French Toast

Way back when I made my last baking post about white bread, I used that bread to make French toast. There's really no recipe to put here, but I'll describe it with pictures.

I sliced the bread about an inch thick, dipped it in a mixture of egg, milk and vanilla and grilled it in a little butter. 

I made a filling with cream cheese, cinnamon and powdered sugar. The end result was something between grilled cheese and stuffed French toast. 

I highly recommend using home-baked bread for French toast whenever possible. It is so good!

White Bread

More savory baking! These cute little loafs of white bread are "basic" but very delicious. The bread was much denser than your standard bagged loafs but not chewy or dry. The bread was best when it was still warm and fresh out of the oven, but it was also great the next day as french toast (post coming soon!) and as sandwich bread.

I used the recipe that came in my KitchenAid booklet (also found here,) which was easy to follow. I probably should have made this bread first instead of starting with French bread last year since it was simpler. 

Easy to slice

Ready to eat!

Flour Tortillas

I've helped my grandmother make flour tortillas before, but I had never made them by myself. Below are pictures from my first attempt to make them from scratch on the comal I received as a Christmas present.   

This recipe seemed reasonably close to my grandmother's (which isn't measured). More importantly, the picture  LOOKED right.

Store-bought or restaurant flour tortillas are often pale imitators of their homemade counterparts. Real flour tortillas should have dark char marks where they came in contact with the cooking surface.

The prettiest one!

Sour Cream Cornbread

I made a lot of chili on Super Bowl Sunday (about 10 quarts.) I froze most of it, but I made this delicious Sour Cream Cornbread to go with the few bowls we ate that night. Sure, I could have just bought a box of Jiffy and called it a day, but I thought I'd try to find a recipe that would be moist but still have a good crumb. The bread had a great texture and did not dry out for a few days. I will definitely make more as I defrost and eat the chili.

French Bread

I've been meaning to expand my baking experience to include savory items and yeasted products in particular. I'm not against sweet yeasted doughs, but I'll get to those later. My first foray into artisan bread-baking were two loaves of French bread I made for Christmas Eve dinner. I followed the recipe from my Kitchen-Aid mixer.

Formed (after some confusing directions about rolling and rolling) and rising.

Doubled and ready for baking.

 I forgot to take pictures of the loaves once they got out of the oven, but here's 

how one looked after it was sliced.

One loaf was made into garlic bread. Perfect with lasagna!

Almond Poppy Seed Bread

This is a test post to see if my webcam can capture good pictures of baked goods.

You can see the poppy seeds in there, right? The remainder of the batter was used to make a dozen muffins.

I couldn't find a recipe that I liked in my cookbooks or online so I added poppy seeds and almond extract to a plain/basic muffin recipe.  I'd post it, but I think there are better recipes to be had. What I thought was interesting and odd was that so many recipes called for sour cream.  Maybe next time I'll try this one.

Thanksbaking

As usual, I baked a Red Velvet Cake for Thanksgiving. Unusually, I baked some rolls for dinner. Here's how the Buttery Pan Rolls looked:


They were melt-in-your-mouth delicious! Next time I'll try to make them all the same size.

I finally remembered to take a picture of a slice of cake. This piece shows off the nice contrast between the deep red cake and the bright white cream cheese frosting.

These are some of the last pictures taken with my old camera. My new camera has a food setting, which I hope will increase the quality of the pictures.

Banana Bread

I make banana bread whenever I have overripe bananas. I don't usually plan it. But on occasion I actually buy extra bananas and intentionally let them get too ripe to eat. I have a bunch of recipes for banana bread, but this time around I used the Kitchen-Aid recipe. The only change I made was adding cinnamon, nutmeg and vanilla.

The loaf pictured was one that I didn't get to eat since I gave it to some friends who were in from out of town. I did try some of its sister loaf, which was delicious.

Zucchini Bread (and Muffins)

New recipe! I got this recipe from a relative who got it from a friend who got it from a relative(?) or maybe a friend. The recipe doesn't call for eggs, but I don't mind. Very moist and delicious. I should probably just delete this earlier post since I won't be making those again.

If you look closely at the first muffin, you can see some nice bits of green from the skin of the courgette. I love this time of year when I can get young, tender, fresh and cheap summer squashes.

No, I didn't get a new kitchen. The picture was taken on my mom's new granite counter top. Isn't it pretty? The quick bread/muffins were baked in her new oven too.