Irish-American soda bread

Sometimes, life gets in the way of the good stuff... like baking.

I tried to take up jogging this year -- good exercise, get healthy, lose some weight, yeah, great plan. And it looked like it was going pretty well... until late February, when I sprained my foot on a treadmill. I ended up on crutches for a week and a half, and then in a walking cast, and then weaning down to just a limp, and now, I've finally gotten rid of the limp, thanks to my awesome physical therapist, and I'm working on strengthening my ankle and hips and training myself to stand and walk correctly (who knew you could be doing such basic things incorrectly your whole life?), and I'm hoping to be able to walk and then jog again soon.

But what does this have to do with baking? Well, if you can't stand for long periods of time, or you can hold yourself up on crutches but can't carry anything across the kitchen 'cause you need both hands to hobble around, no baking happens. So I haven't been making a whole lot lately. But I did manage to try out a new soda bread recipe recently, while my husband and I were putting together a "late-Patrick's Day" dinner for ourselves, a week or so after the holiday. And this is the first soda bread recipe I've made that I actually liked, so I thought I'd share it.

Before anyone jumps down my throat, yes, I know this isn't an authentic Irish recipe. Authentic Irish soda bread is... bland. It's bread, a basic, boring bread you can use to sop up the juices from an Irish stew. This is Irish-American soda bread, bastardized from the Irish but really quite tasty. There wouldn't be raisins in authentic soda bread, and there definitely wouldn't be orange zest... but hey, we all eat General Tso's chicken, and that's not authentic Chinese food, but it's still tasty. As long as you don't try to pass off something as authentic when it isn't, I don't see the problem.

Irish-American Soda Bread
Adapted from Ina Garten

4 c flour
4 tbsp sugar
1 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp salt
4 tbsp butter, cut into small chunks
1 3/4 c buttermilk
1 egg
1 tsp orange zest
1 c raisins or currants

1. In the bowl of a stand mixer, add the flour, sugar, baking soda, salt, and butter. Turn on the mixer to low speed and walk away for a while, until the butter is thoroughly mixed in and you don't see any chunks of it remaining. (You could probably do this with a hand mixer or a pastry blender, but I imagine it would take way longer. Or you could do it in a food processor, if you don't mind the annoyance of having to wash the processor when you're done.)
2. In a large measuring cup, combine the buttermilk, egg and orange zest and whisk together. Pour this into the mixer and mix to combine.
3. In a bowl, mix the raisins with a couple of tablespoons of flour, just to get them coated. Mix these into the dough.
4. Dump the dough out onto a floured surface and knead a bit, just until it comes together.
5. Form the dough into a ball and place it on a sheet pan. Cut an X in the top with a knife.
6. Bake at 375 degrees for about 50 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean and the loaf makes a hollow sound when you tap the bottom of it.

Better banana bread

There's always room for improvement, especially when the initial outcome wasn't all that impressive. After this rare disappointment from Cooks Illustrated, I went back to the drawing board, looking for a better banana bread recipe. And now, I'm happy to say that I've found it.

Better still, this one has the potential to be a much healthier banana bread: The original recipe comes from Cooking Light and includes nonfat yogurt, while leaving out the fattening-but-delicious walnuts. But, well, I couldn't leave well enough alone, especially when I had some full-fat sour cream in the fridge that needed to be used up. I'm sure it would come out just as good with the yogurt, though, since they're both thick, slightly tart dairy products.

I still had a little trouble getting the middle of the loaf done before the outside burned, but there was only one little singed bit on the top by the time this one just barely reached doneness in the center. Careful monitoring of your loaf is key. And the results were well worth the effort.

Better Banana Bread
Adapted from Cooking Light

3 very ripe bananas
2 c flour
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 c sugar
1/4 c butter, softened
2 eggs
1/3 c sour cream
1 tsp vanilla
1 c chopped walnuts (or less, or none, to your taste)

1. Mash the bananas thoroughly and set aside.
2. Whisk together the flour, baking soda and salt and set aside.
3. Beat together the butter and sugar. Beat in the eggs, then the banana, sour cream and vanilla.
4. Beat in the flour mixture on low speed, half at a time, until just blended.
5. Stir in the nuts.
6. Scrape into a greased 9-by-5-inch loaf pan.
7. Bake at 350 degrees for about an hour, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
8. Cool 10 minutes in the pan, then remove from pan and cool completely on a rack
.

Pound cake

Y'know, there's nothing like company to get you off your lazy butt and back on track with household tasks.

When I told my fiancé that my mother would be coming over to visit and see some of the things for the wedding, he actually started picking up the living room a bit — considering that the place has literally never been clean since he first moved into it, never, not once, not even in the first week he lived there, this is really saying something. (I even put a clean apartment on my Christmas list this year. No dice — he wanted to buy me something instead, no matter how much I tried to explain how much I'd love a clean apartment instead.) I have to add, too, that my mom's not one of those hyper-critical types, either; she really, honestly doesn't care if the place is a bit messy, but for some reason, it bothered him enough to pick up a bit, and hey, I'm not complaining.

Me, on the other hand, I picked up a neglected household task, too. I decided that if Mom was coming over, I should bake something, some sort of afternoon dessert to follow the lunch I was taking her out for that day. I looked through my Pinterest to-bake board, and I found one baking staple that I hadn't tried yet but kept meaning to, and it would pair perfectly with the strawberries in my freezer, which really need to be used up since this year's strawberry season is fast approaching. It was a recipe for a basic vanilla pound cake.

This cake came out pretty good; I'd definitely keep this recipe in my repertoire (maybe with some chocolate chips thrown in next time?). The flavor was pretty subtle on its own, but it was pleasant and went nicely with macerated strawberries and some homemade whipped cream. It would be a good base for any fruit topping, or maybe an ice cream sundae, but it's also not bad as just a basic snacking cake.

