Thayer in the Kitchen

This is a delicious easy rhubarb cake that I found on one of my favorite recipe blog sites, The View From Grand Island. You can hardly ever go wrong with one of Sue Moran's recipes and this one is true to form, yummy as my daughter said after leaving her half of the cake. She was supposed to save it for breakfast. It never made it. She said they finished it off while watching TV that evening. Well, you wouldn't want it to go to waste.   Ingredients: 1/2 cup buttermilk (you can substitute 1/2 & 1/2 or cream) 1 tsp. lemon juice if you use something other than buttermilk 1/2 cup unsalted butter at room temperature 3/4 cup granulated sugar, plus 2 teaspoons for sprinkling on top of the cake 1 large egg, at room temperature 1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla  2 cups flour, save 1 tablespoon to toss with the rhubarb 2 teaspoons baking powder 1 teaspoon salt 2 cups thinly sliced rhubarb 1/2 cups roughly chopped nuts (optional) Instructions: Preheat oven to 350F. Butter or spray a 9X9 in...

I made this cake to take to a Books for Cooks meeting.  We were discussing a book on olive oil that I hadn't read, but we were also going to share olive oil tastings and cold summer soups all using olive oil.  I found out that you don't need to use a super expensive olive oil in this cake because with all the other flavors you can't taste the flavor of the olive oil.  However, it is a delicious cake.  The women attending the book club all liked it and Arthur loved it and said it had to go on "the blog."  I grated the zucchini with the grating disk on my food processor.  It takes quite a bit of zucchini to make this cake, which in the height of summer is a good thing. 1 cup (135g) almonds, pecans, or walnuts, toasted 2 cups (280g) flour 1 teaspoon baking powder 1/2 teaspoon baking soda 1 teaspoon kosher or sea salt 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon 1 teaspoon ground ginger 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg 3 large eggs, at room temperature 1 3/4 (350g) cups ...