TWD: Oatmeal Breakfast Bread

I usually bake my TWD "assignments" over the weekend, but it completely slipped my mind this weekend. In fact, I didn't fully realize that today was Tuesday until about 2pm...and of course remembered that I hadn't made my Oatmeal Breakfast Bread! Luckily, Baking: From My Home to Yours is on Google Books, so I was able to review the recipe to see if I needed to stop by Kroger on the way home for any additional ingredients. Luckily, I was in good shape. And even better, after reading the recipe, I found that I would probably even have time to get the bread baked and photograph it in natural light!
Sadly, this was the only picture I got before it got dark. And oh, is it tasty! Sarah mentioned in her post that it reminds her of fall...and I have to say that it does the same for me! Applesauce, raisins, and spices all combine in this bread to make a perfect fall quickbread. (And as a side note, I am totally ready for it to be fall. I am done with heat and humidity.)
This week's pick was chosen by Natalie, of Oven Love. Thanks, Natalie! You picked a good one!

TWD: Sweet Cream Biscuits

I think that I can count on one hand the number of times I've made biscuits. We just don't eat biscuits that much around here. We love 'em though...that's for sure. Maybe that's why I don't make them! In the past, on the few occasions we've had biscuits with dinner, I've just bought the frozen ones and heated them up. (I know, I know...but they're good!) I think biscuits have a reputation as being difficult to make, so I kind of bought into it, I guess. And, being from a Southern state, a girl kind of feels obligated to make delicious, light, flaky biscuits. Well...I can't say that I've got biscuit making down to an art, but I've got a start!
Dorie (and everyone else who is good at making biscuits) will tell you that one of the keys to light, flaky biscuits is to NOT OVERWORK THE DOUGH. This is the thing I have the most trouble with in baking. I guess I just like to be stern with dough. If I get dough in my hands, I have to work it! It's a compulsion! With these biscuits, I tried not to work the dough too much. I was afraid that I had erred too far on the side of caution, but they rose pretty well. I also didn't twist my biscuit cutter when I cut my rounds. I think that helps some, too. I don't understand the chemistry of it all, but I'm pretty sure it helps the dough rise a little higher. Overall, these biscuits were very well-received at my house! David ate 5 of them. But they're teeny-tiny biscuits...cut with a 2-inch cutter. I'm not used to petite biscuits...around here, we want a biscuit the size of your fist! But I do think that these would be precious at a shower with country ham sandwiched between the two halves. YUM! If you'd like to make your own batch of super-easy and delicious biscuits, check out Melissa's blog, Love at First Bite.

TWD: Cocoa-Nana Bread

Hi everyone! The Sweet Life is back after a little hiatus. We've been in the new house for a little over a week now, and it's beginning to feel like home. For several days, I was very uneasy whenever I was in the house, because it just didn't feel like "home." But now that it's a little lived-in, I'm feeling better. It's still not quite "home" yet, but we're closer. At least I don't feel like jumping up and driving back to the old house or my parent's house anymore!
Anyway, I'm LOVING my new kitchen. I have so much more space now than I did at the old house, and I've got crazy amounts of countertops. If you're interested in seeing the new kitchen, take a look at this post.
I decided to make my "comeback" with the Tuesdays with Dorie assignment for the week: Cocoa-Nana Bread, chosen by Steph at Obsessed with Baking. It was a great assignment for my first TWD in my new kitchen: simple ingredients that I could find easily, as I'm still finding my way around the new house. I even had a couple of past-their-prime bananas begging to be used. I felt a little bad for Steph as I looked at the P & Q for this week's pick...it seems lots of people are uneasy about the combo of bananas and chocolate. And that's something I just don't get (kind of like how I don't understand how so many people have an aversion to raisins in baked goods), because they seem to be perfect companions to me. In fact, one of my favorite snacks is a banana drizzled with Hershey's syrup (or covered in Nutella). Anyway, this recipe is a keeper. It's a quick bread, so it's not rocket science. Dorie's description was right on: the first bite is chocolate-chocolate, then you get the banana taste. It was a perfect dessert after dinner tonight...still warm from the oven! Yum!
Thanks, Steph, for choosing this delicious bread! I love the chocolate and banana combo! If you want to try the recipe, visit Obsessed with Baking.

