FEBRUARY IS “LET THEM EAT (FOOD STORAGE) CAKE!” MONTH!

Alright, February is in high swing with wonderful food storage filled cakes!  They don’t use cake mixes, but are just as easy to make.  The recipes are packed with flavor (just look at the Chocolate Molten Lava Cake if you’re wondering) as well as fiber and protein-which of course, means the calories have been C-U-T!  Who doesn’t love a piece of cake that tastes great, has half the calories, and leaves you feeling satisfied and full!  So what is my next awesome recipe?  Well I’ll tell you…

WHOLE WHEAT BANANA DREAM CAKE

Oh, man-this cake was so good, I was honestly surprised because I can remember not really liking banana cake as a child and I didn’t know if I’d like this one.  It was in one word-incredible!  It’s entirely chalk full of fiber with whole wheat, oats, nuts, and beans but you’d never know it by the wonderful taste and texture.

Food Storage Whole Wheat Banana Dream Cake Recipe

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Recipe type: Dessert

Prep time: 15 mins

Cook time: 60 mins

Total time: 1 hour 15 mins

This whole wheat Banana Dream Cake is incredible and no one would ever guess it is chalk full of food storage!

Ingredients

• 1/2 C. Butter (or beans)
• 1 C. brown sugar
• 1/2 c. sugar
• 2 eggs (2 T. dry egg powder + 1/4 C. water)
• 1 1/4 C. flour (I used whole wheat)
• 3/4 t. baking soda
• 1/2 t. baking powder
• 1/2 t. salt
• 3/4 C. oatmeal
• 1/3 C. butter milk (1 T. dry non-instant milk powder or 2 T. dry instant milk powder + 1/3 C. water + 1 t. vinegar or lemon juice)
• 1 C. mashed bananas (about 3)
• whole pecans

Instructions

1. Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs. Beat well. Add dry ingredients alternately with buttermilk mix well. Blend oats bananas and nuts and add to batter. Pour batter into greased 9×13 pan. Bake at 350 for 35-40 minutes.

Notes

This is a thin snack cake. If you want to be thick like a regular cake, either double the recipe or put this sized recipe in a 8×8 pan.

Fresh Banana Frosting
1/4 C. butter
1/2 t. vanilla
1 T. lemon juice
2-3 small bananas
3/4 – 1 pkg (1 lb.) powdered sugar

Mix creamed butter with mashed bananas. Add enough sugar to make a nice spreading consistency. Then add vanilla and spread on cake.

{I didn’t use this frosting when I made it. I just topped it with some whipped cream and it was delicious!}

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BEANS?

If you’re confused why I’m saying to use beans in place of butter get my instructions for successfully using beans for butter and/or oil.

Help Spread the Word!

I love it when you share my tips and recipes for food storage!  Do me a quick favor, if you like what you see please share it on facebook, pinterest, or blog about it!  And make sure you link either the word “food storage” or “Everyday Food Storage” back to me.  Thanks-it makes all the hard work worth it!

© 2012, Crystal. All rights reserved.

Who doesn’t love a good brownie recipe that also includes food storage? I was so happy to receive this recipe for all of us to try. It has beans, wheat, and honey. Sounds great! This recipe is from Sade and she says…

“Hey Crystal,
You inspired me to try these and I’m so glad you did!! These little morsels of heaven were fantastic!! And as you said we wouldn’t be able to taste the beans at all! Thanks so much, I’ll send along the picture and the recipe in case anyone else would like to make these, they are truly food storage brownies!!”

Food Storage Pioneer Brownies: Food Storage Dessert Recipe

Print

Recipe type: Dessert

Prep time: 15 mins

Cook time: 30 mins

Total time: 45 mins

This is truly a food storage brownie!

Ingredients

• 1/2 c. butter (1/4 C. black bean puree and ¼ c. oil)
• 2 tsp. vanilla
• 2/3 c. honey
• 2 Lg. Eggs ( I used powdered)
• 1/2 C. wheat flour
• 1/2 C. cocoa
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1 c. chopped nuts (optional)

Instructions

1. Mix all ingredients and mix well. Put in 9×9 pan and bake at 350 degrees for
2. -30 min.

Notes

**Tip** Cut brownies with a plastic knife and they cut nicer…I have NO
idea why but it does work!

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SHARE WITH US!

Do you have a great idea, recipe or food storage tip you’d love to share?! Email me at efsshowoffs(at)gmail(dot)com! We’d all love to hear from you!

© 2011, Crystal. All rights reserved.

