The True Test of a Good Dessert

Many times I will try a new dessert and my family will say that they like it, but then it sits on my counter uneaten. I believe that I am to assume that they were just being polite, and I don’t need to make that dessert again. Every summer I seem to be trying to find the perfect chocolate zucchini cake recipe that will taste good when I convert it to whole grain and quite possibly the search has finally ended. I wasn’t so sure if the cake I made this past week was really good until it was gone in just two days.

Whole Wheat Chocolate Zucchini Cake

                          2 1/2 cups hard white wheat flour

                          1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

                          1 teaspoon soda

                          1 teaspoon baking powder

                          1/2 teaspoon salt

                          1 cup brown sugar

                          1/2 cup sugar

                          1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened

                          1/2 cup buttermilk

                          3 large eggs

                          1 teaspoon vanilla extract

                          2 cups shredded zucchini

                          1 cup chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease and flour a 9x13 cake pan or bundt pan. Whisk together the flour, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder and salt. In a large mixing bowl, stir together the sugars and butter until smooth. Add the buttermilk, eggs, and vanilla; mix well. Add half the dry ingredients, stirring until evenly moistened. Stir in the zucchini and then the remaining flour mixture. Stir in the chocolate chips. Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Bake for 45 to 50 minutes. For bundt cake, allow to cool on wire rack for 15 minutes before removing cake from pan. Cool completely and drizzle with chocolate glaze.

Chocolate Glaze

1/2 cup heavy cream

3/4 cup chocolate chips

2 teaspoons corn syrup

Heat the heavy cream to a simmer, and pour over the chocolate chips in a bowl. Stir in corn syrup, and keep stirring until there are no more lumps and the mixture is smooth. Drizzle over the cooled cake.

Produce Surprise

Several months ago, a friend told me about bountifulbaskets.org. It is a produce co-op run primarily by volunteers. For fifteen dollars, you get about 12 different kinds of vegetables and fruits. The baskets need to be ordered on Monday evening and picked up Saturday morning. The fun thing is that each week it is a surprise as to what interesting produce my family will get to eat. Sometimes it is something that I wouldn’t normally buy, and I get to find and try a new recipe. This week waiting for me was a cabbage. I have bought cabbages in the past, but I don’t buy them on a regular basis. I decided to make coleslaw. I tried a new recipe, and my family thought it was great.

Creamy Coleslaw

1 head green cabbage, chopped into small pieces ( I use the shredder attachment to my Bosche)

1 large carrot, peeled and finely shredded

Whisk together the following for the dressing:

1 cup mayonnaise

1/3 cup milk

1/3 cup buttermilk

2 Tablespoons white vinegar

3 Tablespoons fresh lemon juice

1/3 cup sugar

1 teaspoon seasoning salt

1/2 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper

dash garlic powder

Pour the dressing over the veggies, and mix well to combine. Store covered in refrigerator for several hours to blend flavors.



No Disappearing Act

For the past several years, I have been collecting a pile of glass containers in my garage with the intent of recycling them someday. The pile was beginning to impede my daughter’s ability to get from her car to the house. The time had come to figure out where to take this load. It was really simple enough. There are several glass recycling drop off locations in the Salt Lake area. The easiest for me was at the Salt Lake landfill located at 6030 West California Avenue. They have several very large bins for glass, cardboard, plastics, and aluminum. The amazing thing about glass is that it can be recycled an indefinite number of times without losing quality or purity. When it ends up in the landfill, I have read that it can take up to a million years to break down. I am not sure how they figure a million years, but that seems to be general consensus by Al Gore and friends. Here is an interesting list compiled by the U.S. Department of Energy of how long it takes certain items to decompose in a landfill:

Banana peel: 3-4 weeks

    Paper box: 1-2 months

 Cotton sock: 5-6 months

           Wood: 10-20 years

    Leather belt: 40-50 years

    Aluminum can: 200-500 years

Disposable diaper: 500-600 years

                Styrofoam cup: 1 million years or more

                   Glass bottle: 1 million years or more

I was feeling a little bit of guilt for all the previous items that I have sent to the landfill. Well, maybe not for the disposable diapers. I like being green, but I don’t think I could ever do cloth diapers, so I am glad that I am past having to make that decision.  :)

Calling for a redo

I was one of the fans of The Hunger Games who had anxiously awaited the final book of the series. It was the first book I actually preordered on Amazon. If this had been the first book in the series, I wouldn’t even have finished the book. The first 180 pages were boring! As I was reading it, I just kept thinking that I should skip to the last chapter to see how the love saga between Peeta, Katniss, and Gale was resolved and get on with my own life. My daughter who read it before I did, just kept telling me to make it to page 200, and it would get better. Halfway through and it finally gets better? She was right, but even now as I have finished the book, I am still frustrated. Suzanne Collins spends way too much time giving us a feel for what it is like to live in district 13. She spends almost half the book when a mere 25 pages would have been more than sufficient. And then I didn’t feel like the corruption she alludes to in 13 was adequately resolved after spending almost the entire first half on its bizarre policies. Peeta seems missing for too much of the book. I love Peeta! I wanted more Peeta. Gale didn’t seem this cold-hearted in any of the previous books. And Katniss just seems too lost. I know it was war, but too many of my favorites die. Many things I thought and hoped would be included in the book were written of only briefly because so much was written about district 13. I wanted more closure between Gale, Katniss, and Peeta, and to know more of rebuilding life after the fall of the capitol. I loved the last four pages. Yes, the last four pages were the best. The rest was just mediocre writing with a few clever twists mingled in. But now I can get on with my life!

