melting your mouth

I made this gluten-free quick bread for a brunch several weeks ago, and now I’ve finally found the time to write it up. This is my first foray into gluten-free baking, and it turned out surprisingly well. It seemed like a good breakfast bread alternative for those who for one reason or another have to stay clear of gluten. I can (and do!) eat as much flour as I want, but I really enjoyed this bread, too. It’s healthier than most breakfast breads since most of the sweetener comes from the fruit, with just a little bit of honey. And the nuts, while adding wonderful flavor, also mean that it will stick with you better than the normal carbohydrate only quick bread. It’s a winner all around!

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It’s that time of the month again … time for another Daring Bakers‘ event. This time, Kelly from Sass & Veracity and Ben from What’s cooking? hosted us to make a Danish Braid. Making this was a lot of fun. I have never made this kind of pastry before. The process is somewhat like making puff pastry (also on my list of things to try to do). After making the dough, which is deliciously flavored with orange and cardamon, you spread it with butter and fold it up on itself, then you keep rolling it back out and folding it in on itself several times over the course of a couple hours, so that you have thin layers of dough with butter in between. The dough is also yeasted, so after assembling the braid, you let it rise for a couple hours. Mine actually didn’t rise as much as it probably should’ve, but it still tasted fine and made a nice light, flaky dough.

This time we were allowed to put our own touch on the recipe by choosing the filling. The recipe came with directions for an apple filling, but I decided to use blackberry preserves instead. At the last minute I remembered that I also had some blanched almonds left over from the Opera Cake last month, so I ground those up with some sugar and an egg to make almond paste, which I spread in the braid underneath the jam.

This is definitely a recipe I will try again, and since the dough made enough for two braids, you might even hear about it again if I think of an interesting enough filling!

I didn’t make any changes to the dough recipe, so I will refer you to Kelly’s post for the recipe, which came from Sherry Yard’s book The Secrets of Baking. Thanks to Kelly and Ben for a great event! And make sure to check out everyone else’s Danish Braids on the Daring Bakers’ Blogroll … there are some great ones out there!

Safeway had an amazing price on mangoes this week — 4 for a dollar instead of the usual $1.50 apiece! So we came home without about 8. So far, we’ve eaten them by themselves and in mango salsa. Then I noticed we had an overripe banana sitting on the counter, and I thought I’d try to make a banana-mango bread with the last two. I hoped to base it on my mom’s recipe, which adds some spice to the traditional banana bread. However, I couldn’t find it, so I turned where I always do, to Elise at Simply Recipes, who seems to have a recipe for anything and everything. I was thinking of a somewhat Indian-inspired concept, so I used spices normally found in chai. I didn’t think the spice flavor was pronounced enough (I added 1/4 t each of ginger, cardamon, cloves, and cinnamon), so I’ve upped the ante a bit in the recipe below. I also added some chopped pistachios, as I like a bit of texture in my quick breads.

So, how did it turn out? It like it, and if I ever end up with overripe mangoes again, I’ll definitely keep it as a possibility. However, that fresh mango flavor and texture didn’t quite shine through all the breadiness as much as I wanted to. So when they’re back to $1.50 a pop, I think I’ll stick to letting the wonderful juicy goodness of raw mango drip down my chin.

Just after deciding to make this bread, I heard that Not Quite Nigella is having a Banana Bread Bake-off. So this is my entry in that event … check out what everyone else did at the roundup, to be posted on May 12.

Banana Mango Bread

adapted from Banana Bread from Simply Recipes

2 ripe mangoes, chopped
1 ripe banana
1/3 c melted butter
3/4 c sugar
1 egg, beaten
1 t vanilla
1 t baking soda
pinch of salt
1 1/2 c flour
1/2 t ginger
1/2 t cardamon
1/4 t cloves
1/4 t cinnamon
1/4 c slightly crushed pistachios

Preheat oven to 350 F. Mash together banana, mango, and butter. Stir in sugar, egg, and vanilla. In a separate bowl, combine dry ingredients (baking soda through cinnamon). Stir dry ingredients into fruit mixture. Stir in pistachios. Pour into greased loaf pan. Bake at 350 F for about 50 minutes. Let cool slightly in the pan, then turn out onto rack to cool the rest of the way.

Other mango recipes:

• Mango Chutney from Simply Recipes
• Mango Shrikhand from Mango Power Girl
• Frozen Mango Lassi from Cooking With Amy
• Mango Salsa from Culinate

My mom finally got tired of me stealing borrowing her Cooking Light magazines every time I came over to her house, so she bought me my own subscription a few months back. (Thanks, Mom!) I’m not sure that was the right lesson to teach me, but I’m enjoying the magazine. I’m not so convinced of the “Light” part of many of their recipes, though that’s partly my own fault since I tend to ignore the “reduced-fat” or “fat-free” components to many of their ingredients. But I enjoy the magazine because it gives me new ideas each month and helps keep me out of a rut.

This time, I adapted their recipe for Cardamon-Lime Sweet Rolls into these Lemon Ginger Sweet Rolls. If you believe, as I do, that sweet rolls can only appropriately be eaten fresh for breakfast (unless, of course, there are leftovers), then they do require a bit of advanced planning, since the yeast dough has to rise for a couple hours. But they last just fine ovenight in the fridge after the second rise, and can be popped in the oven the next morning. Makes for a nice twist from the cinnamon rolls from a can we have every now and then (though I’ll admit that, in my opinion, Pillsbury makes a pretty mean sweet roll, too!).

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This month, I joined my first blogging event — The Daring Bakers. This is a group of (mostly) bloggers that all bake the same recipe once a month, and then all post on it the same day. One person sets this “challenge recipe” and everyone has to basically follow the recipe — few modifications are allowed. The idea is to bake outside our comfort zones a bit, but with a supportive group around to learn from and to compare our results. So this month I joined the Daring Bakers and our first recipe was Julia Child’s French Bread, hosted by Breadchick at The Sour Dough and Sara of I Like to Cook.

Talk about a challenge! I was excited when I found out this month’s challenge would be bread since I haven’t ever made anything but quick bread before and I’d been wanting to try it. But, it was also intimidating. This bread required three different rises, and the shaping was also fairly complicated. (You would think you just roll it into a log to make a baguette, but there’s actually a lot more to it in order to make the bread so that it’ll form a nice crust and gain enough volume and be able to support itself without baking in a pan. Or so I read.) Also, in order to make a simulated “baker’s oven”, I had to find a way to produce steam in the oven. So, all told, a good 6-8 hours to complete, but it was a lot of fun. I was pretty pleased with how the bread looked and tasted. So, if you are feeling ambitious, I recommend this bread, but I will admit I probably won’t make a habit of making this every weekend.

Thanks again to Sara and Breadchick for coming up with a great the challenge this month, and check out my fellow Daring Bakers’ posts from the Daring Bakers Blogroll.

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