Mess of Greens

full bellies | warm welcomes

bread

Sister’s Banana Bread

by Leave a Comment

Everybody down south knows about Sister Shubert… her orange rolls, cinnamon rolls, and yeast rolls are in EVERY grocery freezer in EVERY town and have been served by just about everybody at some point or another. My college roommate spoke about her in VERY reverent and hushed tones. 😉 I knew she was a big deal down here, but what I didn’t know is that Sister is an honest-to-goodness actual lady and that she is generous, and thoughtful, and all around lovely.

I came to know this because my Aunt, Uncle, and Grandmother lived in her hometown of Andalusia, Alabama for many years. My aunt couldn’t say enough wonderful things about Sister (actually, truly what she’s called), and when my grandmother died, rather than just bringing a regular casserole or fruit salad, she shipped us The. Biggest. Box. of frozen baked goods you’ve ever seen. I’m pretty sure that box alone fed my family for a month.

Anyway, she’s so generous that she also shares her recipes for yeast rolls, cinnamon rolls, and other breads in two (1) (2) pretty wonderful cookbooks. (The REAL recipes y’all. They WORK!)

Finally, after living in our new house for two months, my cookbooks got unpacked the other day. This meant I could FINALLY get my hands on them. I could hardly stand it I wanted to cook something so bad. Thankfully, we had a big bunch of frozen bananas that were WAY past their prime, so I pulled out Sister’s cookbook and tried her version of banana bread. It was a hit with my little person (and everyone else for that matter) AND it gave him a chance to stir, stir, stir. I modified the recipe a TEENY bit,  (no nuts, butter rather than shortening) but you could do it her way and it would still be divine! Let me know if you make it!

Sister's Banana Bread
 
Save Print
Prep time
Cook time
Total time
 
Author:
Serves: 2 loaves
What You Need
  • 2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • ½ cup butter
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 2 large eggs
  • 1½ cups mashed overripe bananas
  • ½ teaspoon vanilla
What to Do
  1. Preheat your oven to 325ºF.
  2. Butter ad flour two 8x4 inch loaf pans so you're ready when the batter is ready.
  3. Combine flour, baking soda and salt; set aside.
  4. Beat the butter using an electric mixer until its creamy; gradually add sugar until totally incorporated and fluffy.
  5. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating them in just until yellow disappears after each addition.
  6. Add the banana puree' and vanilla; beat until blended.
  7. Gradually add the dry flour mixture, (1/2 cup by ½ cup works well) beating just until blended
  8. Pour batter into the pans.
  9. Bake for 1 hour or until you can put a toothpick in the middle and it comes out clean.
  10. Cool in pans on wire racks 10 minutes

 

Wild Persimmon & Bourbon Breakfast Bread

by 3 Comments

img_4379
Wild Persimmons: Bourbon Breakfast Bread
 
Save Print
Prep time
Cook time
Total time
 
The most time consuming part of this process is getting the persimmon pulp, but I assure you, the flavor is like NOTHING else and it's even more exciting because it grows wild and is connected to native peoples and early european settlers.
Author:
Recipe type: Breakfast or Dessert
Serves: 4 loaves
What You Need
  • FOR THE BREAD:
  • 2 cups sifted cake flour
  • ½ teaspoons salt
  • 2 teaspoon baking soda
  • ½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
  • ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • 2 cups sugar
  • ½ cup melted unsalted butter or vegetable oil
  • 2 large eggs, at room temperature, lightly beaten
  • 1 Tablespoon Bourbon
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • 2 cups persimmon puree (about 3 cups of wild persimmons)
  • FOR THE FROSTING:
  • 1 cup unsalted butter, softened
  • 18 oz package cream cheese
  • 2½ teaspoons vanilla extract
  • 1 tsp bourbon
  • 4 to 5 cups confectioners’ sugar
What to Do
  1. FOR THE BREAD:
  2. First things first: you have to get the persimmon puree'. A note about wild persimmons... you know they're ripe if they've fallen off the tree or are SUPER wrinkly and soft... like a deflated helium balloon. Once they're at that stage, and you've got a food mill, the you can use it to separate the skin and the seeds from the pulp. If not, then peel the skin away from the pulp and squeeze it into a wire strainer over a bowl. Using the back of a spoon, push the pulp through the strainer and into the bowl, leaving the large seeds. The pulp can be frozen for use later.
  3. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
  4. Prepare your bread or cake pans by coating the insides with butter and lightly flouring the inside.
  5. Mix all of the dry ingredients/spices except the sugar (flour, baking powder, soda, salt, nutmeg, cinnamon) together in a separate medium sized bowl. You may wish to sift this so they are combined consistently.
  6. Then, in a large mixing bowl, combine the puree', the butter or oil, and the sugar until it is entirely incorporated.
  7. Mix in the eggs, the vanilla, and the bourbon.
  8. Cup by cup, mix in the dry ingredients into the puree' mixture. Fold in until just mixed together.
  9. Pour the batter into 2-8" round cake pans, or 2- 9" bread pans, or 4-5" bread pans and bake until a toothpick can be inserted and comes out clean. (somewhere about 20-30 minutes depending on the size of your pan).
  10. FOR THE FROSTING:
  11. Using an electric mixer with the paddle attachment, beat the butter on medium speed until its all creamy.
  12. Add cream cheese and vanilla and bourbon, and beat until it's totally incorporated.
  13. Gradually increase the speed and beat until the cheese and butter mixture fluffy, scraping down the sides of bowl if you need to.
  14. Add in the powdered sugar one cup at a time, scraping down if you need to until everything is fully incorporated.
  15. PUTTING IT TOGETHER:
  16. Once the cake has cooled, frost it, slice it and serve it with a cup of coffee. it is even good at room temperature or straight from the fridge.

