Banananana… You won't know when to stop with this nut bread

Over the course of time, most of my old cravings for forbidden (trigger-laden) foods have disappeared. For example, I no longer pine for strawberries every time The Bat brings home a quart of fresh ones for herself and Pop. Grapes come in and go out without my feeling the desire to pope one in my mouth and stop breathing… but breads are a much harder habit to break. 

Worse still, I have desperately missed dessert-y quick breads, like the classic banana-nut loaf which usually happened at least once a month when I was younger – after my brugly other stopped inhaling the fruits, and the occasional banana was allowed to go a little overripe. During those years, The Bat would take out the extra-long loaf pan (the 5x16 incher) and load it up with batter, filling the house with that sweet, heady aroma. If we were lucky, there would also be a brick of cream cheese on the counter when the bread was finished baking, to add a little bite, a little extra richness to the treat. But once wheat was put on my list of things to be avoided, I would glance longingly at those fruits on the counter as they started to show brown spots.

No more, though!  I can have my cake, and eat it, too. 

Welllll… technically, no. I can have my banana bread, though, and make it lower in carbs at the same time I make it wheat-free. This makes it slightly more virtuous a feast, until I slather that cream cheese all over it and treat it as if it were cupcake frosting.

Granted, it's a fairly heavy version of banana bread – Pop likes his to be a little more on the lightly cakey side, whereas this comes out dense, like a pound cake. Still, it's banana-y, nutty, and moist. What's not to like? 

Rich, nutty, fruity, and good for you…like a bran muffin, only without the whole bran muffin attitude 

 


Banana Bread with Coconut Flour

Ingredients:

7 large eggs at room temperature
3 Tablespoons honey
1/2 cup coconut oil or butter, melted
1 cup mashed ripe bananas
1 cup sifted coconut flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup chopped pecans (optional)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350° F.

Grease a standard glass loaf pan.

In a large bowl, and with Paddle attachment (not dough hook or whisk) combine eggs, honey, oil, and mashed bananas, beat until well blended.

In a separate bowl, sift together coconut flour, salt, baking powder and soda. Whisk in nuts, if you are including them. 

Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet, in the mixer bowl. Mix until completely combined.

Pour into greased loaf pan, place on middle rack of oven. Bake 1 hour. 

Remove from oven, allow to cool 10 minutes in pan.  

Remove from pan,  allow to cool completely on rack.

This bread is better if allowed to stand overnight. Serve with cream cheese brought to room temperature to soften, for greater cake-like awesomeness.

Muffin Doin': cornmeal muffins

My young friend Asteroidae has, for the past couple weeks, been asking to make some muffins. (I guess I shouldn't have left the bright red silicone muffin pan on the table all this time, after using it to sort items for a Christmas project. It's too big a reminder.) Too often, when she arrives here after school, there is not quite enough time to do a serious project after she finishes with her homework, so her disappointment had been building. Finally, this time, we managed to work a little muffin up in the schedule…

At any rate, our households also have a serious weakness for cornbread, cornmeal, polenta, and the occasional bowl of grits, so we combined the two cravings into one solution. Today, we make cornbread muffins. And we make them blue.

If you don't have any blue cornmeal in your refrigerator (and, seriously, if you have it, it should be chilled unless you just bought it this afternoon), any other good quality cornmeal or non-quick-polenta will do, but the blue cornmeal lends its own subtle flavor to the bread. (If you are serious about making this gluten-free, though, remember to check the labels of your ingredients, first, to see that they are clearly marked as GF. Many corn flours and cornmeals are processed alongside wheat and other gluten sources, and cross-contamination may occur. I find Bob's Red Mill is always reliable.)

Also, a good gelatin-free, plain Greek yogurt is best, so check the ingredients in your preferred brand. I like the house brand from Aldi, but you may prefer somebody else's best (if you have none at all, skip it and raise the amount of buttermilk to 2 cups).

These muffins freeze fairly well, and can be stored in an aritight container for about two days – reheat to serve.

Beyond that, the real goal is to have a good time making muffins from maize.

Cornmeal Muffins* †

Ingredients:

2 cups corn flour (masa harina)
1 1/2 cups corn meal (preferably blue)
4 Tablespoons sugar or honey
5 Tablespoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
5-8 Tablespoons butter for pan(s)
4 large eggs, beaten
1 1/2 cups buttermilk
2/3 cups Greek yogurt, plain
1/2 cup melted butter

Directions:

Arrange racks in oven to accommodate two standard-sized 12-muffin tins, with as little overlap as possible. Preheat oven to 400º F.

In a large bowl, mix dry ingredients together, set aside.

Put a dot of butter (about 1/4 - 1/2 teaspoon) into each cup of the muffin tins. Place in oven to melt butter and heat the tins. When the butter is melted, swirl it around so it covers the bottoms of the cups.

