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Bettina’s Banana Bread

Sunday, November 6th, 2011

From a bed and breakfast guest:

“I had banana bread at the bed & breakfast home where I stayed and it was unbelievably good. I must have the recipe. I asked at the home and they told me to write to Bettina’s Blog. Well, I’m writing – now let’s have the recipe. Oh – my name is XXXXXXX and the dates of my stay were XXXXXXXX (just so you get the right banana bread recipe, but please don’t print my name.) Thanks,”

The host family answers:

From the guests name and the date they stayed here is the banana bread recipe – it is really a basic recipe, the difference being the way the bananas are put into the batter. Instead of mashing the bananas and mixing them in, the last thing to do is slice the bananas into the batter while the mixer is running on slow. When the banana bread is baked, there is a kind of squishy, strong banana taste which comes from the baked-in slices. I don’t do anything to keep the slices as a stand out in the bread, just mix them in as the final step.

I use the 1-2-3-4 step cake recipe for this banana bread – the problematic part is how much baking powder to add. If you add too much, the ‘bread’ will go over the top of the glass bread baking dish and go all over the bottom of your oven which is impossible to clean and which leaves you a very little banana bread in the pan. Too little baking powder and the banana bread does not rise properly. The amount needed will probably vary depending upon your location in the world.

I use:

1 cup organic butter (put this in the mixer and let it go for a few minutes to whip the butter)

2 cups organic turbinado sugar (add this slowly after whipping the butter)

4 organic eggs ( it makes a real difference in taste and texture if you are going to use non-organic eggs. I wouldn’t bother – they ruin the bread). Add these one at a time while whipping the mixture, but don’t whip too much because this is the point at which you can overbeat the banana bread.

3 cups organic whole wheat pastry flour mixed* with 1/2 teaspoon himalayan salt and baking powder (measured for your geographical area) – add this a little at a time on a very slow speed on your mixture because you really have to be careful about overmixing when you get here. I add all kind of things at this point and don’t remember exactly what was added on the day you request. I add raisins, shredded coconut, pecans, or sometimes walnuts depending up what I have on the shelf, and – as needed – either coconut milk or a great heavy cream I’ve found which is organic, non-homogenized, from grass-fed cows. The brand name is “Sky Top Farms”.

*To mix the flour, salt and baking powder I use a spoon and stir the mixture around lifting it up by the spoonful and sprinkling it back into itself.

The last thing I add before baking are the bananas. I take two or three bananas, slice them into the batter with the mixer on low and once I’ve finished slicing I pour the batter into glass baking dishes which have been buttered and bake at about 350 degrees for 45 or so minutes.

Sorry I can’t be more specific, but I am one of those toss it in, trial and error cooks, I don’t do the really particular measurements, etc. You will have to experiment to get the perfect banana bread for your oven, mixer and location.

Enjoy! To the guest who wrote: call me if you have questions.

Ed Note: We had a request months ago from someone who asked for a heavy cream which was organic but not “ultra-pasteurized”. At the time, we didn’t know of any and hadn’t come across such a possibility until this blog from a Bettina host family. Now we know about “Sky Top Farms” organic heavy cream which is also from grass-fed cows and non-homogenized. A partial dream realized. Now all we have to do is find one which is straight from the cow without having the nutrition cooked out of it. At least this one still has some nutrition left, although you can’t leave it on the shelf in the refrigerator for months – you have to use it fairly quickly. Which is what most foods need. They were not grown nor taken from the animal to be shelved for a couple years or even for many months. They are to be used ASAP and then repurchased when you need more. A very old, very great concept in good nutrition and even better health.

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High Blood Pressure!

Monday, September 12th, 2011

“Hi everybody!

I am a new host family in the Bettina Network and this is my first blog. I didn’t think anything would happen to make me want to write a blog. I am a quiet, unassuming person and generally go about the business serving rather than joining in the conversation.

That has all changed now!

We had a guest who caused quite a lively conversation at breakfast and when everyone was served I couldn’t resist joining them.

She had high blood pressure and her medicine was out. She was away from home and didn’t know how to get a refill. So the table did every thing they could to help. She was quite reticent about calling her doctor or her local pharmacist. She didn’t want to bother them. That is what made me join the table. Someone as quiet and unassuming as I am, so I got a chance to see myself through someone else. I am going to love this bed & breakfast business.

We tried to do what we could to help. I was worried she would get sick in my home and then what – but that didn’t happen.

Everyone around the table had some remedy they put forth to help her bridge the gap until she returned home. What a conversation.

The best suggestion came from a neighbor who came over to join us for breakfast. He said he used Milk Thistle Seed about twice a year for about 30 days each time. He took two Milk Thistle Seed capsules after dinner in the evenings and it made him “pee like a fire hose”. Well, that broke the ice and when I stopped turning red, it was quite a time.

The next best suggestion was organic parsley. So I put parsley on everything at breakfast – the scrambled eggs; I mashed parsley against a cup to bruise the leaves and filled the cup with water so she could have parsley tea. She got the idea and went into the kitchen several times over the next few days and made parsley tea on her own.

Someone else suggested that old stand-by that I’ve always heard about – garlic. Except in the Bettina Network it would have to be organic garlic – I learn fast.

I didn’t know what to do about that. One can’t put garlic in scrambled eggs – or freshly baked bread – or muffins – or cinnamon buns – so I made the cheese spread that has been going around the Bettina Network as a great snack to give people when they arrive. I believe it came from a golf club in Georgia with changes made by several of us. I made it with three whole garlic bulbs. The cheese in the spread, no doubt, counteracted any affect the garlic would have had, but it was enjoyed by all.”

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Posted in Bettina's Cookbook, Breakfast Table Talk, Health | Comments Off on High Blood Pressure!

A Healthy Very Quick Breakfast

Sunday, August 14th, 2011

I want to share with you something we have started doing in the morning for breakfast when we have a guest who doesn’t have time for a sit-down meal, wants something healthy to keep him/her going during the day and is concerned about keeping healthy and ‘regular’ during their time away from home.

I will call this – the Bettina Smoothie:

For three glass of smoothie we put the following into a blender – if you follow the order we give, you will find the blender works without your having to go in and stir the ingredients while blending.

one glass goats milk kefir (raw and organic, if possible – if not, as close as you can come)
notice we don’t use cow’s milk here and we use kefir instead of ordinary milk. That is our probiotic and guests really appreciate the difference.

2 organic bananas – if you are making only one or two glasses, then use one organic banana instead of 2.
The other ingredients don’t change for one or two glasses. Actually, we don’t know how to make one glass because someone always shows up for the second glass and its easier to have it ready than to make another. they seem to sense the blender going and will have a Bettina Smoothie and then sit down to a full course breakfast.

one package organic frozen fruit – ie blueberries – blackberries – strawberries – pineapple. Use whatever frozen organic fruit you have or the guest particularly likes. We have a couple guests who have to be at meetings by 7am. They have come often enough to expect the smoothie and put in their request for the fruit they feel like eating the night before.

