the recipes!

Those are the recipe cards I made for Heather to match her apron. All baking: strawberry bread, banana bread, and a really good (and freezable) chocolate chip recipe. All three are well tested in our kitchen! (I could probably make that banana bread in my sleep!) The little designs are actually cut-outs from the fabric, and the bases are vintage blank recipe cards, with the recipes cut out and glued down.

In case you're interested, here are the actual recipes:

Strawberry Bread
1-1/2 c fresh strawberries, rinsed, cored and sliced
1 c sugar
1-1/2 c flour
1 t baking powder
1/2 t baking soda
1/4 t salt
1 t cinnamon
2 eggs
1/2 t vanilla
1/2 c butter, melted and then cooled (very important!)
Preheat oven to 350°. Lightly grease and flour an 8"x5" loaf pan. Place strawberries in a small bowl and sprinkle with 1/2 cup of the sugar; mix and set aside. In a large bowl, mix together all remaining dry ingredients. In your medium bowl, beat eggs til foamy, then add the vanilla and butter, then the strawberry-sugar mixture. Combine with the dry ingredients, mixing until completely moistened. Scrape batter into pan and bake for 60 minutes, or until a toothpick/skewer comes out clean. Cool pan on a rack for 20-30 minutes before removing.

Chocolate Chip Cookies
1/2 c unsalted butter,
softened
6 T sugar
6 T light brown sugar
1/4 t salt
1-1/2 t vanilla
1 c plus 2 T flour
1/2 baking soda
1 c chocolate chips
1 c pecan or walnut pieces
Preheat oven to 375°. Beat the butter, sugars, salt and vanilla until well-combined. Add in the egg, scrape bowl down with spatula and beat for a few more seconds. In a 2nd bowl, whisk together the flour and soda. Add dry ingredients to wet and mix on low speed until just blended. Add chocolate and nuts and mix in by hand. Shape dough into 11/2” balls and place about 3” apart on ungreased cookie sheets. Bake for 9-12 minutes, until edges are golden. Let sit for 5 minutes before transferring to wire racks.
Alternately: do not preheat oven, and place shaped cookies close together on cookie sheets and freeze. Transfer when frozen to freezer bags or containers, bake at 375° in batches as small or large as you like.

Banana Bread
2 large eggs
1 c sugar
1/3 c vegetable oil
1 c mashed bananas
2 t vanilla
1 t baking soda
1 t baking powder
1 t salt
1 t cinnamon
1/2 t nutmeg
2-2/3 c flour
1 c sour cream
Preheat oven to 350°. Beat together the eggs, sugar and oil. Blend in the bananas and vanilla. In another bowl, whisk together all dry ingredients and then add all at once to the banana mixture. Mix quickly but thoroughly, then stir in the sour cream, mixing until just combined. Pour batter into a greased and floured 9"x5" pan. Bake for 1 hour, or until a cake tester comes out clean.

Notes: On the banana bread - I am a purist and I don't like nuts or chocolate in my banana bread, but the original recipe (from King Arthur Flour) calls for up to 1 cup of chopped nuts as an option, and I'm sure chips would work too. Also, you can substitute yogurt or buttermilk for the sour cream, but I don't think it works as well. The strawberry bread is from a Penzey's Spice catalog and my onw note on that is that you can chop the berries up if you need to (Emily doesn't like the texture of the large slices). The cookies are from a chronicle books fundraiser called From Our House To Yours, I can't remember the origin past that.