Cranberry Banana Bread and a Confession

I'm back with more of my holiday baking recipes! And I have a confession to make. I have made this Cranberry Banana Bread several times for food gifts, yet I have never tasted it. There's something wrong with that, isn't there? This quick bread always gets good reviews, so I've never been concerned about giving it away (well, except for the first time I made it).
I was so close to having a bite this year, but it just didn't happen. As I was counting my mini-loaves of all kinds of bread, I realized that I would have just enough, so I didn't get to snack on any of this one. I know I would love it, though. I am a sucker for all things cranberry, and that's a recent development. For the longest time I was scared of cranberries, for some reasons. To get over my fear, I started putting dried cranberries on my salad (which I now cannot live without) and I've gradually worked up to using whole cranberries in recipes. I don't know why I was ever scared of the tartness of cranberries. I was the kid who ate unripe gooseberries off of my grandmother's gooseberry bush, for crying out loud!

Anyway, I just know this recipe is good. How can a quick bread with cranberries and bananas be anything but? Maybe when we get moved in to the new house, I'll try a batch of this bread just for me. It'll be a nice christening for my new oven!

Cranberry Banana Bread

1 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup butter, softened

1 cup mashed bananas

1/4 cup milk

2 large eggs

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 cup chopped walnuts

1 1/2 cups fresh cranberries, coarsley chopped

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour a loaf pan. Cream together butter and sugar until completely blended. Add banana, milk, and eggs, mixing well. Add dry ingredients, mixing well, until just moist. Stir in the nuts and cranberries. Spread batter evenly in loaf pan. Bake for 1 hour and 10 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the bread comes out clean. Let cool for 10 minutes, then remove from pan and cool completely.

Peanut Butter Pumpkin Bread

Thank goodness I sort of had my wits about me during my holiday baking frenzy! I took as many pictures as I could, but I haven't posted too many of my recipes thus far. I guess I've been saving them for a rainy day. Now, it looks like I'll be posting those for the next little bit, because my camera seems to have disappeared in the packing chaos! I hope it resurfaces before too long, or I'll be in a tight spot!
Anyway, I made lots of mini loaves of bread this Christmas to give away as gifts. I like the idea of giving mini loaves for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, I assume most people I'm giving food to are in the same predicament as me. I figure they probably love food, but that they've got way too much of it at Christmastime. The mini loaf is just a perfect little snack. It can be consumed in one sitting either alone (Hogatha!) or with a friend. There are no leftovers to feel obligated to eat. I also like mini loaves because I can give a kind of "variety pack" to people with several different flavors. That seems to be much appreciated, at least by my family and friends!
So here's one of my favorite quick bread recipes. Peanut Butter Pumpkin Bread. When I first read the name of the recipe, I was a little uneasy about it. I'd never eaten peanut butter and pumpkin together. But I thought about it, and decided that peanut butter makes anything better, so I took the plunge. And it is delicious! It's a very moist bread, and the peanut butter stands out, but not too much. The pumkin is a perfect accent flavor. This recipe makes two loaves, and they freeze really well. If the pumpkin shortage hasn't hit your area, give this recipe a try!

Peanut Butter Pumpkin Bread

Anita Chicke

3 cups sugar

1 can (15 oz) solid-pack pumpkin

4 eggs

1 cup vegetable oil

3/4 cup water

2/3 cup peanut buter

3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

2 tsp. baking soda

1 1/2 tsp. salt

1 tsp. ground cinnamon

1 tsp. ground nutmeg

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a mixing bowl, combine the sugar, pumpkin, eggs, oil, water, and peanut butter; beat well. In another bowl, combine flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg; whisk well. Gradually add flour mixture to pumpkin mixture. Mix until just combined. Pour into two greased 9x5x3-inch loaf pans. Bake for 60-70 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes before removing from pans to wire racks.

*Makes 6 mini loaves.

