Roasted Banana Shortbread Cookies

I have the luxury of time now, reflection, opportunity. I’m 24 but I wasted an embarrassing amount of years shoring up the flotsam of who I used to be. I don’t worry so much now. I know I’ve kissed boys I’ve regretted. I know I’ve eaten ice cream the carton and left it on the counter until morning. Laundry piles up, bills change color; but I keep waking up in the morning and find it comforting.

Time shifts. Slows down. There’s a birds nest that’s been shuddering with wakeful chicks since last Sunday. It’s an eyrie built in the rain gutter and there’s a poem in there somewhere. They keep me up at night, I hear their hungry cries. They’ve just woken up and I hear them through my window.

There’s a rise and fall to my emotions. I used to think they were impressionism, small strokes of color and enough space in between to contrast. I have a Rembrandt temper, deep and opaque.

I’m working on this.

I made these cookies for no one but myself. I made them because it’s rained for four days straight and it doesn’t seem to be letting up anytime soon. I made over two dozen and only ate a handful. The rest I took out, still on the pan, and threw them to the birds that peck at the apple tree wood. I threw them, one by one, and brought back an empty tray. I have a lot of time these days; I don’t mind sharing.

Roasted Banana Shortbread Cookies

Ingredients:

• 1 banana, cut lengthwise
• 8 tablespoons butter, divided and softened
• ½ cup brown sugar, divided
• 1 ¾ cup AP flour
• Pinch of salt
• ½ cup white sugar
• 2 teaspoon vanilla
• ½ teaspoon cinnamo
• Nutella, optional

Directions:

1. First, you must roast the banana for this recipe
2. Preheat oven to 400*F and prepare a pan with aluminum foil
3. Lay banana, peel side down, on pan and cut three small cuts into the banana
4. Top each banana half with 1 tablespoon butter and 1/8 cup brown sugar apiece
5. Roast for 10-15 minutes until sugar is caramelized and bananas are soft and browned
6. Remove from oven and allow to cool completely before continuing on
7. While waiting for banana to cool, do the following: Reduce oven to 350*F; prepare a cookie sheet with parchment paper; sift flour and salt together in a mixing bowl
8. When bananas are cooled, use a food processor and blend together bananas, remaining 6 TB butter, and remaining sugars. Process until well blended
9. Add vanilla and cinnamon to the mixture
10. With food processor on, slowly add flour through the feeding tube and continue to blend until a dough just starts to form
11. Turn food processor off and turn onto a floured work surface. Dough will be a bit crumbly at first, so work it a bit with your hands and pat into a disc
12. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes
13. When 30 minutes are up, roll back onto floured work surface and cut into desired shapes (make sure the cookies aren’t over a 1/3 inch in thickness)
14. Place shapes on your prepared cookie sheet and bake for 20-25 minutes or until edges are golden
15. Allow to cool and you can eat as is, or top with Nutella and a little cinnamon
16. Last for up to 3 days in an airtight container

Mother's Day: An Orange-Ginger Cake

Some years we sat at the boondocks of my mother’s mind, waiting for her to show the slightest attention. Some years, we were all she had. We played the part of anchors, support, canes, crutches, and the wheelbarrows of her life.  It was backbreaking work and we’d ask for raises in our allowances. Then stopped asking and took the bills from her purse. In spite of the night shifts, double shifts, graveyard shifts. Even when my father bought a portable radio on a credit card to sit in his car for 8 hours on Saturdays, working as a security guard to pay for his kids’ three cars. Some years were like that, but not always.

We’d sit in the boondocks of her mind, at the periphery of conscious effort and wait for her to say, “Good job,” on my sister’s schoolwork, my poems, my brother’s career. When it didn’t come, we wouldn’t ask. She was busy, she was tired, she was mad no one put away the dishes and did she have to do everything around here?

