All the Riches of Fall: Olive Oil Pumpkin, Carrot, and Zucchini Bread

I wasn’t looking for a new favorite pumpkin bread. I’ve been pretty happy with our family standard. And Shiv’s gorgeous loaf from last year was also on my baking list.

But Carolyn, who writes Umami Girl as well as a weekly column over at Serious Eats, posted something too tantalizing to ignore: her friend Viv’s olive oil pumpkin bread. I couldn’t scroll past it. Olive oil pumpkin bread?

Olive oil baked goods are all the rage these days. There’s some pretty delicious olive oil cake for sale at a coffee shop in our neighborhood that’s too tiny for chairs. Paired with their near-perfect espresso, it’s an expensive addiction. And this olive-oil-pumpkin combo is a particularly good idea, since the deep flavors of pumpkin bread can stand up to the rich, musky flavor of olive oil.

Never one to leave well enough alone, I didn’t stop there. You see, I love a warm gingery slice of pumpkin bread. But I also like zucchini bread. And I like carrot cake…thus, Olive Oil Pumpkin, Carrot, and Zucchini Bread was born. It was just crazy enough to work.

The texture of this loaf is so tender, so light and soft, that no pumpkin bread I’ve ever had compares. You could dress it up further with a little candied ginger, or use dried cranberries instead of the raisins. And you could smear the slices with a bit of cream cheese, but I must say, this is a pretty jazzy number on its own.

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Keeping Currant: Mini Currant-Kefir Muffins

When I become obsessed with an ingredient, I can’t rest until I’ve found it. Fresh currants, little rosy globes of tart juice, were calling my name. I had to have them.

But having scored the object of my desire, of course, I had to find something to do with it, and that can be tricky. Having never actually tasted a fresh red currant, I imagined that there would be loads of available recipes calling for them. No dice. These glossy jewels make very pretty garnishes, but I couldn’t find an appealing baking recipe that actually incorporated the fresh currants into the dough!

Luckily, I have a bit of a cookbook obsession, too. I recently acquired a discounted copy of Flo Braker’s Baking for All Occasions in the basement of the Strand. Her “Blue Ribbon Worthy” blueberry muffins seemed to be a classic worth riffing on. Instead of blueberries, I subbed the teeny red currants, perfect to be distributed among the cups of the too-cute-to-let-sit-on-a-shelf mini-muffin tin our friend Adrian gave us as a wedding gift.

The batter sounded a little sweeter than my usual, but I counted on the currants to provide a contrasting tartness, and they came through as promised. When the grocery store didn’t have organic buttermilk, I decided to substitute kefir, a newly-trendy traditional fermented milk that’s a bit like drinkable yogurt. To play up the flavor of the currants, I included a bit of cornmeal with the dry ingredients (though it probably would be good with more) and a little almond extract.

The little muffins puffed up enthusiastically, and they’re cheerful with bright red pops of color. It could be fun to make two batches, one with currants and another with blueberries—maybe for a 4th of July celebration? I bet the currant ones would disappear first, though. They’re fluffy and lemony, a little tangy from the kefir and a bit rich. They’d be delicious smeared with red currant jam—does anyone have a recipe for that? Not sure I’ve had my fill of currants yet, and the season is running out!

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Outsmarting Brunch: Double Vanilla French Toast

I love going out to brunch. I love meeting up with friends for bottomless coffee and perfectly poached eggs, and I love how the light falls through the restaurant windows as morning stretches into afternoon. But let’s be honest. Restaurant brunch is grossly overpriced. Even the best ingredients in breakfast food are only so expensive, and most of the dishes can be recreated at home to great success with pretty minimal effort.

This homemade french toast is better than many on the menus of our local spots. It is fragrant with nutmeg and perfect with a spoonful of fruit on top. I like a little unsweetened yogurt with it too, but we were all out, and this was strictly a pantry meal.

