Spelt Banana Bread #BreadBakers

This delicious spelt banana bread is made with plenty of brown sugar, ripe bananas and nutty tasting spelt flour, for a treat that tastes decadent enough for a holiday snack.

Spelt is one of the so-called ancient grains, which are supposed to be healthier than their modern counterparts. It’s not gluten-free but it is lower in gluten than normal wheat with a nutty flavor that works well in baked goods. If you like baking with spelt, you might also like to try these wonderfully fudgy brownies, coconut energy muffins or a nutty, spiced yeast bread.

You’ll notice that by weight, this banana bread is equal parts brown sugar and spelt flour. This is deliberate. The brown sugar is what pushes it into the treat category, beyond just banana bread. It’s super easy to make, using what I like to call the modified muffin method: Wet ingredients (plus sugar) in one bowl, dry in the other. Fold together and bake.

Spelt Banana Bread

The decorative sprinkle of pearl sugar is not essential but it sure does make the spelt banana bread more festive.

Ingredients
3 very ripe bananas
1 cup, packed, or 200g soft brown sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup or 120ml (4fl oz) buttermilk
1/2 cup or 113g unsalted butter, melted and cooled
2 cups or 200g spelt flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt

Optional (DO IT!) to decorate: Pearl sugar

Method
Preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C. Line a loaf pan (9 x 5 inch or 13 x 23cm) with baking parchment or grease it thoroughly with butter then flour. Set aside.

In a large bowl, mash your ripe bananas with a fork. Add in the brown sugar, eggs, buttermilk and butter. Whisk thoroughly to combine.

In another small bowl, whisk together the spelt flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.

Tip the dry ingredients into the bigger bowl. Fold until the dry ingredients are just combined with the wet.

Pour the batter into your prepared loaf pan. Those are brown sugar lumps you are seeing.

Sprinkle the top with pearl sugar, if using.

Bake in the preheated oven for 55-60 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean when you poke the center of the bread. If it starts to brown too much, you can cover the top with foil.

Leave to cool in the bread pan, then turn out and slice to serve.

Enjoy!

This month all of our Bread Bakers are using whole grained flours to bake our holiday breads. Many thanks to our host Kalyani of Sizzling Tastebuds for this great theme.

• 100% Whole Wheat Bread from Cook's Hideout
• Eggless Whole Wheat Chocolate Cinnamon Rolls from Spill the Spices
• Gingerbread and Oatmeal Bread from Mayuri's Jikoni
• Kamut Cloverleaf Rolls from Cindy's Recipes and Writings
• Key-Shaped Challah with Finger Millet from Sara's Tasty Buds
• Khameeri Puri from Sneha's Recipe
• Oats Whole Wheat Bread from The Mad Scientist's Kitchen
• Santa Lucia Buns from Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Slovak Pasca from Ambrosia
• Spelt Banana Bread from Food Lust People Love
• Whole Wheat Grissini from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Whole Wheat Stollen from All That's Left Are The Crumbs
• Wholewheat Garlic Flavoured Monkey Bread from Sizzling Tastebuds

#BreadBakers is a group of bread loving bakers who get together once a month to bake bread with a common ingredient or theme. Follow our Pinterest board right here. Links are also updated each month on this home page.

We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient.

Pin it! 

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Cornish Saffron Cake #BundtBakers

Cornish Saffron Cake is a traditional bake from Cornwall, made with an enriched yeast dough, flavored with saffron and sweetened with sugar. It is generally served plain or with lashing of butter or even some clotted cream.

This month my Bundt Bakers group is being hosted by Felice of All That’s Left Are The Crumbs. Her theme and in this case, challenge, was to bake a Bundt cake that uses yeast for leavening. I must confess that when I started scouring the internet for ideas, Cornish Saffron Cake came up after a simple search for yeast cakes.

“Excellent!” I exclaimed, making my furry sous chef jump to alertness, and wrote it down in my notebook. Just from the title, it sounded like a winner. I have saffron, some really good quality saffron, and I’m sure the good people of Cornwall would not have kept making Cornish Saffron Cake for all these centuries if it wasn’t good.

But here’s the rub. When it came time to bake and I actually started reading the (many!) recipes, it turns out that Cornish Saffron Cake isn’t really cake at all, but more of a sweet bread, with mixed dried fruit. The dough is traditionally baked into buns or in a loaf pan.  So, would it qualify for the challenge?

