Amish banana nut coffeecake

The Amish Cook

By Lov­ina Eicher

It’s a lit­tle past 7 a.m. and the bright glow in the east­ern sky looks like a promise for a sunny day. The sun is always wel­come at this time of the year. The ground is cov­ered with snow again and the tem­per­a­tures are colder.

Finally feels like win­ter. Sat­ur­day morn­ing our ther­mome­ter showed 6 degrees. The last few days the morn­ing tem­per­a­ture has been around 20. The new stove is heat­ing well and is sav­ing us coal. It was high time for a new one.

I am mak­ing cof­fee. I don’t drink cof­fee every morn­ing but it feels like I need some this morn­ing. I was up with daugh­ter Lov­ina, 7, dur­ing part of the night.

She came to our bed­room and told us she has to throw up. Before I could get her to our bath­room she threw up on our floor. Sigh. I thought she felt warm, so I took her tem­per­a­ture and it showed 103.

After some fever reducer she is sleep­ing well. She didn’t even wake up with the com­mo­tion of the other chil­dren get­ting ready for school. When my chil­dren get sick and I am tend­ing to their needs my thoughts often go back to my mother.

She was always there for us when we were sick and I would often think “doesn’t she ever get tired?” Now that I see it from a mother’s point of view it just seems nat­ural to take care of them while they are sick.

Sit­ting there in the mid­dle of the night hold­ing Lov­ina it makes me think of how for­tu­nate and blessed we truly are. The quiet and peace­ful­ness of the night some­how gives a per­son time to think back over the years.

In May it will be 12 years since my dear father passed away but every Feb. 17 my thoughts are with him as he would be cel­e­brat­ing another birth­day if he were still here.

If he had lived he would be 81 this month. Fri­day the 17th there will be no school and also the fol­low­ing Mon­day. The chil­dren are excited about hav­ing two four-day school weeks. That is their mid-winter break.

Wednes­day will be their 100th day of school for this school year. Lov­ina and Kevin’s class do some­thing spe­cial like bring­ing in 100 small items to count.

I will prob­a­bly let them take but­tons. Also Kevin’s class has to bring 100 pieces of some­thing edi­ble like cereal, marsh­mal­lows, choco­late chips, cook­ies, pret­zels or so forth. They mix it all together and call it “100 Hash” which they all enjoy eating.

Daugh­ter Eliz­a­beth stays with 3 young chil­dren 3 days a week while their mother works. She watches 1 year old twins and a 3-year-old boy.

She enjoys the chil­dren and is used to watch­ing over lit­tle ones from her expe­ri­ence being the old­est of 8. Tues­day Eliz­a­beth and Susan will go clean a house nearby. I miss their help when they are home but they like to earn money too.

Last week I sewed Ben­jamin and Kevin each a new pant. I have another one cut out for Kevin which I hope to sew this week. Kevin has had a growth spurt and needs longer pants.

I also have mate­r­ial to make me a few new dresses. It seems I sew for every­one else in the fam­ily and put my own sewing off. I sure could use a few new dresses.

Another sewing project I hope to do is make the boys new Sun­day pants and jack­ets. I don’t mind sewing the pants but the jack­ets are not my favorite things to sew.

Kevin brought home a fake snake from school and the boys hav­ing fun try­ing to scare me with it. This morn­ing I went to put the eggs back in the refrig­er­a­tor and I almost dropped them when I saw the snake between food con­tain­ers. I imag­ine they would have laughed if they would have seen me drop them. It seems I should be used to that trick by now.

I’ll con­clude the col­umn by shar­ing this great recipe for “banana nut cof­fee cake.”

BANANA NUT COFFEECAKE

1 /2 cup oil

1 /2 cup milk

2 eggs

2 mashed bananas

1 cup packed brown sugar

1 1 /2 cups flour

1 cup chopped nuts

1 1 /2 tea­spoons bak­ing powder

1 /2 tea­spoon salt

1 /2 tea­spoon bak­ing soda

Pre­heat oven to 350. In a large mix­ing bowl com­bine all of the ingre­di­ents and beat until smooth and creamy. Pour into a greased 9 X 13 cake pan. Add the topping.

Top­ping: 1 cup brown sugar, 1 /4 tea­spoon cin­na­mon, 1 /2 cup nuts, 2 table­spoons but­ter, 4 table­spoons flour.

Com­bine sugar, cin­na­mon, flour, nuts and cut in but­ter. Sprin­kle on top of cake. Bake at 350 for 25–30 minutes.

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Posted by kpotts on Feb 14 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.