Homemade Strawberry Syrup

I woke up this past Saturday thinking I wanted pancakes.  However I did not have any syrup and I always wondered how it would taste homemade so I proceeded to read about 6000 recipes. I got the jist that the bulk of them used one part brown sugar, one part white sugar and one part water.  I had all of those things and some strawberries I needed to use up.  Swwwweeet! 

And sweet it was.  I had mixed the strawberries that I strained out of the syrup into the pancake batter and that was actually my mistake when it came to sweetness.  I rarely come across anything that is too sweet for my sweet tooth and the basically candied strawberry pancakes were it.  The next day I decided to give it a second try since I had leftover syrup and without the candied strawberries in the batter it was great.

The syrup had a fun pink tint to it due to the strawberries, however I'm not as handy with a camera as I am with a skillet.  The strawberry flavor was a nice light tone and not overpowering.  However if you'd like super strawberry flavor use more.  You can also use other berries, fruits, butter, maple or other extracts, only brown sugar, dark brown sugar instead of light, or only white sugar and other variations if you'd like a different flavor. 

I know what you are thinking "STOP JABBERING and get to the recipe!"  Your wish is my command....

Ingredients:

1 Cup Light Brown Sugar

1 Cup White Sugar

1 Cup Water

1 Cup Sliced Strawberries

2 Teaspoons Vanilla Extract

1 Large sauce pan, it needs boiling room.

Directions:

Put strawberries and brown sugar in sauce pan.

 

Over medium heat slowly stir in the water and stir constantly until brown sugar is dissolved about 1-2 minutes. The mixture will just be starting to get warm.

Slowly pour in white sugar while stirring and constantly stir until the white sugar is dissolved.

Turn heat to high bringing mixture to a boil for 2 minutes while constantly stirring.  

(Do not stop stirring at this point or it WILL overflow.  

If it starts to bubble too close to the top just lift off the burner 

for a few seconds until it pipes back down.)

Turn heat to medium low.

Add vanilla and stir.

 

Simmer for 15-25 minutes stirring often. I did it for 25, the longer the thicker it will be the shorter the thinner it will be.

Strain into a bowl.  Figure out something yummy to do with the strained fruit.

Use a funnel to transfer the syrup from the bowl to a mason jar or some other kind of containing/pouring device that will be convenient to transfer your super yummy syrup to your pancakes, waffles and other culinary awesomeness creations.

The syrup will keep for a few weeks in the refrigerator.  

Reheat in the microwave at 50% power until it's the desired temperature.

 

Text all of your friends and brag about what a domestic goddess you are because you just made homemade syrup and none of those store brands have anything on you.

Mmmmmmm!

 

Who would have thought homemade syrup was actually this easy?

I hope you not only enjoy eating it but enjoy making it!



Much love and super yumminess!

Homemade Cranberry Sauce

A few days ago I ran across a recipe for homemade cranberry sauce.  I had never even thought to try to make it and when I saw how easy it is I was like what!!!!!!  Cranberry sauce is one of my favorite additions to any holiday feast and I had to try it.  Even though I had already purchased some of the canned stuff I ran out and got fresh cranberries.



This is the same basic recipe that I saw on a million and one websites.  I made some earlier and it's so wonderful!  I'm pretty sure I'll never buy that canned stuff again.

Ingredients:
12 Ounces Fresh Cranberries
1/2 Cup White Sugar
1/2 Cup Brown Sugar
1 Cup Orange Juice

(Some people added cinnamon, I did not)

Directions:
Bring orange juice and sugar to a boil, stir frequently.
Add cranberries, reduce heat to medium, stir frequently.
Cook for 10 minutes.
Remove from heat.
Let cool then put in a bowl to gel in the refrigerator, for several hours or over night. It will thicken as it cools.

Yes it's that easy!!!

You'll hear these wonderful little popping sounds as the cranberries start to burst open.
I saw many people say they used a splash guard, so I put mine on at first but found I didn't need it since I used a pan deep enough that the concoction didn't pop out.
I also went ahead and added about 3 dashes of salt while it was cooking.

I also saw commentary on recipes where people had noted that they ran theirs through a food processor or used a hand mixer on it after it cooked to give it a smoother consistency. However I love the whole berries myself.

This made a little less than 2 cups of cranberry sauce, and it'll surely be a hit amongst your cranberry sauce lovers, so you may want to double or triple the recipe for a large group.

