Irish Soda Bread - Recipe

Irish Soda Bread

Irish soda bread is great to have in your arsenal. It it is leavened with baking soda and buttermilk instead of yeast, so you can go from conception to hot bread on the table in under an hour, with only a few minutes of active work. It adapts beautifully to being made with half whole wheat flour to boost the nutritional value, and it is fun to make with kids. You can add raisins or currants or caraway seeds, or just leave it plain, to suit your mood or menu.

As an aside, I've been enjoying keeping buttermilk as a staple lately. In the past I never had it around, so if the urge came over me to make buttermilk pancakes, or biscuits, or soda bread, I'd either use powdered buttermilk, or forge some kind of substitution with milk and vinegar, or yogurt and so on. Those can all be good, but buttermilk itself is more consistent in most recipes, and it lasts quite awhile in the fridge, so it is isn't a big deal to keep on hand.

In the recipe below, I call for half pastry flour and half whole wheat flour. The pastry flour will give you a more tender bread, but all purpose is fine too. Or you could use half all purpose and half whole wheat pastry flour. Basically any four cups of wheat-based flour is going to be fine, depending on your pantry and desire.

Irish Soda Bread
Makes 1 large loaf
Vegetarian; not vegan or gluten-free
Adapted from Saveur magazine

• 2 cups pastry flour (see note above)
• 2 cups whole wheat flour
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 4 tablespoons butter, cool
• 1 cup raisins or currants, or 1.5 tablespoons caraway seeds, or nothing
• 1 egg, beaten
• 2 cups buttermilk

1. Preheat oven to 425 F. Sift together the flours, sugar, salt, and baking soda.
2. Cut the butter into the flour with two knives or a pastry cutter, as when making a pie crust. (Tip: if your butter is frozen, microwave it for ten seconds at a time until it is cuttable).
3. Add the remaining ingredients, mix well with a spoon, then knead right in the bowl for couple of minutes. It should be most but firm enough to form a ball. If not, add a bit more flour.
4. Shape into a large ball, place on a greased (or silpat-covered) cookie sheat, and make an X in the top with a sharp knife.
5. Bake for about 40 minutes until golden brown, and sounds hollow when rapped on the bottom. Better yet, use an instant read thermometer to look for an internal temperature of 180 degrees. That is a much more reliable way to gauge doneness. If the bread browns too fast, cover it with a tinfoil tent until it is done.
6. Allow to cool for a few minutes, and serve with swaths of sweet cream butter.

Madeleines With Munchkins - Baking With Children

Madeleine cookies - or really, teacakes

My goal for this post is to write about madeleines without mentioning Proust (again).

Mini-me is obsessed with those little packets of three madeleines sold at the Starbucks' register, so I asked if she'd like to make them at home some day. Of course the answer was yes. Remembering that Heidi of 101cookbooks had run a madeleine recipe over a year ago that looked intriguing, we opted to follow hers rather than Joy of Cooking (or more research).

Looking now, I see the recipes are dramatically different! Joy calls for no lemon zest(!), double the flour to butter ratio(!), uses pastry flour instead of all-purpose, and uses baking powder where Heidi uses none. I guess I'll have to try this version next for comparison. I'm pretty sure the pastry flour at least is a good idea, for a more tender crumb.

They definitely turned out great, it was all we could do to not scarf the whole batch the moment they cooled off. Just the right amount of lemon flavor, and a tender/chewy bite.

Sarina pointed out that they are more like a cake than a cookie, and in fact Joy refers to them as a teacake. The beating of the sugar & eggs is very much like a sponge cake.

Although madeleines seem like a good thing to be a purist about, I could imagine using lime, grapefruit or orange zest instead. You won't catch me making Thai-spiced madeleines with coconut foam though!

Kiddo really enjoyed measuring ingredients, watching the mixer, folding the batter together, and filling the special pan. We brought half the batch over to the neighbors and that was fun too. I think madeleines will be in our regular repertoire because they are really easy but when you offer them to guests or give them as gifts, they seem kinda special!

Here are Amazon links for basic or super-deluxe pans if you want to try your hand at them. I probably wouldn't buy non-stick or silicone because they likely won't brown as well. Just use a good brand of pan spray or butter, they come out easily.

Munchkin filling the molds

Cherry-Pumpkin Seed Muffins From The "Farm To Table Cookbook" - Recipe

Cherry-Pumpkin Seed Muffins From The "Farm To Table Cookbook" - Recipe

Sarina gave me this beautiful new book, the The Farm to Table Cookbook: The Art of Eating Locally by Northwest author Ivy Manning for our anniversary. It is organized by seasons, with an emphasis on ingredients that you might find at a farmer's market, and includes recipes both from the author and a who's-who of excellent regional chefs.

Last Saturday morning, my daughter and I made the Cherry-Almond muffins from the book, but since we can't use almonds or almond extract in our house we substituted pumpkin seeds and vanilla extract. It turned out to be great that we made them, because a few hours later, Sarina was in labor and we took the last few muffins to the hospital with us. They were much better than hospital food for a late night snack! (Not that those Swiss Miss vanilla pudding cups aren't delicious. Ok, they're not.)

To make this recipe, you'll need to pit the cherries. The book suggests putting them in a plastic bag and smushing the pits out, which I'm sure would work. I used this very simple and inexpensive "hole punch" style pitter which works great too, as long as you aren't trying to do ten pounds at a time. Hint: do it in the sink, and keep your bowl of pitted cherries a foot or so away so you can be sure not to get any pits mixed in.

Here's our nut-free version of the muffin recipe, which Manning curated from Chef Lee Posey of Portland's Pearl Bakery. By the way, if you make them, please come back and fill out the Recipe Tester Form! Your feedback is always needed.

Cherry Muffins With Pumpkin Seeds (Pepitas)
Yields 12 Muffins
Vegetarian; not vegan or gluten-free

• 6 tablespons unsalted butter, room temperature
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/3 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 cup whole milk
• 8 ounces fresh cherries (Bings or Lapins), pitted and roughly chopped
• 1/2 cup shelled pumpkin seeds (pepitas), toasted in a skillet or oven
• 1/4 cup shelled pumpkin seeds (pepitas), raw

1. Preheat oven to 375. Grease or line 12 muffin cups.
2. Beat butter, sugar, and salt until light and fluffy, either in a mixer or by hand.
3. Beat in the egg and vanilla extract.
4. In another bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, and baking powder.
5. Gently mix half of the flour mixture into the butter, then half of the milk, then the remaining half of each. Do not overbeat or the muffins will be tough.
6. Stir in the cherries and toasted pumpkin seeds.
7. Distribute the batter into the muffin tins, and top with the raw pumpkin seeds.
8. Bake 20-25 minutes until golden brown and a toothpick comes out clean.
9. Cool and chow.