I am avoiding the pie crust. It intimidates me. It reminds me of when I wanted to try Photoshop for the first time and kept putting it off. I'm sure that once the first crust is done, it will be fine, but until then... We did have pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving dessert, and I did use my 'box' recipe (I really have to come up with a name for my anonymous author. How about Sophie? That used to be an old-fashioned name, but it seems to be back in vogue. Hmmm. Have to think about it.) But I used the store-bought crust. Time that day was not on my side, and I think I need to be calm before I tackle crust. But the pumpkin filling was delicious, as always!
Then the plan was that we would bake this morning with my friend Anna who is visiting from Colorado. But she was running late and we had places to go in the afternoon, so the pie and crust recipes got moved to the back of the line and instead we made banana cake! For some reason, even though I haven't made lots of cakes, cake does not intimidate me. So when I suddenly realized that the recipe did not specify how much sugar to use - it's not even given in the list of ingredients and then suddenly she writes to mix 'eggs and sugar and soda together till creamy', leaving out when to add the butter altogether, I felt no panic at all. My meager cooking experience taught me that the butter goes in with the eggs, sugar and soda until creamy. For the sugar, I pulled out my cheat sheet in the form of the Better Homes cookbook. I had much more luck with cake instructions than with their doomsday measuring guidelines for pie crust! Based on their banana cake recipe, I decided that 2/3 cup of sugar would be perfect. Oh, and I also had to guess on the amount of flour to use. In fact, rather than continually try to explain it, here is the recipe exactly how it reads on the card in my box:
Banana Cake:
2 eggs
2 ripe bananas
1/2 cup butter
1/2 tsp soda, dissolved in a little water
1/2 cup nut meats
Flour enough as to thicken for batter
Beat the eggs, sugar and soda to a cream. Add the two bananas, which must be cut into very fine pieces. Then the nut meats and last, beat in the flour slowly. Bake in a moderate oven about 45 minutes.
Slightly cryptic instructions for the cooking impaired! But we filled in the blanks with great success this time, using just under one cup of flour, chopped walnuts for 'nut meats', the aforementioned 2/3 cup of sugar and cooking at 350 for just 30 minutes. (Oh, and using a round 9" cake pan - also not specified). Maya sliced the bananas into slivers that practically melted away in the batter and the results were amazing! So moist and yummy... I might have to revise my stance on cake!