DO IT!!  It's so easy and yummy!!  Not to mention a beautiful addition to your holiday spread.  Your friends and family will be impressed that you were domestic enough to make it from scratch.  It can be our little secret how easy it really is. ;)

ENJOY!!

Much Love!  & Happy Thanksgiving!

MawMaw Eade's Banana Nut Bread

The week of Thanksgiving is officially here!!  I absolutely love Thanksgiving, it is my favorite holiday no matter what.

Everyone seems to have their own traditions for Thanksgiving.  Mine has always been to cook a ton of food!  It does not matter if Thanksgiving dinner is being held at someone else's house, I will bring my contribution to that dinner, and then we always have all of the fixings of Thanksgiving leftovers at my house since I had cooked everything for home as well.  A lot of years during my stay in California we would have the family gathering the day before Thanksgiving, which many families seemed to do there, so the day of Thanksgiving we would just have friends over eat and it would be a great time.  There's probably only been 2 years in my adult life that I just did not cook anything. 

This year for me is very low key.  My first Thanksgiving as a single woman and not living near family and all of my nearby friends have their own things to do so it's just me and I'm ok with that.  I'll be cooking a downsized version of my favorite Thanksgiving foods and having any of my neighbors I see hanging about with no Thanksgiving food come and help themselves to a plate.

After waking up super early and putting the turkey in the oven... My first tradition of the day is enjoying some Banana Nut Bread with some hot coffee.  This was something we always had when I was a child at Thanksgiving and I've carried it into adulthood using the same recipe that my mom used when I was a kid.  My great grandmother, MawMaw Eade's recipe.  MawMaw was very special and passed away about 18 years ago, I'm happy each year to celebrate her memory baking this bread.  I'm so not filling up on a bunch of everyday breakfast foods and making it to where I don't have room to over-stuff myself with the good stuff later.  So for me it's all about in the morning just having a couple of slices of the banana nut bread warmed up and slathered with some real butter.  YUM!!

This bread freezes well if you want to make several in advance and freeze them until it's time to eat them.  I always bake 2-3 loaves several days in advance and actually munch on them all Thanksgiving week. It's the first thing I bake for the Thanksgiving season every year and when that delicious aroma starts wafting from the oven you know Thanksgiving is officially here.

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MawMaw Eade's Banana Nut Bread

1 1/2 Cup All Purpose Flour
1 1/2 Tsp Baking Powder
1/4 Tsp Baking Soda
1/4 Tsp Cinnamon
1/8 Tsp Salt
1 Egg
1 Cup Mashed Bananas
    (about 2 large bananas)
1/4 Cup Oil (Vegetable or Canola)
1 Tsp Lemon Zest (optional)
3/4 Cup Sugar
1/2 Cup Pecans or Walnuts (I'm using walnuts this year)

**My MawMaw's recipe did not call for vanilla, however I have incorporated 1/2 Tsp of Vanilla Extract over the years as well.  I also forgot to grab a lemon for zest at the store so I used 1/4 tsp lemon juice.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Grease and lightly flour loaf pan. (Or use a baking spray that contains flour.)

Stir together dry ingredients in a large bowl. (Excluding sugar and nuts.)
Lightly beat the egg in a separate bowl.

Stir the rest of the wet ingredients, including banana, together in the bowl with the egg.
Add sugar into the wet ingredients until mixed well.
Mix the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients making sure dry ingredients have all been incorporated.
Your batter will be lumpy and thick.
Mix in the nuts.
Pour into your prepared pan and bake for 45-55 minutes. (Toothpick test.)
Serve warm with real butter!
Wrap in foil to keep moist.

Reheat slices in microwave for about 15-20 seconds to experience warm banana nut bread goodness time and time again.

If you do not have a freezer stockpile of ripe bananas and find that your grocery store does not have ripe bananas just put them in a brown bag with an apple as I've done here, these were still slightly green yesterday.

I hope you enjoy this recipe!  I know there are many ways to make it, but this recipe has never failed me.  I love how it has just enough banana and it's not too sweet.

Much Love!

Pineapple Upside-Down Cake

One of my favorite cool weather cakes to bake is pineapple upside-down cake.  It's fantastic warm and melts in your mouth.

I had this great recipe that I used for years however was unable to find it this round, and though I could have done it by memory I decided to look at one of my favorite recipe websites, allrecipes.com, and found this recipe that had over 400 reviews of positive feedback and almost 10,000 people have saved it to their recipe boxes, Anne's Pineapple Upside-Down Cake VII.  It uses a lot more brown sugar than I'm accustomed to using and called for a cast iron skillet which I do not have, however I thought I'd tackle it anyways, and of course give it my own little tweaks that I've incorporated over the years of baking them.