Mock Pecan Pie

1 1/2 C. cooked, drained PINTO beans (you can also use white beans if you don’t have pinto)
1 1/2 C. brown sugar
1/2 C. butter
3 eggs, beaten (3 T. dry egg powder + 1/3 C. water)
1 1/2 t. vanilla
1/2 t. sea salt if desired
1/2-3/4 C. finely chopped pecans (I used more pecans…enough to generously cover the top of the pie)

Cream sugar, butter, eggs, and beans. (If you are using powdered eggs you don’t need to mix the dry egg powder with water first-just put the dry egg powder in with creaming and add the water with the vanilla, which is the next step). Add vanilla and salt. Pour into 9 inch unbaked pie shell (If you missed the Pie Crust 101 Mini Class-check it out for GREAT tips on how to make your own delicious pie crust). Sprinkle the chopped pecans over mixture. Bake at 375 for 25 minutes. Reduce heat to 350 degrees and bake for about 20 minutes more. Pie is done when knife inserted in center comes out clean. Serve with whipped topping or ice cream.

Make sure you check back every day this week for new posts and fun twists on classic and not so classic pies…and yeah, and DEFINITELY enter this giveaway!

© 2010 – 2011, Crystal. All rights reserved.

Ingredients:
2 c. brown sugar, packed
1 c. oil
3 eggs (3 T. Dehydrated Eggs + 1/3 c. water…if you want a really fun trick use your left over carrot or raisin water to add to the egg powder.)
2 c. carrots, finely grated (1c. dehydrated carrots. Pulse in blender before re-hydrating to make them smaller pieces. They take 20 minutes in cold water to rehydrate so if you need them sooner, simply put them in warmer water.)
1 c. crushed pineapple, drained (If you have orange juice you’ll be serving, drain the pineapple juice into your orange juice for a fun topical blend orange juice.)
3 c. whole wheat flour
1 t. salt
1 T. soda
1 t. cinnamon
2 t. vanilla
1 c. raisins
1 c. walnuts, broken

Method:

Preheat oven to 350. Grease and flour 2 bread pans, 1 Bundt pan, or 2 muffin pans (12 each) with vegetable cooking spray. Beat together brown sugar, oil and eggs (no need to reconstitute eggs before adding to this mix). Stir in carrots and pineapple. Blend together dry ingredients; stir into batter thoroughly. Add vanilla, raisins, and nuts. Pour into prepared pan. Bake bread pans for 40-45 minutes, muffins for 20 minutes, and Bundt pan 1 hour or until done.
Makes 1 Bundt pan, 2 bread pans, or 24 muffins.

Adding the nuts on top of the muffins not only gives it a great look and flavor (it lightly toasts the nuts) but it is also a great way to serve nut lovers and non-nut lovers alike since it becomes obvious which have nuts and which don’t.

© 2010 – 2011, Crystal. All rights reserved.

Okay, I have this feeling that most of you (at least if you’re female) feel entirely overwhelmed with everything you have to do in the day what with taking kids to school, laundry (YUCK!), preparing meals, soccer practice, and on top of it all spending time together as a family….oh yeah and that HUGE project of getting prepared. Well, you all probably know by now that I’m a HUGE fan of multi-tasking so I figured why couldn’t you make getting prepared a family event?! I asked my good friends at www.foodstoragemadeeasy.net to help me (since they have all the WONDERFUL information on getting your food storage gathered and basic emergency preparedness) with some Family Home Evening Tidbits. They are quick ideas that will help you on the road to becoming prepared! At the end there is also a treat you can make using your food storage. So all in a night, you’ll have spent time together as a family, taken a step towards being prepared, and practiced using your food storage! AWESOME!

This week I thought “Milk Jug 72 hour kits” would be fun and easy to get people prepared…here is what Jodi from www.foodstoragemadeeasy.net has to say about it:

What a great treat for talking about 72 hour kits! This recipe comes entirely from shelf stable items and happens to be my all time favorite cookie recipe (HONEST!)

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies
*a tip before you begin…I always soak my raisins in water & vanilla so that the raisins are plump and juicy and taste like vanilla. If you don’t have a lot of time you can heat the water, vanilla, and raisins in the microwave for 2 minutes. Remember that you can definitely use your leftover water to hydrate your eggs!

Cream together:
1 C shortening
1 C brown sugar
1 C white sugar
2 eggs (2 T. dry egg powder + 1/4 C. Water)
1 tsp. vanilla

Stir into creamed mixture
1 ½ C whole wheat flour
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. soda
3 C. oats
2 tsp. cinnamon
2 C. raisins

Drop by rounded tablespoonfuls and bake at 375 for 8-10 minutes.

© 2010 – 2011, Crystal. All rights reserved.

