I am at that age where nearly everyone I know is either pregnant or a newly minted parent. I am currently on a first name basis with eight children under the age of 18 months and there are at least seven more on the way in the next six months. This means that I am regularly in the position of trying to imagine some delicious treat to bring to bewildered mamas and papas.

For some reason, I’ve never been good at bringing fully prepared meals to people and instead opt for bringing fairly healthy, easy to grab treats instead. In the past, this has meant that I’ve offered things like nutty oatmeal chocolate chip cookies (at least they’re full of protein and fiber) or loaves of quick bread that are good plain or toasted and buttered.

Yesterday, I went to visit my friend Kate and her new baby girl and took along a batch of these Lemon Buttermilk Muffins (yes, this is where the buttermilk from the cultured butter I wrote about last week went). These muffins are good for new parents because they can easily be eaten one-handed (a nice, firm crumb means that they won’t break to pieces), they aren’t too sweet (eat them for breakfast or alongside a cup of soup for lunch) and since they’re made with whole wheat flour, they feel more virtuous than a cookie.

The recipe is a further tweak of this one that I posted exactly two years ago today (amazingly, I didn’t plan that, it just happened). The yogurt gets replaces with buttermilk, the number of eggs is reduced and I brought in lemon instead of orange. What’s more, if you happened to make a batch of the lemon sugar I mentioned here, this is an excellent place to use it.

Of course, you don’t need to have a new baby around as an excuse to make these muffins. They’re good just about any time.

Lemon Buttermilk Muffins
makes 12

1 1/2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
2/3 cup cane sugar
1 lemon, zested
3/4 cup buttermilk
2 large eggs
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
scant 1/2 cup of olive oil

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 12-cup muffin tin.

In a medium bowl, combine flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.

In a larger mixing bowl, rub the sugar and zest together until combined and fragrant. Add the buttermilk, eggs, extract and olive oil and whisk together.

Add the dry ingredients and combine.

Scoop batter into muffin tins and bake for 20-25 minutes. When the tops of the muffins are golden brown, they are done.

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• Nothing to see here.

This isn’t a recipe post. Nor does it contain a giveaway. It is simply an gentle nudge in the direction of something delicious.

In pursuit of cookbook greatness, I made a lot of curds last week. Lemon curd. Lime curd. Vanilla orange curd. And all of this week, I’ve been eating the run-off from those projects stirred into plain yogurt (greek yogurt. Homemade yogurt. Trader Joe’s creamy European-style yogurt. We go through a lot of yogurt).

Sometimes topped with granola. Sometimes plain. Always delicious.

I exhort you. While citrus is still in season, do yourself a favor and make up a batch of curd. Meyer lemons are wonderful, though limes add a more tropical feel. If you want to feel like you’re eating pie for breakfast, search out some tiny key limes.

This recipe is nice, though I’ve heard that the bits of zest are a textural challenge for some folks. If you want a perfectly smooth curd, rub the zest into the sugar before cooking, that way it imparts all its flavor but doesn’t end up in the final product.

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This weekend, two of my dearest friends were in town. Cindy came from Washington, D.C. and Ingrid came in from Texas, for a pre-wedding weekend prior to Ingrid’s big day in April. We gathered some other area friends together and threw Ingrid a small shower on Saturday afternoon. We gathered a variety of meats, cheeses and fruit from the Italian Market in South Philadelphia, so that Cindy could build one of her signature platters of delicious things. Una brought a lovely carrot cake to share. There was champagne and cucumber-scented water. And I made a batch of these scones, mostly as an excuse for eating jam.

Typically when I bake, I do my best to tweak the recipe I’m working with in order to make the final product a bit more virtuous. I’ll often substitute whole wheat pastry flour for all-purpose or try to reduce the amount of fat a bit. However, there are certain occasions in life that deserve indulgent baked goods, unadulterated by whole grain flours and blessed with the amount of butter that god (or Dorie Greenspan) intended. I believe that chatty, afternoon wedding showers are just that sort of event.

