Cinnamon Crumb Babka

Cinnamon Crumb Babka

Whenever I’m in my local grocery store, I always accidentally-on-purpose wind my way toward the bakery section. Because you know, it’s really fun to stare at treats and wonder why you aren’t buying them all.

As someone who bakes regularly, I don’t often buy dessert. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t reallyreally want to. There are very few desserts that I have a physically hard time turning away from at the store, but babka is one of them. I love babka. Deeply. Passionately. How could I not? If you’ve ever had babka, you know what I mean.

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White Chocolate Butterscotch Banana Bread

White Chocolate Butterscotch Banana Bread

It’s been a snow day kind of week.

The other day, my kids and I spent our first snow day of the season together. I’m always the parent on duty for snow days since I’m a teacher, so we do snuggly activities during the day. We watch movies, drink lukewarm chocolate (nothing hot for my babies!), dabble in arts and crafts, and of course, we bake.

This time, I happened to have some overripe bananas on the countertop, which could only mean one thing. In a world with bananas and children, there must be banana bread.

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Maple-Glazed Applesauce Bread

Maple-Glazed Applesauce Bread

I’m really trying here, folks. You know, to come to terms with the end of summer. It ain’t so easy.

As a warm-weather enthusiast, I greet cooler temperatures with about as much joy as a toddler greets a shot-wielding nurse. Over the past two weeks, my fellow awesome food bloggers have pulled out the pumpkin, heralding an early start to autumn. It’s still August, people! Rage against the dying of the light!

I’m going to hold out against pumpkin for a bit longer. I mean, I love pumpkin. But I want to use it when I really need it, i.e., when the long sleeves start coming out of my closet.

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Loaded Peanut Butter Banana Bread

Loaded Peanut Butter Banana Bread

You know how much I love peanut butter by now, right? Because I really, really, reallyreally need that fix every day. Preferably in some kind of peanut butter cup, but I’ll take the stuff straight up as well. Stirred, not shaken. With a spoon!

Years ago, I was part of a tour group in a foreign country. We stopped in a grocery store, and there on the shelf was a jar of Peter Pan, imported and outrageously marked up in price. I bought it immediately and without any hesitation, despite the fact that everyone in my group was mocking me for spending so much on a jar of peanut butter.

Well, folks, the laugh was on them. I sat on the tour bus, opened the jar, inhaled the sweet aroma and looked up, only to realize that the entire bus was eyeing my Peter Pan with what can only be described as mad lust. And for the rest of the trip, people kept asking if they could have a taste. They missed it so much, you see, and I was the smart one. I was also nice and shared, but not after a whole lotta “I told you so” lectures.

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Chocolate Crumb Babka

Chocolate Crumb Babka

It’s Friday, y’all! In my house, the weekend means babka for breakfast. Allow me to explain.

When I was a little girl, my grandmother used to send a big box of baked goods to us a few times a year. The box was full of her goodies: cookies and cakes, most of them traditional Eastern European specialties. Nestled in the box were always two babkas. For those of you who aren’t familiar, a babka is cake that is actually made from a yeast dough and then swirled with various fillings. The traditional filling is cinnamon sugar, but more modern babkas have chocolate as well

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Mocha Bread

Mocha Bread

I’ve heard that climbing Mount Everest is pretty hard. For most people, anyway.

We all have our version of that, the near-impossible summit that we can’t reach, no matter how hard we try. For years, that was my grandmother’s mocha bread.

When I was little, I didn’t like apple pie. Chalk it up to youthful foolishness. So when my grandmother made the pie, she’d also make this bread. And I loved it. It was so special that I’d eat it slowly, sliver by sliver, to make it last. Usually, I gobble up my dessert. But this was too special

And when I grew up, I tried to make it. Over and over again I followed the recipe, calling my grandmother each time I failed. It was too light in color, or too heavy in weight. What was I doing wrong? It got to the point where I suspected her of recipe sabotage.

Finally, about a year ago, and shortly after my grandmother’s death, I got the mocha bread right. I’m still not sure exactly what I did to make it correctly other than acquire more knowledge and skill, but I feel like the torch has been passed. She was a phenomenal baker who used scant resources in harder times to make amazing food. Later in life, she still had the knack for producing recipes that nobody else seemed to have.

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Mostly Whole Wheat Challah

Mostly Whole Wheat Challah

Ahhhh…TGIF. Almost. Before I breeze through the last day of the week, it’s time to make some serious bread.

Challah, that is.

Challah is too awesome to fly so much under the radar. It’s traditionally an egg bread made with white flour and sugar, kind of like brioche. It makes amazing French toast. There are also water versions, calling for no egg, as well as challahs filled with anything from raisins to chocolate chips.

And lately, whole wheat challah has begun to pop up in bakeries with more frequency, though it’s often put down by challah traditionalists, and who can blame them? Challah is an indulgence, a bread so good that spreading butter or jam on a slice can actually take away from the yeasty, fresh-out-of-the-oven perfection of the bread itself.

I was pretty hestitant to give the whole wheat thing a try. Why fix what ain’t broke? But in a world where whole grains are healthier and white bread is just an occasional indulgence, I wanted to have my challah and eat it too.

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