Zucchini Bread

I happened upon this recipe, which I modified slightly from Paula Deen, when I had an overabundance of zucchinis to consume from last year's farm share (more about farm shares in another post). It is a simple and tasty quickbread recipe that will yield 2-9x5" loaves, plenty to eat and share!

Start by grating some fresh zucchini. Then begin by combining ingredients. First, premix the dry ingredients (flour, salt, spices, baking soda and sugar) together. 

Then, in a separate bowl, combine the wet (oil, eggs, water, zucchini and lemon juice). 

Add the wet ingredients to the dry and mix (can do by hand) until well combined and moistened throughout. Then, fold in the nuts, if you are using them (I used pecans because that's what I had on hand -- yum). 

Bake in 2-9x5x3" loaf pans (otherwise known as "standard loaf pans" -- the 8x4" loaf pans are 1 lb pans) for about 60 minutes, until a tester comes out clean.

A note about the sugar: I've made this bread using a variety of sugar amounts, from 1 cup to 3 cups. It depends on what taste you are going for. 1 cup of sugar is hardly sweet at all, and would pair well with a glaze or icing. 2 cups is moderately sweet, and 3 (what the original recipe called for) is very sweet, like a zucchini pound cake. I personally like 2 cups the best, half brown and half white, but that is my tastebuds. My husband prefers the 1 cup version. Don't be afraid to experiment.

I like this recipe for several reasons: 1) It's tasty; 2) It's easy; 3) it keeps well; 4) It yields 2 loaves, which means it is plenty to feed a crowd; 5) It's different, I've found that people still are surprised when you tell them that you've baked zucchini into a sweet bread. It is also a fantastic way to use up excess zucchini, especially if you have a lot of it (it is always plentiful in the summer, especially if you have a garden or participate in a farm share). I'm fairly certain you could bake the same exact bread with the yellow variety of summer squash, as its texture and taste are roughly equivalent, but I've never personally tried it.

Having said that, I do have to be honest and say that I'm not sure if I would go out of my way to make this bread if I didn't have excess zucchini on hand…but this bread also makes a great base for other types of quickbread (I added apples instead of zucchinis in a previous post, and it was a yummy autumn treat). So if you have excess zucchini, or if you just want to try your hand at zucchini bread, this is a great recipe. And if you want to use it as a base for another type of quickbread, have fun experimenting and be sure to tell me how it turns out!

Zucchini Bread

Ingredients

• 3 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1 cup vegetable oil
• 4 eggs, beaten
• 1/3 cup water
• 2 cups grated zucchini
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice
• 1 cup chopped walnuts or pecans

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. 
2. In a large bowl, combine flour, salt, nutmeg, baking soda, cinnamon and sugar.
3. In a separate bowl, combine oil, eggs, water, zucchini and lemon juice. 
4. Mix wet ingredients into dry, add nuts and fold in. 
5. Bake in 2 standard loaf pans (9x5x3"), sprayed with nonstick spray, for 1 hour, or until a tester comes out clean.
1. Alternately, bake in 5 mini loaf pans for about 45 minutes.

Banana Bread

I have always been on the lookout for a definitive banana bread recipe, and I've finally found it in the form of my friend Lauren's MIL's recipe (which I have since learned is the banana bread recipe from the 1970 Betty Crocker's Cookbook (the red one with the wheel of food on the cover). It's not what I normally think of when I think of banana bread -- that is to say a slightly spicy bread filled with nuts. In contrast, it is pale, white, devoid of spice (although you can certainly add spice in), and also devoid of mix-ins (which again, you can always add back in). It also has, to my thinking, a lot of baking powder in it, and I was expecting there to be an aftertaste. But I tried the recipe because I trust my friend Lauren's opinion since she too is an avid baker. And to my great surprise, I preferred this recipe of plain banana bread to any other that I've tried yet, and I think you will too. It is fluffy and pure, with a banana taste that hits you right in the face.

