I’ve been dabbling in baking up quick bread lately. Quick breads tend to be easy, inexpensive, fun to make, and provide days worth of homemade breakfast and snack items.
A couple of weeks ago I made banana pineapple bread. Obtaining fresh pineapple here in Trinidad is as simple as stopping at one of the many indie street vendors on the way home and picking one out. Delicious, too. Fresh picked, vine-ripened pineapple is just out of sight and so much different than store bought pineapple.
This week I made peanut butter cinnamon bread. Both breads were good but not great. The key is finding the best recipes of course, which I obviously didn’t.
The peanut butter cinnamon bread was actually based on a recipe by Paula Deen for peanut butter bread. I just decided to add cinnamon and sugar to the top. I was pretty disappointed. If you can’t trust a racist southern lady who can you trust… yeah, I know I should have known better.
The amount of batter that the recipe made should have called for two loaf pans. But the recipe instructed to use just one and I used the same size of pan that it said to use. It seemed pretty full when I put it into the oven so I put a baking dish under it in case it overflowed.
It did! Not too terribly much but now I know I could have halved the recipe and been better off. I’m glad I put the cinnamon and sugar on top because it would have been kinda bland otherwise. The taste of the bread itself wasn’t too bad but other stuff definitely needs to get added in to jazz it up… flaked coconut perhaps or walnuts. Something.
Going to find some better recipes to try.
It’s been a rollercoaster week and it looks like I will headed back to Idaho very, very soon.
Hope everyone is doing well and having a great week!
The Sunstone Journal 
I would, but I deleted it from my recipe keeper and I don’t remember where it came from! LOL
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Well, it tasted good, but the texture was a bit off and it was a little too wet. I had frozen the cranberries and when I thawed them out they were very wet. Having said all that, I am eating a piece right now with Cool Whip on it, and it’s pretty doggone good!
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Ha, ha, Oh nice. You should post the recipe!
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Your bread looks fabulous! I’m going to attempt a gluten-free cranberry orange quick bread tomorrow. Wish me luck!
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Oh that’s great. How did it turn out? I like using almond or rice flour in place of some or all of the regular flour although I haven’t done that lately. Adds a nice texture and variety.
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Pineapple Banana bread sounds delicious. I can’t eat carbs now, but I used to bake banana bread with lots of pecans for my late husband. He liked it spread with cream cheese. It was his favorite. Happy Holidays, Joanne!
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Oh yes, cream cheese is a great addition. The pecans sound delicious also. Hope your holidays are going well!!
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That pineapple sure looks sweet! Practice makes perfect, just try the bread again….and I really really liked Ms. Paula – I used to watch her on QVC, even bought a few things of hers – smh!
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Yes, will need to try and try again. Need to find some Caribbean recipes, that will be fun! There are a number of Caribbean food blogs and my husband is semi-addicted to watching Caribbean cooking shows on YouTube, lol
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Yes, there’s a whole lot of trini cooks on YouTube and they do real good stuff.
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Yet more inspired creativity, JoAnn! It doesn’t hurt, either, that you enjoy access to ingredients on par with the fruit you describe. Just your pineapple’s greenery alone proclaims its preferability to anything available up here, 6,000 miles and how many weeks away from being harvested.
Sorry to read you still have to refine the peanut butter quick bread recipe. Nonetheless, you’re on the right path and you are close, as the bread in the picture already looks luscious.
One thing that’s worked wonders for my baking is lemon zest. It’s my not-so-secret secret ingredient. Just a bit goes a long way; thus you’ll want to be judicious (unless, of course, you’re going for a lemon- or a citrus-accented taste profile).
No matter what, the zest gives things a really nice flavor boost. Not just sweet items, either. I’ve been known to add gratings to stir-fry. It enhances things as effectively as does salt, but without the aftertaste and all that sodium.
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Zesting is one thing I need to practice much more. I tried it a couple of times and the results were really quite terrible. Perhaps I need a more fine grate. Not sure.
Accounting for high humidity is something I need to look more into as well. I added a little more flour but there may be more tweaking that I can do as far as that.
Well, it’s fun research work anyway and a long as the results do not turn out too terribly bad it can be delicious as well!
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Hmmm…do you have a Microplane, JoAnn? They’re awesome for zesting, as well as countless other cooking tasks.
Yeah, humidity is a major factor, and much more so where you are. You aren’t kidding about the research. I’d wager you have to teach yourself to cook all over again, as circumstances are so much different than they were, even in Florida.
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I have had Microplane type things in the past but the grate might not have been small or fine enough. Not sure. 🤔
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Microplanes exult fineness in more than one sense. In terms of quality, of course, and also in what they accomplish for lemon zest or for Parmigiano Reggiano.
Take a dense brick of a cheese, draw a Microplane across it, and a miracle happens. The shavings are light and airy, yet flavor still triumphs.
Imagine a similar benefit for citrus. If you get your hands on one, JoAnn, you too will be on a mission to convert cooks everywhere. Lemon zest’s unfortunate history will be just that – history.
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I’ve a couple of bread recipes I’ve been meaning to try: you’ve inspired me 🙂. And “If you can’t trust a racist southern lady who can you trust…” – I’m howling 😂
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Ha ha, that one was a gem, eh? Good luck with the bread recipes. Glad to inspire someone to do something positive!
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The bread looks good!
I sometimes add herbs like dill and rosemary as well as grated cheese. Dried tomatoes are not bad either in bread or roasted onions, now I am getting hungry …
I had the impression that you would settle in Trinidad.
I wish you a pleasant fourth Advent!
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Herb bread sounds delicious. Will have to try that. Fresh herbs in Trinidad are so flavorful! I don’t know what they do to them when they are growing but it’s delicious!
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I guess they just let them grow? There is plenty of sun … 🙂 … I let my herbal plants sow themselves, where they want to grow, also in the flower beds, that is a great success.
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