We ate our way through Christmas

The holidays are such a wonderful season! Pretty lights on the trees (which B&H called "piddy"), lots of presents to open, TONS of great things to eat. B&H did indulge in the holiday season - cookies, pancakes, monkey bread, etc etc. I have blog posts coming for all those, I promise. But first I need to back track a bit and write about this wonderful banana bread recipe I found.

You might recall that I have trouble with quick breads. They tend to sink, be raw in the middle, and burnt on the edges. It's a curse I've tried to overcome for many years. I've also tried banana bread recipe after banana bread recipe and nothing really works.

Then I got this ceramic bread pan. That seems to help.

And I worked on my patience. Turns out I was taking the bread out before it was done.

Anyway, I did find a good recipe lately that I want to repeat over and over again (which, sadly, could be one of the reasons I'm back on the Weight Watchers band wagon....). There was something about this recipe, which uses buttermilk in it, that made it so tasty that babies barely got any. Whoops.

The recipe comes from a blog called Two Peas and Their Pod, which at first I was so excited about because I thought it had to be another twin family blog. But after investigating a bit more, I think the peas are just a man and a woman who have so much in common that THEY are the 2 peas in a pod. Oh well, they still have great recipes on their site!

Buttermilk Banana Bread

Not sunken!

Cook Time: 50-55 minutes

Ingredients:

 1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs
1 cup mashed bananas (3 medium sized bananas)
4 tablespoons buttermilk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon baking soda

Directions:
1. Grease and flour 1 large loaf pan (9 1/4 X 5 1/4-inch) or whatever combination of pans you’d like. I used a mini loaf pan and a 8 1/2 X 4 1/2 loaf pan. You can also make banana muffins with this recipe, if you wish. Set pans aside.

2. In the bowl of a stand mixer, cream butter and sugar together. Add eggs, mashed bananas, buttermilk, and vanilla until the batter is well mixed.
3. Add in the flour, baking powder, salt and soda. Mix until well combined. Divide batter into greased and floured pans and bake at 350 degrees for 50-55 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Perfect, crackly top. Mmmm.

4. Let bread cool on a wire rack for 15 minutes. Loosen the bread with a knife and carefully remove from pan. Finish cooling on rack. Slice and serve once cooled.

I love the rich, yellow color of this bread. It tasted as good as it looks.

 You will be happy to know that I have decided to save up my money for a nicer camera, so my grainy, unfocused iPhone photos will soon be a thing of the past. Of course, between taking care of B&H, running this household, keeping up on chores, writing two blogs (visit our other one here), Facebooking, and having time for myself and my husband who knows when I'll have time to use the new camera, but I hope somehow the days get an extra hour in them for me to learn. :)

Sunken Sweet Potato Bread

Technically, the recipe is called Maple Glazed Sweet Potato Bread (and could easily be called SCRUMPTIOUS Sweet Potato Bread), but I have a problem when I make breads. It always happens.... they sink in the middle! See:

Minutes after being taken out of the oven, my breads drop!

I know there are many, many better bakers than I out there.... so I ask you, what is wrong with my quick bread baking skills???

I shouldn't let this negativity distract from the heaven in a loaf pan that is Sweet Potato bread. It's SO very scrumptious and comes from a new blog I found called Mother Thyme. I love this blog for many reasons - good, down to earth food, easy to follow recipes (I'm sure the bread sinking is NOT the recipe but rather the cook), and  -- the woman who writes it has twins, too! I find it amazing that she has time to create such a beautiful blog and invent such wonderful recipes. I'm slightly jealous. Perhaps she doesn't spend hours on Pinterest like I do, though.....

Again, I digress. This bread is SO delicious. I did make it for the babes, but I admit I ate more than I should have (and at 6 points per 1/12 of the loaf... yikes!). They love it, too - it's a perfect accompaniment to scrambled eggs for breakfast.  I didn't make the maple glaze for this initial batch, but the bread was so good that I went out to Lund's and bought like 6 more pounds of sweet potatoes AND a jar of pure maple syrup. The next batch is in the works for tomorrow.

Mother Thyme's Maple Glazed Sweet Potato Bread

Makes 2 9"x5" loaves

Ingredients

1 cup vegetable shortening

3 cups sugar

4 large eggs

2 cups pureed sweet potatoes

3 ½ cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking soda

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 ½ teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon ground cloves

½ cup milk

For Maple Glaze

1 cup confectioners sugar

½ cup pure maple syrup

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Grease 2 9”x5” loaf pans and set aside.

Using an electric mixer on low speed cream together shortening, sugar, eggs and sweet potatoes.  Sift flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, salt and cloves.  Gradually add flour mixture sweet potato mixture alternating with milk until all combined.  Pour equal amounts in to loaf pans.

Bake for 55-60 minutes until tester inserted in to center comes out clean.  

