I like to make pancakes on Sunday morning, but today I wasn’t in the mood for anything sweet. Instead, I assembled these savory, cheesy griddle cakes, which were perfect with smoked trout salad and cottage cheese. I can easily imagine them going well with eggs, or as a side dish for a chili. Here in Switzerland — a country in which good tortillas are sadly absent — I’ll make them to accompany my next Mexican dinner. They are quite tasty with hot sauce.
This is a great, authentic Russian rye recipe adapted for the dough cycle on most modern bread machines. It begins with a sour dough starter, and adds rye flour to that, so if you’re starting from scratch it’ll take 3 days before you’re ready to actually bake the bread. If you’re like me, though, and keep a batch of starter ready in the refrigerator, you just need to start this bread the night before, and put it in the machine in the morning.
It’s the middle of winter and I just can’t seem to get warm, so, as usual, I turned to the kitchen to see if I could find a cure. There were a couple of tins of canned peaches in my cupboard, which had been sitting there for a while because I’m never really sure what to do with canned fruit. But peaches remind me of hot, sultry Augusts in DC, so I decided to figure out a way to use them.
Next to the peaches was a package of pecans (I hoard pecans because they’re hard to find in Europe) and an idea for a summery quick bread began to form. The result of the experiment was so aromatically peachy and tenderly nutty that I had to share it. This recipe makes two large loaves, so you can halve it if you want to make only one. (I make two because fruit breads freeze so well.)
This is a quick and simple recipe, using only one large bowl to mix the dry ingredients, and a blender to mix the wet ingredients. Like all quick breads, this should be folded gently to mix, rather than vigorously stirred.
(My Russian husband and my German friends had never tasted American quick breads, but now they are all addicted. German baking is, in my opinion, too dry and far too sweet, and quick breads are moist and rich without sending a person into sugar shock.)
There are dozens of great recipes for carrot cakes and breads, and they all have their fans. The one I choose usually depends on my mood at the moment. This cake was invented at a point when I was craving a rich and nutty, tender, glazed, citrus-flavored cake, suitable for either dessert or for munching with a cup of tea/coffee.
It’s very quick to make if you have a food processor and a blender, which adds to its charm. If you have only a blender, you’ll have to grate the carrots by hand. Cut the recipe in half if you only want to make one loaf instead of two. Between the oil and the sunflower seeds, this is a full-fat, mega-calorie cake. My very lean partner, who needs to consume about 3000 calories a day just to maintain his weight, can eat it by the plateful. I stay on a restricted calorie diet, and so I confine myself to thin slices, parceled out carefully and enjoyed fully with a big cup of hot tea.
It’s snowing like mad outside, and I felt like baking something savory and aromatic. A quick look in the refrigerator revealed a chunk of cold Camembert that wouldn’t warm up and ripen any time soon, and I was captured by the thought of the flavor of Camembert in a corn muffin. Onions deepened the flavor, and the apples were a last minute inspiration. As muffins go, they’re a miniature cheese and fruit-plate feast.
I’ve also installed a new recipe plugin, which will hopefully make keeping track of my recipes easier. Eventually I’ll transfer all the old ones to the new format, but in the meantime check out the Camembert, Apple & Corn Muffin Recipe!
