Zucchini Bread

Cuisine: American

Inspiration: When you have a lot of zucchini to use, zucchini bread is always a great idea. I like this recipe for such a situation because it makes a lot of bread and it can be frozen, and it comes out of the freezer tasting just as great as when it went in.

What we Loved: This is my Mom’s recipe, and like her other quick breads that I love, it’s just perfect. The inside of the bread is really moist with a nice, warm cinnamon flavor, and the crust has a great crisp to it that I just can’t get enough of. The flavors of this bread really remind me of the end of summer/beginning of fall, and it makes a great breakfast along with a nice, cold glass of milk.

Helpful Hints: This recipe makes two loaves of bread, which is nice because it allows you to use a couple of different add-ins if you want to. This time, I made one loaf of plain zucchini bread, and one loaf of chocolate chip zucchini bread. Any kind of nuts, raisins, or white chocolate chips would also work great if you prefer those flavors/textures.

Other Quick Bread Recipes (from my Mom!):  pumpkin bread, banana bread

Zucchini Bread
Source: Mom

3 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2 cups sugar
3 eggs, slightly beaten
1 cup canola oil
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups zucchini, grated
1/2 cup sour cream (I used 0% Greek yogurt this time, and it worked great)
Chocolate chips, nuts, or raisins, if desired

1. Mix the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon in a large bowl.

2. Add the sugar, eggs, oil, vanilla, and zucchini to the bowl, and mix thoroughly. If you’re using any add-ins, gently fold them into the batter.

3. Bake in two greased loaf pans at 350 degrees for 60-80 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center of the bread comes out clean.

4. Cool the bread in the pans, on wire racks.

Blueberry Muffins

Cuisine: American

Inspiration: B and I pack our lunches every day for work, and we we always include some fruit. I love buying whatever is in season at the time, and lately I’ve been buying blueberries. We bought a big container at the store last week, and then over the weekend we visited B’s parents and picked a whole bag full of fresh blueberries from their blueberry tree. That left us with a lot of blueberries, meaning it was time to look for recipes! There isn’t even a comparison in taste and quality between the freshly picked blueberries and the store-bought, so I used the store-bought for these muffins. The fresh blueberries were so good that I couldn’t bare to use them for anything other than eating by the handful.

What we Loved: There were three things about these muffins that I really loved. First, they’re definitely not lacking in blueberries. Adding a cup of blueberries to the batter and a spoonful of blueberry filling to each muffin provided blueberry flavor in every bite, which was delicious. Secondly, I really loved the flavor of the muffin itself. It was light and airy, with a subtle but great sweet flavor, almost like a vanilla cupcake. I think that I could eat one of these muffins without the blueberries and still thoroughly enjoy it. And lastly, I really loved that these muffins weren’t full of fat and sugar, as a lot of muffin recipes can be. These only used 3 tablespoons of canola oil and 1/2 cup of sugar.

Helpful Hints: I didn’t have any blueberry jam to add to the center of the muffins before baking, so instead I used another idea that I saw and added a cup of blueberries and a teaspoon of sugar to a pan and heated until a thick syrup formed. As you can see from the picture below, this syrup infused itself into the muffins rather than sitting in the center as a filling, but it was a good alternative if you don’t have any jam. It did give the muffins a really moist texture, so if you have an aversion to that, I would definitely recommend using the jam or leaving both out completely. I also decided not to use a streusel topping as was written in the original recipe, simply to save some calories and sugar. That was painful, because I love streusel so much, and I know it would have went wonderfully with these muffins.

Other Muffin Recipes: pumpkin cream cheese muffins

Blueberry Muffins
Source for the muffins: For the Love of Cooking
Source for the blueberry filling: The Bitten Word, originally from Cooks Illustrated

I only made a few changes to the muffin recipe, omitting the streusel topping and making the blueberry filling that I saw over at The Bitten Word instead of using jam. Here’s the recipe as I made it.

2 cups all purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup sugar, plus 1 teaspoon
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups 0% Greek yogurt
3 tablespoons canola oil
2 cups blueberries, divided

1. Preheat the oven to 375, and grease a 12 cup muffin tray.

2. Add one cup of blueberries and 1 teaspoon of sugar to a small saucepan. Heat over medium heat for approximately 10 minutes, stirring and mashing the blueberries often until a thick paste forms.  Remove from the heat, and let cool for 15 minutes.

