Bananas pair surprisingly well with coffee. Even big coffee chains have had banana-flavored coffee drinks over the past couple of years, mixing bananas with espresso, chocolate and/or caramel. I don’t think that these drinks were as popular as some on the menu, but I also bet that not enough people gave them a fair shake. Since I’ve been playing with Starbucks Via lately, I decided to mix the two flavors together in a baked good, a variation on banana bread that incorporates coffee.

I added coffee into the banana bread batter itself. The Via I used incorporated very smoothly and added a ton of coffee flavor, so you can really taste it in the finished bread. Since black coffee isn’t exactly sweet, the coffee ensures that this bread has a mellow, rich taste to it and isn’t too sweet. That said, I did want to add back some sweetness, so I incorporated some milk chocolate chips into the bread. The milk chocolate goes well with the banana and the coffee, and the bread overall had a great mix of flavors and was a nice twist on plainer banana bread. This might not be as popular with the kids as the standard banana bread, but it gets my vote for pairing with a cup of coffee or latte in the morning.

I used disposable, aluminum foil mini loaf pans for these breads so that I could give them out as gifts. The pans measure about 5×3-inches, give or take a little bit. Since they’re not the sturdiest things, I put them on a baking sheet. Bear in mind that, if you use these same little loaf pans, the baking time may be impacted slightly by the type of baking sheet you choose to set them on. An insulated sheet might mean a few extra minutes in the oven. A heavier, darker baking sheet might mean a few minutes less. Test your bread with a toothpick before the timer goes off just to be sure. If you happen to have regular pans of this size, use those and grease them lightly first.
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One of the first street foods I tried while in Seoul was hotteok, which was recommended to me by The Girl Who Ate Everything just before I left. Hotteok are breads, either baked or fried until crispy, that are filled with a cinnamon-sugar mixture. They’re actually a really simple dish, but quite tasty and a nice sweet afternoon snack. I wanted to try and create a similar version that I could make at home, since 12 hours is a long flight to take for a snack!

I saw many variations of this snack, some that looked like pita breads and some that more closely resembled large disc-like donuts. The ratio of bread to filling varied, as did the amount of filling in each. What did not vary was the cinnamon sugar flavor of the filling and the fact that these must be served warm and fresh, so the exterior is slightly crisp and the filling slightly gooey.

I started with a simple, plain bread dough - a non-yeast dough - and kneaded it until it was smooth. I let the dough rest for a few minutes while preparing a cinnamon-sugar filling so the gluten could relax and the dough would be easier to work with, then divided up the dough into pieces and rolled them out to be filled. Once I added some sugar and sealed the breads, I rolled them out again until they were very thin. This turned out to be one of the keys in getting a good texture, so you got plenty of filling in each bite and not too much bread. I cooked them in a skilled with a bit of oil and ate them hot. I’m not going to set up a stand the next time I’m in Seoul, but they were still an excellent snack and a good recreation, with a crispy exterior and a melty center. They are fairly large and quite satisfying, too.

These really are at their best when they’re cooked in a bit of oil. If you want to cook them in a dry skillet, they will puff up more and be a bit “breadier,” tasting more like Cinnamon English Muffins than the street snack I had in Seoul. This isn’t a bad thing, but the version cooked with a bit of oil is just better if you ask me.

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I’m starting to feel the slightest chill of fall in the air right about this time of year. Granted, I know that some of you have already experienced some early snowfalls, but it’s still fall in my mind. Fall is the start of comfort food season and soups and chilis start to make more frequent appearances in my kitchen. Naturally, I need something to go with these dishes and cornbread is always an easy accompaniment to whip up. This spicy cornbread has a little something extra in it: minced chipotle peppers and fresh corn.

You can find chipotle peppers in adobo sauce in most markets these days, and the smoky, spicy chilis add a lot of personality to this bread. One little trick I used here was to add the minced chilis into the butter as I melted it. This helped infuse the butter with a little of the chipotle flavor, so you get some spiciness throughout the bread, not just when you bite into a bit of pepper. I used fresh corn for its sweetness and texture, but frozen corn (defrosted) and fresh canned corn also work just as well in the bread. The finished product is a slightly rustic feeling, hearty cornbread that has a lot of flavor besides that of cornmeal. It is not particularly moist, but it’s not dry either, so it goes well with a smear of butter or a bowl of chili.

