bake longer if needed.  My oven bakes hot, so I cook this on the lower end of the time frame.

This recipe calls for a lot of different seeds.  Feel free to substitute, or omit as you want.  I'm currently trying caraway on one loaf upstairs.  I also want to try pepitos and walnuts.  I'll get back to you.  Oh, and you can use all honey and no molasses, if you wish.

*The caraway tasted fine, but without it this bread is a little on the sweet side and I prefer it to stay that way.

The sauce recipe I used to bottle spaghetti sauce this year. (Anthony's Pasta Sauce)

So, just so we're clear, this recipe is the one I used to can spaghetti sauce this year.
It is NOT my recipe.
But you can find it here: http://spaghettisauceandmeatballs.com/.

I 3x this recipe, to fill my stock pot, which made 13 jars of sauce.

It's a really drawn out and fancy recipe. But, in my opinion, it's totally worth it. For one thing, it's a very tasty sauce. For another, it makes me feel like a gourmet cook. I don't usually feel that way because I'm not one, and I don't have any other recipes that I do that are this detailed and drawn out. But I seriously love making this sauce. It's just fun to me. Maybe I'm really wierd. But don't knock it until you try it. And I've never tried the meatballs yet, I'm ashamed to say. They sound really good.

When I make this sauce, I have always frozen it in bags before, but this time I tried bottling it. When I would freeze it, I would cook up some sausage and add it to the sauce in the early stages. I originally planned on doing this when I bottled it, but then found out you can only bottle meat with a pressure canner. I do have a pressure canner, but I really didn't want to spend the extra time it would take to use it. I have a steam canner that takes about half the time that the pressure canner does, so I just omitted all meat this time. I will just add sausage or whatever meat when I get the sauce out.

Also, I used 4 cups of tomato sauce that I got from tomatoes from our garden. I have a Sauce Master that makes it REALLY easy to make tomato sauce from fresh tomatoes, without any prep work (no peeling, dicing, or cooking).

So let me know if you try it. And Happy Cooking!

***10/28/12: I have now opened two jars of the sauce and they are VERY watery, so I would recommend either adding a lot less water than it says to, or to let it simmer for at least 30 min to 1 hour to let the water evaporate out.***