3. Stir together the flour, salt, baking soda, and baking powder. In another bowl, combine the 1/2 cup sugar, vanilla, eggs, yogurt, and oil. Slowly add the flour mixture to the egg mixture, stirring until just barely blended. Do not over mix. Gently fold in the remaining cup of blueberries.

4.  Fill each muffin cup halfway full with batter. Top each cup of batter with a spoonful of the blueberry filling, then fill with the remaining muffin batter.

5. Bake for approximately 15 minutes, until the tops of the muffins are brown and a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Allow the muffins to cool slightly in the pan, then remove them and serve.

Carrot-Flecked Dinner Rolls

Cuisine: American

Inspiration: Every time I buy carrots, I always end up with leftovers in the fridge and nothing to do with them. Neither B nor I particularly prefer carrots, but I always end up buying them with a recipe in mind and good intentions for the leftovers. But there are very few recipes that I make using carrots, and so in the end I usually end up forcing myself to take them to work for lunch before they go bad, and I complain about my unsatisfying lunch the whole day. I have real issues with wasting food, so I will always take a baggie of carrots in my lunch before letting them spoil, but it’s not my favorite thing to do. Needless to say, I was really happy to find this amazing recipe for carrot-flecked dinner rolls on 17 and Baking.  They looked like the perfect recipe to use up some extra carrots, and after trying them, I can say that they were. They’ll be my go-to recipe from now on when I have extra carrots in the fridge.

What we Loved: These were everything that a dinner roll should be. We ate them straight out of the oven, and they were perfectly soft and warm, with just a little bit of a nice, brown crust on the bottom. I couldn’t much taste the carrot flavor, but that wasn’t a bad thing; it was a great way to add some extra vegetables to my meal. Even better, the addition of carrots made these rolls so beautiful! The bits of orange and the bits of blue from the poppy seeds made these some of the prettiest dinner rolls I’ve ever seen. When B came into the kitchen for supper, the first thing that he did was make a remark about how good the rolls looked. And they tasted just as great. I wouldn’t change a thing.

Helpful Hints: Sometimes, I can be lazy in weird ways. I happily went through all of the work of making these rolls, letting them rise, etc., but then I didn’t want to bother with greasing two pans, checking on two pans in the oven, and washing two pans. So I stuffed all of my rolls into one pan, and they were a little squished and probably didn’t have quite enough room to rise as much as they should have in the oven. To make these look nicer, I’d recommend using two pans as the original recipe suggested.

Other Bread Recipes: english muffin bread, buttermilk dinner rolls

Carrot-flecked Dinner Rolls

Source: 17 and Baking

1 packet dry active yeast
1 1/4 cups water
3 1/2 cups unbleached flour
2 tsp salt
1/2 lb carrots, grated (I had leftover pre-julienned salad carrots in the fridge, so I ran them through a food processor for smaller pieces)
1 tablespoon unsalted butter, melted
1 egg, beaten
Poppy seeds

1. Sprinkle the yeast into 1/2 cup of the water. Let sit for 5 minutes, then stir to dissolve.

2. Mix the flour and the salt in a large bowl. Form a well in the center, and pour in the dissolved yeast. Add the grated carrots and the melted butter, and together. Stir in the remaining water to form a moist, crumbly dough.

3. Knead the dough until smooth but still sticky, about 10 minutes.

4. Put the dough in a clean bowl, and cover with a damp towel. Let rise until the dough has doubled in size, about 1 to 1 1/2 hours. Punch down, and let rest for 10 minutes.

5. Shape the dough into 12 balls. Arrange the dough, just touching, into a pan. Proof until the balls double in size, about 30 minutes.

6. Preheat the oven to 400. Brush the tops of the rolls with the beaten egg, then sprinkle with poppy seeds.

7. Bake the rolls for approximately 15-20 minutes, or until golden brown.

Irish Soda Bread

I’ve been wanting to make Irish soda bread for a long time, and I finally got a chance to make it this year on St. Patrick’s Day.  I searched through a million different recipes and chose to make a whole wheat version of the bread, and it was delicious! It came out nice and crusty brown on the top and soft in the middle, with a nutty whole wheat flavor and just a bit of sweetness. I couldn’t quite place what the unique flavor reminded me of, but I loved it. It went perfectly with our shepherd’s pie, and it was so easy to make! I’m sure that I will make this bread, or some version of it, every time St. Paddy’s Day rolls around :)

Irish Soda Bread
Source: At the Baker’s Bench

1 cup all purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons brown sugar
3 tablespoons butter, at room temperature
1 egg, plus an additional beaten egg for egg wash
3/4 cup buttermilk

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Spray a baking sheet with nonstick spray.

