Streusel Topped White Chocolate Chip Banana Bread

I love this banana bread. It is easy to whip up & makes a great dessert, snack or breakfast! It is really moist & sweet.

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup margarine, melted
2 eggs, beaten
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 cup buttermilk (may substitute milk w/1 tsp lemon juice)
2 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
3 bananas, mashed
1/2 cup white chocolate chips

Streusel Ingredients:
2 Tbs butter, softened
1 tsp cinnamon
3 Tbs brown sugar

Combine all except streusel ingredients in a mixing bowl. Pour into 2 greased loaf pans. Bake at 350F for about 30 minutes. Meanwhile, stir the streusel ingredients together until crumbly. After baking the bread for about 30 minutes, sprinkle the streusel on and bake until the bread is no longer gooey in the middle (about 5-10 more minutes).

Note: the white chocolate chips usually sink to the bottom while baking, but we don't mind. :)

Cheesy Scalloped Potatoes

Amazingly, we still have quite a few potatoes left from last summer's garden. They're looking pretty tired by now though, with dangling, foot-long sprouts hanging off of them, so lately I've been looking for ways to use them up (i.e. pierogis).

I love scalloped potatoes. Personally, I like them even better than mashed potatoes. Here's how it's done:

Ingredients:
6-7 cups of thinly sliced potatoes (I don't bother to peel them.)
1 small onion, thinly sliced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 stick butter
2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1 tsp parsley (1 Tbs if fresh)
1/4 tsp cayenne
1/4 tsp paprika
1/2 cup flour
5 cups milk
2 cups sharp cheddar

Layer half of the potatoes in a lightly greased 9x13" pan.

Cook onions & garlic in the butter in a saucepan until the onions are tender. Stir in the flour, salt & spices. Slowly add the milk & keep stirring until the mixture is thickened. Pour half of this over the potatoes. Top with half of the cheese. Repeat layers. Bake at 350F for an hour & a half.

Buttercream Frosting

Today was Superhero's b-day & I wanted to make a cake that was special, but easy. Very easy - a cake decorator I am not (yet). So... I made the Tasty Cake, but used buttercream frosting instead of the chocolate frosting that I normally use for that cake. The results: a seriously delicious cake. However, the middle sagged and I hurriedly squirted the frosting on, so it didn't look so hot (at all). Thankfully, I found a tube of black gel icing & drew the outline of a batman mask on it, and I found a number 7 candle way back in a cabinet! Woohoo, we were in business!

The buttercream frosting recipe came from allrecipes & called for using shortening along with the butter, but I used all butter instead and added a tablespoon of vanilla (and a lot of blue food coloring).

Ingredients:
4 cups powdered sugar
1 cup butter, softened
1 Tbs vanilla extract
1-4 Tbs milk

Beat all the ingredients together in a mixer until fluffy. Add enough milk to get it to the consistency you want. It made enough to cover a 2 layer (9") cake - while piling extra in the middle to try to fill in the saggy parts - with about 1/2 left over.

Pierogis!

There's something about this time of the year makes me want to make things like pierogis or egg rolls. One or two (or three or four!) of the kids usually help out, so it makes for a pleasant afternoon in the kitchen, mixing, rolling, stuffing and chatting. These are some of my favorite times.

First, make a batch of mashed potatoes with butter, salt & milk like you normally do (or better yet, use leftovers!)- you will need about 4 cups & will probably have some leftover. Add cooked crumbled bacon, sauteed onions, sharp cheddar, and a little sour cream until you have a really deliciously savory filling. Just taste it & add more until it tastes like you like it. (Personally, I think minced jalapenos would be a very tasty addition!)

Make the dough. Here's how:

Ingredients:

4 cups flour

1 tsp salt

2 eggs, beaten

1 cup sour cream

1/2 cup butter

Mix the flour & salt together. Cut in the butter until it's crumbly. Stir in the eggs & sour cream. Knead until smooth. Cover with plastic wrap & refrigerate for at least an hour. The dough will be a little sticky. Only work with a handful at a time, while keeping the rest refrigerated.

