Bread Baking Day #2: Pear, Ginger,and Vanilla Quickbread

This month's bread baking day is being hosted by Becke of Columbus Foodie. As you can see by my title, she chose "Bread with Fruit" as this month's theme. I had plans to make a bread that begins with a starter made from fermented apples. I forgot about the apples fermenting on the top of my refrigerator and had to toss them out. I'll start that up again soon and make it another time. So, with my busy weekend of Blogathonning I've decided that a quick bread will be my best bet for this event. I love love love ginger and pears aren't too shabby either. This is a recipe I've had for years and years and I'm very happy for the theme this month, as I haven't made it for years and years..I had quite forgotten about it buried in my recipe box. I hope you like it too!

Pear Ginger Quickbread:

1/4 cup unsalted butter (1/2 stick or 2 ounces) at room temperature
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 1/4 tsp vanilla bean paste (or the same amount of vanilla extract)
1/2 cup small dice crystallized ginger
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
zest of one lemon, minced
1/3 cup buttermilk
1 1/2 cups pears, peeled and diced (medium dice will do) I used Anjou pears, but most should work in this recipe. I've also used bosc with great success
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-Preheat your oven to 350f. Prepare one 9x7" bread pan by spraying it with pan spray.
-Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Set aside.
-Cream together the butter, sugar and lemon zest until light and fluffy.
-Add the eggs, one at a time, incorporating well between each addition, mix in the vanilla.
-Alternate mixing in the sifted flour mixture and the buttermilk, starting with 1/3 flour, then 1/2 the buttermilk and so on ending with the flour, mix until the flour just starts to disappear. Fold in the pears.
-Scrape the batter into the prepared bread pan and bake for 50-60 minutes (check earlier if you don't trust your oven).
-Cool in the pan for about 5 minutes then turn out onto a cooling rack to complete the cooling.
Slice, spread with butter or cream cheese, or eat it naked! I think next time I might try this with blueberries instead of the pears. I believe Becke will be posting a roundup for this event on her site in the next few days, I'll have a link up once it is posted!

Happy Baking!

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I'm Baaack! And I Bring the Gift of Scrumptious Strawberry Shortcake!

First off, thank you all for your well wishes and congratulations towards our wedding. I will say that everything went so smoothly that I cannot believe it was an event planned by me. I was fully expecting something to go wrong. I was really expecting my natural grace to kick in as I was walking down the aisle and to send me flat on my face after tripping on some air (I'm not known for my grace). It was a beautiful, if very fast moving, day.

Second, I have a recipe to share! With spring springing and the warmer longer days ahead, I am in want of fruity things. And with California strawberries on sale at the local supermarket it is easy to fulfill that need. Strawberry shortcake is a no fuss dessert, and it's bright, fresh and delicious. I really enjoy the cake part of the dessert to be a simple biscuit and the strawberries just sliced up, sprinkled with a little sugar, swimming in their vibrant juices. And whipped cream. Not many things are made for each other like strawberries and cream (it's very hard for me right now to refrain from getting mushy and talking about how not many people are made for each other like G and myself..but I'll spare you...oops, too late!). So, I'll get to the recipe so you can get to making and enjoying your strawberry soaked biscuits coated with cream. The biscuit recipe is so old that I'm not sure where it has come from....I just know it's on a recipe card in my box.

Biscuits for shortcake: (makes 8 to 12 biscuits)

2 cups all-purpose flour
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 Tbsp granulated sugar
1/2 cup (8 ounces) cold butter
1 cup buttermilk
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-Heat oven to 425f. Line a sheet pan with parchment paper
-Mix together dry ingredients in a bowl.

-Cut in butter with your fingers (I prefer to use my hands for this) or with a pastry blender until mixture is coarse pea sized balls
-Add buttermilk and mix lightly until the mixture forms a ball.
-Either drop biscuits onto the sheet pan for drop-biscuits, or pat the dough out to about 1 inch thickness and cut out biscuit rounds and place on the pan (I prefer drop biscuits for their rustic appearance and sometimes I'm just lazy that way).
-Bake for about 12 to 15 minutes until they are a light golden brown. Remove and cool on a rack.

