Quick Breads

Doughnuts -Louisiana style.  The "beignet" is French for "small doughnut" and easily upstages a Krispie Kreme for its extreme homestyle, real taste. Not too sweet, not too rich, this is a doughnut with a pastry feel. You may use a deep fryer or a wok and tongs. A bread machine does a great job with the dough.
In the BB Test Kitchen, we blend some pure vanilla powder with the confectioners' sugar before dusting. Serve with espresso or Cafe Brule -New Orleans coffee and chicory. You can also leave out the yeast and double the baking powder for a different sort of texture -equally good. In that case, knead half as long.

Mexican vanilla would make these sublime from BetterBaking.com - they are getting used to my creative vanilla recipes at this point!). This recipe makes tiny, not too sweet, pop-in-in-your mouth, mini muffins that are somewhere between a sweet muffin and a cake texture. If you also have ambrosial vanilla paste to swirl in, all the better. If not, scrapings from a vanilla bean (gourmet shops often carry them) will do. If you want to try this ASAP, you can use all-purpose flour; otherwise spring for the cake flour for yet an even more tender muffin.

Who said plain is not exciting? This is the purest butter cake ever beheld.

A little pie tin crumb cake that is meltingly tender (the yogurt helps) and reminiscent of yesteryear. No such cake in your ‘yesteryear’? All you remember is a Twinkie? Well, here’s a cake to put the Twinkie on its tail.  This is mellow yellow of crumb, pretty as a picture in a pie tin, and slices into moist, golden wedges of simply great homespun cake. This is a good keeper but one of those small, gone in 2 days little cakes. In days past, they used cream of tartar and some soda in cakes like this. Here I've opted for the more common baking powder and soda combination.