Easy Peasy Braided Bread

 I have to say, I love my bread machine. I never made bread before I got a bread machine (well, maybe once or twice, but not very often at all). It just wasn't worth the time to me. I mean all the time to mix up ingredients then let it rise, then punch it down and let it rise again and so on and so forth. Just way too much work. Plus, I am not an early riser so by the time I started the bread we might be eating it at Midnight. So I absolutely love my bread machine because using it means that we can have fresh bread any day we want, it only takes about 20 minutes of my time, I just have to wait a little while for it. Sometimes if I want to be fancy but not spend tons of time on bread I will make the dough in the bread machine then shape it in a fun way. One of my favorite ways to shape bread is to braid it. It comes out so fancy, but it really only took minimal work. So here it is, The Easy Peasy way to make braided bread.

First Things first, if you don't have a bread machine consider getting one. If you want to find one for a good price check your local Good Will and garage sales. If you want to make bread the old fashioned way please feel free to skip this step :)

Make your favorite bread dough recipe, whatever that happens to be. I chose to make 1 loaf of french bread and 1 loaf of honey oat bread.

Roll dough into a ball on floured surface

Form into 3 equal-ish balls

Roll each ball into a long string of dough

Press ends of each string together

Braid like hair. (The one on the left side over the middle, then the one on the right side over the middle, then left, then right, etc)

Pinch the other end together

Sometimes I just bake the braid on a flat cookie sheet. This time I put it in a loaf pan to make slicing easier. You can let it rise a little more if you want your bread more airy, or you can go ahead and bake it if you like more dense loaves.

Bake however your recipe says. I think mine says something like bake at 350 degrees for 1/2 hour. I decided to make a little roll too, just for fun :)

Here are my 2 loaves. Aren't they pretty!

The honey oat bread

Linked up to:
Tater Tots and Jello, Naptime Crafters, Frugal Girls, A Pinch of Joy, Uncommon, Addicted to Recipes,

Moist and Yummy Pumpkin Bread

I should probably be posting this in the fall. That is when most people think about and make things with pumpkins. It makes sense because they are most available then. However I am not constrained to make pumpkin dishes only in the fall because I freeze my own pumpkin mush! (If you don't freeze your own mush, it is also still available in stores year round I believe :). I will plan to blog about making and freezing pumpkin mush this fall (because I have no pictures so I can't post about it now :) so all of you can join me in gloriously bucking seasonal constraints and make pumpkin bread all year round! The funny thing is, the reason that I freeze pumpkin mush is because I don't really care for pumpkin. (I know, doesn't make sense right?) I Love roasted pumpkin seeds, and the cost to buy plain raw pumpkin seeds (roasted pumpkin seeds from the store are not nearly as good as homemade) is about the same or more than buying an actual pumpkin so I buy the pumpkins instead (What I really need to do is find a jack-o-lantern carving party and steal all their pumpkin seeds). And I can't let all of that pumpkin go to waste (because my husband does actually love pumpkin) so I end up pureeing tons of pumpkin. Last year I think I only did 2 mini (pie) pumpkins because I was large and pregnant and supposed to be on couch rest (I didn't know, oops) so I didn't do a lot but I did manage to put about 10 cups (individually packaged into ziplock bags, 1 cup per bag for easy measuring and use later) of pumpkin mush in the freezer. The year before that I think I ended up pureeing somewhere between 6 and 10 pumpkins (and not all of them mini) so I had way way too much pumpkin. Unfortunately at that time we were still at the apartment and I only had the freezer above the fridge so I had to store it in the fridge and most of it went bad, but not before I pureed it and turned half of it into pumpkin butter. (In case you were wondering, no you can't can pumpkin mush, so it must be stored in a freezer). Thankfully I have a chest freezer now so that won't happen this year.
Anyways back to the recipe, I have no idea where this recipe came from, I found it a couple of years ago and picked it because it calls for a decent amount of pumpkin mush and like I said I had an overabundance of pumpkin mush so I needed to use it up somehow. And amazingly enough I do actually like this pumpkin bread, I don't eat a lot of it (which is ok because my husband does) but it is definitely not a bad recipe. I am pretty sure that I adapted it from it original recipe (I adapt almost every recipe so that is a pretty safe bet), but since I can't find the original recipe I am not positive. Oh and I doubled the recipe when I made it so the pictures show a bigger amount than the recipe calls for.  Anyways, here is the recipe.

