Thanks for the great recipes! We planted heirloom zucchini seeds this year and they are coming in strong. We will have tons in no time. I so glad to be able to add some recipes to bag of tricks. I have a great recipe for zucchini bread. I have tried many zucchini bread recipes in the past and this is the very best bread! It is very moist. I'm sure you will love it! Zucchini Bread 1 c zucchini 3/4 c nuts (optional) 1 c any dried fruit (optional) 1 1/4 c flour 3/4 c sugar 1 tsp baking powder 1 tsp salt 1/2 tsp baking soda 1/2 tsp cinnamon 1/2 tsp nutmeg 2 eggs 1/2 c melted butter 1/2 c vanilla yogurt 1 tsp vanilla 1 tsp citrus zest Pre heat oven to 350â¢. Grate zucchini, dry and set aside in small bowl. Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, baking soda, cinnamon and nutmeg in large bowl and set aside. In medium bowl whisk eggs, melted butter, yogurt, vanilla and zest. Fold into bowl of dry ingredients. Mix well. Add zucchini, nuts and dried fruit. Place in prepared 9X5 pan. This recipe can be easily double. Enjoy! ~Tina~

Made the Southern Living Bananas Foster Upside Down Cake and it was wonderful - and it looked just like the picture! I thought the bananas were a bit too soft; mine were just getting a few brown spots. I think it would work better if the bananas had just turned yellow. Bananas Foster Upside-Down Cake One quick flip and this cake tumbles from the skillet perfectly golden and party ready. Bananas Foster Upside-Down Cake Photo by: Photo: Jennifer Davick; Styling: Lydia Degaris Pursell YIELD: Makes 8 servings HANDS-ON:20 Minutes TOTAL:1 Hour, 18 Minutes COURSE: Desserts, Cakes/Frostings Ingredients 1/2 cup chopped pecans (We used walnuts) 1/2 cup butter, softened and divided 1 cup firmly packed light brown sugar 2 tablespoons rum 2 ripe bananas 3/4 cup granulated sugar 2 large eggs 3/4 cup milk 1/2 cup sour cream 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 2 cups all-purpose baking mix 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon Preparation 1. Preheat oven to 350�. Bake pecans in a single layer 8 to 10 minutes or until toasted and fragrant, stirring once. 2. Melt 1/4 cup butter in a lightly greased 10-inch cast-iron skillet or 9-inch round cake pan (with sides that are at least 2 inches high) over low heat. Remove from heat; stir in brown sugar and rum. 3. Cut bananas diagonally into 1/4-inch-thick slices; arrange in concentric circles over brown sugar mixture. Sprinkle pecans over bananas. 4. Beat granulated sugar and remaining 1/4 cup butter at medium speed with an electric mixer until blended. Add eggs, 1 at a time, beating just until blended after each addition. Add milk and next 2 ingredients; beat just until blended. Beat in baking mix and cinnamon until blended. (Batter will be slightly lumpy.) Pour batter over mixture in skillet. Place skillet on a foil-lined jelly-roll pan. 5. Bake at 350� for 40 to 45 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool in skillet on a wire rack 10 minutes. Run a knife around edge to loosen. Invert onto a serving plate, spooning any topping in skillet over cake. Southern Living NOVEMBER 2011

I've thought about using one of those bread maching mixes but haven't yet...I'll have to look for this one and give it a try. I let the machine do the work and bake in the oven. As far as mixes go.....I like the Jiffy Corn Muffin mix and I always have a box of brownie mix in the cabinet. Love Ann's, Sherry's, and Marilyn's recipes but sometimes the box mix works just fine and they are really pretty good. Great when the kids want to make something on the fly. I'll say the same for cake mixes too. The one I've yet to duplicate with homemade is the Vanilla White Cake from a box. I just love it...the same goes for the white wedding cake that is served at most weddings I've been too. If you have a good recipe for that, please share it with me! I'm not sure if Bisquick is considered a mix or not??? It is a staple in my pantry supplies. Hey, if it is a baked item...sweet to boot... I'm there!! David

