The results are in

This is a picture of the cake before I frosted it. For frosting I melted a couple of tablespoons of butter in the microwave, stirred in a spoonful of cocoa powder, a little milk, and a couple of cups of powdered sugar. Even without the frosting, though, the cake wasn't bad. A very strong banana flavor, but the texture is nice. Nuts would have helped. Dad ate two pieces of it, in his typical fashion of in a bowl with milk over it. Ice cream would have been even better. I'll most likely put the rest of it in the freezer for a future dessert when we need something easy to feed a crowd. So you'd better watch out! Next time you come to visit you might get fed chocolate banana cake for dessert!

Chocolate Banana Cake

Crystal from Everyday food storage has been sharing cake recipes this month. She inspired me to try making a cake, but because I have lots of yogurt that needs to be used, and we have some overripe bananas that need to be used, and I'm craving a bit of chocolate, well, I did a search for a recipe for a cocoa banana cake, and then I adapted it, and this is what I came up with:

3/4 cup bean puree (oil or margarine or butter)

1 1/2 cups pureed bananas (I used 3)

1 cup whole wheat flour

3/4 cup all-purpose flour

1 cup sugar

3 tablespoons powdered egg (or 3 eggs)

1/4 cup cocoa

2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

6 tablespoons water (for the three powdered eggs--if you're using regular eggs, omit the water)

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

2/3 cup homemade yogurt (sour cream)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and grease a 9x13 pan. Combine the bean puree and the banana puree in a mixing bowl, then add the two flours, the sugar, the egg powder, the cocoa, the baking powder, the baking soda, the salt, and the water. Mix until combined. Mix in the vanilla extract and the yogurt. Pour into pan and bake until done--30 minutes?

I took a bottle of pinto beans and drained off some of the juice and then pureed it in the blender. I measured the 3/4 cup and put the rest of the puree in a container in the fridge. Then I blended up the bananas, measured them, and found that 3 bananas made the 1 1/2 cups (the original recipe suggested using 4 to make the 1 1/2 cups--maybe pureeing it incorporated air into it, I don't know!). Put those things into my mixer bowl and went from there. I'll let you know how it goes. The original recipe is here. I won't be following their recipe for the icing, as I don't have cream (unless I use more yogurt) or corn syrup. If I ice it I'll likely just use powdered sugar and cocoa and butter and a little milk. I'm a little nervous about using the beans in place of the oil. They say it can be done, but I'm still not sure. I'm hoping the bananas and yogurt in there will help the texture in case the beans don't. I guess I'll never really know, though, since I won't have a "control" cake to compare it with.

p.s. This is probably my last attempt at using that yogurt that I made. But that's another story...

p.p.s. While I'm waiting for my cake to bake, I just read the rest of the blog post, and it looks like this person did not like this cake recipe! She got it from this New York Times article, and was very disappointed with the texture and with how the bananas overpowered the chocolate. I knew I should have used 1 cup of cocoa instead of 1/4 cup! Oh, and now I see that she links to a banana cake recipe on her own blog that she much prefers, which also calls for sour cream, so I guess I could have used my yogurt in that one, too. Well, we shall see.

Raspberry yogurt muffins

I made these muffins this morning, following the recipe found here, except that I used half whole wheat flour, and I used 1 1/2 cups of frozen raspberries instead of 2 cups of blueberries. Oh, and no vanilla (see previous post). I used the store-bought Mountain High vanilla-flavored yogurt, rather than my homemade, in an effort to use it up. Still have over 2 quarts of yogurt in the fridge. Stay tuned for more recipes.

BTW, Dad called me on his way to work this morning to tell me that these muffins are "delightful." I appreciated that. I'm glad he enjoyed them. They are cake-like, have a nice texture, and the top is a bit crisp.

p.s. I think one reason they're so good is because of the cup of sugar that the recipe calls for. I mean, that's a lot of sugar! I may have to experiment with variations to make them a bit more healthy, er, I mean, nutritious.

Yogurt cookies

Did you know that yogurt can be used in place of eggs, as well as shortening and oil? In my online search for what to do with all my yogurt, I came across this recipe for Yogurt Cookies. I did not follow it exactly (surprise!). I used 100% whole wheat flour instead of all-purpose flour, and I used 1 cup chocolate chips instead of 2. Here is what I did:

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup white sugar

1/4 to 1/2 cup butter, softened (I just used what was on the dish in my cupboard, as one of the commenters said that they had used only the butter (1/4 cup) and left out the shortening (also 1/4 cup), for a total of only 1/4 cup fat, and they turned out fine.)

1/2 cup (homemade) yogurt

(I skipped the vanilla flavoring--I've been getting tired of vanilla lately)

1 3/4 cups whole wheat flour

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup chocolate chips

Cream sugars and butter, then mix in the yogurt. Add the flour, baking powder and salt and stir well, followed by the chocolate chips. Put blobs on cookie sheet and bake at 375 degrees for 8 to 10 minutes. Makes 24.