Apple Muffins

I'm back again with more muffins! These are the last ones, for a little while, though. When I went on my muffin-baking binge last weekend, my plan was to use up some ingredients that needed to be used. I had some golden delicious apples that we hadn't finished eating, and I didn't want them to go bad, so I went on a search for apple muffins. I found these yummy ones at Smitten Kitchen, where the food is always good and the pictures are always beautiful (and these days, you might even see a picture of a beyond-adorable baby boy!)
I ran across Deb's Smitten Kitchen website not long after I discovered food blogging. I've tried several of her recipes, and they never disappoint. She's truly talented at this whole cooking thing, and I'm amazed that she does it all in a NYC apartment kitchen. Wow.
These muffins were very simple to make, and again, I had all the ingredients on hand. As Deb mentions in her post about these muffins, they're super moist, which I loved. Of the three kinds of muffins I made last weekend, these were David's favorite. They were my second favorite...a very close second behind the pumpkin muffins. They're definitely a recipe that I'll keep in my muffin rotation. I'm not going to post the recipe, because I want you to go to the Smitten Kitchen. Just click here, and you'll go right to the post/recipe for these delightfully apple-y muffins! I didn't make any substitutions or changes to her recipe...I did exactly as Deb said (even not skimping on the topping!). I used golden delicious apples in my muffins, but I think you could use just about anything.

I've gotten a couple of comments about my groovy Halloween muffin liners. They came from Kroger. My Kroger has an aisle of seasonal products that changes fairly frequently, and that's where I always get my muffin/cupcake liners. They always have the cutest designs. I got some super-cute Christmas ones last year, and I've also gotten some Valentine's day ones, too. If you have a Kroger, check to see if they have a seasonal aisle. In my experience, the cute liners are never with the baking supplies. Good luck! Oh, by the way...they're Wilton brand, so you might be able to find them through Wilton, as well.

Pumpkin Muffins

More muffins! Last Saturday afternoon, I got onto a serious muffin-makin' kick and made three kinds of muffins to take to church the next morning. You saw the Allspice Crumb Muffins, which were delish, even though there was a puddle of butter in the bottom of each cup of the muffin tin. I made some apple muffins, too, which will be coming to the blog soon, but these were my favorite...
Pumpkin muffins! When I was planning my muffin-baking marathon, I didn't want to have to go buy any ingredients, and I wanted to use up some things I had on hand. I happened to have some pumpkin puree on hand, and since it's fall (the most wonderful time of the year), I knew I needed to make pumpkin muffins. I thought about searching the Internet for a good recipe, but I thought I'd check Dorie's cookbook (Baking: From My Home to Yours) first. Lo and behold, there on page 13 was a recipe for pumpkin muffins, and I had all the ingredients right here in my little kitchen! Score! They were a breeze to put together, and they came out beautifully!

I loved these muffins. They're full of goodies...spice, pumpkin, golden raisins, and pecans. Yum! The batter was very dense, and it made for beautiful muffins. The tops didn't spread out and get flat around the edges like a lot of muffins do...these were the best-looking muffins I've ever made. I only made one tiny substitution...Dorie says that you should sprinkle raw sunflower seeds over the batter in the muffin cups, but I didn't have those. I did, however, have pepitas (a fancy word for pumpkin seeds). They worked well and gave the final product a nice look.

These muffins were the perfect compliment to a nice warm cup of coffee on a crisp fall morning. For those of you who haven't purchased Dorie's wonderful book, I'll post the recipe and hope she doesn't whip me. Enjoy!

Pumpkin Muffins

Dorie Greenspan

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 tsp. baking powder

1/4 tsp. baking soda

1/4 tsp. salt

3/4 tsp. ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp. ground ginger

1/8 tsp. freshly grated nutmeg

pinch of ground allspice

1 stick unsalted butter, at room temperature

1/2 cup sugar

1/4 cup packed light brown sugar

2 large eggs

1/2 tsp. pure vanilla extract

3/4 cup canned unsweetened pumpkin puree

1/4 cup buttermilk

1/2 cup moist, plump golden raisins

1/2 cup chopped pecans or walnuts

About 1/3 cup unsalted raw sunflower seeds (or pepitas), for topping

Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Butter or spray the 12 molds in a regular-size muffin pan or fit the molds with paper muffin cups. Alternatively, use a silicone muffin pan, which needs neither greasing nor paper cups. Place the muffin pan on a baking sheet.

Whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and spices.

Working with a stand mixer, preferably fitted with a paddle attachment, or with a hand mixer in a large bowl, beat the butter at medium speed until soft. Add both sugars and continue to beat until light and smooth. One by one, add the eggs, beating for a minute after the eggs are incorporated, then beat in the vanilla. Lower the mixer speed and mix in the pumpkin and buttermilk. With the mixer at low speed, add the dry ingredients in a steady stream, mixing only until they disappear. To avoid overmixing, you can stop the machine early and stir any remaining dry ingredients into the batter using a rubber spatula. Stir in the raisins and nuts. Divide the batter evenly among the muffin cups and sprinkle a few sunflower seeds (or pepitas) over the top of each muffin.