How perfect are persimmons? The gorgeous, peachy-oranged fleshed fruit that ripen into wrinkly, sweet pulp are not only the most lovely subjects for still life paintings ever, but also have been used in foods from puddings to beer for generations (read more about its history at American Food Roots). Until my friend Joseph brought me some that he’d found in the woods I’d never tried one and didn’t know that they’d played a large role in the diets of native people in our part of the world AND my southern ancestors. But now I know why.

When I saw the perfect little rosy “sugar plums” I couldn’t resist biting into one….but boy did I regret it. The skin of wild persimmons, dispyros virginiania (small, peachy fruit with smooth skin that’s a bit smaller than a golf ball and has several large, hard seeds) is VERY, VERY bitter and made my mouth feel like I’d covered it in a dry, awful tasting powder. But the inside flesh was soft, very sweet, and super fragrant.

In fact, when I just got a taste of the flesh I was in love. It was divine! And so different! Eventually I’d like to make a beer or vinegar using this lovely little fruit, but to start, I made something I felt pretty comfortable with… persimmon bread loosely based on James Beard’s version but with the added ah-mazingness that is cream cheese buttercream. I also made another batch and shaped it into a cake, which was brown like pumpernickle bread but was something like carrot cake. It really was PERFECT for breakfast, and super easy. If you’ve got folks staying over for Thanksgiving, then this is a nice change from the ubiquitous holiday sweet rolls for breakfast, especially since it makes use of local wild fruit you can find in the woods AND harkens back to the earliest settler’s food.

…

Read More »

Green Biscuits and Ham

by Leave a Comment

IMG_2470   We got out in the dirt this weekend and planted our vegetable garden… the weather was dreamy and it felt so productive to get my sweet little seedlings in the ground.

We’ll have about every color cherry tomato, plus some big ole red Big Boys, and some okra and summer squashes. It’s going to be wonderful IF we can keep the silly deer and other fauna out of them. Gardeners out there, any ideas or tried & true ways for how to keep my little vegetable babies safe?

…

Read More »

Fluffy Sour Cream Cornbread

by Leave a Comment

I have a cornbread addiction.

I love it in ALL of it’s forms… muffins, hot water cracker cornbread, jalepeno, crispy cornpones, cornbread sticks… I just can’t get enough.
Therefore, it made perfect sense that for my first Cookbook club a few months ago I’d pick out the recipe for Sour Cream Cornbread to make for the group. It also may have had something to do with the fact that we were moving the next week and had packed up almost all of our cookware and didn’t have a ton of groceries…but, no matter.

What resulted was a cornbread recipe that was PERFECT to bake ahead and serve to a large group…one with a soft, fluffy texture, a little crispness around the edges, and one that didn’t dry out (even two days later!) If you’ve got to make something for a party, or are having people over for chili (superbowl party, maybe?) but need to make a few things in advance, this is your cornbread recipe. You can thank the Junior League of Birmingham, Alabama from their Tables of Content, Service, Settings, and Supper cookbook AND my fun Delta Cookbook club for the find. (What’s cookbook club, you ask? A fun group of gals who choose a cookbook to make things from for a year, and then have a monthly potluck as we cook our way through! That way, we know what recipes are delicious and which ones are just so-so. Plus, we get to have a girls’ night once a month.) Read on for this cornbread recipe you DEFINITELY need in your repertoire…

Sour Cream Cornbread
Makes about 16 squares

What you Need:
1 Cup All purpose Flour
3/4 Cup Yellow Cornmeal
1/4 Cup Sugar
2 teaspoons Baking Powder
3/4 teaspoon Salt
1 cup sour cream
1/4 cup milk
1 egg, beaten
2 Tablespoons vegetable oil

What to do:
Preheat your oven to 375 degrees, and get out a 9×9 baking dish. Grease it well, then start on the dry ingredients!

Combine the flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking powder, salt and baking soda in a bowl and mix well.

Mix the sour cream, milk, egg and oil in a bowl and stir in the flour mixture slowly.
Once everything is mixed well, put the batter into your baking pan and bake for 30-40 minutes or until the corn bread tests done.(stick a toothpick or fork into the center of it… if it comes out clean like a cake, it’s done. Also, it’ll be a light golden brown…)

Voila! Once it’s cooled a bit, you can slice it up and serve it (or seal it in an airtight container until you’re ready. If you don’t over-bake it, my experience tells me it’ll stay moist for at least a day and a half!) with your favorite soup or chili!