Banana Macadamia Nut Bread

The last time the sister went to Aussie, she brought back some macadamia nuts and it didn't seem too long ago. Since then, I haven't decided what to do with them. 

It's been so long since I last baked the banana bread that Mr G loves so much so I thought I made them for a special breakfast surprise.

For ease of reference, I'm going to state the recipe below again. This recipe was from Flour's but I modified it a bit in blue.

Ingredients:

208g all purpose plain flour

1 tsp baking soda

1/3 tsp ground cinnamon (slightly less than 1/2 tsp - whoever can find 1/3 tsp anyway?)

1/2 1/4 tsp salt

225g 200g caster sugar

2 eggs

109g canola oil

3 1/2 bananas, very ripe and mashed (If you use the big Del Monte bananas from the supermarket, reduce it to 3. If not, you may use about 4 small to medium bananas)

2 tbsp creme fraiche or sour cream or yoghurt (I used yoghurt)

1 tsp vanilla extract

78g walnuts macadamia nuts, chopped and toasted

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F 170 degree celsius. Line the bottom of the loaf pan with parchment paper. I used bakespray and lined the loaf pan with parchment paper thereafter.
2. Sift together the flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt. 
3. Beat sugar and eggs with a whisk until light and fluffy for about 10 minutes or so. 
4. Drizzle in the oil. 
5. Add mashed bananas, creme fraiche yoghurt and vanilla extract. 
6. Fold in dry ingredients and nuts.
7. Pour in the lined loaf pan and bake for about 45 minutes to 1 hour. I used about 1 hour to bake and also around 15 minutes or so, I tented the top of the loaf pan with parchment paper to avoid overbrowning. See how brown the top of my loaf looked above.

How does my banana bread look for a Sunday breakfast? :):)

I'm also submitting this post to Cook-Your-Books #4 organized by Joyce of Kitchen Flavours.

Rosemary Buttered Rolls

To go along with Pioneer Woman's Sunday aka Saturday night stew, I have decided to go for her No Knead Dinner Rolls as our carbo substitute instead of rice. As you can tell, I do get tired of rice sometimes unlike Mr G, this is definitely my preferred choice. Surprisingly, Mr G is ok with it too. Psst, when he says it's ok, just cheong (a chinese dialect word which simply means, go for it!!) so he won't change his mind HAHA!!!

From her latest book, Food from my Frontier, Pioneer Woman's original recipe would yield you 24 rolls. Since it's only for the 2 of us, I made half the recipe. I hope I won't regret that :P

Sidetrack a bit, have you seen her awesome cast iron pan that she used for these dinner rolls?? Aww, yes my heart swooned for a while and then my practical mind started saying that I have so many pans and pots that the cupboard is going to give way soon. Haiz, I think when I do a springcleaning, I might just decide to buy!! :):) Let's see what happens.

Honestly, I was comparing both of her recipes - dinner rolls vs buttered rosemary rolls. I think I'm going to 'marry' them together.

Ingredients:

• 946ml Milk
• 200g Sugar
• 219g Vegetable Oil
• 9 cups Flour (4 cups - 500g, 1 cup - 125g)
• 2 packages (4 1/2 Tsp.) Active Dry Yeast
• 1 teaspoon (heaping) Baking Powder
• 1 teaspoon (scant) Baking Soda
• 2 Tablespoons Salt

Method:

1. Pour milk into a stock pot or Dutch oven. Add sugar and vegetable oil. Stir to combine. Now, turn the burner on medium to medium-low and “scald” the mixture/lukewarm (between 90 and 110 degrees).
2. Before the mixture boils, turn off the heat. NOW. Very important stuff here: walk away. Walk away and allow this mixture to cool to warm/lukewarm. The mixture will need to be warm enough to be a hospitable environment for the yeast, but not so hot that it kills the yeast and makes it inactive. I don’t usually use a thermometer, but if you’d like to, a good temperature is between 90 and 110 degrees. I usually feel the side of the pan with the palm of my hand. If it’s hot at all, I wait another 20 minutes or so. The pan should feel comfortably warm.
3. When the mixture is the right temperature add in 500g and 2 packages of (4-1/2 teaspoons) of active dry yeast. After the yeast and flour are nicely incorporated, add another 500g of flour. Stir together and allow to sit, covered with a tea towel or lid, for an hour. After about an hour it should have almost doubled in size. If it hasn’t changed much, put it in a warm (but turned off ) oven for 45 minutes or so. When it had risen sufficiently add 125g flour, 1 heaping teaspoon of baking powder, 1 scant teaspoon of baking soda and about 2 tablespoons of salt. Stir (or knead just a bit) until combined.
4. Butter 1 or 2 muffin pans. Form the rolls by pinching off a walnut sized piece of dough and rolling it into a little ball. Repeat and tuck three balls of dough into each buttered muffin cup. Continue until pan is full. Cover and allow to rise for about 1 to 2 hours.
5. After rising, brush rolls with melted butter. Sprinkle on chopped rosemary. Brush with additional butter. Sprinkle with coarse sea salt.
6. Bake in a 400-degree 170 degrees celsius oven until golden brown, about 17 to 20  12-15 minutes.

