We are heating up some deliciousness on June 12 for National Peanut Butter Cookie Day! This scrumptious food occasion permits treat sweethearts and peanut butter darlings to move back from the pies and cakes to enjoy a little peanut butter treat.
Alabama’s American farming augmentation instructor, George Washington Carver, advanced the peanut broadly. Notable for his advancements, Carver incorporated 105 nut recipes from different cookbooks, agrarian announcements, and different sources. In 1916, he made an Exploration Release called How to Develop the Peaut and 105 Different ways of Setting it up for Human Consumption. The notice included three recipes calling for squashed or hacked peanuts as one of its fixings. In any case, peanut butter cookies were not one of them.
It was in the early 1920s peanut butter began to be listed as an ingredient in cookies.
Incidentally, the peanut butter we know and love today didn’t become commercially available until the 1920s. In 1922, Joseph Rosefield kept the peanut oil from separating from the solids through this process. Afterward, he patented the process of homogenization and sold it to a company that began making a peanut butter called Peter Pan.
No one knows why we press criss-crossed fork marks into our peanut butter cookies before baking. However, homemade peanut butter cookies would just not be the same without a bit of decoration.
The best way to celebrate this cookie holiday is with some homemade peanut butter cookies, a glass of milk, and a friend. If you don’t feel like baking in the summer heat, visit your favorite baker and grab a dozen. Don’t forget to give them a shout-out and let them know how much you appreciate their mad cookie baking skills!
Share your peanut butter cookie recipe on social media using the hashtag #NationalPeanutButterCookieDay.
February 23rd annually recognizes a well-known food holiday, National Banana Bread Day. A moist, sweet, cake-like quick bread, banana bread is made with fully ripe, mashed bananas. Some recipes call for yeast, and then the finished banana bread is sliced, toasted and spread with butter.
With the popularization of baking soda and baking powder in the 1930s banana bread first became a standard feature of American cookbooks. It appeared in Pillsbury’s 1933 Balanced Recipes cookbook, too. Banana bread later gained further acceptance with the release of the original Chiquita Banana’s Recipe Book in 1950.
Despite the banana’s arrival in the United States in the 1870s, it took a while before they appeared as an ingredient in desserts.
Early Banana Bread
One early recipe came from The Vienna Model Bakery. It advertised banana bread as something new in the April 21, 1893, edition of St. Louis Post-Dispatch. A new restaurant/bakery chain owned by Gaff, Fleischmann & Company, The Viena Model Bakery was known for its baked goods and was likely one of the first to produce banana bread in the United States. The recipe was made with banana flour, which is made by drying strips of the fruit, then grinding it to a powder. This process had long been used in the West Indies.
In Hawaii during World War I, a surplus of bananas resulted from very few ships available to export the fruit. To prevent waste, alternative uses for bananas were developed. For example, bakeries started incorporating the fruit into their bread.
This recipe was printed in The Maui News on April 12, 1918, for banana bread: 2/3 banana 1/3 flour Yeast, coconut milk or water There was also rationing of staple food items such as flour. Banana flour was a suggested substitute. It was touted as a health food and recommended for a vegetarian diet.
This, of course, is not the quick bread we know today. A recipe submitted by Mrs. Dean in the February 18, 1918, issue of The Garden Island paper for a banana muffin might more closely resemble the quick bread we think of today.
1 cup cornmeal 3-1/2 teaspoons of baking powder 2 tablespoons of sugar 1 sifted banana 3/4 cup rye flour 1 teaspoon salt 3/4 cup milk 1 egg 1 tablespoon Crisco Mix dry ingredients, add banana, milk and egg and Crisco.
Quick Bread and Muffin
The difference between a quick bread and a muffin in baking has a lot to do with the type of fat and how it is mixed creating a different crumb or texture to the bread.
In 1927, Unifruit (a wholesale produce company) offered a free cookbook called From the Tropics to Your Table. The book offered recipes full of bananas as ingredients including banana muffins and breads. This little cookbook would have been handy during the Great Depression which was just around the corner. At the time, families utilized every scrap of food, including overripe bananas. They cooked overripe bananas, as well as other fruits and vegetables, into breads, stews and other dishes when flavor and texture were not as appealing raw.
