Great American Bake Sale

Several months after we moved to NWA I joined a playgroup that I found on www.meetup.com.  I have met so many great women and kids through this group.  Occasionally, our group does fundraisers for various causes.  Today, we participated in the Great American Bake Sale to end childhood hunger.  We setup a booth at an event on the Fayetteville Square called First Thursday Fayetteville.  I love to bake, so I spent most of the day in the kitchen.  I decided to make chocolate chess pie, spinach sausage quiche, strawberry cake, and double chocolate chunk cookies.  The pie, quiche, and cake are recipes from my Mom, and the cookies I found years ago on www.verybestbaking.com.  Here are the cookbooks I used today.

As you can see, the one in the middle has seen a lot of action!  I think that book is about 27 years old.  It came from my home church in Oklahoma and it is a treasure.  There are so many well-loved recipes in there from some special ladies in my life.  The Paula Deen cookbook on the right is what I use for my pie crust.  I pretty much have it memorized, but I  always get it out anyway to be sure.  I think it is fine to use ready-made pie crusts, but I grew up with a Mom who is famous for her crusts, so I just don't feel right not making them from scratch!  The book on the left is a new cookbook from my church in NWA.  There are several recipes that my Mom has collected in recent years that I find myself calling her for frequently.  "Mom, I need the chocolate chess pie recipe again."  So, I decided to include those when I submitted my recipes for the book.  Now I have them all in one place!  I have many more cookbooks, but I use these most frequently.  The Rick Bayless books in our house are also falling apart, but I will write about those another time.  Mike is the main user there.

When I make pie crusts, my girls LOVE to eat the scraps.  When I was a kid, my mom would roll out the scraps, spread with butter, sprinkle with cocoa and sugar, roll it up, and bake it.  It was so good!  I haven't tried that on the girls yet since they seem to be content with the plain scraps.

I thought I would share the Quiche recipe today.  Mom came across it several years ago, and we have used it numerous times.  My sister owns The Josie House B&B and it has been used there.  It always gets rave reviews.  It is really simple.  I forgot to take a picture of the ingredients before I opened them, but here is a picture anyway.

Sausage Spinach Quiche

3/4 lb pork or turkey breakfast sausage, browned and drained

1 pkg frozen spinach, cooked and drained

3 eggs, beaten

1 cup cottage cheese

12 oz mozzarella cheese, shredded

1 unbaked pie crust

Mix all ingredients, pour into pie shell and bake at 350 for about 50 minutes.

Here are the results of my day of baking.

When our group has bake sales, we get so much participation.  There were many wonderful things like homemade rolls and french bread, apple butter, cupcakes, muffins, and on and on!  I took home carrot cake cupcakes and pumpkin apple strudel muffins.  And there might have been a chocolate cupcake and a bag of snack mix that didn't even make it to the car.  I didn't stay until the end, but judging from this line before I left, I think it was probably a success!