“No one who cooks, cooks alone. Even at her most solitary, a cook in the kitchen is surrounded by generations of cooks past, the advice and menus of cooks present, the wisdom of cookbook writers.”
— Laurie Colwin
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When I cook and bake, I usually don’t use a recipe, but just wing it. My most popular endeavor is called, “try and use up stuff in the freezer and fridge.” Most of my experiments and recipes are more from experience and learning from my mom when I was a girl. She never used recipes either.
The other day, when I made my banana cupcakes and full sheet cake, my incentive was, wow, there’s a whole bunch of bananas in the freezer. What can I make? I also found a container of leftover pecan pie, and a container of milk. I had lots of eggs, butter and cream cheese in the fridge. Miss Sherri was coming over, so I had a captive audience.
Because I had so many bananas, I had to use two cake mixes. I mushed up the bananas in the baggies and added them to the batter. Fill cupcake liner 1/2 full. Then, I combined one package of cream cheese, two eggs, and poured in some sugar. How much? I don’t know, a cup or two. I mixed that up with my ancient 1975 harvest gold mixer. For the filling, mushed up the left over pecan pie without outside crust, then blended more. I put a dollop of filling in the center of the cupcake batter, then added another tablespoon or two of batter to cover it up. Then, I used the extra mixture in the middle of the 9×12 cake, a little more batter, then I baked till it looked done. A little brown, not burnt.🤦♀️The frosting, 1 cream cheese, 2 sticks butter, almost a whole bag of powdered sugar and a little milk and vanilla. I usually don’t have milk, but I had a small container in the freezer. Yay! More stuff out of the freezer. I had fun frosting with my Wilton tube thingy.
Toni Andrukaitis 
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