These cookies spread out a bit and are quite soft when they're still warm. Stay tuned for how they taste when they are cool.

Okay, I've tasted them cool. They're very soft and a bit tangy. Not the texture that I think of with chocolate chip cookies. Not bad, but not great either.

Tomorrow I plan to try a muffin recipe, like maybe this one here.

It worked!

Okay, so last night around 7:30 or 8 p.m. I checked the yogurt, and it was done. Not curdled and sour, not runny, but real honest-to-goodness yogurt. It smells like vanilla. Curse that vanilla-flavored Mountain High! If I ever do this again, I will buy plain yogurt. The salad dressing that I made was not good. I did eat it on my salad last night, but couldn't handle the vanilla flavor with the spices, so I ended up dumping the rest of the bottle down the sink. I should have done what Josie says she does, and just made half a recipe. So now I have about three quarts of vanilla yogurt, including the one that I bought. What to do with it? Well, I'm going to make one quart of it into yogurt cheese, and see about making a cheesecake. I'll try to eat some of it with some strawberries and/or raspberries and/or bananas stirred--maybe even blended--into it. And, finally, if all else fails, I'll put the rest of it into the ice cream freezer and see about making some frozen yogurt. Some people do like frozen yogurt, and that would be a way of preserving it for those people to enjoy sometime in the future.

Next week: cottage cheese.

In the meantime...

While I'm waiting for the yogurt to do its thing, I've been experimenting with some other food storage recipes. First of all, maybe I should explain that I'm not sure the yogurt will be appreciated around here once it's done. So I need to find creative ways of using it. I'm thinking that I'll try making yogurt cheese, which, I understand, is a good substitute for cream cheese and can be used in cheesecakes. I've also heard that the yogurt will be good to use in making Ranch dressing, something that everyone I know seems to love. While I'm waiting, I decided to try using some of the Mountain High yogurt (that I bought to use as a starter) and make some ranch dressing, using a recipe I found:

Ranch Dressing, or Creamy Dressing

In a blender combine:

1 cup yogurt

1 cup lowfat mayonnaise

1 tablespoon dried parsley flakes

1/8 teaspoon garlic powder

2 teaspoons dehydrated onion

1/2 teaspoon salt

Result: it looks creamy and tastes sort of like, well, vanilla-flavored (*sigh*!!) ranch dressing. We'll see how well it goes over with Jim.

Reading all these food storage books and recipes got me dreaming about whipping up a simple casserole. This is my personalized combination/adaptation of a couple of recipes in one of the books:

2 cans (or pint bottles) of kidney beans, rinsed and drained in a colander

4 cups egg noodles, boiled for about 7 minutes until done, then drained in the same colander (yes, on top of the beans)

In the same pot that you cooked the noodles, combine:

1 cup easy white sauce mix

2 cups water

1 tablespoon dehydrated onion

1/2 teaspoon salt

some pepper

some garlic powder

Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly with a whisk, until bubbly and thick. Then stir in:

1 cup grated cheese

Add the noodles and beans to the cheese sauce mix and stir to combine. Bake, uncovered, at 350 degrees for 40 minutes.

I also baked some bread today.

And, finally, I've been watching YouTube videos about making cottage cheese, ricotta cheese, and mozzarella cheese. Maybe some day I'll try one of those and let you know how it goes. But, first, back to the yogurt, and tonight's dinner.

Yogurt

Today is the day! About 7:30 this morning I got my powdered milk and water blended up in the blender and put into the crock-pot, turned it to low, set the timer for 2 1/2 hours, and let it heat up. I noticed that there was a brown ring around the inside of the crockpot, just above the milk line. I don't know if that's normal or not. Maybe my crockpot cooks hot. Or maybe I didn't have it perfectly clean. At any rate, when the timer went off, I unplugged the crock pot, re-set the timer for 3 more hours, and let it sit again. At that point, I measured two cooks of the very-warm milk into a bowl, and used a fork to stir in 1/2 cup of Mountain High brand yogurt. Then I stirred that back into the crockpot, put the lid on, and wrapped it in three towels. The timer is now set for 6 hours. I hope that the next time I open it I am met with a sweet smell and a gelled hunk of yogurt. I'll let you know.

One of the things I learned from the video is what to do with that liquid that sits on top of the yogurt. I've always tried to stir it back into the yogurt, but she explains that the liquid is the whey, and it should be poured off the top, not stirred back in. She says that stirring your yogurt is kind of like stirring a bowl of jello. It just liquifies it and does nothing to help. The whey, she says, is full of proteins, and is good to use as the liquid in your next batch of bread. Or maybe a pot of soup. Or it could just be dumped down the sink. I never knew.

homemade yogurt

I'm going to try this sometime in the next week. Watch and see what happens.

Here is the link to her webpage with more information about using homemade yogurt and cheeses in your everyday cooking.