Saturday Post No. 3

We LOVE our new KitchenAid! Since we've been back in MKE, this big blue dude has already helped us make bread, peanut butter cookies, coconut cupcakes, and, as of this morning, these New England style hot dog buns! They're still cooling, but seriously, it smells just like a good old fashioned bakery in our apartment right now! I can't wait to try them tonight. 

Otherwise, we're just hanging out (having ourselves a party...that's for you, D), bracing ourselves for the super cold blast that's supposed to hit us tomorrow and Monday. At this point I'm done with winter and am anxiously waiting for spring; I would really appreciate the temperature to cooperate and NOT sink to -10! 

Hope everyone is having a lovely, relaxing weekend - stay warm, friends! 

Cranberry-pumpkin bread.

When my mom was in town a few weeks ago, we decided we were going to make our cranberry-pumpkin bread. To our dismay, we couldn't find fresh cranberries in any of the stores. How could this be, I wondered; we were in WISCONSIN, cranberry country, after all! Disappointed in WI's lack of fresh cranberries (especially because, as my mom reported, MN stores had already been carrying the bright red berries for a few weeks), we gave up our search. 

Earlier this week, as I was shopping for ingredients for our stew, I happily came across several bags of cranberries nestled in between stacks of carrots. I immediately texted my mom to let her know of my discovery, and added the bread to our "to-make" list for the following day. 

We found this bread recipe quite a few years ago, on Thanksgiving Eve, as we were getting ready to host our family for dinner. As was our tradition, every Wednesday before Thanksgiving my aunt would come over to our house, we'd eat shrimp, apples, and brie, and prepare for the next day's meal. This particular evening, we were pouring over cookbooks and magazines to find out if there were any new dishes worth trying; this bread was one of them. We decided to tweak the original recipe just slightly, and have been following our version (reprinted below) ever since. It's so easy, fast, and tastes just lovely, very Thanksgiving-y. I'm craving turkey and stuffing just thinking about it. 

Cranberry-pumpkin bread.

1 1/8 C sugar

1/2 C pumpkin

1/3 C oil

1 egg, lightly beaten

1/2 Tbsp vanilla

1 1/8 C flour

1/2 C chopped pecans

1/2 Tbsp pumpkin pie spice

1/2 Tsp baking soda

1/4 Tsp salt

1 C chopped fresh cranberries. 

Makes 1 loaf.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees; spray loaf pan with cooking spray.

In a medium bowl, combine sugar, pumpkin, oil, eggs, and vanilla, mixing well. Set aside.

In a large bowl, combine remaining bread ingredients except cranberries. Make a well, then pour the pumpkin mixture into the center. Using a wooden spoon, slowly blend, mixing until dry ingredients are well combined. Fold the cranberries into the batter.

Spoon the mixture into the prepared loaf pan; bake, 55 minutes to one hour, or until tester comes out clean. Remove the loaf pan from the oven, and place on a wire rack to cool about 10 minutes before removing the loaf from the pan.

The recipe can easily be doubled to make two loaves, which we'll usually bake on Thanksgiving morning, saving one for dinner and snacking on the other throughout the day. If you make two loaves, the bread freezes well, so you can hide one away for later. Or, better yet, make both, keep one, and take the other over to a friend's house to share!

Happy weekend baking!

A full day in the kitchen.

Thanks to the lovely care package Andrew's mom sent (it's true: I LOVE magazines, especially cooking ones! THANK YOU!), I was inspired to cook and bake all day. The other day, we talked about how the weather was calling for a warm and hearty stew, given that the high temperature just barely made it to 50 degrees. Of course, when we make stew, we have to make bread, as well. So, plenty of pots and pans later, here's a quick recap of all that our kitchen churned out yesterday: 

A fresh loaf, using the Artisan Bread in Five recipe for dough (here's the link to forming a two-pound loaf!).

A beef and Guinness stew, which we decided was our favorite one we've ever made.

Cranberry-pumpkin bread! I'll post the recipe later, but it's been a family favorite for many fall seasons now! 

The apartment smelled so, so good coming in from outside! It was an entire afternoon of baking and cooking delight, but today, it's time to run off all those lovely treats (only 42 days left until Turkey Day 5K!). What is everyone up to today? 

Banana bread.