A little organic maple syrup, or organic turbinado sugar. Use sparingly because you only want a tiny taste.

Pour into elegant, crystal stem glasses and serve with linen or brocade napkins, for that “Bettina” touch.

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Robert’s Blueberry Muffins

Thursday, August 4th, 2011

We have had several requests for Robert’s Blueberry Muffins – which are admittedly exceptional.

He has not been in the frame of mind to give out his recipe. He experimented with lots of different combinations and finally came to the conclusion that it is not the recipe, but the ingredients which make the difference and then went about using just an ordinary muffin recipe. Everytime he makes them we get rave reviews on the “Guest Questionnaire” which we send out to guests who have visited one of the Bettina homes.

He is giving up this recipe with the proviso that when you use it you have to give him credit and give the muffins the title of “Robert’s Blueberry Muffins”.

A creation of the Rev. Dr. Robert Bennett – or so he claims:

   “ROBERT’S BLUEBERRY MUFFINS”

All of the ingredients for these muffins must be organic and not simply ‘organic’, but the best organic ingredients you can find. Be especially careful of ingredients called organic from those large, large stores which are now hopping on the organic bandwagon and selling organic products about which I am a bit suspicious.

1/2 cup organic turbinado sugar (sugar that has been processed only once.)

1/3 cup organic butter or organic, virgin, expeller processed coconut oil (this is a new ‘shortening’ I have started to use because my wife gave me heck for turning my nose up at it and using butter exclusively. I find it makes lighter muffins and gives them a little different taste that no one can quite pick out. This is one of the secrets of these muffins.)

1 egg – organic from chickens that run around in the fresh air and sunshine and are only given organic feed

1/2 cup milk. Preferably raw organic milk. If you can’t find this, then milk which is unhomogenized, and/or unpasteurized. If not, then use organic milk as unprocessed as you can find it.

1 1/2 cups organic flour. Make sure the organic flour is also stone ground.

2 teaspoons organic baking powder.

1/2 teaspoon himalayan salt. A very pure kind of salt and the only kind I am allowed to use at home. I would love to tell you why, but I don’t know.

1/4 teaspoon soda. This was a secret because we had abolished using soda. I used to keep this specially wrapped and hidden away, but the secret is now out.

1 cup organically grown blueberries. Put the blueberries in a small bowl with flour and mix them around with a large spoon until they are coated with flour. This helps to keep the blueberries from all sinking to the bottom of the batter. It took quite a long time for me to figure this one out.

Grated rind of one lemon and a little extra turbinado sugar to mix together and sprinkle on top of each muffin before you bake them.

Mix dry ingredients together with a wire whisk until the flour looks lighter and has incorporated lots of air. .

In a separate bowl, beat egg with a wire whisk until it has lightened and incorporated lots of air then add the rest of the ‘wet’ ingredients. The idea is to incorporate as much air as possible into these wet and dry ingredients because the batter is mixed very little once you put these two together.

Add dry ingredients alternately with wet ingredients. Lightly mix – don’t try to get out all the lumps and especially don’t overmix. Fold in floured blueberries. Pour into a greased muffin tin and sprinkle grated lemon rind and sugar on top of each muffin. Bake at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes.

If you want more than this yields, double or triple the recipe.”

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Use Those Fruit Skins After Breakfast!

Saturday, January 22nd, 2011

We discovered an elegant way to use the skins from the fruit we have for breakfast. Sometimes we serve oranges – different kinds – having taken off the skins and separating them into segments, putting the segments on the plate as beautifully as possible. Normally, we put the skins in the compost after breakfast, but this day, we julienned the skins, put them in one cup water and one cup organic turbinado sugar and let them cook until the temperature reached 240 degrees. What a great discovery! Oh, before I forget – we put the water and sugar in a pot with the fruit rind or skins and didn’t stir – we didn’t touch it, we just let it do its thing until it reached the proper temperature.

When the mixture reached about 220 to 240 degrees, we took the skins out of the syrup, put them in a pan of organic turbinado sugar and mixed them around until the skins were well coated. We took them out of the sugar, put them on a plate laying them out very carefully and let them sit overnight. The next morning the skins had hardened on the outside, were soft on the inside – not too soft, but sill recognizable as oranges – and enjoyed them on a little of everything. They were great to add a lovely touch to dessert dishes. We also put them out, in a cut glass candy dish, for snacks. We served bread pudding and decorated each plate with a few candied orange peels.

We took the syrup left from boiling the orange skins and used it to make Bettina’s Marshmaples – only without maple syrup in the dish we are going to have to rename those ‘sort of’ marshmallows.

This was a great find. Not only did we now have a use for something we would have – not thrown away, but composted – we had also found a way to add a lovely touch to breakfast and other meals with snacks inbetwen.

Onward and upward. We have been looking for ways to use the left over ginger root after we boil it to make ginger tea. What better use than this? After all, candied ginger costs quite a bit at the store and it is usually neither organic nor made with a really good sugar. So we put the Corning glass pot back on the stove, added one cup of water and one cup organic turbinado sugar and dropped in the sliced ginger, which had just been used to make ginger tea.

After about 15 – 20 minutes, the syrup reached 240 degrees and we took out the ginger root. We used the leftover syrup to make Marshmaples and they were also sensational. Marshmallows that taste like ginger. The orange rinds produced Marshmaples which taste like oranges. We have discovered something really great and alleviated the kitchen of leftovers that would be thrown out or composted. The flavor of the Marshmaples are real – not produced by using synthetic flavorings.

And we have found a way to use what would have been left-overs. As days move along, we hope to have lots of the candied fruit rind to offer guests and visitors as idle snacks to be eaten while talking, reading or just looking for something to ease that food craving and our dishes will begin to take on another look as we decorate with candied fruit peels.

P. S. We searched our cookbooks for recipes for this candied peel and found one major difference between their recipes and ours. All the recipes we found suggested you first ‘blanche’ the rind – in other words put the rind in cold water, bring the water to a boil, let them in the boiling water about a minute. Some went so far as to suggest you do this two or three times before candying the rind. A couple recipes suggested you bring water to a boil, put in the rind for about a minute before using them the way we did. We disagree. We didn’t know about blanching so we didn’t. We have tried making candied fruit rind the cookbook way and it tastes like a medium of some kind was used to produce another way to eat sugar. And in each recipe you had to add flavoring to the water and sugar to get the rinds to taste again. We just put the rind in the water and they came out full of flavor and had flavored the syrup so we could use it for other things. I can see using the syrup as a flavoring for a lot of different dishes.

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Time to Get Back to Work

Saturday, January 15th, 2011

Well, 2011 is well on its way to becoming 2012 and before that happens it is time for us to get back to work.

We have a few emails from our bed & breakfast guests who read Bettina’s Blog.

Let’s start the New Year with a great suggestion for baking.

“I was in the kitchen one morning when my host family was making breakfast. They baked a wonderful sour cream breakfast cake. I would love to have the recipe.