I headed back to our Facebook group to ask and saw that someone else had just asked a question about the nature of our yeasty Bundts: Could the Bundt be savory? When Felice said “sure,” (and I saw that her own recipe title was Hot Cross Bun Bundt) I knew that my sweet bready “cake” would probably be fine as well.

I ended up slightly adapting the ingredients from this recipe on Baking for Britain.

Ingredients
1/2 teaspoon saffron strands
1 1/4 cup or 295ml whole milk
4 cups or 500g unbleached white bread flour, plus extra for kneading
1 teaspoon fine sea salt
2/3 cup or 150g unsalted butter, cubed, plus more for baking pan
1/2 cup or 115g light muscovado sugar
1/4 oz or 7g rapid rise yeast
3/4 cup or 115g mixed dried fruit and peel

Note: Back in the old days, when sterilization was an issue, every bread recipe included the instruction to scald the milk first. I won’t go into the reasons why or explain the method because my friend, Jenni, at Pastry Chef Online has done a remarkable job with both in this Fundamental Friday post, if you are interested. But since I was going to heat the milk to infuse the saffron, I thought, might as well scald it.

Method
Start by scalding your milk, which is to say, bringing it almost to a boil either on the stove or in the microwave. (See more precise instructions in the link above.)

Liberally butter a 12-cup Bundt pan and set aside.

Put the saffron in the milk and leave to infuse for an hour or two, or even overnight, in which case, put the milk in the refrigerator after it has cooled off so it doesn't spoil.

When you are ready to bake, warm the saffron milk up again to about 110–115°F (115°F=46°C.) Put 1/4 cup or 60ml of it in a bowl and add the yeast and a tablespoon of the sugar.

When the yeast is activated and bubbling, you can add it back into the rest of the saffron milk.

Measure your flour into the mixing bowl of your stand mixer and add the butter cubes. Use a pastry blender or your hands to mix the butter into the flour until it resembles sandy crumbs.

Stir in the sugar and salt.

Make a well in the middle of the flour/butter mixture and pour in the yeasty saffron milk.

Use the bread hook on your mixer – or indeed, your hands, but this is a wet sticky dough so if you have a mixer, that’s a good thing – to combine the milk and flour until you have soft dough.

Knead the dough for about five minutes with the mixer or 10 minutes by hand. Sprinkle on a little more flour, if necessary.

Add in the mixed fruit and peel and keep kneading until it’s all incorporated.

Roll your dough into a fat log and fit it into your buttered Bundt pan, overlapping the ends. Cover lightly with cling film and set in a warm place to rise for about an hour.

After one hour, start preheating your oven to 350°F or 180°. Once the oven has reached temperature, put the Cornish Saffron Cake into the oven and bake for about 50-60 minutes, until the outside is golden and it sounds hollow when tapped. If it looks like it’s browning too quickly, you can cover the top with foil.

Remove from the oven and allow to rest for a few minutes before turning it out onto a wire rack to cool.

Cool almost completely before slicing with a serrated knife to serve. It’s perfect just ever so slightly warm so butter will melt into it.

Enjoy!

Many thanks to Felice for this great challenge. My favorite part of these baking groups is the opportunity to explore unfamiliar cuisines and recipes to fit a theme. I’ll definitely be making Cornish Saffron Cake again. It's superb with a cup of hot coffee or tea!

Special thanks also to Wendy from A Day in the Life on the Farm for creating our updated link list!

Check out all the other yeasty Bundts we’ve baked for you today.

• Bica Bundt Cake by Patty's Cake
• Coconut Spice Mini Yeasted Bundts by Passion Kneaded
• Cornish Saffron Cake by Food Lust People Love
• Czech Poppyseed Crown Coffee Cake by The Queen of Scones
• Guinness Bread Bundt Cake by I Love Bundt Cakes
• Healthy Vegan Bundt Cake by Bizcocheando
• Hot Cross Bundts by All That's Left Are The Crumbs
• Irish Butter Cheesy Bread Bundt by Faith, Hope, Love, & Luck Survive Despite A Whiskered Accomplice
• Jasmine Tea Savarin by Sneha's Recipe
• King's Bundt Cake by Sew You Think You Can Cook
• Lemon and Blackberry Savarin by A Day in the Life on the Farm

 

#BundtBakers is a group of Bundt loving bakers who get together once a month to bake Bundts with a common ingredient or theme. Follow our Pinterest board right here. Links are also updated each month on the BundtBakers home page.

Pin it! 

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Easy Apple Banana Bread #BreadBakers

Easy Apple Banana Bread is a wonderful transition from summer to fall, as our temperatures finally get cool enough to bake without cranking the air conditioner thermostat down to compensate.

