Easter Baking

Seems like I am on a rampage lately. Through the years I have very few special recipes. You know those recipes you have perfected an you and everyone else knows it.

     My mother was not a cookbook or recipe person. She cooked but it was typical holiday fair or something she saw in a magazine to try every now and then. She just basically cooked when it was needed not a pleasure thing. She worked long hard factory hours so home time was a get what you had to get done time with weekends as catch up and sometimes I remember we would take off to Houston where my dad's family lived to spend the weekend then hustle back to Arkansas to school and work on Monday . I never received any family recipes from my mom. 

      Now my husbands mom Beulah was a well known good cook in the family. She didn't do too much hobby cooking either but she had a wonderful recipe collection from friends and family she cherished. She made notes on the back of each telling who she got it from and sometimes if it had won a blue ribbon where that happened at. I have a few of those that were my husbands favorites. Naturally it is never as good as his moms.

Her granddaughter Elizabeth has her recipe box and book now and I hope she will copy them some day so the rest of the family can cherish them also.

   Well anyway...  I am finding some perfect from scratch basic cake recipes. The hummingbird cake was pretty good. This next cake is going to a family Easter dinner tomorrow. This family loves peanut butter so I have found a peanut butter cake and filling/ frosting that I really like.    

      The name of the recipe is Killer Peanut Butter Cake. It for sure is that! I still haven't figured out how we are going to cut it!

     It is 2 layers that have been split into 4 layers. Each whole layer has a thick chocolate middle. Then I put a 1/2 inch thick layer of peanut butter filling/ frosting in between the 2 whole layers. When it is put all together I poured chocolate ganash over the whole mess! The little chick peeps around the edge and chocolate chips are supposed to make it look like a sunflower. Regretfully there is always 1 peep that partied to hard the night before an falls on his face! Lol

Well here it is! The sample cake I made was good I hope this one is even better.

Ranchmama 

( nowhere near as good as Cake Boss!!)

   

Spring in Oklahoma

There are some things in a Oklahoma spring I really enjoy.

      The yellow forsythia is always one of my favorites.

Then there is our beautiful lilac bushes on the west side of the old settlement house that may very well be knocking on 100 years old. 

Then as we drive the country roads or drive around our pastures looking for a new calf I see all the gorgeous red bud trees just on the edge of the woods and streams and scattered here and there deep inside the bushes.

     When my mother was alive I loved to get together with her and go drive and enjoy all the redbuds.

Then in the yard and out in the newly greening pastures we see clumps of 

Clover

We also have our annual spring geese out in the pasture that nest down by the east pond. Funny thing is I have never seen the babies. This is as close as I could get to them without Heidi Ho scaring them or them just flying off

Here are the turkeys down on one of the bottom ground areas. Sometimes we count over 40 . I just wish the pic could be expanded so you could see them good.

    Now anyone that knows me knows I don't hide anything. There is always good with the not so good right beside it.

      Of course with each spring you get a new set a young wildlife. 

Which Heidi Ho promptly caught a baby squirrel and decided to turn it into a squeak toy! I finally got close enough to her when she quit bouncing away and convinced her the beef soup bones was a lot tastier than spitting out squirrel fur!! Lol regretfully it wasn't in time to save the squirrel . 

     Another Oklahoma spring thing is Tornadoes and earthquakes! So far both have skirted around us this year. 

This is a good pic from Texas A & M

Well that is a lot of the things in our part of Oklahoma that we call spring!!

    Hope you enjoyed the pics

Ranchmama 

Peanut Butter Cookie Recipe

Cookies all dressed up and ready to go!

 

Here's the recipe, it makes a bunch so be ready for a place to store them.

Mrs K's Peanut Butter Cookie Recipe  (Mrs. K is my Mother in Law)

Bake at 375* 10 - 12 min or until brown

Cream Together

4 - Cups Sugar

2 - Cups Short. or (1 c Short + 1 c. Butter)

Add and cream together once more

2 - Cups Peanut Butter

Slowly add or it will be all over the place

1/2 - Milk

4 - t. Vanilla

Add these one at a time until light creamy and almost fluffy

4 - eggs 

In a seperate bowl mix these dry ingredients

7 - Cups AP/ Flour

2 - Teaspoons Salt

4- Teaspoons Soda

Now  add all the dry ingredients a big spoonful at a time and watch out once again or you will look like the Pillsbury dough boy all nice and white. Mix well.

    Once everything is mixed well I like to use a small ice cream scoop it makes a cookie drop about the size of a ping pong ball maybe. 