I got these in the mail last week from my Mom and I knew exactly what they were….Applesauce Cupcakes.  A favorite recipe from my childhood (and my siblings).  I think it’s safe to say for my entire family that these were one of our all time favorite things to eat.  They weren’t made very often and so when they were, it was a REAL TREAT!  Now, while these are a perfect candidate for food storage and my mom’s Frankenstein poem she included with them was incredible cute…that isn’t what I wanted to share with you.  The real treasure to this package was on the inside of this card (after the Frankenstein song) where she shared the STORY behind this recipe.  

You see my Grandfather grew up with these cupcakes.  He grew up in a small farming community in Illinois where one of their main staple crops was apples (so you can imagine they had almost everything apple).  His mother made this recipe (and I use the word “recipe” lightly) and wanted his wife (my grandmother) to make them for him.  So my grandmother sat at the feet of her mother-in-law (a feat I don’t know many women who would do!) and watched her mound up flour, make a depression-well in the center, then add a pint of applesauce, and hand full of this or a pinch of that until it “looked right.”  After watching this, my grandmother had her mother-in-law do it again, this time my grandmother measured everything and made a real “recipe” for these cupcakes.  As I read this story, it dawned on me…I had been and was EATING HISTORY!  

So many times we read history, share stories, look at pictures, but how many times can we actually TASTE it?  To eat the exact same thing our ancestors made or to prepare it and continue on with the tradition.  This great grandmother of mine was born in the late 1800′s and who knows how far back this recipe had gone before her!  (If you notice there are no eggs in the recipe, which shows how old it really must be! Since really old recipes tried to avoid calling for eggs since they were harder for everyone to have at the time).  My point being that a lot of times we feel we are too busy for family history but think of all the memories, stories that are shared, teaching moments that can happen at the dinner table-eating food our mothers, grandmothers, etc. made and all while you’re eating together as a family!  In fact if you want a great Christmas present idea (besides this cute Halloween present idea), one year for Christmas when money was really tight, I made a recipe book for my husband’s immediate family (siblings and parents) which included all of their family favorites.  And because I know how many family memories and traditions are associated around the kitchen table, I also included stories, pictures of family dinners, memories, a chart of where everyone sat, which recipes were used for what occasions, and which were everyone’s favorites.  The cookbook itself took on a life of it’s own and it will be something we can all pass down to our kids so not only can they read history, but they’ll be able to TASTE IT!

Calhoon County Applesauce Cupcakes

Cream 1/2 c. butter and 2 c. sugar
Add 2 c. applesauce (about 1 lb. can) and 1 t. Vanilla
Add dry ingredients: 2 t. soda, 2 T. cocoa, 1/2 t. salt, 2 c. flour (my mom used half whole wheat and half all-purpose), 2 t. cinnamon, 1 t. cloves and beat until smooth
Stir in 1 c. raisins (this ingredient is important if you’re planning on giving this with the Frankenstein song)
Bake 2 dozen cupcakes at 375 for about 25-30 minutes or until done.  Cool.  Keep in plastic bag or Tupperware.  These cupcakes improve with age.  They are “aged” in a day or so when the paper wrappers peel easily from the cupcakes.  ENJOY! 

Frankenstein’s Song:

Oh My Darlin’ Frankenstein

(Sing to the tune of ”Oh My Darlin’ Clementine”)

1) I was working, with my test tube, in my laboratory fine, When one day I broke my glasses and I made poor Frankenstein.

2) He was handsome, he was charming, and I nailed his head on tight, His teeth were nice and pearly, and his eyes came out at night.

3) Frankentstein helped in the kitchen, he was making up a cake, When he fell into the mixer, and got mixed up by mistake.

4) Cooking nicely in the oven, Oh the cake it came out fine.  Told my friends those lumps were raisins, but those lumps were FRANKENSTEIN!

To make it easier on you, I’ve created the card for you to use!  Just download, by clicking HERE, and there are four to a page. ENJOY tasting some of my history!

p.s. if you want to know where my mom got the cute caldrons, she got them at the Dollar Tree…one of my favorite stores! (obviously that runs in the family as well!)

© 2009 – 2011, Crystal. All rights reserved.

Since I posted this last year, I’ve realized that this is also a great candidate for BEANS! Okay, maybe I’m a little obsessed with the beans but every time I try them, the recipe tastes SO MUCH BETTER and I guess I’m still a little in shock! Here is the recipe again…this time with BEANS.

© 2009 – 2011, Crystal. All rights reserved.

