Onion Zucchini Bread

Savory Onion Zucchini Bread with Nutritional Yeast Baking zucchini bread (at least once) has been one of my summer rituals for years. And ever since a nice reader mentioned it in her (his?) comment, I had been thinking about using buttermilk for this quick bread. Of course I cannot buy real buttermilk at regular supermarkets around here, but I can try a substitute idea of mixing vinegar with milk or soy milk. So, I thought it was worth trying, and I actually gave it a go the other day. At first I was going to make a sweet version, because the advice of using buttermilk was given to help my strive for a sweet zucchini bread like the one I first had in the U.S. But while I was googling with the key words: "zucchini bread" and "buttermilk," I bumped into this onion zucchini bread recipe, and a crazy idea (again!) popped into my mind -- "What if I make this bread with some nutritional yeast to add a cheese-like flavor?" Then, as usual, the curiosity drove me into an experiment. The result was not bad. Maybe I can say "satisfactory," though I didn't notice any zucchini taste almost at all. Maybe that's the way zucchini bread usually is, either savory or sweet? The funny thing was that the moment I took a bite, I thought, "Gosh I've got to eat some sausage with this!" ... Sausage, or bacon, or ham. So the next time I make this savory quick bread, I'd probably mix in chopped sausages or bacon. And I still need to do another experiment of using buttermilk (substitute) for sweet zucchini bread. ;P ------ Actually I baked this bread a couple of weeks ago... before Yosakoi festival. I took these photos then, but before I finished a write-up, I got busy with the festival, then visited my parents, and a terrible work shift was waiting for me when I got back... And as if it was not terrible enough -- or could be because things got so stressful -- I developed hives last Saturday night. Boy I was scared! I'd never had hives before, and you know how terrible the wheals (welts) look? When they spread all over my legs and back, I thought I was going to die. :O Fortunately it wasn't anything serious and the itchy wheals were gone a few hours after I went to the hospital on Monday and took antihistamine pills. Just like that. So today, since I don't have to work in the daytime, I thought about going to a nearby park or cook/baking something special so that I can post about it. But I guess I'm going to take it easy in front of my laptop, nibbling on something. Categories: Western-inspired

A Pinch of Salt Needed

Yogurt Banana Muffins When I make a "healthier" version of muffins, using yogurt and vegetable oil instead of butter, I always add a pinch of salt even if the recipe does not call for it. Well, not always... because this time I didn't. I totally forgot about it. It was a big mistake... :( Categories: Sweets

Potato Sausage Cheese Muffins

Potato Sausage Cheese Muffins My Monday morning brunch. (On other days I have to eat breakfast very early -- and in a hurry -- to go to work before 7 AM, so recently Mondays are the only days that I can take time to enjoy brunch.) The recipe is here (in Japanese). *Woops, sorry! I forgot to mention that I replaced bacon in the original recipe with sausage. Diced potatoes were microwaved and then sauteed with onion and sausage before being mixed into the batter. With a good amout of black pepper mixed in, and grated cheese sprinkled on top (which was also my twist -- the original recipe does not call for grated cheese), these muffins tasted so good that I ate 4 of them at once. Mmmmm... Categories: Western-inspired

Lemon Poppyseed Muffins II

I brought 2 lemons with me when I came back to my apartment after the New Year's Day. Those were from my dad's orchard, and I was going to use them for baking. (He doesn't use any postharvest chemicals so I feel safer to use his oranges/lemons when I need grated citrus rind.) And somehow, I completely forgot about those lemons until yesterday. :P So last night, I did a little net search to pick a lemon poppyseed muffin recipe, and this is the recipe I tried out this time. Mmmm.... not bad, but the texture was not exactly what I wanted. Maybe I should try a recipe that does not call for yogurt next time. And there was another thing... and it was not related to the recipe. It was about dad's lemons. I'm no expert, so I may be sounding really stupid, but tell me... If a lemon tree has been grown right next to bunch of orange trees, is it possible that natural cross breeding causes the lemons to taste more like oranges? Dad's lemons are much rounder with more orangy skin color, and not as sour as store-bought lemons. And though I added enough rind (grated), these muffins didn't taste lemony almost at all without the glaze. Next time I'll probably try a different recipe with lemons from the Sunday market. Oh, if you're tempted to say "OMG, obachan! Your poppyseeds are not black!?" see this post. Yes, we went through that stage about a year ago. :) Categories: Sweets