Personal Notes:

• If you don't have a thermometer, use PW's method by touching the pot or pan with your bare hands. But be careful though. For me, the pot actually needed to be cooled a good half hour or more before you can really touch the pot with your bare hands and feel that it's more than just warm.
• The only two things I did were to just use my spoon to mix the dough really well and use my hands to 'round' the dough to put on my muffin pan.

I love the rosemary 'perfume' that I keep sniffing from my oven when I baked these bread. If you are wondering why do these bread rolls look flatish, it's because I put them in a flat pan and I didn't combine mini rolls like what Ree did. Anyway, does it really matter? What matters is, how it tastes. And can I tell you that it tastes buttery, rosemary-ily and best of all, so soft that you keep wanting to eat more!!

So who is still thinking about your bread machine? Or your mixer? Or even using your hands to knead? Ree is really a brilliant one!! I love her to bits!

Now, let us have some good use for this dinner rolls, shan't we? :)

I am submitting this post to the monthly event, Cook like a Star hosted by Baby Sumo of Eat your heart out, Zoe of Bake for Happy Kids and Mich of Piece of Cake. To join us, simply cook or bake any recipe from any Ree Drummond websites or cookbooks for the whole month of September 2013. You can link your posts at any one of the hosts' websites.

Your post must be a current post for September 2013 - please do not link older posts. Please mention Cook like a Star in your post and link back to Zoe of Bake for Happy Kids, Mich of Piece of Cake and Baby Sumo of Eat your heart out.

I'm also submitting this post to Cook-Your-Books #4 organized by Joyce of Kitchen Flavours.

I'm also linking this post to September 2013 Cooking With Herbs Blog Challenge hosted by Lavender and Lovage.

Gruyere Brioche Bread

The last time I  baked bread was eons ago. Ok it was exaggerated but definitely months ago. It could be last year. Yes, that time I kneaded and kneaded by hand. This time I'm going to try once again. Maybe by hand or maybe by bread machine if I'm feeling lazy. If you have been following me, you would realise my blog posts are mainly of cooks or bakes but not much with bread. This is going to be a challenge for me - a challenge that I need to step out of my comfort zone and do something that is not so common for me. I can do it, I'm willing to do it and I want to do it ;)

For our #22 bake with THB, we are baking gruyere brioche bread. I'm not really a cheesy person (no pun intended) so you tell me how gruyere tastes like, I'm not too sure but I'm willing to try the taste. Anyhow, our recipe from Lou Seibert Pappas is from her book 'Coffee Cakes'. So far, this book has plenty of recipes tried, tested and tasted which turn out to be really good from our past bakes.

In case you are wondering what is a brioche, it is a type of pastry that is very much like its French counterpart's highly enriched bread. It is actually bread that has a richer content like pastry due to extra addition of eggs, butter, liquid, milk and water. Hmm, I'm thinking that this brioche should turn out pretty flavourful and soft from the milk content. Let's see.

This month's selection was chosen by Alice from I Love. I Cook. I Bake. This recipe yields a large loaf that can feed 8 to 10 people so I'm only using half the recipe for 4 people. Some for us and perhaps some to give away ;)

Guess what? I tried this recipe once by using bread machine. Ok, I'm not too chummy with my bread machine and this method kinda flopped. I was bummed for a day. Then I decided that it can't be all that hard. So I tried for the 2nd time but this time, I tried it the Lou's way :) I like the sound of that - Lou's way. Yes, with the aid of my Kitchenaid (thank goodness!), I did hand kneading and yes, I think it is therapeutic to knead your dough. Honestly, this recipe doesn't need much kneading unlike others.

I like the light salty fragrance of gruyere cheese in the air when I bake. In the end, I didn't managed to braid the bread but instead I made it like a bread ring or bread wreath (whatever you call it).

I like the light saltiness of this bread caused by the cheese. It's very flavourful and yes, it is a keeper for sure. I will definitely try to bake this bread again. 

Check out the inside of my gruyere brioche.

If you are keen to bake with us, The Home Bakers, do contact Joyce.

I'm also linking this post to Little Thumbs Up organized by Bake for Happy Kids, my little favourite DIY and hosted by Baby Sumo of Eat Your Heart Out since this month's event is Eggs.

           

I'm also going to submit this post to Cook-Your-Books #3 hosted by Joyce of Kitchen Flavours.