   I do grease the cookie sheet. They don't spread much but I only put them about 3 across the narrow side of the pan. I them press them down slightly. ( My mother in law used to dip the bottom of a glass in sugar and press them down then ) I like to use a old fashioned potato masher that has wire squares. When I press down the squares pop up and it gives the cookie nice texture and crispyness. Looks good too.

   When they come out they are soft so let them cool a little before putting them on cooling racks to finish out.

**** You can add any kind of choc chip or chunk, butterscotch chips, dip in chocolate or just drizzle. You can also put 2 cookies together with choc fudge frosting in the middle to make it just dangerous to eat!

Ranchmama 

Peanut Butter Cookies

It's 9 pm and look what I have been doing ..... 

       When I make cookies I don't mess around with a couple dozen. I figure it's the same mess so might as well do 6-7 dozen and share. These are Hubbies favorite cookies. I got the recipe from his mother. I had to tweek it a little bit to make it more crunchie to his liking but it is the house peanut butter cookie recipe . Comes out almost perfect most times. This time I added some chocolate chunk to the last batch. He won't eat them but others will. 

      He got a warm cookie and a glass of milk out of the first batch delivered to him in the living room! Made him feel all loved an all that mushy stuff! Lol

    Warning ... It could make you drool. :-)  

I made the first batch a little large. I wish I had done chocolate to drizzle over them !

Ahhhh don't know if you can see the chocolate chunks but they taste good 

      Ok so you've seen my mess.... Now I have to get it cleaned up and the gifts wrapped for delivery. 

Ranchmama 

Quiet

9:30 pm Wednesday night. R we doing anything exciting? Maybe even constructive? Hmmm.... I think we did that earlier in the day all the way to the city today did business, some shopping for needful things, a little looking around.

      We get back and Hubby unloads feed and later we go pick Old Blue. Old blue is the old 1985 pick'em up war horse of a pick up we use on the ranch. We found someone just down the road from us that can recover the seats and fix other pretty things on trucks. My Oh My ! Wow! Made a huge difference! I will post pics soon and show u. 

    We r now being such lazy bones. After supper Hubby didn't last long in the recliner since he started his day before 5 am and being busy all day with travel then catching up on work when we got home. So while he snoozed Heidi Ho finished off his steak bone in the garage and now in the house on her pillow covered up with her blankie. An I watched a movie all tucked in with a blankie on with my feet up listening to the quiet drizzle of a gentle rain outside. So nice and peaceful feeling. 

   No more demands on me to take care of almost 17 yo Sassy dog since we had to let her go last Wednesday . I have been 2 yrs straight taking care of old doggies with Petey dog the year before needing so much time an extra loving. 

Sometimes I forget to enjoy the peace. 

I miss my big kids not being around and especially my Jon not being here with us. But this is the place for this age of life. Every now and then I just need to remember sometimes this kind of quiet is a good healing thing .

Ranchmama 

( just sitting back in the quiet ) 

What a Prince !

I have always said I am a Princess. I am so spoiled every day. 

   Here we are having such strange Oklahoma weather with single digits in early March with frozen sleet and snow on the ground .....

    Today as we were both leaving in different auto's I was still doing hair and getting ready to go out the door and he was outside warming up my Chevy crew cab and he even turned on the leather seats so when I finally got out the door and landed in the truck it was so nice and warm. Even the toosh was warm!! 

     Now that is just one of the things my Prince does for me. It is sure nice being a Princess! 

Ranchmama 

Strange Things .....

Ok we grow and sell birds. Every now an then we get calls from someone wanting to buy 1 bird. This time I got a call from a man I have never met wanting to buy a bird that we don't grow. No big deal. He told me where he got my number an I have no idea how in the world we got on that bird grower list. Not a clue.

     I told him I would look up a old buyer I had and send him info by email. The addy he gave me was something about ghost hunting. Well... That started a hour long conversation between the two of us. Telling me what they do as a group an what he does on his own. During this long talk I started feeling strange things in different areas of my body. I started telling him what and where I was feeling it at and he told me about the cold he had and how one of the aches was where he had a bullet go through him and where it was still in him at. 

     Next thing I know he was saying Holy Cow he was in Illinois an I was in Oklahoma never met him before telling him about his aches an pains! 

     He said he was talking to his team members wanting to make room for me on their team!  I told him I have never done anything like that didn't even know if I could . Then he tells me they are going to investigate a sanitarium in Arkansas in the very same town my daughter lives!

    So hummmm.... Here is a invite that not many people get. To do something really different. The thing is I haven't the foggiest idea who this person is! He offered to meet my husband and I somewhere but we don't do those kinds of things. Still.... It is something to think about and consider . We could drive down and meet the team there and participate .  

    Got some heavy thinking to do about this one . 

Ranchmama 

( Ghostbuster in training ? )