Bread

Mary McDougall’s Pumpkin Walnut Muffins

October 17, 2012
Pumpkin Walnut Muffins

The first time I made these muffins, I was worried because they contain molasses and I thought I didn’t like molasses. Wrong! I love molasses in these delectable pumpkin muffins. It gives them a dark richness and amplifies the spiciness of the cinnamon and nutmeg. The second time I made them, I was confident that [...]

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Gluten-Free Raspberry Corn Muffins

September 7, 2012
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As a Southerner, I’m morally opposed to sweet cornbread. Where I grew up, cornbread is for sopping up the pot liquor from a mess of collard or turnip greens. It’s moist on the inside and has a crispy crust from being baked in a cast iron skillet. It is not the cake-like confection that passes [...]

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Fat-Free Pumpkin and Raisin Biscuits

October 26, 2009
Fat-Free Pumpkin and Raisin Biscuits

I used to love biscuits. I was raised on my mom’s Bisquick biscuits and sometime during college graduated to baking and devouring Southern-style biscuits made with White Lily flour and lots of butter or margarine. Living alone in my tiny student apartment, I would bake up batches of huge, fluffy, melt-in-your-mouth biscuits on the weekend [...]

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Sugar-Free (or Not) Peach and Vanilla Muffins

August 20, 2009
Sugar-Free (or Not) Peach and Vanilla Muffins

I’m one of those people who can’t keep baked goods in the house. I mean this in two ways. If there are baked goods in the house, they’re not around for long because I eat them, maybe not in one sitting, but quickly and compulsively, snatching them straight from the oven to “test” them and [...]

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Blueberry-Banana Bread

June 9, 2009
Blueberry-Banana Bread

Q: What’s black and yellow and soft all over? A: The bananas on our kitchen counter when we got home from the beach on Sunday. Of course, when we left on Thursday, the bananas were firm and yellow, even a little green. I’d meant to take them with me, but in the rush of packing [...]

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Gluten-Free Pumpkin Waffles

September 16, 2008
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I know I just posted a waffle recipe, but I couldn’t resist showing you my latest version. I had a craving for pumpkin (must be that fall nip in the air) and decided to see if I could make a fat-free pumpkin waffle using gluten-free flours. If I say so myself, these waffles were an [...]

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Fat-free Vanilla or Blueberry Waffles

September 4, 2008
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What a week! On Sunday, our house became temporary home to an extra 5 people, two dogs, one cat, and a bird when my mother-in-law, my sister-in-law, and her three children had to evacuate New Orleans because of Hurricane Gustav. This is not a big house, and things were a little cozy. Some of the [...]

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Persimmon Bread

November 16, 2007
Persimmon Bread

It’s persimmon time again, or at least it was, very briefly, in my parents’ yard in Louisiana. I got an email a couple of weeks ago from my dad saying that if I wanted persimmons, I’d better come get them because they were rapidly going from ripe to overripe to compost. He’d pick what was [...]

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Confetti Cornbread

July 26, 2007
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During the summer, one of my most frequent meals is “fresh from the farmers’ market”: fresh peas, some greens, and cornbread. By “peas” I mean one of the many varieties of field peas available here in the South in the spring and summer, such as blackeyed peas, lady cream peas, pink-eye purple hull peas, and [...]

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Berries and Spice Muffins

July 4, 2007
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There’s something about the idea of a recipe “getting away” from me that makes it irresistibly attractive. Twice in the past couple of weeks I’ve found myself sitting in a doctor’s waiting room frantically scribbling down recipes from magazines I don’t subscribe to. (Not that I subscribe to any food magazines; I’d never finish reading [...]

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Vegan Corned Beef and Cabbage, Roasted Potatoes, and Soda Bread

March 20, 2007
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Instead of St. Patrick’s Day, this year we celebrated St. Patrick’s Weekend. After being out all day Saturday, I didn’t feel up to preparing a big meal, so we waited to have our “official” holiday meal on Sunday night, when I had the time and energy to make it special. And this really was special! [...]

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St. Patrick’s Day Zucchini Muffins

March 18, 2007
Low-Fat Zucchini Muffins

St. Patrick’s Day is a pretty big deal here in Jackson. There’s a big parade, featuring a phenomenon called Sweet Potato Queens, which I won’t even try to explain, especially because being a newcomer I don’t really understand it myself. Suffice it to say that there are a lot of big-haired, gaudily-clad women with artificially [...]

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Carrot Spice Muffins

March 4, 2007
Carrot Muffins

Here’s one way to get your kids to eat their vegetables: Bake them into muffins (the vegetables, that is, not the kids!) I baked these muffins over the weekend, and my daughter E. didn’t even bat an eye at the shreds of carrot in them, despite the fact that she’s never even had carrot cake, [...]

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Sunshine Citrus Bread

December 31, 2006
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I had a great time visiting with my parents and my sister and her family for a few days, and though I’ve been taking a much-needed vacation from the computer, I just couldn’t resist adding one final recipe for the year. Besides, I just came back from Louisiana with more bags of citrus fruit than [...]

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Pumpkin Spice Bread

December 19, 2006
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Reading other food blogs over the past couple of weeks has made me think a little about how being vegan has influenced my gift-giving. While lots of cooks, vegetarian and non-vegetarian alike, merrily bake and pack up goodies to give as gifts, I’ve become a little hesitant about giving gifts of food. It’s not that [...]

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Cranberry-Orange Muffins

October 30, 2006
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This is a tale of two muffins—or of how one type of muffin became two. It’s the same old weekend story. My daughter E. had her friend G. over for the night, and when morning came, they wanted nothing more than to get in the kitchen and help me cook breakfast. Cooking is their thing [...]

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Fresh Peas and Corn Cakes

October 5, 2006
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It’s been a crazy, hectic week here. Our 9-year-old E. is in an opera! She and several of the students from her school are part of the children’s chorus in a local opera production, which will (finally) be performed this weekend. Between driving her to and from rehearsals and staying up late to make sure [...]

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Cherry-Walnut Banana Bread

April 13, 2006
Cherry-Walnut Banana Bread

What do you do when the bananas are so over-ripe that they’re practically inedible? In my house, there are basically two choices: freeze them for smoothies or make banana bread. So I put it to a family vote, and the response was unanimous: Banana Bread! I’ve been making the same banana bread for years. The [...]

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Let’s Call it a Cheese Sandwich

February 17, 2006

Recently Pete Wells, a writer for Food and Wine magazine, wrote an article that described most food blogs as opportunities for “hundreds of pointless cheese-sandwich meanderings.” To illustrate what he considers a boring “cheese sandwich blog,” he pulled quotes out of context from several blogs and caused a big stir among food bloggers. As a [...]

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Banana-Date-Walnut Muffins

January 16, 2006
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This morning I had a houseful of girls: my daughter E. had her friends J. and K. over to spend the night since today is a school holiday. I decided that instead of filling several breakfast orders (one loves grits, one likes cereal, one says she always eats bacon…) I’d make muffins. I took a [...]

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