Substitutions

Last night was another one of my favorite dinner nights - boys' turn! Calvin, as promised, made macaroni and hamburger (I'm starting to worry that he's going to try to work macaroni into his dessert turn somehow...) Max was low on inspiration after selecting carrot sticks for one of his sides. I abandoned my non-orange vegetable edict, suggested garlic toast and he went for it. And then Reed totally got the shaft! 

When I went grocery shopping last week, Reed was at church camp. I thought I remembered him saying he wanted cherry pie for dessert, so I picked up ingredients for that. When he came home and I found out I was wrong, I decided to make the cherry pie as a welcome home dessert (I can create dessert-worthy occasions like a boss!) I sort of forgot about his dessert until the day he had to bake it. Reed wanted to make a recipe of my Grammy's he had recently tried, but I knew we were missing a key ingredient. I called my mom to ask if poppy seeds were necessary for poppy seed bread. We decided it should be ok. An hour and a half later, I got off the phone (we can yak with the best of 'em) and texted her a reminder to e-mail me the recipe in case she had forgotten the reason I'd called (she had). I glanced over the recipe to see if we were lacking anything else, checked the egg carton to make sure we had enough eggs, and texted my mom about one more substitution. She thought lime juice instead of orange juice would actually be pretty good. I sent a joking text to my mom asking if subbing salt for sugar would work, but Reed and I had already decided to go for it.

Turns out, I should've checked more than the egg carton. My salt-for-sugar joke wasn't far from the truth! This event happened to fall the day before we were getting groceries. Since being on the Dave Ramsey plan, the cupboards are pretty bare until grocery day. Anyway, in addition to being out of poppy seeds and OJ, we remembered along the way that we were out of milk. No problem - I had powdered milk on hand, so we just mixed up some of that. Then, we realized the recipe called for butter flavoring, not butter. I didn't have any of that, but we just put in some extra almond and vanilla flavor. Crisis averted. Reed mixed up all the wet ingredients and then went to add the flour. Oops. We only had half of the flour we needed. He was pretty exasperated at this point! I scrounged around the pantry and decided cornmeal was probably not going to cut it, but maybe oat flour would work. We didn't have any, but we did have oats. So, I blended up a cup and a half of that and we were on our way, Reed declaring over and over how bad this concoction was going to taste, and me optimistically prophesying that it might be the best dessert ever (and the desperately praying that it was at least edible).

After Reed mixed it all together, we got the pans ready. Grammy's instructions were to line the pans with foil. Reed started to pull a sheet of foil out and was stopped after about six inches. We were out of foil. "Ahh, COME on!" was his response. I told him the foil was probably not that important, had him spray the heck out of the foil-less pan with vegetable oil, and tried to quickly move him toward the next step - pouring in the batter.

At this point, I noticed that the batter was extremely thin. I was already worried about how this all was going to shake out, so we decided to call my mom yet again. I told Reed it would be "fun" if he would be the one who would talk to Mimi. He didn't agree, but did it anyway. It was super fun for Mimi, but Reed was rolling his eyes at me the whole time. He was a bit embarrassed that HIS dish was turning out to be such a fiasco. Mimi informed us that the batter should be as thick as pancake batter. It was more like chicken broth. Then, she suggested we add pancake mix. We DID have some of that on hand. I laughed with my mom in Reed's ear, we hung up, Reed asked me WHY I thought that would be fun, and we moved on. "How much of this stuff should we put in?" he wondered. My response? "Let's just dump some in. At this point, I don't think we could really make it worse!"

With the bread pans in the oven, I could return my attention to the other little chefs. During all the poppy-less bread drama, Calvin was learning how to brown hamburger and Max was dumping exorbitant amounts of garlic salt on un-buttered bread. It was my most interesting boys' night, to say the least. But the meal turned out good and dessert time rolled around. Reed whipped up the lime-instead-of-orange-juice-and-extra-extracts-instead-of-butter glaze and meticulously drizzled it on each loaf. I held my breath while everyone tasted the bread. Reed was disappointed, but not dejected. "It's ok, but NOT as good as Grammy's recipe." I tried for myself, and...

It was great! No, it wasn't poppy seed bread, but it was sweet and fluffy and had a little sour kick to it that added something extra. I had given Reed the heel (we always fought over the heel of Grammy's bread - it's where all the glaze ran and glopped up), but it was a little tough. I had him try a bite of my piece instead. "Hmmm! Actually, it's pretty good!" Phew! Then, in typical Reed style, he had to brag and trash talk about his superior baking skills. Then we had to name the concoction. Below is Grammy's original recipe, with our suggested substitutions:

POPPY SEED BREAD

by Winnie Teeter a.k.a. Grammy

OR

LIMEY, WITH A CHANCE OF TASTING GOOD (Reed's name)

a.k.a. SWEET AND SOUR BREAD (Mom's name)

a.k.a. MADE BY CHANCE BREAD (Calvin's name)

a.k.a. LIMEY AWESOME BREAD (Max's name)

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Line 2 loaf pans with foil. Or line one pan most of the way with foil and PAM spray the heck out of the other pan and hope for the best.

3 C sifted flour (or 1 1/2 c regular flour, unsifted + 1 1/2 c homemade oat flour + random amount of pancake mix) 1 1/2 tsp. salt 1 1/2 tsp. (heaping) baking powder 2 1/4 C white sugar 1 1/2 Tblsp. poppy seed (or not) 3 eggs 1 1/8 C vegetable oil 1 1/2 C milk (or powdered milk made into regular milk) 1 1/2 tsp. almond flavoring 1 1/2 tsp. butter flavoring (or substitute extra almond and vanilla extract) 1 1/2 tsp. vanilla

Put all ingredients into mixing bowl and beat for 1-2 minutes. (Do not overbeat.)

Bake for 1 hour. Let cool slightly then poke holes in bread with fork. Pour glaze over bread.

GLAZE: 1/4 C orange juice (use highly concentrated: 1 can frozen o.j. to 1 can water) (or lime juice) 3/4 C white sugar 1/2 tsp. almond flavoring 1/2 tsp. butter flavoring (or substitute extra almond and vanilla extract) 1/2 tsp. vanilla

When cool, lift from pans by foil, wrap until ready to serve. (Freezes well.) Cross your fingers and pray to the good Lord above that it's decent so you don't crush a boy's spirit or, worse, turn him off to cooking.

This boy had his face buried in the glaze bowl throughout much of kitchen duty time!