This scone recipe comes from Dorie’s book Baking: From My Home to Yours. Another friend made these scones for my shower (they somehow just seem to fit the occasion) and since have become a dependable recipe for those times when I need something that is quick, simple and so delightful when drizzled with jam.

The only change I’ve made from Dorie’s original recipe is I’ve omitted the currants that she called for, to make them even more of a blank slate (all the better to receive any flavor of jam).

Cream Scone recipe

1 egg
2/3 cup heavy cream
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
5 tablespoons cold butter, cut into small cubes

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Beat egg and cream together and set aside (a two cup measuring cup works really well here). Set aside.

In large mixing bowl, whisk the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt together. Add the butter and rub it into the flour until you have a pebbly mixture.

Pour the egg and cream into the flour/butter mixture and stir to combine with a rubber spatula. When the mixture is totally incorporated, divide the dough into two equal sized balls. Pat them disks about an inch tall. Place them on a parchment or Silpat-lined baking sheet. Carefully cut each disk into six segments (I used a bench scraper) and separate them.

Bake the scones for 20-22 minutes, until the are nicely browned. Serve immediately. Store any leftovers in an airtight container.

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• Nothing to see here.

I’ve been making granola like crazy lately, as I finalize the recipes for that section of the cookbook. Just when I was sure I was done and could put the oats away, another recipe possibility started growing. You see, I’ve had Nutella on the brain in the last few days (I blame Lara’s Chocolate Hazelnut Cookies). And when you combine an obsessive devotion to granola with thoughts of Nutella, its an impossible task to try and avoid seeing what their love child would look like.

In my kitchen, the result of that unlikely union is a chocolate-kissed cereal that has a touch of sweetness and a crunch that is habit-forming. The jar of it is sitting next to me as I type these words and my writing progress is far slower than normal, because I can’t stop my hand from dipping into it every minute or so.

A word of warning. This is not the chocolate cereals of our collective youth. If you eat it with milk, you will not go into glucose shock from drinking the liquid that remains in the bowl. In fact, had someone presented to this to me as a child, I would have taken a bite and then been mightily disappointed by the subtly of the sweetening. However, as an adult, it’s that nuance that I find so appealing (along with the small hints of salt that come through thanks to the 1/4 teaspoon of sea salt).

All that said, if you did want to turn this concoction into something a bit more dessert-like, you could toss the partially cooled cereal with small shards of dark chocolate. That would be good. Oh, another thing. Hazelnuts are one of the more expensive nuts out there. If you can’t swing their price, you could substitute almonds. However, you only need about a 1/3 of a pound for this recipe, so if you have someplace that sells them in bulk, it’s worth spending $3-4 to buy just that amount. They are transcendentally good.

Cocoa Hazelnut Granola

1 cup hazelnuts
3 cups rolled oats
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
1/4 cup neutral oil (I like sunflower oil)
1/2 cup cane syrup* (like Lyle’s Golden Syrup or Steen’s)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Pour the hazelnuts out onto a rimmed baking sheet and roast for 10-12 minutes, until they are toasted and fragrant. While still hot, spill the nuts into a colander or mesh strainer and shake them around. This will loosen the skins. When they are cool enough to touch, use your fingertips to rub away a bit more of the skins. They don’t have to be perfectly skinned, just get rid of whatever is loose.

I like to chop the hazelnuts into slightly smaller pieces, and I do this using a chopping bowl and a curved chopper. You could also pour them into a bag and give it a couple of whacks with a rolling pin. Or, you can just leave them whole. Up to you.

Combine the hazelnuts, oats, cocoa powder and sea salt in a large mixing bowl. Toss it all together with your fingers, just to help the cocoa powder coat everything else.

Measure the oil out into a graduated 1-cup measure and swirl it around a little bit before pouring it into the mixing bowl. Then measure the cane syrup into the same, unwashed measuring cup. This will help you get a accurate measure while still getting the bulk of the sweetener into the granola.

