A Holiday Tradition and A Christmas Miracle

My Dad's family is Swedish. Well, really my grandpa was Swedish and he liked to coerce everyone into believing that we were all 100% from the Swed-land. Despite being English, my grandma played the part of a Swedish homemaker quite well. This included the making of the traditional meals and sweets.

When my grandmother died, I took it upon myself to take her recipe (and her famous yellow bread bowl) to recreate my favorite sweet each year for my family. I mean black labs. I mean I eat it all myself, don't judge it's tradition.

I'm not going to give you the recipe because it's a family secret. Really it's not, I'm just too lazy to go and get it right now. So just behold my photos and try and figure out the recipe yourself from the pics, it's a fun game!

Swedish Coffee Bread:

So, start with these ingredients. It requires many bowls. In one there are some eggs, in the second there 

is some rapid rise yeast yeasting away and in the third there is some scalded milk (whatever that means) and a lot of butter. 

Then mix up the dry stuff, you know, flour and sugar and the like. 

This is the secret ingredient. Mmmm cardamom, smell the Swedish culture. 

Mix it all together in your grandmothers yellow bowl. Yes, this is a key ingredient. 

Flour a bread board and knead dough. This is the most fun part. Caution, flour your hands

or they will stick. 

Put kneaded dough back in greased bowl. 

Cover with towel and let sit until it rises to double its size. 

Voila!

Split into three pieces, and then those into three pieces and make little rolls for braiding. 

Braid into loaves with love.

Bake and then brush with butter. 

When cool, drizzle with powder sugar/milk mixture and decorate with cherries. I'm pretty sure that's how they did it back in the old country. 

Don't worry, I didn't eat all three loaves myself. I gifted two. Nothing says Merry Christmas like fresh bread baked with love. 

I worked on the 23rd and the 24th and when I got home on Christmas Eve a Christmas Miracle happened! My mom! She drove all the way from Chicago to spend Christmas at my house while I worked. I love her so much. We had a great time. The best Christmas gift ever. 

Happy New Years Eve! I will be breaking my tradition of going to bed at 9pm in order to feast with family. And I'm also planning on winning the power ball. A few hours of lost sleep is worth a million bucks. 

Glorious Zucchini

I love baking. It's so much easier to bake then to cook real food. If I had it my way I'd eat baked goods for every meal. Unfortunately my metabolism can't keep up with my sweet tooth. So when Kaylene pawned off a few zucchini on me, (who doesn't like zucchini??) I decided to transform it into "healthy sweets" that won't leave me feeling guilty.

Behold. Glorious Zucchini Bread in perfectly shaped loaves. 

It tastes like cake people. Cake chock full of vegetable healthiness. 

And Zucchini brownies!! Even chocolate can be healthy :) Who would have though a lanky green veggie could be so delectable?

Recipes as follows:

Zucchini Bread

2 eggs                                                  1 tsp. baking soda

1 cup vegetable oil                               1 tsp. salt

2 cups sugar                                        1 tsp. cinnamon

2 cups grated zucchini                         nuts and raisins if you like

3 cups flour                                          1 tsp. vanilla

Beat eggs until light and frothy.  Add oil, sugar, squash and vanilla.  Mix well and add the dry ingredients, nuts, and raisins.    Don't over mix.  Pour into 2 large loaf pans and bake at 350 for  about 1 hour or until done.  Bake time depends on size of pan.      

Zucchini Brownies: (courtesy of Elaine Weber)

4 eggs

1 1/2 cup oil

2 cup sugar

2 cup flour

2 tsp baking soda

2 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp salt

4 tbsp cocoa

1 tsp vanilla

3 cup shredded zucchini

1 cup chopped nuts, walnuts or pecans

Preheat oven to 350.  Combine eggs, oil and sugar.  In a separate bowl, sift together flour, soda, cinnamon, salt and cocoa.  Slowly add flour mixture to sugar mixture.  Finally, add vanilla , zucchini and nuts to batter.  After mixing thoroughly, spread onto a 15 x 10 inch jelly roll pan or large sheet cake pan.  Bake in oven for 30 minutes or until center is set.