whole wheat banana crumb muffins-002

So all that thing of me being allergic to bananas- it doesn’t hold anymore.

Im sure you must be wondering what I am talking about- so for the uninitiated for a while I thought I was allergic to bananas because every time I ate them or had them in cakes or muffins or smoothies I would get a pain in my stomach. Like a really bad pain. But for the past couple of months I have been eating bananas and have noticed no cramps or any other problem. Maybe it was something with US bananas, because odd as it may sound, the problem only persisted when I was in the US. Here in India I have been eating bananas with no such problem. And with that issue gone, it was only a matter of time when I would end up baking with black, rotten looking bananas.

And these banana crumb muffins happened.

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Whole Wheat Dinner Rolls | The Novice HousewifeI had been eyeing this recipe for sweet buns on allrecipes.com for a while now. It had great reviews and I am always looking for new bread recipes to try. Plus it seemed easy to put together. And with such great reviews I was sure I will not be disappointed. And I was right, after about two hours of kneading, resting and baking, I had light and fluffy (and absolutely delicious) dinner rolls. I also got an absolutely drool worthy cinnamon swirl bread. And with my love for all things cinnamon I honestly cherished the cinnamon swirl bread more than the rolls. And that actually says a lot about the bread since the rolls were amazing without any additions!

The recipe makes 16 dinner rolls. I used half the dough to make 8 dinner rolls and the other half I used to make the cinnamon swirl bread. I do not have a recipe, but I followed the same instructions I do when I make cinnamon rolls. Rolled out the dough to a rectangle (keeping it 9 inch long, and as wide as I could with a thickness of about 1/4th inch) and spread softened butter on the rolled out dough, followed by a generous sprinkle of cinnamon sugar on top. I rolled the dough up and let it rise in my bread pan. To achieve the shape I have in the pictures, I cut the rolled up dough like you do for cinnamon rolls (but slightly thinner in thickness)  and put each cut part side by side in the bread pan. I wish I had pictures because I feel I might not be explaining this too well. If that’s the case, sorry!

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quinoa bread-6

I had pinned this recipe for Quinoa bread quite a while back. The recipe was in French (or that’s what google says) but it intrigued me quite a bit, and with the help of google translator I could figure it out more or less and seemed like an easy recipe.

And it IS easy.

Not much of kneading, though I did knead it a little more than what the original recipe suggests. Well, the original recipe just calls for mixing everything with a wooden spoon. Maybe because I used slightly less water than called for I did have to knead it a little by hand to make it into a smooth dough. But that was it.

Also, I was a little wary of adding the walnuts before the first rise, because my knowledge of bread baking tells me that any additions like seeds, nuts weighs the dough down and thus inhibits rising so they should be added after the first rise. Luckily the dough still rose but since I was in a time crunch I did not wait till it tripled in size, as the recipe states but baked it once it was double in size after an hour and a half.

quinoa bread-3

quinoa bread-9

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