Tropical Pancakes

Does your family have a day on the weekend for making special breakfasts? Maybe you do brunch instead? Well, think about making these delightful pancakes and you'll enjoy the weekend even more.

I took two fairly basic recipes for pancakes from Marion Cunningham's The Breakfast Book, mixed them together, added some yogurt, substituted non-dairy soy creamer and non-dairy margarine for milk and butter, used white whole wheat and Irish Whole Meal flours (King Arthur Flour carries both) for part of the flour, added chopped pecans, finely chopped fresh pineapple, finely chopped banana, and chopped, pitted dates. What I ended up with were some of the best pancakes ever if you like tropical flavors.

It takes a few minutes to chop up the fruit and nuts, a few more to mix together the milk or soy milk and the yogurt, a few more to measure out the dry ingredients, more to melt the margarine or butter and mix it with the eggs and then the milk mixture. Hardly any time is needed to add the dry ingredients to the wet and barely mix them.

Cooking the pancakes probably takes the most time and that may just seem that way since you are standing at the stove with a pancake turner, watching the tiny bubbles form at the edges of the pancake and smelling the warming pineapple and banana fragrances. Then when you turn the pancake over, you see the golden brown sheen of the cooked side and you see the pancake rise and you know this is going to be soooo delicious! And it is!

I topped mine with some applesauce, but you can just as easily slather on some butter and syrup or mix up a syrup of sugar, water and orange juice, letting it bubble and thicken while you cook the pancakes. However you top them, enjoy the flavors of the islands.

Tropical Pancakes
based on Plain Pancakes and Buttermilk Pancakes by Marion Cunningham
in The Breakfast Book

2 eggs at room temperature
3/4 cup milk or soy milk or soy creamer, at room temperature
1/4 cup plain yogurt
4 tablespoons butter, or margarine, melted and cooled slightly
3/4 cup white whole wheat flour (or use regular whole wheat)
1/4 cup Irish Whole Meal Flour (or use regular whole wheat)
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup fresh pineapple, finely chopped
3/4 cup fresh ripe banana, finely chopped
1/4 cup finely chopped pecans
2 tablespoons finely chopped pitted dates

Beat the eggs in a mixing bowl until they are fully blended. Add the plain yogurt to the milk or soy milk and beat until combined. Let sit a few minutes, then beat into the eggs. Add the melted butter or margarine and beat until filly blended.

On a piece of waxed paper or parchment paper or in another bowl, combine the flours, sugar, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Stir into the wet ingredients and stir just until blended. Immediately gently stir in the pineapple, banana, pecans and dates.

Cook the pancakes on a lightly greased preheated skillet or griddle: scoop 1/4 cup of the batter for each pancake onto the griddle, using the cup to slightly spread the batter if necessary. Let pancook cook over medium heat until bottom is golden brown and the edges have rapidly breaking small bubbles. After flipping the pancake over, let cook until bottom is golden brown. Serve at once with toppings of your choice.

Makes enough pancakes for 4 people (usually).

Chocolate and Zucchini and Apple

The heat did its work and sped up the harvest. This morning there were extra zucchini, ripe tomatoes, and lots more beans and cucumbers than usual. There were even enough zucchini to make the seasonal favorite, zucchini bread.

I like to make a chocolate version. Sometimes I add nuts, sometime not. Today I decided to add some ripe Gravenstein apple from our trees. It seemed to make the loaves even moister. I say loaves because I made four small loaves instead of one or two large ones. Makes it easier to gift them. Wouldn't you like to receive a gift like this?

Zucchini at the farmer's market and in the grocery stores is plentiful and inexpensive now, so consider making this yourself. If you have a food processor for shredding the zucchini and apple, it goes together very quickly.

I used melted margarine with no dairy, but did use plain yogurt...it doesn't seem to bother me. Adding the chocolate chips is also optional, but fun. If you cut a slice when the bread is still warm, you get a nice gooey chocolate hit with almost every bite.

Chocolate Zucchini Bread with Apple
based on:

ELIZABETH'S PHENOMENAL CHOCOLATE ZUCCHINI BREAD
brought to you via Robin Brande & Jama Rattigan & Tanita Davis

3 cups flour
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 ½ cups sugar
3 eggs or equivalent egg substitute
½ cup melted butter, cooled a bit
½ cup plain yogurt
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups shredded zucchini (about 1-2 medium zucchini)(measured after being squeezed dry)
1/2 cup shredded apple (about 1 small apple), core and stem and blossom end removed before shredding
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease two 9x5" loaf pans with canola spray.

