Food Minia

So my kiddos always go from loving bananas and eating them faster than I can keep them in the house to not touching them at all and then I'm left with a bunch of brown bananas. And what do you do with a bunch of brown bananas? Make a simple banana bread of course! 2 cups flour 1 tsp baking soda 1/4 tsp salt 1 egg 1 cup sugar 1/2 cup canola oil 2 tbsp milk 1/2 tsp vanilla extract 3 ripe bananas (mashed) Heat oven to 325. Grease a loaf pan.  Combine the flour, baking soda and salt in a mixing bowl. In a separate bowl combine the egg, sugar and oil.  Stir the dry ingredients into the wet then add the milk, vanilla extract and mashed banana. Pour into the loaf pan and bake for 50 to 65 minutes or until the bread is cooked through.  Let cool in the pan for 10 minutes then remove to a wire rack to continue cooling.

These biscuits were so tender and light.  They were a great addition to breakfast night and would be a good side along any meal! This recipe is adapted from Baking Bites . 2 cups flour 1 1/2 tsp baking powder 1 tsp sugar 1/2 tsp salt 6 tbsp salted butter (chilled and cut into very small pieces) 1 cup sour cream Heat oven to 400. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Whisk together the flour, baking powder, sugar and salt. Using a pastry blender or two forks add in the butter until the mixture resembles coarse sand. Stir in the sour cream until the dough comes together. Knead the dough on a floured surface for 3-4 minutes. Roll out into a 1 inch thick slab.  Using a biscuit cutter, cut out the biscuits and place on the parchment paper. Bake for 17-20 minutes or until the biscuit tops are lightly browned.

Last year I had the smart idea to try making a matcha babka wreath with milk bread dough.  In my head it would be pretty, and green-tinged, and perfect for the holidays.  In reality, it was dense, ugly, and I ended up throwing it out. This year I decided to follow this tried-and-true recipe for chocolate babka from Smitten Kitchen .  The only change I made to the ingredients is that I used the zest from a whole orange instead of half an orange, and the smells that came out of my oven were glorious.  I also tried shaping it using what I remembered from the pictures in the Baking Breads cookbook. Since the recipe makes two loaves, I decided to give one of the loaves the "pull-apart swirly bread" treatment.  If you'd like to try it, roll out a quarter of the dough (half a loaf) into a rectangle about 10" wide and as long as you can get it.  Spread with 1/4 of the filling and roll it up along the long edge.  Seal the seam and place in the freezer for 15 mi...

This is another post that started with a picture on Instagram.  I saw Sarah Jampel's picture of kubaneh from the Breaking Breads cookbook and was utterly transfixed.  Then it showed up again on the Food52 feed in a picture for their store's twine holder , but all anyone wanted to know was what the beautiful, crazy, swirly bread was on the right.  I managed to track down the recipe from my library's copy of Breaking Breads and tried it without even knowing what it was supposed to taste like. The original was a bit too salty for my liking, but the picture above garnered the most likes I've ever gotten for an Instagram post!  I decided to take a cue from Molly Yeh's scallion pancake challah bread and try a hua juan version of kubaneh by brushing a mixture of scallions and sesame oil on the dough before rolling it up.  I also used a fresher yeast this time, and the results are pretty spectacular if I do say so myself. The bread itself reminds me a lot of milk bre...

Loafing around .....with a loaf of Cranberry Nut Bread and a cup of coffee. It's that time of year when it's always nice  to have a sweet homemade treat in the house.     Cranberries are plentiful in the grocery store  right now and that got me in the mood  for this classic quick bread. In a large bowl whisk to combine the dry  ingredients. Toss the cranberries and nuts  into the flour mixture. You can also add  them at the end as I did this time. Next,  melt the butter in a glass cup then add it  to the orange juice. Then use that cup to  whisk the egg lightly with a fork and add  that to the orange juice and butter mixture.   Whisk that all together and add to the  bowl with the dry ingredients.  Stir just to combine.  Add the nuts and cranberries if you didn't  already toss them in with the flour mixture. I don't cut the cranberries in half as in so many recipes. Too much trouble and they...

