Stakehouse Molasses Bread

I've finally found it!  You know that tasty, craveable, slightly sweet, dark, molasses bread that comes with your meal at steakhouses around the country?  Well, I've been trying to make it at home.  I've tried multiple recipes online and haven't been satisfied with the results, until last night. I have finally found one that works great! The bread is beautiful, soft, and flavorful!  It has a great texture and is best served warm from the oven and slathered with butter!

Steakhouse Molasses bread!  Soft, sweet, and hot from the oven.

Let's get started.  This recipe by the way was found at "It's always Autumn"
You will need

Ingredients:
1 cup warm water
1 Tablespoon active dry yeast
1 Tablespoon of sugar
1 3/4 cup of wheat flour
1 egg
2 Tablespoons of butter, room temp
2 Tablespoons of molasses
1/4 cup of honey 
2 cups of bread flour (can also use AP flour)
1 Tablespoon natural baking cocoa
1 teaspoon of salt 

Optional:  1 egg for an egg wash, and quick oats for a pretty topping 
Printable recipe found here: Click me!

First put 1 cup of warm water, 1 Tablespoon of dry active yeast, and 1 Tablespoon of sugar into your stand mixer. 

I'll admit, this looks a tad gross.  Like I need a lab coat and a beaker to proceed.

Let it "proof" for 10 minutes, (or sit around until bubbly and foamy).

Ah that's better... I think

Add in 1 3/4 cup whole wheat flour, 1 egg, 2 Tablespoons of room temperature butter, 2 Tablespoons of molasses and 1/4 cup of honey.

I finally found a "molasses bread" that actually uses real molasses!

Once combined a little bit, add in 1 cup of the bread flour (we just used regular AP unbleached flour), 1 Tablespoon of baking cocoa power, and 1 teaspoon of salt.  Turn the mixer on low (with the bread paddle).

It's the unsweetened cocoa power that gives this bread it's darker hue, but luckily not a chocolate flavor at all.

Mix the dough together a bit, then add in the last 1/2 cup to 1 cup of flour.  I ended up using the whole remaining 1 cup.  Kneed the dough for 10 min on low, until the dough ball pulls away from the sides. The dough should be soft and elastic. Pull the dough out and roll it into a ball, place in a bowl where it can rise for 60-90 min, covered and in a warm place.

Pretty lil' dough ball

After 90 minutes (we did the full time recommended) we peeked under the tea towel and found it had doubled in size.

Hello big ol' bread lump!

We decided to split the dough in half, to make two long loaves, because my hubby gave me this handy dandy french bread loaf pan, that makes two loaves at the same time (and helps the loaves keep their shape instead of flattening out like they would on a regular cookie sheet).

Just sort of stretched and gently pulled the dough into a long tubular shape

Then your bread needs to rise a 2nd time for an hour. In a non-drafty place.

You really have to be patient to make yummy bread.

After an hour the bread has started to fill out the loaf pan.  Since I wanted this to look and taste like the bread you get at the Blank Angus Restaurant around these parts, I brushed the top of the loaves with an egg wash

action shot

Then sprinkle on some of those quick oats and they will stick to the egg wash.

Look how pretty!  Now it looks like a longer version of the round rolls you share at the restaurant

Bake the bread at 350º for 27-30 min. By the time these are ready to come out of the oven, your house will smell amazing!

Activate smell-o-vision here

You can let the bread cool all the way, or if you're like me and can't resist, cool it just a little and try to cut a slice while it's still warm so it will melt the butter.

Our hopes were high at this point.  It looked great... it smelled great... but would it taste great?

My hubby surprised us with some fancy Kerry Gold Irish butter, he had been saving for just such an occasion. The bread was still warm enough to start slowly melting the butter... YUM.

Steakhouse Molasses Bread, warm from the oven

We served this with some slow cooker loaded baked potato soup and green salad with garlic butter croutons.

Feast your eyes on all that delectable goodness!

I have to thank Autumn for this recipe that turned out fantastic!  It's soft, it's got a great texture, it smells fabulous... AND it tastes amazing.  It's the closest I've ever come to that yummy restaurant bread at home. 

You're gonna want to make this!

This would go great with a number of warm soups you make this fall and winter, but I will admit, it also tasted delicious toasted up in the morning for a hearty little breakfast treat.  So look no further, I've done all the searching for you.  Make this molassess bread and you won't regret it!

Enjoy.

