I'm No Betty Crocker...

But apparently I make a pretty decent quick bread. Little known fact: I do. Not. Bake. Period. Why? Because baking is a lot like chemistry. There are a lot of ingredients that have to go into a baked good and, if they don't go in in the right amounts or in the right order, you'll have a disaster on your hands. Another little know fact: I barely passed high school chemistry. It just doesn't make sense to me with all of those ide's, ade's, ite's, and ate's. Not to mention that unreliable unit of measure known as a mole. Nope, I will stick with my literature and art and other variably interpretable subjects, thank you very much.

Well, I really like quick breads and pound cakes and whatnot, so I decided it was high time for me to give them a go. I got a lemon bread recipe from Taste of Home and a pumpkin bread recipe from Heather.

Sidenote: Heather may have already posted her pumpkin bread recipe, so I apologize if this is a repeat.



Lemon Bread
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
2 Tbsp lemon juice
1 Tbsp grated lemon peel
1-1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp salt
1/2 cup 2% milk

Glaze:
2 Tbsp lemon juice
1/2 cup confectioners' sugar

Ah, my good friend the stand mixer Dizzy. Yes, I name my kitchen appliances. As Mike mentioned, it does all the work for me! This model unfortunately doesn't really have a slow speed, but it's still awesome.


Okay, I have a problem with volumetric estimation. It took some pretty creative mixing to make sure that everything got integrated properly without causing a mess.


So I had this great idea. I knew it would be difficult to extract the loaves, so I thought I would insert lifts into the loaf plans. Good idea, bad execution.

The lift was too small. It actually just split my loaf because it only ran under the center.

Then came the icing. Yummy! Alas, it was not as easy to ice the bread as one might thing.

I just put a paper towel under the cooling rack, and the icing was really liquidous. It just ran down and soaked the paper towel. Fail!

Oh how clever am I? So this time I poured the icing over the bread and, when it was done dripping down the sides, I moved the cooling rack over another bowl. Then I took the original bowl with the icing drippings and poured that over the cake again. I repeated until there was not enough icing to pour anymore.

And then it was done. Clearly I had some issues with this recipe, but it turned out great! My co-workers loved it! After that, I moved onto Heather's pumpkin bread.

Delicious Pumpkin Bread
5 eggs
1-1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 can (15 oz) solid-pack pumpkin
2 cup all-purpose flour
2 cup sugar
2 pkg (3 oz each) cook and serve vanilla pudding mix
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt

In a large mixing bowl, beat the eggs. Add oil and pumpkin; beat until smooth. Combine all of the remaining ingredients; gradually beat into pumpkin mixture.

Pour batter into five greased 5-3/4" x 3" x 2" loaf pans. Bake at 325 for 50-55 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes before removing from pans to wire racks to cools completely.

Okay, fast forward to the end. You can see that I extended my lifts across the whole bottom of the pan.

Success! The lifts removed the pumpkin loaves perfectly.

Okay, so my adventures in baking took some creative thinking, but I'm really pleased with how it all ended up. Interestingly enough, these are both items that I buy from Starbucks. Oh Starbucks, you will rue the day I learned to cook. :-)