For the Strawberries:
1 quart fresh strawberries
1/4 cup sugar
2 or 3 Tbsp Grand Marnier, if you have it (I do not have any on hand today, so I'm using dark rum. It does add a nice little hint of orange).
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-Rinse and pat dry your berries. Slice into halves or quarters or however you would like to slice them.
-Mix the berries with the sugar and booze and let sit until the berries have rendereed their juices.

For the Cream:

1 cup heavy whipping cream
2 Tbsp granulated sugar (this is optional, I tend to like my whipped cream unsweetened, so I do not add it)
1 tsp vanilla extract (this is also optional...I have a serious vanilla addiction, so I'm going to even use vanilla bean paste instead of extract)
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-By hand (or in a machine if you prefer) whisk the cream, sugar and vanilla together until it forms soft peaks. Keep chilled till you are ready to use it. It is best to just whip the cream right before you use it.

Assemble the shortcakes in any way you prefer. I like to slice the biscuits in half, layer on the strawberries and lots of juice, top that with whipped cream and place the other half of the biscuit on top like a festive little hat. I have forgotten how good and simple this is. Take a bite, sit back and ooooooh my.

Now that I'm back and have no wedding to worry about, I hope to be posting more frequently! See you all much more often, thank you for your patience while I was away.











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Cranberry-Orange Bread! (Quickbread, really..)

First, I must apologize for my lack of activity here on the Barmy blog. I've had a few things on my mind lately and this has caused a bit of slacking in the photo-taking-food-writing area of my life. I do hope I will be back more frequently.

Cranberry bread is another of my favorite seasonal baked goods. I love the way that bright tart cranberries and lovely acidic oranges compliment each other. My mom always made loaves of Cranberry Bread for us kids to take to our teachers this time of year. I believe they were much appreciated. The recipe she used (and still does use) was the recipe from the back of the bag of cranberries, and this is the recipe that I still use and love. The only things I've really changed are: I've upped the amount of orange zest (cause I loves the orange zest) and I use butter instead of shortening (everything is better with butter, right?). This is a wonderful bread to add to your Thanksgiving, Christmas, or other Holiday feasts. It rocks alone or with a slathering of butter. Mmmmmmmm.

Cranberry Orange Quickbread: (I doubled this to yield 3 smaller loaves, the recipe as given here yields one 9x5" loaf)

2 cups flour
1 cup sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
3/4 cup orange juice
2 Tbsp butter, melted and cooled
2 Tbsp minced orange zest
1 egg, beaten
1 1/2 cup cranberries, halved
1/2 cup chopped nuts (I used my usual pecans)
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-Preheat oven to 350f. Grease one 9x5" loaf pan.
-In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
-To the dries add the orange juice, orange zest, egg, and butter. Mix until the it just starts to come together and add the cranberries and nuts. Mix just until the cranberries and nuts are distributed throughout.
-Scrape the batter into the prepared loaf pan (it takes a whole lotta restraint to keep me from eating the batter, yum).
-Bake for 45 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.
-Cool, spread with butter or eat naked and enjoy.

The cranberry bread is baking as I type this, and I realized that I made a boo-boo. I switched my amounts of the baking powder and soda. Don't you be silly and do this too! Well, we shall see what happens. I'm going to guess that I'll get less of a nice rise and more of a spread-out top on the loaf (and I'm going to guess that I'll be kicking myself about this for the next few hours). I'm hoping the taste isn't too baking soda-y. This is why the Barmy Baker shouldn't bake when there are too many things on her mind :). I'll post the picture of the way the loaves turned out, so you can see how you don't want yours to look.

Hope you enjoy! Happy Baking!

Note the flat tops. Yours will turn out beautifully with slightly domed tops, because you will be paying attention to what you are doing unlike a certain Barmy Baker I could mention.....

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