Secret Recipe Club: Salmon Cake and Pumpkin Beer Bread

It's the third Monday of the month again. That means it's time for Group C to reveal their Secret Recipe Club picks for this month. I'm sure you all know the drill by now. Secret Recipe Club is a group of bloggers that make another member's recipe (in secret) and reveal them on a particular day. Everyone gets to explore new recipes by new people. My favorite part is seeing what other people make from my recipe collection because they can sometimes unearth some very old recipes (with very terrible photos).

It might be September, but even as I write this it doesn't feel like autumn. It's still hot and humid outside and I still think it's too early to be serving pumpkin spice lattes (even though I made pumpkin bread...how ironic). Work is getting very busy (a good and bad thing) but the best thing about September is FOOTBALL. I never though I'd be so excited about football, but my husband has had quite an influence on me.

This month, I got to explore Heather's blog Join Us Pull Up a Chair. Heather started her blog for many of the same reasons I did: to give some order to the stacks of magazine clippings and printed recipes and dog-eared pages of cookbooks. Now I have some semblance of order for my recipe collection. Heather is a mother and business owner. I don't know how so many of these women do it: finding time to blog and work and raise children. I'll probably find time to do it eventually, but I'm not there yet.

This month I found so many interesting recipes on Heather's blog. I was set to make these salmon cakes, but then one of my coworkers who loves pumpkin spice everything was having a really bad week, so I knew I had to make a loaf of her pumpkin bread (even though it's still way to early for that stuff).

Thanks for the awesome recipes Heather. Glad I got the chance to explore your awesome blog.

Salmon Cakes for 2 (adapted from Join Us, Pull Up a Chair)

Ingredients

• 6-8 oz salmon filets, cooked.
• 1/2 red onion, minced
• 1 celery rib, minced
• 2 tsp capers
• 1 Tbsp fresh parsley
• 3 Tbsp mayo (or to taste)
• salt, pepper, cayenne to taste
• 2 Tbsp panko for the cakes, plus extra for the outside
• eggs

Directions

1. Cook salmon and chill completely. Flake apart with a fork.
2. Mix salmon with other ingredients the same way you would make tuna salad. Form mix into two patties (you can do 3 patties, but these were larger, more burger sized ones)
3. Dredge the patties in extra panko, egg and panko again. Pan fry in a little olive oil until a good crust forms on both sides.
4. Serve with a salad if desired. I served mine on a ciabatta roll with wilted spinach, pickled onions and dill sauce.

Pumpkin Beer Bread (makes 2 loaves). If you only want to make one loaf and have extra for another day, take a look at Heather's original recipe.

Ingredients

• 1 15oz can of pumpkin
• 1 2/3 cup sugar
• 1 bottle pumpkin beer
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 2/3 cup oil
• 4 eggs
• 4 cups flour (I used a white/wheat blend just because I like the flavor)
• 2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 2 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 3/4 tsp nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp cloves

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350 and spray two 9x5 loaf pans
2. In a mixing bowl, combine pumpkin, sugars, beer, oil, eggs and spices
3. In a separate bowl, combine flour, salt and baking soda. Add those slowly to the liquid ingredients.
4. Pour into loaf pans and bake for 1 hour or until toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
5. Remove pans from oven. Let bread cool in pans completely before slicing.

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