The socks are back. I take this to be a sign of spring. My 10 year old niece last fall, in carrying an armload of stuff from my house down the steps to the car, apparently dropped a rolled up pair of her purple socks that have been sitting on the ground under the steps since they landed there. They’ve been buried by snow all winter. Recently, everytime the snow melts enough to reveal the socks, other signs of spring also appear at the same time. It has happened 4 or 5 times now, so often that I have come to see the appearance of the socks as a harbinger of spring.
In the last few weeks, there have been two major snow storms, and the moon has passed in front of the sun in perfect circular alignment. It also got really warm, and major melting ensued. At which point, the socks appeared again. See? It’s spring.
In addition, my daffodils are up with buds, the coltsfoot have cheerfully displayed their fuzzy yellow flowers and a variety of bird songs have returned to the air. Big Night will occur this week, where there is a massive amphibian migration across vehicle traveled roads to lay eggs in vernal pools. There are many a volunteer that go out on Big Night to help these soft bodied creatures get to the other side unharmed by tire treads or cars weighing hundreds of pounds.
Oh. And it’s mud season. Again. I think this is the 5th time this year? I remember when mud season happened only once a year. But I digress…
As the season keeps changing out there, I’ve been making some changes in here too. I have been eating more cereal. I’ve been eating a lot of other things besides cereal for breakfast the last few years…eggs, toast, yogurt, fruit, but recently I decided to try cereal again. And while I’ve started by revisiting some of my favorites like Life and Special K, I’ve gone even deeper and tried the “sometimes” cereals that fell somewhere between being a kid and an adult. This selection includes Grape-Nuts.
Remember Grape-Nuts? Those rock hard little nuggets of wheaty sourness that was only improved upon by sprinkling heavily with granulated sugar, drowning it in milk and then microwaving the whole bowl to warm it up? Then the milk would soak into the lower portion so you had a crunchy top half and a spongy (not soggy) bottom half to the bowl of cereal.
I decided to give them a try, and the crunch little pieces of wheaty sourness are still prominent, but after I drown them in milk, I pour a little maple syrup on top and eat them cold.
Vaguely in my memory was something about baking with Grape-Nuts, since I had a whole box, I decided to look into this more.
According to grapenuts.com, CW Post developed Grape-Nuts in 1897. Made of wheat and barley, not grapes, there are two possible origins of the name. First, Post believed that glucose, or “grape sugar” as he called it, formed during the baking process. This and the nutty flavor of the cereal may have led to the name. And the other idea, of course, is the size and shape, and that they resemble grape seeds.
The website also has some fun facts about Grape-Nuts role in history, such as the formation of The Andy Griffith Show. Click on the link above to learn more.
When it comes to baking with Grape-Nuts, there’s a lot you can do: muffins, cookies, bars, toppings, puddings, crusts. I’ve even had Grape-Nuts ice cream a couple times. Today I decided to go with bread. Specifically, a quick bread. No yeast needed.
While there are a number of Grape-Nuts Bread recipes on the internet, I decided to go with one from NewEngland.com mostly because I liked their recipe for brown-bread-in-a-can, which I wrote about recently. And why did I choose a quick bread? Well, with purple socks and daffodils come spring rains. And that’s what it is doing now. Raining. With more tomorrow. I wanted something quick and warm that would go with a cup of tea to help hold back that rain chill.
So here it is. A 9x4 loaf pan recipe reduced to 20% to fill my small mini loaf pan. Here is the recipe and here is how I made it happen.
ingredients
61g scalded whole milk
16g Post Grape-Nuts cereal
48g all-purpose flour
2g baking powder
1.7g salt
27g sugar
10g beaten egg
8.4g melted butter
directions
Preheat the oven to 3500F and either line your pan with parchment or spray the inside for easy removal
Pour the scalded milk over the cereal and let cool to room temperature
Sift the flour, baking powder, salt and sugar together. I stirred it together with a whisk.
Add the egg and melted butter to the cereal.
Mix the wet and dry ingredients until just combined.
Put batter into the prepared pan and bake approximately 25 minutes, or until a cake tester comes out clean.
I have to say, for what I wanted on a cool rainy afternoon, this couldn’t have been better company for my cup of tea. It has a pleasantly crisp edge, soft center with resistance from the grape nuts, but not the crunchiness of raw ones. It was the perfect amount of sweet, especially swathed in salty creamy butter. I might have to invite friends over for tea next time so I can make a full sized loaf.