Walnut Streusel Bread from Cooking Light

My October issue of Cooking Light arrived this week, and of course I devoured the issue as soon as I could (uh..read the issue. I didn't really eat it. Poetic license, you know...)

The cover story was about quickbreads, a topic near and dear to my heart (and my waistline, ahem), so I was excited to try one of their lightened versions. We frequently have muffins or bread for a weekend breakfast. I chose the Walnut Struesel Bread recipe because 1. I had walnuts and cinnamon and buttermilk on hand and 2. The cover photo looked really yummy.

My overall assessment: it was good. It wasn't exactly earth-shaking though. In fact, the recipe is an awful lot like the coffee cake recipe I posted a while back, except with walnuts and sized for a loaf pan. Still, it was yummy. That photo above was all that was left after my husband and kids sliced into it for their first round of breakfast.

While I was scrolling through their site looking for a link to the recipe (which I couldn't find) I did find a whole list of additional quick bread recipes*. Feel free to check them out and drool.

Ingredients
Streusel**

• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 1/3 cup rolled oats
• 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
• 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
• Dash salt
• 2 tablespoons melted butter
• 2 tablespoons walnuts, chopped

Bread

• 9 ounces all-purpose flour (about 2 cups...I got to use my baking scale!)
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 5 Tbsp butter, softened
• 2/3 cup granulated sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 cup fat-free buttermilk (my local supermarket only carries 1%, so I guess I upped the fat content of the finished product by a smidge)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350. Spray a loaf pan with non-stick cooking spray. (The recipe calls for a 9x5, but mine are all 8x5..no problem, it just took a few extra minutes to bake).
2. In a small bowl, combine Streusel ingredients and stir to combine. It will look a bit like wet sand. Set aside.
3. In a large mixing bowl, whisk the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.
4. With a mixer, cream the softened butter and sugar. Add eggs one at a time, then the vanilla. Make sure you scrape the sides of the bowl.
5. Alternate adding flour mixture and buttermilk to the butter/sugar/egg mixture and beat until combined.
6. Pour about half of the batter into the prepared loaf pan. Top with about half of the struesel. Repeat with remaining batter and streusel.
7. Bake about 45-50 minutes (mine took about 55-60 because of the pan size) until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Cool for about 5 minutes on a wire rack before removing the bread from the pan.

*No, I don't get any affiliate fee or anything for mentioning their site or their recipes--I'm just a happy subscriber who pays my own way). In fact, I hope they don't mind that I am posting about their recipe on my blog!
**Amusingly, the spellcheck on the app I use to blog doesn't contain the word "struesel". It's helpful suggestion: stressful.