>The bake sale raised $980 which is extremely exciting. And I would say at least $100 of that came from the sale of my cake. Ok, maybe not.

>Fresh on the heels of my birthday party culinary successes, I am planning to participate in my first school bake sale. So far I am $15.00 in the hole, and I haven’t even purchased any ingredients. But I love to bake, and I needed an excuse to buy a 9″ spring form pan. My excuse? Oh, I was trying to take it up a notch, so at Andrea’s advice I took myself to the cake supply store to get myself a cake box or five. (What else was I supposed to do? Put the cake on a paper plate and cover it with plastic wrap? No, I am seriously asking, what do I do with the cake?) The cake supply proprietress was sort of bossy as I was interrupting her soaps on the 13″ rabbit ear set. I said, “I think I have a 9 pan.” And before I knew it I was out the door with my 10″ cake box. Alas, during the practice cake run, I determined that I have a 10″ pan, thus rendering the cake box totally useless. Dave suggested I just bake the cake in the pan that I have and then trim the edges so it will fit in the box. Are you kidding me Dave? So today I bought a 9″ pan, which increases the challenge because now my practice run means nothing. New pan, new size, new cooking time.

Wish me luck!

>There are many potential reasons for the spectacular failure of the William Sonoma Vintage Car Cakes that I made for Luke’s birthday. The most likely is that I followed the recipe that came with the cake tin without adjusting for altitude. Other reasons include the fact that I was waiting to hear how my Dad’s quintuple bypass surgery was going, and combining that stress with a big bowl of butter, eggs, and sugar wad just asking karma to teach me a lesson. (Back in those days I couldn’t eat any animal fat without imagining what it was doing to my arteries and it made me feel very nauseous. That doesn’t happen any more.)

This is not what the cakes looked like:

They looked like this:

From Blog pix

Those are the ones that turned out well.

The reason I bring this up now, is that I have been thinking about attempting to make them for Jack’s birthday. So the main question is… do I make a practice set this weekend to see if I can do it right this time? Or do I just attempt to make them next weekend and plan to buy a cake if I have another car cake disaster? Keep in mind that greasing the pan takes about half a day.

I guess we’ll see how this weekend goes!

>When I was a junior in college, I moved into a house, and I started inviting people over for dinner immediately. As I started cooking that very first meal I realized that I did not, in fact, know how to cook. By Christmas someone had wised up enough to give me a cook book. And once I had a recipe to go from, things started to improve. Slowly. I would make one delicious thing from the cookbook, with no regard to how many people it served compared to how many people I had invited, and I only made one thing. Side dishes? What? It probably took about 10 years for me to start incorporating side dishes. But at the beginning, on 27 Mound Street, when I was making Cajun Lentil Stew, I was having a panic attack because the recipe said the lentils would be done after X amount of time and they weren’t done. Dave was there, and I think he suggested that I add more water. Once the meal was served, I remember Eliot and Nellie saying that I should have a cooking show called The Nervous Cook. I would have a bunch of friends over, start cooking, totally freak out about something, get some advice from the friends/audience and then everything would turn out fine.

So, things have improved, but now my show would be called: The Messy Cook. And instead of a show, it would be a blog.

The accidental fat free zucchini bread and the peach cobbler blog posts are the ones that have generated more hits than everything else, so people are obviously very interesting in finding recipes on the internet. And I feel sorry for the ones that end up here with my bad photography and recipes gone wrong. (Although the peach cobbler is delish.)

So on my pretend cooking blog, I will now review 3 zucchini bread recipes.

1.) Blue Ribbon Zucchini Bread from my Simply Colorado cookbook.
3 eggs beaten
½ Cup sugar
1 C. brown sugar
½ C. oil
1 T maple flavoring (I leave this out)
2 C. zucchini shredded
2 tsp. baking soda
½ tsp. baking powder
1 tps. Salt
½ C. wheat germ
2 ½ C flour
1/3 C. walnuts, chopped
Cooking spray
¼ c. sesame seeds
Preheat to 350
Coat two 9x5x3 pans coated with cooking spray and flour
Beat together eggs, sugars, oil and maple flavoring until foamy and thick
Stir in zucchini.
Mix dry ingredients, stir into above.
Add nuts
Spoon batter into pans
Sprinkle tops with sesame seeds
Bake 45 to 60 minutes until toothpick inserted into center comes out clean.
Cool 10 minutes before removing from pans.

