GardenFork – Eclectic DIY

Tag: baking

Sweet Cornbread Recipe with Maple Syrup – GF Video
Maple syrup makes this sweet cornbread recipe extra special. And not too sweet either, which is the way I like it. Watch the video and check out the recipe below.

The vegetarian chili recipe video we mention in the video goes great with this.

How to make this sweet cornbread recipe

The maple syrup adds a smokey caramel flavor, I think. If you don’t have any, you can use sugar or honey, but it will have a different taste. You can also dial back the sweetness if you like. Be sure to mix the syrup into the wet ingredients, or else it will sit in the bottom of the mix.

I really like the stone ground cornmeal. It happens to be from upstate New York, but I’ve seen different brands of stone ground. This might all be in my head, but I like the feel it gives the cornbread. But use what you got, and if you have regular cornbread, then go ahead and use it. K?

I use butter in this recipe, but you can use bacon fat, vegetable oil, or lard. This fat melts in the pan in the oven, so keep an eye on it to make sure it doesn’t burn. The fat will melt faster than you think!

I prefer a glass baking dish, but I also use a metal pan with fine results. I think the bottom crust is crunchier with the glass pan. This could all be in my head, anything is possible, you know…
Sweet Cornbread Recipe with Maple Syrup

Recipe Type: Dinner

Cuisine: American

Author: Eric Rochow

Prep time: 10 mins

Cook time: 30 mins

Total time: 40 mins

Serves: 9 pieces

This cornbread recipe is based on one by Mark Bittman in the NY Times. I use whole wheat flour and maple syrup to change it up. I’ve found the whole wheat works very well with cornmeal in baking.
Ingredients

4 tablespoons butter

1 1/2 cups cornmeal, stone ground if possible

1/2 cup whole wheat flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder – make sure its fresh!

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup maple syrup – you can substitute sugar or honey

2 eggs

1 cup milk
Instructions

Turn on the oven to 375F.

Put the butter in a 8″ baking pan in the oven.

Mix the dry ingredients together in a medium sized bowl.

Put the milk into a small bowl and beat in the two eggs.

Add the maple syrup to the egg-milk mixture.

Pour the liquid ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix together.

Its ok if there are some lumps in the batter.

Pull the pan out of the oven – carefully!

Pour the batter into the pan – it may spatter – and put back in oven

Bake for 30-40 minutes, depending on your oven.
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January 7, 2016
What Happens When You Forget To Add Butter

What’s wrong here? Oh, I forgot to add the butter.

Are you sometimes on autopilot when baking. I must bake some sort of cobbler or crisp every week, and I do the recipe mostly by eye now. Not sure what was going on in my head here, but I made this whole cobbler, baked it in the oven, and then realized something was wrong. (Of course we have a cobbler recipe video here.)

The crust was just blah.

But it was time to go to dinner at the camp, and I was to bring dessert, and this was it. So I got out the propane torch and dropped some cubes of butter on top of what was supposed to be cobbler, melted the butter and toasted the topping.

It ended up being not bad, especially when ice cream was added. Just crunchy sweet stuff. Definitely a done is better than perfect moment. What have your forgotten ingredient incidents been?

August 6, 2015
How To Make Banana Bread With Mom’s Recipe
Moms shows us how to make banana bread with a recipe she has used for years. If you want moist banana bread, I suggest using riper bananas and more of them. You will have to bake the banana bread a little longer.

Banana bread is one of those comfort foods from childhood that still work. Having a bad day? Have some banana bread. I really like this loaf toasted with some butter on it, served with tea. Nice.

I don’t recall the name of the cookbook this banana bread recipe comes from, but it was one of those recipe collections put together by a group of people and self published. There are many variations on banana bread, we have one made with coconut here, and a dutch oven banana bread here. But this is mom’s standard and its the one we will learn how to make banana bread with. So here we go.

I have found that dark metal or glass loaf pans work better for this, I like the browning of the crust. And if you want a taller loaf use slightly narrower pans than the standard loaf pan. The baking time will vary depending on your oven, they are all different.

I’m all about saving bananas in the freezer. Have some your family wont eat? Put them in the freezer to save for this. They thaw quickly and fall apart in the batter. Nice that you don’t have to jump through all sorts of hoops to prepare them for freezing. Just throw them in. Done.
Banana Bread – Mom’s Recipe

Recipe Type: Baking

Author: Community Baking Book

Prep time: 10 mins

Cook time: 60 mins

Total time: 1 hour 10 mins

Serves: 1 loaf

Here is how to make banana bread, this basic recipe will make a nice loaf, if you want a moist banana bread, add more bananas and bake longer.
Ingredients

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup butter

3 ripe bananas

2 eggs

2 cups all purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt
Instructions

Mix together the sugar and softened butter with a hand mixer

Add in the bananas and eggs, mix them in.