In a large bowl, combine flour, cocoa, soda, baking powder, and salt. Mix well. In a separate bowl, beat eggs (or egg substitute) with the sugar until well combined. Add melted butter, yogurt and vanilla. Beat to combine, then stir in zucchini and apple shreds. Add wet bowl to dry bowl and stir until just moistened. Stir chocolate chips.

Spoon evenly into pans. Bake 55-60 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes in pans, then turn onto racks. This bread is yummy when eaten still warm...the chips are melty and the fragrance is full chocolate!

Scones For The Mostly Dairy Free Folks

When I first learned to make scones I loved using cold butter and rich cream to make wonderful, light but rich and flaky delights. When I planned a tea party for this month my sister challenged me to make a scone that was equally delightful, but with none of the usual dairy. After all, when my guests were going 'mmmm good' as they ate their scones, I wanted to be right in there with them. No lemon curd or clotted cream for me, but raspberry jam goes really well with the perfect scone.

These may not have been the perfect scone, but they were delicious and had the right texture, too. I used very cold margarine instead of the butter, used a light hand with the cutting in of the margarine, used a mixture of soy milk creamer and Greek yogurt (the only dairy I can tolerate) for the liquid and I added a touch of almond extract, too. Sweetie had one shortly after I took them from the oven and he was a convert. I enjoyed mine, too and so did my guests. If you are eating vegan, just skip the Greek yogurt and use a full cup of the soy creamer. I used Silk brand original plain soy creamer. I've found that it works well as a milk/cream replacement and tastes good, too.

Here are half the scones before baking...you make two discs like this.

Simple Only Yogurt Scones
Heat oven to 425 degrees F. Grease two cookie sheets or line with parchment paper.

3 cups all-purpose flour
½ cup sugar
2 ½ teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon baking soda
¾ cup non-dairy margarine, well chilled
¾ cup soy creamer
1/4 cup Greek yogurt
1/4 teaspoon almond extract

Glaze: 2 tablespoons soy creamer
2 tablespoons sugar (I used white sanding sugar)

Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and baking soda in a large bowl. With pastry blender or two knives, cut in butter until mixture resembles fine to medium crumbs. In a large measuring cup whisk together the soy creamer and the Greek yogurt. (Alternately, just use 1 cup soy creamer instead of that mixture.)

Pour soy milk mixture over crumb mixture. Stir together with fork just until mixture comes together. Use a light hand. Gather dough gently into a ball; knead 4 or 5 times. Cut dough in half and transfer pieces to prepared cookie sheets. Shape each piece into a 6 inch x 1/4 inch thick circle. Using floured knife or bench scraper, cut each circle into 8 wedges. Put wedges on the prepared cookie sheets.

For glaze, brush tops with soy creamer and sprinkle with sugar.

Bake 20 – 25 minutes until toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Makes 16 scones.

If you are going to freeze these to re-heat later, bake them just short of golden brown and re-heat, thawed, for 5 minutes at 425 degrees F.

Mixed Muffins

It's been a long time since I made muffins. Hard to believe that I used to make muffins as a business when I was young and foolish. Of course those muffins were rich with butter and milk and no one even knew about gluten intolerance then, except for a few doctors. The muffins a made yesterday were made with my current restrictions in mind, but they were decadent anyway. Instead of all one kind, I decided to make two kinds...but then found that I didn't have very many raspberries left. Still, I was able to make a couple of raspberry ones since I had gotten the yen for those. The rest were apple date pecan muffins. A nice mix of flavors all around.

These were delicious when warm, but also good once they cooled off. The crumb was open but delicate and moist. I really enjoyed the dates when they were warm and I could taste the apple more when they had cooled. The raspberry muffin was eaten while still a little warm and it was outstanding! The muffin itself doesn't have much sugar, so the berry flavor really dominated.

I used yogurt instead of sour cream. Yogurt seems to be the only dairy my bod likes. For additional liquid I used almond milk and a little olive oil. Although I'll bet these could have been made just with gluten free flour mix, I decided to use half GF (Bob's Red Mill) and half all-purpose. The best part was creating the mix-ins. I used diced apple, chopped dates, and chopped pecans for 10 muffins and some fresh raspberries for two. Sounds difficult? Not if you put the raspberries in the bottom of the greased muffin tins, then add the batter 3/4 of the way up the pan. The apple/date/nut mixture was then quickly blended into the batter and the rest of the tin filled up with that.

