Buttermilk Cornbread

It’s the end of healthy January month, how did you do? Were you eating your vegetables and getting more exercise? I have to be truthful with you. While I’ve been posting all of these good for you, lower calories recipes for you, I’ve been secretly stockpiling deliciously evil, high fat treats. I know, I’m terrible. You’re in for a dangerous February!

Along with those sneaky desserts, I’ve been eating lots of soup. It’s been that kind of winter in the Northeast, a soup-eating winter. In fact there is another weather front heading for us tonight! The television keeps warning me about it every fifteen minutes. Warning, warning! Snow is coming! Then some ice, lots and lots of ice! Then you’re going to fall down tomorrow morning on your walk into work. Thank you television, now I know to wrap myself in plastic and pillows before I leave for work in the morning.

While the soup has been nothing spectacular, recipes still in the works, I do have some amazing cornbread to share with you. I have tried a lot of cornbread recipes, because nothing is better with soup. They are all different, too bland, too sweet, to bicarby (note: use baking powder when directed, not baking soda). This has become my favorite, it goes perfectly with chili. It’s best right out of the oven, crunchy around the edges and soft in the middle. Now go warm up and watch the snow come down.

Snack Week! - Zucchini Bread

The only photo I have, because they ate it all...

Happy Friday everyone! Where has the week gone? From the sounds of it, half of the world has been sick this week with some cold or flu virus or another. I know that I was. Luckily I had all these tasty snacks in my fridge, ready for that mild hunger pang of a sick person. You know how it goes, you’re hungry, but you just can’t manage to eat something tangible? Snack week couldn’t have come at a better time.


Did you also hear that everything was ready for me? I prepared all of these foods on Sunday! So maybe you have a crazy work week ahead, maybe the kids have an insane amount of obligations or maybe you want to have some free time this week. Take a few hours on Sunday and you’ll be all set for the week. All of the baked goods require nothing more than a bowl and a big spoon.

This last treat for snack week is something that I never actually ate. I brought these loaves into work and they were gone before I even had a slice. It was three o’clock in the afternoon and I was feeling hungry. Thinking, nobody was eating the zucchini bread, I bet I can get myself a snack. Walk walk walk to the break room. Noooo! An empty container! Where did it all go? According to one of my labmates, if it’s there after three, it’s going to disappear quick. Nuts, maybe I should have hidden some.

Tomorrow, for the last day of Snack Week! I'll be posting many of my favorite pre-packaged healthy snacks.  Because sometimes you just don't have the time!  Thanks for tuning in this week!  Oh, what to do next week, last week of healthy January.  Have you been behaving?  Detoxing from all those cookies?

Daring Bakers: Christmas Stollen

Merry Christmas or Happy Chinese food and movie day to everyone! I hope that your day is treating you well, no matter what you are up to. I’ve been enjoying my Buffalo Christmas this year, spending time with family and friends. In the spirit of spending time with the ones I love, I decided to complete my December Daring Baker’s challenge with my mom! We had a great time, made a huge mess and came out with an amazing dessert.

The 2010 December Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Penny of Sweet Sadie’s Baking. She chose to challenge the Daring Bakers’ to make Stollen. She adapted a friend’s family recipe and combined it with information from friends, techniques from Peter Reinhart’s book and Martha Stewart’s demonstration.

The original recipe called for lots of candied citrus peels and rum. Personally, I’m not really a rum person, and I didn’t feel like candying that much peel. I was feeling particularly lazy this Christmas. However I couldn’t be too lazy because this stollen has quite a few steps. I recommend getting a partner to help you with this recipe. This will help you make sure everything that needs to be added to the bread, actually is added to the bread. Also, you’ll have four different bowls of ingredients that need to be prepared before they are all combined.

We had a great time making this dessert. The best part of it was watching the bread grow. After we formed it into the wreath we watched it grow and grow (it’s alive!), then once it went into the oven it got even bigger. We decided to bring the monster to our family gathering on Christmas eve. After a little explanation the dessert started to disappear (it goes well with pizza and buffalo wings!). At the end of the evening there was some fighting over the remaining stollen, mostly because I suggested it would make an amazing French toast tomorrow morning.