Kumquat Marmalade Crumble Muffins

Kumquat Marmalade Crumble Muffins I still have two small jars of kumquat marmalade sitting on the shelf in my kitchen. Since I don’t like it very much on buttered toast, the choices left are using it for drinks or sweets. Yeah, the financier was a great success. But this time I wanted to try something else. So this was the kumquat marmalade version of an “orange marmalade and crumble muffins” recipe that I found on the net. Actually the recipe called for cream cheese and crumbles for the topping. OK. I had some cream cheese left in the fridge. I was so curious about how the toppings would taste with the big kumquat chunks in the muffins. But unfortunately, I didn’t taste cream cheese almost at all. And though the muffins were not bad after all, I have to say that I liked the kumquat marmalade in financier better -- much better. Categories: Sweets

Cranberry Nut Bread

Cranberry Nut Bread Well, dear readers, I have a confession to make. I no longer work for the kaiseki place. Actually that kaiseki place does not exist any more; they seem to have closed at the end of January. Why do I say they “seem to have closed?” Because I quit that place in the first week of January. And I already knew that they were going to close pretty soon. So there will be no more "kaiseki chronicles" here unless I start working at another kaiseki place. Sorry. Anyway, today I tried out this cranberry nut bread recipe and it was OK. I know. I should have used more cranberries. Look at the photo on the recipe site. Look how berry-full the bread is! Mine is a lot more orangey. ;) Maybe I should name this "Orange bread with cranberry and nuts" Categories: Sweets

Open Sandwich with Low-fat New York Bread

My brunch today ... Open Sandwich and Scrambled Eggs See the result of my first baking attempt with my brown applesauce. ;) This is my favorite recipe from a muffin book (Japanese), Itsudemo Muffin - Muffins & Quick Breads - by Asa Shirokawa. The author is a Japanese woman who had spent several years in the U.S. She wrote that she was inspired by the muffins served at a cafe in NYC and came up with this quick bread recipe after trials and errors. The recipe calls for absolutely no butter or salad oil. Instead, oatmeal (cooked), applesauce, banana and plain yogurt are used to make this quick bread pleasantly moist. This time, I omitted cooked apple chunks, and added a little almond powder to the dry ingredients. What I forgot to do, though, was adding a pinch of salt. It is not mentioned in the recipe but I thought a little salt would make this bread taste even better. Oh well, next time. Nevertheless, the bread turned out very moist and tasty. I love tasting the gentle, natural sweetness of this bread with the saltiness of ham and/or cheese. (Of course, butter or mayonnaise is also good, but I like cheese the best.) * To those who want to email me: The window may not open when you click on the "email me" link on the sidebar. Right-click on the link and copy-paste my email address, please. Thanks. Categories: Western-inspired

Cranberry Muffins

Cranberry Muffins These must have tasted much better if I hadn’t substituted butter with canola oil and yogurt. I just felt like "healthier" muffins all the sudden today. Maybe the idea wasn’t too terrible, but the problem was the proportion :P And maybe I didn’t need to add soy milk at all. But the toasted walnuts and coconut flakes, along with the slightly tart dried cranberries, made the muffins pretty tasty, so this was not a total failure after all. I’ll try again and post a recipe then (if I had a success). ;) Categories: Sweets

Lemon Poppyseed Muffins

Yesterday I bought a bunch of lemons imported from Chile (on sale, of course). So there’ll be a couple of lemon-related posts on this blog from now on. This is the PART-1: Lemon poppyseed muffins. The recipe is here. I didn’t have lemon-flavored yogurt so I used regular yogurt. Very moist and fluffy, but the lemon juice poured over the muffins at the end made them a bit too lemony for me. I should have tasted the juice before using it. :P For those who are wondering: These are the poppyseeds I can get at regular supermarkets here in Kochi, Japan. I do see some black ones here and there, but the majority is "white" (well, actually it's more like beige, but you know what I mean), I guess. Are these different from what you usually use in your country? Categories: Sweets

My Therapy...

