On Sunday, I baked a double recipe of my no-butter drop sugar cookies and rolled them in red sugar in honor of the Memorial Day weekend. The cookies are soft enough that Scott will be able to eat them.

Mmmm, I love carrot cake!

I made a batch of sandwich/burger buns today.

I'm behind in my photo comments, so I'll catch-up here.

Mike, your keto ingredients' breads look good. I admire the way you do experiments. I never do experiments to avoid wasting any ingredients. I think that's my dad talking.

Joan, I don't play poker. When I was a young child, my dad tried to teach me. He supplied our pennies. The first time he had to take one of my pennies was the last time I played poker. Having said that, IF I played poker, I'd want someone to bring the delicious pumpkin pie you baked. Congratulations on mastering the placement of photos on this site!

Joan, I've never made a carrot cake but would love to enjoy some of yours. Beautiful photo!

If I've forgotten anyone's photo, sorry.

Your cheese bread sounds delicious, Skeptic.

I needed to use the last of my Cara Cara oranges, so I found a quick bread recipe, "Barley Orange Bread" in Bernard Clayton, Jr.'s New Complete Book of Breads (expanded 2nd edition, pp. 177-179). It uses just barley flour, which appealed to me, since my husband and I are both fond of barley. I baked it, with a few changes on Thursday. I reduced the baking powder from 1 Tbs. to 2 ½ tsp. because the larger amount always seems to me to leave an aftertaste, and I find that the Bakewell Cream baking powder outperforms other brands. The rise was fine on the baked bread, but the center of the loaf has a slight depression. I wonder if 2 tsp. baking powder and ¼ tsp. baking soda (to offset the acidity of the orange juice) would correct that slight defect. (Cass would have known!) The recipe has a complex boiling of orange rind and creating a kind of syrup with it and half the sugar, but the headnote in the 2nd edition of Clayton's book, unlike in the 1st, says that you can skip that if you do not mind assertive orange flavor. However, he does not say how to compensate for the syrup. I decided to cut the amount of water used to make the final syrup (which I did not make) in half, as I assume at least half would have evaporated in the 25-minute cooking time. I added 1 Tbs. milk powder, and I replaced 3 Tbs. of butter or shortening, melted, with 3 Tbs. avocado oil. I altered the mixing instructions to mix the wet ingredients first, along with the sugar into which I had mixed the orange zest. The pans called for were either a 9" x 5" or two 7" x 3". I used three 2 ½" x 5" loaf pans. I baked for 38 minutes but perhaps should have taken then out after 35, Once they have cooled, I will wrap up two for freezing, and the other I will wrap and allow to rest for a day or two, as Clayton says a richer flavor will develop if allowed to rest for at least a day. As we have dessert for the next two days, that works perfectly.

Italiancook I wish we could all share too!skeptic your flatbread sounds good with all the cheese,BakerAunt your Barley orange bread sounds good but I've never baked with barley, and Mike your Keto cheesecake filling sounds great. I made a Banana cake recipe I had not baked for a long time and it turned out good and I iced with cream cheese frosting.

Your baking all looks great. Maybe we could schedule a My Nebraska Kitchen meet up? We had the virtual pizza night during Covid.

This week was supposed to be a challah week but my logistics partner is laid up after surgery so we're skipping May. But I think I'll bake her one next week.

We're expanding challah production. Not quite sure how we'll do it yet. One of the rabbis wants to have more people involved and I also want to do this for a second congregation. Part of this too, is to convince people who are already making their own challah to give a loaf away. Most traditional challah recipes will make two loaves (at least). It's tradition to have two loaves on your sabbath table. It would be great if everyone took one of those loaves and gave it someone else.

Joan, your banana cake looks dive-in great! I never thought of using a cream cheese frosting, but I can see how that'd be delicious. When I make banana cake, I always use my grandmother's frosting. She'd make confectioner's sugar icing with a big dollop of peanut butter mixed in. No one has ever recognized it as peanut butter, although most people comment the icing has something special.