The Streusel Bread Experiment

Last month (or perhaps the month before that) I saw "Walnut Streusel Bread" on the cover of Cooking Light Magazine and thought that I might want to try making a "quick" bread other than banana bread for once.

I altered their recipe a bit and made an Orange Almond Streusel Bread instead. I also kept saying the word "streusel" in a ridiculous Arnold/Hans/Franz type accent which isn't a required step in the recipe, but sure makes it more fun!

Ingredients:
Streusel:
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1 tablespoon water
1/2 cup quick oats (instant oatmeal)
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon of salt
3 1/2 tablespoons melted butter*
2 teaspoons orange extract
3 tablespoons sliced almonds

Bread:
9 ounces all-purpose flour (about 2 cups)
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 1/2 tablespoons melted butter*
2/3 cup granulated sugar
3 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup buttermilk
Baking spray with flour

*Overall this is 1 stick of butter between the streusel and the bread

Preparation
1. Preheat oven to 350°.

2. Prepare Streusel
Combine brown sugar and water in bowl. Add oats, flour, cinnamon, and salt. Stir together until well mixed. Add melted butter and orange extract to the mix and stir it all together. Add the almonds in and stir some more. Put it off to the side and get your bread ingredients ready.

3. Prepare Bread
Mix flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in a small bowl and put aside.

Beat melted butter and granulated sugar in a large bowl until well blended, then add eggs in and blend together

Beating at low speed, add flour mixture and buttermilk alternately to sugar mixture; beat just until combined.

Scrape half of batter into a 9 x 5-inch loaf pan coated with baking spray; sprinkle with 1/3 of streusel mixture.

Spread remaining batter over streusel.

Sprinkle remaining streusel on top of batter.

Bake at 350° for 45 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out with moist crumbs clinging. Cool 10 minutes in pan on a wire rack. Remove from pan; cool completely on wire rack.

I thought the streusel bread was nice. It had a light, delicate flavor and is something that goes well with a cup of coffee or tea. A great breakfast pastry I think. The bread perhaps could use some more flavor depending on what you're looking for. I've decided that this is an excellent "base recipe" to make some more flavorful streusel breads.

Tonight I made a second streusel bread that swapped the orange and vanilla flavors. I added 2 teaspoons of orange extract to the bread batter to make an orange bread and used 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract in the streusel to make a vanilla almond crunch. I think it's much more flavorful this way. Super yummy now.

I still have half a container of buttermilk to use and I think I am going to try some more flavor combinations. I might use coconut oil in the batter instead of butter and add coconut flakes to the streusel to make a toasted almond coconut bread. Another idea is to go heavy on the cinnamon in the streusel to make a coffee cake like bread. A maple walnut or maple pecan version also sounds nice. There are many possibilities with this one!

Tropical Caketini (Tropical Martini + Cake)

After looking through older photos I'm feeling inspired to add some entries for creations that happened before I started this blog. I'm going all the way back to August 2010 for this posting. ;)

The Tropical Martini is one of my favorite drinks. It's an absolutely delicious combination of vodka, passion fruit, mango, and pineapple. If you've ever been to The Cheesecake Factory then you might be familiar with their pretty & super yummy tropical martini.

I make my own tropical martini at home with pineapple mango juice, passion fruit concentrate, and Smirnoff Passion fruit vodka; garnished with grenadine and strawberries.

I should post that recipe when I get a photo of it in an actual martini glass. I do love my "M" glass though because the colors match the drink and the glass was a gift from one of my most favorite people ever. You know who you are. :-D

Anyway, on to the Tropical Caketini where I combined the magical deliciousness of cake with the flavors and booze of the tropical martini.

The moist passion fruit, mango, and pineapple flavored cake was divided into four thin layers.

There were three layers of filling. The top and bottom layers were a vodka passion fruit frosting mixture that had a slightly sour note to it like a sour cocktail mix. The middle layer (shown below) was a mix of chopped strawberries soaked in passion fruit vodka and grenadine.

Layers assembled with strawberry frosting to seal in the middle layer:

The cake was covered with a fluffy strawberry frosting and then topped with fresh strawberry slices.

My coworkers, who are more lucky than they realize (lol), then enjoyed the tropical caketini in the office the following day. Look at those moist layers of yummy cake and gooey fruity fillings!

Tropical Caketini - I'll "clink" to that.

Peanut Butter-Chocolate Banana Cream Pie

Many years ago (circa 2006) I stumbled upon this recipe for Peanut Butter-Chocolate Banana Cream Pie from Kraft. The recipe was a little too Sanda-Lee "semi-homemade" for me, but I decided to use the same idea with more "tasty" ingredients. The best thing about the recipe is that you can make it as "from scratch" or "assembled/semi-homemade" as you would like.

I last made this pie for Thanksgiving (2010) and saw the photos last night when I was uploading my cake-pie photos. They seemed all alone out there and worthy of their own blog entry.

Step One: The crust. The Kraft recipe uses Nilla Wafers, but I really think Graham crackers go better with the chocolate/banana/peanut butter combo so I made a crust from crushed Graham crackers.

Step Two: Cut bananas in half (length-wise) and then cut into smaller sections, placing them cut side down.

Step Three: This step doesn't look so pretty lol. A mixture of melted chocolate and peanut butter is poured over the banana slices.

Step Four: Cook some yummy pudding on the stove.

Step Five: Pour chilled pudding with homemade whipped cream folded into it on top of the chocolate/PB covered bananas.

Step Six: I decided to put a hypnotic swirl of chocolate syrup on the pie just because I could.

Step Seven: Make a fancy design with homemade whipped cream on top of all of the delicious ingredients.

Step Eight: Garnish the pie. I used chopped up mini Reese's PB Cups.

Final Step: Eat the pie and knife anyone who tries to steal your piece of pie! Guarding your pie is the most important part of pie survival.

Thanksgiving Dessert: Cake That Looks Like Pie

I like cake more than most pies, but pies seem more Thanksgiving-like so I made a chocolate cake in a pie dish, frosted it with peanut butter frosting, covered it in a chocolate cream sauce, and then used the frosting to make a pie crust decoration.

Then I made a bunch of cupcakes with random designs; some also look like pies. :-D

They are cute, but more importantly, they are also super delicious!