Mixed Reviews

I was tired of my same old zucchini bread recipe. I was in the mood for one with a little bit of chocolate and some nuts, and so I thought I would browse the web and find a new one. Usually when I make quick bread, I do at least six loaves because I typically give several to my married children, and my husband can eat almost an entire loaf in one sitting. Now I understand they are called quick breads because there is no rising involved, but there is nothing quick when you have to grate zucchini, chop nuts, grind wheat, and zest an orange, to say nothing about the clean-up. Any how, I didn’t want to do six loaves and nobody like them. Since I was grating zucchini and grinding wheat any way, I did six loaves of my tried and true recipe, and two loaves of the experimental bread.

* One daughter said there was too much going on, and if I left out the nuts, it would be good.

* Another daughter liked the new bread just how it was. Well, maybe less chocolate chips.
* My husband and another daughter said they definitely liked the old recipe better.

* One son won’t try anything new, and my other son will eat anything but bananas and peanut butter.

* I like them both, and my mood will determine which one I will choose to make next time.

Chocolate Chip Orange Zucchini Bread

3 eggs                                                         2 cups white sugar

1 cup vegetable                                 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

3 cups hard white wheat flour           1/4 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda                                     1 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon                     1 teaspoon nutmeg

2 cups zucchini                                     1 cup chopped walnuts

1 cup chocolate chips                         1 tablespoon orange zest

1. Sift together flour, baking powder, soda, salt and spices.

2. In a large bowl, beat eggs until light and fluffy. Add sugar, and continue beating until well blended. Stir in oil, vanilla, and zucchini. Blend in sifted ingredients. Stir in nuts, chips, and orange rind. Turn batter into two greased loaf pans.

3. Bake at 350 degrees for 50 minutes, or until bread tests done. Remove loaves from pans, and cool.

For the technologically challenged

Do you ever learn something and immediately wonder why no one explained this to you sooner? Now some of you pro texters out there probably learned this as a baby, but maybe there is just one other person out there who doesn’t know this little bit of info and will be delighted that I shared my new found knowledge. I have liked using texting as a way to keep in touch with my teenagers but that was as far as my texting went because it seemed it would take longer to text one simple sentence than it would take to make a phone call. One of my frustrations has been numbers. I couldn’t ever figure out how to just get a simple “1” in my text, and so instead I would type “one”. Well, that doesn’t seem too difficult unless one of your children ask you to text them a phone number. Nine, six, nine, two, seven . . . you get the point. Once in exasperation, I gave my phone to one of my children to text a number, and they said, “Mom, you just hold down the number!” Well, what do you know, I simply pushed and held down the 8 and instead of a T, an 8 appeared. And now any one who needs a number, address, bank account balance, forgotten library card, or anything but my visa number, I am happy to oblige.

Grilling is not just for meat lovers

For many years, I have wanted to buy a barbeque, but my husband has been against the idea. I have many fond memories of my dad cooking ribs, hamburgers, chicken, and even a Thanksgiving Day turkey on his grill. The problem with my husband and barbeques is that most of what is cooked on the grill is meat, and my husband is not a big fan of meat. One of my arguments in favor of a grill is that I promised that we wouldn’t eat more meat just because we had a grill. My sweet children pulled their resources last year and surprised me with a barbeque for Christmas. In keeping with my “no more meat commitment”, I purchased The New Vegetarian Grill cookbook, and we have tried some fun recipes from it on the grill. Last Sunday, we had Maple-Grilled Pound Cake with Peaches.


Maple-Grilled Pound Cake with Peaches

8 firm, ripe peaches, skins removed, and halved
1/4 cup orange juice
2 Tablespoons butter, melted
2 Tablespoons pure maple syrup
One 8-inch loaf pound cake

1. Prepare a medium fire in the grill.
2. Combine the orange juice, butter, and maple syrup and mix well. Brush onto the peaches and both sides of the cake slices. Grill the peaches and cake slices until golden brown, about 5 minutes per side for the peaches and about 3 minutes per side for the cake.
3. Place a slice of cake and 2 peach halves on each plate. Drizzle additional maple syrup over the cake and peaches, if desired.

Vanilla Pound Cake

2 1/2 cups soft white wheat flour
1 cup barley flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup unsalted butter
1 cup powdered sugar
1 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
4 large eggs
1 cup sour cream
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon almond extract

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease two 8 1/2 x 4 1/2 loaf pans.

Whisk together the flours and salt in a medium bowl. Cream together the butter, sugars and baking powder in a large mixing bowl until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. On low, add the flour mixture alternately with the sour cream. Stir in the vanilla and almond extract. Place batter in prepared pans and bake for 55 minutes.