The Cake That Started It All...

We buried my grandmother today. She passed away Monday afternoon at age 95. As we were at the funeral home, everyone talked about what a great cook she was. At one point, it seemed the whole family was in the funeral home's kitchen, snacking and talking. My cousin Marcia said, "Isn't this exactly how Mommy (that's what her side of the family called my grandmother, whom we called Emmy) would have wanted it? You couldn't walk in the house without being offered a plate of food!" She was exactly right. Food was a big part of Emmy's life, and it was the way she showed love.
My sister and I went to Emmy and Pa's house every Monday and Friday afternoon after school, and we spent most Saturday mornings with them as well. Emmy was the person who "infected" me with the baking bug. All of my vivid memories of her involve cooking, canning, and baking. She even had a fully equipped kitchen in her basement, in addition to her main kitchen upstairs! We spent many hours in both of those kitchens, but I was always most interested in baking with her.
She always made lots of pies...your traditional apple and cherry pies, but also things like gooseberry pie and rhubarb pie. I always got the scraps and loved to cut shapes, sprinkle them with cinnamon sugar, and bake my own little snacks. She always encouraged my love of the "domestic arts," my favorite of which was cooking. Anytime I ever asked to cook or bake, she was ready to help. One day while at her house, I baked a cake "all by myself," which meant that I was under her watchful eye and had plenty of help with measuring and cutting! It was called a "Doctor Bird Cake," which I think is similar to what a lot of people call a Hummingbird Cake. I decided that there would be no more fitting way to honor Emmy's memory than to make that same cake tonight.
It's incredibly simple to make. My recipe, which came directly from Emmy, states in large, capitalized letters "DO NOT USE MIXER!" So I didn't. But I wonder if that has more to do with simply not wanting to clean up the mess that an 8-year old might make with a hand mixer than the texture of the completed cake! The whole cake is made in one bowl, and you need nothing more than a wooden spoon. The ingredients are simple (and fattening!), and the result is delicious.

This cake is full of bananas, pineapple, pecans, and cinnamon. It's topped with a simple cream cheese frosting. The next time I make it, I might increase the cinnamon and maybe add some nutmeg, but tonight, I made it just like Emmy taught me.

Doctor Bird Cake

Emma Bickers

3 cups flour, sifted

2 cups sugar

1 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. cinnamon

1 tsp. salt

1 1/2 cups cooking oil (I used canola)

1 cup crushed pineapple in juice (undrained)

3 eggs

2 cups diced banana

1 1/2 tsp. vanilla

DO NOT USE MIXER! Preheat oven to 350 degrees Sift all dry ingredients into large bowl. Add banana, oil, vanilla, eggs, and crushed pineapple (juice and all). Mix until just blended. Do not beat. Pour batter into a greased and floured tube pan. Bake for 1 hour and 20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Set aside to cool on cooling rack. After 10 minutes, turn cake out onto cooling rack to finish cooling.

For Frosting:

3 oz. cream cheese, softened

1/4 cup butter, melted

2 cups confectioner's sugar

Beat cream cheese on medium. Add melted butter and confectioner's sugar. Beat until light and fluffy. Frost only the top of the completely cooled cake.

Thrifty Thursday!

Behold...the banana! In my opinion, nature's perfect fruit. Perfectly portable for a nutritious snack. Loads of potassium, to prevent those pesky leg cramps! A low GI food...perfect for diabetics. And you know those boxes of 100-calorie snacks you can get at the grocery...those little packages of tiny cookies that are really just enough to make you mad, not satisfy a craving? Who needs those, when you've got a banana?! See those bananas up there? Each one of them is just about 100 calories. And you can take it wherever you go! Heck, I tote one to work with me on most days!

I bet you're trying to figure out where I'm going with this. First, bananas are pretty thrifty in and of themselves. You can buy them all day, every day for 50-something cents a pound, and lots of times even cheaper than that! Second, they're really versatile...there's lots you can do with a banana. You can just eat a banana plain for a snack. But there's not much better than a banana slathered in peanut butter. You can slice it on top of your cereal to help get in those 5-9 servings of fruits and veggies you need to stay healthy! Make banana pudding! Slice one and put it in a fruit salad! Take good Jell-O and ruin it by floating banans in it! But here's the best thing of all...wait until they go WAAAAAAAAAY ripe (like almost black), and make the best quick bread in the world...Banana Bread! I'm going to confess something right now that I'm not proud of. I used to throw away over-ripe bananas. You see, David (who is a pickier eater than me, though neither of us is picky at all), won't eat bananas. So I buy a bunch of bananas and always have 2 or 3 that I haven't eaten by the time they reach that point where they're really not fit to eat. And I used to throw them away. What was wrong with me? I don't know what caused it, but one day I had an ephiphany! Freeze the blasted things so you'll always have them ready for banana bread! DUH! So here you go...the thriftiest part of my Thrifty Thursday post:
Now, I'm always ready for banana bread! Or banana pancakes! The possibilities are endless! Since my ephiphany, I've even been known to purposely buy those "Bargain Bananas" at Kroger that are 30 cents a pound (they had some today, but I resisted temptation), because they're in that in-between stage...not good enough to eat plain, but not rotten, either. I buy 'em up, bring 'em home, give 'em a good mash, shove 'em in a bag, and freeze 'em! YUM!

Earl's Birthday Banana Cream Pie

Earl is my super-awesome father-in-law, and his birthday was April 10. I offered to make him a pie for his birthday, but his sister-in-law had already baked him a cake, so we were forced to continue the celebration today! I started my Banana Cream Pie adventure last night at about 8:30...pretty late to start making pastry cream (I thought), but it went together like a dream!

First, I got all my ingredients together and ready to go:

After I boiled my milk, I poured it into the rest of the ingredients for pastry cream and whisked away:

Everyone said that the pastry cream would thicken up really quick, and they weren't kidding! It smelled divine...almost like Christmas, which was kind of weird since it's April and 70-some degrees outside, but divine nonetheless. This pastry cream process (plus making my pie dough) left me with a huge mess to clean up at about 9pm, but I got it done.

This morning, I rolled out my pie dough, let it chill for a bit, then baked it off so it would be ready for pie assembly:

Isn't it pretty? I was pretty impressed. I am now a convert to using Dorie's pie crust. And this pie crust has even gotten shortening reinstated at my mother-in-law's house. Earl told her she could buy some, as long as she uses it to make pie crust. (It's only 2 1/2 tablespoons, after all. But I didn't tell them how much butter. And yes, Earl, it's REAL butter. Land O'Lakes Butter...because it was on sale!)

Right before heading over to Earl and Shirley's house this afternoon, I made the whipped cream topping and assembled the pie. Didn't it turn out nice?Earl was ready to dig in! (See the big red scrape on the side of his cheek? Shirley ran him into a hedgeapple tree while they were out on the 4-wheeler. His side of the story: We were in a wide-open field, then all of a sudden she runs me into a hedgeapple tree! Her side of the story: He should have been more alert! At any rate, it's a little funny. He prefers to be addressed as "Scarface" now, rather than Earl.)

Here's David's big '0l slice of the pie:

The four of us really put the hurt on the banana cream pie this afternoon, but we needed our strength to go pick up limbs that were down all over the farm. As Earl says, "Picking up limbs is BORING."

I think I'm pretty much caught up with the Tuesday's With Dorie group now. This was the pie I was supposed to make when I made the Devil's Food White-Out cake for my Mom instead. For the recipe, you can go to Amy's blog: Sing For Your Supper. I still owe Earl my recipe for chicken salad...I'll get that up tomorrow!