Oops - I forgot to include this recipe in the "For Mommy" post below....so, since I'm lazy and don't want to go back and add it - I'll just make a new post. And now that I think of it - I believe this bread is good enough that it deserves its own post! So there!

(Finally, some decent pictures!!) This recipe is great - I made it specially for my mom because she and my dad are on a "mango kick" right now and can't seem to get enough mangos. I personally, thought it sounded  a little odd, but as it turns out, this is a pretty tasty loaf!

Fresh Mango Bread
from Dorie Greenspan’s Baking: From My Home to Yours

3 large eggs
3/4 cup flavorless oil, such as canola or safflower oil (I used vegetable)
1 cup sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup light brown sugar
2 cups diced mango
3/4 cup golden raisins (I omitted this)
grated zest of 1/2 a lime

1. Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 350′. Butter an 8 1/2 x 4 1/2 inch loaf pan, dust the inside with flour and tap out the excess. Put the pan on an insulated baking sheet or on two regular baking sheets stacked one on top of the other.

2. Whisk the eggs and oil together.

3. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, spices and salt. Rub the brown sugar between your palms into the bowl, breaking up any lumps, then stir it in.

4. Pour the wet ingredients over the dry, switch to s sturdy rubber spatula or wooden spoon and mix until blended. The batter will be very thick (really more like a dough than a batter) and not easily mixed, but persevere, it will soon come together.

5. Stir in the mango, raisins and zest. Scrape the batter into the pan and smooth the top with a rubber spatula.

6. Bake the bread for 1 1/2 hours, or until it is golden brown and a thin knife inserted into the centre comes out clean. (If the bread looks as if it’s getting too brown as it bakes, cover it loosely with a foil tent.)

7. Transfer the pan to a rack and cool 5 minutes before running a knife around the sides of the pan and unmolding. Invert and cool to room temperature right side up on the rack.

Mmmm, yummy!!! Go make some!

When I was a little girl, getting to go play at my great-grandmother's house (whom we've always called “Baba”) was a huge treat for my big sister and me. Her house was always warm and inviting and she always had something fun for us to do, whether it was letting us rummage through her jewelry boxes, playing paper dolls, or making mud pies in the back yard. She also had a great talent for telling stories. One of our favorite things was sitting in the floor, listening to Baba tell funny stories from her childhood, or of she and her husband, or my personal favorite – Peter Rabbit.

However, one of my fondest memories of afternoons at Baba's house were spent sitting on her kitchen counter tops watching her make homemade buttermilk biscuits. Baba is one heck of a good cook - her fried chicken, coconut cake, and peach cobbler (especially her peach cobbler), and buttermilk biscuits, to name a few, cannot be matched. But, this post is just about her biscuits, so I'll get back on track (but trust me, you'll definitely be seeing many more of Baba's recipes on here!). When I was a kid, I loved the taste of the raw biscuit dough, and she would let me have the little “scraps” that were leftover from cutting out the circles. Baba's biscuits always tasted fantastic with breakfast or dinner, but my personal favorite way to eat them was with butter and sugar (sugardy butterdy biscuits, we called them as kids....I know, we were weird kids, I guess).

I've always been scared to re-create recipes of Baba's; I guess because I know they'll never be half as good as hers were (plus, there's just something about a recipe made by your grandmother that makes it taste extra special). However, after some encouragement from my mother, I decided to try my hand at Baba's buttermilk biscuits. Of course, as I suspected, they weren't as good as hers, but they weren't half bad, either......

Buttermilk Biscuits

adapted from The American Woman's Cookbook

2 cups all purpose flour

½ teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons cold shortening (plus 2 more tablespoons for greasing pans)

1 cup cold buttermilk

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

Sift all dry ingredients together

In a food processor, pulse shortening and flour mixture together until it resembles coarse meal. (or you can do it the old fashioned way- nix the food processor and cut the shortening in by hand)

Add the buttermilk and mix until dough forms a ball. (it will be sticky)

Dump the dough out of floured surface and form into a ball (you'll need to add a little more flour to be able to do this – approx. 1 or 2 teaspoons)

roll dough out about ¾ of an inch thick; using a biscuit cutter, or round cookie cutter, cut out biscuits.

Place a tablespoon of shortening in a cake pan and let it melt in the oven for a minute or so (you'll probably need two cake pans)

Place each biscuit in the warm cake pans after turning them in the melted shortening to coat.

Bake for 8-10 minutes or until golden brown.