Homestead Blessings Recipe Reviews: Part 1

After I received my copy of "The Homestead Blessings Cookbook" in the mail, I went a little recipe making crazy. How could I not, everything looked so good! Did you see how many post-it notes I had marking recipes??
Instead of reviewing each recipe in a blog post- heaven knows that would take MONTHS of posting- I'm condensing it all to one post. For now that is.

Here's what we've made so far and here are our opinions:

Banana Cream Smoothie: Ooooh, this one is so good. It's like eating ice cream for breakfast! Everyone gave it two big thumbs up.

Better Than Carrot Cake Muffins: These just got a so-so rating. And I even made them with white flour! I don't know what it was, but they just weren't a huge hit.

Johnny Cakes: Except that Layton loved the name and thought they were "neat" to eat, we won't be making these again.

Celia's Country Cornbread: I used this for the Johnny Cakes and that may have been the reason we didn't love them. I already have a tried and true cornbread recipe that I've used for years so I'll be sticking with that one.

Simply Sweet Potatoes: I'd make them again. I used yams instead of sweet potatoes. My brother was here for dinner that night and he said, "Did you put pumpkin pie spice in this?" with a slight disgusted tone to his voice. I love yams though and I could eat them any way they are served.

Corn Dressing: This was yummy and easy! Everyone loved it and it's going in my personal recipe book!

Lee's Lemon Pie: This was a good pie. I wouldn't make it for a special occasion but once in a while in the winter I'd fix it up!

Mama's Busy Chocolate Cake: Another good recipe. I did add a thin layer of homemade frosting to this cake and afterwards thought that it would have been better without the frosting. The only thing is that this cake bakes up nicely in a 13x9 pan in about 45-50 minutes, not 30. If I had taken it out at 30, half the cake would have still been batter!

Hannah's No-Fry Doughnuts: When you don't fry doughnuts they come out tasting somewhere between a bagel and a sweet roll. This recipe makes TONS of doughnuts so you could easily cut it in half. I only have 1 baking sheet so I had a problem with all the dough rising again while I was waiting for the 1st batch to come out of the oven. I'll be honest.... I broke out the deep cast iron skillet, poured in sunflower oil and fried the rest of them. WOW. I will be making these doughnuts fried again. They were outstanding! Not so healthy, but really, really yummy.

Spiced Oatmeal Cake: Want a recipe for your kids to make? Here it is. If you do the first step (which has boiling water involved) the kiddos can have at the rest. I don't think you could mess this cake up. It's fun with all the different ingredients. This used quite a bit of spices. I don't think I've ever put 2 tsp. of cloves into anything! This is a wonderful cake if you're cutting out refined sugar, since it just uses honey. A little cream cheese frosting on top wouldn't hurt this cake but it is plenty good without it. Actually, if you leave off the frosting it could even be a breakfast cake.

Garlic Roasted Potatoes: I must have done something wrong with this recipe. Or the West Ladies idea of "4 large potatoes" is way different than mine. I used 4 BIG potatoes. I also overcooked them in the water. Even if they hadn't been overcooked, I would have probably used about 3 times the amount of the other ingredients to adequately cover the potatoes. But we used sour cream and that salvaged it. I think if I tweak this recipe (a lot) I could make it into what I had imagined it to be.

Still on my list to make are the Georgia Peach Pie, the Chocolate Chip Skillet Cookies, Buttermilk Pie, Scalloped Potatoes, Cornbread Dressing, Popcorn Crunch.......

If you don't already have this cookbook I'd recommend adding it to your wish list. It's worth it!
Well, back to the kitchen I go!