Although the cake was really good they had a hard time getting it out of the cake pan. It eventually came out, but not as pretty as they had hoped. I gave them a suggestion, which I decided to also send to the blog. It is one which has served me well over many years – and I never have and never will use that spray stuff you see being put into baking pans on the cooking shows.

When I start to bake a cake, the first thing I do is oil the pan with organic butter and put it in the refrigerator until I have finished with the cake batter and it is ready to be poured into the pan. I have never had a problem getting my cakes out of the pan. Once out of the oven, let the cake cool about five minutes (no longer) and then put a plate over the cake pan invert it and the cake will come right out of the pan.”

Ed. Note: We tried this several times and it worked beautifully. Needless to say we passed this suggestion on to the bed & breakfast host family who was mentioned as having a hard time getting their cake out of the pan.

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A Great Web Site for Those Who Cook!

Tuesday, November 16th, 2010

Passed around over breakfast was the web site www.ChefTalk.com.

We checked it out and it is great!!!! It claims to be “a food lover’s link to professional chefs and indeed it is.

Ask your questions and get many answers in record time. There is a section of articles. A Forum. Reviews and more. My first greeting from the site was an article on “DeConstructing Turkey Gravy.” The title made the article too tempting to skip over.

I have been threatening to make sausage and don’t have a clue. All the sausage I know about comes in some animals gut and is wrapped in plastic. I redeem myself by buying only the sausages labeled “organic”, but I still don’t feel good about the purchases so the series of back and forth question and answer on this site is really excellent for someone with very little knowledge. The site graduates from the rank beginner to the professional chef. It was nice being in such diverse company.

There are the serious/funny question and answers – like the most recent on saffron started by someone who knew nothing about saffron, but was questioning which was the very best. Whoever this was wanted to cook with saffron, but didn’t know how it tasted, how to use it in anything, but was going for the top of the line. I couldn’t help but be amused to think a cook someplace was going to start trial and error with saffron which costs – probably more than gold, instead of experimenting first and improving the ingredient when experience took over.

You won’t regret taking a look at this web site – if you enjoy cooking, talking about cooking, looking at pictures about cooking from a place which is a substantial learning center.

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A NEW BREAKFAST HABIT – FRESH COFFEE

Wednesday, October 20th, 2010

The Bettina Network, inc.
copyright 2010

We have started a new tradition, thanks to a guest, from Oxford in England, who makes Espresso for himself every morning with a popcorn popper and good, green espresso coffee beans.

It was a fascinating conversation to realize something which I had dismissed as complicated, time-consuming, etc. is being done on a regular, daily basis by a young bed & breakfast guest who has lots of other things to do – a busy life, research, moving his career forward, etc. We tried to get him to write for Bettina’s Blog, but in spite of much begging and pleading, he resisted. Maybe in the future he will relent and write a blog about his morning coffee ritual.

We will have to report this third hand. As you try it, please give us feed back to help us and you refine the process.

The guest referred us to a web site – www.sweetmarias.com. We went all over the site and learned much, which we are trying to put into practice.

First, we had to find the right popcorn popper – mainly because the coffee roasters we found are way up in the hundreds of dollars and only last, according to what we’ve read, about two years. So the popcorn popper is our beginning. Who would have thought you could have really fresh coffee made with beans roasted in a popcorn popper. But who knows, if we become really good at this we can spin off a Bettina coffee roasting company. You can have your coffee beans shipped overnight mail so you can have really fresh coffee in the morning – Bettina style. I suspect some Bettina host families might put up a fuss if we started to require all homes have fresh coffee in the mornings, but stranger things have happened.

I learned, right before the guest left, that the popcorn popper we had would not work. His advice was to get one with holes in the sides of the well where one would normally put the un-popped corn. The hot-air popcorn popper we have has a screen over the hole in the bottom of the well, but no holes in the sides of the well. The holes in the side are needed to keep the coffee beans rotating. They won’t roast and pop out of the popper the way corn does – they will crack and the outer shells coming off the beans as they crack, will fly out of the popcorn popper the way the corn does. For lack of a more professional word – I call that flying stuff ‘shaft’.

We found the right kind at a second hand store for about $3.50. So off we went with our green coffee beans. We had no idea about quality in coffee beans, but since this was a trial, it didn’t matter.

The beans went into the hot air popcorn popper, plugged it in, put a glass bowl where one normally puts one to catch the popped corn which comes out of the popper and out came ‘shaft’ – after the first crack.

Oh, I forgot the cracks! One must wait, while the beans roast, with an incredible smell filling the house until you hear the beans ‘crack’. After this first ‘crack’ the ‘shaft’ – or what I think is the outside covering of the coffee bean – will come out of the popper since it is light and the hot air just blows it into the glass bowl. The directions from our guest says wait until almost the second crack and your beans are done. I had no idea when the second crack would come to be able to anticipate and take the beans out of the popper at that point so I waited a minute or two after the first crack and took out the beans.

The next direction was to make sure you cool the beans by using two pans and pouring the beans from one to the other until the beans cool down or they will continue to roast as long as there is heat and you have lost control of the roasting process.

I stood in the kitchen, pouring the beans from one sifter to the other thinking I had really lost it in my search for perfect breakfast foods and had I gone too far this time? There are perfectly good organic coffees – ground and whole beans, which I could grind – on the market. What was I doing messing up the kitchen and destroying this popcorn popper trying to do what? I didn’t even know if I had good beans or not.

After cooling, I continued to follow the guests directions and let the coffee beans sit overnight. I’m not sure why, but I follow directions pretty good. I don’t deviate until I have tried the prescribed directions and they don’t work and then – all bets are off.

This morning, I am sitting in my office having the best cup of coffee I have ever had in life. Its like the difference in quality between buying a bag of popcorn which was popped probably a month ago, packaged and stored in a too hot warehouse and popping the corn in your kitchen in a kettle popper, eating it fresh and hot out of the popper.

The coffee is incredible. Remarkable!

Now – I am going to try again. This time after reading a bit about coffee beans, learning something about differences in quality of the beans and refining my roasting and grinding technique. I might even buy a coffee grinder, instead of using the grinder we use for nuts to grind the coffee beans.

Growing up, my great-grandmother made her coffee from green beans every morning. She had a wood burning stove in the kitchen and once that stove was fired up, she roasted coffee beans and had a coffee grinder screwed to the wall – a glass jar contraption – and into that grinder she put her coffee beans and had really fresh coffee daily. It was normal! That was just a part of her morning ritual!!! No one considered that strange or special or anything, that was just how you made coffee.

How far we have come from such basics. – Today we have ‘decaf’ coffee which, if you spill on the flame it lets out an incredible stench and the smell of burning ‘decaf’ coffee grounds is a horrible, horrible odor. It always amazes me when guests ask for ‘decaf’. I wonder if they know the process and if they have ever spilled any of their ‘decaf’ coffee grounds on the stove in the flame or electric element.

All the ways we have coffee. Is it because we’ve lost touch with simply roasting your beans, grinding them and making your coffee in a small french press? That is an exquisite way to start your day.