Bake for about 25 minutes, or until a thin knife insterted into the center of the muffins comes out clean. Transfer the pan to a rack and cool the muffins for 5 minutes in the pan, then carefully remove each one from its mold and finish cooling on the rack.

TWD: Allspice Crumb Muffins

It's not just a simple Tuesdays With Dorie post today...it's also my 100th blog post! I can't believe it! I couldn't decide whether to do something special for this post, or to just go along as if it were a regular post like any other. I pretty much decided to let it go like any other post, mainly because I had no idea when I'd find the time to plan or execute something special. Then...I realized that if I waited long enough, I could have a TWD post as my 100th post, which I thought would be quite fitting. After all, my joining TWD was the whole reason to start this blog in the first place!
This week's TWD assignment was a welcome one. It was chosen by Kayte, of Grandma's Kitchen Table. This was a very easy recipe to put together, and I had pretty much all the ingredients on hand. While I was making these last Saturday, I decided to go ahead and make a couple of other kinds of muffins to take to church the following morning. You'll see those in future posts. Anyway, these muffins were delicious and well-received during Sunday School.

I just had two little issues with this recipe. First, the crumb topping. I know some of the other bakers had some problems with the crumb topping sliding off the muffin during baking. I took their advice and lightly pressed it into the batter, so that kept the crumb from sliding off. However, it still didn't turn out the way I expected it to. I guess I expected something more along the lines of a streusel topping, and that's not what I got. It was very tasty, but just not the look I had hoped for. The next issue was with excess butter. When I removed the muffins (which were baked in groovy-looking Halloween cupcake liners) from the tins, there was a puddle of butter left behind. YUCK! The muffins didn't taste greasy or overly buttery, but I just couldn't get rid of the visual of the muffins sitting in a puddle of butter. Plus, it made the bottom of my liners buttery/greasy which was kind of messy during transport.

Overall, these muffins were great! I enjoyed the allspice flavor...I've never used it as a primary flavoring, and it was nice to really taste it. It's got a light "fall" flavor to it, which is perfect this time of year. Kayte has posted the recipe on her website, which you can find here. Happy baking!

TWD: Fresh Mango Bread

Even though I haven't officially been a member of Tuesdays With Dorie for all that long, I've been baking lots of things out of the cookbook (Baking: From My Home to Yours). I have decided that this is pretty much my very favorite recipe so far. I have a soft spot for quick breads, though. I love quick breads of any kind...I'd rather have a quick bread over just about anything. But this quick bread falls into the category of one that I would have never made if I hadn't been a member of TWD. I mean, I live in small town Kentucky! Who makes mango bread?! I like mangoes, but I had never thought of using them in a quick bread, but I have Kelly, from Baking with the Boys to thank for encouraging me to make this one!

Here's what you need:

flour, baking soda, baking powder, ginger, cinnamon, some eggs, brown sugar, lime zest, a mango (duh) some oil, sugar, and golden raisins. Let me say that I am so happy to have a recipe that doesn't require room temperature butter! I can never, ever remember to put my butter out to get to room temperature, so that sets me back a little while! Yay for oil!
This comes together really easily, in just two bowls! I love my KitchenAid mixer, but I was glad to have a recipe that didn't require it. The batter sure is stiff, though. Dorie's right, it's more like a dough than a batter. After baking (and waiting a whole day to try it, because Dorie says it's better that way!), here's what we have:I just wish that I had used another mango. It had a great flavor, especially when you got a big bite of the mango, but I don't think I got quite the 2 cups that the recipe called for. But the flavor of this bread was fabulous. I gave two generous slices to David's grandmother, Mama (pronounced Mamaw...she's my guinea pig), and I think I pretty much ate the rest. I think David had two slices, but mostly it was me.

Last Saturday, I used this recipe to make some banana bread, because I thought the flavors would work really well together. I mashed the banana, so it kind of disappeared into the batter, so next time, I think I'll try to leave some chunks. Overall, this was a great recipe, one I'll definitely use time and again, probably with lots of variations on the fruit. If you'd like the recipe, head on over to Kelly's site. I'd recommend that you go right now.