Beer Cheese Bread

This is a very tasty non-yeast bread that goes beautifully with a hearty winter stew or chili.

Ingredients

• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 Tablespoons sugar
• 2 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1/2 teaspoon dried marjoram
• 1 cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese
• 1 12-ounce beer*

*I used a Killian's Irish Red for this loaf, but it is also tasty made with Guiness.  Also, feel free to adjust the recipe to 2 beers.  If you do that, use one in the bread, as stated below, and enjoy the other while the bread bakes.

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375
2. Grease a loaf pan
3. In a large mixing bowl, whisk all of the dry ingredients (flour, leaveners, spices) together. 
4. Add the cheese and stir to coat it evenly in the flour mixture.
5. Pour in the beer. 
6. Stir with a heavy rubber spatula just until combined. Spread the batter into the loaf pan.
7. Bake 35-40 minutes until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.
8. Cool on wire rack about 10 minutes then remove from the loaf pan. Continue cooling or serve warm.

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.

Cheddar Garlic Biscuits

My cats are the only felines I have ever known who try to steal scraps of biscuit dough. I wonder if its the milk or the butter. But either way, our two 1-year old cats (no longer longer kittens) tend to claim the counter stools closest to my work surface with the same eager expressions on their face that my two-footed children do when I'm making cupcakes.

Tonight's baking was Cheddar Garlic Biscuits to go with a crock-pot pot roast. Homemade biscuits are easy to make and this version is tasty even though it calls for plain milk instead of buttermilk. With the cheese, these make great drop biscuits, so there is no rolling pin or floured counter to clean.

Ingredients

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 2 teaspoons sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup finely shredded sharp cheddar cheese
• 1/2 cup butter (1 stick), cold
• 2 tablespoons additional butter (for melting)
• 1 teaspoon minced garlic (fresh or jarred).

Directions

• Preheat the oven to 450.
• In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, sugar, cream of tartar, and salt.  
• Using a pastry cutter (or butter knives or forks, or a food processor), cut the 1/2 cup cold butter into the dry ingredients until it resembles coarse crumbs.
• Stir the cheese into the dry ingredients.
• Melt the 2 tablespoons butter and garlic together in a ramekin in the microwave. 30 seconds on high was perfect.
• Stir the milk into the butter/flour/cheese mixture with a spatula just until it comes together.
• Drop the biscuit dough by fat spoonfuls onto a baking sheet about 2" apart.
• Brush the tops of each biscuit with melted garlic butter.
• Bake 10-14 minutes (longer for bigger biscuits, shorter for smaller ones).
• Makes 12-16 biscuits.

Monkey Bread

Ingredients

• 12 Rhodes frozen dinner roll dough balls (about 1 pound)
• 1 stick butter
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon
• 1 cup whole pecans

Directions

1. Thaw the roll dough in a covered bowl in the refrigerator overnight. In the morning, set the oven to preheat for about 1 minute then turn it Off. Place the roll dough (still covered) into the warm (but off!) oven to rise for 30 minutes until puffy. With a knife or kitchen shears, cut each dough ball into 3-4 pieces.
2. While the dough is rising, take 1/2 cup of the pecans, chop them, and toast them lightly in a small skillet over medium heat (about 5 minutes). Leave the rest whole.
3. Melt the butter in a medium sized bowl.
4. In another medium sized bowl, stir the sugars and cinnamon.
5. Pre-heat the oven to 375 and spray a loaf pan with non-stick cooking spray.
6. Drop each ball of dough first into the butter and then roll in the cinnamon-sugar then place in the pan.
7. Sprinkle the toasted, chopped nuts in between the dough in the pan. I sort of make a layer of cinnamon-dough, then sprinkle some nuts, then repeat.
8. Toss the whole pecans first in butter than roll them in the remaining cinnamon sugar. Spread them on top of the loaf pan (feel free to pour all the remaining cinnamon sugar out with them).
9. Bake for 30 minutes until golden brown on top. The dough in the middle should also be cooked through.

Accidentally Low-Sugar Chocolate Pecan Banana Bread

My Year of Pancakes hit a mid-year slump. We are probably moving houses, possibly as soon as next month. The new place has a big fancy kitchen in which to make lots of big fancy pancakes (and other yummies). I'm excited. I'm also busy packing and cleaning and painting and did I mention packing and cleaning?

Yeah, cookbooks are packed. Many of my baking pans are packed. Not that you'd know it by looking at my cupboards. Ahem, not that I have a lot of baking pans or anything (Hey, I like to cook so back off, k?) :) News flash: moving is hard work. Exponentially harder with children than it was when my husband and I last did it as newly-engaged twenty-somethings.

This morning, we all are in need of tasty, easy, comfort food to help soothe frazzled nerves. So, banana bread. Banana bread with pecans. Banana bread with chocolate chips and pecans. Easy peasy and it make the house smell so good.

The silly part about this recipe is that I forgot the sugar. Normally, I would have added 3/4 cup of sugar along with the bananas, and you still can if you prefer. But with all of the banana and the extra chocolate, it is still kid-tested and approved.

Chocolate Pecan Banana Bread
Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon (I like Penzey's Ceylon cinnamon in banana bread)
• 1 egg
• 1 cup mashed bananas (3 super-over-ripe bananas)
• 1/4 cup melted butter
• 1/2 cup chopped pecans
• 1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Directions

1. Pre-heat oven to 350. Spray a loaf pan with cooking spray.
2. In a medium mixing bowl, mash bananas. This is a small-child-friendly-task--just provide a potato masher and get ready for the giggles.
3. In a large mixing bowl, whik flour, baking powder, baking soda and cinnamon.
4. Once you manage to extract the banana mash from the hands of your tiny sous chef, whisk in the egg and butter. Note, this is the point of the recipe where you could add sugar, if you're not distracted by curious kittens and children and your lack of morning coffee.
5. Stir the banana mixture into the dry mixture with a spatula just until combined.
6. Fold in the chocolate chips and pecans.
7. Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and bake about 45-55 minutes. 
8. Let the bread cool in the pan about 10 minutes before removing.  Serve hot if you're impatient, or cool on a wire rack if you can wait that long.

Cheesy Corn Muffins

Back in the mid-2000's B.K. (Before Kids), I was good at halving and quartering recipes so that my husband and I didn't have to choose between overeating on baked treats or wasting perishable food. Now that we have two more mouths, I still find that my smaller recipes work well to make just enough of some dishes without leaving leftovers. I'm sure things will change as my kids (and their appetites) grow.

This corn muffin recipe easily doubles to make a dozen muffins. You can leave out the cheese for plain-ol cornbread, or halve the sugar if you prefer your bread less sweet. If I'd had some leftover cooked bacon on hand, I might have stirred that in as well (but who ever has leftover bacon?).

These were the side to a quick pot of chili for dinner on a stormy April evening (yes, there is such a thing as a quick chili, maybe a post for another day).

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup cornmeal
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1/2 tablespoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup milk
• 2 tablespoons butter, melted
• 3/4 cup shredded cheese (I used a "Mexican" blend)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 425. Grease the cups of a 6-cup muffin pan.
2. In a medium mixing bowl, whisk flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking powder and salt.
3. In a small mixing bowl, whisk the milk, butter, and egg until well blended.
4. Add the liquid ingredients to the dry and stir with a spatula just until blended.
5. Fold in the cheese.
6. Bake at 425 for 20 minutes. Makes 6 muffins.