Chocolate Muffins Something frustrating happened last night and this morning, so I made these in the late afternoon to pamper myself. While baking these in the oven, I gutted a couple of fish to let my aggression out. :O A nice teatime with these muffins healed me. And a good thing is that I have more than enough fish fillet to make meuniere for my supper tonight. Cooking/baking can be pretty therapeutic, you know. :) Categories: Sweets

A Dream Come True - Blueberry Muffins -

Blueberry Muffins and a Rhubarb-jam Muffin Look! These are the blueberries I harvested from my sunshine blue bush this summer. It’s a big progress from last year’s yield of three and a half berries, don’t you think? Since the end of last month, I had been picking a couple of ripe ones in every few days and storing them in the freezer. And finally today, I defrosted them all and baked these blueberry muffins. The strange-looking one in the back is a rhubarb-jam muffin. (I made the jam a while back but didn’t post about it. It is pretty tart.) I baked 3 of them because the blueberries were not enough for a half-batch of the recipe and I needed to use up the batter somehow. Of course, I have had better-tasting blueberry muffins before with more berries in each. But I guess you readers understand how special these muffins are to me. Five years ago, baking muffins with home-grown blueberries was a mere dream for me. Then this lovely sunshine blue bush came into my life. It survived the heat and the disease last year, and finally today, I baked blueberry muffins with the berries from my balcony garden! What a fulfilling experience. Now I’m going to freeze the muffins … after eating one more of them. ;) Then I’ll probably take a shower and enjoy the rest of the night watching “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” which I rented today. No work, no more study tonight (I took a test yesterday) and I can sleep in tomorrow morning. Yay! Categories: Sweets

If You're Lucky...

Banana Muffins Now, you have to bear with me while I experiment this and that trying to get used to my new (used) camera. ;P Anyway, I probably didn’t mention this before, but I LOVE muffins. I wouldn’t mind having them every morning, sweet and savory kinds alternating every day. Then why didn’t I post about them more often? Or why didn’t I make them more often? Because I couldn’t find a muffin pan that suits my small oven. The one I bought several years ago did fit in there, but it got stuck and could not turn with the turntable. (I use one of those oven-cum-microwave ovens.) Of course I can buy, at the nearby 100-yen shop, these paper muffin cups that you can just pour batter in and bake without using a muffin pan. But it didn’t seem to be a very cost-effective idea to me, and the hesitation kept me from baking muffins for years. Then just the other day, I found these metallic cups at the 100-yen shop, and a bunch of these thin muffin baking cups at MARUCO, our favorite baking goods store in Kochi. Hence, so much for my hesitation. (BTW, what do you call these metallic cups?) I was originally going to make apricot-jam muffins to use up the jam I made the other day, but it was no good any more. I forgot to put it in the fridge for the last couple of days!! So the plan had to be changed at the very last minute and I decided to throw in banana instead of the jam. Too bad I had only one banana left this morning and the decision was made after I took a big bite out of it… Thus, these turned out to be muffins "with a possibility of hitting tiny banana chunks if you’re lucky." But I’m totally happy with the combination of these metallic cups and paper baking cups, so dear readers, be ready for more muffin posts to come. ;) Categories: Sweets

Banana-Walnut Bread

Banana-Walnut Bread I had this sudden craving for banana-walnut bread today, so I baked one this afternoon. The banana I used wasn’t very ripe but this still tastes OK (a little overbaked, though). I just had two slices. Very filling. Mmmm… OK, guys, here's the recipe. I substituted the shortening with butter, though. ;)

Apple-Walnut Muffins

Apple-Walnut Muffins After the intensive osechi consuming period (???), I craved sweet smell of apple, butter and cinnamon. So I made these for breakfast this morning. Yes, my first baking of 2006. Hmmm... so good. :D

Sourdough English Muffins

Sourdough English Muffin Of course I haven’t forgotten about my dear Charlie II ;) This was my brunch yesterday -- sourdough English muffins – inspired by the recent (?) post by Nic of Bakingsheet. Actually I wanted them for breakfast, but I wasn't careful enough when I read the recipe the night before. I didn’t pay a proper attention to the part that said,“Sprinkle the tops of the muffins with cornmeal and leave them to rise, covered with a clean dishtowel, for about 45 minutes” and I slept in yesterday morning. So when all the necessary preparations and baking were done, it was already brunch time rather than breakfast ;P Charlie didn’t look very active, but the muffins rose pretty well. It was my first time making English muffins myself, and I liked using a frying pan, not oven, for baking them. The cornmeal tasted really good. It was my persimmon jam that wasn’t really great about this brunch, but I wanted to finish the jam no matter what. Next time I’m definitely going for orange marmalade.

