Yogurt and Honey Quickbread

I haven't had bread or any form of bread for at least 2 weeks. I have been craving bread. So one of my BFFs gave me a recipe for Honey Yogurt Quickbread but her "recipe" was basically only the ingredients and said bake at 350 degrees for 55-60 mins and then cool in pan for 10 mins. That didn't really tell me much. I could make a guess at what to do like put the dry ingredients first. But when it comes to gluten free baking recipes, I'm not quite the "baker" or even close to it yet... considering this is my first weekend of testing the baking waters. I looked up the recipe on the web and I found it on this forum though it's called Yogurt and Honey Quickbread.

I followed the recipe mostly but made a few changes to the ingredients. So here's my version of Yogurt and Honey Quickbread.

Dry Ingredients:
2 cups Four Flour Bean Mix (2/3 cup garfava flour, 1/3 cup sorghum flour, 2 cups cornstarch)
1.5 tsp xantham gum
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1.5 tbsp sugar

Wet Ingredients:
3 eggs plus 1 egg white
3 tbsp Earth Balance vegan organic shortening, melted
1 tbsp honey
1/2 tsp distilled white vinegar
3/4 cup vanilla yogurt
1/3 cup water

1) Mix together dry ingredients in bowl.

2) Combine eggs, shortening, honey and vinegar in a mixer and blend well. Add the yogurt and water and beat until smooth.
[Note: I was concerned about this recipe because I used shortening versus butter. I am allergic to cow's milk so butter is out of the question. While mixing the shortening in Step 2, the shortening started to solidify. I wasn't sure how the recipe would turn out.]

3) Slowly incorporate the dry mixture and mix thoroughly.

4) Pour into a lightly greased and floured bread pan. Bake for 55-60 minutes. Let cool in pan for 10 minutes before removing to cool completely.
[Note: I baked it for 30 minutes on a convection oven.]

The finished product looked as so. The dough doubled in size from the pan while it was baking. I thought the bread was getting too brown at the top around 20 minutes in. So at 30 minutes, I tested and it was surprisingly done.


The first slice. It looked like any other regular bread.

Inside

The bread was moist and slightly sweet. A great bread for jam and preserves. I am excited to have bread in my tummy again - gluten free and dairy free.

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Banana Bread

We had a few very ripe and slightly bruised bananas left over from last weekend's camping trip. Neither of us is a fan of eating mushy bananas so I decided to bake with them. I decided to try something different and I don't know how I never thought of this before... Take a couple of my favorite things and bake them all together.

The great thing about this recipe is that neither the chocolate, peanut butter nor bananas have a dominate taste in the bread. There is a good mix of each of them and the bread is moist. It also makes 2 loaves so you can freeze one and eat one.

Makes 2 Loaves

~ 12 slices per loaf

~185 calories per slice

2 1/2 cups flour

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup packed brown sugar

1 tbsp baking powder

3/4 tsp salt

1/4 tsp cinnamon

3 bananas, mashed

1 cup milk (I used soy milk and you can't taste the difference.)

3/4 cup peanut butter

1 tsp vanilla

1 egg

1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips (I might try dark chocolate next time.)

1) Stir together flour, sugars, baking powder, salt and cinnamon in a large bowl. Put aside.

2) Beat together bananas, milk, peanut butter, vanilla and egg. Mix in dry ingredients. Stir in chocolate chips.

3) Pour batter into 2 greased loaf pans. The batter will be about 1/2 a pan but the bread will almost double in size when baking.

4) Bake at 350 degrees for 50 minutes or until done.

Apple Blackberry Cake / Bread

Last week I was going through some papers and found a recipe I cut out from a Martha Stewart magazine. It was for an Apple Blackberry Cake / Bread. The picture looked delicious! Even though we planned on camping for the weekend, I decided to make the cake/bread... I assumed whatever didn't get eaten during the week, we'd just bring along with us... I assumed wrong... Nothing was left. I made this cake/bread on Tuesday and it was eaten by Friday morning from just the two of us. It was a big hit in the kitchen and something I'd make again. The recipe was sugar quick and easy.

