Cooking with Kid(s)

I enjoyed having my nieces in town for Thanksgiving. I think the best part
(other than the Raggedy costume)
was the quality time I spent with Adele in the kitchen on Friday! (Making food that was homemade, but full of refined flour and white sugar - and food coloring! - not exactly Slow Food or Local Food or Real Food.)

I posted earlier about trying to figure out what to serve for breakfast to my niece that does not include eggs, oatmeal, or peanuts. My sister decided on pull-aparts - and actually got up early in the morning to make the dough, so it had plenty of time to rise.

Okay, so breakfast still wasn't ready until 10:30, and I didn't get any pictures of the process, but Adele did a great job helping me put little balls of dough rolled in butter and cinnamon sugar in my Bundt pan.

She's two, so I was afraid she'd pile all the dough on one side of the pan. Actually, she did a great job of putting the balls around the pan. When she had filled one layer of dough about halfway around the pan, she looked at her handiwork and exclaimed (I am not making this up), "oh look, it's a perfect rainbow." She was right. The balls of (brownish) dough in a semi-circle were indeed a perfect rainbow shape. She continued on with her work, and eventually the dough made a perfect circle. After the first layer, I think she got a little bit bored, and she started just throwing the dough anywhere. But it only took a little bit of rearranging before the finished product was set on top of the oven to rise again. The rolls were pretty good, although they could have had more of the butter/sugar mixture!

Later in the day I asked Adele if she wanted to make cookies with me. She and her mom do cooking "projects" at home sometimes, and she really seems to like them. Plus, Portage is a nice town but it isn't the most exciting place for two-year-olds. (We don't even have an art desk.) I got out my grandpa's Crisp Cookie recipe that my aunt gave me a few years ago, when I knew I wouldn't make it all the way to WI (from Kentucky) for Christmas, but didn't want to miss out on Grandpa's cookies. (Or the decorating that goes with it.)

Michael and I had (a little too much?) fun decorating the crisp cookies last year!
Adele helped me pick out good cookie cutters (she named the shapes as I held them up - if she didn't know what the shape was supposed to be, we didn't use that one)
hmm . . . what could this be?

She was very interested in sprinkling flour on the dough mat
and she even helped roll out the dough.
The cookies turned out pretty well by my standards - none of them were burned or undercooked, and only a few were smashed/broken.
With three pans and lots of helpers (and photographers) the job went quickly, even if it was very hot in the kitchen! Adele took a nap while the cookies cooled.

Adele sampled the cookies after her nap.
Oliver and Loki tried to convince Adele to share with them (but she didn't)
Finally, we were ready to decorate! (Aunt Dee Dee made a little mistake about what time the parade was supposed to be on Friday night - I had it in my head all day that the parade was at 5:00 but our internet was down, so I had no way of verifying this (without going downtown to look at the signs). Around 4:45 as we were piling on winter gear to go to the parade, I checked the internet again and it was working - which was a good thing because the parade was not until 6:00.) So we used the extra time to decorate the cookies.

Adele was a very good sport about wearing a kitchen towel as her "apron."
Mommy showed her how to do one, and then Adele decorated like a pro.
Okay, so she got a little bit messy . . . that's what the newspaper was for!
What's wrong with this cookie, MeMaw?He has an owie knee, just like BaPa!
I sent the decorated cookies home with them.
I wonder how long they lasted.

On Seasonality

Notes:
I think this is my first home-grown cake.

Did you notice that I made a very special effort not to use my handy-dandy, all-purpose snowman platter for this one?

Sorry my camera never travels with me to the garden; I don't have a picture of the pumpkins in on the vine.

Bread

I love banana bread. I found a recipe for banana bread in the newspaper approximately 15 years ago, and it became my signature baked good. (Along with berry pies that I used to show off for my uncles.) But after I read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, I couldn't buy bananas anymore. I miss them. I miss baking banana bread. I was sort of intrigued by the sneaky zucchini-chocolate chip cookie recipe in Miracle, and my dad had made zucchini bread a few times when I was a kid (although I might be the only person to remember that), so I tried a zucchini muffin recipe last summer. It was good. I experimented with it. I recently posted it on my blog. But I wasn't attached to it, you know? The copyrighted zucchini bread I made last week was good, but it was too sweet. It wasn't my recipe. There was no batter-spattered recipe card in my stack called "Katie's Zucchini Bread" in alphabetical order behind "Jenny's Pumpkin Bread" and "Katie's Banana Bread." My sister had never called asking for the recipe. Twice.

Tonight, I played around and tweaked a little bit, and I think I may have hit upon Katie's Zucchini Bread. It's a good thing I'm not finished typing up all of my recipes yet, because I have another one for my collection. I think I can be attached to this one. In fact, I think I'll shred some zucchini on Thursday afternoon to put in my new freezer, so it can be all ready to pull out in January when I need a little taste of summer. (Also, it will be nice to clear up some space in my fridge for the rest of July.)

Katie's Zucchini Bread

1 3-lb zucchini
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups whole-wheat flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons cinnamon
2 teaspoons allspice
1 cup sugar
1 cup honey
1 1/2 sticks of unsalted butter, melted and cooled
4 eggs
1/4 cup yogurt

Makes 2 8-1/2 by 4-1/2-inch loaf pans.

Adjust an oven rack to the middle position and heat the oven to 325 degrees.

Cut zucchini in half lengthwise and remove seeds with spoon. Shred zucchini. Place shredded zucchini in a towel, and squeeze out the water. (This will remove approximately half a pound of water.)

Whisk together the dry ingredients and set aside.

Combine the sugar, melted butter, honey, eggs, and yogurt together in a large bowl. Slowly add the dry ingredients. (I do this by hand.)

Pour the batter into a greased pan (you could also flour the pan, but it is probably not necessary) and bake for about one hour and ten minutes.
Yeah, I know, my oven's not clean. I spilled zucchini bread in it last week, remember?

The honey (which I included because it is local) makes the bread turn brown early in the baking process. Don't be fooled. Insert a toothpick or a knife into the center of the bread to test doneness. If it comes out soggy, put the bread back in the oven. If just a few crumbs are attached, take the bread out of the oven, let it cool for a while (10 minutes?) and turn it out onto a wire rack. I'd eat it as soon as it's cool enough to handle.


My husband approves this recipe :)