2. Combine the all purpose flour, wheat flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and brown sugar in a medium sized bowl.

3. Cut in the butter, mixing it into the flour mixture with a fork until the mixture has the texture of coarse cornmeal. In a separate bowl, beat together 1 egg and the buttermilk.

4. Pour the buttermilk mixture into the flour mixture, and combine just until the dry ingredients are moistened. Turn the dough onto a lightly floured surface, and knead for 8 to 10 turns, just until the dough forms a ball. Place the dough on the cooking sheet, forming it into a rounded loaf. Cut a cross into the tough of the dough. Brush the loaf with egg wash.

5. Bake for 30 minutes, or until the bread is golden brown on top and until the interior of the cross cut appears dry. Cool 10 minutes before serving.

Pumpkin Cream Cheese Muffins

These are the best muffins that I’ve ever made, and they might just be the best muffins that I’ve ever eaten. They are seriously delicious. I made them to eat for breakfast in order to finish up some extra cream cheese in the fridge and some pumpkin puree that I had in the freezer from last fall, and I’m so excited about how great these turned out. The muffin itself is really soft with all of the cinnamon-spicy flavors of pumpkin, and the filling is so rich and creamy. It’s almost like biting into a pumpkin cake with a nice filling of cream cheese frosting inside. So unbelieveably good!! And the streusel topping of sugar, flour, butter, and cinnamon tastes delicious, too, as any streusel does. This recipe really is perfect, and it tastes as good in the winter time as it would in the fall :) I love the fall time, so it’s actually kind of fun to enjoy a little something in the middle of winter that reminds me of that time of year.

Pumpkin Cream Cheese Muffins
Source: Annie’s Eats

I cut this recipe in half to make 12 muffins. Here’s the recipe as I made it.

For the muffins
1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground clvoes
2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
2 eggs
Just over 3/4 cup canola oil
1 cup sugar
1 cup pumpkin puree

For the filling
4 ounces cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup powdered sugar

For the streusel topping
1/4 cup sugar
1/8 cup flour
2 tablespoons butter, cubed
3/4 teaspoon cinnamon

1. To prepare the filling, combine the cream cheese and the powdered sugar, and whip until smooth with an electric mixer. Form the cream cheese mixture into a log on plastic wrap, making sure that the diameter is small enough to fit into the well of a muffin pan. Wrap the log up tightly, and freeze it until it is slightly hardened, approximately 1-2 hours.

2. To make the muffins, combine the flour, spices, salt, and baking soda in a medium bowl. Mix well and set aside. In another bowl, combine the eggs, canola oil, sugar, and pumpkin puree. Mix until well combined. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients, and mix until just combined.

3. To make the streusel topping, combine all ingredients in a small bowl. Mix together with two forks until crumbly.

4. Preheat the oven to 350°. Line a muffin pan (with 12 muffin wells) with paper liners. To assemble the muffins, fill each muffin well halfway with batter. Remove the cream cheese log from the freezer, and slice it into 12 equal slices. Place a slice in each muffin well. Divide the remaining muffin batter evenly among the muffin cups, spooning it on top of the cream cheese. Sprinkle the streusel topping over the top of the batter.

5. Bake for 20-25 minutes. Let cool completely before serving.

Buttermilk Dinner Rolls

Out of everything that I love to cook, my favorite food to make is bread. I absolutely love bread in all of its forms, and making it homemade is so satisfying. These are the first dinner rolls that I’ve made, and they’re pretty tasty. They’re made with quite a bit of buttermilk and a little bit of honey, so they have a unique and slightly sweet flavor. I changed the original recipe and added some whole wheat flour, so these are also a little healthier than an average white dinner roll. These rolls are nice and soft when you break them open, and B and I both loved the honey-wheat flavor. We had these alongside a bowl of broccoli soup, and I popped the leftovers in the freezer for future meals.

