Om Nom Nom: Then You Has Jazz
Although there are a lot of paeans to the importance of using only the very *best* ingredients, actually I think that cooking is quite often about turning things that are inedible or not all that great in their current state into something noticeably better. So I can see the point of making truffles with cocoa powder a lot more than with great artisanal chocolate, because you can just eat the damn chocolate.
I had some decidedly elderly pears, a small amount of Trader Joe's lovely chopped toasted pecans, some sunflower seeds from God knows when, and some organic medium eggs that needed using up.
OK! So I put a couple of cups of atta flour (which seems to behave like whole wheat pastry flour) into a mixing bowl, grated three of the pears, stopping when I reached the mushy spots, threw in some oatmeal, the sunflower seeds and pecans, a spoonful of baking powder, in retrospect a little too much salt. I was almost out of sugar, so I threw in about half of what was in the sugar bowl--maybe half a cup?, cracked in three of the eggs (remember, they're mediums, I probably would have used only two for Large or XL), a drip of corn oil, and enough milk to make it a batter.
Preheated 350 degree oven, 9" square pan, about half an hour, then turn on the oven and another 10-15 minutes in the cooling oven.
I thought it was a lovely moist breakfasty coffee cake, although if I didn't know it had pears in it I'm not sure I would have been able to pick them out in a lineup. (If there's a CSI cooking show, there might be a police artist chef, and you keep giving ze hints until something come out of the oven and you say "OMG, that's the cake!")
I had some decidedly elderly pears, a small amount of Trader Joe's lovely chopped toasted pecans, some sunflower seeds from God knows when, and some organic medium eggs that needed using up.
OK! So I put a couple of cups of atta flour (which seems to behave like whole wheat pastry flour) into a mixing bowl, grated three of the pears, stopping when I reached the mushy spots, threw in some oatmeal, the sunflower seeds and pecans, a spoonful of baking powder, in retrospect a little too much salt. I was almost out of sugar, so I threw in about half of what was in the sugar bowl--maybe half a cup?, cracked in three of the eggs (remember, they're mediums, I probably would have used only two for Large or XL), a drip of corn oil, and enough milk to make it a batter.
Preheated 350 degree oven, 9" square pan, about half an hour, then turn on the oven and another 10-15 minutes in the cooling oven.
I thought it was a lovely moist breakfasty coffee cake, although if I didn't know it had pears in it I'm not sure I would have been able to pick them out in a lineup. (If there's a CSI cooking show, there might be a police artist chef, and you keep giving ze hints until something come out of the oven and you say "OMG, that's the cake!")