You know when you are so fast asleep that the phone rings and you somehow incorporate it into your dream? That was me the other night. My sister called about 1 a.m. to ask if I could come over to stay with her girls because their father was being taken to the medical center for testing. The doctors suspected a blockage in one artery. Well, I didn’t wake up in the four rings it took the answering machine to do its thing so she had to call our mom to go. I felt terrible the next morning when I saw the phone blinking and realized that I had missed the call.

The next day, while he was still being tested, I was charged with picking the girls up from school, so I decided to bake an after school snack for them. There was a change of plans and I ended up not doing the school pick up but I can assure you that this easy apple banana bread makes an excellent after school snack! Or breakfast. Or midmorning coffee break.

In other good news, my brother-in-law is fine and he was released that day. I believe a stent may be in the cards but at least it’s not an emergency situation.

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups or 190g flour
3/4 cup or 150g sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2 ripe bananas, peeled
1/3 cup or 75g butter, melted and cooled, plus more for buttering the pan
1 egg, at room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 large or 2 small apples
Option for decorating: a light sprinkling of powdered or confectioner’s sugar

Method
Preheat the oven to 350°F or 180°C. Butter a loaf pan or line it with baking parchment.

Whisk your flour, sugar, baking soda, salt and cinnamon together in a mixing bowl and set it aside.

In another bowl, use a fork to mash your bananas until they are fairly smooth and pour in the melted butter.

Mix well with the fork until the butter is completely incorporated.

Add in the vanilla and egg and mix well again.

Peel and chop your apple/s finely. Add the apples to the banana bowl and stir well.

Fold the wet and dry ingredients together until just combined.

Pour the batter into your buttered loaf pan. You can sprinkle on a little extra cinnamon and sugar, if you'd like.

Bake in the preheated oven for 50-55 minutes or until the loaf is nicely browned and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Remove from the oven and leave to cool for about 10 minutes on a wire rack.

Run a knife around the edges and turn the apple banana loaf out on to the wire rack to cool completely.

Slice with a serrated bread knife to serve.

Enjoy!

This month my Bread Bakers group is celebrating fall fruit and vegetables with a plethora of breads, both quick and yeasted. Many thanks to our host, Pavani of Cook's Hideout, for her behind the scenes work.

• Apple & Olive Oil Boulé from Food Above Gold
• Apple Cider Muffins from A Baker's House
• Apple, Pear and Persimmon Stuffed Brioche from A Shaggy Dough Story
• Baked Cauliflower Breadsticks from Sneha's Recipe
• Broccoli Burger Buns from Herbivore Cucina
• Brown Sugar Pumpkin Apple Bread from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Chilli and Cheddar Potato Rolls from Mayuri's Jikoni
• Easy Apple Banana Bread from Food Lust People Love
• Figs Quick Bread from Basic N Delicious
• Harvest Bread with Sweet Potato from Cook's Hideout
• Kartofel Khleb - Russian Potato Bread from Ruchik Randhap
• Potato Bread Rolls from Gayathri's Cook Spot
• Pumpkin Challah from Passion Kneaded
• Sauerkraut-Nut Bread from Palatable Pastime
• Savoury Potato Rose Rolls from Sara's Tasty Buds
• Spiced Apple Star Bread from Hostess At Heart

#BreadBakers is a group of bread loving bakers who get together once a month to bake bread with a common ingredient or theme. Follow our Pinterest board right here. Links are also updated each month on this home page. We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient.

Pin it!

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Cinnamon Pumpkin Quick Bread #BreadBakers

Cinnamon Pumpkin Quick Bread is made with the muffin-method. Bowl of wet ingredients mixed quickly with the bowl of dry. The texture is light yet moist with just the right amount of sweetness. 

This month my Bread Baker group is doing one of two things. Jumping the gun, if you aren’t ready for pumpkin recipes yet. Or fulfilling your what-the-heck-took-so-long needs for pumpkin bread, if you’ve been waiting.

If you are in the former group, hey, pin them for later. If you are in the latter, you are most welcome. Either way, you are going to love this creative group of recipes. Many thanks to our host this month, Kylee of Kylee Cooks. Kylee is a fellow expat in reverse. She was born and raised in New Zealand but lives in the US now. I can completely relate to her regrets that her boys don't get to spend as much time with their grandmother as she did with hers. There are pluses and minuses to this expat life and missing family is a big downside.

You know what helps ease the pain though? Sweet pumpkin bread with cinnamon. This recipe has been adapted from one on the King Arthur website. I have no idea why they complicated their lives by using beaters for quick bread but my way is much easier and completely delicious.

Ingredients
1 3/4 cups or 220g flour
1/2 cup or 100g granulated sugar
1/2 cup, firmly packed, or 100g dark brown sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup or 200g canned pumpkin (not pumpkin pie filling)
1/2 cup or 120ml vegetable oil
2 large eggs
1/3 cup or 80ml water
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

To decorate:
2 tablespoons pumpkin seeds
1 tablespoon sugar mixed with 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

Method
Preheat the oven to 350°F or 180°C and prepare your loaf pan by rubbing the inside with a little oil or by lining it with baking parchment.

Use a large bowl to mix together your flour, sugars, baking powder, salt, cinnamon and baking soda. My brown sugar tends to get lumpy. If you have the same problem, use the tines of a fork or even your hands to get rid of the lumps.

In another smaller mixing bowl, whisk together the canned pumpkin, oil, eggs, water and vanilla extract.

Pour your wet ingredients into your dry.

Fold until they are just mixed. There may still be a little flour showing.

Pour the batter into your prepared loaf pan. Sprinkle on the pumpkin seeds, then top them with the cinnamon sugar.

Bake in your preheated oven for about 60-70 minutes or until a wooden skewer comes out clean. For the last 20 minutes or so, cover the top loosely with foil.

Allow to cool completely in the pan before slicing.

Enjoy!

Check out all the lovely pumpkin or pumpkin spice breads we have for you today.

• Almost Vegan Chocolate and Pumpkin Loaf Cake by Sizzling Tastebuds
• Brown Butter & Pumpkin Seed Scones by Food Above Gold
• Cinnamon Pumpkin Quick Bread by Food Lust People Love
• Cinnamon Spice Pumpkin Bread with Walnuts and a Trio of Frosting by Hezzi-D's Books and Cooks
• Hearty Whole Wheat Bread with Toasted Pumpkin Seeds by Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Italian Pumpkin Bread by Mayuri's Jikoni
• Lal Bhoplyachya Gharge by Sneha's Recipe
• Nutella Swirl Pumpkin Bread by Plated Cravings
• Pumpkin Bread with Cream Cheese Swirl by A Baker's House
• Pumpkin Cardamom Buns by Sara's Tasty Buds
• Pumpkin Chocolate Babka by House of Nash Eats
• Pumpkin Cornbread by Cindy's Recipes and Writings
• Pumpkin Dinner Rolls by A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Pumpkin Muffins with Cream Cheese Filling by Cook's Hideout
• Pumpkin Pepita Muffin Tops by A Salad For All Seasons
• Pumpkin Pie Stuffed Cinnamon Rolls by Kylee Cooks
• Pumpkin Raisin Scones by Palatable Pastime
• Pumpkin Ricotta Pull Apart Buns by Food Smart Mom
• Pumpkin Sour Cherry Sourdough Bread by A Shaggy Dough Story
• Pumpkin Spice Ale Soft Pretzels by Baking Sense
• Pumpkin Spice Raisin Bread with Kinako by What Smells So Good?
• Pumpkin Spice Swirl Quickbread by Baking in Pyjamas
• Multigrain Pumpkin Bread by Herbivore Cucina
• Two Tone Pumpkin Bread by Passion Kneaded
• Whole Wheat Pumpkin Sandwich Loaf by Gayathri's Cook Spot
• Yeasted Pumpkin Bread by Veena's Vegnation

#BreadBakers is a group of bread loving bakers who get together once a month to bake bread with a common ingredient or theme. Follow our Pinterest board right here. Links are also updated each month on this home page. We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient.

Pin it!

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Chocolate Filled Bundt Bread #BreadBakers

This lovely Bundt loaf boasts loads of dark chocolate in a slightly sweet yeast bread, with a thick chocolate glaze. Perfect for a decadent breakfast or even dessert.

This month my Bread Bakers are pushing out the cacao boat, using cocoa, chocolate or carob in a variety of breads. Many thanks to my fellow Dubai blogger, Shireen from Ruchik Randhap, who is hosting this great event.

I bookmarked this recipe from Just a Pinch more than a year ago, renaming it Chocolate Filled Yeast Bundt Cake so maybe Bread. From a quick read through, it sure sounded more like bread than cake. I ended up adjusting a few ingredients so it's even more bread-like than the original but whatever you call it, it's good and chocolatey.

Ingredients
For the dough:
4 cups or 500g all purpose flour, plus extra for kneading
1/4 cup or 50g sugar
1 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs, at room temperature
1 1/3 cup or 315ml warm milk (110°F or 43°C)

Note: If you are using organic or unpasteurized milk, heat it to 180°F or 82°C and then cool down to the right temperature. Read more about how, why and when to scald milk here at Pastry Chef Online.

For the filling:
12 oz or 340g dark chocolate

For the glaze:
6 oz or 170g dark chocolate,
2 tablespoons butter, plus extra for greasing Bundt pan
1 tablespoon golden syrup

Optional: Sprinkles for decorating

Method
Grease a 10-inch  or 25cm Bundt cake pan with butter and sprinkle with flour.

Sift the flour into the bowl of your stand mixer and add salt, yeast, sugar, eggs and warm milk.

Mix with the bread hook until all of the flour has been incorporated into the wet ingredients and you have a sticky dough.

Cover the dough bowl with a kitchen towel and leave it in a warm place for about an hour or until the dough doubles in size.

When the hour is almost up, melt the 12 oz of dark chocolate either in a double boiler or in the microwave with a few short zaps. Set it aside to cool a bit.

Sprinkle your clean work surface with flour and knead the dough for a few minutes.

Roll out the dough into a rectangular shape that is 12 x 16 in or 31x41cm. Spread the cooled chocolate on it.

Roll the up the dough, jelly roll style, starting from the longer side. Pinch the ends together.

Quickly move the roll to your greased Bundt cake pan, trying to make sure the seam side is down. Sprinkle with flour and then cover with a towel for 30 minutes.

Start preheating your oven so it will be at 350°F or 180°C when the 30 minutes are up.

After half an hour

Bake in the preheated oven for 30 to 35 minutes. Leave plenty of headroom for the bread to rise. Because rise it certainly will!

Leave to cool for about 15-20 minutes and then turn out onto a wire rack. I had to trim some off of one side of my bottom to get it to stand up straight.

For the glaze, warm up all ingredients in a double boiler or with a few good zaps in a microwaveable bowl until chocolate is melted. Let it cool a little and pour over the bread.

Decorate with sprinkles, if desired.

Enjoy!

Breads with Cocoa, Cacao or Carob in any form

• Chocolate & Cherry Swirl Breads from The Bread She Bakes
• Chocolate Orange Swirl Buns from Mayuri's Jikoni
• Chocolate and Vanilla Brioche from Kidsandchic
• Chocolate Banana Quick Bread from Basic N Delicious
• Chocolate Buttermilk Quick Bread from Cindy's Recipes and Writings
• Chocolate Cinnamon Rolls from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Chocolate Filled Bundt Bread from Food Lust People Love
• Chocolate Hazelnut Banana Bread from Hezzi-D's Books and Cooks
• Chocolate Monkey Bread from Sara's Tasty Buds
• Chocolate Peanut Butter Chip Quick Bread from Magnolia Days
• Chocolate Peanut Butter Cinnamon Rolls from From Gate to Plate
• Chocolate Yeast Bread from Cook's Hideout
• Croatian Povitica - Chocolate Walnut Swirl Bread from Herbivore Cucina
• Dark Chocolate Cherry Pocket Bread from Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Dark Chocolate Chip Hot Cross Buns from Baking in Pyjamas
• Double Chocolate Espresso Scones from Wholistic Woman
• Double Chocolate Zucchini Bread from Sizzling Tastebuds
• Egg Free 45 Minutes Chocolate Buns from Gayathri's Cook Spot
• Eggless Chocolate Babka from I Camp in my Kitchen
• Eggless Chocolate Swirl Buns from Seduce Your Tastebuds
• Eggless Triple Chocolate Scones from Spill the Spices
• Four-Chocolate Sour Cream Quickbread from What Smells So Good?
• Leopard Print Bread from Spiceroots
• Pain Au Chocolat (Chocolate filled Croissants) from G'Gina's Kitchenette
• Pane Al Cioccolato - Chocolate Bread from Ruchik Randhap
• Petits Pain au Chocolat - Mini Chocolate Croissant from Sneha's Recipe
• Sourdough Cacao Sweet Bread from The Schizo Chef
• Sweet Russian Chocolate Braid from Hostess At Heart
• Two Chocolates Greek Yogurt Banana Bread from La cocina de Aisha

#BreadBakers is a group of bread loving bakers who get together once a month to bake bread with a common ingredient or theme. Follow our Pinterest board right here. Links are also updated each month on this home page.

We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient.

If you are a food blogger and would like to join us, just send me an email with your blog URL to foodlustpeoplelove@gmail.com.



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