Buttermilk Dinner Rolls

Source: Adapted from Slashfood

1/4 cup warm water
1 packet active dry yeast
1 1/4 cups buttermilk, room temperature
2 tablespoons honey
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 3/4 cups all purpose flour, plus an additional 1/4 cup+ for kneading

1. Add the water and the packet of yeast to a mixing bowl (or the bowl of a stand mixer, if you are using one), and allow to sit for 5-10 minutes.

2. Add the buttermilk, honey, salt, whole wheat flour, and 1 3/4 cup of the all purpose flour to the bowl, and mix to combine. (The original recipe calls for adding less flour to the mixing bowl, but I found my dough to be way too sticky and runny to even handle. In total, I added about 2 3/4 cups flour to the mixing bowl, though I think it even could have used a little more, as it was still a little sticky to handle. 3 cups total may be more appropriate.)

3. Turn the dough out onto a floured surface. Sprinkling the top of the dough with flour, flour your hands and knead the dough until it is smooth and forms a ball. Add as much flour as necessary while you are kneading to prevent sticking.

4. Once the dough is smooth, place it in a greased bowl and cover with a damp towel. Let rise for 1-2 hours.

5. Form the dough into whatever shape you’d like (I just made balls), and place on a greased baking sheet. Cover, and let rise 20 minutes.

6. Bake in a 400 degree oven for approximately 10-15 minutes. Check the rolls after ten minutes to ensure that the bottoms don’t burn.

Sweet Yellow Cornbread

In my opinion, sugary sweet yellow cornbread is the only way to go. I know that it’s not the traditional Southern style white cornbread, but I don’t care. It’s just so.good. I’ll take a warm, buttery piece of sweet cornbread any day over almost any other kind of bread. For those who enjoy the sweet type of cornbread like I do, this recipe really is perfect. I searched for a while before trying out this recipe for the first time last year, knowing that I wanted a sweet, buttery recipe instead of the saltier white cornbread recipes that are more traditional to the South. And I haven’t made a different recipe for cornbread since I first tried this out. The crust gets nice and crispy, the inside is sweet and crumbly moist, and the bread tastes great all on its own. I served this with a nice hot pot of chili for a perfect winter meal.

Sweet Yellow Cornbread
Source: Allrecipes

1 stick butter
2/3 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 cup buttermilk
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup yellow cornmeal
1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Grease an 8 or 9 inch square or round pan.

2. Melt the butter in a sauce pot. Remove from the heat and stir in the sugar. Quickly add the eggs and beat until well blended. Combine the buttermilk with the baking soda, and stir into the butter mixture. Stir in the cornmeal, flour, and salt until the mixture is well blended and few lumps remain.

3. Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Bake in the preheated oven for approximately 30 minutes, or until the bread is browned and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

Banana Bread

I love making quick breads during this time of the year. There’s something about having a few pieces of bread for breakfast with a glass of milk that is just so comforting. This banana bread is another recipe from my Mom, and it’s fabulous. The outside gets almost crispy from the butter, and the inside of the bread is so amazingly soft and moist. More so, I think, than any other bread that I’ve had. And if you use really overripe bananas, the banana flavor is awesome. I love to eat this bread plain, but I’ve also tried it heated up in the microwave for a few seconds and spread with some peanut butter. That is really delicious, too. My house smelled so completely sweet and wonderful while this was baking. Just thinking of it makes me so excited to have another piece :)

Banana Bread
Source: Mom

1 2/3 cup sugar
2/3 cup butter
1 1/4 cup bananas (3)
2/3 cup sour cream
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
2 1/2 cups flour
1 1/4 tsp baking soda
1 1/4 tsp baking powder

1. Cream together the sugar, butter, and bananas.

2. Add the sour cream, eggs, and vanilla, and mix until combined.

3. Stir in the flour, baking soda, and baking powder until well blended.

4. Bake at 350 degrees in two greased loaf pans. Cool for 20-30 minutes in the pans, and then turn out onto wire racks to continue cooling.