Pineapple Upside-Down Cake VII

Prep Time: 20 Minutes Cook Time: 45 Minutes

Ready In: 1 Hour 5 Minutes Servings: 12

"This pineapple upside down cake is made in an iron skillet. It's quick, easy and so beautiful."

Ingredients:

1/2 cup butter 1 1/2 cups brown sugar 1 (20 ounce) can sliced pineapple

10 maraschino cherries 1 (18.25 ounce) package white cake mix

Directions:

1.

Melt the butter over medium high heat in the iron skillet. Remove from the heat and sprinkle the brown sugar evenly to cover the butter. Next, arrange pineapple rings around the bottom of the pan, one layer deep. Place a maraschino cherry into the center of each pineapple ring. Prepare the cake mix as directed by the manufacturer, substitute some of the pineapple juice for some of the liquid in the directions. Pour the batter over the pineapple layer.

2.

Bake as directed by the cake mix directions. Cool for 10 minutes, then carefully turn out onto a plate. Do not let the cake cool too much or it will be stuck to the pan.

My tweaks:

• As mentioned before I do not have a cast iron skillet so I just used a 9x13 glass cake pan.
• I used yellow cake not white cake.
• I soak the pineapple slices in about 1/3 of a cup of spiced rum in a zipper bag or a plastic bowl with a lid, shake them or turn them every so often to get even soaking, the longer the better, try at least an hour to overnight.  Still save your juice from the can!
• Replace some of the liquid called for in the cake mix recipe with the rum from the pineapple soak and then the rest with the leftover canned pineapple juice and finally water if you need more liquid.
• I place cherries in the voids around the edges of the pineapple rings and around the edges of the pans this way you get your full cherry satisfaction.

Flipping tip: If you've never made an upside-down cake of any sort the easiest way to make your flip without resulting in a pile of mess... place the dish you are turning your cake onto on top of the pan you baked in, and then flip placing your dish on to the counter, I like to give the pan a few pounds of the palm on the bottom in case there are any lingering pineapples or cherries, however if you do not let it cool too long it should not be an issue, then remove your pan and find a perfectly flipped beautiful cake.

I did somehow manage to think to take a quick shot of the cold
yummy leftovers before they were dished out.

This cake turned out absolutely delicious!  It looked so good and I didn't even think before we cut into it to take a picture of it fresh and hot for the blog I was sure I'd be writing.  But who can blame me, our mouths were watering and we were intoxicated by the smell. 

It melted in our mouths and the large amount of sugar formed the perfect crispy crusty wonderfulness around the edges of the pineapples.  I will definitely be purchasing a cast iron skillet to try to make this in as well.  One of my coworkers told me that is how her grandmother had done it and there is no other way to eat them.  I found that Amazon has a 12-Inch Pre-Seasoned Skillet that looks perfect at a great price and eligible for free shipping.  I cannot wait to try this again in that skillet!

If you've never tried to make a homemade pineapple upside down cake it's truly an easy cake to make and is so yummy it will have your friends and family in awe of your Domestic Goddess skills.  Give it a try and you will not be sorry.

Much Love!!

Not So Lazy Sunday

Today I woke up and have been on the go since.  I haven't even had time to think of an actual topic driven blog for today.  Laundry, grocery shopping, dog walking, iguana petting and ball dipping.  The details of the actual ball dipping is a blog all of it's own to come at a later date.  Today was my first time making the ever popular new fad cake balls.  I baked two cakes for these balls for the work Halloween bash being held on Tuesday, because not everyone will be there tomorrow on actual Halloween or something like that.  I've made my first batch of balls and I'm over it, and I have a whole nother batch of balls to go.  I have ball delirium.  I need to hire a little unsuspecting person at my apartments and tell them if they dip my balls they get to keep some of the balls.  Now I'm just going to vegetate for the rest of the night try to forget the balls and the rest of the balls will be finished tomorrow.  The ball project has been fun but tedious.  Whoever thought of the cake balls was brilliant, for one they are yummy for two I just got to reference balls 14 times in one blog.  I hope everyone has had a wonderful weekend and that Monday is kind to them.
 
 Much Love!!
 BALLS!(15) These are some of the ones I've made so far.

Omelet Night!

Yesterday one of my wonderful coworkers brought in some freshly laid eggs from his chickens.  Fresh eggs are undoubtedly the most awesome of all eggs.

