Filed under Baked Goods + Desserts + Drinks
Lisa brought two more zucchinis for me from her garden. This time I ended up making zucchini bread since I had an entire Saturday free. It was pouring outside so as soon as I switched to cooking mode, I couldn’t stop. I ended up staying in the kitchen all day baking.
For fun, I used my financier molds to cook smaller version of the cake and served it with vanilla ice cream after lunch.
Ingredients:
1 large fresh zucchini, grated
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 eggs, beaten
1 cup sugar
2 tsps vanilla
2 tsps baking soda
a pinch of salt
1/2 tsp nutmeg
2 tsps cinnamon
1 stick of butter, melted
a handful of walnuts, crushed with hand
1. Preheat the oven to 300º. In a large bowl, mix together the sugar, eggs and vanilla. Mix in the grated zucchini and then the melted butter. Sprinkle baking soda and salt over the mixture and mix in. Add the flour, a little at a time while mixing with a spatula. Sprinkle in the cinnamon and nutmeg and mix until well-combined. Fold in the walnuts.
2. Divide the batter equally between 2 buttered 5 by 9 inch loaf pans. Bake for 1 hour or until a wooden pick inserted in to the center comes out clean. Check for doneness at 50 minutes. Cool in pans for 10 minutes and then turn out onto wire racks to cool completely.
Related post/s:
Easy financier recipe
Best banana bread recipe
Filed under Baked Goods + Desserts + Drinks
For our first barbecue, I wanted to serve a simple summer dessert that everyone would enjoy after eating all the pork belly and chicken. I don’t know how heavy watermelons are in your area, but in Harlem, a quarter of a melon is good enough for this recipe–it fed five people with second servings. And at 69 cents a pound, it’s also the least expensive dessert I can think of with minimal effort. The watermelon juice that didn’t fit in the glass dish went into three tall glasses spiked with Grey Goose.
Ingredients:
watermelon flesh, chopped in manageable pieces
1/4 cup sugar
juice from 1 lemon
mint leaves
1. Put all watermelon pieces in a large glass bowl and sprinkle all over with sugar. Let stand for an hour in room temperature. In the meantime, put a square baking glass dish in the freezer.
2. Using a blender, purée the sugared watermelon and their juices with 1/2 cup of water and a squirt of the lemon juice. Taste and add more lemon juice if necessary. There should be a perfect balance of light sweetness and some tart.
3. Remove the glass dish from the freezer and pour in blended watermelon juice. Return to the freezer and freeze.
4. After 30 minutes, the watermelon should begin to freeze. Scrape off frozen bits from the side of the glass dish and move them to the center. Return to the freezer. Repeat three more times before serving with mint leaves.
Related post/s:
I forgot I made celery granita before
