Irish Brown Bread Recipe

Kayleigh here. On our recent trip to Ireland, Jason and I both fell in love with the warm, soft brown bread served with most meals. While 'Irish Soda Bread' can be found on almost every recipe blog around St. Patrick's Day, it seems this whole-grain, molasses-sweetened counterpart gets no love online. Going off our memories of the taste (and having seen the ingredients in a bread mix once), we set about recreating this.

This bread is definitely best when served warm and fresh alongside a hearty breakfast or sopping up a thick stew. If you have any left over after the first day, I suggest pre-slicing the rest of loaf and freezing it. The bread quickly dries out if left in the refrigerator, and the lack of preservatives makes it last a few days at best on the countertop.

Ingredients:
1 Cup Brown Rice Flour
1/2 Cups Sweet Rice Flour
1/2 Cups Buckwheat Flour
1 Cup Tapioca Starch
2 ts Xanthan/Guar Gum
1/2 ts Salt
1/3 Cups Rolled Oats (or other gluten free hot cereal like quinoa or brown rice flakes)
1/4 Cups Milled Flax Seeds
3 ts Baking Powder
1 1/2 ts Baking Soda
2 TB Molasses
3 Eggs
3 TB Butter, softened
2 ts Apple Cider Vinegar
1 1/2 Cups Milk

Directions:

1) Combine all ingredients from Brown Rice Flour to Baking Soda in one bowl, and the remaining ingredients in another, then mix both together. Mix thoroughly, to get out all the lumps.
2) Pour into a greased bread pan, then bake at 350 degrees F for 45 minutes to one hour, until the top is browned and an inserted toothpick comes out clean. Alternately, you can use a breadmaker on the 'quick bread' setting.

Japanese Cheesecake for One Recipe

Kayleigh here. I know I just posted a cheesecake recipe a couple weeks back, so it seems too soon to post another one, but I feel strongly that one should go into battle armed with knowledge and options. Choose the one that appeals most to you, and go forth!

To give a little bit of a background to this, I found that quite a few foods I have come to enjoy in America are slightly different when bought in Japan. Beers are almost all pale lagers, bottled teas were unsweetened and usually green or barley, and peanut butter was replaced with peanut cream- a syrupy, lightly peanut flavored concoction that would best find its home on an ice cream sundae. Desserts were as likely to contain matcha or adzuki beans as they were chocolate, and coffee (if not bought in a can) was often brewed in fantastical steampunk contraptions of glass spheres and metal workings. But what this recipe focuses on is the cheesecakes that I would find, not in the refrigerated aisle, but on the baked goods shelf.

Really, this is pretty far from what the average American would consider a cheesecake, given its light and fluffy texture and mild creaminess-it's like someone mixed a New York cheesecake with an angel food cake. Because of this, I think it's the only cheesecake I've ever had that actually tastes best at room temperature, or even slightly warm. Heavy mix-ins or extra sweet toppings may not pair very well with this- I would recommend flavor add-ins like matcha/cocoa powder or tiny bits like mini chocolate chips or finely chopped chestnuts if you choose to embellish.

Japanese-style Cheesecake for One Recipe

Ingredients:

1 Egg, white and yolk separated

2 ts Sugar

1 pinch cream of tartar

2 TB Unsweetened Applesauce (if sweetened, reduce sugar to 1 ts)

2 TB cream cheese, Plain Greek Yogurt, or Sour Cream (whatever you have on hand)

1/8 Cups Millet Flour

1/8 Cups Vanilla Whey Protein powder

1-2 drops Vanilla Extract

1 Pinch Baking Powder

1 Pinch Salt (tiny amount!)

Directions:

1) Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Whip egg white, sugar, and cream of tartar in a bowl until stiff peaks form.

2) Combine the remaining ingredients in a separate bowl and stir thoroughly. Gently fold in the egg white mixture afterwards.

3) Pour/spoon the mixture into an oven safe bowl (sturdy coffee mugs or bowls work, and giant ‘Texas size’ muffin tins are great if you want to increase the recipe and make more than one). Bake for 20 minutes, or until the surface is cracked and lightly browned. If baked it in a container with little surface area, then you may also want to check the center with a toothpick to make sure it cooked all the way through.