"You, Grainlady, may actually create a new recipe out of your head, but, don't you think it may already exist somewhere?" Yes and no..... As the old saying goes, "there is no new thing under the sun" but...... If you study food science and food history, you'll find baker's ratios have been well established throughout the ages, and they have evolved as new foods, methods, and machinery were developed, and that's what I use to develop recipes. Bread made before hard winter wheat was developed, as well as methods for milling it (in the mid 1870's), was made with soft wheat and was entirely different, and the method for making it was completely different. Naturally-leavened breads are made differently than breads made with baker's yeast, which was developed during WWII and revolutionized bread making, but it's all "bread" made with common ingredients and some common ratios. There have been well established "rules" for making bread, then in 1945 out came a booklet entitled "Bake the No-Knead Way" Ann Pillsbury's Amazing Discovery, and you could save up to 1/2 your baking time. Next came "Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day", with another revolutionizing method. But you still get "bread". Those were methods and recipes they developed. There is a proportion we maintain between ingredients for most baked goods and they are well established and easily found and followed. Biscuit recipes are fairly standard, but there are all kinds of recipes for biscuits because a few ingredients have been altered, and new add-ins make them "new and improved", but it's still a biscuit. We know that there are ingredients that are tenderizers (fat and sugar) and ingredients that are structure builders (flour and eggs). A standard plain cake has, by measure, 1/3 as much fat as sugar; 2/3 as much milk as sugar; and about three times as much flour as liquid. The ratio worked for my grandmother who used a coffee or tea cup to measure the ingredients without a real recipe, or my mother who used a pint canning jar with a sketchy recipe handed down from her mother, or me with my fancy stainless steel measuring cups and exact measurements, but still using a similar ratio of ingredients that make a cake. But take Red Velvet Cake as an example. It's essentially a chocolate cake with a bottle of red food coloring added to it, whether that was by accident or intentionally. It's a cake using a common ratio of ingredients - with a new twist. Up until then there were plenty of chocolate cake recipes, but only one Red Velvet Cake - and now you will find many adaptations of it - and "Red Velvet" is turning up in all kinds of baked goods, not just cake. When you alter ingredients significantly from "normal standards", such as in the 37 Calorie Brownies, you have to find ways to use alternatives to meet your recipe goals. Sarah Phillips of "Baking 9-1-1" fame (great book and web site) made 100 versions of a low-fat white cake before she was happy with it. That's a cake recipe she developed - she didn't invent "cake". More science... When fat and sugar are reduced for the sake of calories, you will compromise the tenderness. Buttermilk and fat-free yogurt make good low-fat substitutes in recipes that aid tenderness and richness without fat. If you use chemical no-calorie, sugar-free substitutes or stevia, you've sacrificed tenderness and browning. The recipe for 37 Calorie Brownies is what it is....according to the person who developed it. Although it had little in common with brownies, other than the name, anyone who makes the recipe will probably find ways to alter the original recipe unless they like it just like it is. I made a low-carb version of Coconut Pecan Filling/Frosting (a recipe I developed) to top the recipe to make it "better" than just the plain recipe. I wasn't concerned with the number of calories, but I liked that it was wheat-free. In order to alter the 37 Calorie Brownie recipe to be more like traditional brownies, study what makes a brownie a brownie. Do you want it fudgy or cakey? What kind of mouth-feel, because this recipe is smooth and creamy and nothing like cake. Differences in cocoa powder and chocolate in a brownie recipe might be interesting (something America's Test Kitchen has explored, I'm sure). What would happen if you refrigerated the batter before baking it? Added nut flour (such as almond flour) or coconut flour to make it more cake-like? This is how you develop a recipe, and when it's finished, it has little in common with the original, if you make enough changes. Several years ago I developed cookie recipes for a local sorghum mill. The cookies and recipes were featured at a "Taste of Kansas Tour" at the mill. They are recipes I created myself, but they were based on common baker's formulas and common baking science. For convenience, I first developed a base recipe that would make nearly any kind or flavor of a cookie, then I altered it with add-ins and substitutes. If you find a Nutella White Sorghum Flour Cookie Recipe, it's probably mine. I've shared it on this message board many times. I've developed a multi-grain baking mix called "Good-For-You Baking Mix" and recipes to use it in, but I'm not the first person to come up with the idea - even Betty Crocker didn't develop Bisquick originally - a cook on a train developed it so he had a short-cut mixture with which to make biscuits quickly - as needed. I developed a multi-grain pancake mix one Christmas to add to food baskets at church, and we call it "Christmas Pancake Mix"- not the first, but the one using ingredients common in my pantry, like Morning Moo's Whey-Based Milk Substitute and grains I mill myself. My original recipe for a low-carb granola dubbed "Nutola" because there are more nuts than grain, and low-glycemic sweeteners, isn't the first granola recipe, just my version of one I developed. I've developed recipes 18-years ago using agave nectar (when it was nearly impossible to find), and even won $500 in a low-glycemic recipe contest using 2 of those recipe. At the time, my agave nectar sweetened recipes were the only ones I'd ever seen, but I used honey as a guideline for the recipes I developed. -Grainlady