Gracie's Strawberry Liquado

I made this with my niece Gracie.  She really enjoyed it, so I thought I'd share it here.

Ingredients:

• 15 fresh strawberries, stemmed and wiped clean
• 1/4 cup lowfat milk
• 2 tbsp sugar
• 15 ice cubes

Directions:

1. Put all ingredients into the blender.
2. Blend until slushy and smooth.
3. Pour into a glass, and then scarf it down.
4. Have a great breakfast!

Coolio's Strawberry Banana Muffins

I guess I was the last to know that Coolio isn't just a rapper-- he's actually a really good cook too!  Here's a recipe from his book, "Cookin With Coolio."  You can also watch his um, interesting cooking show here: Cookin' With Coolio.
These were made even better since I used fresh strawberries and bananas.  They were definitely a hit!

Ingredients:

• a few drops of olive oil
• 1/2 stick unsalted butter, melted
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1 large egg
• 1 3/4 cups flour
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 cup chopped strawberries
• 1 banana, thinly sliced

Directions:

1. Preheat your oven to 375 degrees F.
2. Grease your muffin tin with the olive oil.
3. Combine butter, milk, and egg in a small bowl and beat lightly.
4. In a larger bowl, combine flour, salt, baking powder, and sugar.
5. Toss in the chopped strawberries and bananas into the flour mixture and stir to coat.
6. Pour in the milk mixture and stir together.  Mixture will be thick!
7. Fill the muffin tins with your batter, then bake for 25 minutes (or until the tops of the muffins are slightly browned).
8. Cool for 10 minutes before removing from the muffin tin.
9. Turn on some Gangster's Paradise and devour those bad boys.

Thanks to Sweethome for the picture.

Banana Bread

My husband's family is made up exactly like The Brady Bunch... His family consisted of his dad and three sons.  Then his dad met his wife, who had two daughters... Okay, well, they're missing Jan, but still! Anyways, as a joke one Christmas, my hubby inherited a copy of Alice's Brady Bunch Cookbook.  This recipe comes from there.
It especially comes in handy when you were at the grocery store and thought you'd be healthy and buy some bananas---except you forgot that eating them was the important part.  So now you have a whole bunch of bananas that are getting a little mushy.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup butter, softened
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 4 eggs
• 4 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt
• 6 large bananas, mashed
• 2 tsp vanilla extract

Directions:

1. First, mash up your bananas.
2. In a separate, large bowl, cream together the butter an sugar until fluffy.  Add the eggs and beat well.
3. In another separate bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda and salt.  Add the dry ingredients to the creamed mixture and mix well.
4. Fold in the mashed bananas and vanilla.
5. Pour the batter evenly into 2 greased 9x5-inch loaf pans.
6. Bake at 350° F for 50 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
7. Cool for 10 minutes in the pans, then remove to racks.  Makes 2 loaves of banana-tasting goodness.

*Thanks to Kevin Week's Seriously Good for the picture. :)

Homemade Apple Fritters

I wish I could figure out where I got this recipe from (somewhere in the great beyond of the world wide web)...  I've had it in my cookbook for a while now, and finally decided to make it tonight.

They were so incredibly simple, I'm wondering why I didn't make these sooner.

Oh, and did I mention that they're delicious?

Ingredients

• 1 cup flour
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/3 cup milk
• 1 egg
• 1 cup chopped tart apples (granny smith works well)
• Vegetable oil

Glaze

• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 1 1/2 tbsp milk

Directions

1. Combine flour, sugar, salt, baking powder and cinnamon.
2. Stir in milk and egg until just combined.  Fold in chopped apple.
3. Pour oil into skillet so that it is approximately 1 1/2 inches deep.  Heat oil on high.  Oil is ready when dough floats on top.
4. Carefully add dough to oil in heaping teaspoons.*  Cook until brown, about 2 minutes, then flip.  Cook another 1-2 minutes, until both sides are browned.  Transfer briefly to paper towels to absorb excess oil, then transfer to cooling rack.
5. Make glaze by stirring milk and powdered sugar together in a small bowl.  Drizzle over apple fritters.  Wait approximately 3 minutes for glaze to harden, then flip fritters and drizzle glaze over the other side.  Best served warm, dunked in coffee.

*As tempting as it may sound, don't attempt to make these big.  You'll end up with crispy outsides and uncooked interior.  Just stick to a heaping teaspoon, and you'll end up with lovely donut hole-sized fritters.