Mix the dry ingredients together in a bowl with a fork.

Add the dry ingredients into the wet batter and stir to combine, but don’t overmix.

Pour into a greased loaf pan and bake for 1 hour at 350F
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May 6, 2015
Coconut Banana Bread Recipe – GF Cooks Video

Not your bland banana bread recipe, this one has a few twists to make banana bread stand on its own. Too often, banana bread is this dense wet slice of cake that is overpriced in the artisanal cafe. Not this one. Watch the video, the recipe is below.

Banana bread brings up those memories of being raised in the Midwest. You came home from school and your mom had made banana bread. You carved off a big slice and life was good.
My aim here was to make a banana bread that wasn’t like that kind of dense stuff that they sell in coffee shops now. I put in a couple of twists that I’ve been thinking about for a while: first I added whole wheat flour, which I think adds a different flavor definitely in a little bit better structure I think. And I added coconut which I happen to love – if you’re not a big coconut band that’s okay this banana bread recipe taste great without coconut.

Source your bananas from the discount rack at your grocery store. Somewhere in the produce section in the far corner is probably a rack of vegetables and fruits that have been discounted because they might have some dents or they might be a little brown or have some spots on them, but they’re perfectly edible. And they’re super cheap! I got this bunch of bananas for $.69 which is a beautiful thing.

If you want a higher loaf you should use a slightly smaller loaf pan. There is a standard loaf pan which is 9″ x 5″, but there’s also one that they sell that just slightly narrower 8.5″ x 4.5″ (buy here) and that’ll make this pop up a bit more. You could also amp up the baking soda, but the careful if you add too much baking soda it starts to have kind of a chemical taste to it.
What are your banana bread recipe favorites any suggestions you have any thoughts about the recipe or just your memories of banana bread let me know in the comments below thanks.

Coconut Banana Bread Recipe

4 super ripe bananas – ok to use less than super ripe

1/2 cup Whole Wheat Flour

1 cup all purpose flour

1 1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup sugar

1 cup sweetened coconut

1/2 cup (1 stick) melted butter

1 egg, scrambled

1/4 cup milk

Mix the dry ingredients together in a bowl.

Add in the wet ingredients, be careful with the butter, its better if its cool, don’t want to burn anyone.

Pour into a buttered or oiled loaf pan, I like butter better for this one.

Bake in a 350F oven for about an hour, the sides may smell toasted before the center is done.

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January 13, 2015
Bake A Cake : Outdoor Cooking with a dutch oven – GF Video

Outdoor cooking recipe to bake a cake in a dutch oven. Great camping recipe or to keep you house cool in summer, outdoor baking is the way to go. We use this basic cake recipe and add in whatever fresh fruit we have in the summer months. Its a fun way to bake a cake that doesn’t heat up the house, or when you are camping, this is a super simple cake recipe. Its easy to change up the recipe to suit whatever ingredients you have.

How To Bake A Cake Outdoors

You need to have a fireproof safe place to do this. We use our grill, it works well because it is a good height, and is already built for fire. Or you could use some other fireproof material, but be careful, you will be using hot charcoal to do this. In a camping situation, you can use the coals from a campfire, but you will have to pay more attention to the coals, probably adding a few during the baking process.

If you do not have some oven-proof bowls of some sort – we like to use ramekins – you can use balled up foil to raise the dutch oven above the coals. You do not want the bottom of the dutch oven to touch the coals, this can burn the bottom of the cake. If your dutch oven does not have a flat lid, you can make a ring of foil that will keep the coals from falling off the top of the dutch oven.

To Bake a cake this way requires some experimentation, its easy to burn the cake if the coals on the bottom are too hot. There is some trial and error here. And wear oven mitts or heat proof gloves, this stuff is hot!

Easy Cake Recipe:

1 cup self rising flour
OR 1 cup all purpose flour + 1 1/2 tsp baking powder and 1/2 tsp salt

1 stick of butter

1 cup milk

1 cup sugar – you can use less sugar, this cake is pretty sweet

1 can of peaches, drained, light syrup preferred, 20-24 oz

Preheat the oven to 375F

Put the stick of butter in a 9×9 baking dish, preferably a glass dish, and place in the oven to melt the butter.

Mix together the dry ingredients, then add the milk and mix.

Pour the batter into the heated baking dish with the melted butter, then add the can of peaches.

Bake at 375 for 30-40 minutes. The cake is done when a knife comes out clean.

