I make notes on a post-it note, then stick it on the recipe with followup comments afterwards.

Yesterday, the Appliance Apocalypse struck at my house. Plus, my brain went on vacation., I made Banana Coffeecake for breakfast. After I had 3/4 of the batter in the baking dish, it occurred to me that there wasn't much batter. I had forgotten to put in the bananas! I scooped the batter out of the baking dish back into the mixing bowl, added chuncked bananas and let the stand mixer go to work.

After baking the required 25 minutes, I pulled the oven shelf out and realized the upper oven wasn't working up to temp. Instead of being done, the surface was a little brown and bubbly. I raised the oven temp twenty-five degrees and set the timer for 15 minutes. Eight or ten minutes would have been adequate, probably. When the coffeecake was fully baked, it was a little too brown on top and crusty along one edge. It tasted good, though, so mission accomplished.

In the afternoon, I tried a new recipe for dinner rolls to go with Cabbage Soup from the freezer. Using the lower oven. I found the recipe for Sour Cream Rolls at Fleischmann'sBreadworld.com. Since it's listed as a beginner recipe, I figured I could have them prepped and baked in 90 minutes and get rid of sour cream. My downfall in this recipe is that I decided to experiment with paper liners.

I had the idea that my life would be easier if I never again had to grease muffin tins. So I put paper cupcake liners in 6 of the openings to see if they work as good for yeast rolls as for muffins/cupcakes. They do not. The batter barely rose in the liners and didn't spread. After an hour rise. The ones in the greased tins looked perfect for baking. I decided to try a trick my beloved stepmother used.

She never put her bread and rolls in a preheated oven. She wanted the oven spring from the bread going into a cold oven and gradually going up to temp. I don't know if that really works, but I remember her believing it did. So I put the pan into a cold oven, hoping the gradual heating of the oven would force a rise out of the dough in paper liners. I added five extra minutes to the cooking time, which was a huge mistake. I ended up with burnt tops!

On top of that, the rolls were too oily for me with butter spread on them. Still later, I remembered why I had a lonely container of sour cream in the fridge. I have become lactose-intolerant and instead of throwing away the sour cream, I shoved it to the back of the refrigerator. Today, I will throw away 11 rolls. My husband won't eat them with the burnt tops. But at least I know not to use paper liners for yeast rolls!

• This reply was modified 5 years, 5 months ago by Italiancook.

I bought a rectangular cube sponge from KAF a few years ago that works well to clean muffin tins. I later found them at T.J. Maxx and bought a couple more.

I fed my sourdough starter on Monday. I made pan pizza with my usual sourdough pizza crust. For sauce, I mixed some tomato paste with water and spread it on, before sprinkling liberally with Penzey’s Tuscan Sunset (salt-free blend) and garlic powder. I topped it with browned ground turkey, 8 oz. of sliced mushrooms, red bell pepper, green onion, 4 oz. Mozzarella, and Parmesan. We had it with a salad.

I fed my sourdough starter again and made up a double batch of dough for my lower saturated fat version of my Whole Wheat Sourdough Cheese Crackers. I’ll bake them in a couple of days.

Joan--King Arthur has an interesting sourdough cinnamon roll recipe that I'm tempted to try.

I made KAF chocolate whoopie pies yesterday. It's interesting. The cakes were okay on their own without a lot of depth of flavor but were pretty good when mixed with the filling. My kids loved them. My wife cut one in half and ate half and went back for the other which is a good sign.

I brought some over to my "whoopie pie connoisseur" neighbors and I am still waiting for feedback. One of them is completely lacking in tact so she will be brutally honest. She, like my wife, was only going to eat half of one before she went to the gym. I said that if she could eat half and walk away I had failed.

Fun to bake something new.

Yesterday (Wednesday) I baked a strawberry snacking cake from a Bon Appetit email. (Details are in the Baking--Dessert category.) It's not overly sweet, and we liked it as a good alternative when dietary restraints rule out strawberry shortcake.

Today I baked my lower-fat sourdough whole wheat cheese crackers from the dough I made earlier this week.

Joan, have you ever made the "Impossible" Bisquick pies? I made those years and years ago for my Dad. Cold, creamy, quick and easy - great for summertime. His favorite was coconut, followed by lemon. You just throw ALL the ingredients into a blender, pour into a pie plate, bake -- it forms it's own crust. Lemon lush is a great name!