Mini Pear Loaves

This recipe is originally for pear ginger "bread" (not sure why it's called bread though as it's really more muffin/loaf-y). Anyway I thought - pear and ginger? That sounds good. Well I was wrong! The recipe calls for 3 tbsp fresh ginger which is a lot of ginger, too much for me and I love ginger. But I think I prefer it in savoury things like beet and tofu salad. Or at least in the dried form for baked goods, though I've never tried crystallized ginger.

Anyway, the great thing about these little loaves is that they're so deliciously soft and the pear in them is just perfect and doesn't make them mushy, as I've found apples can in muffin recipes. I tried a pear, cardamom and pumpkin seed muffin version of this recipe and while I liked the sound of it, I didn't really like the cardamom in there. I plan to try out other variations on this recipe adding different spices, nuts and fruit (and of course I'd like to try out a version that involves chocolate!) I modified the recipe to be healthier, as with most other muffin recipes I make (unless I just want to go all out).

If this sounds good, you might like:
Pumpkin Pecan Raisin Muffins
Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins
Almond Coconut Muffins
Chocolate Walnut Banana Bread

Mini Pear Loaves
adapted from The Garden of Vegan

Makes 8 mini loaves or 12 muffins.

1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
2 tbsp sugar
3/4 cup apple juice
1/3 cup applesauce
1 banana, mashed
1 large pear, cored and cubed
1/2 cup nuts or seeds (pecans, pumpkin seeds, etc)

Preheat oven to 350F. In a large bowl, sift together the flours, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Stir in sugar, apple juice, applesauce, banana, pear, and nuts/seeds. Stir together gently until "just mixed." Pour batter into a lightly oiled mini loaf pan or muffin pan and bake for 20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

My 100th Post! And Chocolate Walnut Banana Bread

This is my 100th post! I don't have anything exciting to celebrate it with but this banana bread was pretty delicious. I rarely make banana bread because when I was growing up my mom always made it. It was yummy but I guess lost its magical appeal. She never put walnuts or chocolate chips in it though, and this was actually my first time putting chocolate chips in banana bread. I like to maintain this image in my mind of banana bread being healthy and if I put chocolate chips in it, well it just makes it a little more difficult to believe! But I thought if I cut down the sugar a lot (to 2 tablespoons) and only put a small amount of chocolate chips, it wouldn't be a terribly unhealthy snack. And thus begins my love of this chocolate walnut banana bread.

I haven't used my mini loaf pans for a while and forgot how great little loaves are. In the recipe I wrote that you can use either oat flour or whole wheat pastry flour. The oat flour makes it much denser, but I loved it that way. If that's not quite for you, try the whole wheat pastry flour. It will still be a dense muffin but lightens it up a bit.

If this sounds good, you might also like:
Earl Grey White Chocolate Chunk Muffins
Healthy Banana Bran Muffins
Whole Wheat Blueberry Muffins
Pumpkin Pecan Raisin Muffins

Chocolate Walnut Banana Bread
Adapted from How It All Vegan!

Makes 1 loaf, 6 mini loaves, or 12 small-ish muffins

3 ripe bananas, mashed
1/2 cup applesauce
2 tbsp sugar
1 cup chopped walnuts
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour OR oat flour
1/2 cup wheat germ
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/3 cup chocolate chips, optional*

Preheat oven to 375F. In a small bowl, mash the bananas with a fork until very mushy, then add the applesauce, sugar, and walnuts and stir together.

In a separate large bowl, stir together the whole wheat flour, whole wheat pastry flour (or oat flour), salt, baking powder, and baking soda.

Add the banana mixture to the flour mixture and mix together gently until "just mixed". Gently stir in the chocolate chips.

Spoon into a lightly oiled loaf pan (or muffin pan) and bake for 40-50 minutes**. Test with a toothpick or a knife to see if done.

*Use nondairy chocolate chips or omit them to make this vegan.
**The first time I made these, I used mini loaf pans and I can't remember how long it took. I would check them around 25 minutes and see how they are. Maybe even 20 minutes.