This is going to be quite special, discovering different coffee beans, filling the house with the smell of freshly roasting coffee beans. The one consistency, which ties back to everything else – ALL THE BEANS WE EXPLORE WILL HAVE TO BE ORGANICALLY GROWN! I’m sure you’ve guessed that.

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Breakfast Apples

Thursday, October 14th, 2010

One of the Bettina Host families has finally sent us her recipe for the apples which are a trademark of her breakfasts. Every morning, you can count on geting these apples, no matter what else she serves.

We loved them from first taste. They are not stewed apples, which break down to a kind of mush and are nice with certain dishes. These apples pretty much keep their shape and taste fantastic.

They are quick and easy to make if you have the right equipment and what you need is a very good apple corer and a VERY sharp knife for slicing.

“I use organic Granny Smith apples for this dish and buy them by the box. Needless to say a box barely lasts a week.

I wash the apples carefully because I use the peel. It gives a nice semi-caramel taste and texture to these apples. With organic apples I don’t have to worry about strange and awful stuff on the outside because that isn’t allowed, but I still wash them with great care.

Core the apples with an apple corer.

Slice the apples with a very sharp knife. The width of the apples depends upon your taste. Experiment! When you came to stay with us I was slicing the apples about an inch thick, now I slice about half an inch and I like that better.

Put a generous amount of butter in a flat, iron skillet. The skillet probably has another name, but I don’t know what it is. The flat skillet with a little lip around the side is perfect for these apples. The lip catches any butter that strays.

Once the butter starts to bubble, but long before it browns, put apples in the butter and let them fry for just a minute. Turn them and fry on the other side.

Sprinkle the apples with a generous amount of organic turbinado sugar (I read the blog and changed from what used to look like sugar to me and now looks like white death, to this wonderful coarse brown-in-color sugar). Some people think I fry them in brown sugar, but the organic turbinado sugar is different. Most brown sugar (see I do research too) is white sugar with some molasses – which was originally taken out of the sugar – put back.

Once you’ve sprinkled them with organic turbinado sugar, let them fry about another minute on both sides and take them out with a spatula. The ‘no-no’ with this dish is to avoid the temptation of frying the apples too long. A very quick fry on both sides is all you need – this is not apple mush, but fried apple rings and apples will mush very quickly. This is the step which makes the difference between my apples and everybody else’s. (Wow, I’ve been around you too long, my ego is shooting to the moon).

If you need more you can continue to fry the apples in the same skillet adding more butter and sugar as you go along. The last batch is usally the best and I save that for me while I am cleaning the kitchen. Enjoy and stop hassling me for recipes and articles for the blog. You now have my most treasured recipe.

It takes time to really get these right. I made them for weeks before I got the hang of frying them in butter so that the apples would come out in whole slices and look really gorgeous on the plate. Don’t give up, just keep trying and one morning it will click.”

ed. note: I hope our readers’ appreciate all the guff I take to bring them the best from bed & breakfast host families and guests.

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I tried Bettina’s Coconut Cake

Wednesday, August 11th, 2010

THIS WAS SENT TO US BY A VERY LOYAL GUEST. SOMEONE WHO HAS USED THE BETTINA NETWORK FOR OVER 10 YEARS. WE ARE DELIGHTED SHE IS NOW FOLLOWING US ON BETTINA’s BLOG.

The cake was stupendous. I had requests for cakes from everyone I know. That’s not a good thing because I am not a bakery and am so busy I don’t know how I found the time to bake the Bettina’s Coconut Cake.

I learned a little when making this cake that I would like to share with you. The greatness of this cake, for me, is the icing. I have been trying to make a good butter cream icing and haven’t been able to get it right. This recipe did it for me.

I used one cup organic turbinado sugar in a Corning glass saucepan with one cup water. I heated this until it reached 240 degrees – following your directions. When it got close, I put three egg whites into a mixer and let it go until the egg whites were stiff. I then poured the hot simple syrup into the egg whites and let it beat until it looked like the marshmallows I tried from your recipes. That was great. Then I added three sticks of organic lightly salted butter – (I used Organic Valley), putting in one small pat at a time. After about 15 minutes of letting the mixer beat at almost high speed I had the best butter cream icing I have ever tasted. I worried when I started about how much butter I would use and didn’t want to use a couple pounds which other recipes call for. I decided the number of sticks of butter I would use would equal the number of egg whites. I have no logic for that decision, it just popped in my head because I didn’t want to spend any more money on this cake. A huge investment in butter seemed a waste.

I was a bit worried because when I saw the icing look like liquid again I was panic stricken, but kept my ground because I didn’t want to use anymore butter.

The texture and taste of this butter cream is unbelievable. When put on the 1-2-3-4 cake the combination was shameful it was so good. The cake lasted about an hour. Oh! I also put powdered organic vanilla powder – one teaspoon – in the icing. You recommended that several blogs ago and I experimented with it because I don’t particularly like the vanilla extract which seems to be held together by alcohol.

I am going to use your cake recipe for every cake I make. It beats those boxed cakes and doesn’t take that much more time to make, especially compared to the difference in the results. One can forget how good a cake made from scratch can taste and how easy it is to make.

I love the way the organic coconut milk adds something to the cake that you can’t quite put your finger on and we all now know that Coconut Milk, etc. is exceptionally healthy. I’ve thrown out my cooking oils and cook exclusively with Organic Virgin Coconut Oil. The smell and taste it adds is great.

Thanks! Keep those recipe’s coming. I will probably lose my job if I spend anymore time in the kitchen, but the results would be worth it. Your recipe’s are dynamite. Of course, then you would have to give me a job working in your test kitchen – if you have one. Something you are doing is turning out these great dishes.

A VERY LOYAL GUEST AND BLOG READER. (PLEASE DON’T USE MY NAME).

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Searching for Goats MILK!

Thursday, July 8th, 2010

We are searching for Organic Whole Raw Goats Milk Kefir! If we can’t find the Organic Whole Raw Goats Milk Kefir – if you know of a source for Organic Whole Raw Goats Milk let us know that to – we will make our own Kefir.

We have received lots of mail about one of our bed & breakfast home’s morning Smoothie Drink which is available to their bed and breakfast guests as an addition to or instead of the regular breakfasts they prepare. We would like to make the recipe and information available on the Blog, but sources for the Goats Milk are impossible to find – except in the most hidden places. What country is this? A democracy? Or has our open government been replaced with a dictatorship when we weren’t looking?

Don’t know why those foods that are best for us are the hardest to find? Are we being marketed and programmed into sickness and problem health issues?

The smoothie made with Organic Raw Goats’ Milk Kefir is getting rave reviews from some of our guests. One guest credits it with getting rid of his “pot belly” which he cultivated by drinking beer and which exercise did nothing to flatten.

The recipe:

Put the following in a blender –
1 cup organic raw whole goat’s milk kefir
Add a frozen packet of your favorite organic fruit – blackberries, pinneapple, cherries, strawberries, etc.
Add one organic banana – very ripe
Add organic maple syrup to taste

If you like your smoothie very cold and a little like a soft ice cream add about 4 ice cubes
If you prefer your smoothie more liquid, don’t add the ice cubes and you will get a wonderful thick drink.

