Tag: Quick Bread

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Quick Cinnamon Rolls

I have a backlog of recipes.  You probably are thinking about what you are going to make for breakfast tomorrow.  Or maybe you are getting ready for a sweet snack. DSCN3284As a special treat, you get a special Saturday recipe.  This is one of those recipes that is ridiculously easy, but the results are spectacular.

Quick Cinnamon Rolls
Follow recipe for Baking Powder biscuits, patting the mixture into oblong shape. Spread lightly with melted butter. Sprinkle with ½ cup of sugar into 1 tsp cinnamon has been mixed. Roll up, cut in cross-wise slices like a jelly roll and bake in oven.

DSCN3285To make these even quicker, you can use canned biscuits or Bisquik.

To fancy them up, melt butter, brown sugar, and nuts in the bottom of a pie plate before adding the rolls.  Or put some cream cheese frosting on top.

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Tweedle Beetle Banana Bread Battle

Banana Bread

When I shop at a certain grocery store, they almost always have bananas in their reduced produce bin.   I can get an enormous bag of bananas for 99 cents.  There is never anything wrong with them except that their skins have some brown spots.  The bananas inside are perfectly lovely and ripe.  However, we can only eat so many bananas in a day or two.  The rest of them find a nice home in my freezer until I’m ready to take them out and do something amazing with them.  Unfortunately, I’m not always very creative and that something is almost always banana bread.  I have a delicious recipe that I normally use from Todd English’s Olives Dessert Table Cookbook.  This blog is not about Todd English or the incredible recipes he has published, though…

In my collection of hand-me-down recipes, I was blessed with a number of banana bread recipes.  My normal process for recipes is to scan them all in and rename them all then do a quick comparison to see if the recipes are exactly alike. You would think that with the thousand or so recipes I have that there would be more repeated recipes than there actually are.  I had a long debate with myself about how to handle repeated titles and variations on recipes. There are some cases where it makes sense to do a taste test and figure out which recipe is actually better.  But in the case of things like ham loaves or egg foo yung recipes, I’m not sure I’m up to making more than one version at a time.  If we have to do things like compare which gingersnap recipe is better, as long as I have enough molasses and time, I’ll gladly make 20 versions and try them all.  In this case, I made the banana breads a few weeks apart.  I made small loaves and froze some of them for eating later on.

Ok…Banana Bread #1.

Banana Bread

1/2 cup margarine
1 1/4 cup sugar
1/4 tsp salt
2 eggs
3 cups flour
1/2 cup sour milk
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup nuts
3 mashed bananas

45-50 minutes at 350

Banana Bread #2

Banana Bread 2

Banana Bread 2

1 cup sugar
1/2 cup shortening
2 eggs
3 small or 2 large bananas
1 tsp baking soda
2 TB sour milk
2 cups flour
1/2 cup nuts

1 hour at 325.

These are others of those recipes where you have to know how to make it in order to follow the recipe.  Basic method for quick breads, cream the sugars and fat together, add eggs and bananas, mix the dry ingredients on the side and alternate adding them and the milk.  Add the nuts at the end.

So which was better?

#1 is textured more like a sandwich bread.  It’s a bit dryer and very much unlike other banana breads I’ve had.  It has a definite crust.  There was nothing wrong with it, but butter or cream cheese made it much better.

#2 is similar to most of the banana breads I’ve eaten before.  The texture is moist and cake-like. There is no discernible crust except on the very edges.  It reminded me of watching Julia Child at my grandma’s house when she was making some muffin or something and said “It’s so good, it hardly needs butter” as she slathered an enormous amount of butter on whatever it was she was eating. My kids definitely preferred this one.

In the battle of these two banana breads, #2 is #1.

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Applesauce Date-Nut Bread

After months of blogging, I decided it was time for a post that includes dates.  I named my blog after this “common” ingredient, but never used it.  Applesauce Date Nut Bread. (See About Page for further details).

Dates have fallen out of favor as a normal ingredient except in things like energy bites.  I have so many “new” recipes that call for them, that I was excited to see a large resealable bag of them at Costco. Oat flour often coats dried dates to prevent them from sticking together. I use caution when buying dates since I am allergic to oats.DSCN2829Quick breads are great.  They are easy to make, they are easy to store.  Warm them up and spread with butter, jam, or cream cheese.  My kids eat them, but only if I’ve sliced the loaf for them.

My husband commented that when bread is unsliced, he feels like it has another purpose.  Then went on to say something about “It’s the greatest thing since sliced bread because when the bread is sliced you know you can eat it.” Maybe I should leave “Eat Me” signs around my kitchen like in Alice in Wonderland?

But the thing is, I get caught in the banana bread/pumpkin bread/zucchini bread loop.  There are so many other great quick breads out there.  If you don’t want to eat a loaf of bread, make mini loaves or muffins instead.

Adjust cooking time when changing pan sizes, of course. When I deviate from the size pan specified by the recipe (usually from larger to smaller), I set the timer for the oven for 20 minutes and evaluate from that point.  Use a toothpick/cake tester or judge by sight how much more time is needed for a proper bake.   I used mini loaf pans and got 3 loaves.  I have the other ones in my freezer.  They took about 45 minutes to bake.

DSCN2837Appropriately the dates for the applesauce date nut bread recipe came from my grandma’s house when we moved her a year ago.  They have been sitting in my freezer just waiting (along with fruit for fruitcakes, but that’ll be closer to Christmas).  The applesauce I used for this came from my apple trees.  It’s slightly cinnamony and not heavily sweetened.  It’s very much a personal preference or what you have on hand sort of thing.

You do not need to make your own applesauce for this recipe.  But there is no reason not to.

A couple of other things about applesauce date nut bread.  It is very dense and very moist.  Toast the nuts before using them.  It makes a difference.  Substitute whole wheat flour for the white flour, if you choose.  It still makes great bread.

And really, isn’t this a lovely loaf?
DSCN2834

The Recipe:

Applesauce-Date Nut Loaf

If you like this recipe, check out Tweedle Beetle Banana Bread Battle, Flash Flood Drop Doughnuts, and Sally Lunn and Hot Brandy Sauce.

Pinnable Image Applesauce Date Nut Bread