Quick Breads | Chickens in the Road Page 2

Posts Tagged ‘quick breads’

Mar
9

Sweet, creamy, warm comfort food. Bread pudding, but better–with banana bread instead of regular bread, and filled with even more sliced bananas inside. And whipped cream on top. Want some? First, bake some banana bread. Use this recipe, or your own favorite.

How to make Banana Bread:

1 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
2/3 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup ripe mashed bananas
1/3 cup softened butter
2 tablespoons buttermilk (can substitute milk)
2 eggs
1/3 cup chopped pecans

In a large bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Add mashed bananas, butter, buttermilk (or milk), and eggs. Using a mixer, beat well. Stir in nuts; pour into greased loaf pan. Bake at 350-degrees for about 50 minutes.

Stop and eat a piece of banana bread. You know you want to.

How to make Banana Bread Pudding:

1 loaf banana bread
2 bananas
1 cup half-and-half
2 cups milk
4 eggs
1/3 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla

Slice and cube banana bread. Grease a 9-inch pie pan. Spread half the cubed banana bread in the pie dish. Slice the two bananas on top. Cover with the other half of the cubed banana bread slices.

Whisk half-and-half, milk, eggs, sugar, and vanilla in a medium-sized bowl. Pour over cubed banana bread and bananas in pie dish.

Using a spoon, squish the banana bread at the top down to make sure all of the pieces get into the creamy goodness. Let sit for about 10 minutes then bake at 350-degrees for 50 minutes. Top with whipped cream. Eat it before dinner. Because you can.

Oh yeah. That moving thing? It snowed. And snowed. I submitted to the forces of Nature beyond my control. I stayed home and packed and dreamed of a day when the stars will align correctly and I can move into my new house. Banana Bread Pudding was a huge comfort in the midst of more disappointment. Huge.

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Posted by Suzanne McMinn | Permalink

Tags: bananas, puddings, quick breads

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Feb
23

In West Virginia, cornbread is practically an art. For my cousin, who grinds his own cornmeal, it’s almost a religion. And I’m a convert. Fresh, stone-ground cornmeal. Try it. You’ll never go back to cornmeal off the shelf again. At the very least, throw out your Jiffy boxes. That is cardboard cornbread. You need the real thing.

Cornbread is easy to make from scratch, but if you want a mix, you can make your own homemade cornbread mix. (I’ll show you how.) If you can, get fresh cornmeal from a local farmers’ market, organic/health food market, or local fairs and festivals. The fresher the cornmeal, the better.

Note: Fresh cornmeal doesn’t contain preservatives. Store in the fridge or freezer.

If you’re in this area, my cousin sells his fresh-ground cornmeal at the Black Walnut Festival in Spencer every October and the Mountain State Arts & Crafts Fair in Ripley every July. (He’s been grinding cornmeal there for so many years, he’s been inducted into their Hall of Fame.) I like to get my cornmeal right off his grinder.

How to make Cornbread:

2 slices peppered bacon
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup cornmeal
1/4 cup sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup butter (cut up) or oil
2 eggs
1 cup milk or buttermilk

Using a large iron skillet, fry two slices of bacon. Remove the bacon and drain to use for another purpose or crumble and stir into your cornbread mixture before baking.

In a mixing bowl, stir together flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Add butter or oil, eggs, and milk or buttermilk. Stir to combine. Don’t overstir. (Sometimes more or less milk is required, depending on slight variations in measuring dry ingredients–add what you need to get a nice, thick almost pourable-but-not consistency.)

Variations: More sugar, if you want really sweet cornbread, or less sugar if you plan to add vegetables to the mixture–you can add a cup or so of diced, sauteed onions, peppers, anything that appeals to you. Add shredded cheese, or corn, or even chopped pecans. (I like it with pecans especially with a sweet, sweet cornbread mixture.)

Pour cornbread mixture into the iron skillet you used to cook the bacon in to season it with the bacon drippings. (First tip the pan all the way around, spreading the bacon drippings to grease the sides of the skillet.) Bake in a 425-oven for 20-25 minutes.

*You can skip the bacon step, if preferred. You can still bake it in a greased cast-iron skillet or in a greased 8 x 8 square baking dish or a pie pan.

How to make a Homemade Cornbread Mix:

4 cups flour
4 cups cornmeal
1 cup sugar (or less if you don’t plan to make sweet cornbread)
4 tablespoons baking powder
2 teaspoons salt
1 cup butter (cut up)

Mix well. Store in the freezer in a large plastic freezer bag. To use, scoop out 2-1/4 cups mix, add 2 eggs and 1 cup of milk or buttermilk. Just like a Jiffy mix. Only so much better. This keeps well in the freezer a long time, so make duplicate bags if you know you like to use mixes to fix cornbread quickly and if this will stop you from using Jiffy mixes. I’m here to help. I’m a helper.

Each batch of mix is enough for 4 pans of cornbread.

You know you need a pot of beans with that.