Zucchini Bread

As I'm beginning to type this post, I wonder if I've ever put a recipe for zucchini (my husband likes to annoy me and pronounce it "zoo-chin-eye" or "zuck-chinny", depending on his mood) bread.

Ah, well. If so, sorry--here it is again!

I made this bread out of necessity. I found a zucchini in my garden that was bigger than a large eggplant. This guy was a total behemoth, and I knew that the only way I'd be able to successfully use it was in a bread or muffin.

Turns out, this bad mamajamma made 6 cups of grated zucchini--or enough for 4 loaves of bread when following the recipe below.

I decided to use half and freeze half, as I'm sure I'll want some zucchini bread again during the winter.

The recipe I used was from one of my absolute favorite blogs/recipe collections: Simply Recipes, by Elise.

I didn't change a thing, but I'll copy the recipe below for your viewing pleasure. I love Elise's cooking--she's methodical and analytical. Basically, she's the blog version of Cook's Illustrated.

Simply Recipes' Zucchini Bread

Makes 2, 9x5" loaves

Ingredients:

2 eggs, beaten
1 1/3 cup sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
3 cups grated, fresh zucchini--I pressed a little (but not all) of the water out
2/3 c melted, unsalted butter*
2 tsp baking soda
pinch of salt*
3 cups flour (I used bread flour, because it's all that I had)
1/2 tsp nutmeg
2 tsp cinnamon

*I only had salted butter, so I omitted the pinch of salt---everything came out just fine.

Procedure:

1. Preheat oven to 350F, butter/grease 2, 9x5" loaf pans
2. Mix eggs, sugar and vanilla until combined.
3. Mix in the grated zucchini and butter.
4. Sprinkle the baking soda and salt over the batter, then combine.
5. Add 1 cup of flour at a time, and completely mix in before adding the next cup. The batter will be considerably thicker now.
6. Mix in the cinnamon and nutmeg.
7. Divide the batter equally between the two loaf pans. Set the pans on a cookie sheet (this makes getting them in and out of the oven easier, and if you have any spills, they won't burn in your oven).
8. Bake 50 minutes. Check with a toothpick in the center to make sure the bread is cooked all the way through. If it's still gooey, put back in the over for another 5 minutes.
9. Cool in pan for 20 mins, then transfer to a wire rack to finish cooling.

Enjoy!

Breakfast Puffs

Note: This recipe is the exact recipe from BHG's Cookbook, called "Nan's Puffs".

These puffs are so simple.

So delicious.

So...adaptable! I made the bare-bones version at home this morning, but I can imagine so many delicious possibilities: Cheese and chive puffs, cinnamon and nutmeg puffs, custard filled puffs...and the list goes on.

These are a perfect "Sunday" breakfast in my mind: quick to make, only a few staple ingredients, and only 1 pot and 1 muffin tin to clean up! Perfect!

Breakfast Puffs

Makes 12 puffs

Ingredients:

1/2 c butter

1 c milk

3/4 c flour

4 eggs

sugar for sprinkling

honey for topping

Procedure:

1. Preheat oven to 375F, and grease a 12 cup muffin tin, inside and around the edges.

2. In a 2 quart saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat. Once the butter is melted, add the milk and carefully (let's not repeat the dreaded TAPIOCA INCIDENT) bring to a boil.

3. Once boiling, immediately and quickly stir in all of the flour. The mixture will stick to itself and make a large ball, coming away from the sides of the saucepan. Allow the mixture to cool for 5 minutes.

4. After cooling, add the eggs one at a time, beating vigorously after each addition for one minute.

5. Scoop into equal portions in the muffin tin, filling the cups about 3/4 of the way full. Sprinkle sugar on top of each puff. Bake for 30 minutes at 375F, until puffed up and golden. Be careful not to startle the muffins too much (treat them as gently as you would a souffle, because they will deflate easily.

6. Serve immediately, drizzled with honey for extra sweetness.

Happy Muffin Says ENJOY! :)

Freezer Calzones

These calzones are a perfect make-ahead-and-freeze dish. No, they aren't the healthiest of meal options, but if you serve them with some fresh veggies, you might be able to wash away some of your carbohydrate related sins.

Plus, you can put whatever you want in them!

I've come up with a few filling pairs that would be delicious to try out:

White-Spinach Calzone:

Alfredo sauce

Cooked spinach

Parmesan cheese

Mozzarella cheese

Meat Lover's (blech):

Marinara sauce

Italian sausage

Ground beef

Pepperoni

Mozzarella

Greek:

Alfredo

Cooked spinach

Kalamata olives

Feta cheese

Mozzarella

Veggie Lover's:

Marinara sauce

Mushrooms

Black Olives

Green peppers

Onions

Roma tomatoes

And the options are endless! The recipe is simple to follow. Just prepare the crust (recipe below), and fill with whatever your heart desires!

You can cook the calzones right away by placing in a pre-heated 350F oven for about 15-20 minutes, or until the cheese is bubbling out and the crust is a light, golden brown. You can also place them in individual zip-loc freezer bags and freeze for later. To cook later, just heat the oven up to 350F and cook for about 28-35 minutes.

Enjoy experimenting with this recipe!

