Banana Muffins

I tried a new banana bread recipe this morning,from Mom’s Big Book of Baking , baking it in muffin cups instead of a loaf pan. I have to say I really prefer the Bittman recipe with nutmeg and coconut.  But some folks might prefer a plainer version and this was good, just not with the flavors I’ve become accustomed to. I made it because I was out of coconut. So this is a good plain banana bread recipe. And if you prefer a bread to muffins, just bake it longer, about 50-60 minutes rather than the 20-25 minutes.  I used these Silicone Baking Cups for the first time and am in love!  The muffins came out of the liners totally easily and the cleanup was a snap!  Much easier than paper liners that often seem very attached to the muffins or the cleaning up the muffin tins. I’m a convert!

• 2 cups flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup butter, at room temperature
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 3 overripe bananas, mushed up a bit
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Mix together the flour, baking powder, and salt and set aside.

In your mixer, mix together the butter and sugar, then add the eggs and mix well. Cream everything together 2-3 minutes. Add the eggs, bananas, and vanilla and beat until smooth.  Stir in the flour mixture. (If you like nuts in your banana bread, stir in 1 cup chopped nuts after adding the flour mix.)

Spoon the batter into muffin cups and bake about 25 minutes, until done in the center. (They will still look moist because of the banana.)

Freeze muffins for up to a month.

We had a wonderful suprise birthday party barbecue here last weekend. It left me with some surplus hot dog and hamburger buns. Some I made room for in the freezer.  Here are a few other ideas if you find yourself in the same situation. These are things I’ve done in the past that worked out great.

Bread Crumbs

These are a bit obvious perhaps but if you’ve not made your own before, here’s how. Let them air dry a bit or speed them up in a low oven. Then grind them up in your blender or food processor. Freeze them in a freezer bag and you can easily pull out just what you need later.

Croutons

Nearly as obvious but still…. Cube them and toss with some olive oil and the seasonings of your choices. I like some garlic powder and parsley at the least.

Bread Pudding

Anything you can do with leftover bread,  you can do with leftover hamburger and hotdog buns.  Use this recipe for bread pudding as a starting point.

Frankfurter Circles

Okay, leftover hamburger buns with hot dogs. Talk about using up the odd mix?!  A childhood favorite of mine that my grandma used to make.  I really need to get a picture on here as it’s definitely worth a thousand words!

Sloppy Joes, Meatball Subs, Tuna Melts, etc.

Make your favorite “food on bread” recipe but use your leftover hot dog or hamburger buns instead of whatever you normally use.   Make your own “Quizno” melts at home.  Smaller sized buns are perfect for smaller appetites rather than wasting a whole french roll.

Garlic Bread

I prefer to mix some butter with minced garlic, spread on the bread of choice and broil. But we also like “cheater” garlic bread in a pinch. Spread with butter (or margarine), sprinkle with garlic powder and broil. Sprinkle with some grated cheese first if you like.

French Toast

Cut into sticks and make French toast sticks with them using your favorite recipe.  Here’s my normal mode of French toast.

Need some more ideas?

Peruse these:

• Real Simple’s Take on Leftover Buns
• Thifty Fun’s Forum with lots of ideas
• Chowhound’s Forum thread
• Yahoo Answer’s forum thread

These are all based upon using it up within your family, of course. You can always share with neighbors or your local food pantry or homeless shelter.

This is part of my fiction cooking series.   The recipe comes courtesy of Food to Die For.

You don’t have to braid it of course but it sure does look pretty!  I divided the dough in half and braided half for dinner and cooked the other half in a loaf pan so we could have some regular sliced bread at breakfast.

• 1 1/2 cups milk
• 1/2 cup water
• 5 Tbs olive oil (divided)
• 2 Tbs honey
• 5-6 cups flour (bread flour works better but I often just use regular flour and a bit of extra yeast)
• 5 tsp rapid rise yeast (bought in bulk at the big box store, keep the extra in the freezer)
• 2 tsp salt
• 1 egg, beaten

In a small saucepan, mix the milk, water, 3 Tbs of oil, and honey. Stir until warm, about 130 degrees F.

I like to knead my bread in my Kitchen Aid mixer these days. You can also do it by hand of course.

In a large bowl, mix half the flour, salt, and yeast. Add the warm milk mixture and stir, then add the rest of the flour up to the last cup.  Add the last cup slowly as you’re kneading and see when it stops being incorporated.  Knead about 10 minutes by hand or 4-5 minutes in the mixer.