Toss everything together with a silicone spatula (it’s the best tool for this job but a wooden spoon also works) until the oil and syrup are evenly distributed.

Pour the cereal out onto an ungreased baking sheet and spread it evenly using your spatula. Bake at 325 degrees for 25-30 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes or so, to ensure even baking.

When it well roasted, remove the baking sheet from the pan. Using a spatula, scoot the cereal together into the center of the baking sheet and press it down. Let it remain like this, undisturbed, until fully cool. This promotes crunchy clusters.

When the granola is totally cool, use a sturdy metal spatula (something like this, with a flat, straight edge is ideal) to break up the granola and scrape it off the baking sheet.

Store in an airtight jar or container, to protect the crunch.

*If you can’t find or don’t have cane syrup, you could sub in maple syrup. I wouldn’t swap in honey though, I think it would make it too cloying.

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• Nothing to see here.

Last Monday night, in the midst of finishing my final holiday canning projects (I made a big batch of this cranberry apple jam to give to our collective co-workers and supervisors), doing laundry so that I could pack for my trip to Oregon and giving the apartment a good once-over so that I didn’t leave it in ruins, I also managed to make a batch of chocolate chip banana bread.

I had four blackened bananas in the fruit bowl and couldn’t bear to let them go to waste. I nearly tossed them in the freezer, but quarters tight in there at the moment and I’ve already got approximately 12 halved frozen bananas occupying valuable space. It was either use ‘em up or let ‘em go. Besides, there’s nothing so calming as a bit of unnecessary baking in the midst of holiday frenzy. It’s akin to cleaning the house from top to bottom when you’re writing a book. Of course, I wouldn’t know anything about that kind of procrastination. Nope, not me.

But anyway, back to the banana bread. This is a recipe I first discovered on Orangette, who adapted it from Jeannette at Everybody Likes Sandwiches, who herself altered it from a recipe entitled Willie Nelson’s Famous Banana Bread. Quite a pedigree, wouldn’t you say?

I made it three years ago, around the time Molly first published the recipe. I took it to a writing retreat and left it in the kitchen, my offering to the communal snack table. A few hours later the pan was half empty and by the next day the banana bread was present in memory only. I made it once or twice more and then promptly forgot about it. My maple banana bread became my default and I thought all was right in the my quick bread world.

But on Monday night, I wanted something easy and fast. One bowl, preferably. As I stood in the kitchen pondering my options (and wondering whether it was insane to make banana bread at all), the memory of this recipe popped into my head. It satisfied all my demands (minimal dishes, used things I had, delicious) and so I set to work.

Less than an hour later, I had a pan of lovely banana bread. The remnants are now in Oregon with me (Scott is not a banana lover, so leaving it in Philly would have defeated my “Save the Bananas” mission). My sister has been nabbing nibbles from the container since I arrived (I found a piece this morning with a perfect half-moon bite missing) and I discovered this morning that it is amazing crumbled on top of warm oatmeal.

I’m not suggesting you make this now. I know that oven space is precious in the hours leading up to Christmas (I still need to make an apple pie, a pumpkin cheesecake and a batch of gingerbread cookies). However, if you have a bit of time off in the next week and a few withered bananas, this could be just the thing.

Chocolate Chip Banana Bread

I streamlined the recipe a bit from the one that Molly, Jeannette and Willie Nelson used. Most noticeably, I skipped the cinnamon sugar topping. I had an inkling that this bread would need to travel and I was afraid it would be too messy with a sugary topping. Truly, I didn’t miss it. However, I imagine it gilds the lily nicely, so if you want to see what topping is all about, check out Jeannette’s original posting.

3-4 very black bananas
2 large eggs
1 ½ cups whole wheat pastry flour
3/4 cup cane sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Butter a baking pan (the original recipes call for an 8 inch square pan. For some reason, I chose to use an 11 by 7 inch pan. They hold the same capacity, so use whatever one you’d like).