I've made this bread plain, with chocolate chips, and with cinnamon and pecans, and that is the order of my preference -- plain, chocolate chip, and then nuts/spice. I'd highly recommend making it plain the first time you try it, and then you can always change it up later if your tastebuds want something extra.

But first, because I've missed writing them, a brief banana interlude. Skip down to ignore my rambling and get right to the recipe!

Bananas are native to Southeast Asia, and have been cultivated for at least the last 5000 years, if not longer! They didn't start becoming popular in the United States until after the Civil War, and it wasn't until 1933 that the first recipe for banana bread appeared in an American cookbook (Balanced Recipes by Pillsbury). Coincidentally, the appearance of this first banana quickbread recipe coincides with a marked rise in the use of the chemical leavening agents baking powder and baking soda in America in the 1930's (get it -- "rise"? I crack myself up).

Little known fact: bananas are actually slightly radioactive due to their high potassium content. They contain small amounts of the isotope potassium-40, which has a half-life of 1.25 billion years! One banana does not have an appreciable amount of radiation, a trace amount when eaten that has been termed the Banana Equivalent Dose, or BED. But, a whole truckload of bananas actually has enough radiation to trigger false alarms by the Radiation Portal Monitors (RPMs) that screen goods coming into US land and sea ports (http://www.nti.org/analysis/articles/radiological-nuclear-detection-devices/)!

Today, virtually all sweet bananas sold (as opposed to plantains) are of the Cavendish variety, but currently that variety is under threat of being damaged by a brand-new strain (Tropical Race 4; TR4) of a soil fungal infection called Panama Disease. A different strain of Panama Disease, Race 1, all but destroyed the previous large-scale banana cultivar, Gros Michel, in the 1950's. Blights on banana crops have such stunningly devastating effects because cultivated bananas are in fact sterile -- they produce no seeds. They are not crossed and bred like other crops to maintain genetic diversity, with the result that all Cavendish bananas are essentially clones with identical genetic material -- which means they are all equally susceptible to TR4.  It is estimated that in anywhere from 5-20 years, TR4 will reach South America and permanently cripple the Cavendish banana supply. Worse, unlike the situation in the 50's where Cavendish stepped up after the demise of Gros Michel, there is currently no viable Cavendish replacement for large-scale banana cultivation. Other variants that exist are so far away from what you and I would consider the "typical banana" that most people would consider these alternate variants to not even be bananas!

Back to the baking!

I apologize for the pictures, when I gathered up the photos I had in hand, I realized that some of them are from the time I tried the recipe plain, some are from when I added chocolate chips, while others are from the time I tried adding nuts. So the pics are sort of all over the place, if you are wondering why one pic might have chips while the next pic is of plain bread…

This recipe is so easy, I almost can't stand it. First, mash up the bananas, the riper they are, the better (a fork works great for this).

Then, combine the bananas with all the other ingredients, and mix until moistened (about 30 seconds in a stand mixer).

Pour into a 9x5" loaf pan (I used the Pam baking spray with flour in it to coat the pan first, or you can do the traditional grease and flour), and bake at 350F for 55-65 minutes until the top of the bread is golden, and a tester is clean.

I can't say enough good things about this bread. It is simple, easy, and tastes fantastic even without anything in it -- in fact I prefer it plain, which is unusual for me! But you can easily use this recipe as a base and customize it with nuts and spices, or chocolate chips; I've tried both of those variations as well and they are both yummy!

Banana Bread

 Ingredients 

• 2 1/4 cups flour
• 1 cup sugar
• 3 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 3 Tablespoons vegetable or canola oil
• 3/4 cup milk
• 1 cup mashed very ripe banana (2-3 bananas)
• 1 egg
• optional mix-ins: 1C of nuts or chocolate chips
• optional spice: 1 tsp cinnamon

Directions

1.  Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. Grease and flour your loaf pan.
3. Beat the mixture for 30 seconds on medium speed (the great part of the recipe is that you don't have to cream anything or do any step-wise additions; just dump all the ingredients into the bowl and mix).
4. Pour into a 9-5" loaf pan.
5. Bake 55-65 minutes until tester comes out clean

Cinnamon Apple Quick Bread

I am waaaaaaay behind on the posts I had hoped to make. I still have an entire summer's worth of farm-share related blogs to get to, but I'm going to not even think about those until after this holiday season is done.