If you need to make these gluten free, just use your favorite gluten free flour mixture for all the flour and add a teaspoon of xanthan gum for stability. Enjoy with a cup of coffee or tea, and you have a great mid-morning or afternoon snack.

Mixed Muffins

a variation on Sour Cream Muffins in Joy of Cooking

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour (I used 1 cup GF flour mix - Bob's Red Mill & 3/4 cup all-purpose flour)
1 teaspoon double-acting baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons sugar
1 egg, beaten
1/2 cup plain yogurt
1/2 cup almond milk (add a little more if yogurt isn't wet enough)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 medium to large apple, chopped
1/4 cup dates, chopped
1/4 cup pecans, chopped or broken up

optional- fresh raspberries for some of the muffins

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

Grease a 12-cup muffin pan or spray with cooking spray.

In a large bowl sift or whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and sugar.

In a medium bowl whisk together the egg, yogurt, almond milk and vanilla. Gently and quickly, with as few strokes as possible, mix the wet mixture into the dry mixture. At this point, if you are doing both apple and raspberry muffins, place about 5 raspberries in the bottom of a couple of muffin cups, then add batter to fill cup 3/4 of the way to the top.

With remaining batter, fold in gently and quickly, with as few strokes as possible the apple, dates and pecans. Put batter in prepared muffin cups, filling 3/4 of the way to the top.

Immediately put the muffin pan into the preheated oven and bake for about 20 minutes. Check at 15 minutes and turn pan around 180 degrees if needed for even baking. Muffin is done when a light poke in the middle springs back.

Remove from oven and cool 10 minutes on a rack. Remove from the muffin cups and serve or serve at room temperature.

Makes 1 dozen large muffins.

A Bread For Zucchini Madness

It happens every year...too many zucchini. It may be from your own plant, it may be the sneaky neighbor who deposited a big bag of them on your porch early in the morning, or maybe you got carried away at the farmer's market. Now you are looking for ways to use them up...look no further.

My great good friend NoHandle sent another wonderful guest post. You are going to want to make this zucchini bread my friend. If you really like it, maybe I can get some of my extra zucchini to you (just kidding). The best part about this bread is there is no chocolate. Although I love chocolate, it doesn't love me at present. Thanks NoHandle!

Zucchini Bread Again?

Perhaps the only thing more pervasive than the excessive production of the zucchini plant (it would be considered a weed if the fruits weren't edible) is the profusion of recipes you find about now to create uses for the aforementioned excessive production. Leaving bags of the stuff on neighbor's porches can go undetected for only so long, and then they force you to stop. And no fair setting the bag on fire; that is a different prank. 

At any rate, I noticed, in my hour of need, that  my favorite blog (this one) had almost all chocolate zucchini bread recipes, and so cried out for a non-chocolate rendition. (I'm a big fan of chocolate, but not everyone in the household is, and I don't want to be the only consumer of the bread; that would partially defeat the purpose. She really likes this one.) So, I cast about and found a decent looking one on the Food and Wine site. It had only one ingredient that I didn't currently have in the cupboard (and that was just a matter of timing) so I printed a copy and off I went.

To begin with, most recipes say a “medium” zucchini produces 1 cup of shredded (and squeezed out) flesh. I must have had a monster then. It produced a bit over three cups, so although the (doubled) recipe called for two cups, three cups it was to be. The remaining quarter of a cup or so went to compost.

The next issue was with the yogurt, for which the recipe the recipe called “non-fat” which in my mind meant “not really food” and the grocery store was apparently in the former camp. I ended up with a honey-flavored full-fat product, which meant there was a measure of sugar in it. The amount of sugar called for in the recipe seemed excessive, so I didn't feel bad about cutting it back in this case. I also ended up a bit short on the flour, so in included a half-cup or so (I didn't measure it) of whole wheat flour to round it out. With the extra zucchini, I wasn't too concerned with exact measurement, I just added a bit to just about everything (except sugar and oil; with full-fat yogurt, I slacked off on the oil too). And of course this was double the recipe (two loaves instead of one) which led to needing an extra large bowl to combine everything where the recipe called for only a large bowl. I think we've all been there when scaling up recipes. Mine was a glass salad bowl.

