I thought that I would post one more “Savory Bake” for the Bake-a-Long Topic of the week (we’ll switch to the last topic tomorrow), so here is a photo of my breakfast. The actual baking part of this post are the spectacular Cheddar Chive Buttermilk Biscuits. I have been trying and trying to make the perfect biscuit for a long time — flakey, light and most importantly, easy to make. Turns out, these fit the bill and could be great as a dinner roll with soup, as the basis for a sandwich or in my case the absolute perfect thing for a bacon-egg-and-cheddar muffin for breakfast. These are definitely going to be my go-to from now on. You could also swap out the chives for finely minced scallions or parsley and cheddar can be with gouda. Aaaand, while I’m talking substitutions … don’t have buttermilk? Add a teaspoon of lemon juice or white vinegar to regular milk and let sit for 10 minutes … voila, buttermilk!
Breads
Browned Butter Bourbon Walnut Banana Bread
(aka Squirrel Bread)
So, a couple of different anecdotes to add today. The first one is: in German, a colloquial way of saying “hoarding” is “hamstering” (as in “I am hamstering toilet paper”). Kind of makes sense, right? Hamsters filling their cheeks with reserves (although that is when the whole TP analogy falls apart, because that would be a little gross to have TP in the mouth). I’ve always thought it a cute and funny expression.
The other story is this (and trust me, I’ll get to a point here in a minute): a few weeks ago, a friend of mine had a chocolate squirrel fall out of her freezer (sort of like chocolate bunnies, one of the companies in Germany makes chocolate squirrels around this time of year — wow, hamsters and squirrels and bunnies, all in one post) so she decided to add the now-broken squirrel into banana bread. For some reason, this struck me as funny, so this morning, as I made this Browned Butter Bourbon Walnut Banana Bread, I decided that I was just going to call it Squirrel Bread.
Happy New Year 2020! Many cultures have a celebratory dish or bread or …. something that they use to ring in the New Year. This year, I decided to do a variation on the New Year’s Bread. In the past, I’ve done a giant New Year’s Pretzel … this year it is New Year’s Star. It’s like a giant cinnamon roll actually. Either which way, it is a lovely item for breakfast in the morning. I hope that your 2020 starts off well. Enjoy!
Cooler weather (though really, it has still been summery) makes me want to bake more bread. Most of the time, when I want a multigrain, I go to my standard Dakota bread, but I wanted to see if I could make a decent No Knead, bake in a Dutch Oven style. This didn’t disappoint. I happen to have some King Arthur Artisan Bread Topping, but you can also mix your own with a combo of seeds (sesame, sunflower, poppy, even pumpkin) or mix in some flax or even oatmeal. Turned out really nice for a first attempt. While it does look dense, it is actually lovely and light on the inside.