The Daring Bakers Make Quick Bread!

Every month I am thrilled to partake in "The Daring Bakers'" recipe challenge. A baker from around the web supplies a marvelous theme, and often a recipe to get started, and sets loose all of the creative cooking energy to be found on the net. The Daring Bakers’ February 2012 host was – Lis! Lisa stepped in last minute and challenged us to create a quick bread we could call our own. She supplied us with a base recipe and shared some recipes she loves from various websites and encouraged us to build upon them and create new flavor profiles.







 I'm no stranger to quick breads myself. When I was little, my mom made them all the time. Thus, I thought it'd be fun to mess around in the kitchen and come up with my own recipes rather than following something established. I made sure, however, to write down what I was doing along the way so-as to avoid the "How did I make this??" guessing game come blog-time.


What I ended up with were: 100% Whole Wheat Banana-(optional) Chocolate Chip muffins and a Meyer Lemon Loaf. Both were delicious. Also, they both keep very well! Quick breads often taste better a day after baking anyway (it gives the flavors more time to meld and develop). These muffins lasted almost a full 
week in a container on the countertop without getting dried out, and the second of the two lemon loaves I made just came out of its plastic wrap as moist and flavorful as when it went in. Both would also freeze beautifully. Just wrap them first in plastic and then in aluminum. Or you can slice the loaf and put individual slices in baggies, but if you're going to do that you may as well make muffins instead of a loaf. 


In terms of loaf vs. muffin questions, pretty much every quick bread will work in either form. The only difference should come with baking time. Loaves, since they're bigger, take longer to bake. But you can certainly make my banana muffins into a loaf and my lemon loaf into muffins. 




Banana Muffins


I love banana muffins--my mom made them all the time when I was a kid, and we'd eat them with cream cheese. Sounds weird, maybe, but I promise once you try it you'll never go back. Although I wouldn't recommend doing the banana-chocolate chip ones with cream cheese necessarily. 

I was planning on just making my mom's regular recipe, but then wandering through the Berkeley Bowl (which is this amazing, warehouse-like grocery store with fantastic organic/natural/bulk/local options), I discovered a sale on whole wheat pastry flour and figured I'd try and give this already not-so-very-bad-for-you treat a healthier spin. While I wouldn't call the result diet food, it's a healthier option than your average banana muffin, I think. 

Ingredients


-1/3 cup vegetable oil
-1/4 cup maple syrup
-1/4 cup brown sugar (or all syrup, or all sugar, or you can sub in honey or agave or white sugar or whatever)
-2 eggs
-1 tsp. vanilla extract
-3 large bananas, mashed with a fork
-2 cups whole wheat pastry flour (I used "Bob's Mill")
-1 tsp. baking soda
-1 tsp. ground cinnamon
-1/2 tsp. salt
-1/2 cup chocolate chips (optional)

Procedure
1. Mix the oil and sugar/syrup together and mix thoroughly, beating in the eggs and vanilla. Stir in the mashed bananas


2. In a separate bowl (I'm usually too lazy to use a separate bowl, but it's a good idea), mix the flour, cinnamon, baking soda, and salt.

3. Mix the dries into the wets as efficiently as possible, trying not to overmix! Fold in the chocolate, if using. Walnuts or pecans would also work. 

4. Divide the batter among 12 greased muffin cups and bake in a 350°F oven for 20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out with a couple of crumbs or clean. Cool on a wire rack. 








Meyer Lemon Loaf
When I think of California, I think Meyer Lemons. My grandma in Berkeley has a small tree in her backyard, with which I made those lemon-blueberry muffins a few weeks back. (Just so you know, this loaf is pretty different from those muffins, but I do think blueberries would be delicious in it.) My grandparents in Marin have a huge tree with huge, beautiful lemons on it. When I visited last weekend, my grandpa sent me back with a half dozen. I only used 2 and a half for this recipe. 