Although I love yeast breads, the joy and simplicity of a simple quick bread never ceases to amaze me. After I went on my annual apple-picking excursion, I wanted to try some new things with my apples. The first recipe I settled on was an apple quick bread, which is a variation of Paula Deen's zucchini bread, which I became well-acquainted with this summer during my farm share, when I had zucchinis coming out of my ears. At the time, I thought the base would be good for other fruit or veggie mix-ins, and I was right. With a little tweaking, I made this recipe work beautifully for apples.

But first, a little interlude (or skip down for more baking!):

Halloween is my absolute favorite holiday, hand's down. Not only do I love Halloween-themed treats, but I love Halloween tradition as well.  Last year, around this time, I paired my Halloween and Fall-themed posts with little blurbs on the background of some common Halloween tradition and/or lore, including the history of Halloween and trick-or-treating, vampires, zombies, jack-o-lanterns, and bobbing for apples. This year, even though I am starting a little late, I am continuing that tradition with this latest topic:

"So useful to have him swooping around like an overgrown bat."

This is my 6 month old kitty cat, Severus (as in Severus Snape, because I'm a huge nerd), and he and his brother Magnus hold my heart in their paws. I've always been a dog person, growing up I had a wonderful German Shepherd, and I never seriously contemplated owning a cat. But, I always promised myself that if I did ever get a cat, he would be jet black from the tips of his ears to the bottoms of his paws. There's just something about them that draws me in. So what more perfect Halloween interlude than to examine the superstition surrounding Halloween and

Throughout history, the attitude towards cats in general has been one of dueling extremes. In ancient times, particularly in Egypt and Rome, cats were revered. In Egypt, they were the earthly representatives of the goddess Bastet, while in Rome, they were often worshiped as household gods. The ancient Christians had a tradition that a tabby cat kept the baby Jesus warm when he was born, and in gratitude, the Virgin Mary bestowed the characteristic "M" on his forehead.

But during the Dark and Middle Ages, this began to change. In 1232, the Pope suggested that cats might in fact be agents of the Devil. Although no one is sure what caused this shift in attitudes, the fact that cats are nocturnal animals with highly reflective eyes that seem to glow and aloof demeanors probably didn't help matters any! Many cats were burned at the stake along with their owners during medieval witch hunts. One high-profile example in the 17th century was the story of Charles I and his favorite cat, which happened to be black. Charles I was very attached to his kitty, so the story goes, and even assigned guards for its protection.  When it died, he allegedly exclaimed that his luck had gone, and the very next day, he was arrested. His subsequent execution resulted in the (temporary) overthrow of the British monarchy, and only did more damage to the reputation of black cats. In the latter part of the 17th century, New England witch hunters in Salem and elsewhere became convinced that cats, particularly black ones, were familiars -- that is, the spirits in animal form that collude with and assist witches.  These early attitudes gave rise to most of the black cat superstitions we are familiar with today, such as: having bad luck if a black cat crosses your path; a black cat at a funeral meaning another family member will die; and just the general bad luck that was believed to follow black cats around. It also gave rise to the classic Halloween icon of a black cat silhouette. 

Even though we live in modern times, some superstitions unfortunately die hard, because a study in the Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science looking at adoption rates in  CA animal shelters found that black cats have the lowest adoption rate out of all coat colors. All Halloween playfulness aside, this is heartbreakingly unfortunate for all the sweet black kitties out there that desperately need love. If you're ever in a position to welcome a cat into your home, and you have a choice of a black one, please seriously consider taking him or her since statistics show that it is unlikely that someone else will come along to adopt him. :-(

And now, back to baking!