Granulated sugar, for pan
1 1/2 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
6 tbsp butter, melted
2 tbsp butter cut into pieces (for topping)
3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
2 tbsp packed light brown sugar (for topping)
1/2 cup milk
2 eggs
4 apples, peeled, cored, and cut into wedges (I used granny smith apple because they're my favorite)
1 cup blackberries
1/4 tsp cinnamon

1. Butter a 9" springform pan and dust with granulated sugar.
2. Whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt in a bowl.
3. Whisk together melted butter, 3/4 cup brown sugar, milk and eggs in a separate bowl. Whisk flour mixture into wet ingredient bowl.
4. Spread batter evenly into prepared plan. Arrange apple wedges over batter and sprinkle with blackberries. Gently press fruit into batter.
5. Combine remaining 2 tbsp brown sugar, cinnamon and remaining 2 tbsp butter into a bowl. Cut into pieces and sprinkle over fruit.
6. Bake at 375 degrees for about 24-50 min or util cake tester is clean.

Best Ever Zucchini Bread

On Friday, I made chocolate chip cookies, or what we call in our household "Perfect Cookies". It's just a basic chocolate chip recipe but I added in walnuts, dark chocolate, and caramel.


Yesterday, I didn't have time to do any baking... Kameran's bachelorette party.

But today, it was back to baking. Today's bake of the day was Zucchini Bread. It is delicious! I highly recommend this recipe. It's too bad I only made 2 loaves because I might eat them both by the end of the week.

Makes 2 loaves

3 cups flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
3 tsp ground cinnamon
3 eggs
1 cup vegetable / canola oil
2 1/4 cups sugar
3 tsp vanilla
2 cups grated zucchini
1 cup chopped walnuts

1) Grease and flour 2 bread pans.
2) Sift flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, and cinnamon together in a bowl.
3) Beat eggs, oil, vanilla, and sugar together. Add sifted ingredients. Stir in zucchini and nuts.
4) Bake at 325 degrees for approximately 50 minutes.
5) Enjoy and eat well!

Roasted Garlic Butter Bread

It got to late for me to blog about yesterday's baking encounters...

Last month, I made Roasted Garlic Butter with my Gilroy garlic.

Picture is not that appetizing, I know... but that's the butter rolled in wax paper.

I was going to a Cookies meeting last night and volunteered to bring rolls with the corned beef and cabbage main dish. I decided I would use my Roasted Garlic Butter for the dinner "rolls." I didn't have time to make dough from scratch so I bought some pre-made french bread dough from the store. Rolled out the dough on a mat, spread heapings of roasted garlic butter on the dough and rolled the dough back up. Viola! It was delicious and I got quite a few compliments last night.

You can do this with many different spreads like pesto or sundried tomatoes. I have also do this as a "pizza" by spreading a light tomato sauce and added in pepperoni, pancetti, and mushrooms. Yummy yummy yummy!

Gilroy Garlic Makes Roasted Garlic Compound Butter with Rosemary

With 8 cloves of Gilroy garlic, I was searching for any kind of delicious garlic recipe. I got suggestions for roasted garlic, pickled garlic and garlic ice cream.

Garlic #1 and #2: I started my venture off with a basic Garlic and Herb Cheese Bread with my trusty bread maker. No recipe, just winging it... a packet of yeast, ~2 cups of flour, ~1 cup of warm water, ~1-2 cups of mixed shredded cheese, salt to taste, dried oregano from the garden, and 2 garlic bulbs sliced, diced, and cloved. Put it in the bread maker to mix, knead and rise. Then transferred it to a bread pan and baked at 350 until done. It smelled like a ton of garlic and I was worried it would be too much garlic. But it tasted good. It could have used a little more cheese but I didn't have any more.

Garlic #3 - #7: In my search for garlic recipes, I came across this website. It had 3 different types of garlic recipes with roasted garlic. So I roasted 5 whole garlics in my toaster oven and used the butter compound recipe with my newly roasted Gilroy garlic. I'm not a fan of butter unless it's baked into cookies or a dessert. But the hubby likes butter and if this turned out well, I might spread it on a french bread for a snack. I used maybe 6 tbsp of butter instead of 8. And smashed all 5 roasted garlic into the butter. To add a little more flavor, I added a small handful of rosemary from Jen's garden. We'll see how it turns out... (pictures to come)

Fattening the Belly with Cinnamon Rolls

I am a little down today so I feel like fattening up the belly with some homemade cinnamon rolls. I can't really take credit for the recipe since we got it from Ryan's mom. I changed around the recipe a bit to fit my style...

