I have a confession to make: sometimes I fib a little in this blog. Not about anything drastic like results or how well I like a recipe, but occasionally I’ll fudge on exactly “when” I made a certain dish. If I flip through a cookbook and see stuff I’ve made in the past, or is so basic that naturally I’ve done it before, I rarely bother making it again just for the blog. There are only so many variations on whipped cream! I check the recipe off the list, and if I have anything to say, I’ll write it up as if it just happened. This time it was banana bread, which I have made dozens of times in my life. Like any good Joanna Gaines fan, I subscribe to her “Magnolia Journal” magazine. One of her early issues featured the exact same recipe for After School Banana Bread that later appeared in Magnolia Table. Keep in mind this was well before she even hinted that she was releasing a whole cookbook, and I baked it when it originally published. Had I known, I would have taken a picture, but I didn’t want to make it again just for a photo opp. 
Fast forward a few years, and here I am in the middle of a quarantine with only a handful of recipes left before I complete the project. Every time I passed the photo of this bread and saw the little checkmark by the title, I felt a twinge of guilt at my lie of omission to you, dear reader! When I finally say I made every recipe, I want to be able to declare, loud and proud, that I recorded an image of each one. Which brings me to today, when I walked into my kitchen and spied two blackened bananas on the verge of death, and several more that at least looked like they had lived a hard life.
I decided then and there that it was time to give the bread recipe another whirl. Boy am I glad I did! For one thing, there is no other use for decrepit bananas than bread of some sort, and I hate waste. For another, I am mostly home alone, so I ignored my Other Half’s irrational disdain for nuts in bread and added the pecans! I stuck to her recipe for the batter, but I was inspired when she said, “add as much sugar to the top as you want before baking.” Don’t mind if I do, Jo-Jo. But in addition to sugar, I incorporated a sprinkle of homemade gingerbread spice which was hanging out in the cupboard since last Christmas. If you’ve never tried banana nut bread with gingerbread spice you are missing out. On a practical note, she suggests baking this in an 8×8 pan instead of a traditional loaf pan. GENIUS. The result is perfectly baked bread with no gummy spots, no worrying if the outside is burning while the inside is raw, or praying it stays in one piece when you try to turn it out. (I’m talking to YOU, Lemon Poppy Seed Bread!)
Secret #2: I don’t think there’s a Lebanese bone in my body, and I wasn’t interested in trying to channel non-existent Middle Eastern roots when I made Jo’s Fatayar. I took major liberties with the directions, and won’t even apologize! I had NO CLUE what this was, and still don’t know how to pronounce it. All I knew was I had the bones of the meal in the pantry and fridge, but changes were gonna happen. I made this on a day when my Other Half and I had already done a ton of work on our basement remodel and yard cleanup. I was beyond caring about dinner, but also hungry, with thawed beef eyeballing me every time I opened the door. Frozen hash browns? Nope, but I had a load of potatoes growing roots, so into the food processor they went and BAM, just as good as frozen. Not as pretty though; luckily all that rusty, red oxidation rinses right off if you have to wait a few minutes before cooking the potato. Bagged cheddar shreds? Another no, but that’s why God invented cheese graters. Technically I could have shredded that in the food processor too, but hindsight is 20/20, and at the time I’d already dumped it in the sink. Here’s where I threw caution to the winds: Grands Biscuits. Jo’s recipe is adapted from her grandfather’s laborious version, and she included a lot of shortcuts to make it accessible to modern American cooks, such as refrigerated dough. I wasn’t about to make dough from scratch, but I had no biscuits. What I did have was a tube of crescent rolls, and a “what’s the worst that could happen” attitude that made me certain it could work. Turns out I was right! 
My “fake-ayar” continued to go down a different path when I got to the part about cutting 24 circles of dough and painstakingly filling each one with the beef/cheese/potato mixture, then forming a little “purse pinch” to hold it together. NOT TODAY, JO! I just Super-sized it, making two giant pouches. The meat inside was already cooked, so I wasn’t worried about giving us food poisoning. To accompany this Middle Eastern meat pie, naturally I chose… a down-home, Southern side dish. Look, I’m running low on options at this point! I hadn’t yet made Creamed Corn Spoonbread, and it cooked for roughly the same amount of time. Winner. This was a surprisingly delicious (if squishy) recipe! It called for two cans of corn (one regular, one creamed), sugar and salt, a couple eggs, sour cream, and a whole stick of melted butter. Holding this soggy mess together was a lone box of dry corn muffin mix, barely combined. Let me be clear: that is a TON of wet ingredients! Jo didn’t provide a picture of the completed recipe, so I wasn’t sure what “it will still look loose in the center” really meant. I was taking no chances however, and baked it an additional 10 minutes. It was still jiggly and spread across the plate, but really, really tasty! I suggest eating the whole pan in one sitting though; I didn’t love the reheated leftovers as much. 
Finally, I must confess that occasionally I fail HARD at a recipe that was going well at the outset! This happened to me last weekend when I was preparing what was supposed to be dessert for a post-quarantine get-together with another couple. There I was, so excited to finally SEE other people! To FEED them! Alas, catastrophe awaited. I’d forgotten to cancel my Royal Crest Dairy delivery several times, and was sitting on a stockpile of nearly four dozen eggs. The perfect time to try out Lemon Angel Food Cake, which requires a full dozen egg whites. It is for that very reason that I’ve only made non-boxed angel food cake twice in my life. That’s a lot of eggs, and then you have to use up the yolks! I see an InstantPot cheesecake in my near future… 
Things went swimmingly at the beginning, whipping up the egg whites with sugar, salt and cream of tartar. I added lemon zest and vanilla, but decided to spice things up a bit with ginger extract, since I did not have pure lemon extract. The flavor was glorious. The Other Half got to lick the beater, and wanted to know what kind of frosting I’d made. That’s when I realized that the first part of making angel food is essentially Seven-Minute Frosting; at least until I added the thrice-sifted cake flour/sugar dry ingredients. Who knew? I dug out my “unitasker” tubed cake pan that literally serves no purpose except making angel food cakes, and spread fluffy clouds of gingery, lemony batter into it. 
That is, after I performed an uncalled for, and ultimately disastrous, step. I sprayed the pan with cooking spray. Normally this is necessary!! I stand by my logic, and didn’t think for a second that just possibly, Jo had omitted that instruction on purpose. When I took my masterpiece out of the oven, it had puffed so high that it extended even above the posts on the pan meant to keep the surface of the cake off the cooling rack when inverted. Another option is sliding the tube onto a wine bottle, which allows super-floofy cakes the extra room they need. IN THEORY, I should have had to loosen the cake with a knife to remove it from the pan. Instead, this happened. There was nothing to do but laugh and come up with “Plan B” when the whole thing plopped out in a pile. That, and make my family eat this mess (which still tasted good) at our own Memorial Day BBQ! 
Have Book, Will Cook 