June 5, 2014
Triple Chocolate Cake Recipe – GF Video

Take our chocolate cake recipe, add chocolate chips and chocolate icing, and make a triple chocolate cake! Based on comments viewers made to our original simple chocolate cake video, we added a few things to amp up the cake, and it tastes amazing.

I love this cake for its simplicity. But then, I love making everything as simple as possible, life is complicated enough as it is. So with a few additions, you can amp up the decadence of the chocolate cake and it still takes almost no time to make.

Adding chocolate chips on top of the batter makes this decadent.

Snooki said in her comment that her family makes a similar chocolate cake recipe and adds chocolate chips across the top of the batter, so we did that. Simple and done. You could mix the chips into the batter, but this cake doesn’t need it. I like how the chocolate chip layer is on the top. If you wanted to switch it up a little, you could use white chocolate chips, or peanut butter chips. Either one would be a great addition.

Cathy suggested the chocolate icing or glaze. ( Not sure if its called icing or a glaze, let me know your thoughts below ) Take a half stick of butter, melt it, add in cocoa and powdered sugar and spread across the top of the cake. You could do this just before serving, but I like to do it beforehand and let the glaze settle into the cake a bit. I like the word unctuous, and it fits here really well. Now while writing this i want some cake, and its not even lunchtime yet.

Do you guys make a cake like this? Let me know in the comments below, we can make a third and fourth version of this going forward

Check out our original simple chocolate cake recipe video here.

Triple Chocolate Cake Recipe – GardenFork.TV
Ingredients
• 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3 tablespoons cocoa
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 3/4 cup veg oil
• 3/4 cup water
• 1 tablespoon vinegar
• 1 cup chocolate chips
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
Cooking Directions
1. This is based on our simple chocolate cake recipe, amped up with more chocolate
2. Heat Oven to 350F
3. Put all the dry ingredients in an 8 x 8 or 9 x 9 pan.
4. Mix together well, using a whisk or fork if you like
5. Make a well or hole in the middle of the dry ingredients
6. Add the wet ingredients in to the well.
7. Mix the wet into the dry until it looks like chocolate cake batter
8. Smooth the top of the batter, and scatter across the top the chocolate chips
9. Bake on the middle rack of the oven. Check at 25 minutes, you want it moist, not dry.
10. In our oven, this bakes in 30 minutes, a convection oven may be faster.
11. Mix up the chocolate icing recipe, pour across the cake, and let it cool.

Simple Chocolate Icing
Ingredients
• 1/2 stick – 4 ozs butter
• 2 teaspoons cocoa
• 1/4 cup milk
• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
Cooking Directions
1. This icing was suggested by one of our viewers, and its great on chocolate cake
2. Melt the butter in a small saucepan.
3. Turn off heat and add milk.
4. Stir in cocoa
5. Add in powedered sugar
6. Mix well and then spread over the cake.
7. Smooth it out if you want and allow cake to cool.

March 6, 2014
Christmas Sugar Cookie Recipe Video GF.TV

Sugar cookies are an easy christmas cookie recipe, even I can make these holiday cookies, maybe. Watch here and learn how to make sugar cookies for Christmas and the holidays.

Universal Sugar Cookie Recipe

This sugar cookie recipe is based on one Chris Kimball wrote about, saying its the universal recipe used by almost every baker.

1/2 cup white sugar

1 stick butter ( 1/2 cup ) slightly softened, but not mushy.

1 egg

1 1/2 cups flour

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon coarse salt

dash of vanilla

optionals:

chopped walnut, espresso powder, cocoa powder, almonds, etc.

Preheat oven to 375F

Put the stick of butter and the sugar in your food processor. You can also use an electric mixer, but I don’t have one right now, so the food processor works well for me.

Turn the food processor on to medium speed to mix the sugar and butter together, then add the 1 egg and vanilla, mix it in. The mixture should be lumpy, not super smooth.

Mix together all the dry ingredients – flour, baking soda, salt, – and then add these to the food processor butter mixture.

Run the food processor until the mixture starts to form into a ball.

Turn our the dough onto a floured board and divide the dough into two equal pieces.

Roll each piece of dough into a log shape about 1 1/2 inches in diameter.

Wrap these dough logs in plastic wrap and put in the fridge for one hour.

Using knife or pastry blade, slice off 1/4″ thick circles from the dough logs, place on cookies sheets with parchment paper.

Bake at 375F for about 8 minutes. you want the edges to be starting to brown, but not dark.

Cool on a wire rack and eat as soon as possible. They taste great when warm.

