Monday Menu or Meals!

By now you make have figured out that I have a regular feature on Monday… food! Recipes to more exact.

I love cooking, baking, and of course eating all those tasty creations! And it’s great to be able share those recipes with all of you and see what you think of all them. But I have been thinking about a witty name for the weekly feature and haven’t been able to come up with something I like. I have a couple ideas… Monday Meals or The Monday Menu.

My thought is that I would continue to feature a great recipe each Monday, spotlight other bloggers and their tasty recipes, and possibly have a link up. What do you think?

You’re wondering what’s this week’s recipe, right?

It’s another zucchini recipe because I’m still trying to work through all that zucchini that my garden has produced this year. My brother laughed at me and told me enough with all the zucchini recipes and just give it all away. But I’m sure that I haven’t found them all yet… there are a lot of recipes to try still!

Zucchini Pound Cake

I found this recipe a while back on Sophistimom website and finally tried it. It was amazing! I made a couple changes based on what I had in my pantry and they’re in parentheses.

3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
3 teaspoons cinnamon
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup brown sugar (I used demera since I was out of brown)
2 sticks unsalted butter, melted (I use regular salted butter)
3 eggs
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
1/2 cup sour cream
2 cups finely grated zucchini (I used 2+ cups… I just used the entire zucchini and grated it normally)

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.

Butter or spray a bundt pan and then sprinkle with cinnamon sugar.

The pan with sugar cinnamon coating

In a large bowl, whisk together the sugars and butter. Add in eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Stir in vanilla, sour cream and zucchini. Add the dry ingredients and mix well. For me this was a one bowl cake. And I love that because it means less mess!

The batter

Bake for about 30 – 40 minutes. Now this is an estimate because I can’t remember how long it was that I actually baked mine! Sorry…

When it’s done let it cool in the pan for about 10 minutes and then remove to a rack to finish cooling.

Finished cake

When it’s done it will have a sweet crust on the outside from the cinnamon sugar that was in the pan!

The cake is good plain, with a glaze or frosting, or with whipped cream!

Cake with whip topping

I love this cake and the sweet, buttery taste of it and I’m sure you’ll love it too!

So I need your help with my new features name!

  • Monday Meals
  • The Monday Menu
  • Or.. something else!

What do you think?

Zucchini Bread ~ Summer Harvest Series

This summer I planted a garden and to help out with the terrible soil (clay) that we have my husband put some top soil and horse manure down on it and then had it all tilled into it. Wow…. this was great! Things started growing wonderfully and I was pretty excited to finally have something growing as opposed to previous years.

As the summer progressed the garden grew and then the weeds did too. And they grew… and grew…. and … well you get the idea. There was no amount of weeding that could have kept up. Needless to say it’s a virtual jungle out there now. Of course there is also the incredible amount of vegetable plants that are all over the place.

Note to self… no more manure and plant things further apart. Oh… and use those cage things for tomatoes.

Anyway, I have more zucchini than I know what to do with now and have been baking almost non-stop.

My family loves zucchini bread so I thought that I’d share the recipe with you.

  • 3 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 3 teaspoons ground cinnamon
  • 3 eggs
  • 1 cup vegetable oil
  • 2 1/4 cups white sugar
  • 3 teaspoons vanilla extract
  • 2 cups grated zucchini
  1. Grease and flour two 8 x 4 inch pans (I used 9 x 5 pan and used the extra batter for muffins. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.
  2. Sift flour, salt, baking powder, soda, and cinnamon together in a bowl.
  3. Beat eggs, oil, vanilla, and sugar together in a large bowl. Add sifted ingredients to the creamed mixture, and beat well. Stir in zucchini and nuts until well combined. Pour batter into prepared pans.
  4. I sprinkled mine with a little bit of cinnamon sugar before putting it into the oven.
  5. Bake for 40 to 60 minutes, or until tester inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool in pan on rack for 20 minutes. Remove bread from pan, and completely cool.

Note: to keep the bread from browning to much on top I covered it with aluminum foil.

 

zucchini bread

This week I’m going to try the chocolate olive oil zucchini bread recipe that Alison from Mama Wants this wrote about last week!

What’s your favorite summer harvest recipe?

This is the first in a series of posts about all the great things that you can make from the fresh fruits and veggies that I’ve either grown or bought at my local farmers market! I would love you to join me and post your own recipe or you can guest post right here!