Make Your Own Hamburger Buns

There is something very comforting about the smell of freshly baked bread.

This past Christmas, I received a few new cookbooks and one of them has a recipe for Hawaiian Grilled Cheeseburgers. We have been grilling pineapple and putting them on cheeseburgers occasionally, but that recipe took the sandwich to new heights.

To keep on the level of awesomeness of the cheeseburger recipe, I decided to try my hand at making homemade buns.

Zucchini Bread

Yowza! What to do with all the zucchini my garden produced this year!

Zucchini is one of the easiest vegetables to grow and as such, it's known far and wide among home gardeners for overwhelming crops. 

When cooking, zucchini is treated as a vegetable and is usually cooked and served as a savory or side dish. 
Botanically, however, zucchini is really a fruit.

Not only is the zucchini versatile to cook with, but it’s also loaded with nutrients and vitamins that can help prevent cancer and heart disease. 

Aunt Janey's Sour Cream Coffee Cake

My daughter Jami met her husband Donnie, fell in love and got married a few years back.  (Seems like yesterday!)  

We are really pleased with her choice for our son-in-law, just a great guy.  We also have had the pleasure of meeting many of his family members, which, happily we love too!

Donnie's mother Julie and grandmother Mary are wonderful cooks and I'm still trying to get their Apple Pie recipe (best I've ever tasted) and homemade Chicken and Dumplings recipe. 

Donnie's Aunt Janey and Uncle Eddie live in southern Ohio in a beautiful hilltop home.  Aunt Janey shared this recipe with me after bringing it to one of our fall parties. She told me she originally found the recipe in a magazine years and years ago.
It is absolutely delicious!

Make in the Morning Cinnamon Rolls

I am anxiously awaiting the perfect outdoor temperatures so I can once again tap my maple trees to make maple syrup.  The temps need to be above 40 degrees during the day and below freezing at night. This causes the sap to run.  

While waiting all I can think about are recipes using maple syrup.

This is a pretty easy homemade Cinnamon Roll recipe and perfect for a lazy Saturday morning.

These can be started in the early morning hours before everyone wakes, and are ready in about 1 to 1½ hours, start to finish.   Their also just as good the next day! (if any make it that long)

Perfect Sourdough Bread

Sourdough bread is great buttered, toasted, served with dinner, or used for sandwiches. 

In my opinion, bread making is an art and a science.

There is a special pleasure working with bread and just the aroma of baking bread throughout the house is well worth the effort.

I grew up eating my mother’s homemade bread.  We would beg and beg her to make it and it was always eaten hot from the oven covered with butter.  
My mother never looked at a recipe to make her bread, she just mixed it up and it was perfect. Every Single Time. Sigh.

I can't just whip up a loaf of bread, I always have the recipe right next to me and I have been practicing for years.  In the past, I’ve had as many bread failures as successes I think, but I kept at it. 

Using a sourdough starter is an ancient method to make leavened bread.

Sourdough Bread Starter

Sourdough Starter

Let me start this post by saying I am no expert when it comes to bread making and I believe bread making is an art form. I have been practicing for years and kicked up the experimenting in the last few years.  
I have tried to get a sourdough starter going a few times with no luck.  But my son Daniel absolutely loves a good sourdough bread so I persevered. 

Making good loaves of bread is time consuming so it's not for everyone.  But the joy and feelings of accomplishment you get when the bread turns out perfect are well worth it. 
I have never actually met anyone who has been successful at getting a starter to ferment or live. 
There are plenty of websites with instructions, and even rants about how easy plain flour and water is to start,  but what good are they if they don't work for me or you? 

Well let's get started.  Here are a few tips on how I got my starter to work.

It needs restating and underscored that the better the ingredients the better the end product.  

Also, if quick and easy bread is what you are more interested in try my Easy Beer Bread recipe. 

Sourdough is time consuming.  It just is.

Hearty Beer Bread

A rich thick hearty easy bread to make, this is I think the best beer bread I have made so far.  

There is no kneading or rising needed so it’s super easy to make. 

Beer adds its own unique flavor and because it's a product of fermentation, it also adds its own leavening agent.

The bread will take on what ever character or flavor of beer you use, so the bread can and will taste a little different each time you make it.

I like using Imports, stouts or stronger flavors of beer.  

But a domestic beer will work just fine too.

And in case putting beer in bread is of concern for you, a great percentage of the alcohol evaporates during the baking process.

There are many debates as to whether beer or bread came first in early civilization. But one thing is certain; both have been in the human diet for thousands of years.

Indian Tacos

Indian Taco (Sioux, Cherokee or Navajo)

My husband and I and our kids have a love for South Dakota and the Black Hills.  We have made several trips out West and always discover something new, beautiful or amazing (sometimes all at once) on each trip.

This last September just my husband Bill and I made the trip.

When planning the trip, we made sure to reserved a couple days to drive the back roads off the beaten tourist routes, through and around the Badlands National Park and into the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation with a stop at the Wounded Knee Massacre Site. 

Moist Banana Nut Bread

I really adore bananas and use them in many dishes, try to eat 4 to 5 of them a week and even make my own homemade Banana Cream Pie.

There are many banana nut bread recipes out there and many are pretty good. But of all the Banana Nut Bread recipes I have tried, (and there have been many), this one is my absolute favorite.  It turns out moist and delicious every time with lots of banana flavor. 

I also like that it makes enough to eat now and enough to save a loaf for later.  This recipe makes perfect mini loaves for gift giving around the Holidays.

This recipe came from my husband’s cousin’s wife Casey Elder.  She posted on Facebook in 2010 about how wonderful this bread was and something like her whole house smelled divine from baking banana nut bread.  (Maybe that part I envisioned in my own head, lol)

Flaky Buttery Buttermilk Biscuits

My biscuits, fresh out of the oven

I found this recipe in a Fine Cooking magazine in 2007.

These are one of the best biscuits I have tasted and are easy to make. 
I love that the butter doesn't need to be chopped on crumbled into the flour. This is so much easier and creates a stronger butter flavored biscuit!

Tips and Suggestions:
I use a Buttermilk Powder from SACO and follow the directions on the container to make the buttermilk.   SACO Cultured Buttermilk Blend can be used in nearly any recipe that calls for liquid buttermilk or soured milk. 

I also use a smaller, round baking dish instead of a sheet, and have the sides of my biscuits touching. 

Cooking the biscuits in a dish lined with parchment paper just makes for a much easier clean-up.

I also use King Arthur Flour and Land of Lakes Butter.  The better the quality of ingredients the better the end product.

Day Of The Dead Bread

Day of the Dead Bread

So I get an email from my nephew-in-law Ben, saying he made "Day of the Dead" bread and had an extra loaf and would I like one.
Well as some of you may know, bread is my friend. I was super excited but hadn't opened the email until late in the day so had to wait an entire (eternity) day to pick it up.

Let me give you a little info on Ben: He is a wonderful cook, has his own cooking website and is a great photographer. I had, up until trying his home baked bread, only salivated over his dishes via his website.Anyway, I arrived at his and Jon's house to pick up the bread yesterday and upon entering his house immediately became brain dead.Yes that's right.
Upon viewing the wonderful little loaves of bread my hands began to shake and my mouth watered against my will.  Heaven!