What is your sugar cookie recipe, your favorite addition to sugar cookies? Let us know below

December 21, 2011
How to make easy pie & pastry crust by Chez Pim – a video how to

Trying to actually chart how I find cool people and neat stuff on the web can be interesting. I was showing my sister the Tartine Bread video made by 4SP films, and I saw that 4SP also had produced a video about Chez Pim making a pie – pastry crust. The recipe is super simple, what really interested me was the technique of making the dough by hand on a piece of marble. So many of us – me included – pull out the food processor to make pie crust. Next time I’m using Chez Pim’s method shown here in this well done video:

Pim has published a book, The Foodie Handbook, information is on her website here.

July 14, 2011
Tartine Bread Cookbook Video, this is cool.

I usually don’t like auto play videos embedded on a web page. but i couldn’t stop watching this one about Tartine Bread book featuring Chad Robertson

I ran across this after reading a tweet by Mike Senese @msenese about his Halloween Pizza Bash. In my head I’m building a backyard pizza oven and i was intrigued by his Weber grill pizza oven. His oven plan came from PizzaHacker, and on the Pizza Hacker site was this video about the cookbook Tartine Bread
written by Elisabeth Prueitt and Chad Robertson, co-owners of the Tartine Bakery in San Fransisco

You can order the Tartine Bread Book here from an independent bookstore

November 3, 2010
Easy Cake Recipe Peach Dump Cake – GF Video

I’m not a great baker, so this easy cake recipe appeals to me. This is called a Dump Cake Recipe.

Watch here as we make this peach dump cake that tastes good and is quick to make.

This all came about as I had a can of peaches and wanted to make a dessert with them. So I asked on Twitter for a peach dessert recipe, and @writersinthesky answered with this peach cake recipe.

What I like about this cake recipe and dump cakes in general is that they’re a great emergency dessert. If you forgot to plan a dessert or you just decide that you want to add a simple dessert to your dinner, you can make it happen. Because you, like me, always plan ahead, you can keep a can of peaches or a can of pears or other fruit (ideally in a light syrup not the heavy syrup) in the kitchen. Pull it out, add flour, and boom you’ve got a cake.

This easy cake recipe comes together in minutes. All you really have do is remember to preheat the oven. I like to use a glass cake pan, I think the crust is more crunchy, but you can use a metal pan as well. Use what you got is what I say. You can do this, it’s easy, it’s quite good and it’s wicked simple. So go ahead make this and tell me your thoughts.

Peach Cake Recipe

1 cup self rising flour
OR 1 cup all purpose flour + 1 1/2 tsp baking powder and 1/2 tsp salt

1 stick of butter

1 cup milk

1 cup sugar – you can use less sugar, this cake is pretty sweet

1 can of peaches, drained, light syrup preferred, 20-24 oz

Preheat the oven to 375F

Put the stick of butter in a 9×9 baking dish, preferably a glass dish, and place in the oven to melt the butter.

Mix together the dry ingredients, then add the milk and mix.

Pour the batter into the heated baking dish with the melted butter, then add the can of peaches.

Bake at 375 for 30-40 minutes. The cake is done when a knife comes out clean.

recipe ©2014 Eric Rochow all rights reserved

April 15, 2010
Add Walnuts after the flour in the banana bread recipe

I was working on a one-bowl banana bread recipe today, trying to simplify an already simple recipe. ( here is the final recipe )

Surfing the web, I found there are a lot of complicated recipes for banana bread: using cake mixes, Bisquic, all sorts of odd stuff. Why does is have to be?

I did succeed in making a one bowl banana bread that tastes real good. At least I think so.

But, I learned a great lesson in the process.

I had tossed in the walnuts into the ‘wet’ mix, not thinking about what would happen afterward, and then when I added the flour, I found out what would happen.

The flour coats the walnuts. not good.

After you bake the bread, you get little pockets of white flour around the nooks of the walnuts.

Another lesson learned here on Gardenfork for me.

what have you learned in baking or life lately? tell us in the comments below:

add walnuts after the flour…

December 31, 2009
Alphabet Sugar Cookies for my birthday

A good friend of mine stopped by the house and laid out this birthday message for me. What Fun! Making words with cookies.

These are Alphabet Cookies cutters and two cookie batters, one a plain sugar cookie the other a fudge sugar cookie. You roll out the dough, cut the squares, then use the alphabet cookie cutters to cut out the letters. You take the white letter and drop it into the corresponding chocolate letter space. Then take the chocolate letter and drop it into the white sugar cookie with the same letter.

One place you can buy cookie cutters is The Cookie Cutter Shop

We also used the letter from the birthday message to spell out a nickname we have for Charlie Pup:

Do you have any fun cookie cutters or have you made some interesting cookies? Tell us below:

December 23, 2009