I imagine that regular lemons would work equally well, but I do think of meyer lemons as being less bitter than your standard lemons, so perhaps one would want to up the sugar slightly. 


This recipe is not-so-healthy. I used less sugar and less butter than the couple of recipes I glanced over called for, and you'd better believe I'm still eating it for breakfast (and snacks, and dessert), but if you want to make a "healthy" quick bread, the banana ones are probably a better idea. This one's super delicious though!




Ingredients
-9 TB butter, softened
-3/4 cup sugar
-3 eggs
-1 tsp. vanilla
-2 TB lemon zest (about 2 large lemons' worth)
-1/4 cup lemon juice (I used 2 lemons)
-3/4 cup milk
-3 cups all-purpose flour
-2 tsp. baking powder
-1 1/2 tsp. salt


Glaze: 1/4 cup lemon juice, 1/2 tsp. lemon zest (optional), 1/4 cup powdered sugar, 1 TB milk


Procedure
1. Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy and beat in the eggs, followed by the vanilla and lemon zest and juice. 


2. Combine the flour, baking powder, and salt in a small bowl and beat into the butter and sugar mix in 3 parts, alternating with the milk. Don't overbeat!



3. Divide the batter into two greased bread pans (I want to say mine were 8" X 4") and bake in a 350°F oven for about 30 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean


4. A few minutes before the bread is done, whisk the glaze's lemon juice, zest, powdered sugar, and milk together. When the loaves come out of the oven, pour half the glaze over each loaf. 


5. Move the loaves (in the pans) to a wire rack, and let them stay in the pans until cooled completely...if you can wait.  

Ginger-Brown Sugar Tea/"Soup"

Good morning, everybody!

So, I've decided to try to institute, beginning today, what might possibly become a new sabbath tradition: no email or facebook. I'm not doing this so much to be self-depriving as just to put forth a small effort to make shabbat holy. The Hebrew verb for holy, קדש (kadosh), means "to set apart." God, in instructing the Jews, tells them to "set apart" this seventh day as a day of rest.

Back in the "good ol' days," most Jews followed the designated rules for how to "rest" on the sabbath, and around the world many Jewish people still do. When I was in Israel last month, the hotel we stayed in in Jerusalem had a "Sabbath Elevator" that went automatically from floor to floor and a "Sabbath" button in each room that would automatically control lights so that residents need not "work" to turn them on or off. I'm not that hardcore. I still handle money, drive, use electricity (obviously), write, study Hebrew, cook, etc. However, I do want to do start to do something, more than just lighting candles and attending services and reading some torah, to "set apart" this day. So I'm gonna try giving up email and facebook, and we'll see how that goes.

Anyway, all of that's got nothing whatsoever to do with this easy-peasy-don't-even-have-to-think-about-it recipe that I'm about to post and which I'm about to post because I've been sick-ish all week and drinking quite a lot of it. I know in a lot of the country it's still winter. While that's definitely not true here, somehow I've still come down with a cold and have been coughing up a storm.

It's interesting to consider traditions. The Jewish traditions of my childhood and of generations before me have come to inform the way that I live. But there are new traditions too. When I was little, sick meant chicken noodle soup. Now, it means ginger-brown sugar tea.

Back when I was living in Yunnan last year, my colleague and friend Li Yiming introduced me to this common cold remedy. All four of us fellows got sick frequently. When that sickness involved repeated bathroom trips, tea didn't help. However, when it involved gross, scratchy or painful throats and very stuffy noses, I've discovered that there's nothing better.

When we got sick at the same time (which happened a lot as we lived in four rooms right next door to one another and often ate together, repeatedly putting our used chopsticks in the same serving dishes), it wasn't unusual for Yiming to come knocking, announcing in his questioning-yet-nearly-perfect-English: "I've made the soup? So, if you want...." Moments later, we'd gather in his room, mugs in hand, to receive "the soup," which most American minds would probably classify as a tea. It's amazingly soothing and definitely better than the ginger teas available in supermarkets.

