Now on sale . . . Muffins & Mayhem: Recipes for a Happy (if Disorderly) Life by Suzanne Beecher, and when you purchase it, request a free autographed bookplate, by visiting:
http://tinyurl.com/Muffins-MayhemPO
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Dear Reader,
When the teacher told me to only fill the jar up to "almost" half-full I should have listened, but I didn't.
Book club reader, Kathy Fletcher, emailed requesting six autographed bookplates for my book Muffins and Mayhem. "Suzanne, I thought your book would make the best little holiday gift. I'm putting the signed bookplates in books I'm giving for Christmas gifts this year. I'm going to stick the book in a basket with a coffee mug and some homemade banana bread--made from the 'Whoops! Banana Bread' recipe on page 84 in your book. I'll bake the bread in pint size mason jars, spray them on the inside with some canola oil and fill the jar up to almost half--not quite half--but almost, then I'll bake the bread in the jar. I've done something similar many times before. After the bread bakes about 26-28 minutes (stick a toothpick in it to check, when it comes out clean, it's done) then take the jars out of the oven and while they're hot, seal them with a canning lid, and then let them cool. It makes a super little basket stuffer. Your book, Muffins and Mayhem with an autographed bookplate, and your 'Whoops! Banana Bread' in a jar. The perfect holiday gift."
I loved Kathy's idea, but before I shared it with other readers, I wanted to try it myself. So I mixed up a batch of my 'Whoops! Banana Bread,' filled some pint-sized mason canning jars with batter, set the jars on a pizza pan so they wouldn't tip over and popped them into the oven.
When you bake, my advice is to exactly follow the recipe; measurements are critical when baking. So why didn't I follow my own advice? I don't know, but the end result was a fiasco. I filled the jars more than one-half full with batter, so the banana bread exploded out of the top of each jar. My solution: lop off the top of the bread and seal the jar. Okay, no big deal, this will still work, I told myself. But then after the bread cooled and I tried to slide the banana bread out of one of the jars, it wouldn't budge. The bread did let go from the inside of the jar, but no matter how hard I banged on the bottom of the jar I couldn't get the bread to slide out. I kept whacking and whacking and WHACKING the bottom of the jar, throwing in a few choice words. The bread would start to slide out of the jar, but the neck of the jar was thinner than the bread. How did Kathy get this bread out of the jar? Was this some sort of egg-in-a-bottle trick like we did in science class?
Determined not to let this bread get the best of me (I was gonna get this bread out of the jar one way or the other), using a table knife as a machete, I frantically sliced the bread inside the jar to smithereens. It may not have been pretty, but it still tasted good. But it was apparent that I couldn't give my bread as a gift. "It tastes great, but you'll have to slice and dice to get it out of the jar."
I thought about sending Kathy an email to ask what I did wrong, but I didn't. Good thing, too, because it would have been embarrassing. Actually I would have sounded pretty stupid. In the middle of the night, I woke up and realized the problem. 'If you want the bread to slide out of the jars, Suzanne, you'll have to buy wide-mouth jars, not the skinny ones.'
Kathy is right. A copy of Muffins and Mayhem with an autographed bookplate and a jar of banana bread, makes a thoughtful Thanksgiving hostess gift, or a Christmas gift for friends. (Thanks Kathy!)
See my finished breads in (wide-mouth) jars, and you can request an autographed bookplate and personal letter to put in my book, go to: http://www.muffinsandmayhem.com:80/node/17092
Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.
Suzanne Beecher
Suzanne@DearReader.com
www.MuffinsandMayhem.com
* A note from Suzanne about this week's AUTHORBUZZ
This week's AUTHORBUZZ inspired me to remember a story in our family. It's one of the wondrous things about writing. An author shares a story and I remember one of my own. When my husband and I vacationed in the Smoky Mountains we were lucky enough to be visiting during a kid's Bluegrass contest. I'd never really been a bluegrass fan, but after listening to those kids, now I'm hooked.
Meet five new authors and five new books at AUTHORBUZZ and find out which one has the bluegrass connection. http://authorbuzz.com/dearreader
THE ICING ON THE CAKE by Alison Kent
DINING WITH JOY by Rachel Hauck
DON'T LOOK BACK by Lynette Eason
MUHAMMAD: A STORY OF THE LAST PROPHET by Deepak Chopra
ALMOST HEAVEN by Chris Fabry
Have fun! Go to: http://authorbuzz.com/dearreader
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