Molasses-Flavored Zucchini Bread

Zucchini Bread with Molasses Concerning zucchini bread, I had 2 long-term goals that I wanted to achieve: one was to come up with a recipe of light-tasting breakfast zucchini bread, and the other was making one that tastes just like the very first zucchini bread I tasted in Pennsylvania about 20 years ago. Now that the first goal is almost satisfactory met, I’m up to the experiment for the second goal. This time I replaced half of the amount of sugar in my Breakfast zucchini bread recipe with dark molasses. This idea had been in my mind for a long time while I was going through the repeated experiments in the past. The very first zucchini bread I tasted in the U.S. was very moist, and I had been wondering if molasses or honey was added. Also, another recipe I found on the net seemed to be supportive of my idea. At least, someone already tried it, which means it’s not a totally crazy idea, right? So, with the Brer Rabbit molasses I bought last winter, I gave it a try. The result --- Yes, the texture turned out to be a little closer to the first zucchini bread I had, but not exactly. More than anything, the one in Penn. didn’t have the strong smell of molasses like this. So definitely, dark molasses was not it. This molasses-flavored zucchini bread was not bad at all, though… Too bad I didn't have any raisins to add. It must have been perfect with raisins. Read More My zucchini bread story -part 2 – It was more than 15 years after my first encounter with zucchini bread that I actually baked one myself in Japan, using a recipe I got from an American friend of mine. I don’t remember if I followed the recipe perfectly at my first try—I only remember that I was so happy about making one myself, even though it didn’t taste like the one I had in Pennsylvania. From the very beginning, however, the amount of sugar in the recipe scared me, -- 1 cup sugar for just a little more than 1 cup flour ! -- so I started cutting it down right away. Then the problem came in… I realized strange bitterness or harshness stayed on my tongue for a long time after eating the courgette bread. I’m not sure if I can call it ”bitterness.” It was not like that of bitter gourd… it was more like what happens to your tongue after eating too much pineapples , but not exactly the same. The disturbing harshness became more apparent as I reduced the amount of sugar to make it “healthier.” I had no idea where it came from. Zucchini? Baking powder? Spices? Or possibly, the walnuts? Or the Japanese salt that contained more bittern (nigari) because I always added a pinch of salt? I kept experimenting, changing the amount of ingredients each time, except for increasing the amount of sugar. I only thought about cutting down the amount of the thing that was causing the harshness, not hiding the problem with increased sweetness. But nothing worked. My zucchini bread always had disturbing harshness! After coming back to Kochi, I continued the experiment whenever zucchinis were available, but no progress --- or it got even worse. One day I brought my zucchini bread to a Japanese friend who wanted to taste it, then she instantly gave me a negative reaction after one bite. The problem was, according to her, “Definitely too much sugar and absolutely no zucchini flavor, and the terrible harshness.” She insisted that since vegetable was used as the main ingredient, it HAD TO be a healthy bread with noticeable veggie flavor, otherwise there was no meaning in adding zucchini. Vanilla extract and cinnamon must be reduced, too, she said, because it must have killed the zucchini flavor. And the harshness must be removed by all means, she said. So there my struggle got worse. Imagine making a courgette bread cutting down all those ingredients! That made the annoying harshness more apparent. All the zucchini bread recipes I found on the net didn’t say anything about the bitterness or harshness. I asked around on the net, but the answers I got were “I’ve never had such a problem.” "I don't know what bitterness you're talking about." I felt overwhelmed, but now that there’s someone else who’s waiting for the result of my experiment, I couldn’t give it up. Finally the mere sight of zucchini started causing a pain in my stomach. I’m not kidding. I could have just told my friend, “That’s the way zucchini bread is. If you don’t like it, just don’t eat it.” However, I myself wanted a mild-tasting, less-sweet zucchini bread that would be good for breakfast, so I just didn’t want to give up. Then last summer, I came up with an idea when I was making bitter-gourd stir fry. From several cooking magazines, I had learned that rubbing a bitter gourd with salt would reduce its bitterness. Can’t it work for my zucchini bread, if the bitterness/harshness was coming from the zucchini? What if I rub the zucchini with salt before grating it? I gave it a try… … and IT WORKED! :D Finally, I made a zucchini bread with less amount of sugar, oil and spices with no harsh aftertaste! When I tried it with a bowl of tomato soup, as I had dreamed about, I was simply overjoyed. To be cont'd.

