Cooking Thursday: A Couple of Yummy Quick Breads

 

Hello beautiful Friends!

It's a cozy rainy Thursday here and I've been soaking up the vibes. I got a new blackberry jam candle at bath & body recently and it smells so good! I have that going and a pretty early Fall scene playing on the tv with pretty piano music.

*I love that the lid of the candle looks like the top of a jam jar 

(it's the little things 😊)

 

And one thing I love to do on cozy days is bake. I recently made these 2 breads (about a week apart) also on gray cozier days. The first one I want to share is for an apple cheddar bread I made a few weeks ago before Annie left. She thought it sounded delish so I gave it a go. 

I had found the recipe at gimmesomeoven.com 

It's a pretty straight forward quick bread and I didn't use the sage it called for and used thyme instead and I also added some cinnamon. I just measured with my heart on both and didn't add a specific amount. I also just cubed up the apple and didn't shred it in.

We all thought the flavor was amazing and this would be such a great bread with soup in the Fall. It had a very kind of biscuit texture to it. My notes on this were that I think next time I'd use a little less flour and I would shred some of the apple in and cube the rest. I think it would make the bread a little less biscuit-like and more moist. Either way though we gave it a thumbs up! Of course it helped that I made a cinnamon honey butter to top it with too. 😉

The next bread I made more recently. I had a can of pumpkin in the cabinet and wanted to use it up...so I thought August was close enough for our first loaf of pumpkin chocolate chip bread. 🎃  I found the recipe at sallysbakingaddiction.com (she has the best baking stuff!). It turned out amazing and the only thing I did was add milk instead of orange juice (I didn't have any oranges and that was her suggestion if you didn't). And I did add the chocolate chips (because of course I did 😋) and some chopped pecans I needed to use up. Total 10 out of 10! It tasted so good to have my first taste of something pumpkin!! I brought some to my Mom and step Dad too. Definitely recommend this one for Autumn. 

Have you started any Fall baking yet? Do you have a go-to you like to make on rainy days? 

If you try these I hope you enjoy! 

xoxo

Zucchini Chocolate Chip Bread

 

Hello lovely Friends! 

Happy Thursday to you. 💗

I hope wherever you are the sun is shining and that you'll have a nice gentle day today. We had some storms come through last night and give everything a nice big drink. Today the sun is shining and summer is in the air. ☀️💛

Summer makes me think of things like the strawberry rhubarb sauce I shared and you can find it here.

But it also makes me think of zucchini bread. Mmmm - with chocolate chips of course. 😋 Do you know the blog sallysbakingaddiction.com? I LOVE her recipes. I have made several through the years and they're always great. Here is one I recently made - and added the chocolate chips (if you know you know😉)

I definitely recommend you give it a go - or any other recipe she has on her blog. I even receive updates in my email from her. That's how I came across this recipe. 

Here's the loaf I made.

And here's the recipe off of her site:

Ingredients

• 1 and 3/4 cups (220g) all-purpose flour (spooned & leveled)
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 and 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/2 cup (120ml) vegetable oil (or melted coconut oil)
• 1/2 cup (100g) packed light or dark brown sugar
• 1/2 cup (100g) granulated sugar
• 2 large eggs, at room temperature
• 1/4 cup (60g) unsweetened applesauce (or sour cream or Greek yogurt)
• 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
• 1 and 1/2 cups (180g) shredded zucchini (no need to blot)
• optional: 1 cup (180g) semi-sweet chocolate chips (or chopped nuts, raisins, etc)

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (177°C). Grease a 9×5-inch loaf pan. See notes for muffins.
2. Whisk the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg together in a large bowl until thoroughly combined. Set aside. In a medium bowl, whisk the oil, brown sugar, granulated sugar, eggs, applesauce, and vanilla together until combined. Whisk in the zucchini. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients. Gently stir or whisk until *just* combined; do not overmix. Fold in any optional add-ins like chocolate chips or nuts. Batter is slightly thick.
3. Spread the batter evenly into prepared loaf pan. Bake for 55-70 minutes. (I like to loosely cover the bread with aluminum foil halfway through to prevent heavy browning on top.) Baking times vary so keep an eye on yours. The bread is done when a toothpick inserted in the center comes out *mostly* clean with zero raw batter. Remove the bread from the oven and set on a wire rack. Cool in pan for 1 hour before removing from pan. You can slice the bread at this point, but it will still be warm in the center and may not slice neatly. For neat slices, continue cooling bread directly on a wire rack and then slice once cooled.
4. Cover and store leftover bread at room temperature for up to 3-4 days or in the refrigerator for up to 1 week.

Wishing you a wonderful weekend ahead. 

xoxo

Pineapple Coconut Quick Bread

 

Hello Friends! 

Well big surprise - it's snowing in the northwoods again. Predicting maybe another 8 inches by the time it's done. Old Man Winter just won't take the hint he's not welcome here anymore. Lol Our big local area shopping mall had so much snow on its roof that a portion of it caved in and they're dealing with that right now and it has been closed for days. This added snow today isn't helping their situation I'm sure. Geesh - we need some Spring to make a visit asap!! 

So I've been doing all the things to think warmer thoughts and even got into tropical vibes by baking this yummy quick bread. It was delicious and had almost more of a cake-like texture. It was another recipe I found on pinterest and you can find it under my board "breads".

And how could you go wrong with some sunny pineapple.

And tasty tropical coconut? 

Sprinkle a little more coconut on top for good measure and bake. The only thing I changed with this recipe is I didn't cover my bread. I just kept an eye on it. But everyone's ovens are different so I would say be careful not to burn it towards the end. If mine hadn't been baked through at the end I would have covered it then. 

Here's the recipe. Enjoy!