Bake your favorite version of banana bread to celebrate. With so many varieties to try – banana nut, chocolate banana and more – you can make more than one! Invite someone to join you or give a loaf or two away. The celebration is just too good not to share! We like ours warm from the oven with butter!
Use #NationalBananaBreadDay to post on social media.
February 10th, National Cream Cheese Brownie Day shines a spotlight on an irresistible dessert bar. Combining chocolate and cream cheese has long been a favorite in the bakery. When it’s added to a brownie recipe the results are spectacular.
The brownie has been around since the 1800s but was first documented in 1906 in The Boston Cooking School Cook Book. There are hundreds of cream cheese brownie recipes. However, we also enjoy them cut up into parfaits or mixed into ice cream. Add a dollop of whipped cream, berries or a sprinkle of nuts and fruit and they become a decadent dessert in their own right.
Adding cream to the batter once it’s poured into the pan and swirling it around with a knife gives the finished product an elegant look. It even suggests a celebration when you look at it! No matter how you enjoy cream cheese brownies, we are sure that you will find one that you like.
Maybe you would like to bake a pan of these delicious brownies and share them with your family and friends! Enjoy my fun easy recipe. If you missed these Easy Loaded Brownies this recipe is great the whole year through.
Use #CreamCheeseBrownieDay to post on social media.
National Sunday Supper Day encourages families to gather around the table, enjoy a meal and a conversation together each year on the second Sunday in January.
Sunday Supper starts off as one day a week and soon becomes a way of life. – Sunday Supper Movement
These days families are busy with after-school activities, jobs, and homework. Sunday supper has been a disappearing tradition around the country and the Sunday Supper Movement aims to bring families back together in the kitchen and around the dinner table one Sunday at a time. National Sunday Supper Day is another step toward this goal.
Isabel Laessig is the founder of the Sunday Supper Movement and the Food and Wine Conference. A mother of four, she was inspired to start her blog, Family Foodie, when her oldest left for college and the things she would miss most about home would be the times spent in the kitchen and around the table with family. Some of our favorites can be found here.
In 2012 Laessig and eight other bloggers and their families celebrated the first virtual Sunday Supper with a progressive dinner. According to Laessig, she and these eight bloggers are “passionate about bringing families together to cook and eat together.”
Invite friends and family over to spend the day preparing a Sunday Supper. While you’re preparing supper, discuss plans for continuing the tradition next week. Take turns and find ways to spend more time enjoying each other’s company over a meal. Create bonds that will last a lifetime. For more information visit wwww.sundaysuppermovement.com. Use #SundaySupper on social media.
National Sunday Supper Month is an annual designation observed in January. A waning tradition, the Sunday Supper was once an opportunity after a hectic week for families to gather to spend time together and share stories about their week. This month National Sunday Supper Month and the Sunday Supper Movement resolves to bring back this family tradition.
If 2020 taught us anything it is definitely the value of each other. A reminder that time is fleeting and our families are way more important than celebrities, influencers, and others. Taking time each week to prepare and sit down together, gives us a recharge to face the challenges presented in the outside world.
The lasting memories created will warm both adults and children alike. It gives a family another opportunity to put down the gadgets and engage with each other. In our household this not only educated us it forged strong connections. Lively debate was often encouraged as well as the chance to simply catch up on each others, achievements, trials, stresses and demonstrate care and concern if needed. This is a great time to indulge in Slow Cooking Month and National Soup Month.
Isabel Laessig is the founder of the Sunday Supper Movement and the Food and Wine Conference. A mother of four, she was inspired to start her blog, Family Foodie, when her oldest left for college and the things she would miss most about home would be the times spent in the kitchen and around the table with family.
In 2012 Laessig and eight other bloggers and their families celebrated the first virtual Sunday Supper with a progressive dinner. According to Laessig, she and these eight bloggers are “passionate about bringing families together to cook and eat together.”
Gather with family or friends and prepare a meal together. Savor each other’s company around the supper table. Use #SundaySupper to post a photo of your set up on social media. Life gets busy and it can be hard for families and friends to come together, sit down and enjoy a meal together… But if you can make time to do so, you will never regret it! Check out some of my favorite recipes here.