Breakfast Zucchini Bread

Zucchini Bread Zucchini bread has become something very special to me in the past couple of years. I’ve experimented quite a bit to come up with a recipe of very light-tasting zucchini bread that is good -- at least for me –- for breakfast. Unlike many Japanese people, I love having sweets for breakfast once in a while, such as pancakes with loads of maple syrup, sweet muffins, cinnamon rolls and so on. But when I thought about having zucchini bread for breakfast, I definitely wanted it to have a light taste so that it would go well with my favorite breakfast foods like sunny-side up, sausages, tomato soup, yogurt, juice and coffee. Somehow I saw zucchini bread as something along the line of cornbread... something to eat with meals. My Brunch. Sometimes I toast zucchini bread slices and spread butter on them. I love eating this with cold soy milk. Recipe to follow. Read More BREAKFAST ZUCCHINI BREAD (formerly called OLE MISS SPECIAL) ** revised June 2009 * for 8 or 6 inch loaf pan Ingredients 1 Tbsp. salt (to rub zucchini with)** A) 1/2 to 2/3 cup sugar 1/4 cup vegetable oil 1 cup grated zucchini 1+1/2 eggs vanilla extract (a pinch salt)** B) 1(+1/8 to 1/4) cup all-purpose flour* 1/8 tsp. baking soda 1/2 tsp. baking powder a few dashes cinnamon nutmeg (optional) 1/2 cup (or more, if desired) chopped walnuts Sift B (except walnuts) together.　Rub zucchini with salt (I use apx. 1 Tbsp) by rolling it on a cutting board until the skin becomes tender. Leave for a little while to let moisture beads form on the skin. Rinse well with water. Grate the zucchini to make one cupful, drain and squeeze gently to get excess juice out (but not too much). Mix A in a bowl. Add B to A and mix. Add walnuts. Pour in a greased or buttered loaf pan (8x4 or 6x3 inch) and bake at 375F (190C) for apx. 30 min. * Adjust the amount of flour depending on how moist the grated zucchini is. Actually, this is the recipe that I gave chika about a year ago before I started my own blogs. (A few minor additions were made in the recipe posted above.) At that time I was using a nickname, “ole miss” on some online message boards so I named my recipe “ole miss special.” ;P I thought my recipe deserved that name because I had worked so hard to come up with it. Chika tried out my recipe, kindly said she liked it and posted about it on her blog. As many of us know well, she is such a nice person who is very fair and considerate of copyright. When she asked for my permission before posting the recipe on her site, I instantly okayed it (and sent her the recipe in Japanese). Oh, how thrilled I was to see my recipe on her site --- a foodblog from Hawaii written in English to be read by readers all over the world! :D And her directions are much better than mine. (See the comment section of her post.) Because of its mild taste, this breakfast version of courgette bread seems to have inspired some people to creatively give some twists and make their own versions. This year I’m going to experiment some more for a recipe of a sweeter & moister version which should be closer to the 1st zucchini bread I tasted in the U.S. long time ago. There’s a lot I want to write about me and zucchini bread, including the reason why I rub zucchini with salt, but it’d be too long for a single entry. Since I’m going to make zucchini bread a few more times in this zucchini season, I’ll post just the “part 1” of the story here. The rest will be added to my forthcoming zucchini bread entries. ---- My zucchini bread story -- part 1 -- * My first encounter with zucchini bread was at an Easter dinner at my friend’s house in Pennsylvania, USA, back in 1984. There I tasted a slice of something that looked like pound cake, except it was green. And it was so sweet and moist and… something I had never tasted before. I asked my friend what it was, and she said, “Zucchini bread,” but I had no idea what zucchini was then. She also told me that it was her grandmother who made it. According to my friend, her grandmother had lost her eyesight (because of a disease?) but she was an excellent baker, and no one in her family and extended families could make zucchini bread like her grandmother did. I was so touched to witness how much everyone loved the grandmother. The moment I told her how great her zucchini bread was, her face brightened up with a smile. That was an unforgettable scene. If I were as shameless as I am now, I would have asked her to give me the recipe. Unfortunately I wasn’t. Also I assumed that such an elaborate dessert would be too difficult for me to make and just chickend out. So that was all for my encounter with zucchini bread. I had no chance to eat or even see one for quite a while after that. To be cont’d.