She was every manifestation of Shiva and every epithet of Hera. As much an orphan as she was a mother. As much a Madonna as she was child. How hard she worked until her fingers bruised and calloused. Her kisses were tender when she’d check our foreheads for fevers. She fell asleep more than once waiting for the birthday cake to finish in the oven. One year we ate at the mall food court when I turned nine.

I left home when I was seventeen. When I moved to California and I hated the first house I had with my boyfriend, I called my mother and cried on the way home from school. She said I was too much to handle now, that all I ever did was bitch and moan. I hung up and didn’t call her back for two months.

But things change, I grew up. I forgave but the dust motes of resentment still hit the sunlight sometime. I never let it settle for long. This is the first year I’m celebrating Mother’s Day with her in six years, the first time in six years I can hand her a card and hug her tight. She makes the coffee every morning and leaves me post-it notes of how she’ll miss me when she goes to work. She took me in when that same boy in California kicked me out. She took me in even after all the time passed in wasted silence. She was a tough mom, an angry mom, a sad mom. But she’s also the only other person I know who has had to reinvent themselves more than they can count. And now she sits, crocheting in her reclining chair, being the anchor to some slowly dissolving memory I have of how it was, and just how good I had it.

Happy Mother’s Day.   

Ginger-Orange Layer Cake

This cake celebrates spring and the harsh, bitter, and sweet of any relationship. Three layers, swathed in buttercream and sprinkles, with layers of a quick orange marmalade in between. Makes a three-layer cake, 6 inches in diameter

Ingredients for the Quick Orange Marmalade

• 1 large orange, washed
• ½ cup sugar
• 1 TB grated fresh ginger
• 2 TB water

Directions for Quick Orange Marmalade

1. Cut the top and bottom of the orange and then cut into 8 sections
2. In a food processor, pulse whole orange until it is finely pureed and no large chunks are visible
3. In a saucepan, add all ingredients and simmer for 15 minutes or until marmalade begins to congeal
4. Take off heat and allow to cool
5. Note: this is a quick jam just for this recipe with no proper canning technique involved

Ingredients for Cake

• 3 ½ cup AP flour
• 1 ½ teaspoon salt
• 3 teaspoon baking powder
• 2 cup sugar
• ¼ cup honey
• ½ cup shortening
• 1/3 cup butter, softened
• 1 ¼ cup milk
• 2 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 1 tablespoon white vinegar
• 4 eggs
• 1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger
• 2 tablespoon orange zest

Directions for Cake

1. Preheat oven to 350*F and prepare pans with butter and parchment paper
2. In a medium bowl, sift together flour, salt, and baking powder and set aside
3. In a measuring cup, whisk to combine milk, vanilla, and vinegar and set aside
4. In the bowl of a stand mixer, add honey, sugar, and fats. With the paddle attachment, beat until mixture is pale and fluffy
5. Add one egg at a time, do not add subsequent egg until first is fully incorporated
6. With mixer on low, alternate between adding the flour and the milk mixture until batter is formed
7. Stir in ginger and orange zest
8. Pour into prepare pans (or pan, if you have to reuse) and bake each layer for 40-45 minutes until a knife comes out clean
9. Allow to cool completely before assembling
10. Note: While baking, use this buttercream recipe and add 1 teaspoon of ground ginger if you so desire

Assembly: Use squares of parchment paper under the first layer of the cake to help with a clean finish on the icing. Lay one cake layer down, add your marmalade, then the second cake layer, more marmalade, then final cake layer. Refrigerate 15 minutes. Take out of the fridge and add a crumb coat, return to fridge for 30 minutes. Remove and add final layer of buttercream, using a large angled spatula knife and a bench scraper for those fine edges.  Finally, you can decorate as I did, with sprinkles by basically putting some in your hand and gently pressing into the cake. Repeat until fully covered. Removed parchment squares. Enjoy!