Pour  a bit of olive oil in a large bowl and rub around. Put the dough in and turn the ball of dough until coated with oil. Cover with a clean towel and let rise for 45 minutes to an hour in a warm space.  If your house is cold, turn the oven on a minute or so to warm up, and place the bowl in there. (Don’t forget to turn the oven off!)

When the dough has doubled, punch it down, knead a few times, then let it sit for ten minutes to relax.

Take half the dough onto a floured cutting board or counter and divide into thirds. Stretch each third into 14″ ropes. (Or place each half into a loaf pan after roughly shaping into a loaf.)

Place the ropes onto a greased baking sheet. Starting from the middle, braid the ropes and pinch the ends together. Then turn the pan around and braid the other half and pinch those ends together. Brush with the beaten egg and then the last bit of oil. Cover and let rise another half an hour.

Preheat the oven to 375 F. Bake braided loaves 20-25 minutes. (Loaf pans another 10 minutes or so.)

It’s easy to throw stuff away when it’s gone stale but it’s amazing how much food the average household in America throws away every year. Would you believe over 450 pounds? That’s about 14 percent of the food brought IN to the house. And doesn’t count the food that goes down the garbage disposal or into the compost pile.

Wow.

I just posted a recipe for bread pudding that’s a good way to use up some slightly stale bread. But here are a few other ideas you might want to use.

First, of course, if you have room in your freezer, slice the bagels in half and just freeze them for later. Same for bread: wrap it up and freeze it. My aunt, who lived alone the last decade or so of her life, always kept a couple of different kinds of sliced bread in her freezer so she could have some variety without wasting anything.

Make creative sandwiches. Leftover bagels can be used for tuna melts, a thicker version of French toast, and other sandwiches.

Make your own bagel chips. Slice your leftover bagels as thinly as possible, butter them or brush some olive oil on them, then bake on a cookie sheet at 325 until crisp.

Make your own croutons. With bread or bagels, cut into cubes, toss with some melted butter or olive oil and herbs, and bake until crispy.

Make your own bread crumbs. If you have a food processor, tear your bread or bagels into chunks and process until you have fine crumbs. Bake in a warm oven until dried out a bit. You can make them plain or seasoned. These will keep on the shelf for a while or even longer in the freezer. Use them to bread things for frying or to top a vegetable gratin of make a dessert like Apple Brown Betty.

This would be best with slightly stale substantial bread I think, but it came out great with some not stale whole grain white bread too. If you like rice pudding, you’ll probably like this. It’s the same basic custard cooked with bread instead of rice. Some folks remove the crusts on the bread for stuff like that. I take it as an opportunity to turn the ends of the bread, which are often not the favorites for sandwiches, into something everyone will happily eat.

3 eggs
1/2 cup sugar
pinch of salt
2 1/2 cups milk
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup raisins (optional)
6 slices bread, buttered on one side

Preheat oven to 350. Put a kettle of water on to boil.

In a medium sized bowl, whisk together the eggs, sugar, and salt.

In a small saucepan, heat the milk until scalded (just below the boiling point). You’ll see bubbles forming around the edge. Remove the pan from the heat and slowly pour the egg mixture in, whisking all the while. Stir in the vanilla and raisins.

Place the bread, buttered side up, in a 9×9 pan, just fitting in a few layers as evenly as possible. Pour the milk and egg mixture over the bread.

Fill a 9×13 pan (or something else that will hold your 9×9 pan) half full with boiling water. It’s easier to slide your oven rack out, put the larger pan on the rack, put the pan with the bread pudding in it in the larger pan, then pour the boiling water in the outer pan so that it comes up to the halfway point of the smaller pan. Slide your rack carefully back into your oven. Close the door and bake for 30 minutes or so, until the custard is set.

Really. I got this recipe from More Home Cooking: A Writer Returns to the Kitchen. The batch I made today was not GREAT bread but it was GOOD bread. It rose a bit too much I think, so was a bit spongy in the middle, but the texture overall was quite good and it was totally easy.

Start the night before you want bread for dinner. I mixed this up in my KitchenAid mixer with the dough hook. You could just as easily mix it together by hand, then knead.

1 cup oatmeal
1 cup wheat germ
6 cups white flour
1 Tbs salt
1/2 tsp yeast
3 cups tepid water

Grind the oatmeal in your blender. (I used the Magic Bullet thingy and it worked great!)

