Irish Brown Soda Bread

The first Wednesday of the month this semester has been a day of nonstop meetings at the seminary. By the time I get home, my brain is fried!! Since I love to cook and it doesn’t require the brain power that my paid work does, I find that I can de-stress through cooking. I already had leftover turkey noodle soup so I decided to make a loaf of this bread to go with it.

I first had this bread (sans the cranberries & walnuts) at the Milestone Inn in Ireland on vacation. This is one of the breakfast specialties of the co-owner, Michael. I adapted his recipe by adding the dried cranberries and walnut. I really like the sweetness that the cranberries add and the crunch and flavor of the walnuts! An additional plus for soda bread is that it can be whipped up and baked in a very short time since there is no rise time like you have with yeast breads. This is comfort food at its best and was great with the leftover soup!

Ingredients
1 C. buttermilk
7/8 C. of white flour (4 oz. if you have a scale)
7/8 C. of whole wheat flour (4 oz. if you have a scale)
1/4 C. sweetened, dried cranberries
1/4 C. coarsely chopped walnuts
1 large handful of wheat bran
1 large handful of quick oats
1 t. sugar
1 t. salt
1 t. baking soda

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
2. Measure all the dry ingredients into a medium mixing bowl and mix well with your hands by lifting the ingredients together to add air to the mixture.
3. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and add the buttermilk. Gently mix the dry ingredients into the buttermilk by scooping under the dry ingredients and lifting it into the buttermilk. The dough will be very sticky and moist. Do not over mix!!
4. Sprinkle a little whole wheat flour onto a baking sheet and gather the wet dough into a ball and flatten it into a two inch thick circle and sprinkle with a little oats.
5. Place on the middle rack of the oven and bake for about 35 minutes. If you tap the bottom of the loaf, it should sound a bit hollow.
6. Cool on a wire rack. Slice and serve with butter and jam.

Holiday Cranberry-Orange Slices

It’s always nice to have something citrusy (is that a word) on a holiday cookie platter. This cookie combines cranberry with orange to make a flavorful, shortbread-type cookie with flecks of red in it from the chopped dried cranberries. This is a versatile cookie, as well. They can be eaten plain, of course, but can also be jazzed up by dipping half the cookie in melted chocolate or dipping the whole cookie right out of the oven in powdered sugar and then dipping them again after they cool. This recipe is from the December 2010 issue of Midwest Living magazine.

Ingredients
1 C. butter, softened
1/2 C. sugar
1 egg yolk
1 t. vanilla
2 1/4 C. all-purpose flour
1/2 C. dried cranberries, finely chopped (I used my mini food processor)
1/2 C. chopped pecans
2 t. finely shredded orange peel

1. In a large bowl, beat the butter with an electric mixer for 30 seconds. Add sugar and beat until combined, scraping sides of bowl occasionally. Beat in egg yolk and vanilla until combined.
2. Beat in as much of the flour as possible and stir in the rest of the flour by hand.
3. Stir in the cranberries, pecans, and orange peel making sure they are evenly distributed throughout the dough.
4. Divide dough in half. Shape each half into a 9-inch log. Wrap in plastic wrap or waxed paper.

Ready to Refrigerate

5. Chill an hour or two until firm enough to slice.
6. With serrated knife, cut rolls into 1/4 inch slices. Place 1 inch apart on an ungreased cookie sheet.
7. Bake in a 350 degree oven for 8-10 minutes or until edges are firm and lightly browned.
8. Cool on cookie sheet for 1 minute then transfer to wire rack to let cool.

Variations
1. When cookies are slightly but not completely cooled gently shake them in powdered sugar. When cooled completely shake them in the sugar again.
2. When cookies are completely cool dip half the cookie in 12 ounces of melted semi-sweet chocolate chips. Lay on waxed paper until the chocolate has cooled and hardened.

Makes about 4 dozen cookies.

Dipped in Chocolate

Bran Muffins

These muffins are delicious and the recipe makes batter for two dozen muffins that can be kept in the refrigerator for up to 4 weeks. Just bake up what you need and keep the rest until you need it. The first batch of these didn’t turn out well because I filled the muffins cups too full and they overflowed! I got the amount right in these. Don’t fill the cups more than 3/4 full! I used silicone muffin cups that I purchased at Marshall’s for $12.99. They are naturally nonstick and can be used over and over again. I highly recommend them if you bake muffins or cupcakes regularly.

This recipe is nice because you can easily do variations on the basic recipe. I love them for breakfast or with soup for dinner. For the muffins shown, I added 1/2 cup of dried cherries to half of the finished batter to make cherry bran muffins and then refrigerated the rest of the batter to use another day. I’ll list the variations at the end of the recipe. This recipe is adapted from the one on the back of the Hodgson Mill Wheat Bran box.

Ingredients
3 C. unprocessed wheat bran (I used Hodgson Mill brand)
1 C. boiling water
1 C. packed brown sugar
1/2 C. butter, softened
2 1/2 C. unbleached white flour
2 t. baking soda
1 t. salt
2 eggs, beaten
2 C. buttermilk

Mix 1 C. wheat bran with 1 C. boiling water; stir and let water absorb into bran. In a separate bowl blend sugar and butter. Mix in the salt and baking soda until well combined. Combine the moist bran with beaten eggs, the remaining two cups of bran, and buttermilk. Alternate adding this egg mixture and the flour to the sugar and butter mixture until everything is well combined.

Place in the refrigerator for future use, or bake immediately. If baking immediately, bake in a preheated 400 degree oven for 15-17 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle of a muffin comes out clean. If you don’t wish to use all the batter at once, store the unused batter in an airtight container for 2 to 4 weeks. Stir the batter well before spooning into prepared muffin cups. Yield: 2 dozen muffins.
Variations: For banana bran muffins add 1 large mashed banana to 1/2 of the batter. Yield will be 14 muffins. For cinnamon bran muffins add 2 t. of cinnamon to the whole recipe to yield 24 muffins. For raisin or cranberry bran muffins, add 1 C. of raisins or dried cranberries to the batter to yield 26-28 muffins. For banana bran muffins add 1 mashed banana to half the batter before putting in baking cups.