Plan ahead and spend some time with someone special, baking this dessert. You’ll be enjoying it for days ahead. Make it into French toast, a bread pudding or just as toast with butter. If you coat it with sticks and sticks of butter and layers and layers of powdered sugar, then this dessert will last for weeks. (And also be buttery and delicious, BUTTER!)

Thanksgiving 2010 - Whole Wheat Dinner Rolls

Now I know making your own rolls sounds like a lot of work, but they are completely worth it. Buying rolls leaves a big question mark on your plate. Unless you buy your rolls from a bakery, it is likely that they have been plumped up the preservatives. Being a chemist, I will be the last person to tell you not to eat chemicals, I just think fresh tastes better! The rule of “Don’t eat anything you can pronounce” doesn’t really apply to someone who got their PhD in organic chemistry. Not only can I pronounce it, I can also draw you a picture of it.

So I made you some rolls, which I suppose could classify under the Cupcake 24-7 project. Although I can’t take credit for these rolls being in the shape of cupcakes, the recipe made the suggestion. I digress! You’ll see I’ve prepared you some traditional pull-apart rolls as well as the clover-leaf rolls. Rolls are really my favorite part of the meal. I think that everything on the plate marries well with rolls. Dunk them in gravy, use them to corral some cranberries, even use them to clean your plate. Rolls are multi-purpose food entities!

By making your rolls, you control the health quotient. I’ve modified a classic dinner roll recipe to be higher in fiber and lower in fat. Except the butter, you can’t replace the butter in the babies. They just wouldn’t be the same! Now you can prepare the dough in the morning and stop before the second rise. Cover your rolls and put them in the oven to hold them until baking. Just be sure to bring them out about two hours before dinnertime. You need to give them time to warm to room temperature and complete their second rise before baking.

Whole Wheat Dinner Rolls

Adapted from Essentials of Baking

1 pkg active dry yeast (2 ½ tsp)

¼ c warm water

1 c milk (I went with skim, but use whatever you have on hand)

2 tbsp sugar
2 eggs
6 tbsp butter
2 c Whole wheat flour
2 ½ c all-purpose flour (plus extra as needed)
2 tsp salt

Combine warm water and yeast in a small bowl and allow to sit for 5 minutes. Once the yeast is awake and foamy, add remaining ingredients. Stir with a wooden spoon until the dough forms a mass. Dump out onto a floured surface and knead for 5-7 minutes. Your dough with be soft and tacky, but not sticky.

Shape dough into a ball and place in a lightly oiled bowl. Turn to coat the dough in oil. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and let dough rise in a warm spot for 1 ½-2 hours, or until doubled in size (It took me about 1h 45m).

While you are waiting, spray a 9-inch round cake pan and a 12-cup muffin pan generously with spray oil.

Punch down the dough and turn out onto the counter. Cut dough in half. For the clover-leaf rolls cut dough into 12 equal portions. Then cut each piece into 3 pieces. Roll these small pieces into little balls. Place 3 balls into each muffin cup. Cover with a kitchen towel and set aside.

For the pull-apart rolls, cut dough into 8 equal pieces. Roll the dough into balls. Place 7 pieces around the edge of the cake pan and one in the middle. Cover with a kitchen towel and set aside to rise for about 30-45 minutes. They should be puffy!

If you would like shiny rolls, take one egg. Beat said egg. Brush tops of the rolls with beaten egg. Heat your oven to 400 F and bake the rolls for 20-25 minutes. They should be golden brown and delicious looking. Serve as soon as you can!

Cinnamon Raisin Walnut Bread

Okay, so I might be doing the Bread Baker’s Apprentice Challenge a little out of order. Can you blame me though? Once you flip through a bread book, and see a perfect loaf of cinnamon bread, you have to try it. I know, the Cinnamon Raisin Walnut Bread is number nine on the list of breads, but I LOVE cinnamon bread! I can even pinpoint the reason for my love of cinnamon bread.

When we were little, my brother and I never had a babysitter. While some other kids were watched by neighbors or teenage daughters of their parents friends, we got to go to the tiny house. I loved the tiny house, because in the tiny house was my tiny Gram. At Gram’s house we would spend hours in the garden, eating grapes off of the back fence. I would sit in the kitchen, organizing the cabinets. And when we were hungry, we would get toast. Toasted cinnamon raisin bread, yum.