A Town I Could Never Forget: My Piece in Driftless Magazine, Issue 5

I was honored to have a memoir piece and recipe published in the newest issue of Driftless Magazine, an independent magazine about "food, art, and adventure in the Midwest." This is my first piece I've ever had published in print and as I cut the mail open to hold the copy in my hands, I thought, "This is it!" And as I read the piece to my mother while she did the dishes and, later, to my father when he got home from a business trip, I thought, "This is just the beginning."

I want to share with you the narrative, as I always do on the blog. The stories behind why I bake. The inspiration behind the flour-dusted countertops and sticky testing spoons. But, to find the recipe for the cornbread trifle and more, you should pick up the magazine or find it online here.

Be sure to check Driftless out on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram as well!

And here is part of my piece...

A Town I Could Never Forget: for issue 5 of Driftless Magazine

It’s always dusk when I look back at my town of Indiana. Versailles, it’s called. Forty-five minutes west of Cincinnati and pronounced “Ver-sales”. It’s always dusk and the light blue water tower that stands like Atlas above the town casts long shadows on the Dairy Queen down the road. A sundial for the bargain shoppers, mothers with chipped nail polish, and husbands that drink beer in the garage that I still call family.

Some work at factories, some are bartenders. They pay their bills and find it hard to dream bigger than the first exit on the highway. Cornfields line the back roads to church and sometimes it all feels so expansive and sometimes it’s suffocating.

I haven’t been back there for a few years; haven’t lived there a few years longer than that. I know what’s changed and what hasn’t. A few more great-aunts lay buried in the family plot and an uncle won $10,000 at a poker tournament. My grandfather lost one of his fingers in a saw and spends his time drinking.

I know there’s one less house on Main Street that was torn down and the roots of an old tree cracked the sidewalk. That was big news in my small town. It traveled to me when I lived in California. My mom repeated it again at Thanksgiving.

“A girl could have tripped and really hurt herself!”

“ I hope they do something about it soon,” I said, mirroring my mother’s concern.

My mother left that world when she was sixteen but revisits it in conversation often. She smoked cigarettes while waiting for her nails to dry and spend years trying to find the self-confidence that always seemed to escape between her open fingertips, held out for clemency for all the mistakes she thinks she made as a mother.

She hasn’t changed much since she married my father and moved away from their hometown in Indiana. The salt of the earth is the grit in her teeth when she’s scowling; it’s the dust that gets in my eyes when I think of that town changing before I visit again soon.

But not much will. It hasn’t for years and years. A grandmother still rests at the foot of a hill. The weeds that grow on a farm my dad used to own still houses garter snakes and mice that hide in shadows. The bramble of the blackberry bushes my uncle owned wrapped themselves around his truck tires when he died. Earth is more alive in this part of the Midwest. It only gives what it can eventually take back.

I thought about that town and its land when I made this trifle. I made this dessert as a eulogy to the cracked veneer of a world that I may never get back. A myth, a dream world I see when I look at the rose-patterned china that sits in a cardboard box in my parents’ basement. How the blackberry bramble would twist itself around that box. How the mice would hide in the shadows, too.

I think of this dessert as a love letter to the town I was born in, with its mispronounced name and its cracked sidewalks. Cornmeal, berries, and two cups of sugar.

Simple, timeless, an artifact from a world I’m afraid to lose. My ode to Indiana: a cornbread trifle. 

Thank you to everyone for your support and support your local and independent magazines!

Honey Oat Bread

I sustain myself with simple foods. Foods I can rip by hand—tangerines and loaves of bread. Food I ate when I lived in San Antonio and didn’t have enough money for gas, but still had enough for to make cakes. Simple foods, delicate. Tactile and necessary. I bread a bit of crust off and feed it to Milo. My parents’ dog, Jack, gets jealous and he gets some, too.  I ate this bread for three days, with butter and jam and before bed.  I ate it with crumbs on the plate and then got another slice. It sustained me when I was busy, not wanting to work. Not wanting to get out of bed. Not wanting to check the mail or pay my bills or feed the animals.  I get like this sometimes. Not often, but sometimes. And I wait it out, keep busy. Stay quiet. Eat when I have to and wait for morning to come. 