Daring Baker's Challenge - Potato Bread

My second Daring Bakers' challenge! And I don't know that I'll ever make bread again. Well I'm sure one day I'll feel ready to give it another shot, but not for a long while. Anyway, I was a bit disappointed to find out that this month's challenge was savory as I really love making sweet things. But it was also a really great challenge for me because it was a real challenge. It pushed me to make something that I love but have never tried making (potato bread specifically but I've always wanted to try making bread).

I made one large loaf and 8 rolls, a few with cheese. I forgot to put the cheese on the rolls before putting them in the oven so had to grab them back out. Then regretted baking the rolls on my Silpat as I didn't want to clean melted cheese off it. I also forgot to slash my loaf before putting it in the oven so I took it out after a few minutes and did that - unsure at the time if I had messed it up as the loaf seemed to already be developing a bit of a crust. The slashed part turned out fine though, and I love how it looked.

I must've been doing something wrong because I was kneading the dough for a good 20 minutes at least. My mom and brother said that seemed like a long time, but it said to knead for 10 minutes, then add the flour 1/4 cup at a time, which means more kneading. The dough was so sticky for most of that first 10 minutes and I really extremely hated that. Is there anything I can do to avoid that? How can you even knead the dough when it's constantly sticking to your hands? Keep flouring up your hands? I ended up using about 6 1/2 cups of flour (the minimum amount) because I was scared of using too much (since it said beginners always use too much flour). And holy crap my forearms got so insanely sore from kneading for so long. I have never had such sore forearms. I must be doing it all wrong (very possible). But I'm sure it didn't help that I was kneading on a flimsy plastic cutting board that kept sliding around.

I must admit that once I smelled the potato bread/rolls baking, and saw them brown it made me really happy and excited. Not excited enough to be making bread again anytime soon though. As for how it tasted - for me, just okay. Apparently my niece really liked it though. I cooked the buns too long and they were pretty chewy unless microwaved. The loaf was soft in the middle, but didn't taste like anything special. To me this bread tasted just like regular white bread. And not very good white bread at that. I didn't taste or notice that the potato had been added (though that could be because I misread the recipe to mean only use 8 ounces of potato total, or maybe that was what I was supposed to do). I don't fault the recipe for how the bread turned out though. I'm sure many of the other Daring Bakers had beautiful delicious loaves and variations that I will be coveting.

Overall, I guess it was a successful enough first bread making experience. It was edible and not rock hard, though when I took the loaf out of the pan to cool it felt like it could be used as a weapon since the exterior was hard and it was so heavy. Throughout the bread making experience I kept thinking to myself, it's okay if it doesn't turn out, it doesn't have to, I'm challenging myself. That helped to make the pressure off my perfectionist self. I am glad that I participated in this challenge, despite all my whining! And I can't wait to find out what the next challenge is.

Check out all the other yummy potato breads made by other Daring Bakers. The recipe is on Tanna's site My Kitchen In Half Cups. Tanna did some amazing things with this bread that I can only aspire to be able to do with bread one day.

bill's Coconut Bread

I must've seen the recipe for bill's coconut bread at least a couple of years ago. Being a coconut fiend, I mentally added it to my list of things to bake. Finally I got around to actually making it recently. As for the results, it wasn't as good as I thought it would be but I'm happy I made it and would try it again with some modifications. It's like a very thick dense loaf mixed with bread - not as moist as a loaf and not as dry as bread. I loved how the exterior was crispy when it first came out of the oven - unfortunately it became completely soft the next day. The addition of cinnamon was interesting and people seemed to like it (in fact my boyfriend I think said that it was the thing about the bread that made it special) but personally I wouldn't put that much cinnamon in next time - maybe I'd add lots of vanilla extract, and extra coconut flakes sprinkled on top before baking? I made coconut nutmeg cookies once and that experience might still be traumatizing me from enjoying coconut with spices.

