Dave's Original Pumpkin Molasses Bread

This is one of Dave's own recipes, and I love the dark, rich flavor of molasses in this bread. It's a rich cake, and tastes amazing considering how low it is in saturated fat. I'd call it dense and buttery, although there is no butter in it.

makes 2 loaves


1 cup white sugar
1 cup brown sugar
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
2 1/2 cups all purpose unbleached flour
2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 cup molasses
2 cups canned pumpkin
4 eggs
1 cup canola oil
3 tsp pumpkin spice
1 cup semi-sweet French chocolate truffles, chopped coarsely* (optional)
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 350ºF. Sift together the dry ingredients. Mix wet ingredients in a separate bowl and add to dry ingredients. Add chocolate and nuts. Bake in two greased 9x5x3 inch loaf pans. Bake for about 70 minutes or until a skewer through the center comes out clean.

*If you don't know where to find these, you can use your own favorite chocolate pieces

Dave's Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cake with Rum-Butter Sauce

Dave makes beautiful breads and cakes and all manner of baked goods. Lately he has been testing a lot of the King Arthur website recipes. This one can be found here. The Rum-Butter sauce is my addition from a recipe I've used for years.

Cake:

4 large eggs
2 cups puréed pumpkin (1-pound can)
1 cup (7 ounces) vegetable oil
1 cup (2 1/8 ounces) bran cereal
2 cups (8 1/2 ounces) King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups (14 ounces) granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon EACH ground cloves and cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon EACH allspice and ginger (or substitute 1 1/2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice for the preceding four spices)
1 cup (4 ounces) chopped walnuts
2 2/3 cups (16 ounces) chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease and flour a 10-inch tube or Bundt pan.

In a large bowl, beat eggs till foamy. Stir in pumpkin, vegetable oil and bran cereal; combine well.

In another bowl, sift together flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, sugar and spices. Add to wet ingredients and mix gently, till just combined. Stir in nuts and chocolate chips.

Spoon the batter into the prepared pan. Bake in preheated 350°F oven for 70 minutes, or until a cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean. Remove from the oven and cool the cake in the pan for 10 minutes, then remove from the pan and cool completely on a rack before slicing.

Rum-Butter Sauce:

1 cups brown sugar
1/2 cup salted butter
1 T corn starch
1/4 - 1/2 cup spiced rum
1/2 cup half and half

Combine first three ingredients in a sauce pan, then add the rum and half & half and stir until smooth. Heat over medium-high heat and cook until thick. Pour hot, over individual slices of cake.

Old Fashioned Root Beer Cookies

These ooey-gooey root beer cookies are rich and buttery rather than "cakey" like some versions I've had. Confession: that is because I made up the recipe myself and didn't want the cakey version. So there. My kids were dubious about something flavored like soda pop, but they quickly changed their minds when these came out of the oven.

Dough:
1/2 cup unsalted butter
1 cup raw (or brown) sugar
1 egg
1 tsp root beer extract (or root beer starter)
1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 tsp salt
Frosting (below)

Cream the butter and sugar. Add the eggs and continue to beat until fluffy. Combine dry ingredients and add to the butter mixture, beating until smooth. Roll into balls and place on ungreased baking sheet. Cook at 350ºF until just barely starting to crack (about 8 minutes). Don't overcook! Makes 12 large cookies. You can double or triple the batch for more.

Frosting:
1/2 cup butter
1 1/2 cups confectioner's sugar
1 tsp root beer extract
1 - 3 Tblsp water (to texture)

Cool cookies before frosting them (of course).

*Note: 100% natural extracts can be purchased at Faerie's Finest.

Dave's Banana Bread

There always seems to be three over-ripe bananas at the tail end of a bunch at our house. Dave uses these leftover bananas to make this delicious banana bread.

2 cups all-purpose unbleached flour (white or whole wheat)
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 tsp salt
1 tsp soda
3 bananas, mashed
1/2 cup butter, melted
1 tsp vanilla
2 eggs
1/2 cup nuts (optional)

Combine dry ingredients in a large bowl. Combine bananas, butter, vanilla and eggs in a separate bowl. Beat the dry and wet ingredients together in the large bowl until smooth. Add nuts, if desired (I love walnuts in this bread). Bake in a prepared loaf pan at 325ºF for 1 hour, or until an inserted knife comes out clean. Serve hot, slice, with butter.

Fresh Fruit Tart

This dessert is so easy, yet it never fails to get great compliments because it looks beautiful, tastes delicious, and is perfectly elegant. This is my own version, but there are many similar recipes found in cookbooks and online.