Blend for several minutes – depending upon how you want the outcome – experiment until you get your favorite consistency.

We’ve started trying it, but can’t get the proper milk. We are using organic whole milk pasteurized cows milk kefir. Its still good, but not as healthy, nor does it give the kind of results the organic raw whole goat’s milk kefir is giving and we are jealous of the results and frustrated in this search.

At least we can find the organic whole milk – Lifeway is the only label we’ve found selling the organic whole cow’s milk kefir.

I am sure you all know the difference between the whole milk and low fat. We are discovering claims that low fat is what is producing the osteoporosis epidemic. All the research we’ve done and the breakfast discussions we’ve been made aware of talk about the difference and the false bill of goods, particularly women, have been sold thinking low fat milk products will help them control their weight and provide their needed calcium, etc.

Apparently, milk fat and milk protein have to be present in the body at the exact same time and the only way that can happen is if your milk is “whole”. All the unnatural things that are being done to milk is amazing. What ever happened to good, plain, clean milk straight from the animal without all the expensive equipment now needed to produce a bottle of milk to sell to consumers. It certainly has limited who can go into the dairy business and produce the end product – And, especially – who receives the real profit from milk. It looks as though that will not be the farmer with the dairy animals producing the milk. That is only the first step – after which those who make the real profit on milk step in, collect milk from many dairy farmers and up the price beyond anything any dairy farmer could hope to make.

There have been some hot breakfast table discussions about milk lately. We buy organic milk, but hadn’t thought much beyond that. We now have been pushed to look at a lot more and think carefully about this whole topic. There is even a bit of controversy over kefir. Are there 10 or 12 probiotics in Kefir or are there 36 and are we being short changed even in that area?

Bed and breakfast opens doors we didn’t even realize were doors and throws open windows we couldn’t see through. What a startling new view through those windows with the painted glass panes. This milk business is certainly an area that has us dizzy. And it all started with smoothies for breakfast.

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Red Tea – Po Er

Thursday, May 27th, 2010

We had a magnificent tea, made and served at breakfast by a bed & breakfast guest. It was an incredible experience and we wanted to share it with you. The guests carry the makings for this tea in a special box wherever they travel. The tea itself looked like a sheet of dark green paper and they cut the tip of the square of this ‘tea sheet’ and it made a huge pot of tea. So much for our tea bags, which make one cup.

INGREDIENTS:

5 Chrysanthemums (they used dried)

5 rose buds (also dried, but you could use fresh flowers if they have not been sprayed, etc.)

Tibetan red flower (small amount – they used two pieces)

Ling chi (mushroom chopped in pieces)

Tea (red, green, black, white – any kind)

Pour hot water over all and let this sit for 15 minutes

Add milk – honey – and drink.

Enjoy this unusual treat.

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Grits, Shrimp and Greens

Tuesday, May 25th, 2010

We combined two recipe’s from two different guests who told us one way they make grits. Both are from the deep south – one from Mississippi, one from Tennessee. We think, in this combination, we have found an outstanding way to make grits.

INGREDIENTS

2 cups organic yellow grits (we prefer Arrowhead Mills)

1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper – I would not add salt to this. Save your himalayan salt for
guests to add according to their tastes.

6 cups chicken broth, vegetable broth or any kind of broth you make and keep for cooking or
some of the soup you keep in the refrigerator and add to periodically.

Collard greens, spinach or any other kind of chopped greens.

One nice-sized organic yellow onion, chopped fine.

2 1/2 cups Parmesan Reggiano Cheese – nothing else tastes quite the same

One recipe calls for 1 cup cooked bacon. One recipe calls for a couple cups of raw chopped
shrimp. We would give you another alternative – wild caught raw bay scallops. If you feel
particularly flushed with money a really spectacular grits dish would combine all three –
bacon, shrimp and scallops.

PROCESS

Put cream and broth or cream and milk (which can be substituted for broth), in a glass pot and bring it to a boil. Add grits while whirling the milk with a wire whisk so you avoid lumps.

Put greens and chopped onion in the broth/milk/grits and stir the liquids from time to time.

Add cayenne pepper, cheese, raw shrimp and whatever else you decide to put in the grits.
Constantly stir to keep from getting lumps until you are happy the grits is on its way to cooking nicely on its own.

Pour into a greased baking dish and sprinkle with the bacon (if you decided to use bacon), and extra cheese to make the top nicely browned and bubbly.

Bake for about 30 minutes at 350 degrees.

We owe a huge thank you to Marilee and Sherry. They haven’t met, but their grits recipes have combined to make a superb breakfast dish.

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Creole Grits – for Sami

Saturday, April 17th, 2010

Most of my young life, growing up in New Orleans, grits was a daily breakfast staple. If my grandmother didn’t make grits for me for breakfast – no matter what else she made – I would ‘pout’ until she produced grits. My favorite breakfast in those days was grits and liver. My neighbor used to tease me because he could hear me through the window in the morning calling downstairs for my ‘drits and liba, Mama’ when I was just learning to talk.

It is amazing how things change as we grow-up. Today I can’t stand to eat liver. When I think of my grandmother’s lovingly prepared calf’s liver I remember the conversations about who had the best calf’s liver, how old the calf should be -not too old or the liver would be tough with that strange taste, how long to let it cook (You didn’t want well done liver) etc. I could not hold that conversation today without getting a little sick to my stomach. I often wonder if my turning away from liver was a function of growing up or of the society changing around me having an affect on my eating likes and dislikes.

Grits, however, has remained a favorite and not just any kind of grits – Creole grits. I look down my nose at anyone who prepares grits according to the recipe on the box and tries to serve it to people for them to actually eat. It seems such a sacrilege to a great food.

The amounts below will feed about four or five people, with some left over for later to fry in butter or reheat. You need to get to know, for yourself, the amounts you want to use for the number of people you are feeding. Cooking is not slavishly following someone else’s discoveries, but taking the general idea someone else follows, making it your own. The pre=prepared pre-processed food companies have spent billions on marketing to make cooking seem like some mysterious process, which is known and can be successfully practiced only by the professionals in the food processing company’s commercial kitchens – ergo you have to buy their prepared foods. Because you couldn’t possibly make your own – cost too much, takes too much time, you don’t know how to make these complicated dishes. Many of us have bought that story-line. I am still amazed at the number of people I meet who think baking bread from scratch is a really difficult and time consuming process – it is definitely not. With a little planning, baking bread fits into the busiest lives. In reality, cooking is easy and much of it quick. Spending hours slaving over a hot stove to make a meal is an advertising guru’s creation, not a reality.

Back to Creole Grits:

1 cup organic yellow stone ground grits

(I prefer Arrowhead Mills grits. We try to stick to Arrowhead Mills products with flour and other grains, because we discovered the only place in the U. S. which does not have DDT residue in the ground is in the area around Arkansas where Arrowhead Mills products are grown. Robert says it is because the farmers were too poor to afford the pesticides which were so popular in the 1950’s and ’60s and which were going to save the world from starvation. Well, we know that didn’t happen – instead they’ve caused the world much grief. So today, those farmers and their descendants are rewarded by being able to charge a premium for their organic products because they are the only place one can get truly organically grown grains.)