In a large bowl, mash the bananas. Break in the eggs and stir to combine. Add flour, sugar, baking soda, cinnamon and vanilla extract and mix. When the batter has formed, add the chocolate chips and stir to incorporate.

Scrap the batter into your baking dish and bake for 30-40 minutes. Mine was done at the 32 minute mark, but I used a dark metal baking pan, which tends to make things brown faster than glass. It is done when the top is burnished and a toothpick comes out clean (save streaks of chocolate chip).

It is wonderful eaten warm, but remains amazingly tasty eaten out of a gladware container, four days later.

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• Holiday Giving: Meringue Cookies

In my family, we always eat the same breakfast on Christmas morning. It consists of eggs cooked sunny-side up, crispy turkey bacon and a warm bread product. Some years, it’s crusty sourdough bread. Others, we toast slices of panattone. Last year, upon my father’s request, I made a batch of bear claws (they were good but deeply imperfect). Of all our breakfast breads, I think my very favorite was a batch of cranberry orange scones.

It’s a recipe my mother plucked off the internet some years back and was so easy and good that I asked her to send it to me. I’ve made them many times in the last four years (the recipe print-out is dated 2006) and now, I’ve adapted the recipe to make a gift out of the mix. I’ve managed to get the whole thing into a pint jar, save the 1 egg, 1/4 cup of butter and 1/2 a cup of buttermilk that the recipient will have to provide. Gifted with a jar of homemade jam, it becomes a Christmas breakfast kit that I think many a household would be happy to have.

You begin with a pint jar. If you’re preparing a batch for particularly good friends, I recommend using a lovelier than average jar. I’ve pulled a sturdy, vintage one from my collection to use here and I think it adds to the charm of the gift. Layer 1 1/2 cups of whole wheat pastry flour, 3 teaspoons of baking powder and 1/2 teaspoon of salt (sea salt is best if you have it) into the jar. Put the lid on and give it a good shake, so that ingredients integrate. Once they are combined, make sure to tap the jar gently on the counter a few times, to better compress the ingredients into the jar.

Measure out 1/4 cup of sugar into a small jar and grate the zest of one orange into it. Use your fingers to work the zest into the sugar. The sugar will act as a preservative and will help the orange zest maintain its fragrance and flavor longer than if you just heaped the zest into the jar on its own (a small jar of orange infused sugar would make a tasty gift all on its own as well).

Pack the orange sugar on top of the flour (if your orange sugar is very moist, laying a small piece of plastic wrap between the flour level and the sugar level will extend the shelf life quite a bit. Just make sure to tell your recipient to look out for it) and finish the jar off with 1/2 cup of dried cranberries. Should you realize as you’re making up a jar that you’re actually out of dried cranberries, feel free to substitute dried blueberries. Had I not already written up the recipe card, I would have simply called these blueberry orange scones, but that’s what I get for my poor pantry maintenance.

Write the following instructions on a small card (if you’re doing a number of these, feel free to print it up on the computer. Though, the handwritten touch is nice, provided your penmanship is legible).

1. Empty the contents of this jar into a bowl.
2. Cut 1/4 cup of butter into the flour.
3. Beat 1/2 cup buttermilk and 1 egg together. Add them to the flour mixture and stir to combine.
4. Once combined, turn out batter onto a cookie sheet and pat into a circle.
5. Cut into 8 wedges, but do not separate.
6. Bake at 400 degrees for 20-25 minutes, until they are golden on top.
7. Serve with jam.

One thing to note is that this scone mix doesn’t have the longest shelf life ever, so do try to gift it soon after mixing.

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My mom was something of a reluctant hippie. Free love wasn’t her thing, recreational drugs didn’t float her boat and she missed Woodstock by a hair. Ticket in hand, she came down with the flu two hours before her ride was coming to pick her up. However her brown hair was kept long and straight, she religiously dabbed patchouli oil on her pulse points and, in 1970, she married my dad in a handmade dress on a hilltop overlooking San Francisco.

