Tag Archives: baking

Stonewall Kitchen scone mix

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Cheddar scones

Friends of mine gave me an assortment of food gifts from Stonewall Kitchen.  They’re from Maine and so is Stonewall Kitchen, so it was a nice, local-type thing, like when I send Acme bread out to other parts.

The scone mix has been tempting me for awhile now, so one day this past weekend I thought I’d greet the morning and residents with hot scones.  Now, mixes can be good when they are from a company that uses quality ingredients, as well as convenient, but they are never cost-effective.  I look on these as a luxury and an exception.

Scones are a bit of a mess to make, since they result in a sticky, buttery dough that needs to be rolled and cut.  In this case, the mix saves you from having to add anything but butter, but it does not save you from the messy bits.  No way around that.

I had some aged cheddar hanging ar0und, so I crumbled that into the dough.

The scones came out perfect.  They were airy with just the right amount of density, and had great flavor.  That said, the mix is listed at $6.95 on the Stonewall Kitchen website – which is too much to spend for flour, sugar, baking powder, sea salt and baking soda on an ongoing basis.

Starbucks’ banana walnut bread recipe

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Starbucks’ banana walnut bread

My mom came home the other day with a card from Starbucks containing their banana walnut bread recipe.  I thought I’d give it a try since it calls for buttermilk, which is not a common ingredient.  I have to say that we all liked the bread, which was moist and flavorful.

The batter turned out very dry for me, so I added a bit more buttermilk.  However, the bananas I used were a little south of large and not overly ripe, so just know that you, too, may have to make adjustments based on the state of your bananas.  I mean, until I added the extra buttermilk, the stuff would not even move!

The recipe calls for a baking time of 45 – 60 minutes, but my loaf needed a good 20 minutes more before the wooden test skewer came out dry.

One little tip:  keep a container of baker’s buttermilk on hand.  It’s sold dry and you have to reconstitute it with water.  It’s a godsend when you need small quantities of the stuff.

Here’s the recipe:

Starbucks’ Banana Walnut Bread Recipe

The high cost of almond paste

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When I go to Alaska next month I’ll have time to post the 50 or so back-logged entries I’m holding. While the economy has not been good, it has been great for my line of consulting – which is always feast or famine, but has been more feast since the stimulus plan went into effect. Don’t think of me as taking advantage of the misery of others, think of me as doing my part toward alternative energy sources. ‘Nuff said. I’m glad I’m bringing in money, because Steven picked up a tube of almond paste for me at Lucky and it was NINE dollars! I’m surprised he even bought it because he’s on the frugal side. I told him that I normally buy it elsewhere, and to call me if he is confronted by this kind of price for 7 ounces of ANYTHING. Plus, who the hell needs 7 ounces of something? I am so sick of this downsizing, which makes it difficult to bake, especially, since you need to be precise with ingredients. Even a “quart” of mayo is down to 30 ounces. Anyway, I made pignoli cookies using my friend Tonina’s recipe, which requires a half-pound of almond paste. I love these Italian cookies, which are a bit crisp on the outside but dense, soft and chewy inside. I used to buy them at Franks Bakery on 30th Avenue in Astoria, Queens, when I lived there and they were a real treat, given the price. Tonina still lives in Astoria, and she’s Italian, so she knew exactly what I was talking about when I described the cookie I missed. I am now down to needing one cookie recipe. When I was a grade-schooler, I used to have these flat, leaf-shaped, butter cookies that were coated withchocolate, with the chocolate being thicker in the middle and then thinning as the leaf fanned out. These were to die for, and I have never had them since those days visiting Stork’s Pastry Shop in Whitestone.

Remembering date nut bread

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Date nut bread in a loaf pan

A retro dinner the other night (my Mother made Swiss steak, remember that?) made me want to have something I have not had in a good 20 years:  date nut bread.  I have no idea if this was popular all over the country, but it was in New York City when I was a kid in the 1960’s.  Chock full o’Nuts coffee shops sold date nut bread and cream cheese sandwiches.  By the very early 1980’s, when most of the shops had already closed, there were still a few hanging on, and there was one at 116th & Broadway – across from Columbia University – that kept me alive for all those late-night classes with coffee and date nut bread, which, if you dropped it, would have broken your foot.  If you check their site (they still hawk their brand of coffee, though I have no idea how many times the company changed hands) you can hear Mrs. Black singing the jingle about Chock full o’Nuts being “the heavenly coffee” (click on the old commercial links), but they don’t have the story there of the Blacks’ nasty divorce.  Since this is not the kind of thing you’ll find in a new cookbook, I checked out one my old ones and, sure enough.  I love old cookbooks because you’re likely to find names and notes written in them — and stains — and it gives me a feeling of continuity when I think that perhaps a woman back in 1952 was making the same recipe and had dropped her 1/4 pound of butter on page 869, only for me to find it in 2009.  The chosen book was Meta Given’s Modern Encyclopedia of Cooking (Chicago:  J. G. Fergusen and Associates, 1952), whose recipe turned out a winner of a loaf, if a bit less dense than I’m used to.  Now for the cream cheese!

(Note that the recipe is missing the baking temperature. I bake it at 350 F.)

Old date nut bread recipe

Corn muffins

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corn muffins on two plates side by side

Corn muffins made today.  That box of Albers yellow cornmeal was staring me in the face so I put together the recipe on the box, adding twice the quantity of sugar called for.  I made two batches — one for the heavy, dark, non-stick muffin pan and the other for the blue silicone pan.  The heavy pan browned better, but both versions were fine.  These silicone pans (even the smooth ones) stick when you make cornbread or pound cake-type recipes, I don’t care what anyone says.  I always rub a little oil in them first.  The last time I made cupcakes in those individual, ridged silicone cupcake pans, fuggedaboutit — they really stuck and were a mess to clean up.  Berry took it upon himself to oversee the corn muffin process and then kept an eye on them, as you can see in the photo.

Find the dog watching corn muffins being made

Find the dog watching corn muffins being made