What’s Stu Cooking

Believe it or not, this one beats an old favorite - banana nut bread - and gives us something to do will all the fresh rhubarb we get from the garden. The rhubarb really works to keep the cake nice and moist. Great sliced for breakfast with a nice pat of butter.

• 1 1/2 cups brown sugar, packed
• 2/3 cup vegetable oil
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 cup buttermilk (substitute: 1 cup plain yogurt, or sour the milk with a tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar)
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 cups diced rhubarb
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Topping:

• 1/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1 tablespoon softened butter

Beat together the oil and brown sugar until smooth. Gently stir in the egg, buttermilk, salt, baking soda, vanilla, and flour; blending only until just moistened and combined. Do not over mix. Fold in the rhubarb and nuts. Pour into two 8×4x2 1/2-inch loaf pans.

For the topping, mix the sugar and softened butter until crumbly and sprinkle over the batter.

Bake at 350 F for 55 to 60 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the bread comes out clean. Let stand for 10 minutes, then remove from the pan and allow to cool.

From Sugar Snips and Asparagus Tips

No more sliced white bread! Kim’s been baking bread twice a week. She found a good recipe from Delia Online that she tweaked and perfected. I’m not much of a baker but I thought I’d give it a try today. It worked out!

The nice thing about a good white loaf recipe is that you can use it as a base to make different kinds of bread. Kim worked out that you can add a cup of granary or wheat flour and it gives the bread a great flavour. She also threw in some seeds and rolled oats. Ummmm.

Kim increased the size of the recipe to better fill out our loaf tins. The altered Delia recipe is as follows:

• 5 cups strong white bread flour
• 1 cup wheat or granary flour
• 1 level tablespoon salt
• 1 1/4 teaspoon of dry yeast
• 1 1/4 teaspoon sugar
• 510 ml hand-hot water
• 3-4 tablespoon mixed seeds and 3-4 tablespoon rolled oats

Follow Delia’s by-hand recipe except for the following changes:

• Combine the yeast with some of the warm water in a small bowl and leave it to sit while the flour warms in the oven.
• Use a ceramic serving bowl so that the dough doesn’t take on a metallic taste. But make sure you cover the dough loosely with the plastic wrap so that it can rise above the rim of the bowl.
• Rise the dough in a warm place.
• Don’t bother with the polythene bags once the dough is in the tins, just use the oiled plastic wrap from the first rising time
• Start the oven heating about 1/2 hour before you need to put the bread in the oven.
• Check the bread after 30 minutes of baking. Ours was done by then, but oven temperatures vary.
• We found that the bottom and sides of the bread are browned and crusty enough without turning the bread upside down and baking for an additional 5 minutes.

We haven’t tried it yet but I bet you could use all white flour and add in all kinds of stuff like herbs or sliced olives instead of the seeds and oats.