My only complaint is a rather small one: Why do recipes for loaf-shaped foods always call for different-sized pans? Why is there no standard loaf size? I bought 9-by-5 pans for bread, and then I had to buy 8-by-4 pans for fruitcake, and now this recipe? It calls for 8.5-by-4.5, as if to spite me. So my cake came out a little on the short side, though still delicious, 'cause I used a 9-by-5 pan (better a bigger pan than the possibility of the batter overflowing all over the oven, I figured).

Pound Cake
Slightly adapted from Diana's Desserts

1 1/2 c flour
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
3/4 c butter, softened
1 c sugar
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
Insides of 1 vanilla bean (split lengthwise and scrape out with a knife)
2 eggs
1/2 c sour cream

1. Grease and flour a 8.5-by-4.5 or 9-by-5 loaf pan.
2. Whisk together the flour, baking soda and salt and set aside.
3. Beat together the butter, sugar, vanilla and vanilla bean scrapings, then beat in the eggs.
4. Stir in half of the flour mixture, then the sour cream, then the rest of the flour mixture, just until combined.
5. Scrape the batter into the pan and smooth out with your spoon. Bake at 325 degrees for about 70 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
6. Let cool in the pan 15 minutes, then run a butter knife around the sides of the cake, remove it from the pan and rest it on its side on a rack until cooled.

Date-nut bread

Sometimes, you bake something because you really have the itch to make a particular thing. And sometimes, you bake something because it will use up something you have in the house. This is one of the latter.

I've got to be just about the only person I know who'd buy fresh dates as an impulse purchase. But I'd never had fresh dates before, only the pre-packaged, chopped-and-dried-and-sugared king. And there they were at the grocery store, on sale and everything. And they're fruit, so they're healthy, so I should buy them... so I did.

And then they sat on the counter, snug in their package, for a couple of weeks. And I realized that other than "hey, let's get one out and try it and maybe eat a couple," I had no plan for these rather pricey little fruits.

But then, I remembered flipping past a date bread recipe in my copy of "Baking Illustrated." And I just happened to have some buttermilk going bad in the fridge, too. Perfect.

This recipe produced a moist, delicious loaf, studded with nuts and soft little morsels of date. Yum. Sure, it's not flashy or decadent like, say, cupcakes, or brownies, but it's tasty all the same (and would be even better with a nice cup of tea, I'd think).

Date-Nut Bread
From "Baking Illustrated"

2 c fresh whole dates
1 c boiling water
1 tsp baking soda
2 c flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1 c chopped walnuts or pecans
2/3 c buttermilk
3/4 c dark brown sugar
6 tbsp butter, melted and cooled
1 egg

1. Pit the dates — sorta squish them and pull them apart with your fingers, then take out the pit (it looks kinda like a piece of walnut). Then, chop up the dates.
2. Place the dates in a bowl with the hot water and baking soda. Stir and let sit.
3. Whisk together the flour, salt and baking powder in another bowl. Stir in the nuts.
4. Stir the buttermilk and sugar together in a large bowl. Add the butter and egg and stir. Stir in the date mixture, then the dry ingredients, just until combined.
5. Scrape into a greased and floured 9-by-5 loaf pan.
6. Bake at 350 degrees until the loaf is dark brown and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, 55 to 60 minutes. Cool in the pan 10 minutes, then depan onto a rack and cool.

Apple bread

Today's lesson: Sometimes, size does matter.

See, I had this idea that if one loaf of apple bread was a good idea, two would be even better, so I should double the recipe. And that would have been a great idea, except for one thing: I didn't notice until I was actually putting the batter in the pans that this recipe calls for a 9-by-5 loaf pan, and I have 8-by-4 loaf pans. I thought "well, heck, what's the worst that can happen -- maybe they'll be a little tall, puff up a bit over the top of the pan, no big deal," and I went ahead and filled those pans full.

What actually happened was that when I put them in the oven, the batter started spilling over the sides of the pans as if it was fleeing for its life, some of it hitting the bottom of the oven in a big, batter-y pile that started to smoke up the kitchen a bit. Um, oops. (Now, if I had been thinking, I would've at least put a pan or some foil or something on the rack below them, just in case this happened. But I digress.)

I had planned on taking one of these loaves to work, but after seeing how misshapen they looked, I couldn't bring myself to put one out for public consumption (and silent criticism). Guess I'll just have to eat them both. Good thing they're still really, really tasty. I'd make this again, but I'd definitely scale the recipe back for my pans, maybe a one-and-a-half batch for the two pans. I might try swirling the topping into the batter, too, 'cause when I de-panned them, a lot of the topping fell off.

Apple Bread
From Tasty Kitchen
Yield as written: One 9-by-5 loaf

1/2 c butter, softened
1 c sugar
1/4 c milk
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
2 c shredded apples
2 c flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon

1/4 c brown sugar
3 tbsp flour
1/4 tsp cinnamon
2 tbsp butter, cold, cut into pieces
1/2 c walnuts, chopped

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and spray the loaf pan with nonstick spray.
2. In one bowl, cream together the butter and sugar. Beat in the milk, eggs, vanilla and apples. (Mine looked like a gloppy, nasty disaster right about now, but fear not.)
3. In another bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt and cinnamon.
4. Beat the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients. Pour batter into pan.
5. In a bowl, crumble together the brown sugar, flour, cinnamon, butter and nuts. Sprinkle over the batter.
6. Bake at 350 degrees for about 60 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean. Let stand 10 minutes, then de-pan and cool on a rack.