One Ingredient Ice Cream (or two, or three)

You really can make ice cream with only one ingredient.  And no, the one ingredient is not cream.  It's bananas.  So no, I guess you can't technically call it ice cream but I'm going to anyway.  Here is the oh so difficult recipe.

Slice a couple of very ripe bananas and freeze them two hours.  Then dump it in your food processer and turn it on.  Ta da!

It might look a little gritty at first but you keep going until it is soft serve consistency.  If you want you can then freeze it so that you can scoop it out like real ice cream.  Obviously this is going to be banana flavored ice cream.  It is not blue bell ice cream but it still tastes good AND it's healthy.  It's especially great if you can't have dairy or you want to give your kids a guilt free treat.  Add peanut butter for a two ingreadient ice cream.  I think nutella would really push it into the fantastic catagory but I haven't tried it yet.  I first saw the recipe for this HERE and you can find a few other versions HERE.

Last night I had planned on making the chocolate one for dessert.  Unfortunately I didn't plan anything for dinner.  But reasoning that the ice cream was actually healthy I decided to have crepes with ice cream for dinner.  And THAT earned me a "thanks for a wonderful Mom" in Hyrum's prayer at dinner.

Quick Chocolate Pudding

John's favorite dessert is chocolate pudding. I love that I can make his favorite dessert quickly from scratch with ingredients I have on hand. I got the original recipe from allrecipes and only changed it by adding butter.

Ingredients

1/2 cup white sugar

1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

3 tablespoons cornstarch

2 cups milk

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 Tablespoon butter (optional)

Combine sugar cocoa powder and cornstarch in a large microwave safe bowl (I use my extra large 4 cup measure). Sift the cocoa powder if there are clumps. Whisk in milk slowly and make sure there are no clumps. Microwave on high for 3 minutes.

Stir and continue microwaving at one minute intervals until thick and shiny, about 2-4 minutes. Keep an eye on it to be sure it doesn't over flow.

Remove from microwave and add optional butter and vanilla. Stir and refrigerate with plastic wrap on top touching the pudding.

Of course more fat (whole milk and butter) makes it taste better (richer, smoother). But I've made this with 2 % milk and no butter and it's still great.

Speedy Brownies

This is my favorite Brownie recipe to make.  It's fast, easy, and I usually have all the ingredients.  I usually mix the chips into the batter.  It's also good with nuts but for some reason, I usually need to increase the baking time about 10 min.

2 Cups Sugar

1 3/4 cups flour

1/2 cup cocoa powder

1 tsp salt

5 eggs

1 cup oil

1 tsp vanilla

1 cup chocolate chips

Combine first seven ingredients until smooth.  Pour into a grease 9 x 13 pan.  Sprinkle with chocolate chips.  Bake at 350 for 30 min or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean.

White Almond Sour Cream Cake

Often considered the quintessential wedding cake, it has a very subtle almond taste. Really you can use this recipe to make most any kind of cake varying the flavoring and the cake mix. This is the cake I made for mom at the 2007 reunion

1 (18 ounce) box white cake mix
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup granulated sugar
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/3 cups water
1/8 cup vegetable oil
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon almond extract
1 cup sour cream
4 large egg whites

Directions
1Place all dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl and stir together with a wire whisk.
2Add the remaining ingredients and beat on medium speed for 2 minutes.
3Pour into greased and floured cake pans, filling each pan a little over half full.
4Lightly tap cake pans on counter to bring air bubbles to top.
5Bake in preheated 325° F oven until cake tests done. (about 35 minutes for 8 inch rounds)

Makes 2 8 inch round cakes

Peach Rhubarb Cobbler

Mom requested this one....

Serves 8

Fruit:
1 quart rhubarb chuncks
1 quart peeled peach chunks
¼ cup water
¾ cup sugar

Spread rhubarb evenly in the bottom of a buttered 3-quart casserole. Distribute peaches over rhubarb. Pour water around edges. Sprinkle sugar over the fruit.

Topping:
2 cups flour
1 cup sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
¾ cup cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
½ cup water

Stir together flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Blend in butter with pastry blender until mixture resembles coarse meal. Stir in water until just combined.

Drop by spoonfuls over fruit. Bake in the middle of oven until topping is golden, about 25 minutes.