My Vulcanic Oven

What smells like roasted corn?

Umm, nothing dear!

It was a spur of the moment quick bread.  I didn’t note the size of pan required for the recipe, and I modified the original to include sour cream and a little olive oil since the last egg in the fridge mysteriously disappeared.  The roasted scent was from the globs of dough burning on the bottom of the oven.  More was on the way from the seething undersized loaf pan on the top rack.  A cookie sheet on the lower rack was pushed in as I grabbed the closest utensil to scrape the rapidly hardening expulsions.  My heart sunk, was the whole thing ruined?

I left the darn thing in the oven to finish baking, hoping my late night dessert would survive.  Every door and window was open in an attempt to evacuate the billows of smoke coming from the oven floor.   With all the commotion in the kitchen I was surprised no one came out to investigate!

Happily, the loaf finished baking.  It’s not the prettiest lemon poppy seed cake/loaf but it could be one of the tastiest.

 

I shared the first slice with Hubby.  And saved the rest for breakfast.

Lemon Poppy Seed Loaf

Adapted from The Great Holiday Baking Book by Beatrice Ojakangas

This original recipe was a cranberry nut quick bread.  I changed the flavour using lemon zest, juice, and poppy seeds.

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 cup butter, melted
• 4 lemons, zested and juiced
• 2/3 cup sour cream
• 1/3 cup oil
• 4 Tbsp poppy seeds

Mix the dry and wet ingredients separately, adding the poppy seeds to the wet bowl.  Make a well in the flour mixture and add the wet ingredients.  Mix by hand until the flour disappears and the batter is evenly moist.  It will look dry and clumpy, that’s OK!

Spoon the batter into two 5 x 4 inch loaf pans or into muffin tins.  Be sure that the pans or tins are half full or your oven will end up like mine.

Bake at 350ºF for about 50 – 60 minutes.

You might want a cookie sheet under that.  You can thank me later.

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Lemon Poppyseed Waffles

It’s Sunday morning.  The autumn sun has barely crept into the kitchen through the French door windows.  Both children are tugging at me in bed.  LEDs illuminate 8:07 on my alarm clock, which is not waking us up during the weekends. Nope, the hungry little ones, including the dog, are quite capable of replacing the clock all together!

Like pixies pulling at Wendy in the night, the children pinch my pajamas and tow forward.

What’s for breakfast Mom?  Waffles, we haven’t had waffles in a while.  That sounds good.

I start pulling out the ingredients from the pantry and have to move a jar of poppy seeds to get the baking powder.  I paused.  Mmmm… you know what would be really yummy right now?  Lemon Poppy seed cake, just like the one from the bake sale.  Baking a cake this early, and for probably just me, wasn’t going to happen.  Instead, I cleverly added the seeds and some lemon zest to half the waffle batter.  The result: Lemon Poppy seed Waffles!  And they soothed my early-morning-crankiness and sudden craving for cake.

Adapted from Better Homes & Garden’s Cookbook

• 1  3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 Tbsp baking powder
• 2 Tbsp poppy seeds
• 2-3 lemons, zested and juiced
• 1 tbsp vanilla
• 2 eggs
• 1 3/4 cup milk
• 1/2 cup butter, melted and cooled
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/4 tsp salt

Mix the flours, sugar, baking powder, salt, seeds, and lemon zest in a large bowl.  Beat the eggs and combine with the milk, vanilla, and butter.  Make a well in the flour and add the egg mixture, stir until combined and all the flour is mixed in.  Let the batter stand while the waffle iron heats up.  Use the appropriate amount of batter to fill the iron, mine can handle about 2/3 cup per round waffle.

Fancy option: lemon glaze.  Take the lemon juice and whisk it with confectioner’s sugar.  Keep adding sugar to get a consistency that you like.  Drizzle over warm waffles.

Busy Mom Tip ~ Freeze extra waffles and on weekday mornings pop one in the toaster for a quick breakfast!

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Let the clean up begin

Making a mess in the kitchen is much more fun than cleaning up afterwards. I left the house this morning, car loaded for the Austin Bakes for Bastrop bake sale and the kitchen was a disaster. I wasn’t expecting it to look any better when I returned. Hubby and Big Brother spent the better part of an hour cleaning up my mess and still didn’t manage to finish. Grateful for their efforts, I relieved them of their duties. Am I finished cleaning as I write this post? Nope! Closer but I couldn’t wait to try this lemon poppy seed mini cake with [very] lemony glaze.

Let's Bake! Lemon Poppy Seed Cake

This is so lemony and moist, it really held up to being outside until 2PM when we shut down the bake sale in Round Rock.

I might need to take a nap now.

Check out Austinbakes.wordpress.com for the update on Monday about the final amount raised for the wildfire relief fund in Central Texas!

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