Irish soda bread is one of my favorite things to make when I want a quick loaf of bread fresh from the oven. Soda bread gets its name from the fact that it is leavened with baking soda, rather than with yeast. This means that very little time passes between starting to mix up bread dough and eating the finished loaf. Irish soda breads are moist, hearty and while there is a traditional way to make them, there is plenty of room for variation, too.

This Irish soda bread has some rolled oats in it and is sweetened with a little bit of honey. I threw in some raisins for good measure, partially because I like their moistness in soda breads in general, but primarily because their natural sweetness is brought out even more with the addition of the honey. This loaf is a little bit dense, but is tender and moist. It is great slathered with some butter while it is still warm from the oven - particularly if you are using Irish butter - and it also makes great toast. Despite the honey and raisins, it isn’t too sweet and pairs well as a side dish with chilis and soups.

Kneading soda bread gives it a better rise in the oven, so I always knead my bread for a minute or two before putting it on a baking sheet. I like to knead this type of bread right in the mixing bowl because there is no need to add additional flour that may toughen up the texture of the bread - and because there is no need to clean up the counter afterward! This recipe doesn’t make a huge loaf, but you could easily double the recipe and make two if you need to serve a crowd. I like big slices of soda bread personally, so I would say that this is a good sized loaf for up to 6 people.
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If you’ve ever had a glass of cherry limemade, you know what a good combination cherry and lime can be. I used that combination as inspiration for this Cherry Lime Bread. This quickbread is sweet, and zesty, with flavors that you don’t see too often together. It is moist and tender, with a texture that hints at that of a pound cake.

There are two keys to getting a good result from this bread. The first is to use fresh lime juice. Fresh limes are going to give you the most vibrant flavor. I find that a lot of their tartness is lost when you use bottled juice, so make sure to pick up some fresh fruit to juice to make this loaf. The second is to use a good cherry preserve for the filling. I used Orchard’s finest Michigan Red Tart Cherry Preserves, an all natural cherry preserve made by Smuckers. It’s not too sweet and has a lot of big chunks of cherries it in, adding both a nice cherry flavor and a good texture to the bread. This jam is so tasty that I was tempted just to eat the whole jar on toast (and I did eat a lot of it that way, don’t get me wrong), but I’m glad I ended up putting some of it in this loaf because it went so well with the bright, zesty lime.

This loaf is equally good for breakfast and for dessert. It will keep well for a couple of days, so you can bake it on the weekend and enjoy it during the week - at least, you can enjoy it for the few days that it will last in the kitchen - or bake it a day ahead and serve it during brunch on a Sunday morning.

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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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