A Banana Bread Recipe So Good, We Almost Missed Getting Pictures of the Second Loaf Before It Was Gone.

Sierra and I are happy to announce that we have our own website now. Thanks to all the support and encouragement from the community. The new site will allow us to have much more flexibility with our content. I hope you will join us at our new website www.cookwithsierra.com (Please feel free to follow this link to our new site)
There is something special about the smell of Banana Bread baking in the oven. We doubled this recipe and were glad we did because the Banana Bread didn’t last through the second day. Parents remember if you are cooking with your kids try to be patient baking can get messy.
	(Important: we doubled the recipe) Measure 4 cups of flour into your sifter.
	Sierra uses a butter knife to level off the flour.
	Sifting the flour helps loosen the flour up ensuring that there is no clumps of flour in the final product.
	After sifting the flour measure 4 cups out of the sifted flour into another bowl. If there is any flour left over put it back into the flour bag.
	Measure 2 tsp baking powder add it to the flour.
	Add ½ tsp salt to the flour.
	Add two sticks of butter to your stand mixer.
	Add 1 ½ cups of Brown Sugar to the butter.
	Cream Butter and Sugar together.
	Use Ripe Bananas. It’s worth the wait. Grocery stores typically put the riper bananas off to the side buying already ripened bananas helps. Putting the bananas into a closed brown paper bag on the counter will also help them ripen quicker. Watch them closely if you put the bananas into a brown paper bag. The bananas can spoil quickly if you are not paying attention.
	Crush the bananas. Your hands are a great tool for this job. Sierra loved this job. Go ahead and preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
	Measure 4 2/3 cups of smashed bananas into your mixing bowl. I think it took around 10 Bananas.
	Crack 4 eggs into a small bowl. (to avoid getting egg shells into the mixture)
	Pour the eggs into the banana mixture.
	Mix the banana mixture you don’t have to make it perfectly smooth its ok to have some banana chunks left over.
	Pour flour mixture into the banana mixture.
	Mix the batter slowly at first. Be careful not to dust your kitchen.
	Grease your bread pans.
	Pour the banana bread mixture into the bread pans. Grip the pan firmly with both hands shake back and forth to smooth the batter out in the pan.
	Take a moment to admire your work. Bake Banana Bread for 60 to 65 minutes insert a toothpick after 60 min if it comes out clean its done. Let Banana bread cool in pan for 10 minutes, then use a knife and gently slide it around the edges of the pan place bread on a wire rack to finish cooling. The Banana Bread was very good warm. Though, I liked the Banana bread even more after putting it in the refridgerator overnight.
	Some treasures are more valuable than gold. This picture reminds me of when I was in Pre School. When I was growing up I was hyperactive and my parents managed my hyperactivity by not allowing me to have sweets. So every day my class mates would have snack time and I was not allowed to have anything. One day my mom made a Carrot Cake for my class as it was my turn to share. The teacher asked me if I was planning on sharing the Carrot cake with the class. I said nope and dug in. When I got to my car I had saved a small piece of cake for my mom. She asked “how did your class like the cake?” I said “I was supposed to share?” She was so mad at me.
You can find the recipe here: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Banana-Banana-Bread/Detail.aspx (This link opens in a new window)

A Soft and Fluffy Pumpkin Cookie Recipe, Worth Sinking Your Teeth In To

Sierra and I are happy to announce that we have our own website now. Thanks to all the support and encouragement from the community. The new site will allow us to have much more flexibility with our content. I hope you will join us at our new website www.cookwithsierra.com (Please feel free to follow this link to our new site)
	Today Sierra is going to bake one of our family’s favorite recipes pumpkin cookies. The Recipe info is available at the bottom of the page. This recipe is incredible the cookies come out soft and fluffy and fill the house with spicy cookie aromas. Take two sticks of butter and put them in your mixer.
	Add 1 cup of sugar to the mixer.
	Sierra finds when making this cookie recipe it is easier to load the mixing bowl with your ingredients first and then put it on the mixer. After adding the sugar and butter to the mixer have a parent turn on the mixer. It is very important that the child does not get too close to the mixer while it is running.
	Level off the flour using a butter knife.
	While the mixer is creaming the butter and sugar for our cookies measure two cups of flour into a sifter. (Note we have skipped sifting the flour in the past and the cookies still turned out fine although it is good practice when baking to sift your flour.)
	Add a cup of pumpkin to the mixer. We accidently added the whole can the pumpkin cookies turned out fine. I do suggest following the recipe though.
	Crack one egg into a bowl. If there are any egg shells remove them before putting the egg into the mixer.
	Sierra suggests using pure vanilla it just tastes better than imitation vanilla.
	Measure 1 teaspoon vanilla over a small bowl that way if there is any accidental spilling it won’t go into the final product. Add the vanilla to the cookie mixture.
	Mix the contents together. Remember an adult should help with this part.
	Measure two cups of your sifted flour into another bowl. You will most likely find that you have extra flour left over put the remaining flour back in the flour sack. The extra amount is there because we sifted the flour. In our case we had a 1/4 cup extra flour after sifting.
	Measure ½ tsp of the baking powder and level it off put the baking powder into the flour mixture.
	Add 1 tsp baking soda into your flour mixture.
	Add 1 tsp cinnamon into the mix.
	Add ½ tsp salt.
	Add ½ tsp nutmeg.
	Stir the dry ingredients together.
	Now it is time to add the dry ingredients to the pumpkin cookie mixture.
	Combine slowly at first be careful not to dust your kitchen with flour. Then speed it up so every thing is mixed well. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
	Remember you can watch but don’t touch. The mixer can be dangerous.
	Raisins are a nice addition to the recipe. We chose not to add walnuts to this recipe but if you want them you would add them now.
	Sierra won’t need the beater anymore time to take a break.
	Put parchment paper onto the cookie sheet.
	Use a spoon and finger to put cookie dough into the cookie sheet. (Note: We make much bigger cookies than the recipe calls for see recipe below if you want to make them smaller.)
	Keep the cookies separated they will grow a little bit when they bake.
	Bake the cookies in batches. Our cookies baked 17 min for each batch check them at 15 min if they look done touch one if it bounces back like a cake then they are ready. Let the completed cookies cool on the pan while the other cookies are baking. Before the next batch is ready move the cookies to a cooling rack. It’s ok to reuse the parchment paper. Your house should smell very good by now.
	Enjoy! The Cookies will go quickly it’s probably a good idea to double the recipe. I skipped icing the cookies I think they are fine without the icing.
You can find the recipe we used to make these cookies at: Pumpkin Cookie recipe (This link opens in a new window)
Sierra and I hope that you all enjoy this cookie recipe. Please feel free to leave comments below let us know how we are doing. If any of you try out a recipe please let us know how it turned out.