Calzone Dough

Makes about 8-10 calzones

Ingredients:

1/2 packet active dry yeast

1 1/2 cups warm water

4 cups flour (I use unbleached all purpose)

2 Tbs olive oil

1 tsp salt

Procedure:

1. Sprinkle the yeast into the warm water in a bowl.

2. Mix the flour and salt thoroughly in a separate bowl. Drizzle in the olive oil and mix with a spoon until incorporated.

3. Stir the yeast in the water, then add to the flour mixture. Mix until the dough forms a ball.

4. Coat a large bowl with a drizzle of olive oil, and transfer the dough ball to the bowl.

5. Cover the bowl with a damp towel and set in a warm area for about 1-2 hours, or until the dough has nearly doubled in size.

6. Prepare an area to work with the dough. Coat area with a light dusting of flour. Divide the dough into about 8 balls (in between the size of a golf ball and the size of a tennis ball...).

7. Work the dough into a rectangular shape. Fill one diagonal half (does that even make sense? look at the photo!) with sauce and toppings, taking care not to overfill.

8. Fold over the un-sauced half, and crimp the edges together with a fork or your fingers.

9. Place in freezer bags to freeze, or pop in the oven right away!

Cooking times:

Frozen: 350F, 28-35 minutes

Fresh: 350F, 15-20 minutes

Enjoy!

Light Wheat Bread

Over the weekend, I made some pretty delicious wheat bread for sandwiches. I followed smitten kitchen's recipe exactly, and I think she eloquently and thoroughly explained the procedure, so I'm just going to post up the pictures.

I'm definitely going to use this recipe again--and in bulk! Making a few loaves and freezing them for later is just as much work as making one loaf, and when you're feeling like a lazy bum you can just defrost one and, voila! Homemade bread.

Mixing the dry ingredients....

My favorite part is the kneading. It's therapeutic.

Finished product! I brushed a little melted butter on top to add some flavor.

Tony took these photos of the sliced bread---I think they're really great! I think he did it out of neccessity, he knew I wanted pictures of the bread, but he really wanted a sandwich :).

NUTELLA!

P.s. I feel a little dorky for copyrighting all my pictures, but I'd be pretty cranky if I found out that someone else thought it was good enough to use without telling me, and then they became famous while I was still stuck in grad school. Mild exaggeration, people. Hardy har har.

Banana Bread

This recipe was used out of necessity, and for my compulsive need to not be wasteful. We had a few bananas, you see, that were about to cross over to the dark side. They HAD to be used before it was too late...dun dun dun.

I found particular recipe on one of my favorite recipe websites: Simply Recipes. This website is a fast and reliable resource for an every day cook. I made a slight modification to the original recipe by adding about 1/3 cup of walnuts to the batter, and sprinkling a handful of walnuts on top of the cake before it was added to the oven.

This bread makes for a tasty breakfast or dessert--whatever your preference. The few ingredients required make this a fast recipe that can be popped in the oven while other things can be finished up (cleaning, laundry, reading about cardia bifida in zebrafish...wait, what?).

Ingredients:

3 ripe bananas

1/3 cup butter

1/2 cup Splenda for baking (or 3/4 to 1 cup sugar)

1 egg, beaten

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp baking powder

pinch of salt

1 and 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1/3 cup chopped walnuts

palm-full of walnuts for garnish

Procedure:

1. Preheat oven to 350 F.

2. SMASH BANANAS! WOO HOO!

3. Calm down. Enjoy your moment of being destructive, then, get over it.

4. Add melted butter and mix thoroughly with a wooden spoon. Add sugar, egg and vanilla.

5. Sprinkle baking powder and salt over mixture, and incorporate thoroughly.

6. Sift in flour, and finally, add the walnuts.

7. Pour into a greased, standard loaf pan, and top with walnuts.

8. Bake for about 1 hour, and cool on a rack.

9. Hide bread from hungry husband. He may eat more than you want him to...:)

A First Attempt

At work, as well as at home, some things require a definite mustering of courage to try something new. In chemistry, this is commonly known as an activation barrier. Basically, in terms of the progress of a reaction, there are some points which require more energy (or in layman's terms, a little more oomph), which when reached, everything else is downhill from that highest energy point. The easiest way to picture this concept is to imagine yourself walking along a path, and up ahead, you see a hill (a really, really big hill). You know that climbing the hill is going to be really awful, but once you get to the top you can 1. Roll down like a little kid to the bottom and 2. at the bottom there is a pool of cookie dough (or marshmallows or whatever else makes you giggle).

Graduate school has been a series of hills for me. Every technique I have learned in the past few months has required me to climb a really big hill, and not only break my back doing so, but also humble myself by constantly asking for help from my peers and labmates. Cooking and baking for me have been no different. I've had to really work up the courage to cook certain things.

This whole "working one's self up" to try a new technique (in the lab or in the kitchen) is ridiculous. My energy has constantly been placed in building courage and trying to harness my fear of failure.

Yesterday, I attempted a *sacred* Ryno family recipe for yeast rolls. Whenever my mother-in-law makes these, I try to eat my weight in them (as does everyone else in the family). They are indescribable. My first attempt was not a total failure, though it was certainly not a stones throw close to Tony's mom's rolls. Mistake 1 was using a glass pan versus a metal pan: the rolls cooked differently on the bottom than on the top. Mistake 2 was kneading the rolls for too long (or with a mixer dough hook versus by hand).

At any rate, these rolls were edible, and my dad ate about 4 within a day. I dare not divulge the recipe without permission, but you can see the fruit of my labor :).

Happy Holidays!