4) Let sit for 30 minutes or until nearly room temperature, then transfer upside down onto a plate to cool completely. You can also refrigerate the cake for 1 hour or more to enjoy it chilled.

Jason here. So I never got to try any cheesecake while in Japan, or any baked goods really. Gluten free wasn’t really a known thing in Japan. That’s why I was excited to see what Kayleigh was raving about.

Some long time readers may remember the amazing Dragon Cake recipe. The thing about that recipe though… is it is ridiculously sweet. It’s basically sugar infused angel food cake coated with sugar and more sugar on top. If dentists had an arch nemesis, it would be that recipe.

The Japanese cheesecake tastes a lot like angel cake, but without all that ridiculous sugar. Sure it still tastes sweet like angel cake should, but it’s also got a creaminess to it that makes it good to eat all on its own.

We enjoyed our little cakes topped with raspberries, which added a nice tartness to it. Something fruity, but not too sweet is what I would recommend as a topping. As mentioned, the cake itself has a light sweetness to it, so you don’t want to overwhelm it. Something sour or tart makes for an excellent addition.

If you’re interested in trying out Japanese Cheesecake, or just looking for another angel food cake recipe give this one a shot.
 

English Muffins Recipe

Kayleigh here. This recipe has probably been the most frustrating one of the blog so far. Yearning for an english muffin a couple years back, I made a mediocre batch and the plan to improve upon it. After a few more attempts, I was able to pat myself on the back and say that they were finally right enough to satisfy that craving.

I recorded the recipe, wrote up a blog post for it, then waited for the next week when I would post it. But when the time came, the hard drive the post was on had broken. Every blog post had been backed up except that english muffin recipe. Frustrated, I abandoned trying to recreate it for a year.

Until recently, when that craving struck again, so I tried in vain to remember what I had done. The result: It certainly tasted like an english muffin, but I had the amounts wrong. The dough that I thought would rise to become six puffy, chewy muffins instead stayed so flat that I could not even cut them in half for putting the toppings on.

I didn't give up though, and managed to get things right the second time through. Thank goodness it was not another month-long process to find the right combination! Admittedly, I may tweak this recipe in the future to get an even better nook-and-cranny texture on the inside, but this is a delicious, convenient breakfast as it is now.

English Muffins Recipe (makes 6 muffins)

Ingredients:

1 Cup Sweet Rice Flour

¼ Cups Garbanzo Flour

½ Cups Corn Starch

3 TB Dry Powdered Milk

½ ts Xanthan Gum

1 Egg

1 ts Baking Powder

½ ts Baking Soda

1 packet Yeast (or 2 ½ ts)

¼ ts Salt

1 ts Apple Cider Vinegar

1 Cups Milk

Corn Meal, for dusting

Directions:

1) Add all dry ingredients (flours, milk powder, xanthan gum, baking powder/soda, salt, yeast if it does not need proofing) into a bowl.
2) Heat the milk in the microwave for forty five seconds, or until just warm. Add the remainder of the ingredients except corn meal to the dry ingredients, stirring until it becomes a dense mixture, about like a biscuit dough. If it doesn't come together, add more water. If it doesn't hold it's shape, add more corn starch.
3) Grease a hamburger bun pan, english muffin rings, or whatever you plan to use (they do hold their shape reasonably well, if you want to shape them and lay them out on a cookie sheet). Sprinkle cornmeal into the pan, then add the dough. Using a wet finger or spoon, smooth out the top of the muffins, then sprinkle more cornmeal on top.
4) Let these sit for 2 hours in a warm spot, so they have time to rise fully. Towards the end, preheat an oven to 350 degrees.
5) Bake for 20 minutes, or until golden brown. Serve immediately, or warm them in a toaster oven as leftovers.

Jason here. I’ve eaten about a dozen of these breakfast baked goods. I’ll admit I ate them with some spreadable raw honey, and peanut butter every single time. I probably should have also tried them with some jelly, but the raw honey peanut butter combo was just too good to pass up. 

The English muffins most definitely had the taste of traditional English muffins, but were missing some of the original airiness. That’s not to say they did not have that crunchy texture that comes to mind when I think of English muffins, just not the full airiness. 

To be honest, I don’t think missing the airiness subtracted much. I smother my English muffins in peanut butter and honey so what I was really looking for was the crunchy texture to balance out the spreads, which this recipe provided.