Oh, the recipe calls for coarse chopped walnuts, but we prefer smaller bits, so I used my trusty nut grinder, which produces bits about the size of half of a lentil, and smaller.

My other departure was to not consider sugar a “wet” ingredient, and including it with the dry. I mixed the eggs and oil first to create an emulsion, then added the yogurt, which preserved it. The dry (plus sugar) ingredients were already combined, so I added some shreds, and some of the liquid, to the dry, mixed that up, and added the rest. I don't have a stand mixer, but I recommend one for this application. Mix at slow speed, as the flour and batter tend to fly. My heavy-duty hand mixer was adequate to the task, but a lesser one might have started smoking, quite literally, from the strain, and that would have ruined the aroma from baking. It is a very, very dense batter. I also poured the batter alternately into the pans to keep the results consistent. I weighed them both to ensure they had about the same amounts. It was about 56 ounces each (including the weight of the pan, a bit over a pound) in case you were wondering. 

The baking time is a rather lengthy hour and ten minutes, and with two moist cakes in the same oven, a bit longer is better. I was satisfied at one hour and fifteen minutes, but another five or so wouldn't hurt. There is another long wait as the loaves cool, at least a half-hour. This is quick bread for the patient.

Note that even with surplus zucchini the pans were not quite full when baking was done. Freeze at least one to bring back memories of the closing days of summer (and the bounty of the zucchini plant) in the midst of winter, and enjoy the other while still warm (and for a few days thereafter). 

Your neighbors will appreciate this more than the raw fruit, so bake some more! (You have more zucchini, don't you?)

Here is the recipe as I did it. The measurements are approximate, but this is forgiving one.

Zucchini Bread

Ingredients:

1 ½ cup walnut halves

4 cups all-purpose flour (substituting about ½ cup whole wheat flour works too)

1 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. baking soda

1 ½ cup sugar (scant)

4 large eggs

¾ cup vegetable oil (I used pure olive oil; not extra virgin nor even virgin. It has nearly no olive taste.)

1 cup honey-flavored Greek yogurt

3 cups coarsely grated zucchini, squeezed in a ta towel to remove as much liquid as you can

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Butter (or cooking spray) and flour two 9-by-4 ½ inch metal loaf pans. Spread the walnut halves on a small (cookie) sheet pan, and toast them for about 10 minutes, until they are fragrant. Cool them in the freezer for 5 minutes while you make the batter, then chop in fine pieces.

In a very large bowl, whisk the flower with baking powder, baking soda, and salt. If you combine the sugar at this point the dish still works. In a medium (medium is still big enough) bowl, beat the eggs and vegetable oil together until well combined, and then beat in the yogurt. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients, along with the grated zucchini and toasted, chopped walnuts. I found adding about 1/3 first of both, beating, and then the remaining made the process easier and the result smoother. Beat until the batter is evenly moistened.

Pour the batter into the prepared pans and bake for 1 hour 15 minutes, until the loaf is risen and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean (about 195 degrees in an instant read thermometer).

Let the loaf cool on a rack for 30 minutes before un-molding and serving. A few additional minutes cooling of the released loaf will make slicing easier, as the center is still fairly moist.

Enjoy, NoHandle.

Apple Pie-ish

The Gravensteins are here! A big banner, sponsored by the Slow Food movement, announces that fact right near Whole Foods in downtown Sebastopol. Gravensteins are one of the early apples. They are delicious and make great applesauce and cider, even pie, but don't keep and don't ship well. Fortunately, we have a couple of Gravenstein trees on the property and this morning I had my first taste of the season.

My breakfast was apple pie-ish because I diced half of an unpeeled Gravenstein, sprinkled it with cinnamon, microwaved it for a minute and a half, then used that delicious, hot apple goodness as the base for my cereal and plain yogurt. If you think about the bran cereal as having pie crust flavors, and the yogurt as having the dairy flavor that some ice cream or whipped cream would have, it isn't difficult to pretend that you are eating apple pie...well, if you have an imagination like mine anyway.

The main kitchen cabinets are here this morning, too! Soon we will be having breakfast in regular bowls, not paper ones, because we will have a dishwasher again. Once the stove is hooked up, there will be real cooking and baking again, too. Exciting!