I’m going to come out in favor of white-bread french toast over challah or other egg-based bread. The heaviness and sweetness of challah overpowers the delicate spices, and fresh egg custard is really all the egg you need. I love the chewy Portuguese loaves found in groceries in New York and New Jersey, but any flavorful and sturdy white loaf would probably be nice. Perhaps you have bread left over from making this loaf?

The other secret to this recipe is a double dose of vanilla. I scraped a fresh vanilla bean into the soaking liquid, and also added something I’ve been brewing up for awhile: vanilla-infused bourbon. It’s basically a vanilla extract I started at home by putting a few chopped vanilla beans into a dark-sided jar and filling it with decent-tasting bourbon. Whenever I have extra beans (even if they’ve been scraped) I add them to the jar, and top off with more bourbon as I use it up. It started smelling wonderfully vanilla-y about two weeks after I mixed it, and I shake it up occasionally to move things around. Shiv and I bought a GIANT bag of about 120 plump, moist vanilla beans from this site awhile back and I’ve been quite pleased with them. Perhaps more vanilla beans than we will ever use up, but it’s so much better than being charged an arm and a leg for two measly dried-up beans at a time every time you need them.

If you want to make this now, though, or this very weekend, feel free to use regular vanilla extract, or half vanilla extract and half drinkable bourbon.

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The Old Fashioned Way: Nicole Rees’s Simple Cream Scones

Living in a 450 square-foot apartment is tricky if you love to cook and bake. Wall shelves help, as does a freestanding counter island. Baking pans are stacked in unnatural positions and wedged in tiny cabinets, and we have a bread board hanging on a nail on the wall. Luckily, we did manage to find an apartment with a dishwasher—though it’s insalled directly under the sink, rendering it impossible to rinse dishes and put them into the dishwasher with any sort of grace. Needless to say, we don’t have lots of big kitchen appliances.

Every time I read a cooking magazine or pick up a new cookbook, I am reminded of my longing for a food processor and (sigh) a Kitchenaid mixer. So many recipes call for these tools without explaining any alternatives. That’s why I was so excited to receive a copy of Baking Unplugged from the kind folks at Wiley publishing.

In Baking Unplugged, Nicole Rees provides recipes for old-fashioned treats that don’t call for any fancy equipment. With a whisk and a spoon (and a few other low-tech tools you probably already own), she makes breakfast treats and old-fashioned desserts to satisfy a sweet tooth. The yeasted cinnamon rolls sound amazing, as do the lemon squares with grated hazelnuts in the dough. (That one is very high on my to-make list.) Her directions are simple and clear, though I do wish there were pictures of the finished dishes. A long introduction explains baking down to the simplest techniques and ingredients: she wants to impart all the knowledge of old-fashioned baking the way your great-grandmother might have done.

Many of Rees’s techniques and tricks for baking by hand make perfect sense, and I wish more cookbook and magazine writers would follow her lead and at least mention how a dish might be made without a mixer. Besides, it is kind of satisfying to put a dough together the old fashioned way. However, I’m unlikely to follow her all the way down this road. Whipping cream with a cold whisk may be possible, but I’m not that eager to try when a small electric hand mixer can do the job in a fraction of the time. (And without the arm cramp.)

I had never made scones before attempting the recipe in Baking Unplugged, and I was amazed at how quickly they came together. You could easily bake these in the morning before friends came over for tea or brunch. (Though they can also be frozen and rewarmed with decent results.) Straight out of the oven, they are trancendental. They’re simple, tender, and flaky, with none of the off, stale flavors you find in coffeeshop scones (plus, a fraction of the cost!)

I used local cream from the farmer’s market for this recipe, which I highly recommend. Because the scones have more cream than butter, and no other flavorings to distract you, the taste is one of farm-fresh dairy. They’re not greasy at all. They were a touch too sugary for my liking—perhaps this is what the author means by “retro” baking. I’ll scale down the sugar a tiny bit when I make them again (and watch the sugar in other recipes in the book.) I just may not have quite the same intense sweet tooth as Nicole Rees. But I’m glad her sweet tooth guided her toward writing this book.