Mix together the oatmeal, wheat germ, flour, salt, yeast, and water in a large bowl. Knead on your breadboard with some flour. Then put it back in your large bowl. Mine was quite moist, batter-like even so I added some extra flour. Cover the bowl with a tea towel and go to bed.

The next morning, punch the dough down and divide it into two bread pans that you’ve buttered a bit. Cover with the tea towel again.

After work, heat the oven to 400, brush the tops of the bread with a bit of milk, then pop them into the oven for 40 minutes. Colwin said to turn once halfway through but I forgot that part. The dough rose very well, perhaps a bit too much. The loaves were rectangular rather than with the classic curved top.

But the taste was great! Sliced and toasted it was fantastic! Total active time invested: 15 minutes. I tried a “one hour” bread from Mark Bittman and this is sort of the opposite approach. His idea was do a quick rise then bake. This has two really long rises. I like this better, but you do have to think a day ahead.

I somehow managed NOT to overplant the zucchini this year so am just now getting around to making zucchini bread. I had a zucchini bread recipe I liked well enough but just felt like experimenting a bit this afternoon. The primary differences is that this has more than double the sugar, so it’s much more like a dessert. Less baking soda and less cinnamon. Oh, and this one says to beat the eggs well before adding anything else. It came out fantastically light and delicious. I got it from one of those “community” cookbooks, the old fashioned blog-sharing I guess! Real people cooking real recipes! I always leave the nuts out because my girls don’t like them, but add 1 cup of chopped nuts if you’d like. I think the next time I’ll try my “less sugar” recipe but beat the eggs well first, which I’ve not done before.

3 eggs
1 cup oil
2 cups sugar
2 cups grated zucchini
1 Tbs vanilla
3 cups flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp baking powder
2 tsp cinnamon

Beat the eggs well, then add the oil, sugar, zucchini, and vanilla and blend. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix. Pour into two greased loaf pans and bake 1 hour at 325 F.

This is from How to Cook Everything. I decided to make the batter into muffins, rather than a loaf. Somehow the kids like quick breads better as muffins rather than sliced from a loaf. Go figure. The coconut adds a delightful flavor and a bit of texture.

1/2 cup butter
2 eggs
3 very ripe bananas, mashed together
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups flour (up to 1/2 cup whole wheat flour)
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
1/2 cup grated coconut

Cream together the butter and eggs, then mix in the ripe bananas and vanilla.

In a small bowl, mix the flour, salt, baking powder, and sugar together, then add to the wet ingredients and mix just until all is moistened. Add the walnuts and coconut.

Spoon the batter into muffin tins and bake at 350 for 30 minutes or so, until done. Alternately, pour into a buttered bread pan and bake about an hour.

Ah, soup night . Soup night is a staple around here come winter but the weather is at that unpredictable state. Still, youngest requested one of our favorite hearty soups, which is a variation of a hamburger soup you might see in many old community cookbooks and such. We call it Cheeseburger Soup. Cook some burger with some onion and garlic, add some carrot and celery, mushrooms if you have some. Then add broth and diced potatoes and cook a bit, then thicken the soup and add some grated cheese. I’m sure that my original recipe called for a can of cream of mushroom soup but I converted it since I rarely buy those and prefer to make my own. Often, I post the recipe here first and then later put it over on the web site and index it, but in this case the recipe is already over there, so click on through.

Last night I only had 2 cups of chicken broth in the freezer so I used those up and added 2 cups of water plus 2 tsp of beef bouillon for the broth.

I like to make a quick drop biscuit for dinner periodically. They’re good plain, but they’re also good with a bit of grated cheese added. You could also add some garlic powder or minced garlic, chives, or other herbs of course. I use my KitchenAid mixer to mix these up rather than doing the hand “cutting in” or the food processor.

2 cups flour
3 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 cup grated Cheddar cheese
4 Tbs shortening
1 cup milk or buttermilk or sour milk

Mix together the flour, baking powder and salt. Add the cheese and mix that a bit. Add the shortening and mix in (or cut in if you’re doing it properly by hand) until well mixed. Add the milk all at once and mix just until moistened.

Drop by soup spoonfuls onto a cookie sheet. You should be able to make 9 or 10 good sized biscuits from this. Bake at 450 for 15-20 minutes.