Thursday, April 12, 2012

Checking Off Some Items

I'm a self-proclaimed bread baker. I love making bread. I love eating homemade bread. It makes me happy every morning when I make my toast with bread that I made with my own two hands (and my Kitchen Aid). That being the case, I really wanted to find a bread that I could feel good about putting in my body. While I like eating the TWD white loaves--because it's sooooooo tasty--I don't really feel good about eating it. I'm weird like that.

I've had Marilyn's wheaty pan loaves on my to-make list for a while, so I was glad to finally get around to making them. The mistake I made was in making this a Friday-night project instead of a Saturday or Sunday event. I've never made a bread that called for 3 rises before so at 2 AM I was still waiting for the bread to cool enough to wrap up. The puppy and I were very sleepy.

It always freaks me out when she sleeps with one of her eyes open. Especially when only the white part is visible.

It's a nice, hearty bread that I've been enjoying for breakfast smeared with honey almond butter and topped with sliced strawberries. I just pulled the last mini loaf out of the freezer to defrost so I'll be making it again this weekend; the only thing I think I'll do differently, other than making it on Sunday instead of Friday, is to add 1/4-1/2 c of ground flax seeds for more fiber.

Next up on my to-make list was a last-minute addition. Let me just say that I LOVE Dorie Greenspan recipes. They are always given in an easy, straight-forward way and typically come out exactly as they should. Her gluten free Almond Baby Cakes were no exception.


It was an easy process with only a handful of ingredients. The recipe calls for 5 items (almonds, sugar, eggs, butter, vanilla/rum/kirsch) but I added a couple of teaspoons of lemon zest to the batter and I used vanilla, rather than kirsch or rum, although I think the kirsch would probably taste really good. The recipe says to use muffin cups but I only have jumbo muffin cups so I went with what I had. I used a 4" individual tart mold and my mini brioche molds for a second batch and that taught me that you should only fill whatever mold you use 3/4 of the way to the top. They're still delicious, but they overflow and it's a bit of a pain to get them out of the molds.

These are light, flavorful and really tasty. As you might know from a previous post, my stepmom (who is a really awesome lady, btw) can't have gluten, so I decided to take a few of these down to Austin with me for Easter weekend and they were a definite hit!

4 comments:

  1. Lovely bread, I still have it too on my to-do list!!

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  2. oooh, this looks terrific! I'm experimenting with gluten-free and loving it! Thank you for the Leibtser Award too! I'm just back from vacation, and it was such a great surprise to find!!!!

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  3. Yeah. I've been there, starting bread recipes at the wrong time, setting my alarm to wake up to shape dough or stick it in the oven at 2am. It sounds like a great healthy recipe though and I'll have to try it. The cakes look good too.

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  4. Sorry you lost sleep over this recipe! But I'm glad you liked it enough to make again. The puppy is so cute!

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