Banana Bread

We've been busy this summer, running around, getting ready for school to start, and wouldn't you know it, I look over on the counter and I have a few bananas starting to turn brown.  Too brown for small people to eat, that is for sure.  To them, brown = poison!  Head for the hills if your apples oxidize!  Fruit peels and flesh should be empirically attractive before the small fry shall deem it edible.  I decide we should not let these ugly, yet extra sweet banans go to waste, and that this would be an excellent time to test out a new banana bread recipe.  So behold, I give you about the best thing you can make with a few-days-old fruit!

Delicious Banana Bread hot from the oven - something everyone will love!

If you google "the best banana bread ever" a myriad of recipes will pop up.  One of the first few is from Martha Stewart.  After a quick glance through the ingredients, I really liked that the recipe had sour cream in it, which I hoped translated into that the whole thing was going to be intensely moist and deliciously dense.  Here is a link to the original recipe, which we followed exactly (minus the nuts).

First you will need the following ingredients:

1 stick of butter at room temperature
1 cup of sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups unbleached flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon of salt (less if you use salted butter)
1 cup of mashed bananas
1/2 cup sour cream
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cups chopped nuts (optional)

Take your softened butter and 1 cup of sugar and place in a mixing bowl and cream together.

Add two eggs.

Until Blended well.  Add in 1 1/2 cups of flour, 1 teaspoon of baking soda, and the salt.  Mix just until blended

Now you want to add in your 1 cup of mashed bananas, the 1/2 cup of sour cream, and the 1 teaspoon of vanilla.

Blend together to form a nice smooth batter.

Pour into a prepared pan that has been greased with butter

And bake at 350º for 70 minutes, or until golden brown

Your house will smell like heaven at this point.  Keep in the pan to cool completely, or after about 10 minutes turn out to a cutting board to cool.

Mmmm can you smell it?

At this time you can cut it up and serve it.

Mmmmm mmm delicious!  If you get a chance to eat it while it is still warm, it's pure heaven I tell you.  You can also let it cool all the way, wrap it up, and give as simple house warming gift, hostess gift, eat it for breakfast the next day.  I can't imagine anyone refusing delicious, homemade from scratch banana bread.  We like to put a little butter on it while it is still warm and enjoy it with a cold glass of milk.

So all in all, this turned out to be a great recipe.  That Martha really knows what she is talking about.  The bread was very moist, very dense, and of course very delicious!  Happy Baking, enjoy!

Snickerdoodle Breakfast Puffs

If we have a little extra time on Saturday mornings, one of the favorite things my girls and I like to do is watch the Pioneer Woman.  They love watching all about her horses, farm animals, kids, and the recipes she whips up on the ranch.  We were actually watching an older episode where Ree was making something called "French Breakfast Puffs", and I could tell just by the look in my oldest daughter's eyes she was dying to test out that recipe.  Like, right that very second.  So into the kitchen we went to surprise daddy with a home-baked tasty treat!

Snickerdoodle Breakfast Puffs - or French Breakfast Puffs from the Pioneer Woman

I happen to have all of Ree's cookbooks, and we found the French Puffs recipe in the first one.  Did I mention that all my books are now personally signed by the Pioneer Woman herself?  That's right!  Last December I was able to meet Ree in person when she came to our town.  I shall blog about that soon, but you must know, she is as sweet and kind in person as she comes across in her show!  All of that, and she makes some pretty delicious food!  We got so excited about making this recipe I even forgot to take pictures until the dough was already in the muffin tin.  No need to fret though, Ree has the play by play picture recipe posted on her blog in case you want to make these bad boys yourself.  Once you get the dough ready, you scoop in generously into a 12-muffin tin.

This dough is nice and thick - easy to use an ice cream scoop to get it into the pan

Bake at 350º for 20-25 minutes until golden brown.  These baked up huge! Enormous actually.  Come to think of it, the next time we make this recipe, I am totally going to make these in a few mini muffin pans.  That way you can pop them in your mouth like a little sugary donut hole.

Next, while they are cooling a bit on the stove top, mix in a bowl 1 1/2 cups of sugar and 3 teaspoons of cinnamon.

Mix sugar and cinnamon until blended, and at the same time, melt two sticks of butter in another glass bowl in the microwave.

Making an assembly line, roll the muffin completely in the melted butter and quickly roll around in the cinnamon/sugar mixture.  This was a bit messy and I must appologize there was no real way to snap a pic with my camera of the dipping process, mostly because my hand was coated in cinnamon and sugar the second I started.