Moist and Yummy Pumpkin Bread
makes 2 large loaves

2-4 cups pumpkin mush (I used 5 cups for the doubled recipe)
3 1/2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
3 cups sugar
4 eggs (my recipe says beaten, but I didn't beat them and it was fine)
1 cup vegetable oil
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
2-4 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 cup water (if you are using store bought pumpkin mush you may want to up the water, frozen homemade pumpkin mush tends to be more watery than store bought)

You can also add in 1/2 t allspice, 2 t nutmeg, 1 c pecans, 1/2 c raisins, or 1 c chocolate chips but I find that too much spice tends to cover up the pumpkin flavor. I might try chocolate chips sometime though.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees
Stir together flour, soda, salt, cinnamon and sugar (and allspice and nutmeg if you are using them)
Add eggs, water, oil, and pumpkin
Stir until well blended
If desired add pecans, raisins, and/or chocolate chips and mix well
Grease loaf pans and pour batter into them.
Bake approximately 1 hr
Doneness - knife test - if knife comes out slightly sticky, not wet, it is done
Remove from oven, cool slightly (10 min)
Take out of pans to let cool on rack.
Slice and Enjoy!

Verdict:
According to my husband "delicious". A couple months ago he took some to a carry in at work and he said people were raving about it and it disappeared really fast. One of his coworkers said it was the best pumpkin bread he had ever had and begged me to send more. I definitely recommend making this recipe! This bread also freezes well. Since I made so much I am planning to freeze some (if I get around to it before Mr. Random eats it all) to be enjoyed at a later date.

Here are pictures from this recipe:

The batter. If you are going to double the recipe like I did then you will need a very big bowl.

Like I said in the Low Country boil post, Monday was my baking day, my oven was full!

This recipe doubled made 3 large loaves, 3 smaller loaves, and 12 small muffins

Linked up to:
Uncommon, Naptime Crafters, Frugal Girls, Tater Tots and Jello, A Pinch of Joy, Addicted to Recipes, Cornerstone Confessions,

Cream Cheese Biscuits

I had never heard of cream cheese biscuits before. I was browsing blogs looking for good recipes and I found this one. It looked so amazing that I had to try it. If you would like to see the original recipe click the link, I adapted it a little bit so I will post what I did.

Ingredients:
8 oz cream cheese (I pulled out, thawed, and softened one of my frozen cream cheese blocks)
3/4 c butter (also frozen, thawed, and softened)
1 1/3 c flour
1 3/4 t baking powder
1/3 t salt

Directions:
Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Cream together cream cheese and butter until smooth. Slowly add flour, baking powder, and salt and mix until it forms a ball. Turn out onto plastic wrap. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 1 hour (more time is ok too). Pull out and roll out or pat to about 1/2 - 1 inch thick. Cut dough into squares (you can  cut with a biscuit cutter if you want but that produces scraps you have do deal with and trust me they taste just as yummy in squares, and I think that they are just as cute). Put on baking sheet. Bake 10 - 12 minutes. You can brush butter on top if you want. I didn't feel that it was necessary. These are best served warm.

Verdict:
Pure Yumminess! These were very good. They were small so 4-6 looked like a side serving to me. I ate them with homemade strawberry jam and they were very good. My husband is slightly lactose intolerant so he couldn't eat very many but he thought that they were ok (he is not the cream cheese fanatic that I am :), I think that he said that they tasted like biscuits :)

Pictures:

Linked up to:
Frugal Girls, Everyday Mom, Addicted to Recipes, Cups by Kim, Jam Hands, A Pinch of Joy, Make Ahead Meals, Our Delightful Home, Skip to My Lou, Serendipity and Spice, The Winthrop Cronicles, Simply Klassic Home, Cornerstone Confessions,