Roll the dough out on a floured surface until about 1/4" thick. Cut into 3" circles (I used a plastic drinking cup for this).

Put a rounded teaspoon of the filling onto the middle of each circle. Fold the circle in half and then wet the edges and fold them in to seal them. Once folded, dip a fork in flour and press the edges to make sure they're sealed and to make them look pretty.

Now you can freeze them for later use or go ahead & cook them. To freeze them, lay them on wax paper on a baking sheet with a little space in between. Place a sheet of wax paper between each layer so they don't stick together. Once they're frozen, you can put them all together in ziplock bags.

To cook them, drop several at a time into boiling water. You can boil them for several minutes & serve them this way, but I like to scoop them out of the water once they've risen to the surface, let them drain and then fry them in a little oil until they're golden. Serve with sour cream, salsa or ketchup! Makes about 4 dozen.

Popcorn Soup

This really isn't a soup, it's more like a breakfast porridge. We call it popcorn soup, because we ground popcorn kernels to make it. (That 25lb bag of popcorn from Sam's takes a long time to use up, even for a family of 8!) Maybe it should be called Cream of Popcorn, or Sweet Polenta or, yeah - Sweet Polenta. I like the sound of that. Anyway... here's how you make it:

Ingredients:

1 cup polenta (or coarsely ground corn meal -or coarsely ground popcorn, in case you have about 20 pounds too many, like we did)

3 cups cold water

2 cups milk

dash salt

1/2 cup sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

Combine 2 cups of the cold water and 2 cups of milk in a medium saucepan. Slowly bring it to a low boil. Stir the polenta into the remaining cup of water. Once the milk mixture is boiling, add the salt and slowly stir in the polenta/water mixture. Keep whisking it so that it doesn't get lumpy. Simmer for several more minutes while stirring, or until it is thickened. Remove from heat & stir in the sugar & vanilla. Ladle into bowls and serve with milk, if desired. (Which, around here, it always is.)

Serves 5-6.

Octopus & Seaweed

I know this isn't a real recipe, but it's such a fun & cute idea that I just had to post it here. I first read about it several years ago, but hadn't made it for my younger set of kidlets. So, if you aren't philosophically opposed to feeding hotdogs & ramen to your children, here's how ya do it:

Get a hot dog & cut legs all the way up to within an inch of one end. (Mine only had 6 legs, but only a couple of my kids noticed.) Boil the hotdogs for a couple of minutes, and their legs will magically open up and they will become Octopi. (Design their faces with mustard.) Serve over a bed of ramen, which you can tint with green food coloring if you want it to be more realistic, that is, of course if you aren't opposed to feeding your kids even more chemicals. :P

Sugar Cookies

I just love Christmas baking, and in case I haven't posted enough sugary recipes here lately, here's another one...

This is another slightly altered allrecipes recipe. I love the flavor of these cookies. If you roll them out a little thick (1/2") they are just soft enough without being cakey. Thinner and they will be a bit crispier, but still tasty. The flavor is sweet, but not too sweet, which is important because most of my decorators like to really pile on the icing & sprinkles!

This is important & will save you lots of mess: instead of rolling the cookies out on a floured surface, I have found it much easier to roll them out on floured parchment paper and transfer the paper to pans for baking. The dough is rather sticky and may bunch up or tear if you try to transfer it with a spatula.

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups butter, softened
• 2 cups white sugar
• 4 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 6 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt

1. In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until smooth. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Stir in the flour, baking powder, and salt. Cover, and chill dough for at least one hour (or overnight).
2. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Roll out dough on floured surface 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick. Cut into shapes with any cookie cutter. Place cookies 1 inch apart on ungreased cookie sheets.
3. Bake 6 to 8 minutes in preheated oven. Cool completely.