Crushed Pineapple Carrot Quick Bread #BreadBakers

This crushed pineapple carrot quick bread is just the right amount of sweet from the pineapple, carrots and sugar. It’s perfect for breakfast or tea time. Slice it up for your Easter brunch table. It will disappear in no time! 

Last Sunday we had guests over for brunch. I fried up a couple of pounds of bacon, baked M&M mini muffins, put together a fresh fruit salad, cooked cheesy scrambled eggs and baked this crushed pineapple carrot quick bread. 

It was a lovely spread and much enjoyed by all and not just because we drank fresh squeezed orange juice with Champagne! Is it really a Sunday brunch if there aren’t mimosas on offer? I think not. 

The general consensus on the quick bread was "would have again!" It’s so good! 

Crushed Pineapple Carrot Quick Bread

When you drain the crushed pineapple, do push on it gently with a spoon. It should still be very moist but not dripping wet. 

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups or 190g all-purpose flour

3/4 cup or 150g sugar

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt

1 egg

1/2 cup or 120ml canola oil

1 cup, lightly packed, or 166g finely grated carrots

2/3 cup or 168g crushed pineapple in juice (not syrup!), drained – pressed a little bit

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 cup or 57g chopped pecans, plus extra for topping, if desired

Method

Preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C and prepare one 8x4 in or 20 x 10cm loaf pan by greasing and flouring it or lining it with baking parchment.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking soda, cinnamon and salt. 

In another bowl, beat the egg and oil together. Add in the carrots, pineapple and vanilla and stir well. 

Fold the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients just until moistened.

Fold in the chopped pecans.

Spoon into your prepared loaf pan and top with more chopped pecans, if desired. 

Bake in your preheated oven for 60-65 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes before removing to wire racks to cool completely.

Slice and enjoy! 

It’s the second Tuesday of the month so that means it’s THE day for my Bread Baker friends to share their recipes. Our theme this month is carrot or Easter bread. Many thanks to our host, Swathi of Zesty South Indian Kitchen. Check out the links below. 

• Carrot and Thyme Sourdough Boule by A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Cozonac - Romanian Easter Bread by A Messy Kitchen
• Crushed Pineapple Carrot Quick Bread by Food Lust People Love
• Sourdough Carrot Bread by Sneha’s Recipe
• Sourdough Carrot Raisin Loaf by Zesty South Indian Kitchen
• Whole Wheat Carrot Bread by Karen’s Kitchen stories

#BreadBakers is a group of bread loving bakers who get together once a month to bake bread with a common ingredient or theme. Follow our Pinterest board right here. Links are also updated each month on this home page. We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient.

Pin this Crushed Pineapple Carrot Quick Bread! 

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Norwegian Crispbread aka Knekkebrød #BreadBakers

Made with whole seeds and oats, Norwegian Crispbread aka Knekkebrød has a lovely nutty flavor with a bit more richness than the Finnish and Swedish versions.

And while Swedish and Finnish crispbread is traditionally round, with a hole in the middle for hanging, Norwegian crispbread is usually rectangular-shaped which seemed like a much easier thing to make!

What they all have in common is rye flour, which happens to be the main ingredient for this month’s Bread Baker’s theme. I used a dark rye. 

Norwegian Crispbread aka Knekkebrød

You can serve these plain or spread with butter. They are delicious topped with cheese, jam or chutney. 

Ingredients

1 cup or 135g rye flour

½ teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon baking powder

¼ cup or 28g rolled oats

¼ cup or 32g pumpkin seeds

¼ cup or 34g sesame seeds

2 tablespoons golden flaxseeds

3 tablespoons olive oil

⅓ cup water or a little more if needed

Method

Preheat your oven to 400° or 200°C. 

Put all the dry ingredients in a bowl and mix them together well so that all the ingredients are evenly distributed.

Add the oil and water and combine well. 

It will be somewhat crumbly but if you take some and can press it into a firm ball that holds together, that’s probably enough water. 

If it’s too crumbly to stick together, add just a little more water, mixing well, until it does.  

Turn the mixture out onto a silicone mat or a piece of baking parchment the size of a half sheet pan (18 x 13 in or 46 x 33cm) and press the dough out to flatten it a little. 

Use a rolling pin to press it flat, pushing the sides in with your fingers to shape it into a rectangle.

My dough didn’t stick to the rolling pin but if yours does, you can use a second piece of baking parchment or cling film on top. 

Transfer the silicone mat or parchment to the baking pan. Score the top of the dough to make rectangles where you want to cut the crispbread into pieces.

