Quick Breads and Cereals
Quick Breads
Quick breads differ from cakes in that they are not as sweet, often are much more moist, and have a long shelf life. They freeze well and generally fall into two categories: those made by mixing the dry ingredients separately from the wet ingredients and then quickly mixing the two in one bowl, or by first creaming butter with sugar and eggs and then mixing in the rest of the ingredients. Some modifications for these recipes are noted in the instructions. For example, some recipes work fine with less sugar.
Most quick bread recipes can also be made as muffins—you just bake them for 15-20 minutes, instead of having the oven on for an hour or more. A few quick bread recipes make delicious sheet cakes, and can be frosted and decorated for a fancy dessert. Nuts, fruit, raisins, chocolate chips, or other additions should be cut into small pieces so they don’t sink to the bottom of the batters. With berries and nuts, such as blueberries or dried cranberries, it helps to mix the berries with the dry ingredients and coat them with the flour mixture before adding the wet ingredients.
Biscuits
Biscuits can be both a breakfast bread or an easy-to-make bread to accompany a dinner. One trick to making good biscuits is to handle the dough as little as possible so your biscuits won’t be tough.
Muffins are easy to make and can be modified to suit your tastes—adding more or less sugar, experimenting with juices and milks for your liquids, mixing in your favorite spices, nuts, or fruit, using combinations of flours (whole wheat, white, bran), or sprinkling toppings over them. Muffin recipes here that are especially amenable to modifications have notes in them. Even though sifting dry ingredients may seem tedious, it really does help the texture and final product, especially if you are using whole wheat flour.
You can use paper liners in your muffin tins, or you can spray or grease the muffin tins. Sprays like Pam or Bak-Klene seem to work well. Cheaper sprays like the generics or even Baker’s Joy may leave a funny taste on the muffins or a sticky residue on the muffin tins. If the tops of your muffins are flat, it means the oven temperature was too low. If the tops of the muffins have funny, irregular peaks, your oven temperature was too high. You may have to change the temperature you bake muffins to fit your particular oven.
Let the muffins sit in the pans for a few minutes to cool. This will make them easier to remove. If they don’t come out easily, then you need to use more grease or spray or let them sit longer. The one exception is if you have a lot of sugary topping on the muffins. In that case, you want to remove the muffins as soon as possible so the sugar doesn’t solidify and cement the muffins in place.
Muffins are usually best eaten the day they are made or should be frozen for future use. They don’t keep as long as cupcakes since they have less fat. Since they freeze well, it is often efficient to make a double batch and freeze what you don’t eat that morning.
Pancakes and Waffles
Pancakes and waffles are generally breakfast food. However, some families have traditions of eating these at special times.
Other Quick Breads and Cereals