| Ah, zucchini bread. The staple of everyone who suddenly awoke one morning to a world awash in zucchini, or at least, or everyone so situated who likes zucchini bread. It’s good stuff, in any case, and very easy to make. In fact, my mother makes it 2 or 4 loaves at a time. |  |
Here’s the ultimate recommendation from Sean: “I don’t feel guilty when I eat 4 of these for breakfast!” What more could you want from a cookie? Don’t worry, we promise that they are still very tasty! (Well, the “we” here is Sean and myself, since, for obvious gluteny reasons, Jennifer can’t eat these!)
So Jocelyn may have been hoping her post on kolaches would prompt me to do the same, but nope, it’s hermuffins instead. I took one look at that post and thought, “Wow, has it really been so long since I made muffins? I want some!” Blueberry muffins were one of my first posts, but I hadn’t really done anything with muffins since then. I’d always intended to post more varieties of muffin, though, so here you go!
Kolaches are a traditional Czech pastry, kinda somewhere between a filled donut, a danish, and a sweetbread roll. Of course, they’re nothing like any of these :-). Though the ones I’ve
made here all have dessert and/or breakfast fillings (fruit flavors and cream cheese filling both fall into that category), you can also make kolaches that have sausage filling, potato filling, sausage or potato and cheese filling.
These muffins are quite tasty, and actually pretty good for you, especially in the world of muffins! Muffins are such a wonderfully portable and fast food, but, like many things that can be
called “fast food” (literally), the fast food industry has a tendency to bloat them up with extra simple carbs, sugar, fat, and overall calories. You don’t have to feel guilty, or bloated, if you want to eat these for breakfast, though, and you can make up a big batch at once for convenience. Enjoy!
Now, traditionally
, stollen is made with some candied fruits and is covered in either powdered sugar or a powdered sugar glaze. For obvious reasons, this does not work for people trying to live sugar-free over the holidays! I do have something to confess: I had no idea what “stollen” was when my husband began to talk wistfully of the bread his family made every Christmas Eve (I realized later that I had seen the commercialized version of it that is usually sold in Germany–a German professor brought one in–but I didn’t realize it was the same thing when Sean was talking about it). However, he quite liked the tradition his family had concerning this bread, so I thought I’d give a shot to making it.
This particular recipe is one of my better efforts in recreating pretty much exactly what Sean missed (and, for that matter, what I expect out of a good cinnamon roll!). They are not so syrupy as what you’ll get from the cinnamon roll place in your local mall, but quite frankly, having good fresh sweetbread makes it unnecessary to drown the roll in syrup. All that extra sweet is to hide how dry the roll is from being reheated so much. These are sweet and satisfying, and the cream cheese topping positively indulgent :-).
...)
Banana bread is one of the other things I reinvented pretty early on–there are always a few bananas that no one wants to eat that you have to do something with! In addition, Sean really likes to eat it for breakfast :-). Unfortunately, though Sean liked some of the versions I produced from recipes found on the internet, I didn’t. My tongue was accustomed to something sweeter and lighter. This isn’t quite identical to the “add two cups of sugar” version from my childhood, but I find it a very good compromise, since the whole wheat flour and natural sugars are much better for me! It is still moist, bouncy and banana-y, and really, what more could you ask for?