Now, whenever I'm sick, I too make "the soup."  it's become a tradition that I'll eventually pass to my own kids just like lighting the candles on Friday night, even though China has only been in my family for a few years while Judaism's been in it (well, one side of it) for generation upon generation. That fascinates me. But I'm rambling.

Ingredients (approximate and can be doubled/tripled/etc)
-1 cup cold water
-1 inch piece of washed (but not peeled) ginger, sliced relatively thinly
-1-2 tsp. brown sugar


Procedure
Technically, you don't even need to "cook" this. You can just pour boiling water over the ginger and sugar and let it steep. However, I prefer to put everything in a small saucepan, bring the water to a boil, and let it simmer for a few minutes, just to get more flavor out of the ginger. I've also found that, as with typical tea bags, you can continue adding more water, and occasionally more sugar, to the ginger you've used and get out additional cups before it starts losing its flavor. 

Meyer Lemon-Blueberry Muffins!

So in Berkeley it's "winter," which means it's (sometimes) chilly at night and in the early morning, and in the middle of the day, most days, I've found myself more likely to want my tivas than my hoodie. This is taking some getting used to. The rain makes for gloomier days, but Cali's so-called "rainy season" has been rather sparse, which is bad for my grandma's garden and her water bill but lovely for me and my newly-rejuvenated biking habit. (I should point out that the only place worse to be, as a biker, than out of shape, is just beginning to get into shape, especially when getting into shape in Berkeley, which has, y'know, hills. Still, I'm trying. And Berkeley, although not as bike-savvy as Minneapolis,  is a very, very bike-friendly place to be.)

The point here is that "winter" in Berkeley (and yes, "winter" when talking about Berkeley cannot be written without quotation marks) is a season where meyer lemons grow and even ripen. So it was that, last week, I decided to take some from my grandma's tree and bring them to almost-nirvana in the form of Lemon-Blueberry Muffins. (Real meyer lemon nirvana=lemon bars, which I promise to make and post at some point in the near future.)

Muffins are some of my very favorite things to bake, because they come together so easily, keep relatively well, and are wonderful as breakfast or snacks or even dessert, depending how cup cake-like you make them. I tend to go for less cup cakey muffins most of the time, but I would call this recipe something of a compromise between a wholesome, wholegrain standby and a fluffy, sugary concoction. The trick with muffins is: fast as possible, hands off as much as possible. You need to mix for sure, but once wet ingredients touch dry you want to be as efficient in stirring as you can be. The more you mix the tougher they'll get. Plus,  the chemical reaction with the leavening agents will begin as soon as the ingredients are combined, so not getting them directly into the oven will hinder rising potential. So yeah: fast as possible, hands off. Got it? Good.


Ingredients (for 12 smallish-medium muffins)
-6 TB cold, unsalted butter
-1/2 cup sugar
-1 egg
-1 tsp. vanilla extract
-zest and juice of 2 small meyer lemons (about 2.5 TBS juice and 1 tsp. zest, but more is good too!)
-1/2 cup milk (I used 1%, but any should work)
-1.5 tsp. salt (less if using salted butter)
-2 tsp. baking powder
-2 1/4 c. all-purpose flour (you could probably sub in some whole wheat pastry--I intend to next time!)
-2 cups fresh or frozen blueberries (I happened to have about 1 cup fresh and 1 cup frozen wild)

Procedure
-Preheat the oven to 375°F and grease or line a 12-muffin tin.
-Cream the butter and sugar together until nice and fluffy, then mix in the lemon zest and juice, egg, and vanilla. 

-In a separate bowl, whisk the salt, baking powder, and flour together and then gently mix in the blueberries. 
-Mix dries into wets, alternating with the milk, and stir until just combined. Some of the blueberries will burst. They will still taste great. Don't worry!
-Portion out batter into 12 muffin cups and bake for 25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out dry or with a couple of crumbs.
-Enjoy plain or with jam. Also tea. Yum!