My dad embraced the sixties counter-culture with a bit more passion. He dropped in and out of college, played folk music in smoky coffeehouses, conscientiously objected to the Vietnam War and, on occasion, lived in his Volkswagon (it had a giant God’s Eye painted on the back).

During their Santa Cruz years, they kept chickens in their backyard and watched their pennies (my mom can still recite her weekly grocery list from those days and knows exactly how much a pound of chuck steak cost in 1973). She briefly ran a toy store called Joyful, Joyful and sometimes cooked for a local Headstart program, making lunch from scratch for over 100 kids and adults with little or no help. My dad went to school, kept playing music and repaired cars on the side.

During most of these early years, they always a jar of nutty, homemade, wheat-germ fortified granola on the countertop. It was cheap and easy to make, and even a small bowl had the power to keep you full for hours. The original recipe was cribbed from a friend, who made it in industrial sized batches and sold it around the Bay Area.

I offer these details as my granola credentials. I come from people who know and enjoy their granola (or GORP, as the original recipe was called). I’ve made many a batch in the last 10+ years and have learned a number of things from the repetition.

I like a two to one oat to nut/seed ration the best. Additional oil is unnecessary (although I still recommend greasing your measuring cup before pouring brown rice syrup or honey into it). Toasting the sesame seeds a little before adding them to the mix ensures that you won’t end up with an occasional mouthful of bitter. Always wait to add dried fruit until the toasting process is complete. And most importantly, it’s okay to adapt a recipe to your audience.

These days, I make a fairly plain batch. Sometimes I flavor it with cinnamon, sometimes with vanilla. I always leave the dried fruit out (Scott is not a fan). It’s a whole lot easier for me to add a palmful of dried blueberries or raisins to my serving than it is for him to pick them out after the fact (and far less wasteful). And best of all, it stores beautifully in a jar on the countertop.

The reason for the large batch you see above was that I made a dozen pint jars of granola for the Great American Bake Sale a couple of weeks ago (that’s the picture you see up at the top of the post). I don’t know if they all sold, but soon after I dropped them off, I heard a woman say, “I just want to grab one of those jars and pour it straight into my mouth.” I do love those overheard endorsements!

Granola Recipe (not tripled)

6 cups rolled oats
1  cup whole almonds
1 cup pepitas
1/2 cups sunflower seeds
1/2 cup sesame seeds (lightly toasted and cooled)
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
3/4 cups brown rice syrup
1/4 cup honey

In a large bowl (larger than you might think, so that you have plenty of room to toss), combine the oats, seeds and nuts. You can also include flaked coconut or wheat germ (they were staple ingredients in my childhood granola, but are too “hippy-ish” for my husband). Sprinkle the cinnamon and salt in and toss all the ingredients to combine.

In a small saucepan, heat the brown rice syrup and honey until it’s warm and will run thin. Pour it over the granola base and, using a large spoon, keep turning the granola until the syrup is well-integrated.

Spread it out in your largest roasting pan and bake at 325 degrees for 30 minutes, turning it with a spatula every 10 minutes so that it toasts evenly.

Once it has browned to your liking, remove the hot pan to your countertop and let it cool briefly. Once it has cooled a bit, move it around with a spatula so that it doesn’t stick to the pan too badly. When it has thoroughly cooled, funnel it into a large jar. It will keep 2-3 weeks in an airtight jar (but rarely lasts that long in my household).

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• Preserves in Action: Five-Ingredient Fruit Butter Granola

We got 28.5 inches of snow here in Philadelphia over the last 24 hours. I bought oranges, lemons and grapefruit yesterday before the storm hit, thinking that I might take advantage of the snow day and make a batch of mixed citrus marmalade.