4 cups water
1 organic onion – vary the kind you use when you make this dish
3 stalks organic celery
1 large organic green pepper
1 teaspoon himalayan salt – or sea salt if you haven’t changed over yet
cayenne pepper to taste
3 kinds of your favorite cheeses – we use parmesan reggiano, jack cheese and cheddar. We use Stonyfield Farms’ organic raw milk cheeses as much as possible because they are made with raw un-homogenized, un-pasteurized milk and they do not use rennet or other synthetic things to rush the cheese-making process and cut corners.

Put water in a glass corning pot and set the pot on the stove over a medium to low flame. Use a steel wire whisk to start the water swirling around and while you swirl the water slowly add the grits. You do this to keep the grits from clumping.

Let this mixture cook a few minutes, stirring it and keeping a close eye on the pot because you don’t want it to either burn or clump so stirring is essential. While keeping an eye on the pot and stirring the grits, chop the vegetables or put them in a food processor to chop pretty fine – unless you like to see the vegetables in this dish. In that case, chop the vegetables to whichever size makes you happiest.

Because we make this for bed and breakfast guests, we process the vegetables almost to a sauce. Not everyone enjoys the different textures produced when you chop the vegies. You will notice we do not fry the vegies in butter or oil before putting them into this dish. That is an unnecessary evil and produces a very different taste, which I don’t like.

Add the vegetables to the grits and continue stirring. I think putting the vegetables into the grits without pre-cooking them gives added nutrition to this dish and eliminates the oil that would come from adding the vegies after frying them in oil or butter.

When the grits look almost, but not quite done, add about 2/3 the cheese (two cups of cheese is great, but that is my taste, you might want to add more or less depending upon your taste buds.) We grate the cheese before adding to this dish. The only difference chopping the cheese into pieces instead of grating makes – it takes longer for the cheese to melt and takes you a longer time stirring the dish to incorporate the cheese. So you either spend your time grating, or you spend it stirring.

Stir the pot until the cheese is well mixed into the grits.

If this is the pot in which you want to serve the grits, sprinkle the remaining cheese on top of this dish (which would be about 1/3 the amount you started with), put a cover on the pot and put the pot in a 350 degree oven for about 1/2 hour. If you do not want to bring this pot to the table, transfer the grits to your serving pot – which should be oven-proof – sprinkle the cheese on top, cover this pot and let the grits cook for the requisite 1/2 hour. The amount of time you let the grits cook depends upon how long it takes for the cheese on the top to melt and form a nice added taste and another texture. The top will look like melted cheese with a light brown color with oil, which has come out of the cheese, on top.

This is great for breakfast, lunch or dinner. It is especially good served with broiled wild-caught (not farm raised) fish – halibut, cod, etc. If you don’t obsess over fried foods you might also serve this with cat-fish, covered with corn meal and fried in butter.

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Old Fashioned Tea Cookies

Monday, April 12th, 2010

1 cup organic butter
1 cup organic turbinado sugar
2 large eggs
2 1/2 cups organic whole wheat stone ground pastry flour
2 generous teaspoons baking powder
1 generous teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 cup organic milk (more or less)

These are wonderful cookie/cakes which go unbelievably well with tea. They remind us of freshly baked vanilla wafers, before the recipe for vanilla wafers was changed and fixed up so they could sit on the grocery shelf for a year or more without going rancid. These cake/cookies are delicate, light, cake-like with a wonderful taste whether warm out of the oven or at room temperature.

Put butter in your electric mixer and beat a few minutes until it becomes creamy. Add sugar, a little at a time, beating until the combination is creamy and light. Add eggs and beat a few minutes to blend the mixture.

Mix flour, baking power and cinnamon in a bowl using a spoon to lift up the flour and pour it back into the bowl – letting lots of air into this dry mixture.

Add half the flour mix to the electric mixer, which is now turned to low, add the milk and the remaining flour while mixing the cookie dough. Be careful to mix only to combine the ingredients, don’t mix too much because you will get a tough cookie.

Put the cookie dough into the refrigerator for an hour or more. This is a cookie dough you can keep in the refrigerator, taking a bit out as you are ready to have freshly baked cookies.

Butter a baking pan by making circles with the butter where you are going to put a cookie.

Using a teaspoon, take up a spoon full of the mixture, roll it into a ball in your hand and put the ball where you have made a circle on the baking pan.

Bake at 350 degrees for 13-15 minutes. When you take these out of the oven, immediately release the cookies from the baking pan using a spatula to lift them from the pan. Put the cookies back in their place on the baking pan to cool a few minutes. When cool enough not to stick together or to stick to the plate in which you are going to put them, transfer the cookies to a serving plate. Take the cookies you would like off the plate before you serve them because they won’t last – it is hard to eat only four or five and impossible to eat only one.

4/16/2010 an email from a blog reader follows
Thanks for the tea cookies recipe. They are wonderful – they taste like fresh vanilla wafers. The ones you buy at the store in various boxes from different manufacturers are hard and stale. We are so used to them we have collectively forgotten why vanilla wafers were so popular.

I put a pecan into the top of the cookies before I baked them and it made a world of difference. The taste was barely modified with the pecan, but they looked much more elegant. I am sure other things pushed gently into the top of these cookies before they bake would also be great – depending upon the taste of the baker. Keep those recipe’s coming. I love being a part of the Bettina Network’s bed & breakfast community even though I only travel once or twice a year I read your blog religiously.

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A Great and Healthy Cookie

Thursday, April 1st, 2010

I have been experimenting with cookies and wanted to share the recipe and the process that came out of those experiments.

The cookie is fantastic. If you have just a little will power you can eat and enjoy only one. If you have no will power, the cookies are gone before they cool and you are left with a heavy stomach-ache because these are heavy cookies meant to be enjoyed one at a time.

Ingredients:
2 cups organic stoneground whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking power
1 teaspoon salt – we use himalayan salt, some people use sea salt, try for the purest and most organic salt you can find
1 heaping teaspoon cinnamon
1 and 1/2 sticks organic butter
2/3 cup organic peanut butter
2 and 1/2 cups organic turbinado sugar
2 large organic eggs
1 cup – or to your taste – organic dark chocolate chips
the same amount of roasted organic peanuts
1 teaspoon or 1 tablespoon or to your taste organic vanilla oil

I made these cookies without baking powder and they were almost rock hard. You had to really work at eating them. I tried them with baking soda and they were still rock hard. I sort of knew you add baking soda when baking with sour milk products, but I didn’t know why or what happened if you added it to other baking times and now I know. It was only when I added baking powder did I get great cookies.

I always wondered why add baking powder and I now have my answer. When adding baking soda or nothing, the cookies came out of the oven and they were great – soft, but not too soft, etc. When they cooled, however, they also hardened – really hardened – late night stand-up comic jokes hardened. When I added baking powder, they cooled and stayed nice.