This used to be my go to recipe for zucchini bread, and when I accidentally made it without any oil, it turned out fine, but it seems strangely short. This was a good one because it seems to be the healthiest, but at the same time, I haven’t been inspired to make it again yet. Luke didn’t like it because it had nuts, and no raisins. Or none raisins, as he would say. Of the three, this is probably the best one though, if you are looking for something that is on the lower end of the fat and sugar scale.

2.) From my fave food blog, the antithesis of The Messy Cook, Smitten Kitchen

I made this without nuts and with raisins. It was fine. Luke really liked it. I’m not really inspired to make it again though.

3.) Then Dave came home raving about his co-worker’s wife’s zucchini bread, and I can’t be outdone, so I made that. I think maybe I didn’t cook it long enough because it was kind of gooey and one half of one of the loaves stayed in the pan. But if you are looking for a dessert zucchini bread, served straight out of the pan with a spoon that you pass around the table, then this is the one for you. Or you could just cook it a little longer. Details:

It all started at some festival, where we saw the great zucchini races, and Luke wanted me to grow a gigantic zucchini. I had a zucchini in the garden that was about ready to be picked, so I just didn’t pick it. Three weeks later, Dave noticed it while looking out the window. If I had waited any longer to pick it, it would have been visible from space. Weighing in at 5 pounds, the zucchini:

From Zucchini

Luke helped me shred it in the food processor.

From Zucchini

I had enough for 9 loaves of bread.

I made sort of a mess.

From Zucchini

It turned out gooey.

From Zucchini

The end.

>So Jessica Seinfeld wrote some book about hiding vegetables in your meals, and I guess there was some other book that was also about pureeing vegetables and hiding them in brownies and spaghetti sauce. I haven’t read either one because I subscribe to the parenting philosophy of preparing a well balanced meal and then saying, “Eat your vegetables!”

So I am still not over my grocery store boycott, and I am still getting my vegetables and fruits delivered and I am still the best pizza chef any of you have ever met, or anonymously read about. Where is this all going? Three words: Swiss Chard Pizza.

I don’t have a lot of experience with Swiss Chard, but it seems to show up in my box o’ veggies about every other week. I had been making a swiss chard and goat cheese frittata, which was delicious, but Luke doesn’t like it. He does like the zucchini frittata, and I have 18 cups of shredded zucchini in the freezer, so why not just make that one instead? Well here’s why: Because then I have to find something else to do with the swiss chard. So I was browsing epicurious, and I found a recipe for swiss chard casserole which all the reviewers said was terrible. Terrible, but would be good as a pizza topping or something. Light bulb! I cut the leaves off the stems, shredded the swiss chard, and microwaved it until it was wilted, stirring every 2 minutes or so. This is exactly what I did with the swiss chard when I was making the frittata, but all summer Dave read the paper on the front porch instead of in the living room. It was raining today so he was a lot closer to the action in the kitchen. And the smells. It smelled the same as it always smells. Dave described the smell like this, “That smells like poop.”

That didn’t deter me one bit. I made the crust with 1 cup of water, 1.5 teaspoons of yeast, 2 tablespoons of sugar, 1.5 cups whole wheat flour, 1.5 cups of white flour. As the flour was mixing, I tossed the swiss chard in. As it was all getting mixed together, I added a bit of flour to get the right texture. Toppings: Blue Parrot Tomato Sauce, Mozz, and Pepperoni. It was delicious. Luke had one piece, Dave had two. (Dave usually has 4 pieces, but I am still calling this a success.)

* Note: I made this yesterday and no one has eaten any leftovers. Hmmm. And I just got more chard today.