Cinnamon Apple Bread

This recipe is ridiculously easy. So easy that I hardly have any pics to go with the post. First, start with some apples. I used Fuji exclusively, because that is what looked good at the orchard, but generally I like to have a mix of apples.  Either dice them up or shred them using the biggest openings on your shredder. I chose to shred because it goes quickly, and I always get lazy when I'm dicing, and I end up with progressively larger and larger pieces...

Mix a little lemon juice into those cut apples, to slow down the oxidation (browning).

Pre-combine the dry ingredients: flour, sugar, baking soda, salt, and spices. A note about the sugar: I've made this bread using a variety of sugar amounts, from 1 cup to 3 cups, which is why there is a range in the recipe listed below. It depends on what taste you are going for. 1 cup of sugar is hardly sweet at all, and would pair well with a glaze or icing. 2 cups is moderately sweet, and 3 (what the original recipe called for) is very sweet, like apple pound cake. I personally like 2 cups the best, half brown and half white, but that is my tastebuds. My husband prefers 1 cup.

Beat the eggs together with oil and water in a separate bowl, then mix in the apples (and nuts if you want them).

Combine the dry and wet ingredients together.

Then, take 2-9x5" loaf pans, spray them with butter spray, and line the bottom with parchment. Spraying before you put the parchment on the bottom helps it to stick to the metal. Then give the top of the parchment a little spray as well. Don't skip the parchment step, believe me, I only tell you to parchment-line something if it is really necessary. Then, divide the batter between the two loaf pans, and bake at 350F for about 50 minutes (as a range, I'd say anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour). Keep baking until a tester comes out clean.

Cool in the pan for ten minutes before de-panning and cooling fully.

This bread is a yummy and fragrant bit of Fall, studded with apples and walnuts, and swirled with spices. It would probably be delicious with a caramel glaze, but that involved going to the store, so I didn't bother. As-is, however, 2 loaves got devoured in a single day at my work. If you have apples, and you want to make more than just pies and crisps, consider making this bread!

Cinnamon Apple Bread

(Printable Recipe)

Ingredients

• 2 C apples, shredded
• 1 tsp lemon juice
• 4 eggs
• 1 C vegetable oil
• 1/3 C water
• 3-1/4 C AP flour
• 2 C sugar (1C brown, 1C white)
• 2 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1 C nuts, pecans or walnuts

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350F
2. Shred or dice apples, and mix with lemon juice
3. Beat together eggs, oil, and water. Stir in apples and nuts
4. Combine flour, sugar, salt, baking soda and spices in separate bowl
5. Combine wet and dry ingredients
6. Line the bottoms of two 9x5" loaf pans with parchment, and spray bottom and sides of pans
7. Divide batter evenly between 2 pans and bake for about 50-60 minutes, until tester comes out clean 
8. Cool in pan for ten minutes, then de-pan
9. Enjoy!

Tsoureki (Sweet Greek Easter Bread)

One of my most consistent childhood memories is of the tsoureki my Yia-Yia would always bring to my house at Easter. She would get it from the church, and I was always fascinated by the slightly sweet, almond topped bread with a blood-red egg stuffed into it. This year, I decided to try my hand at making my own. I have never made a yeast bread before, and every Easter when I see the tsoureki at the Greek store by my house, I think "I can do that" but I never actually try. So I decided that 2009 would be the year. Ignoring my family's dusty, obligatory "Joys of Greek Cooking" book, I located a recipe online that I liked the look of, from Evelyn/Athens at RecipeZaar.


For those who don't know, tsoureki is a braided Greek sweet bread, traditionally served at Easter. It has many equivalents in other cultures, including: corek (Turkey); panaret (Albanian); choreg (Armenian); and, more distantly, Challah. It is considered a "brioche-like" bread, meaning that it is tender and yet has a dark outer crust courtesy of an egg wash. Although it has the right amount of flour, it does not, however, contain enough butter to be truly considered a brioche bread. In Greece, tsoureki can also be known as lambropsomo, which is a derivative of the Greek name for Easter Sunday, and literally means "shining bread." The outer glossiness of the bread is considered an important symbol for the light of Christ, and the blood-red egg (kokkina avga) is also highly symbolic -- red for the blood of Christ, and egg as a symbol of renewal and rebirth. All of this, of course, went right over my head as a child. I just thought I was getting a yummy dessert!

