Lovin' From the Oven

Mom’s Zucchini Bread

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Orange is the New Black Season 2 is up on Netflix and I can’t get enough of that show. If it wasn’t for work for me and bar studying for my DF, we would have finished the entire season in a day. Seriously, that show is brilliant.

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Zucchini bread’s a weird thing. That’s a whole lot of greens going into baked goods, but it works. The moisture from the zucchini keeps the bread nice and soft.

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The batter even looks a bit strange. It slightly resembles tempura batter that has broccoli flakes and carrot trimmings that got stuck to the dough and left behind.

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Once you bake it, though, it turns into pure delightfulness.

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It’s so eye appealing that kids might even eat their greens. It’s a shame that it didn’t work for my DF, though. I’m still working on that.

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Let’s see what it looks like on the inside, shall we?

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Side note, I feel overwhelmed with my to-do list recently. Pay a million bills, get a shirt and tie for my DF for the wedding, get a visa, apply for a marriage certificate, grocery lists, blog posts, empty all of our moving boxes… The list goes on and on.

At least I did one thing; The wedding invitations have been sent out! That’s a huge weight off of my shoulders.

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Recipe is adapted from AllRecipes

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Mom’s Zucchini Bread

Ingredients

  • 3 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 3 teaspoons ground cinnamon
  • 3 eggs
  • 1 cup applesauce
  • 1 3/4 cups white sugar
  • 3 teaspoons vanilla extract
  • 2 cups grated zucchini
  • 1 cup chopped walnuts

Directions

  1. Grease two 8 x 4 inch pans.
  2. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.
  3. Beat together the eggs, oil, vanilla, and sugar. Add in the flour, salt, baking powder, soda, and cinnamon.
  4. Stir in zucchini and nuts.
  5. Evenly pour batter into prepared pans and bake for 40 to 60 minutes, until toothpick comes out clean. Cool in pan on rack for 20 minutes. Remove bread from pan, and completely cool.
https://lovintheoven.com/moms-zucchini-bread/

Blueberry Lemon Coffee Cake

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Happy New Year, friends! I hope were ringing it 2013 with the ones you love the most. As for me, I fell asleep at 11 PM and didn’t quite make it to midnight. I told you I was a grandma. My body is just not made for staying up past 10 PM.

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It’s okay, though. I never really cared for New Years. For some reason, I’ve never had a good one so my expectations are very low. I’d much rather be sleeping than waiting up for a ball to drop. I don’t even get the significance of that, anyway. How does a ball touching the floor indicate the start of a new year? Why couldn’t you get fake snow to fall or an elaborate display of fireworks?

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Oh wait, a quick wikipedia search answered my question. Apparently the British Royal Observatory used to drop a lighted ball everyday so that the Captains could synchronize their timepieces. Well, that was boring. Heck, I don’t even know if that’s true, but we’ll just go with that for now.

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Do you have any New Years resolution or are you sick and tired of hearing about them? I’ve got a couple:

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  1. Blog more often. I have been doing this every year since the blog started, so I’m hoping to carry on that tradition.
  2. Become more personal on my blog. I have a crazy amount of stories and I need to write them down before I forget them all. I just need the time to write them!
  3. Update A Pile of Style. I know, I totally suck.
  4. Be more adventurous in cooking. 2012 was the year for the crockpot for me. I may have started cooking, but it was all mostly in the crockpot. Time to take it to the stovetop.
  5. Get my DB to eat vegetables. Alright, that one may be a little bit of a reach, but I think I can do it. Slowly and surely, he’ll be eating greens in no time. It’s just a matter of tricking the mind…

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I guess I can also throw in all the stereotypical “eat healthier, lose weight, drink more water, eat smaller portions more frequently…. ” yada yada yada. But for now, I’ll just say not to eat this coffee cake in one sitting.

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This cake may seem like it’s a lot of work because the ingredient and direction list continue on endlessly, but I promise it’s not difficult. It’s just a matter of making each part and putting the pieces together.

You end up with a magazine worthy looking cake that can feed a dinner party. This is probably on my list for the top 5 prettiest looking baked goods. Not only does it look good, but it tastes like heaven. It’s really dense (carrying this thing out of the oven was a workout for me!) and a little goes a long way. The lemon flavor is strong, but not overwhelming. The blueberries sunk a little bit for me, but coat them  in a bit of flour and you’ve solved that problem.