In a medium bowl, mix eggs, buttermilk, yogurt and 1/2 cup melted butter. Add into dry mixture all at once and stir until moistened (do NOT overmix – it should still be a little lumpy).

Scoop by 1/4 cup into the muffin tins, bake 11-15 minutes, or until toothpick inserted in center of muffin comes out clean.

Makes 2 dozen.



*You can make this into a standard corn cake in two cast-iron frying pans, other heavy-duty round pans, or a 12x16x2 cake pan, by reducing the amount of butter to be put into the pan by about half (about 2-3 Tablespoons per round pan, or about 4-5 per rectangle), and then by baking for 15-22 minutes.

†Update: If, for the sake of portion control, you want to make mini-muffins (as pictured below, using regular cornmeal – I made these much later, under the watchful eye of Asteroidae's younger brother, Ilex), this recipe will make about 4 dozen. Treat the same as regular muffins, but bake only 8 minutes, or until lightly golden-browned. Serve warm – with more butter, if you feel like living the decadent life.

They just look so darned cheerful, all in a row, don't they?

We like our cornbread accompanied by butter and a bowl of soup or chili.

Cheesy Bacon Quick Bread

This recipe is easily doubled, as long as you have a pound of bacon to toss into the mix. Fortunately, we tend to cook up lots of the stuff in advance, during the summer, so that, whenever we want, we can assemble a quick BLT using the lettuce and tomatoes from Pop's garden.

If you don't have all of that lying about, though, you can probably substitute the pre-cooked bacon bits from the store. For that, you'll need to adjust and adapt according to your own tastes. I'd estimate approximately one ounce of the pre-cooked stuff per slice in the recipe, and add about 1/8 tsp more oil to the recipe.

Also, as this is a chunky batter, I recommend leaving your whisk in its drawer, or wherever you store it. This is a job for a spoon or a heavy-duty spatula.


Cheesy Bacon Quick Bread

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/3 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup shredded sharp Cheddar cheese
3/4 cup quick-cooking oats
6 slices bacon, cooked and crumbled
2 eggs, beaten
1/2 cup nonfat buttermilk
1/4 cup vegetable oil

Directions:

Combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cheese, oats and bacon in a large bowl. Set aside. 

Combine the eggs, milk and oil in another bowl and add to the first mixture, stirring just enough to moisten the dry ingredients (do not overmix. This is like a muffin or pancake batter, so you don't ant to over-activate the gluten, or it will become dense and rubbery). Spoon the batter into a greased and floured 8-1/2" x 4-1/2" x 3" loaf pan. 

Bake at 350°F for 35 to 40 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Remove from oven, then remove from loaf pans. Let cool on rack for 10 minutes before slicing.

Quick Oatmeal Molasses Bread

As I played with this, I realized how much it reminds me of Mom's Anadama bread recipe, but slightly quicker and simpler, and with the addition of dried fruit such as raisins or dried cranberries, it's more like a luncheon bread than a hearty sandwich loaf. Nevertheless, it's tasty as all getout. Plus, it's less than an hour from raw ingredients to ready-to-eat. It's kind of hard to beat that!

Quick Oatmeal Molasses Bread 

Ingredients:

2 cups nonfat buttermilk
1/2 cup quick oats (not instant oatmeal)
1/4 cup unsulphured molasses
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
2 tablespoons sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup raisins or dried cranberries (optional)*

 Directions:

Preheat oven to 400°.

Heavily grease and flour two standard 8x4 loaf pans

Combine first 4 ingredients in a medium bowl. Set aside.

Sift or lightly spoon flours into dry measuring cups; level with a knife. Combine flours, sugar, salt, baking powder, and baking soda in a large bowl; make a well in center of mixture.

Add buttermilk mixture to flour mixture, stirring just until moist; stir in raisins. Stir with a wooden spoon until dough pulls together in a shaggy mass. Let rest 2 minutes.

Butter or oil your hands well and gently knead in bowl or on lightly floured surface (dough will be so sticky you will almost mistake it for thick batter); shape dough in loaf and place in loaf pan. Repeat procedure with remaining dough.

Make 3 diagonal cuts 1/4-inch deep across top of each loaf using a VERY sharp and lightly oiled knife.

Bake at 400° for 20 minutes. Leaving loaves in oven, reduce temperature to 375°; bake an additional 15 minutes.  Remove from oven, place on cooling rack, brush lightly with butter. Let stand at least 15 minutes before slicing.



*I made this without raisins, and on a cornmeal-coated cookie sheet instead of greased loaf pans, so I had to adjust the amount of flour to use, in order for the loaf to even remotely hold its shape. I probably could have added more, plus another 1/4 cup of oats or so, as well. Either way, the dough is still very sticky, and I will consider lining the bottoms of my loaf pans with parchment, next time I make this.