So baking my own loaf of cinnamon raisin bread brought back so many memories from that tiny house. More of a free form loaf bread, this doesn’t have to be perfect. This recipe made for a wonderful day, filling the house with a sweet, cinnamon aroma. So this post is in honor of that tiny house and my tiny Gram who lived inside.

BBAC - Anadama Bread

A pretty simple post today, to go along with a simple bread. A bread that I would have never baked if not for the Bread Bakers Apprentice Challenge. You’ve never heard of the BBAC? It’s lots of fun. You go out and get yourself a copy of Peter Reinhart’s The Bread Baker’s Apprentice. You join the BBAC group on facebook. Then you bake your way through the book, from A to Z. Simple, fun, challenging! I have always wanted to be able to bake bread. To make my 350 square feet of living space smell like the inside of a bakery.

Bread is one of those food items that it seems silly to make, right? I mean bread is two dollars at the store, maybe three at the bakery. Why make your own? Because a sandwich tastes better when made on home baked bread. Toast is so much more crunchy and flavorful. French toast comes out richer. Everything just tastes better. So challenge yourself, get a biceps workout and enjoy bread, warm from the oven.

Pear Cake with Pine Nuts

If you haven’t noticed by now, breakfast is my favorite meal. I think that I could eat pastries, French toast or pancakes for every meal of the day. I try to make my breakfasts somewhat healthy by eating some fruit alongside my carbohydrates and drinking a glass of skim milk. I’m a bit strange in another manner, I don’t like to eat eggs for breakfast. Yuk. If you find me eating sunny-side up eggs, it is most likely nine at night, not nine in the morning. For some reason eggs at night are a meal, whereas eggs in the morning are gross. Ooo, unless they are on a sandwich, with some bacon.

Luckily today we are getting our fruit baked right into our breakfast pastry. This means that you can save time and be out the door in a snap! The fruit of the moment? Pears! I love pears because you can eat just about the whole thing. Many years ago I realized that you can just rip out the stem of a pear and then you can eat the whole top of the fruit. This also makes it super easy to slice pears into easy discs. Slice circles off of the pear until you hit the seeds. You can cut around the outside of the pear or just move onto another piece of fruit. (I suggest you just eat the bottom third)

So simple to make, this pastry is perfect for a lazy weekend morning. A simple coffee cake, fancied up with pears and pine nuts, this is just perfect. The leftovers (if there are any) can be kept in the fridge until tomorrow. Reheating is simple. Cut yourself a slice, heat in the microwave for 1 minute on half power. Once you learn to use the power settings in your microwave you will be amazed at what it can do. Play around, it’s fun! You can get non-rubbery pasta leftovers, perfectly thawed bread slices and even scrambled eggs.

Best Banana Bread

I seem to have made a lot of fruit breads recently. Apple cake Wednesday, banana bread today! Some people like apples, and some like bananas, gotta try to make everyone happy! Personally, I am a big banana fan. I start my morning, everyday, with a banana. It could be with cereal, a muffin, pancakes or just milk. The main dish is ever changing, but the banana remains. Unlike some picky people, I will eat a banana at most stages of ripeness. From once it turns mostly yellow (green around the edges is okay) until it is almost overwhelmed with brown spots, I’m going to eat it. There is a line that I just won’t cross, that last banana inevitably turns completely brown. I won’t touch it and into the freezer it goes.

I have several single bananas in the freezer, waiting to be baked into tasty treats. I find that freezing the bananas leads to a creamy texture in the final bread. Freezing them slightly breaks down their cellular structure and makes them easy to mash (just be sure to let them thaw in a bowl). You could even buy some bananas just for the purpose of baking them! Toss them in the freezer once they turn yellow and a few days later they are ready for baking!

This particular recipe has its healthy quotient bulked up with its use of whole wheat flour and Greek yogurt. I also love to bake them in mini loaf pans, that way your serving looks so much bigger! And if you can’t stop yourself from eating the whole thing, you only had three servings… Excuse me now, I have to go eat a loaf of banana bread.