1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup butter
1/2 cup water
1 pkg rapid rise yeast
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 egg, beaten
3 cups flour

1. Warm milk in small saucepan until it bubbles. Remove from heat and mix in butter until melted.
2. Add water and let cool until lukewarm.
3. Add flour, sugar, salt, egg, and yeast into bread machine. Pour milk/butter/water mixture into bread machine.
4. Set bread machine to dough setting. (Add flour if needed.)

1 tsp ground cinnamon
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup softened butter (I'd use less... maybe 2-3 tbsp)
Optional Nuts (I am a big fan of nuts and used pecans but I'm sure walnuts would taste great too.)

1. Turn dough out onto floured cutting board. Roll into 12x9 inch rectangle.
2. Mix cinnamon and brown sugar in bowl
3. Spread dough with softened butter and sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar mixture.
4. Roll up dough and slice into 12 1" slices.
5. Place rolls into 9x13" greased baking dish.
6. Cover and let rise until almost doubled. (About 1-1.5 hrs)
7. Bake for 20-25 min at 375 degrees.

Frosting
1 cup confectioners sugar
1.5 oz cream cheese softened
1/2 tbsp butter softened
1/4 tsp vanilla extra (I like to use almond extract instead.)
1.5 tbsp milk

1. Combine confectioner's sugar, cream cheese, butter and vanilla.
2. Add milk gradually until frosting reaches a spreading consistency.
3. Spread over warm (but not hot) cinnamon rolls.

Apple Honey Challah

A new Martha Stewart magazine came out this week and she had a recipe for Apple Honey Challah. Let me say, it was a LOT of waiting. There are 3 times to wait for the dough to rise... I'm not sure if the rising was worth it all because I think some of the bread fermented during all the "waiting". Still tastes great but it took awhile.

1 stick butter
3.5 c bread flour, un-bleached
3/4 c warm water
2/3 c honey
2 eggs
3 egg yolks
2 tsp Active Dry Yeast
2 tsp Coarse Salt
2 green apples, peeled and cut into ¼" thick slices

1) Butter a large bowl and melt 4 tbsp butter in a saucepan over medium-low heat; let cool.

2) Combine 2 tbsp melted butter, the flour, water, 1/3 cup honey, the eggs and yolks, yeast and salt in a large bowl. Mix until dough forms. Turn dough out onto a floured surface and knead until smooth, about 10 minutes.

3) Transfer dough to a buttered bowl and brush with 1 tbsp melted butter. Cover. Let rise in a warm place until dough almost doubles in size. About 1½ hours.

4) Turn dough out onto a floured surface. Pat into an 8½x14" rectangle. Top with apples; knead to incorporate. Return to bowl and brush with the remaining melted butter. Cover. Let rise again until doubled, about 1 hour.

5) Pre-heat oven to 375°F

6) Butter a 9" round cake pan. Roll dough into about a 24" rope and coil in concentric circles and transfer to the pan. Cover and let rise again, about 45 minutes. (My bread, at this step, overflowed out of the pan. Next time I might use this recipe in 2 pans or 1 large pan.)

7) Heat remaining 4 tbsp butter and 1/3 cup honey a saucepan over medium-low heat until butter melts. (This produced quite a bit of “sauce” so I would trim down on the butter and honey.) Brush the dough with the honey-butter mixture. Bake until golden brown and firm, about 30-35 minutes. (190°F internal temperature)

8) Brush the baked and warm challah with the remaining butter-honey mixture. Let cool in the pan on a wire rack for about 30 minutes. Turn out loaf from the pan and let cool.

Apple Bread

This recipe has been a big hit with everyone! I think I've made somewhere around 5-6 loaves in the past month. I can't get enough of how good it is. The picture doesn't do justice!

Apple Bread

2 cups flour

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 cup butter, softened

2/3 cup sugar

2 eggs

1 tbsp lemon juice

2 tsp vanilla extract

3 Granny Smith apples - peeled and chopped into big chunks

1. Combine flour, baking soda and salt in a medium bowl.

2. Cream butter and sugar in a mixing bowl. Beat eggs, lemon juice and vanilla.

3. Add flour mixture to butter mixture and stir until moistened.

4. Stir in apples.

Topping

2 tbsp flour

2 tbsp sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tbsp butter

2 tbsp brown sugar

6. Combine flour, sugar, and cinnamon in a small bowl. Cut in butter until crumbly.

7. Spoon half of the batter into a buttered 9x5 loaf pans. Sprinkle with half of the topping. Spoon remaining batter into the pan and sprinkle with the remaining topping.

8. Bake for 55 minutes at 350 degrees.

For the love of basil...

