Bread 'n' Buttah.

I'm making an effort to be more festive this year. Fall and winter are my favorite seasons, and subsequently, Halloween and Christmas are my favorite holidays. Amidst all the wedding planning for my sister's October wedding and my December wedding last year, my holiday bliss fell short. I had a long list of cookies I wanted to bake: sugar and chocolate chip like we did growing up, light Christmas candles all day long, get more holiday decor, but poo. Not much of that happened. Weddings keep you busy!


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Sissy's fall wedding!

Our Christmas wedding! ------------->



I'm starting early this holiday season. As soon as my August 31 birthday vanishes, I'm in fall mode! I was looking around for all of our fall decor. We have a cute pumpkin piece but Elliot decided it's his chew toy, so we've hid it in a closet. I unpacked all our fall oriented Yankee candles, so we have been busy burning those. Also set out a fall-themed wreath on the kitchen table that surrounds a baking spice candle. All fall colors. We don't have much else. Blugh. SO...I'm diving into festive recipes. First recipe I chose was the cover page of our Cooking Light magazine: Walnut streusel bread. I hesitated to make it because I'm not a fan of anything nutty in my pastries or desserts. Yuckkkkkkkk! However, we've had a bag of walnuts sitting in our pantry for some time now after we devoured the first bag we bought. Thing is, I love walnuts, pecans, peanuts, etc. in my salad. We try to toast and spice them for our dinners, and I love them! Still can't get into them for dessert, but I thought it would be a good way to use up some walnuts and give Hubby a work snack that's easily transferable.

The streusel, I will say, is soooooo good. Oats, brown sugar, Ceylon cinnamon, and butter are the main components and I should have stopped there. After you mix all that along with the usual baking power, soda, and salt, you crush some walnuts and throw it in. While I was moderate in my walnut dispensing, it ended up that I just don't like nuts in dessert. Oh well. The streusel ended up swirled into the batter and then sprinkled on top. The crust of the bread was soooo yummy and the cake was ridiculously moist. Mmmm mmmm mmm!  The final product overall was very successful, even though I'm still not a convert to nutty desserts. I try to substitute Splenda for at least half of the sugar called for in each recipe I try, so between that and the oats, I tried to convince myself the bread wasn't THAT bad for us. Next time I'll use whole wheat flour, too.

This is the final, half-eaten product.

 

Once I finished the bread, I still felt the Autumn bug biting me in the butt. I found a recipe for crock pot apple butter online which was super simple, so I went for it. I put half a dozen Fuji apples, 1/4 cup water, and a tsp of vanilla into the crock pot for about six hours. After that, I crushed the apples which had broken down considerably and added 1/8 cup of brown sugar, 1/4 tsp allspice,  and 1/4 tsp of cinnamon. Then all of that cooked overnight. The end result was DELICIOUS but way too runny. I don't think the water was necessary so I will skip it next time. It's about the consistency of applesauce which the recipe said it would be, but definitely not the right thickness. Oh well. You live and learn, and we have yummy apple butter to put on our walnut streusel bread!

 

There's a better picture of the final product, but it won't send to my email properly. It's much smoother thanks to my immersion blender.

 

 

 

Happy Autumn!