Place the baking sheet in the oven and bake for around 20-23 minutes until the top is dry and firm and the edges are just starting to become darker.

Leave them to cool a minute or two then cut along the score lines to break the crispbread into the rectangles. 

Because of all the seeds, you might be left with a small pile of seedy crumbs on the cutting board once you plate up the crispbread. These are the baker’s treat! 

Enjoy! 

It’s the second Tuesday of the month so that means it’s time for my Bread Baker friends to share their bakes. Many thanks to our host, Camilla from Culinary Adventures with Cam who asked up to explore the world of rye by making rye or pumpernickel recipes. Check out the link list below.

• Connie's Swedish Rye by Culinary Cam
• Marbled Rye Bread by Karen's Kitchen Stories
• New York Jewish Deli Rye by A Messy Kitchen
• Norwegian Crispbread aka Knekkebrød by Food Lust People Love
• Pumpernickel Rolls by Sneha's Recipe
• Swiss Onion Rye Batard by A Day in the Life on the Farm

#BreadBakers is a group of bread loving bakers who get together once a month to bake bread with a common ingredient or theme. Follow our Pinterest board right here. Links are also updated each month on this home page. We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient.

Pin this Norwegian Crispbread aka Knekkebrød!

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Cheater Pain aux Raisins #BreadBakers

Use ready-made puff pastry instead of the traditional laminated yeast dough to make these cheater pain aux raisins. They are more-ish and delicious! 

I’d have called these easy but I did have to make the pastry cream filling and even the apricot jam for the glaze since my local supermarket didn't have any. If you can somehow buy both of those, these would be a cinch! If you do need to make the pastry cream, I have a quick and easy recipe you can follow. Link in the ingredients list below. 

Years ago, back when our girls were young, we were living in Paris and there were many days when we needed a pre- or post-nap outing to break up the day. We'd walk down to the boulangerie on the far corner of our block. Then on to the nearby park to eat our snacks. As I mentioned before in my rosemary orange boule post, our younger daughter always chose a pain aux raisins for her treat. Nowadays she doesn't want raisins in things! Go figure.

Cheater Pain aux Raisins

For the puff pastry, I used the one from Trader Joe’s (18 oz, sadly seasonal but I alway buy extra to store in my freezer) because it is made with butter rather than shortening but if you can’t find that, the Pepperidge Farm (17 oz) brand would work too. Both brands come in a box with two sheets. 

Ingredients for 8

For pain aux raisins:

2 sheets puff pastry (see note above)

1 cup or 265g crème pâtissière aka vanilla pastry cream (This recipe.) 

½ cup or 70g golden raisins

For the egg wash:

1 egg

1 tablespoon milk

For the glaze: 

¼ cup or 70g apricot jam (store-bought or homemade)

1 tablespoon water

Method

Soak the raisins for 5 minutes in warm water. Drain and pat dry with paper towels. This also gives you an opportunity to pull off any small stems if you see them. Those tiny bugs on the right? My stem bits. 

Lay one sheet of puff pastry on a cutting board and spread half of the pastry cream evenly on the pastry sheet. Top the pastry with half of the golden raisins. 

Lay the other piece on pastry on top. Spread the rest of the pastry cream on top and sprinkle on the rest of the raisins. 

Roll the two pieces of pastry up together, forming a big log. 

Cover the log snuggly in cling film and chill in the refrigerator for 30 minutes. 

During the chilling time, preheat your oven to 375°F or 190°C and prepare a large baking pan by lining it with baking parchment or a silicone liner.

Use a sharp knife, unflavored dental floss or some fine fishing line to cut the log into eight even rolls. I used fishing line! Slide it under (you may have to lift the log) to the place you want to cut. Bring both ends up and put one piece under the other like you are starting to tie a shoe. Pull the ends and voilá, a clean cut. 

Transfer the pain aux raisins to your prepared pan and secure the ends with toothpicks. In retrospect, I should have stuck mine in deeper! 

 

Whisk the egg with the milk and brush each roll well with the mixture.

Bake the pastries until the pain aux raisins are golden brown in color, about 30-32 minutes, depending on your oven. If your oven doesn’t heat evenly, turn the pan around halfway through the baking time. 

Right before the pastries come out of the oven, microwave the apricot jam and water for 30 seconds in a small bowl to make a chunky glaze. Mix well.

When the pain aux raisins come out of the oven, brush them with the apricot glaze.

Allow them to slightly cool before eating. The bottoms are lovely and crunchy. I should have take a photo of them! 