The prospect of tsoureki-making was exciting to me because it was such a familiar part of my life (and yet I had no clue how to make it), because it was a yeast bread, and because it contained a few elements out of the common way.



The first of these are the main spices in the bread, mahlepi and masticha. I had never heard of these spices until I started looking up recipes. Mahlepi are seeds from the St. Lucie cherry, most common to the Mediterranean and southern Europe, but found all the way to Morocco and Pakistan. The seeds, which need to be ground to a powder before using, taste like a mixture of cherry and almond. Masticha is the resin from the mastic plant, an evergreen shrub in the pistacio family. Here's an interesting tidbit of trivia: although mastic plants are found over a wide geographical area, only the mastic shrubs on the Greek island of Chios are capable of producing the resin for the spice. As such, Chios has been granted "protected designation of origin" status by the EU. To this day, the masticha production of Chios is controlled by the Mastichochoria, a collective of medieval villages. But enough with the trivia!



The second element of the bread is, of course, dying the egg a deep blood red. I have done it before, and instructions can be found here , but this time (because I was short on time) I chose to just use Paas, and try to get the pink as dark as I could.

I found the mahlepi and masticha at my local Greek store,Pithari/Hellas Greek Food in Highland Park, NJ. Many ethnic grocery stores, or supermarkets with extensive grocery sections should carry both, especially at this time of the year, but if you can't find them, anise and vanilla can be substituted as indicated below.
Ingredients
2 cups milk
2 (1/4 ounce) envelopes active dry yeast
8-9 cups bread flour
1 3/4 cups sugar
1 cup almonds, very finely chopped (optional)
1 teaspoon salt
1 orange, zest of, grated
1 tablespoon mahlepi (or 2 teaspoons finely ground anise seed)
1 teaspoon ground masticha (optional - can also use 1-2 tsp vanilla)
1/4 cup butter, melted
5 eggs, very well beaten

Glaze
1 egg yolk
2-3 tablespoons milk
1/2 cup slivered almond

Instructions

1. Warm two cups of milk (110-130 F) and place in a large bowl. Add the yeast, one cup of the flour, and 1/4 cup of the sugar. Cover and proof for one hour.

Here is the mixture, happily bubbling away

Here are my spices and such (clockwise from plate): orange zest, masticha, mahlepi, and pulverized almonds. I used the same nut chopper to powderize the mahlepi and masticha

2. In a large bowl, combine seven cups of flour, the ground almonds, salt, remaining sugar, orange rind, aniseed or mahlepi and masticha (if using). Make a well in the center. Add the yeast mixture, melted butter and eggs. Work from the center outwards, bringing flour into the well, stirring the mixture until a dough begins to form.

3. Dust a worksurface with a little of the remaining flour and knead, adding more flour if necessary, until the dough is smooth and doesn't stick to your hands, about 12 minutes. Don't skimp on this, it is important.

4. Place in an oiled bowl, cover with a cloth, and set aside in a warm, draft-free place to rise until doubled in bulk, about two hours. Punch down dough. It'll feel like marshmallow when it comes back out of the bowl. And...it'll be huge...

5. Divide into six small balls and roll each into strips 12-15 inches long, and abut 2 inches in diameter. I did this by cutting the dough ball in half, and then cutting three wedges from each half. In retrospect, my loaves were too big, so I think I will cut the dough into quarters before dividing each piece into three wedges. This will increase the recipe yield from two to four.

6. Lay three strips side by side, pinching together at one end, and braid. Pinch together at the other end to hold the loaf intact. At this point you can press dyed eggs between the strips of the braid or just leave the braided loaf plain. Repeat for the second loaf (or however many you decide to make).