I was so excited when I received an electric bubble waffle maker from my brother and sister-in-law for my birthday last year.  I had visions of making the eggettes I used to get from NYC's Chinatown and SF's Genki and maybe even making a puffle cone a la Cauldron Ice Cream or Monkey King Tea (below).  But after trying the recipes I found on-line for eggettes and puffle cones (basically the same recipe) I'm still not satisfied with the results.  I even played around a little with the ingredients but nothing I made recreated the aroma, texture, or taste I was looking for. Not to be deterred, I decided to experiment with some other batter-based foods I had made before.  First up was pão de queijo (Brazilian cheese bread) .  Since some of the eggette recipes used a little tapioca flour, I figured it would be fun to try an entirely tapioca flour based batter in the bubble waffle maker.  The results were incredible! The bubble waffle maker was able to encapsulat...

I've made the famous no-knead bread a few times now, and while the concept is great, the reality is I'm always a little disappointed with the results.  Even though there's no kneading involved, it's still a multi-step recipe that can take 20+ hours to finish, and while the texture of the ensuing bread is great for a home cook, it's kind of lacking in flavor.  So I'm pretty excited to have found a recipe for bread that only takes 4 hours from start to finish, still has great texture, and is packed full of flavor. I pretty much followed this Genius Recipe from Food52 for Dan Leader's 4-Hour Baguette but I applied some of the concepts I learned from Ken Forkish's Flour Water Salt Yeast and added some diastatic malt powder .  According to the King Arthur Flour website, the malt powder promotes "a strong rise, great texture, and lovely brown crust".  You can certainly make this bread without it; I just used because I still had some left from  mak...

Kneeding bread is a good exercise. No kneed bread is fine but a little kneeding makes better bread. IMPORTANT INFO: Using antibacterial spray on your work surfaces prior to kneeding bread will kill the yeast. It makes no difference if it's bakers yeast or sourdough. Those of you who have been following this blog over the years will know that I have been dabbling with sourdough for quite some time. I've had lots of failures as using sourdough is not as straightforward as using yeast. Now we need a drum roll as I believe that I have it sussed.  The result is a light soft bread with a crunchy crust that is all too good to eat. I just wish that I could share it with you all. I actually cooked this bread in a cast iron pan as this helps to steam the outside of the loaf and create this crust. Now, it takes time to make sourdough bread but it doesn't take much effort. A little weighing and mixing and leaving is all you have to know. It's the way that you do theses things that ...

In the last post I gave you the recipe for focaccia, but what I didn't tell you is that this dough makes an excellent base for pizza. All I did was roll it out thinner than the focaccia and top it with some: tomato passata, stoned olives, thinly sliced chorizo grated mozarella cheese a few dried herbs: origano or thyme Allow it to rise for about 30 minutes and cook in a very hot oven until brown and bubbling. One of the advantages of pizza over all other doughs is that you don't have to leave it to get cold before digging in.

What's the point in making tikka masala if you don't have any naan to swipe up the leftover sauce?  If I had known how easy it was to make naan on the stovetop, I would've made it a long time ago!  Since I had some garlic and scallions lying around, I decided to make the garlic version, which let's face it, is so much better than the plain version. I found the dough to be on the wetter side, so make sure you work it on a floured surface and use a floured rolling pin or else it'll end up sticking everywhere and to everything.  Sadly, naan does not keep well so I would suggest eating it the same day it is made. Garlic Naan (adapted from Saveur ) makes 4 pieces 6 tablespoons water heated to 115°F 1/2 teaspoon honey 1 heaping teaspoon active dry yeast 1 cup all-purpose flour 1⁄4 cup plain, full-fat Greek yogurt 1 tablespoon canola oil 1⁄4 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more for sprinkling 1 tablespoon minced garlic 1 tablespoon chopped scallions Melted ghee or butter, for ...

I just ha d to share these cute bunny rolls that I made for Easter dinner.  Everyone loved them they were a huge hit.  The dough recipe is from a previous post by my sister, Lynn, and si nce the recipe has be en pinned over 250,000 times w hy use a nother ?  She call s it Best Rolls Ever.  Now, I can't claim that I came up with the bunny design all on my own.  Nope that's what Pinterest and Google are for.  Bunny design came from Taste of Home . Though the design and a different recipe is used at Taste of Home they didn't have pictures of step by step instructions which I will include here. After you make Best Rolls Ever recipe you will need to let your dough rest for 30-60 minutes. Punch down your dough and with a rolling pin roll out your dough to at least 20 inches long one way (see picture below). Using a pizza cutter you will cut horizontal 1/2 inch strips.  Then cut the strips vertically 10 inches, 5 inches, two 2 inches, and then one inch....