Pumpkin Bread

This bread is legendary in my family as being one of the most important parts of Thanksgiving day. It’s my Mom’s recipe, and for my entire life she has always made a million loaves on the day before Thanksgiving for the big meal. We all pile it right on the dinner plate, alongside the turkey and stuffing and gravy and everything else that is so delicious. As a kid, we’d eat it for days after Thanksgiving for breakfast or for dessert with whipped cream on top. These days, B and I usually eat Thanksgiving dinner at my parents’ house and then move on to another Thanksgiving dinner at his parents’ house before heading back home, so I usually only eat maybe a half of a slice. It’s just not right. So, last year, I started a little tradition of making a couple loaves of this bread a few weeks before Thanksgiving. I love doing this so much and have been counting down to it for weeks now :) I can’t do it too early, because it’s like my own official little start to the holiday season. As soon as I smell that bread cooking, it just feels like happy, and in my mind the holidays are here. I’ll be splurging on this for breakfast up until Thanksgiving, alongside a nice glass of cold milk. It’s the little things :)

So that’s my little story. About the bread itself, though, it really is as good as I make it seem to be. It’s incredibly moist and soooo flavorful. It tastes like cinnamon and cloves and everything that Thanksgiving time should be. My favorite part is that little section on the top of the bread (you can see it in this photo) where the crust breaks apart while cooking. After cooling and sitting wrapped up for a day, it gets super soft and gooey right there. I always save that bite for last with every piece that I eat :)

Thought: I want to make a sandwich with leftover turkey and cranberry sauce and use this bread. And gravy. Why have I not done this??

Pumpkin Bread
Source: Mom

2/3 cup shortening
2 2/3 cup sugar
4 eggs
16 oz can pumpkin
2/3 cup water
1 1 /2 teaspoon salt
3 1/3 cup flour
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp cloves

1. Cream the shortening and sugar together in a large bowl.

2. Mix in the eggs, pumpkin, and water.

3. Mix in the salt, flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, and cloves.

4. Bake at 350 degrees in 2 greased loaf pans for approximately 60 minutes.

Pepperjack Cornmeal Bread

 

There’s nothing like a really sweet, warm piece of yellow cornbread with some butter, and it’s the perfect side for a bowl of chili. I feel like a crusty yeast bread goes better with white chili, though, and I when I found this recipe for pepperjack cornmeal bread, I thought it was perfect for the white chili that I was making. White chili is really good with pepperjack cheese on top (or mixed into the sauce), and this bread had just a little bit of that flavor as well as a slight crunch from the cornmeal and the crusty-on-the-oustide, soft-on-the-inside texture that I wanted from the yeast. Next time, though, I think I’d leave the cheese out of the dough, and instead roll out the dough, spread it with a layer of cheese, and then roll it up, creating a more pronounced cheese flavor and a swirl of melted cheese when you cut into the bread. This bread is best really hot out of the oven, so my suggestion is to eat it all in one sitting. :)

Pepperjack Cornmeal Bread
Source: Phemomenon

I only made a couple of changes to the recipe, replacing vegetable oil with extra virgin olive oil and replacing bread flour with all purpose.

3/4 cup lukewarm water
2 tablespoons sugar
1 (1/4 oz) package dry yeast
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 large egg
3 cups all purpose flour
1 cup shredded pepperjack cheese
1/4 cup yellow cornmeal
2 teaspoons salt

1. In a medium bowl, stir together the water, sugar, and yeast. Let sit for five minutes. Stir in the oil and the egg.

2. In a large bowl, stir together 2 1/2 cups of the flour, the cheese, the cornmeal, and the salt. Stir in the yeast mixture until a soft dough forms.

3. Sprinkle the remaining 1/2 cup flour on your work surface. Turn the dough out onto the surface and knead for approximately 10 minutes or until smooth and elastic, working in the flour on the counter only as necessary to prevent sticking.

4. Place the dough ball into a clean, lightly oiled bowl, and cover with a damp towel. Let rise for 1 to 1 1/2 hours or until doubled in bulk. Punch down the dough and turn out onto a lightly floured surface.

5. Lightly oil a baking sheet and dust with enough extra cornmeal to cover. Pat the dough into a 8×14-inch rectangle. Roll up the dough tightly, starting at the long side of the dough. Pinch the bottom and sides to seal. Place the dough on baking sheet and let rise for 45 minutes or until doubled in bulk.

6. Heat the oven to 400 degrees F. Bake the loaf for 20 minutes or until it is well browned and the bottom sounds hollow when tapped.