I had a mishap with my second pink egg, so I had to use a blue.

A little large...

7. Place the breads on a parchment-lined baking sheet, covered, and let rise for two hours, or until doubled in bulk. While the braids are rising, preheat oven to 375F (190°C). Yeah, another two hours. Yeast breads are time-consuming. But very rewarding!

8. Beat together the egg yolk and remaining milk. Brush over tsoureki loaves and sprinkle with slivered almonds.

9. Bake for about 40-45 minutes, or until golden brown. The bread should sound hollow when tapped on the bottom. Remove and cool on racks.

Perfect!

This bread had such a great flavor, it tasted like coming home to me. But everyone will like this bread, it is a truly great sweet bread recipe. Sans the egg if you want, substitute in sesame seeds for almonds in the topping if your tastes would prefer it, make it any shape you want -- twist, round, braid...yeast breads are time consuming, but they are just plain fun to work with, and they taste great. Success!

Irish Soda Bread

I have wanted to try and make Irish soda bread for a long time now, and in honor of St. Patrick's Day coming up, I finally decided to give it a shot. I don't know what it is about Irish Soda Bread, but around this time of year, I crave it. Maybe it makes me feel more Irish. Of course, I'm not Irish at all...but everyone always thinks I am. So I routinely pass myself off as such during every mid-March.

I prefer my soda bread with just a hint of sweetness (especially in the yummy crusty outer part), so I hunted for a recipe that seemed like it would fit the bill. I came across Marilyn O'Reilly's Irish Soda Bread on the Food Network website. Not only was it the highest rated out of all the soda bread recipes, but it also called for more sugar than the others. So I decided that this recipe was definitely the one for me.

Ingredients:

3 C all-purpose flour
1/4 C sugar
1 tbls baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
4 tbls unsalted butter (1/4 C)
2 tbls caraway seeds, optional

1 C raisins/cranberries/etc <-- I used the raisin/cranberry blend from Sun-Maid

1 C buttermilk

1 egg

Zest of 1 orange (I decided to add this to the recipe, and it gives a nice citrus undertone. I might even zest 2 oranges next time)

Directions:

1. Set a rack in the middle level of the oven and preheat to 400 degrees.

2. In a mixing bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, soda, zest and salt and stir well to mix.

3. Add the butter and rub in until the butter disappears into the dry ingredients.

4. Stir in the caraway seeds if used and the dried fruit.

5. In a separate bowl, whisk the buttermilk and egg together and mix into the dough

6. Turn the dough out on a floured work surface and fold it over on itself several times, kneeding for a few minutes

7. Shape it into a round loaf. Transfer the loaf to one cookie sheet or jelly roll pan covered with parchment or foil and cut a cross in the top (I forgot to do this, so I stabbed at it with a butter knife while it was in the oven...this is why my top looks like a cat attacked it).

8. Bake for 15 minutes then reduce heat to 350 and cook for about 30-35 minutes more, until well colored and a toothpick plunged into the center emerges clean. The original recipe says to cook it for only an additional 15-20 minutes, making for a 30-35 minute total cooking time, but I (and the other reviewers on Food Network) found that it took closer to 50 total minutes for the bread to be done.

9. Cool the soda bread on a rack and serve with butter and/or marmalade.

I ate my bread without any butter, and it was very yummy. The crust baked up nice and slightly sweet, almost like a cookie coating on the bread. The caraway seeds were little strong, but without them, I don't think the bread would have much of a taste on it's own. One reviewer said she tried the bread with and without seeds, and the seeded bread won the taste test of her coworkers hands down. Maybe, if you really object to caraway, add only 1 tbls instead of 2.

I definitely agree with the 5 star rating for this recipe. It was easy to put together, looks great, smells fantastic as it bakes, and tastes yummy. It was a little crumbly, especially on the outer parts, but I expect that from Irish Soda Bread. I think I will definitely be adding this recipe to my St. Patty's Day repertoire!