For a while, now, I've wanted to make banana bread. It's such a nice treat to have in the morning and goes wonderfully with coffee. The problem, though, is that I never seem to have enough ripe bananas for a loaf; we eat them regularly for breakfast, so I'm left with just one or two bananas and end up tossing them before I get a chance to bake the bread. One time, as our bunch of bananas was getting down to four overly-ripe fruits, I thought I would be clever and keep them in the freezer until I was ready to bake...and that's where they stayed. I never did bake that bread, but the bananas sat in the back of the freezer (looking quite sad and not so appetizing), until we threw them out. 

Last week, though, I was determined. I bought enough green bananas to make sure we'd have some to eat with yogurt in the morning and still have enough that would turn ripe and perfect for baking. And, this morning, the day finally came where I made my banana bread. Verdict: worth the wait. 

I had looked at enough different recipes over the last few weeks to come up with this one below. You don't have to use Greek yogurt, it's just what we had on hand, but it makes the bread nice and moist without weighing it down. And who doesn't love bananas and peanut butter (except my sister...sorry, D!)?  You can also add whatever nuts you have in your kitchen, or omit them completely if you prefer. I think walnuts are great, but pecans would work nicely, too. 

Banana bread with creamy peanut butter. 

1 1/2 cups mashed bananas (about 3-4)

3 Tbsp melted butter

1/4 cup Greek yogurt

1/3 cup creamy peanut butter

1 egg, lightly beaten

1/4 cup baker's sugar

1/2 cup light brown sugar 

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1 teaspoon salt 

1 teaspoon cinnamon 

1 teaspoon baking soda 

Nutmeg, grated to taste (about 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon) 

1/2 cup walnuts, roughly chopped

1/3 cup dark chocolate chips 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter and flour a 9 x 5 loaf pan.

In a medium bowl, mix together the mashed bananas, butter, peanut butter, and yogurt. Add the egg and sugars and stir to combine. Set aside.

In a large bowl, mix together the dry ingredients (flour, salt, cinnamon, baking soda, nutmeg); make a well. Add the banana mixture into the well, and fold together until the flour is fully incorporated. Fold in the chopped walnuts and chocolate chips. 

Pour the mixture into the prepared loaf pan. Bake until a tester comes out clean, about 45-50 minutes. Let the pan cool on a cooling rack for 5 minutes, then remove from pan, and continue to cool at least another 5-10 minutes. 

Enjoy with coffee and friends (or a handsome fiance!). 

Pizza!

Last night, we made a deep-dish pizza with an olive oil and cornmeal crust. 

A bit more than a year ago, Andrew started making bread at home using Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois' recipes in Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. We loved how easy the recipes were; we could quickly make a batch of dough to keep on hand in the fridge and then pull off what we needed to have fresh bread ready in minutes. And few things make an apartment smell better and instantly more homey than crackling bread as it comes out of the oven. 

Then, last fall, Jeff and Zoe came out with Artisan Pizza and Flatbread in Five Minutes a Day. While we had started to play with pizza dough recipes using the original AB in 5 instructions, we were excited to experiment using their new cookbook, particularly because of our love for deep-dish pizza (actually, we love all kinds of pizza). There wasn't really a great deep-dish place in Minneapolis, and we were craving the heartier, saucier, "Chicago-style" pizzas; at one point, Andrew even considered having the pizza shipped to us from Lou Malnati's! 

We decided, though, that our pizza would probably taste better if we made it in our own kitchen instead of having the frozen version delivered from Chicago. Many pizza pies (and plenty of smoke alarms, thanks to our old apartment's poor ventilation) later, we've become fanatics. The AB in 5 method works just as well for pizza dough as it does for baguettes and pita bread! 

In the past, we've made mini-deep dish pizzas using our little staub cocottes, but last night, we went all out and used the biggest cast-iron pan we have. We have found that the olive oil and cornmeal dough works the best for deep-dish, as it gives the pizza a thick and crumbly crust. 

We stuffed our pizza with eggplant, pepperoni, red pepper, garlic, and mozzarella, topped it with homemade tomato sauce (crushed tomatoes, onion, butter, fennel pollen, and red pepper flakes - so, so good!), and set it to bake for about 45 minutes. We tried letting it rest for the recommended amount of 10 minutes, but couldn't wait that long so we cut in after about 5. Topped with fresh basil and a sprinkling of pecorino cheese, this was one of our best pizzas to date. I'm getting hungry just thinking about it - thankfully we still have most of it for leftovers! 

Do you make pizza at home? If you don't, definitely check out AB in 5 for pizza - it's so easy, and actually quite inexpensive to make the dough in your own kitchen!