I think this may be the World’s Best Quickbread. In any case, I can’t quit eating or baking it. Photo…eventually.

Ingredients

Procedure

1. Preheat oven to 350º and prepare loaf pan.
2. Toast walnuts, cool, and roughly chop.
3. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.
4. Cream butter and sugar.
5. Add eggs, banana, sour cream, and vanilla all at once. Mix for about one minute, until thoroughly blended.
6. Add flour mixture and mix on low speed until just moistened.
7. Add cranberries and walnuts and mix until well incorporated.
8. Scrape the batter into the loaf pan. It will be about ¾ of an inch from the top.
9. Bake 55 to 65 minutes or until the bread is golden and springs back when pressed lightly in the middle. You may have to tent loosely with foil midway through baking to avoid overbrowning.
10. Cool on wire rack for ten minutes. Loosen the sides, turn out of the pan, let cool completely.

Today was a Hungry Day. Big time. I haven’t learned how to balance my wild appetite fluctuations and nutritional needs with the urgent cravings I am experiencing with ever-greater frequency. I need advice: when I am sure that I will die if I don’t eat a turkey burger immediately (a true story), should I go make that burger happen (I didn’t)?

I’ve always been into food, but not like this. The bowl of lightly-sweetened multi-grain Cheerios I had for breakfast (with real milk, which is pretty crazy considering I “gave up” cow’s milk back in 2001) just about put me into orbit. It’s good, right, but it’s never been that good. By ten a.m. I started to wonder if maybe I should stop at every food cart between PSU and the Library MAX stop in case I needed something to tide me over through my teeny fifteen-minute commute. Some days, all food smells make me want to fill my nostrils with concrete. Today, the aromas of frying onions and baking dough and coffee and even the sort of freaky meat smells (like, I assume, sausages) flipped some kind of switch in my guts, causing me to need everything I smelled.

Though it’s just not possible, I feel like I have been hungry all day long. When I arrived home after that epic quarter-hour commute I wolfed down two slices of veggie pizza left over from last night’s dinner at Old Town Pizza (we had leftovers because yesterday was definitely not a Hungry Day). Shortly thereafter, I emptied all of the vegetables from the fridge and pantry and made a spicy, tomato-based vegetable soup, scheduled to be my lunch tomorrow. While that simmered, I baked off some Cinnamon-Coconut Chocolate Chunk Cookies and gave them to guys installing windows downstairs. Tasting occurred, of course, throughout.

About two hours ago I started thinking about the slice of banana bread I had last weekend. I was at a morning event catered by Grand Central Bakery, and enjoyed a slice of their very moist and nutty banana bread. I decided about an hour and a half ago that I have never had such delicious banana bread in all of my life. I decided an hour ago that if I didn’t make something half as good for breakfast tomorrow, then my day would surely be ruined and the mental and physical well-being of the baby, the Squeeze and me would be irreparably compromised.

What follows is a variation based on the a Cook’s Illustrated banana bread recipe, not meant to be even an approximation of GCB’s banana bread, but one that, what with the wheat flour and the demera sugar and all, I can feel less-bad about eating.

Ingredients:

Procedure:

1. Preheat oven to 350ºF. Grease and flour a 6×9-inch loaf pan.
2. In a medium bowl, combine flours, sugar, salt, soda, and poppy seeds. Whisk to combine.
3. In a separate bowl, whisk together cooled butter, yogurt, eggs, vanilla extract, and mashed bananas.
4. Gently fold the wet ingredients into the flour mixture, leaving some lumps in the batter.
5. Pour into prepared loaf pan, smooth out the top, and bake for approximately 55 minutes. When a toothpick is inserted into the center of the loaf, only a few crumbs should cling.

Yields two 9″x3″ loaves. (can very easily be halved.)

Ingredients:

Procedure:

1. Preheat oven to 350ºF. Prepare two 9″ x 3″ loaf pans.
2. Whisk together flours, spices, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.
3. Beat together sugar and oil until well blended.
4. Add eggs, vanilla, and chai (or water — the chai is just a way to squeeze in more flavor).
5. Beat until mixture is even and smooth, scraping down the sides of the bowl and the beater as necessary.
6. Add flour mixture all at once. Stir gently until just mixed.
7. Fold in pumpkin puree until uniform.
8. Stir in nuts or seeds, and cranberries, if you like.
9. Divide batter between the loaf pans and bake, about one hour, until a toothpick inserted in the center of the loaf emerges clean.
10. Cool on a wire rack about ten minutes, then remove bread from the pans and cool completely before slicing or wrapping.

Ingredients:

Procedure:

1. Mix dry ingredients (first seven).
2. Whisk all wet ingredients together.
3. Mix wet ingredients into dry.
4. Beat for approximately thirty seconds to activate the xanthan gum.
5. Stir in dried apricots.
6. Drop dough onto nonstick baking sheet in four pieces.
7. Form dough into rounds with wet hands.
8. Sprinkle with sesame seeds, if using.
9. Bake at 425º F until golden.
10. Remove from oven and let cool.

Breads will fall, but they are still tasty, especially toasted with jam.

I do not often bake cakes. Cake, somehow, has become dessert of higher order. Cakes mark birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, graduations – and evidently conception – and these are no ordinary events. Cakes signal extra-specialness. I’m more of a cookie girl myself. I’m big on breakfast pastries and quickbreads. I like me a real nice tart once in a while. But I only make cake when someone else is having a party and I am asked very nicely to provide dessert.

There are two noteworthy results of this trend: One: Whenever I do make a cake, I am always eager to test a new recipe that I’ve been sitting on for weeks, maybe months. Two: Since I get such little practice, I’m not terrifically good at it.
I have picked up a few tricks over the years, though – most from the Infamous Frenchman – and this handful of techniques has served me relatively well. Attempting to be sensible, this time around I only altered one piece of the cake puzzle and stuck with the rest of my usual construction. There was little chance that the fillings, frosting, or decoration would go awry – the only wildcard this time around was Sally Schneider’s Nut Cake recipe. But it isn’t as if I found the Nut Cake recipe stuck to the underside of a MAX seat, Ms. Schneider seems to know what’s what (far better than I).

J9′s Nuts and Berries Cake, for Julia and Skippy

Components:
• Berry Compote (I used cherries and marionberries and a little bit of sugar, cooked down until very thick.)
• Fresh raspberries
• Fresh blueberries
• Candied hazelnuts
• Lemon Chantilly (chantilly = heavy whipping cream + confectioner’s sugar)
• Edible flowers
• Sally’s Nut Cake (mine was almond and hazelnut)