Later in the day I remembered that a few weeks ago another fantastic coworker had brought me a jar of homemade Concord Grape jelly that was made from the grapes her father grows on his farm in Kentucky. 

I was never a grape jelly fan, however I had never been exposed to homemade grape jelly - I'm now a fan!  It's not overly sweet and it tastes like grapes, unlike the mock grape flavor infused sugar as you buy in the grocery store.

 

I decided I must have an omelet with these fantastically colored eggs.  And it had to be just a simple cheese omelet so that the flavor of the fresh eggs would be the star, not the filling/toppings. And the perfect complement would be biscuits with that wonderful grape jelly.

A basic light and fluffy wonderful Bisquick drop biscuit.   When you are a working woman who doesn't have time to roll out the homemade, but want fresh hot biscuits with the satisfaction of at least mixing them yourself this is the way to go. 2 minutes prep, 8 minutes cook and you feel like you've accomplished awesomeness.


If you are unsure of how to make an omelet  below I will paste a basic recipe I found from the web that uses the same technique I've figured out after years of trial and error. Follow the directions and it will be perfect.  It cannot get any easier than that.
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Cheese Omelet on the Food Network

Ingredients

• 3 large Grade A eggs
• 2 slices American cheese
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil

Directions

Equipment: 9-inch non-stick skillet and an immersion blender

Add oil to the skillet over high heat, and heat it until small hairline ripples appear on the surface of the oil.

Break the eggs into tall glass or frappe cup and whisk to blend for 1 minute. (The Waffle House uses a 15,000 rpm malt shop mixer.)

While moving the skillet in a circular motion, pour in the eggs. Continue to move the skillet in a circular motion, allowing the outside of the eggs to cook and fluff up. When the outside edges have firmly cooked, flip the omelet and cook on the other side for approximately 30 seconds. Keep moving the pan in a circular motion, but not as often as before it was flipped. (Too much movement at this time will cause the omelet to fall.) Flip the omelet once more to finish cooking--no more than 30 additional seconds.

Overlap 2 slices of American cheese in the center of the omelet in a diamond shape.

Fold the omelet in half, being certain to cover the cheese slices, and slide it onto your plate.
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My Personal Notes:

• Do not add milk to your eggs for whatever reason it is people add milk.  Don't believe me, read this Why not to put milk in eggs.  Notice the awesome yellow color of my omelet.
• I do not have the recommended blender device... I went old school with your good old bowl and a fork and beat the dickens out of my eggs for 60 seconds.
• I did not use cheese slices as they suggested. I had shredded cheese which worked beautifully and even sprinkled a little on top for the fun of it.  
• Notice you are not melting your cheese into the omelet while in the pan. If you try to do this it will dry out your eggs.  They are saying put in your cheese fold and take out of pan, it's a quick process. 
• I personally, to not risk egg dry out, have my cheese prepared in advance then when they are done flip my eggs onto the plate so the hotter skillet side is up and toss in the cheese and fold. The heat and steam of the hot eggs will melt it perfectly within a minute or so as it cools.  
• This also goes for if you were using other fillings such as vegetables, meats, etc... precook your fillings because they will take longer than your eggs, keep them on warm covered so they are nice and hot and throw in the middle of your hot egg as soon as it hits the plate and top with your cheese then fold.
• Let's say you missed getting everything into the omelet before it lost it's hot steamy cheese melty abilities... do not fret and do not stick it back in the skillet to dry it out. Just put it in an oven safe dish and cover tightly with foil and pop it in the oven at a low temperature for a few minutes and it will retain it's fluffy moisture.
• What does circular motion mean? You are not sliding your pan around on top of the burner in circles (or I don't). Slightly lifting up the handle holding the pan at an angle and gently making your eggs slurry around in circles in your pan by constantly moving your angle.
• Pop and air bubbles with the corner of your spatula and keep circling.
• Make sure you have a rather large spatula for your flipping and your eggs will be less likely to fold when you flip.
• And finally be kind to your non stick pans - Only use a plastic or wooden spatula and your skillet will thank you!

When it comes down to it everyone has their own style. I know some people are reading this and thinking NO NO NO that's all wrong!  But hey....

My omelet was fluffy, moist, and the farm fresh egg taste was rich and wonderful!  And biscuit with that jelly... oh man that jelly!!!  Now that you've been shown the basics mix it up and try your hand at an omelet this weekend!

Much love and HAPPY FRIDAY!

Do you have omelet cooking tips I should try? Let me know!