There are many stories about cookies made for dunking in coffee and now I know why. They are cookies where the baker forgot to put in the baking powder, or picked up the wrong box and added baking soda without thinking.

I found a recipe for baking powder, but haven’t had the guts to try it. It is 2 parts cream of tartar to 1 part baking soda. Anyone out there try this? Any feedback you want to give the cowards among us? With real experience from a friend I might take the plunge. When your grandmother dies, your experience corner is gone and you have to rely on your own hard-won experiences. My grandmother has been dead for quite a few years so i’ve had to rely on my own experimenting, except where friends came forward to share. Make peace with your family before the silence falls – you miss a lot after that happens – the stories, but mostly the life experience. You can either get it from those older than you in your family or you can reinvent the wheel over and over and over again. Why in your family, you ask? Because you share the same culture, tastes, history, DNA. We don’t want to recognize that and try to move on to – ‘my friends are my family’, but it is not true. Your family is your family.

You know, after all these years, and thousands of breakfast conversations I am beginning to understand why so many people have such negative feelings about their families. Mostly, they are trying to change class and culture and family is like a bright red blinking neon sign which makes that more difficult. Either they show up and ‘out you’, or your newly acquired way of speaking, eating, thinking, living are put in jeopardy because family comes along with the old ways and you have to struggle to maintain your new higher status. What a stunner! I guess you all knew that already. Reject your class, race, culture, history, DNA and you are forever conflicted and have heavy conflicts with those who knew you when. AH! Truth telling in a cookie recipe, but then when you reach my age you can take all kind of liberties.

Now – preheat your oven to about 325-350 degrees.
Put the butter in an electric mixer with the paddle attachment and mix on almost high speed until it begins to lighten in color and texture. Add sugar and continue to mix while the two blend and become sort of like whipped cream. Then add the peanut butter and mix until all are combined.

In a separate bowl put in flour, baking powder, ground cinnamon and mix with a large spoon, picking up a spoonful of the flour mixture and pouring it back into the bowl over and over again to let a lot of air get into the mix. I don’t believe in sifting. You have to do that with non-organic white flour to get the pesticides and the little lumps out before using it – you know, the tiny little lumps in the flour and the black flecks which are the remains of the bugs which were killed in the flour by the pesticides when the flour was in the Silos – where it got an infestation of bugs – which were killed off with the pesticides, left in the flour, with the pesticide residue, to deteriorate and are now the little black specks and little white flour covered lumps you have to sift out before using. Since you are using stone-ground organic whole wheat flour you don’t have to worry about that.

Back to your mixer – once the sugar and peanut butter have been added – crack your organic eggs and add them to the mixer one at a time. Don’t mix too much after adding the eggs.

Gradually add the flour mixture, turn your mixer to low and mix only until the flour is incorporated into the cookie dough. Add the chocolate chips, peanuts and vanilla, again mixing only until they are well distributed. This is the crunch time for baking – too much mixing and you get a tough product – so be careful at this point.

Refrigerate the dough until it is firm – or until you are ready for freshly baked cookies. You can bake these all at once, or you can bake them as you want freshly baked cookies. The dough will last in the refrigerator a couple days. Impress your friends, bake cookies after they have arrived in just a little over ten minutes – the time it takes to make tea and put together a pretty serving tray to gossip over.

We use them for afternoon tea. They are substantial enough to bridge the gap from lunch to dinner without eating too many. The problem is, whenever I eat them I don’t want tea I want hot chocolate. The two go together like peanut butter and jelly, or rice and gravy.

To bake you can have either small bite-sized cookies or larger ones. For small cookies, take a teaspoonful of dough, roll it in your hands to make a ball and put it on a greased baking sheet. The size of the dough you take out of the bowl and roll is dependent upon the size of cookie you want as a final product. They will spread a little when baking, but not much.

These are very rich cookies so you don’t want to make them too large, most people won’t be able to eat a large cookie and they will waste your hard work and hard-earned money by eating a piece and leaving the rest.

Bake these about 12-13 minutes. Don’t bake them much longer than that or the bottoms will burn. They will be soft to the touch when you take them out of the oven and look as though they are not thoroughly baked. Ignore that – they are – these are tricky little cookies. To get a really good final product the baking time is the most crucial stage for these cookies.

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A Change to Your Lemon Tea Bread Recipe

Wednesday, March 31st, 2010

by: A former guest

I tried your Lemon Tea Bread recipe several times and love it. The problem has been, it is a little dry for my taste so I added 1/2cup heavy cream – organic, of course and it was perfect for my taste. Others may have the same problem so I decided to share my change with you.

I also have a question. How do I find heavy cream which is organic, but not super-pasteurized? I have looked all over with no luck. The only kind I can find will last in the refrigerator for almost 3 months, but I want fresh, organic heavy cream which only lasts days because it hasn’t been super treated.

Thanks,

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An Update on Bread Baking – Bettina Style

Thursday, March 4th, 2010

We are unbelievably delighted with our bread baking. Finally, after many years, we have mastered the art of freshly baked bread every morning without getting up at 3am. We mastered this art not in the process of trying to accomplish what we thought was an unattainable feat, but in the process of trying to make great organic croissants.

Our latest breakfast experiment is organic croissants. So far, it has not been successful, but on our way to croissants, we’ve discovered other wonderful bread treats.

We are only willing to use organic stone ground whole wheat flour and everything else has to be real, whole, organic food. We’ve been given many “secrets” to a successful croissant, but they all have made us question even eating croissants. We’ve heard about using everything from a ‘starter,’ to very expensive kitchen equipment. The healthiest suggestion was a Yogurt starter, but when we read the ingredients we couldn’t pronounce some so we dropped that possibility. When we checked out the kitchen equipment there was aluminum in crucial places, so we will continue the effort without those suggestions – and you know we won’t give up.

Our ‘accidental discoveries’ on the way to a successful, organic, whole wheat croissant have been exciting and exceptionally delicious. Our latest discovery is a wonderful bun which can be used for hamburgers; a breakfast biscuit of any shape you desire; a wrap for ‘pigs in the blanket’ or beef hotdogs for those who won’t eat pork; cinnamon buns, which are a little bit of heaven; the best monkey bread you can find and more. Our ‘new’ dough discovery has many applications, however, if you want a great slice of very tasty, nutritious, substantial bread, the original Bettina Bread recipe can’t be beat – especially if you use organic apple juice for the liquid and molasses for a little sweetener.