Crust:
1 1/2 cups flour (white, all purpose)
1/2 cup powdered sugar
3/4 cup butter

Combine well. Press into two tart pans. Bake at 300ºF until brown (about 30 minutes).

Filling:
10 oz white chocolate, chopped
1/2 cup heavy cream
16 oz cream cheese

Melt white chocolate with heavy cream. Cool slightly. Beat cream cheese with melted chocolate until smooth. Spread over crusts. Top with your choice of cut fruit.

Baklava

I came across this photo in my files from last year. I made this Baklava for an Egyptian dinner we held after returning from a 2.5 week tour of Egypt (our second visit there). The Egyptians grow sugar cane as one of their main agricultural exports. Their cuisine is infused with syrupy sweet dishes made of phyllo dough or semolina flour. In other parts of the Middle East, honey is often used, but the Egyptians replace the honey with simple syrup made from boiled granulated sugar. This recipe is more typical of Greek Baklava, because it uses honey along with the simple syrup. It really isn't as difficult to make as you might think, although it does take a little patience and time.

1 1/2 cup water
1 1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
3/4 cup honey
16 oz phyllo dough (pre-cut to fit 9 X 13" pan)
1 pound of chopped nuts, lightly toasted (I used walnuts and pecans in this photo)
1 cup salted butter, melted
1 tsp cinnamon


Boil the sugar and water for 1 minute. Add vanilla and honey, then simmer on low for 20 minutes. Allow to cool in the fridge while making Baklava.

Butter the bottom of a 9 x 13" pan. Toss the nuts with the cinnamon and set aside. Unroll phyllo dough. Many people cover the phyllo dough with a wet cloth while working, but I find that cumbersome. I just work quickly before the dough dries out.

Place 2 sheets of phyllo in pan, and brush thoroughly with butter. Repeat 3 times (until you have 8 sheets layered in the pan). Sprinkle with 3 tablespoons of nut mixture on top. Top with two more sheets, buttering each thoroughly and then add another layer of nut mixture. Continue layering nuts and two sheets until the nuts are gone. Top with 6 - 8 layers of just phyllo dough and butter.

Use a sharp knife to cut either square or diamond shapes. Be sure to cut all the way to the bottom of the pan.

Bake for 50 minutes at 350ºF or until it looks golden and crisp.

Spoon cooled sugar sauce immediately over the baked Baklava. Allow it to cool completely before serving. Don't cover the baklava or it will become soggy. Store extra baklava uncovered in the fridge or freeze wrapped in foil.

Elijah's Butter Cake with Strawberry Frosting

Strawberry frosting flavored with real strawberries. Imagine that! Please don't use fake fruit flavorings. For one thing, they don't taste anything like fruit. For another, they are nothing but chemicals... so they aren't really food at all. It is never a good idea to eat something that isn't food unless it's medicine and your doctor has prescribed it. Apparently blue food coloring in M & Ms might help your spine... but I doubt that eating red food coloring or strawberry Jell-O or other flavorings I've found in strawberry frosting recipes is going to do anything good for your health. And why eat something that tastes terrible unless it's good for your health? Brussel sprouts, for example, might be worth eating.

My son, Elijah, wanted strawberry frosting on his cake. I did some research and found that most people have not been successful in putting fresh strawberries into frosting, because they are just too full of liquid. It ruins the consistency. So I came up with the idea of using fresh strawberry preserves in the recipe. That way, I was using real strawberries, but they were already thickened. It was a bit sweet... but the frosting tasted like real strawberries, which was the point. It was so good, that my kids kept sneaking the leftover frosting from the fridge by finger-fulls.

The cake is to die for and probably would cause you to die young if you ate it every day. BUTTER! It's rich, dense and deliciously self-indulgent. But for birthdays? Yes. We can eat this way on birthdays.

Butter Cake:
3 cups flour (I used King Aurthur Unbleached all-purpose)
2 cups sugar
3 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 cups of butter, softened (hello, Julia Child!)
1/2 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp almond extract
6 eggs

Combine all ingredients in a bowl but eggs. Beat with electric mixer until smooth. Beat in one egg at a time. Pour batter into greased 10inch tube pan. Bake at 350ºF for 1 hour 15 minutes or until done.


Strawberry Frosting:
1 lb of powdered sugar
1 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup fresh strawberry preserves (or to texture)
2 tsp vanilla

Whip the butter and sugar until crumbly. Add the vanilla, then add the preserves a couple tablespoons at a time until the consistency is just right for spreading over cake.

Allow cake to cool completely before frosting.