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Feeding a Crowd: Make-ahead Brunch

Mission: feed ten people (including vegetarians) a brunch feast including sweet and savory on a Sunday morning without panicking, running out of burners, wishing you’d moved to the suburbs where they have real kitchens, or missing out on the fun once your friends show up and start mixing mimosas!

With mushroom sauce already made and in the fridge, grits cooking overnight, and french toast soaked in custard and ready to bake, we sat around this morning calmly drinking coffee. No last minute pancake-flipping, no slaving over a waffle iron—it’s always best to make food that multiplies easily for a crowd. We popped everything in the oven as people arrived. Kielbasa would have been cooked on the grill, if we hadn’t run out of propane at that very moment (doesn’t that always happen?) It was fine, really, since I’m sure those kielbasa went a long way toward seasoning my less-broken-in cast iron pan.

These sorts of events make me wonder: will we get as much joy-per-square-foot out of our home when it’s, say, twice as big? When we no longer work and sleep and cook and hang out in one room?

Make-Ahead Brunch Menu for Ten

Overnight Slow Cooker Grits
Mushroom-Sauce Baked Eggs
Kielbasa
Baked Cafe au Lait French Toast (recipe here)
Fruit Salad
Bialys with Lox from Russ & Daughters)
Pom-Orange Mimosas
Coffee

I would definitely repeat these eggs, though I’m not sure about the french toast. The bitterness of the coffee was pretty good when balanced with maple syrup, but it didn’t thrill any of us. My tip for overnight french toast is to soak the bread overnight in about 3/4 of the custard mixture, reserving the rest to pour over the top the next morning after the initial amount has been absorbed. These can bake in the same oven as the eggs.

Pom-Orange Mimosas
One bottle sparkling wine, cava, or prosecco
2 cups orange juice (freshly squeezed is great!)
1 or 2 cups pomegranate juice

Mix in pitcher and serve in flutes!

Slow Cooker Grits
2 cups stoneground grits
9 cups water
1 T butter
about 1 cup grated cheddar cheese

Combine grits, water, and butter in electric slow cooker. This cooked on low for 10 hours. Different brands of grits and slow cookers will vary, but after 10 hours these were not quite done and had not absorbed all the liquid. We turned it up to high for about 20 minutes, then took the lid off and stirred while the water evaporated a bit for another 30 minutes or so, adding the cheese as the texture got thicker.

Earthy Vegetarian Mushroom Sauce
1 T butter
splash olive oil
3 cloves garlic, chopped
2 medium yellow onions, chopped
1 T fresh herbs (I used sage, oregano, and rosemary), chopped
1 teaspoon or so concentrated tomato paste (I like the kind that comes in a tube)
2 pounds crimini mushrooms
3 large portobello mushroom caps
1 cup wine (I used white, but red would be great if you have it around)
sprinkle curry powder
sprinkle dried oregano
pinch sugar
1/2 teaspoon balsamic vinegar or a little less
salt and pepper to taste
Splash milk or cream
1/4 cup yogurt or creme fraiche

In a large dutch oven, saute onions and garlic in butter and olive oil over low heat a few minutes, stirring occasionally, until translucent. Meanwhile, slice the mushrooms. I did half of them into medium sized slices for a nice texture, while the other half were diced smaller for a finer sauce. Add the tomato paste to the pot and stir until the onions are coated, this will help them caramelize a bit. Add the mushrooms as you slice them and stir to incorporate. Add wine, fresh and dried herbs and spices, sugar and balsamic, stirring and cooking on low-medium heat until mushrooms look fully cooked. Add salt and pepper to taste. (At this point, I cooled the mixture overnight to reheat the next morning.) Reheat sauce if necessary, stir in milk and yogurt.

Mushroom Baked Eggs
Mushroom sauce (see above)
12 free-range eggs
Freshly ground pepper

Preheat oven to 400. Split sauce between two ovenproof glass dishes (a pie plate works fine). Make indentations for eggs. Crack eggs into indentations, grind pepper on top and bake for 10-15 minutes. Do not overcook—they may not look as done as they are! Serve on top of grits.