Mmmm delicious Snickerdoodle puffs

Most of my muffins were so big that I ended up cutting them in half to make smaller portions.  The butter made a nice way for the sugar and cinnamon to stick and coat the whole thing.  Seriously.  These were so good!  We could not get over how much they tasted like a snickerdoodle cookie.

 
We stored these is a plastic container with a lid and they lasted for a few mornings of breakfasts, and come to think of it, bed time snacks to boot!  Ree also said you can freeze these up and defrost them as needed.  We can not wait to make these again in mini muffin size. Here's a link to her recipe one more time.   Enjoy

 

Ham, Cheese, and Onion Frittata

So I was still a few days away from the end of the 31 nights of different dinners for January when our friends gave us a dozen eggs from their chickens. We had already had scrambled eggs earlier in the month, so according to the rules (no repeats) I had to think of something else to do with them.  I had left over ham I had chopped up and saved from one of the dinners, so I was thinking omelets at first, but then I remembered something I had seen like an omelet, only you bake it in a frying pan in the oven.  So now I give you my first attempt at a frittata.

A ham, cheese, and onion frittata

I went a "googlin" to see how to make them and checked out Alton Brown's recipe, which I used as sort of a base.  The nice thing about fritattas is that you can use any left over meat and veggies you have lying around.  Great for after a holiday party when you have both ham and a veggie tray to use up.  Alton used asparagus, but you can use anything you love and throw it in the pan.  I even heard some people put left over noodles in there.  Weird, right?  I just stuck with the basics.  Leftover ham, some diced onions, eggs, herbs, and a bit of shredded cheese.

This recipe is very loose and flexible.  The size of your pan and the number of eggs you use depends on how many people you are feeding.  Alton recommends using a 12-inch non-stick yet oven safe frying pan.  I do not have one like that (the handles would melt off) so I used my smaller medium sized (8in) cast iron because it was just me and hubby.  The number of eggs you use also depends on if you want a thick frittata or a thin one.

The difference between a frittata and an omelet is (besides the obvious flipping halfway through the cooking), is that you saute the meat and veggies before pouring the eggs over.  Also there is something usually added in the egg mixture, like herbs and Parmesan cheese.  First I sauteed the ham and onions together on medium for about 5 minutes until the ham was heated and the onions were translucent.  

This makes for a lovely smell...

 
Next preheat your oven on a low broil and then in a small bowl mix together:

6-7 eggs (or more if you want a thicker frittata)
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese (I used Kraft)
Johny's seasoning salt (to taste)
fresh cracked pepper
1 Tablespoon of dried basil or parsley (can use fresh too)

We used basil instead of parsley as the recipe suggested

 
Once your veggies and meat are ready to go, pour the egg mixture into the pan.

Add caption

At first you want to treat this like an omelet. The pan was pretty hot from the saute so I backed off the heat a bit before I poured in the eggs.  Move the ingredients around in the pan slowly with a spatula until they start to set up.

Mmmm.... yummy

As the sides start to set but it is still loose in the middle, I sprinkled on a tiny bit of grated cheese.

everything is better with cheese.

 
Put the whole pan in the oven and let it broil for 3-4 minutes until the top is set

 
It started to poof up just like our pannukakku recipe... always an impressive feat.

The frittata, the much easier omelet

This next step is exactly where a non stick, oven safe pan would come in handy, because as you pull it out of the oven you can easily slide the whole frittata onto a cutting board.  Since we had the higher sides of a cast iron skillet, we actually took two spatulas and lifted it out onto the cutting board.  I was relieved it came out in one piece.

The finished frittata on the cutting board

You can cut through this baby with a pizza cutter and I hear it is quite traditional to slice it into wedges.  After that serve it up with some hashbrowns or toast.

 
A few things to note about the frittata.  It is definitely more dense than a light and fluffy omelet.  The flavors of the cooked onions and ham, along with the basil and the Parmesan gave it a more "grown up" flavor.  I personally thought it was on the "dry" side but I like my eggs a little runny. I was thinking it needed some kind of dipping sauce next time, but I'm not sure what. The one great mommy bonus was that you can serve everyone at once, which is nice because when you make omelets, normally it's one at a time.  These also heated up nicely the next day for left overs.  So that was our first attempt at a frittata.  It's fun, it's different, it was quick (about 10 min),and it was very flavorful. Enjoy.

