Corn Bread Muffins

I was in a Southern Food kind of mood today and made some white beans (I used Great Northern Beans). What goes better with rice and beans than corn bread? Nothing, that's what!
Mom usually makes corn bread in a round cake pan, but I love the crispy edges the muffins get.
Corn bread is easy to make from scratch, and it's cheap too. Stop buying that box mix and try this instead. It's better this way.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 cup cornmeal (you can use yellow, white or blue)
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 dollops sour cream
• 1 cup milk
• 1/4 cup cooking oil

Directions:
Preheat your oven to 425 degrees F.
Grease muffin tins. Makes 12 muffins.
In a large bowl stir together the flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking powder and salt.
When the oven is hot add the sour cream, milk, and cooking oil to the dry ingredients and mix well. The batter will be a little lumpy, and you shouldn't over beat corn bread batter.
Spoon the batter into the muffin pans, they should be about 2/3 full.
Bake for 12 to 15 minutes or until the muffins are light brown.

If you want to make these in a greased 9" round cake pan, prepare the same as above but bake at 425 degrees F for 20 to 25 minutes.

Hummingbird Cake

Mom wanted to make dessert, she acted like we NEVER have sweets. This from the same woman who claimed we were all getting "fat" from all the sweets I make. (We have all actually lost weight lately! HA!) I was craving something with pineapple and coconut, and came across this recipe stumbling around on the net this evening. I just had to try it!! Mom ended up actually making the cake and I played kitchen manager. (I just sat at the kitchen table and told her what ingredients she needed and such.) I did make the icing myself, but icing is so easy I don't think it counts for very much. Oh, and since it's just the 3 of us here, and we really don't want to get fatter, we only made half the recipe for one 9" cake. The cake kinda reminded me of a cross between banana nut bread and cake. It is really yummy.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup pecans, chopped
  
• 1/2 cup crushed pineapple
  
• 3 ripe bananas, mashed
• 2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
  
• 1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
• 3 dollops sour cream or 3 egg replacer equivalent
• 1 3/4 cups granulated sugar
• 1 cup vegetable oil

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease two 8 or 9-inch round cake pans and line the bottom with parchment paper.

Spread the pecans on a baking sheet and bake until fragrant and toasted, about 4 minutes. Chop the pecans an mix them with the bananas, pineapple, and 1/2 cup flour.

Mix the remaining 2 1/4 cups flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger in a bowl. Mix the sour cream (or egg replacer), sugar and oil in a large bowl.
Add the flour mixture to the sour cream mixture, mix well, and then fold in the fruit mixture.

Spread the batter into the cake pan, and bake until the cakes are firm and toothpick inserted in to the middle come out clean, 25 to 30 minutes. Let the cakes cool for 10 minutes then remove them from the pans and let finish cooling about an hour. Once they are cool you can frost them. I made coconut butter frosting, but most people use a cream cheese frosting on this cake. My frosting recipe is below.

Coconut Butter Frosting

Ingredients:

• 1/3 cup butter, softened
• 4 1/2 cups powdered sugar
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 3/4 cup coconut fake or shredded coconut

Fluff the butter with a knife and slowly mix in the sugar.
Add milk, vanilla and coconut and mix until there are no sugar lumps left.
If the icing is too thick add a little milk 1 teaspoon at a time until it is to your liking.

Pumpkin Pie - Eggless

This is an eggless adaptation of Libby's Famous Pumpkin Pie recipe. We make this pie a few times every fall and winter, and we always make it for Thanksgiving. It's the only kind of pie my dad really enjoys. It's also a nice change of pace from all the apple pie we have been eating lately.
If you don't have all the spices you can substitute them with 1 1/2 teaspoons of pumpkin pie spice.

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
• 2 dollops sour cream
• 2 tablespoons corn starch
• 1 can (15 oz.) 100% pure pumpkin
• 1 can (12 fl. oz.) evaporated milk
• 9 inch deep dish frozen pie crust or your favorite single pie crust recipe

Directions

Mix sugar, cinnamon, salt, ginger and cloves in large bowl. Mix in sour cream. Stir in pumpkin. Pour about 1/3 of the evaporated milk into a small bowl and whisk in the corn starch making sure you have removed all the lumps. Gradually stir all of the evaporated milk and corn starch mixture into the pie mixture.

Pour into pie shell.

Bake in preheated 425° F oven for 15 minutes. Reduce temperature to 350° F and bake for an additional 40 to 50 minutes or until toothpick inserted near center comes out clean.
Cool on wire rack for 2 hours.

Tortellini

Pasta Dough:
1 cup flour
1 cup semolina
1/2 to 3/4 cups water

Filling:
3/4 cup ricotta cheese
1 tbs parmesan cheese, grated
1 tbs parsley, chopped

Pasta dough is very strange to make. It takes a lot less water then you think it would, and you have to roll it much thinner than you think you should.

I used a KitchenAid stand mixer using a dough hook to mix my pasta dough. I just threw everything in there and let it run on low for 10 minutes. The dough was soft and elastic. The dough needs to rest for at least 30 minutes before you try to roll it out. Rolling it out by hand takes some time, I recommend using a pasta roller if you have one. I split the dough into thirds and rolled out each piece.
Once the dough was rolled out, I quickly mixed together the filling.
I used a ruler and a sharp knife to cut the dough into 2 inch square pieces.
Fill each piece with 1/4 tsp of filling and shape.
Here's a good video of how to shape them.
Also, if your dough is very dry use a tiny bit of water around the inside edges so that your tortellini seal nicely.
Cook in boiling water for 8-10 minutes.
I served mine hot with pasta sauce, zucchini and mushrooms, and a spoon of ricotta.

Zucchini Bread

It's fall, and that means the zucchini is ready to be picked. We've had more zucchini this year than we know what to do with. After eating and freezing tons of zucchini I thought it was time to make some zucchini bread. I found my grandma's old recipe for zucchini bread, one which my mother had never tried, and went to it. My mom was skeptical, she doesn't remember my grandmother ever making zucchini bread. Well, it turned out AMAZING and will be my go to for zucchini bread from now on.

We had a bunch of zucchinis already grated and I just took what I need.


Ingredients:
2 dollops sour cream
1 egg replacer equivalent
1 cup oil
1 cup chopped nuts
2 cups sugar
2 cups peeled grated zucchini
½ teaspoon vanilla
½ teaspoon almond extract
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon nutmeg
½ teaspoon cinnamon
3 ½ cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder

Directions:
Mix sugar, oil, sour cream, egg replacer, zucchini, spices and flavorings.
Add dry ingredients and nuts.
Grease and flour two 8x4 or 9x5 loaf pans.
Bake at 350° for 45 to 60 minutes. (Mine took the entire 60 minutes.)