Cool on wire rack in loaf pan until cool.  Run butter knife around side of loaf pan, turn upside down to remove loaf.   Set on wire rack to continue to cool.  

For glaze-

Stir confectioners sugar and maple syrup until creamy.  Drizzle over loaves and let dry.

Notes:

To prepare sweet potatoes:

Peel sweet potatoes and cut in to large wedges.  Lightly toss in vegetable oil and salt and place on a baking sheet.  Cook in a 400 degree oven for 20-25 minutes turning half way until tender.  Remove and let cool.  Put wedges in food process and blend until smooth.  

 

For my variation, I made 1/2 a recipe and got 1 loaf (at the time, I didn't have enough sweet potatoes). I also didn't have cloves so I used nutmeg.

See? Even my photo taken on my iPhon can show how delicious - even without the glaze!

Miss Monkey H

Mr Monkey B

 I, unfortunately, don't have a photo of the babies enjoying the bread, but I do have 2 cute photos of them dressed as monkeys for Halloween!










Now, for the last order of business. I've decided to do a give-away. I will be giving away a magazine subscription to Taste of Home, one of my favorite sources for finding fast, easy food for the family. Now, I'm sure you've noticed, I don't have ads on my blog. I also don't have tons of links to or from here. So, I'm small potatoes over here. But I do want to grow. So, my giveaway will happen under 2 stipulations. First, I must reach 1,000 hits (I currently have 400-some). Second, I must get 10 people to follow the blog (I currently have 2).

So, when those two things happen, I will post and ask for your entries. A random winner will be selected and my gift to you will be a year of recipes. YUM YUM!

Now, get out there and spread the word about these babies and their baked goods!

What We're Eating Wednesday: Breakfast

Quite the hearty breakfast today! Babies enjoyed Cheesy Scrambled Eggs, Yo Baby Apple & Sweet Potato yogurt (their favorite), a banana, and Sweet Potato Bread (more on that tomorrow!). You moms with discerning eyes will also notice the Cheerios box in the background - their appetizer! :) They are both off morning bottles now, so they washed down this meal with a big ol' sippy cup of formula. Yum Yum!

Do you have children who you feed on Wednesdays? I invite you to chronicle their eats on your blog, too! Comment below and let me know if you added your own WWE Wednesday! I'd love to see what you're eating. :)

Zucchini Apple Bread-Cake

In typical Tracy fashion, I put something off until the last minute. It was my turn to bring treats for the adults to ECFE yesterday and I knew I wanted to make something with the apples we have from the orchard. A bit of Googling, and I found a recipe for Zucchini Apple Bread. I have zucchini coming out my ears in the freezer, so I thought it'd be a good way to use up two things at once.

So I printed the recipe. Then proceeded to waste most of naptime playing Words with Friends.

We have ECFE at noon. It takes us 20 minutes to get there. At 10:45 I started mixing the batter up. Sheesh. Not surprising I did that, but still. Sheesh.

The recipe says it makes 2 loafs of bread that you need to bake for 50-60 minutes. I didn't have that much time, so I thought maybe, just maybe, if I put the batter in a cake pan it would bake faster. It did! And so, the bread-cake was born. Looks like cake. Tastes like bread. Perfect!

Zucchini Apple Bread

Ingredients

Is it cake? Is it bread?

• Nonstick spray
• 1 cup finely grated zucchini (about 1 zucchini)
• 1 cup grated green apple, peeled and cored (about 1 apple)
• 1 1/4 cups packed light brown sugar
• 1 cup canola oil
• 3 large eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 3 cups plus 1/2 teaspoon all-purpose flour
• 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg
• 1 1/2 cups chopped walnuts

Directions

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Coat 2 (4 1/2 by 8 1/2-inch) loaf pans with nonstick spray. Line the pans with parchment paper and spray the paper.

Combine the zucchini, apple, brown sugar, oil, eggs and vanilla extract in a large bowl and stir to combine. Add 3 cups flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and nutmeg to the bowl and mix well. Toss the nuts with the remaining1/2 teaspoon flour to coat and prevent them from sinking. Gently stir in the nuts and the extract.

Divide the batter between the 2 loaf pans. Bake until a toothpick or skewer inserted in the middle of each loaf comes out clean, 50 minutes to 1 hour. Remove the bread from the pans and cool on a wire rack.

I omitted the walnuts (yuck!) and made it in a cake pan, baking for about 35 minutes. Very delicious, but I would like a bit more cinnamon and nutmeg flavor. And I'd maybe do 1-1/2 apples, but with my luck that would mess up the recipe and it would be too wet and runny. Anyway,  I figured 18 pieces of cake-bread and 7 points plus per serving. (YIKES!)

And, yes, I made it to class on time. Whew. And, I'm making this my new motto: