Great Aunt Jeanette's Maple Oatmeal Bread

Today is the day that I'm making sticky buns AND bread.  Because I'm hungry.  And I'm on a sweet kick.

Right next to my cookbooks, I keep a large untidy stack of papers and magazine bits.  These are my favorite recipes.  Some my mother copied down, some are from my Grammie, and some I have printed or clipped out long ago.  This bread is amazing, especially with my uncle's maple syrup.  Slightly sweet, full of flavor, and when toasted with butter...better than any other bread I've tried!

Great Aunt Jeanette's Maple Oatmeal Bread

Yield: 2 loaves

Combine:

2 cups boiling water

1 cups oats

1/2 cup maple syrup

1/2 tsp salt (I used sea salt)

2 Tbsp butter

Stir, and cool to lukewarm.

Dissolve 1 package dry yeast in 1/4 cup lukewarm water and add to oat mixture.

Add flour* (maybe up to 5 cups) as needed.  <-- Here, I added flour a little at a time until the dough came       away from the sides of the bowl and 'felt right'.

Knead (or use electric mixer 5-7 minutes) until dough is stretchy and when you slap it, it feels taught.  It will be a little sticky.

Let rise until double (depending on kitchen temperature, 11/2 to 2 hours).

Punch down.  Shape into loaves, place in greased regular sized (9 by 5?) dough pans.  Rise again about 30 minutes, until dough starts to reach top of the pan.

Bake at 350 for 35-40 minutes.

Remove from pans and cool on wire rack.

*All purpose flour works, but bread flour is really great!  <--My mother's side note.

(These loaves are very flat...because I had the sticky buns in the oven right before the bread and turned the oven off before putting the bread in...I didn't realize this until the timer went off 40 minutes later...still tastes good, though!)

Grammie's Brown Sugar Cake Recipe

I spent maybe half an hour today looking for a coffeecake recipe that looked decent, and I couldn't find anything that sounded good and used ingredients that I already had.  Then I remembered, yes, I had finally unpacked the cookbooks and random pieces of paper with family recipes on them.  And somewhere in that pile was Grammie's brown sugar cake recipe.

It is like a cake/coffeecake hybrid, with a brown sugar flavor in an old-fashioned cake form.  If I was ever asked what I wanted for a treat, I would ask for this cake.  I have no idea where the recipe came from.

So now I am sharing it here.  It is rich and goes a long way.

Brown Sugar Cake

2 cups flour

2 cups packed brown sugar

1/2 shortening

Combine.  Mix until crumbly.  Set aside 1 cup of mixture.

(I substituted the following today: 1 cup whole wheat pastry flour, 1 cup all purpose flour, 1 cup white sugar, 1 cup demarara sugar, 1/2 cup lard)

Add these remaining ingredients:

1 egg, beaten

1 cup sour milk (if you don't have sour milk, measure just under a cup of milk, then add cider or white vinegar to meet the 1 cup mark, let set for a few minutes, and it will sour)

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt (I used sea salt)

1 tsp vanilla

Blend well.  

Pour into a greased 8x8 pan.  Spread reserved mixture on top.

Bake at 350 for 30 to 40 minutes, until a cake tester or knife inserted into the center comes out clean.  My oven runs hot, and it took me 40 minutes, but keep an eye on it so it doesn't burn!

Of course I cut it when it was still piping hot, but you get the idea.  Best coffeecake ever.

Snow/rain day and chocolate swirl gingerbread

I am convinced that my daily motivation to get up and do something is directly related to weather and amount of sunlight.  I have been known, when the clouds part and a beam of sunlight floods into the living room, to jump up and yell 'sun!' and stand in it.  Today started with snow (YAY), but is now just full of rain and I have barely been able to move off of the couch.

At least I haven't let myself take a nap.  Yet.

Today, I worked on some knitting and made some lamb broth from some bones.  And I ate a relatively large amount of snacks.  Today was also another day that I gave in to hunger and had some peanut butter toast.  Maybe its just that I'm too lazy to think up something else, but when I am starving and I haven't planned ahead, at least I always have homemade bread handy!  Now that I've already given in today, I might as well top it off with this dessert that I found on tastespotting.com.

Chocolate swirl gingerbread.

I have no idea how it will turn out, but the pictures alone make me want to go to the trouble of melting chocolate swirling batter.  It even uses whole wheat flour.  That means they are healthy!

Besides, Jon has been out all day in this weather, and he deserves a treat =)

Gluten and hunger

Going gluten free is hard.  Very hard.  I had no idea how much I depended on wheat in my diet.  And I did make a few things that worked out very well, like banana bread and rice-based dishes.  Making baked goods with wheat for Jon led to a lot of temptation, and there were days where there was nothing to eat but a little bread.  At that point, I had to make a decision to go hungry or eat wheat.  If I had more money and time, I would have been able to stick with the diet.  So.  Instead of completely going without, I am making choices.  If I can avoid gluten, then I do, but if I can't, then I shouldn't worry so much about it.  This isn't a diet because of an allergy, it is a choice.

By the way, this is an amazing gf banana bread recipe.

And this is a wonderful egg substitute for when you run out of eggs and still want to bake (I used whole flax seeds).