My loaves always puff up so much in the middle so I must remember to try and make sure the ends and corners have ample amounts of batter (assuming that would help fix it). I do love that this is unabashedly a real coconut bread. I think it would be wonderful made into French toast, and more simply, it's good toasted with some butter. And as for the lowercase b in bill's, it's not a typo - it seems to be typed that way for his show and on his site, etc.

bill's Coconut Bread
found on Baking Bites, from Sydney Food by Bill Granger

2 eggs
300ml (1 1/4 cups) milk
1 tsp vanilla
350g (2 1/2 cups) flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp cinnamon
225 g (1 cup and a bit) caster sugar
150 g (2 cups) shredded coconut
75 g (1/3 cup) butter, melted

Preheat oven to 180C /350F.

Whisk together eggs, milk and vanilla.

Sift together flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon. Stir in sugar and coconut. Make a well in the center and pour in egg mixture. Stir until just combined.

Add butter and stir until just smooth, being careful not to overmix.

Pour into a greased and floured loaf pan and bake for 1 hour, or until tester comes out clean.

Cool in tin for 10 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack.

Last week in food.

Sugar cookies from Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook. My friend and I wanted to have a cookie decorating day! Hers are the more beautiful ones. ;) I didn't think I liked sugar cookies but these ones were really good - a little shortbread-y. We used royal icing, which I was scared to eat since it contains raw egg whites, but everyone who ate an iced cookie seems to have survived.


Apple pie-crumb cake muffins from Vegan With A Vengeance. This is the first recipe I've tried from her cookbook. I thought they were decent tasting and not too sweet, and other people really liked them. The grated and chopped apple makes the muffin really moist though so they're best eaten within a couple of days or else they get soggy on top. There's a crumb topping that tasted okay but I would've liked a firmer crumb.


Curried cauliflower soup from Moosewood Restaurant Daily Special. I've been craving soup and salad a lot recently, and this is a perfect cookbook for that. I used red potatoes instead of russet which I think was not the best choice. Red potatoes are yummy on their own, but they added a strange taste to the soup.


Smoky red lentil spread from Entertaining for a Veggie Planet. I'm looking for a relatively healthy dip to eat with veggies and was hoping this might be it, but I'm pretty sure that it's not. It had a really strong onion and garlic flavour (due to the entire raw onion that was pureed into the dip). I'd try making a dip with red lentils again but maybe roast the onion first or add something else to it.


Crepes with sauteed mushrooms, cheddar cheese and green onions from The Clueless Vegetarian. This was my first time making crepes and it was incredibly exciting! They're something I've always wanted to make and talked about making but was too scared to for fear of them not turning out. The recipe even says something about not getting discouraged if the first few don't turn out properly - but they actually did turn out really well. I definitely want to make crepes again and experiment with different fillings, sweet and savoury.


Pumpkin bread from Bon Appetit, October 2000. Oh my god this was so good. I love pumpkin anything, so even if it hadn't turned out I'm sure I still would've liked it, but oh wow it turned out well. It was the perfect pumpkin bread/loaf - moist, dense, and full of flavour. A tablespoon of sugar is sprinkled on top before being baked, and it gives a nice crunchy top that I love. I substituted half of the flour for whole wheat flour and added extra spices. This is definitely a recipe to make over and over again - even pumpkin dislikers (hate is such a strong word...) liked it.

Pumpkin Bread/Loaf
from Bon Appetit, October 2000 with slight modifications

1 cup all purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground cloves
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
3/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon sugar
2 large eggs, room temperature
1 cup canned pure pumpkin
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 cup milk

Position rack in center of oven; preheat to 325°F. Butter 9x5x3-inch metal loaf pan. Sift first 8 ingredients into medium bowl. Using electric mixer, beat butter in large bowl until light. Gradually beat in 3/4 cup sugar. Beat in eggs 1 at a time. Beat in pumpkin, lemon peel and vanilla. Whisk sour cream and milk in small bowl. Beat flour and sour cream mixtures alternately into batter in 2 additions each. Transfer batter to pan; smooth top. Sprinkle with 1 tablespoon sugar.

Bake bread until tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 1 hour 10 minutes. Cool in pan 10 minutes. Turn out onto rack; cool.