Honey Oat Bread, makes two loaves

Ingredients:

• 1 cup whole milk
• 1 cup water
• ½ cup honey
• ¼ cup brown sugar
• 2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup oats, plus more for top of bread
• 3 tablespoons butter, divided (one of those tablespoons melted)
• ¼ cup beer
• 1 ¼ cup yeast (I use Red Star Yeast)
• 4-5 cups AP flour

Directions:

1. In a medium saucepan combine milk, water, honey, sugar, salt, oats, 2 tablespoons of butter, and beer
2. Heat on medium, stirring often until small bubbles appear on rim of liquid and butter is melted
3. Remove from heat and allow to cool until warm to the touch
4. Pour into the bowl of a stand mixer, fitted with the paddle attachment, and sprinkle in yeast
5. Allow to stand for ten minutes for yeast to bloom. Small bubbles will appear, but as this is a heavy liquid starter, it will not be foamy
6. Turn mixer on and begin adding flour, one cup at a time. Do this slowly and allow for each cup to be fully incorporated before adding the next
7. When dough is just formed, switch attachment to the dough hook
8. Mix on medium-low for 5-7 minutes until dough is turned on hook and not sticking to the sides
9. Set into a well-oiled bowl and allow to rise, covered with a towel, for one hour
10. When doubled in size, punch down and divide into two loaves
11. Rest 20 minutes
12. While dough is resting, prepare the 2 loaf pans and preheat oven to 350*F and melt remaining tablespoon of butter
13. Gently shape each half into a loaf shape, careful not to deflate dough, and place into pans
14. Brush with melted butter and sprinkle oats on top
15. Bake for about 25-28 minutes, checking at the 20 minute mark for any heavy browning or burning
16. Remove and cool before eating. Can be kept in airtight container for up to 3 days (but fresh bread is always the best bread!) 

Heritage: A Savory Dutch Baby with Onion-Apple Relish, in Partnership with Lodge Cast Iron

On Sunday, I went to my sister’s home. A place I’ve only been to twice. A duplex on hill, a ten-year-old Golden Retriever to greet us. We met at a McDonald’s and followed her past a lumber yard, a gas station that still showed gas at a dollar-sixty, and a fencepost where a wreath was nailed on.

I’ve only hung out with my sister once or twice. We smoked a cigarette in her old Mustang in high school and she bought me beer one Fourth of July. We met in a Walmart parking lot and I never paid her back. But it’s different now, we’ve grown up. Had to. Wanted to. Her husband still plays video games and they had their honeymoon in Niagara. They live a good life and I’m happy to witness it, even if it’s just for a couple hours. Going to the outlet malls and sharing nachos for lunch.

She’s precious cargo now, she sat in the backseat. Thirteen weeks along, she’s having a baby come October. Niece or nephew, boy or girl. It’s changed me on a molecular level. I think of a future now. I put money away for her, I paid for dinner. She gave up caffeine, Keith still smokes, though. It’s okay. There’s love there. I give her a hug, a kiss. I tell her I love her so much.

These are hungry words, hungry for the eight years since we last sat in a car together and got food. Hungry for a connection. We share a mom, a handful of aunts and uncles.  A tendency to hold a grudge, react and then apologize. We demand apologies in my family, but we ask for hugs and forgiveness on our own time. They were hungry words and I’m excited to learn how to be a brother again and to go fawn-legged into helping raise her child when she needs me.

We talk about ordinary things. Vacations we used to take in the Smokies. If it will be a hot summer. We talk about sad things, the uncle we lost in Afghanistan and the dog we had growing up. We talk about scary things, blood tests and airbags. We drove forty more miles and talked about baby names. 