A friendly coworker lamented that his basil plants were producing way more basil than he knew what to do with. "Make pesto!" I told him. But what then? He was getting sick of pesto with pasta. "I'd be happy to take some off your hands," I told him. The next day he presented me with a gallon size zip-loc bag packed with basil.

Me: Wow, that's a lot of basil!
Him: Make pesto!

Hah. Okay fine. Pesto it is! As far as pesto recipes are concerned, I love Ina Garten's. But since everyone seems to be complaining about being fatties, I opted for a light version from Cook's Illustrated. I've made it before and though it is lighter in taste, it is still just as delicious.

Lighter Pesto
The New Best Recipe, Editors of Cook's Illustrated Magazine

1/4 cup pine nuts
3 medium garlic cloves
2 cups fresh basil leaves
2 tablespoons fresh parsley
1/4 cup chicken broth
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
1/2 teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Put the pine nuts and garlic cloves on a baking sheet and place in oven for 2 to 3 minutes, or until the garlic is lightly browned and the pine nuts are lightly toasted. Put the toasted pine nuts and garlic in a food processor with the basil, parsley, chicken broth, olive oil, Parmesan cheese and salt and process until smooth. One tablespoon is counted as a serving.

Makes 2 cups

Of course I wasn't going to do pasta + pesto. That is so, like, 1995. I had scoured a few blogs and come up with... pesto bread! I was especially intrigued by the jellyroll-fashion of making the bread and the pretty swirly pattern it would become. Pretty pattern = pretty impressive.



This bread is delicious with a capital D. It is worth the effort of turning on the oven in the summertime!

Pain Pesto
Marcy Goldman

1 1/4 cups warm water (100 to 110 degrees F)
1 tablespoon rapid rise yeast
4 cups (approximately) bread flour
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
5 teaspoons sugar
2 3/4 teaspoons salt
1 (10 oz) jar of prepared pesto (I used the entire contents of the above recipe)
olive oil, salt, pepper, parsley and Parmesan cheese, for sprinkling

Stack two large baking sheets together and line top sheet with parchment paper.

In a mixer bowl, hand whisk water and yeast together and let stand 2-3 minutes to dissolve yeast. Add 1 cup flour and stir briefly. Then stir in oil, sugar, salt and most of the remaining flour. Mix ingredients and then attach dough hook and knead on lowest speed 6-8 minutes until smooth and elastic, adding more flour if needed.

Remove dough hook from machine and spray dough with nonstick cooking spray. Cover entire mixer with clear plastic bag. Let rise for 45-90 minutes or until almost doubled.

Gently deflate dough on a lightly floured surface. Let rest 10 minutes and then roll out to a 20 x 20 inch shape. If dough resists, let it rest a few more minutes then roll out gently. Drizzle some additional olive oil on the dough and then smear on pesto all over dough's surface. Roll up jellyroll style. Shape into an "S" shape and put on prepared baking sheets.

Drizzle oil on top and dust with salt, pepper, Parmesan cheese and parsley. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rise until puffy, about 45-60 minutes.

Preheat oven to 350.

Gently press bread down slightly before it goes into the oven. Bake until it is well browned, about 35-45 minutes. Cool to warm on baking sheet before cutting.

Cinnamon Pecan Monkey Bread

This month's King Arthur Flour catalog illustrated a mouth watering Sticky Bun. I knew I had to make it or something like it. I decided to go with the monkey bread approach. I researched a few recipes... Sticky Bun + Monkey Bread = Cinnamon Pecan Monkey Bread... maybe it is better termed Sticky Monkey Bread...

Due to time constraints this weekend, I took the lazy approach. I bought the dough at the store instead of making it from scratch. Turned out delicious and it was simple to make.

4 dinner roll packs cut into quarters (Next time I would use 3 packages. Four will fill the bundt pan but three is probably sufficient.)

1/2 cup corn syrup/maple syrup/honey (I used a mixture of maple syrup and honey.)

3 tbsp melted butter

1 cup packed brown sugar

1 cup diced pecans

1/2 cup sugar

2 tsp cinnamon

Recipe

1. Grease bundt pan

2. Whisk melted butter with corn syrup/maple syrup/honey. Pour mixture into bundt pan.

3. Mix brown sugar and pecans. Sprinkle over pan.

4. Mix sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl.

5. Roll dough into sugar and cinnamon mixture. Place dough lightly into pan.

6. Bake 45 minutes at 350 degrees.