The outsides of mine were much flakier than the middles but since I used all butter puff pastry, they were still rich and delicious. Perfect, in fact, with a cup of coffee in the morning or hot tea in the afternoon. 

Enjoy! 

It’s the second Tuesday of the month so that means it’s Bread Baker time! This month our theme is French breads! Many thanks to our host, Wendy from A Day in the Life on the Farm. Check out the links below. 

• The Wimpy Vegetarian: Black Olive and Herb Fougasse
• A Day in the Life on the Farm: Brioche 
• Food Lust People Love: Cheater Pain aux Raisins
• Karen's Kitchen Stories: La Couronne Lyonaise 
• Culinary Cam: Pain au Chocolat
• A Messy Kitchen: Pain Brié 
• Zesty South Indian Kitchen: Pain de campagne 
• Sneha's Recipe : Sourdough French Bread

#BreadBakers is a group of bread loving bakers who get together once a month to bake bread with a common ingredient or theme. Follow our Pinterest board right here. Links are also updated each month on this home page. We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient.

Pin these Cheater Pain aux Raisins! 

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Sprouted Spelt Banana Walnut Muffins #BreadBakers

Made with one of the ancient grains, these sprouted spelt banana walnut muffins have a wonderful nutty flavor and a mellow sweetness from the banana and brown sugar. 

Hard to believe but my fellow Bread Bakers and I have been baking together once a month for more than 10 years! We’ve lost some members and gained others over the years but I love their enthusiasm each December when I ask for hosts and themes for the new year. 

To take the pressure off, I usually volunteer for January and so it is this year as well. I chose ancient grains as our main ingredient because we hadn’t used them as a group since January 2016. Seemed about time to revisit that theme! 

Sprouted Spelt Banana Muffins - Small Batch

This recipe makes six normal sized muffins but it is easily doubled if you need a full batch of 12. Right at the end, I decided to fold in some chopped walnuts so I was going to make those optional but they were such a good addition that I changed the name of my muffins!

Ingredients

1 cup or 120g sprouted spelt flour

1/3 cup, packed, or 66g brown sugar

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup or 60ml milk

1/4 cup or 60ml canola or other light oil, plus extra for the pan

1 very overripe banana (mine weighed 92g without peel)

1 large egg

1/4 cup or 28g chopped walnut halves, plus six more to top, if desired.

Method

Preheat the oven to 400°F or 200°C. Prepare your six-cup muffin pan by brushing it will a little canola oil. 

In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, brown sugar, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt. Set aside.

In another bowl, add the banana, milk, oil and egg. Mash the banana with a fork. Then use the fork to mix the four together thoroughly. 

Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredient bowl. Fold until well combined. 

Add the chopped walnuts and fold again until combined.

Spoon the batter equally into the 6 muffin cups. Top each with a single walnut half, if using. Set a timer for five minutes and leave the muffin pan to rest on the counter. 

Bake for 5 minutes in your preheated oven then decrease the oven temperature to 350°F or 180°C WITHOUT opening the oven door, and bake for 15-18 minutes more until domed and set. A toothpick inserted in the center should come out clean or with just a couple crumbs attached.

Let cool for a few minutes then remove to the wire rack to cool completely. 

Enjoy!

It’s the second Tuesday of the month so that means it’s Bread Baker time. As I mentioned above, this month I’m hosting and I’ve chosen ancient grains as our theme. Check out the breads with ancient grains my fellow bloggers are sharing below.

• Bajri Tilachi Bhakri from Sneha's Recipe
• Banana Millet Bread from The Wimpy Vegetarian
• Banana Oat Pancakes from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Khapli Wheat Roti from Cook with Renu
• Milled Ancient Multigrain Bread from A Messy Kitchen
• Peanut Butter Ancient Grain Corn Muffins from Palatable Pastime
• Spelt and Poppyseed Sourdough Bread from Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Spelt Coconut Sourdough Bread from Zesty South Indian Kitchen
• Sprouted Spelt Banana Walnut Muffins from Food Lust People Love

#BreadBakers is a group of bread loving bakers who get together once a month to bake bread with a common ingredient or theme. Follow our Pinterest board right here. Links are also updated each month on this home page. We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient.

Pin this Sprouted Spelt Banana Walnut Muffins! 

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Lassy Raisin Bread #BreadBakers

This Lassy Raisin Bread is made with molasses, whence comes the name. It is a classic recipe from Newfoundland, often enjoyed during the holidays. It's a lovely soft loaf that is delicious plain and even better toasted and buttered!

The end of the year has snuck up on me and I can’t imagine I’m the only one who feels that way. I was determined to find time to bake bread for this final Bread Bakers event though because I have finally figured out where to buy fresh yeast here in Houston (YAY!) and I just love how it smells and tastes in freshly baked bread. 