I usually make cornbread in square or rectangular pans, but I made this cornbread in a round cake pan. I like the way that the wedges look when the come out, and they’re even easier for dipping into chilis and soups than squares of cornbread. That being said, you could easily make this recipe in an 8×8-inch square pan if you prefer to or don’t have a round cake pan available.
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 This is another one of those recipes that manages to use grapefruit juice instead of lemon or orange juice, both of which appear far more commonly in quickbread recipes, just like the Grapefruit Meringue PieI put together recently. The sweet, cake-like quickbread is very similar to recipes for Meyer Lemon and Blueberry Bread and Orange Cranberry Bread, but uses fresh grapefruit juice and candied ginger as a flavor base. Spicy-sweet candied ginger is a nice match for the tart, and sometimes bitter, grapefruit juice. The two make for a loaf that tastes really fresh, sweet and citrusy.

Fresh grapefruit juice works the best for this recipe, since it gives you access to extra zest to stir into the batter, but a pure-juice packaged grapefruit juice will work well, too. If you aren’t using grapefruit zest, I’d add in some orange zest to give the bread a little more flavor. For the candied ginger, I’d recommend using ginger chips if you can find them because they’re so easy to use. If you’re buying your candied ginger in larger pieces, chop it up with a sharp knife. Leave some of the pieces a little larger and some a little smaller so there will be a good variety throughout the loaf.

This bread has a fairly open crumb and a tender, slightly crumbly texture. It goes well with butter and some types of jam, like marmelade if you’re a fan of it. It is also good just on its own and is sweet enough to serve as a sort of coffee cake. The candied ginger doesn’t make this bread ideal for putting it into a standard toaster, but it is good toasted if you haver a toaster oven to work with.

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Walnuts are a very common inclusion in banana bread. It’s just the way things are. I’ve never been a big fan of banana walnut bread, however, because I think that all the walnuts really start to take away from the banana flavor at some point. Don’t get me wrong here: nuts can add a lot of richness, texture and flavor to a banana bread, it’s just that walnuts have a surprisingly strong flavor can sometimes take away from the banana. Pecans, which are sweeter, seem to blend into the bread a little more. One way I really like to get a nut flavor to a bread is to grind it up and incorporate it, not leave it in chunks to stand on its own.

This is what I did with this hazelnut banana bread. I whizzed whole hazelnuts in the food processor until they turned into a fine meal (you can also buy hazelnut meal at some stores, preground) and incorporated it into a fairly basic banana bread recipe. The hazelnuts replaced a little bit of the flour, but were more of an “extra” ingredient, since there were no nuts, oats, chocolate chips or anything similar stirred into the batter before baking.

The finished bread has a great, rich hazelnut flavor and light banana flavor. The two blend very well. It is moist, and has a density that reminds me a bit of pound cake, with a very tight crumb. Both flavor-wise and texture-wise, it’s a very satisfying loaf - especially if you’re a fan of either banana bread or hazelnut to begin with. I like that the bread isn’t too heavy or oily, and I love the fact that it is easy to slice and holds up well to toasting.

This fills the pan up well, so be sure to use a 9×5-inch loaf pan. It’s a standard size, but it is worth double checking if you’re not completely sure it’s the right one. I once made the mistake of using a 4×8-inch pan and there was a bit of overflow. Since it is a big loaf with a fairly long baking time, you might want to keep a sheet of foil handy just in case your oven has a few hot spots (or tends to run a bit high) and the top of the loaf gets darker than you’d like. If this happens, just tent the foil over the loaf for the last 10 minutes or so of baking.

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Blue cheese is one of those things that either you love or you hate. Good quality blue cheeses have a strong flavor, to say the least. Smoked blue cheese has an even stronger flavor still, with the tanginess of the cheese and the strong, smokey flavor that I associate with barbecue. I have had a package of smoked blue cheese sitting in my fridge for quite some time (courtesy of Harry and David, and well-wrapped for fairly long term storage, as cheeses go.) and, while I like blue cheese, I haven’t been tempted to eat it on its own. While preparing a batch of chili - which had a nice smokey flavor itself - the idea to incorporated the smokey, smelly cheese into some cornbread.

Cornbread has a mild flavor that buffers the strength of the cheese nicely. You can still taste the cheese clearly, but you also get a nice flavor of corn and butter, thanks to the buttermilk in the recipe. I really like the crumbly and slightly rough texture that this cornbread has. I think it provides a nice contrast to the creaminess of the cheese (especially when the cheese is still slightly warm). It also means that the cornbread, while it slices easily, it crumbles well into chili and soups.

If you don’t have smoked blue cheese, you can use regular blue cheese. You can also use a smoked, non-blue cheese if you prefer to start with a slightly less stinky cheese to begin with.
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