Instead, I embraced the slowness of the snow and rambled through the day. I walked over to my cousins’ house and spent a couple of hours helping celebrate Derek’s third birthday. Back at home, I did some dishes and organized canning jars (I invest more time in this particular endeavor than I care to admit). For dinner, I quickly cooked some broccoli and reheated the rest of the chicken pot pie I made on Thursday night. And I transformed some seriously blackened bananas into Maple-Banana Bread.

I’d been watching these bananas get progressively blacker and less appealing for most of the week. Each time I made dinner, I’d move them from one counter top and then back again, always mentally promising them that I’d use them before they were beyond salvation. Today, with the snow and general coziness, baking just felt like the obvious choice.

I used to be devoted to the banana bread recipe in the late sixties edition of The Joy of Cooking (when left to its own devices, my mother’s copy opens right to that recipe). However, over the years I’ve tweaked it so thoroughly, that it’s hardly related to the original. This version lives on an index card in my kitchen, tucked between the radio and my kitchen scale. Made with whole wheat pastry flour, wheat germ and maple syrup, it manages to be tender and not too sweet (perfect with a dab of apple or pear butter!).

So gather your aging bananas and bake up a batch this weekend!

Maple-Banana Bread

4 tablespoons softened butter (that’s half a stick)
1/4 cup applesauce
1/2 cup maple syrup
1 egg
1 1/2 cups mashed ripe banana (that’s 2-3 bananas)
1/2 teaspoon of maple extract (it boosts the flavor of the syrup. If you don’t have any, just use a splash of vanilla instead)
1 1/2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 cup wheat germ
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup pecans, toasted and chopped

Preheat over to 350 degrees and butter a standard sized loaf pan.

Beat the butter, maple syrup, egg, banana and vanilla together (it will be a lumpy slurry). In a separate bowl, whisk the dry ingredients together. Add them to the wet ingredients and mix to combine. Add the pecans and mix until they’re integrated. Scrape the batter into the greased loaf pan and smooth the top. Bake at 350 degrees for 45-50 minutes. Use a skewer or toothpick to test for doneness.

Eat warm from the pan. On the second day, it is best briefly toasted and buttered.

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We’ve been back from our honeymoon for the last couple of days, but I haven’t done much of anything creative in the kitchen as of yet. I’m still eying the pile of wedding gifts, trying to incorporate the new gadgets and pots into my already overfull galley (truly, a blessed problem to have). However, the very first morning we were back, weary of having to shower and dress before venturing out for breakfast, I made my lazy morning specialty.

French toast is one of those meals that doesn’t really require a recipe. It’s about taking a few end bits from the refrigerator and making a meal that elevates those humble, half-stale, slightly sour ingredients into something satisfying (and refreshingly cheap)! In our case, I didn’t even have to resort to the slightly sour, as there was an unopened quart of half and half in the fridge with an expiration date that was still three weeks in the future. There were also three lonely eggs and four slices of multi-grain bread (two of which were the heels).

I beat those eggs in a shallow dish with several glugs of the half and half, until it was a mellow lemon color. Some cinnamon and freshly grated nutmeg joined the egg mixture and a slice of bread went in. I heated my pancake/french toast griddle over medium heat and added a mostly unnecessary slick of butter (that griddle has been so well loved that it’s seasoned to the point where grease is hardly needed. But butter is so delicious).

My dad taught me to make french toast when I was young, and the point he always stressed was that it was important to give the bread a good soaking (but to watch carefully that you don’t oversoak). You want to get enough egg mixture into the fibers of the bread so that it puffs up like a custard while cooking. If your bread is particularly stale (which mine was), use a fork to score the slices in order to aid egg absorption.

Once your first slice is sufficiently saturated, carefully transfer it your pan. Follow suit with the rest of the slices of bread, as they’re ready. My griddle can accommodate four slices of bread, but if you don’t have such a roomy cooking vessel, feel free to cook them one or two at a time in frying pan (just don’t let them soak to bits if you’re using a smaller pan). Cook over medium heat, so that the slices have a chance to cook all the way through.

Serve on a messy dining table, with some previously canned pear butter or some Vermont maple syrup.

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