I know that most people eat Hot Cross Buns on Good Friday and thus I am a day early, but I had time this morning, and won’t tomorrow, so there you have it. Also, in case someone was inspired to make their own and needed a recipe. Every year I make a new variation, but the base recipe stays the same (it’s usually the things that I add — raisins or cranberries or currants or chocolate chips — or this year, apricots) that I swap out. They are actually one of my favorite things and I have to be careful that I don’t snack this whole batch. As you can see, it makes a lot of buns!
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Breakfast/Brunch
Breads, Breakfast/Brunch, Sweet Snacks
Browned Butter Bourbon Walnut Banana Bread
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.
As you all know, I love Meyer Lemons. I can across a larger batch of them the last time that I was at Whole Foods, and decided to buy up the whole bunch that they had. I’ve already made standard Meyer Lemon Curd, so this time, I poured in some ginger syrup that I had, which game is quite a lovely twist. Sunshine in a jar!
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!