Amish Cinnamon Bread

After making the Buttermilk Waffles, I had some leftover buttermilk. I didn't want to just throw it out but I also couldn't figure out what to do with it. So when my mom said we were going to have brunch at their house to celebrate Mother's Day, I figured I'd use it for that. After not fully liking what I had for hardcopy recipes, I went through Pinterest. While there were quite a few options for cake, two caught my eye that seemed a bit more appropriate for brunch: cinnamon coffee cake and amish cinnamon bread.

You remember the amish cinnamon bread, right? You get a starter batter and over the course of about 10 days, you knead the bag to get everything mixed and to activate the yeast. About halfway through add a few ingredients before kneading. Eventually, you divide the batter to give your friends their own starter batter and you use the rest for the bread itself (if you want to make your own starter, I found a good recipe on a website called Friendship Bread Kitchen, which has a ton of recipes that use the starter after the 10-day process).

For the sake of nostalgia, I decided to make the amish bread, completely forgetting about the 10-day mashing process. Turns out, that wasn't a problem: the recipe I found is a quick alternative recipe. No kneading, not waiting 10 days. Just combine the ingredients and bake like a normal recipe. The recipe comes from Redfly Creations.

Madeleines

A few months ago I was at Bed, Bath, & Beyond to see if they have a broiling pan so I could make burgers at home (I've discovered that it's a good place to go before Amazon for stuff for my apartment that Safeway and Target don't have. Plus I get a coupon with my Good Housekeeping magazine that I like to use). As I usually do when I'm there, I started walking around the area of the kitchen section where the kitchen tools and baking pans are. I came across a pan for making madeleines - a.k.a. mini tea cakes. A madeleine pan is one of the few items left on my Amazon baking items wish list because I've always wanted to make them. So I decided to buy it with the plan to use up leftover chocolate chips from baking Christmas presents. I even found a recipe.

Except that plan never really came to fruition. I wanted to make them for me but never really had an opportunity (yes, I'm one of those bad people who has to have dessert after dinner. However, as I've said before, my hands are magnets to new/limited flavors of Oreos and I want to eat them before making cookies from scratch. This has yet to happen). And I was unsure about how they would be received at work. So the pan sat on my storage shelf, the label still on it. Until I found out we were having brunch for Mother's Day. Perfect! Madeleines seem like the kind of thing you serve at brunch as well as tea. So I pulled out the saved recipe - something simple that I could add chocolate chips to - and got to work.