I chose to make this particular loaf because 1. My husband loves raisin bread, especially when it’s toasted and buttered and 2. this month my Bread Baker friends and I are sharing holiday breads from around the world. 

There are probably as many recipes for Newfoundland lassy or molasses bread as we have neighbors to my very north, but one thing they all have in common is the requisite molasses, generally the milder unsulphured kind, and raisins. The traditional loaves are shaped by making three balls of the dough and placing them in a row in a bread pan. 

Lassy Raisin Bread

My recipe is adapted from one on Rock Recipes which makes a very impressive FOUR loaves. They really, really love their lassy raisin bread! And once you've tried a slice, you'll see why.

Ingredients

1/4 cup or 60ml lukewarm water

1 1/2 teaspoons brown sugar

1 teaspoon active dry yeast or 20g fresh yeast

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 1/2 - 3 cups or 312-375g flour, plus extra for kneading

1/3 cup or 80ml lukewarm milk

1/4 cup or 60ml molasses

5 teaspoons cooled melted butter, plus extra for brushing the baked loaf, optional

1 egg, beaten lightly

3/4 cup or 100g raisins

Method

In the bowl of an electric mixer that has a dough hook, stir the yeast and brown sugar into the lukewarm water and then let stand without stirring for 10 minutes. It should get nice and fluffy if your yeast is alive.

Add in 1 cup or 125g of the flour along with the salt, butter, warm milk and the beaten egg.

Using the regular paddle of your electric mixer, mix slowly for 4-5 minutes until the mixture is smooth with no lumps. Whoops, almost forgot our namesake molasses! Add that in and beat again. 

Switch to the dough hook at this point and begin to slowly incorporate the remaining flour. 

You may not need to use all of the flour. This is a soft dough that’s supposed to be a little sticky.  

Add the raisins at this point and continue to mix with the bread hook until the raisins are evenly distributed throughout the dough.

Place the dough in a large bowl and cover the bowl with cling film or a damp tea towel. 

Leave it to rest and rise for two hours. 

Punch the dough down and knead it for a few minutes by hand on a lightly floured work surface.

Divide the dough into three even pieces. I use my scale here to weigh the whole dough then divide by three. My dough weighed 760g so each ball weighed about 253g. Form each piece into a nice round ball. 

Line a medium loaf pan with baking parchment. (Mine was 9 x 5 in or 23 x 13cm.) 

Place the 3 balls of dough in your prepared loaf pan. 

Cover with greased cling film and allow the dough to rise until it is about 2 inches or 5cm above the rim of the pan, about 1 1/2 - 2 hours, depending on room temperature. 

[As you can see from the photo, pretty sure I overproved mine, making a strategical error when I decided I had time to nip out to the grocery store for salmon. Reader, as it turned out, I did not. While I was disappointed in the outside looks of this wonderful bread, the flavor and soft, tender crumb consoled me.]

Bake at 350°F or 180°C for about 40 minutes. The top and bottom crust should have good color. I tented mine halfway through with foil because it was browning so quickly. Check on yours in case you might want to do the same. 

Once baked, turn the loaf out onto a wire rack to cool. 

Brush the top with melted butter, if desired, to soften the top crust. Also, more butter is always better was one of my mom's rules. She was a very clever woman.

Leave to cool completely before slicing to serve. I'm trying to think of it as "rustic," not misshapen.

Enjoy! 

It’s the second Tuesday of the month which, as I mentioned above, means it’s time for my Bread Bakers to share their recipes. Many thanks to Wendy of A Day in the Life on the Farm for hosting and for choosing this lovely theme. Check out all the international holiday breads below. 

• Passion Kneaded: Christopsomo (Greek Christmas Bread) 
• A Messy Kitchen: Joululimppu 
• The Wimpy Vegetarian: Julekake : A Norwegian Christmas Bread 
• Food Lust People Love: Lassy Raisin Bread 
• A Day in the Life on the Farm: Laufabraud 
• Zesty South Indian Kitchen: Sourdough bobalki (Slovak Christmas eve bread) 
• Sneha's Recipe: Vánočka/Vanocka - Czech Christmas Bread 
• Karen's Kitchen Stories: Venezuelan Christmas Ham Bread - Pan de Jamón

#BreadBakers is a group of bread loving bakers who get together once a month to bake bread with a common ingredient or theme. Follow our Pinterest board right here. Links are also updated each month on this home page. We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient.

Pin this Lassy Raisin Bread! 

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