 We don’t mention my grandmother’s name, but it’s in the running. So is Elliott. Cash for a boy. Something simple, classic for a girl. She liked Rachel and then she didn’t. She liked Nora and then she didn’t. She never liked her own name. She said she didn’t like mine too much either. But we think, make lists on an old envelope I found in my glove compartment.  We laugh, stop for gas. She said she’d like to think of a name that’s in the family, something strong, something from Indiana. She said we didn’t have a lot to remember from back there, so it’d be nice to remember it now.  

I thought about that the rest of the day. How names become heritage, relics. Antiques and heirlooms. I think of the way my sister and I are different, but how we are the same. How there’s a bit of dirt under our fingernails from our farmer uncles and diesel in us from our truck driver grandfather. How our eyes are shaped the same but hers are hazel and mine are blue. How we are just tattooed skin stretched over cast iron bones. How we don’t say sorry much and crush the cigarettes we used to smoke under the same rock by the creekbed. Those were our traditions. And we think back on all the traditions we missed from our relatives in the Midwest. Bundt cakes cooling on a rack and gone by midnight. The tire swing in the woods behind my aunt’s doublewide trailer. And the collection of Lodge cast iron pans that’s been passed between us all at one time or another. Seasoned and still black as coal. That’s how tradition works, rough on the hands and it’s got some weight to it. And in forty years’ time maybe going to the outlets on an ordinary Sunday will seem like a tradition, too.

Savory Dutch Baby with Onion-Apple Relish

This recipe was inspired by my heritage--easy comfort food, cooked with butter and in cast iron. The Dutch baby can be made in a skillet of 10-12" and is best served hot. The relish can be made ahead and kept for up to two days. 

Ingredients for Onion-Apple Relish

• 1 medium-sized apple, cored and chopped
• ½ of a yellow onion, chopped thinly
• 3 tablespoons butter, divided
• ¼ cup beer
• ¼ cup brown sugar
• Salt and pepper to tast

Directions for Onion-Apple Relish

1. Preheat oven to 425*F (this is not for the relish, but you want your oven hot for the Dutch Baby)
2. In your Lodge 11” cast iron skillet, heat 2 TB butter on medium until melted and hot
3. Toss in your onion and apple and stir occasionally for 8-12 minutes, until apples are tender and onions are translucent
4. Turn heat up to medium-high and add beer, which will steam immediately
5. Add brown sugar and last TB of butter and continue stirring until all liquid is cooked off and you are left with a soft and tender mixture of onion and apples
6. Salt and pepper to taste, reserve in a container, scraping all bits of the relish out of the pan and set the pan aside for the Dutch baby without washing (you want some of the savory flavors to mix into the batter while it cooks!)

Ingredients for the Dutch Baby

• ¾ cup AP flour
• Pinch of salt
• 2 eggs
• ¾ cup whole milk
• ½ tablespoon finely chopped rosemar

Directions for Dutch Baby

1. While skillet is still hot from making the Onion-Apple Relish (above), you may want to rub a TB of butter around the pan to grease it a bit more
2. In a bowl, sift flour and salt and set aside
3. In a large mixing bowl, whisk together eggs and whole milk
4. Slowly add the flour mixture, whisking continuously to avoid lumps
5. Sprinkle in the rosemary when all flour is incorporated
6. Whisk vigorously for about 30 seconds to create some air and form bubbles on top of the batter

7. Immediately pour into prepared skillet and place in preheated oven

8. Bake for 14-18 minutes or until puffed and golden brown. Begin checking at the 12-minute mark for any burning

9. Remove from oven, top with relish, and enjoy. Best results are immediately from oven.

Thank you so much to Lodge Cast Iron for sponsoring this post with your amazing products. We have used cast iron in our family for generations and I am proud to work alongside Lodge in creating this post. All opinions, recipes, and photos are my own.  For this post, I used their 11” rust resistant cast iron skillet. For more information about Lodge, please visit their website, Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.