Banana Walnut Muffins

Banana Walnut Muffin It’s raining now. Today’s high was 23 degree Celsius and humidity was 95%, according to a Japanese weather forecast website. Too warm and humid for this part of Japan in April :( Maybe partly because of this weather, I was so exhausted when I came home today after a long day. I craved for something sweet, and found 2 bananas turning almost brown on my kitchen table. OK, bananas. You are telling me to turn you into banana muffins, right? How I wished that I was living with someone to cook/bake for me! I thought I wouldn’t be able to stand up again once I sat down, and the mere thought of measuring flour and sugar and beating butter just brought me down. But you know what…. my craving for banana muffins finally won. OK, now I’m just going to scarf down the muffins (with cold milk), and go to bed early. I need a rest.... Sweet dream, everyone. P.S. I added some photos of cherry blossoms at night on my another blog.

Chocolate Muffins

Chocolate Muffin Not quite perfect, but pretty yummicious!! I'm no great baker, but this time I liked what I made. MrsTweety’s comment the other day somewhat triggered my chocolate cake craving, and I spent some time googling for a recipe of gooey chocolate cake. But there were just too many and when I picked one recipe site, I had no energy left to beat eggs to bake a cake. So I went for something quicker and easier…. Chocolate muffins. I used this recipe, but without chocolate chips because I didn’t have any. And I thought it was better without them to enjoy the soft and rich texture of the muffins. Well, to be honest, I was running out of baking powder and ended up using less than what the recipe called for. The muffins didn’t rise as much as I thought they would. And I used some leftover big paper muffin cups and put batter to less than half of each cup (so that they get done faster). So, after all, I’m not quite happy with the way they look. Still the taste and texture were not bad… No, more than that… They were yummicious!

Happy Halloween!

Pumpkin Muffin Some Halloween-related events are scheduled for this weekend in this town. The one I joined last night was a big costume & dance party :) From 11:30 pm to 3:00am, I kept chatting and dancing! (Details here.) I slept in this morning and now I’m craving for miso soup….(Miso is said to be a good alkalizing food which is good for you when you have a hangover.) Anyway, I felt the urge to make something using pumpkin this weekend to celebrate Halloween. As you can probably imagine, I’m a bit tired of pies recently, so pumpkin pie was not my choice. Instead, I baked some cute Pumpkin muffins yesterday. The recipe is from my favorite muffin book, ” Itsudemo Muffin – Muffins & Quick Breads” by Asa Shiokawa. This is a real nice book. What’s so nice about the book is not only the recipes included but also the PHOTOS!! The photos of muffins/quick breads in this book look so nice with a great effect of the natural sunlight and shade. Oh how I long to be able to take photos like them and post to my foodblog!! Now, this is the kind of pumpkin we have here: Kabocha It tastes very sweet and its flesh is (almost like sweet potatoes or chestnuts) not as moist as the pumpkins you usually use for pumpkin pie, I guess. This kabocha is very good for this type of pumpkin muffins, because about 2/3 of the pumpkin called for in the recipe is not pureed but added to the batter as pumpkin chunks. And the chunks give a little snap of pumpkin flavor, which goes really well with the salty pumpkin seeds on top. See the orange-colored pumpkin chunks inside? The recipe says the muffins would be good with cinnamon butter, too. I’m usually a coffee drinker, but today, with these muffins, I felt like having hot cocoa. So, Happy Halloween!!!