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From Kitchen Runway

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Blueberry Lemon Coffee Cake

Ingredients

    Crumb Topping:
  • 1¾ C all purpose flour
  • ¾ C light brown sugar, packed
  • 1 tsp cinnamon
  • 1 tsp coarse salt
  • 1½ sticks of cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
    • Cake:
  • 2 C all purpose flour
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • ¼ tsp salt
  • 3 large eggs
  • 2 C sugar
  • ¾ C regular butter, melted and cooled
  • 1 tsp pure vanilla
  • zest of 1 lemon
  • juice of 1 lemon
  • 12 oz. fresh blueberries
    • Glaze:
  • 1 C powdered sugar
  • 2½ Tbs fresh lemon juice
  • ½ Tbs. milk

Directions

  1. Pre-heat oven to 300° F. Grease 9" spring form pan with butter.
  2. Make the crumb topping: Mix together the flour, brown sugar, cinnamon and salt in a large bowl. Add butter pieces and use your hands to combine mixture until clumps form. Place in the refrigerator.
  3. Now, get started on the cake. Combine the dry ingredients: flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl. Set aside.
  4. In your mixer bowl, beat eggs and sugar on medium high speed for about 5 minutes until mixture is lighter in color and has increased in volume.
  5. Turn mixer to low and slowly add butter. Then beat on medium speed for an additional 2 minutes.
  6. Stir in the vanilla, zest, and lemon juice. Slowly fold ½ C of the flour mixture at a time into the egg and sugar mixture. Add blueberries and stir gently until just incorporated.
  7. Pour into pan and top with crumb topping. Bake for 1 hour 30 minutes or until toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean.
  8. Cool cake in pan until completely cooled.
  9. Once the cake is completely cooled, make the glaze: whisk together the powdered sugar, lemon juice and milk until smooth. Drizzle the glaze over the cake, letting it drip over the sides of the cake. Let the glaze harden before cutting and serving.
https://lovintheoven.com/blueberry-lemon-coffee-cake/

 

Crockpot Apple Cinnamon Steel Cut Oats

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I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving! I kind of disappeared into the chaos of traveling during the holidays and wanted to make the most of it spending time with loved ones, which explains the lack of updates after my pumpkin recipes.

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What are your thoughts on steel cut oats? Love ’em? Hate ’em? For me, it was a long time before I even gave them a shot. Finally, I gave in and decided to give them a try. I was the same with oatmeal; I never ate it as a child and only started eating it when I moved out of my house. I don’t know why that is, we just never had any oatmeal around the house. I assumed oatmeal was strictly used for cookies.

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Now, as a flight attendant, I eat instant oatmeal about three times a week. It’s convenient, fast, and does a fairly good job on curbing your hunger.

Steel cut oats became popular a couple of months ago and pretty much appeared out of nowhere. All of a sudden, it was on breakfast menus, stocked on your grocery shelves in a variety of brands, and used in everyday recipes.

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I actually first tried it at Panera because the picture of it looked so good. Sure enough, it didn’t disappoint me. The crusty brown sugar topping that Panera uses gave it the sweetness that I needed to eat these steel cut oats. If they were plain, I’d never be able to muster a bowl down into my belly.

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I figured it was probably ridiculous to pay four-five bucks for a bowl of oatmeal, so I bought some steel cut oats at the grocery store and went home trying to find a recipe I’d like for myself. They take a lot longer than regular oatmeal to cook, so I threw it into the crockpot the night before I went to bed.

I woke up to a lovely smelling kitchen and breakfast ready to eat. The edges burned a bit and the oats were a little dry, so I’d lower the crockpot time by two hours next time.

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Crockpot Apple Cinnamon Steel Cut Oats

Ingredients

  • 1 cup steel cut oats
  • 2 cups milk
  • 1 1/2 cup water
  • 3 tsp cinnamon
  • 2 apples, chopped
  • 2 tsp stevia
  • 2 tbsp sugar in the raw

Directions

  1. Put all your ingredients except for the sugar in the raw into the crockpot. Give it a good stir.
  2. Sprinkle the sugar in the raw on top.
  3. Cook on low for 6-8 hours.
https://lovintheoven.com/crockpot-apple-cinnamon-steel-cut-oats/

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