As we experimented trying to make croissants we mixed half organic whole wheat flour with half organic whole wheat pastry flour. In addition we used one stick of organic butter for the fat in the Bettina Bread recipe. We used organic apple juice for liquid and organic maple syrup for a sweetener. Once we’ve been through the first steps of making bread and have reached the point where the dough is mixed and ready for its first rising, we roll out the bread dough with a rolling pin, cut a stick of organic butter into pats and put them on 1/2 the rolled out dough. We folded 1/2 dough without butter over the 1/2 dough with butter and continued to fold the dough in halves until it reached a small packet. We then rolled that out with a rolling pin – refolded the dough – rolled it out again, refolded it again and wrapped it tightly with a clean cotton towel and put the resulting packet in the refrigerator. We did this in the middle of the day. So at night, before bed, we re-rolled the dough, folded it into a small square packet again, covered it and put it in the refrigerator. If we were up to it we would re-roll and re-fold the dough a couple time before wrapping and putting it in the refrigerator. We found that the dough rises, even in the refrigerator, so it was always pushing hard against its cotton cover. Some people use Saran Wrap for this, but we weren’t happy with that.

The next morning, we unwrapped the dough and cut off the amount of dough we wanted to use for breakfast rolls, rolled out the remainder with the rolling pin, folded it into a small square and put it back into the refrigerator.

Keeping this going – we re-rolled the dough at night before going to bed and the next morning, took off the piece we wanted to use for breakfast rolls, re-rolled the rest, covered it, put it in the refrigerator, etc. You get the picture. There is always dough in the refrigerator if you would like freshly baked bread, pizza, etc. with very little work and time spent. It would take anywhere from 1/2 hour to 2 hours for the dough to rise and that didn’t depend upon the dough, but upon our time once we shaped the dough into its final form. If we didn’t have much time, 1/2 hour gave us a beautifully risen sheet of breakfast biscuits which took about 15-20 minutes to bake. If we were busy and didn’t get back to the rising dough for an hour or more it was still in great shape.

We did find that organic yeast was the best to use if we didn’t want bread dough which would smell like ammonia if we let it rise too long. The other stuff we had to watch carefully or we would have to throw out the half-made bread and start over again. One day we will try keeping the dough going using some of the old dough to serve as the rising agent for the dough being newly made, but that’s another year and another blog. We are feeling good about all of this bread baking, but not that good!

As we saw that we would run out of dough the next morning, we started another recipe of dough so it would continue being available. We used the dough for three mornings before we ran out so we don’t know what would happen to the dough if you kept it in the refrigerator longer than that.

The pizza we made from the dough adding tomatoes, parmesan cheese and whatever else we had in the refrigerator which fit, was unbelievably fantastic! It was so good a couple bed and breakfast guests who saw us make the pizza the night before and tasted it, requested pizza for lunch and came home from their all-day business meeting to eat pizza. That isn’t something we normally do or encourage, but we loved every minute of preparing that pizza and enjoying lunch with guests.

That’s our story! Let us know what happens if you try this, or some of your experiences making croissants. We are seeking information to make great organic croissants with whole wheat flour. We clearly don’t know how to do that!

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Elegant S’mores for Breakfast!

Sunday, January 31st, 2010

It is a little decadent to have dessert for breakfast, but we rationalize it by advising you to go for a long walk after breakfast to use up all that extra food energy.

You will need:

Organic Graham Crackers
Bettina’s Marshmaples (recipe under ‘Bettina’s Cookbook’)
Bettina’s chocolate sauce

Bettina’s Chocolate Sauce
Make this sauce immediately before serving because it becomes less liquid and more solid the longer it sits and cools. A cooled sauce will not pour over the Marshmaples.

To make the sauce you will need:
organic semi-sweet chocolate chips (the amount depends upon the number of s’mores you’re making.)
organic heavy cream – enough to cover the organic chocolate chips.

Melt the chocolate chips in the top of a double boiler
pour in the heavy cream, once the chips have melted and stir.
If you would like to add flavor, organic oils in vanilla, almond, etc. will do nicely

Once the sauce is ready, use a very beautiful dessert plate (A saucer larger than a cup saucer)
Put an organic graham cracker on the saucer
Cut the Bettina Marshmaples to fit the graham cracker – with a scissors, dull knife, etc.
pour the chocolate sauce over the Marshmaples so it drips down the sides
Serve to lots of ooohs and aaahs and exclamations of joy!

These are best assembled and served one at a time so you can spoon Bettina’s Chocolate Sauce from the pot while it is still over the double boiler!

We keep a glass dish of Marshmaples in the refrigerator because there are so many things you can do with them. We keep them in one piece and only cut as we need Bettina’s Marshmaples for different dishes – or as someone would like one to go with their ginger or tulsi tea – or even at night with hot chocolate!

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A Change to Bettina’s Coconut Cake

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

I made the Coconut Cake and it was just as great as I had hoped it would be. I did a few things a little different and wanted to share that with you.

For the icing, I used whole eggs instead of just the egg whites. I hate to waste and I knew I woulnd’t be up to making Bettina’s Chocolate Pudding or anything else after I finished this cake. I put four whole (organic free range) eggs in the mixer. I bought the Cuisinart stand mixer when you wrote that blog on your thoughts about mixers. I let the mixer beat for about 15 minutes. That is how long it took for the eggs to become fluffy the way I wanted them to.

In the meantime, I put the sugar and water on to boil. I used 1 1/2 cups sugar and 1 1/2 cups water instead of the 1 cup sugar and 1 cup water in your recipe because I wanted lots of icing.

When the water and sugar reached the 240 degree stage I started to pour it, very slowly, into the eggs while letting the mixer keep going.

When I finished that, I started to put into the mixer the butter. I cut the butter into small pats and threw each pat into the mixer letting it mix for a few seconds. Altogether I used three sticks of butter.

I also put in about 1/3 cup organic virgin coconut oil – which was hardened since that is its natural state. I got the idea to do that from your suggestion of using coconut milk in the cake. If you use coconut milk in the cake, why not coconut oil in the icing. It is the consistency of butter, whips up into a very light confection like butter and sure enough, it worked.

I let the mixer beat the icing until it turned into a light buttery like creation. At the end, before stopping the mixer I put in the vanilla oil you suggested in another recipe – the organic oil, you remember? That was the ultimate.

I did not put shredded coconut on my cake, I put the icing on as it was. The coconut milk and oil carried the day and gave the taste so I didn’t need the shredded stuff.

It was unbelievably good. Thanks for the recipe. In case you don’t remember me, I am the one who asked for the recipe and I appreciate your putting it on the blog.

Enjoy this change – it is nice to have more than one way to do something.

A loyal guest!
Thanks for not using my name. We are all paranoid these days.

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Archive for the ‘Bettina’s Cookbook’ Category

Bettina’s Banana Bread

High Blood Pressure!

A Healthy Very Quick Breakfast

Robert’s Blueberry Muffins

Use Those Fruit Skins After Breakfast!

Time to Get Back to Work

A Great Web Site for Those Who Cook!

A NEW BREAKFAST HABIT – FRESH COFFEE

Breakfast Apples

I tried Bettina’s Coconut Cake

Searching for Goats MILK!

Red Tea – Po Er

Grits, Shrimp and Greens

Creole Grits – for Sami

Old Fashioned Tea Cookies

A Great and Healthy Cookie

A Change to Your Lemon Tea Bread Recipe

An Update on Bread Baking – Bettina Style

Elegant S’mores for Breakfast!

A Change to Bettina’s Coconut Cake

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