I got this recipe from a gal in my ward who is a FABULOUS cook. One of those ladies you know if it has their name on it that it will be delicious. Well she made this last year for a “Recipe Swap” and I’ve been waiting for a YEAR to share this with you. When I made it this year, I realized…hey….I could use beans in this AND whole wheat flour (not to mention powdered eggs!). And it was DELICIOUS. It turns it into some sort of food storage super dessert! The original recipe calls for cream cheese frosting but I topped it with a whipped topping with cinnamon and 1 t. vanilla. Yummmm…..the most delicious whipped topping you’ll EVER eat!

Harvest Pumpkin Brownies
1 (16 oz.) can pumpkin
4 eggs (1/4 C. dry egg powder + 1/2 C. water)
3/4 C. vegetable oil (or 3/4 C. white bean puree)
2 t. vanilla
2 C. whole wheat flour
2 C. sugar
1 T. pumpkin pie spice
2 t. ground cinnamon
2 t. baking powder
1/2 t. salt

Mix wet ingredients (including the water needed for your powdered eggs but not the dry egg powder…remember you DON’T need to mix these before adding to your recipes) Mix dry ingredients with wet ingredients. Pour into 9×13 pan and bake at 350 for 25-30 minutes. Allow to cool and frost with cream cheese frosting or dollup cinnamon whipped topping.

VIDEO: Pressure cooking your beans and how to freeze smaller portions to use in your every day baking! 

Want to learn more about the specifics of an electric pressure cooker? Click HERE.

© 2009 – 2011, Crystal. All rights reserved.

This recipe was sent in from Teresa and doesn’t it look so delicious!? I wish I could cut myself a slice right now and eat it! It also sounds like a nice healthy-er treat to eat coming back from trick-or-treating. Give it a try and have a very Happy Halloween! Also, thanks for voting…my husband is very happy.

Cinnamon Burst Bread (like Great Harvest’s)-Makes 4 Loaves

3 T. yeast
1/2 cup sugar
4 eggs, beaten lightly (*Note from Crystal, 1/4 C. Dry Egg Powder +1/2 C. Water)
3 3/4 cup warm water
4 1/2 tsp. salt
3 T. vegetable oil
2 1/2 cups cinnamon bites (available at health food stores, these are like compacted bits of cinnamon or here)
11-12 cups flour (*Note from Crystal, this is a great recipe to disguise wheat in! Try it at least half whole wheat flour and half all-purpose or get really gutsy and try it 100% whole wheat!)

Combine in mixing bowl 4 cups flour, yeast, and sugar. Add water, eggs, and oil. Beat well to “cake batter” stage. Stir in salt, cinnamon bites, and 7 more cups flour to make bread-dough consistency. Let mixer knead it to the right texture (add up to 1 more cup flour if needed). Place dough in greased bowl, cover, and let rise for 1 hour. Shape dough into 4 loaves. Let rise for another hour or until doubled. Bake at 375 degrees for about 30 minutes. Slice thick and serve warm with butter, or toast slices in the toaster (be careful, the cinnamon bites can burn your fingers), or make slices into French Toast. Yummy!

Teresa says-Here’s a picture of the four loaves I made last week. We ate one loaf for breakfast the next day, I gave one loaf away to a friend, and I froze the other two loaves to take to my Sister’s Weekend. They thawed beautifully and tasted fresh and wonderful this weekend!

© 2009 – 2011, Crystal. All rights reserved.

You know how I LOVE themed Family Home Evening lessons and an FHE for Pioneer day (July 24th, the day the Mormon Pioneers entered the Salt Lake Valley) is no different!  I think it’s so important to teach our heritage to our children so they know the strength of past and present pioneers.

Click HERE for a link to a great Pioneer Day Family Home Evening lesson and read below for a fun dessert!

This dessert is SO delicious and SO easy when you use your apple slices.  Apple slices make any baked apple dessert a BREEZE to make.  Just think…no peeling, slicing, worrying about your apple slices turning brown!  You simply hydrate the apples in hot water for 5 minutes and follow your recipe. A total life saver when you are short on time…although…aren’t we all? Another great reason to turn your baked apple recipes into food storage recipes every time!

Apple Brown Betty

Filling:

2 C. boiling water
4 C. dried apple slices

Topping:
1/2 C. whole wheat flour
1/4 C. oatmeal
1/4 t. cinnamon
1/4 C. brown sugar
1/4 C. butter

Pour boiling water over dried apples.  Let stand at least 5 minutes.  Meanwhile, mix dry topping ingredients together, then cut in butter.  Place apples and any remaining liquid in a greased 9-inch square baking pan.  Sprinkle topping over apples.  Bake at 350 for 55 minutes.

© 2009 – 2011, Crystal. All rights reserved.