A richer variation of my mother’s wonderful (if non-cheddarific) recipe.
Yield: 1 loaf
Ingredients
Wet
3 bananas, mashed
2 oz. (4 tablespoons) butter, melted
2 eggs, well beaten
Dry
1 3/4 cups flour (I used King Arthur Flour’s White Whole Wheat, but all purpose would work as well.)
3/4 tsp soda
1/2 tsp salt
2/3 cup sugar
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
Cinnamon and sugar for dusting the top
Procedure
If you hadn’t noticed yet, Chris is a big fan of King Arthur Flour’s products and recipes. I am, too–I used to drool over their catalogs back before I went to pastry school, and I loyally buy their flour–but not quite to the extent that he is. One of their website’s cool features that he’s drawn my attention to lately is their guaranteed recipes. If the recipe doesn’t turn out how they promise it will, you can call them and they’ll walk you through the recipe, and if that fails they’ll send you a five-dollar gift certificate. They’re willing to put their money where your mouth is, pretty much literally.
Chris tried out their gingerbread recipe a couple months ago. We were split on our opinion of it. He loved it, and I thought it was good, but not as good as the one I’d made from The Joy of Cooking. To be fair, I prefer the darker, more intense sort of gingerbread, and when I made mine I made it to my tastes. Still, I liked the idea of a guaranteed recipe. It strikes some sort of chord in the place where I feel food rather than think about it. Continue reading
Behold, the oatmeal cupcake!
Okay, I haven’t perfected my oatmeal cupcake yet. When I do it will be legendary, but I may have to turn to the world of molecular gastronomy if I want this baby to keep its shape after a spin in the microwave.
What I have perfected, though, is the weekday morning breakfast.
It’s no secret to anyone that weekday morning breakfasts have gone very literal: all the do is break our nighttime fast and keep us going until we have our first real meal at lunchtime, or dinner if lunch is a grab-and-go affair. I “work” from home (I’ll remove the quotes after I get a publishing contract), I have a love and appreciation for breakfast born of watching so many people be nourished by our two-course offerings at the Inn, and even I have a hard time sitting down to something substantial most mornings. Sure, sometimes I’ll make myself an omelet and realize how little time it takes, but any reform is usually short lived. Within a week, I’m reaching for the cereal box again or just waiting for lunchtime.
The cure for this is my steel-cut oatmeal. Not only does it take very little hands-on time on my part, especially if I have the dry ingredients mixed and at the ready in advance, but it makes fantastic leftovers. Continue reading