Banana Cranberry

   So I've been slacking again in the bread department. It's hard when you have 1,000 ideas and try to make them all happen in the same time frame :) Anyway, I made banana cranberry bread last night. I have a board meeting today after work and thought a little snack would go nicely at the 6 o'clock hour. I also made homemade cinnamon butter.

   I used my traditional banana nut bread recipe, but I substituted nuts for cranberries. Who doesn't love cranberries?! And I was concerned some folks attending the meeting might have a nut allergy. Greek yogurt is all the craze with cooking now so I substitued plain Greek yogurt for the sour cream in this recipe too. Here we go:

   Banana cranberry bread: In a medium bowl, sift 2 cups flour, 1 tsp baking soda and 1 tsp salt. In another medium or large bowl, cream together 8 tbls butter (1stick) and 1 cup sugar. Then add 2 eggs, 1/4 cup sour cream or plain Greek yogurt, 1 tsp vanilla, and 2 very ripe bananas (the original recipe says 1, I always do 2). Mix well, preferably with a mixer stand on 3 or 4 speed. Add flour mixture and 2 cups cranberries. You can also add 1 cup of chopped walnuts at this point if you want to.

   Bake at 350 for 30 minutes. Make a tinfoil tent over the loaf and bake an additional 25 minutes. (The tent prevents over-browning the top). Toothpick check for doneness.

   The butter: 1 stick softened butter, 1/4 cup white sugar (can use brown), 1 tsp vanilla and a heaping spoonful of Greek yogurt. **Caution - I made this combination up. I didn't have cream cheese or I would have used that instead of yogurt. The yogurt made it very light and fluffy, similar to Roadhouse cinnamon butter. The meeting will be a trial an error for the butter. The bread I'm sure about :)

High Protein Pumpkin Muffins

   For those of you who love bread products but also try to eat healthy on a regular basis, here is a recipe I found (and tweaked a little) for high protein pumpkin muffins. They are made without flour or sugar.

Ingredients:

15 oz. can pure pumpkin

1 cup all natural, no sugar added applesauce

3 eggs

5-6 scoops protein poweder, vanilla flavor

1 cup rolled oats

1 tablespoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 tablespoons pumpkin pie spice

1 tablespoon each of nutmeg, cloves and cinnamon

1 cup Stevia all natural, no calorie sweetener

Mix pumpkin, eggs and applesauce. Sift dry ingredients separately and then add to wet ingredients 1/2 a cup at a time. You may need to add more rolled oats to get a good muffin batter consistancy. Don't add too many or they will come out dry!

Preheat the oven to 350. Spray muffin tins with non-stick cooking spray. Bake for 15-20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Set on a rack to cool for 10 minutes and then remove the muffins from the tins.

**Each muffin has approx. 112 calories, 1.7 grams of fat, 160 grams of potassium, 10 carbs, 3 sugars and 14 grams of protein.

Amish Friendship Bread

   A coworker who knows my love of bread baking brought me a starter for friendship bread. It takes several days of squishing and mushing in the bag, 5 days into it, you feed it with a cup each of flour, sugar and milk. On the 9th day, you feed it once more and take out four 1cup servings to bag and give to friends. You use the rest of the dough/batter to make your bread at that time.

   I chose to use all the starter dough/batter and make 6 loaves of bread. It takes about 2 cups of starter for each recipe and each recipe makes 2 loaves. You add the list of ingredients that should come with the starter your friend gives you. It's roughly 3 eggs, 1 cup each of sugar and milk, 1 and 1/2 cups flour, 2 tsp cinnamon, 1 tsp baking soda and powder, vanilla and salt. Lastly you add one large package of vanilla pudding mix. Stir it together. 

   Take a cup of sugar and a tbsp of cinnamon and mix. Grease 2, or in my case 6, loaf pans and dust with cinnamon sugar mixture. Pour in the batter leaving at least 1 inch at the top for rising. Dust the tops of the loaves with the remaining sugar mixture. Bake at 350 for 50-60 minutes. The bread is amazing. Very moist and sweet - good for breakfast. 

   Now, I just need to get the starter recipe from my coworker. :)  Stay tuned.   

St. Patty's Day

   We went to our hunt camp for St. Patrick's Day. I do love all the holiday festivities, theme parties and cooking that goes along with this holiday and I didn't want to miss out. So I made some rye bread and bought a cornbeef roast to take to camp to make some reubens.
   I started the dough on Wednesday night. Bread flour, rye flour, sugar, honey, yeast and water. I let the sponge rest for a whole 24 hours. Thursday night, I added the dry ingredients: bread flour, salt, yeast, and caraway seeds by pouring them over the sponge to let it bubble through. After about 3 hours, I added the oil and kneaded it all into a dough. I let the dough rise over night. Friday morning, I punched it down and covered it again to rise Friday while I was at work. Friday night, I punched it down one more time and then divided the dough into 2 torpedo loaves. While the oven was preheating to 450, the dough rises a little bit more. Bake at 450 for about 15 minutes. Then turn the oven down to 375. This helps the crust form.

   I didn't slice the loaves until Satuday once we got to camp and began making dinner. But the inside was exactly perfect. Light and fluffy with a chewy crust. The caraway seeds give rye bread it's amazing flavor.

   We put the cornbeef roast in the crockpot for about 6 hours with 1/4 cup brown sugar and a 12 oz. bottle of Guinness - my favorite recipe for cornbeef! Add some thousand island dressing and sourkraut. Delish!