Pannukakku (Finnish Pancake)

I was so proud of my hubby a few months back when he came downstairs with a printed recipe he wanted to try.  The name alone was crazy enough for me to love it immediately. Pannukakku.  Go ahead, try and say it now.  Just rolls off the tongue I tell you.  This amazing Finnish pancake is a wonder to behold. In what other dish can you feed a room full of people with only four eggs?. Not to mention it impressively puffs up like a 3rd grade science experiment gone awry, only to collapse into a creamy tasty treat the whole family will love. No longer do you have to stand and flip endless pancakes and be the last one to eat!  Just pour this extremely simple batter in a hot buttered pan and 30 minutes later you can all sit down to breakfast together.  Genius.

Pannukakku - Try making a Finnish pancake today!!

The texture of Pannukakku is very interesting.  It's like a custard, a crepe, french toast, and a pancake had a baby.  Creamy, dense, and yet light and fluffy at the same time.  The thing with Pannukakku is that it is made with the most basic of ingredients.  Eggs, milk, flour and sugar.  Everybody and their grandma seems to have a slightly different variation.  We've done you a favor by making a few different recipes over that last few months, and have narrowed it down to our most favorite. You will need: (Full printable recipe at the end of the post)

4 Eggs
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 1/2 cups milk
1 cup flour
1/4 cup sugar
4 Tablespoons butter

Heat oven to 400º

Crack the four eggs into a mixing bowl

What did we all do before Kitchen-aid mixers??

Blend until the eggs are combined

Egg action shot my hubby was very proud of

By the way, while you are mixing these ingredients together, place the 4 Tablespoons of butter in the bottom of a 9x13 (or a 10x15 for a thinner version) pan and place in the 400º oven.  The butter will melt while you mix the rest of the ingredients.  Be extremely careful at this step.  Do not leave the kitchen or leave the melting butter unattended.  My sister in law caught her entire kitchen on fire this exact way while making cornbread.  (It's a really good cornbread recipe by the way, I will share it with you soon)

Melting butter... delicious but please KEEP an eye on it

After the eggs are blended, mix the 3/4 tsp of salt, the 2 1/2 cups of milk, 1 cup of flour, and 1/4 cup of sugar.

Blend until you have a smooth thin batter

Pannukakku batter is very thin and not like a regular pancake batter

Keep checking on your butter.  By now it should be melted and bubbling slightly.

No need to grease the pan with delicious bubbling butter around

Gently pour your batter into the hot pan.  Pour very slowly, it's 400º and butter splashes would hurt.

Pannukakku batter pouring into the buttery pan

Now it is ready to be placed in the oven. Set the timer for 30 minutes.  At first it will look like absolutely nothing is happening...

But suddenly stuff happens.... It starts growing.  Like it's trying to get out of the pan.  Bring the kids over and turn on the oven light.  It's like breakfast and a SHOW I tell you...

It's fun to watch your breakfast try and get away

After 30 minutes (check it at 25 minutes as oven times vary) it should be very puffy, and golden brown.

Warning, taking this out of the oven in front of guests will garner "oooo's and ahhh's" from all those assembled.

Once you gently pull this out of the oven and place on the stove top, some people (okay, people like us) were told to sprinkle a bit more sugar over the top, to get that tasty brule' effect. The sugar will melt into the hot pancake.  The funny thing is, once this thing hits room temperature air, it will start to collapse.  I have a hard time not thinking of the Wicked Witch of the West's dramatic line "I'm melting" as it sinks down in the pan.  The edges will still stay poofy and golden though (my favorite part).  Now you have some pretty hard decisions to make in the next few minutes.  How to you serve and EAT your pannukakku? It's a tough job, but someone has to do it!  Well there is the easy and traditional method very close to it's American pancake cousin, with butter and syrup!

You can serve it with fruit compote, jelly and whipped cream:

This was apricot pineapple jelly, a recent discovery that I fell in love with

One time we rolled them up more like a crepe and put our garden strawberries and homemade strawberry jelly and whipped cream on them.  That gave it a nice ultra fancy touch.

Pannukakku the baked custard pancake.

So needless to say, this easy little recipe has become a quick family favorite on the weekends.  Comes together in just a few minutes and my favorite part is that you can sit down at the same time and enjoy it with your whole family.  I'm sure you are thinking to yourself, hey I have FOUR eggs in my fridge right now... I could surprise my family tomorrow and dazzle them with something new!  Let me know how it turns out and what you guys like to put on your Pannukakku! 

Full printable recipe found here.