SOS Kitchen Challenge: April

At the beginning of the month, I was excited to find out that the ingredient of the month was asparagus. I have never done much with it, but I do love to eat it. There was a challenge in the announcement in regards to creating a sweet treat with this ingredient. I decided to take up the challenge, and create a bread similar in composition to zucchini bread. Thus began some research into ideas on what went well with asparagus. I found several recipes that combined strawberries and oranges with asparagus. I decided to go the route of orange.

Given that it is rather difficult to grate an asparagus spear, I decided a puree for most of my liquid would be the simplest route to go. Have I mentioned that ratios are now my friend? I think this went together even a bit more smoothly than the Double Chocolate Cherry Muffins. Looking for the information on ratios for quick breads? Go take a look at the post for those muffins or check out the other muffins/breads in last month's rally.

I started putting this together before I remembered that I was supposed to pick the Monkey up for his weekly therapy session. So I worked quickly, ate my lunch quickly, put this in the fridge, and then left for about 2 and a half hours. It really thickened up. I don't know if the results would have been different if I had cooked the more liquid form rather than the thicker form. Will probably try it again soon to see as this bread was well received by all members of the family. Whoo hoo! As it was, the bread is a bit crumbly (read here: hard to cut). I am going to make another batch soon to see if I can improve upon the texture. Overall though I am pleased to share it with you.

Asparagus-Orange Quick Bread

60 grams brown rice flour
60 grams potato starch
120 grams teff flour
200 grams turbinado sugar
12-15 asparagus spears, softened (I used frozen & microwaved for about 40 seconds)
4-6 ounces orange juice
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons orange peel
1 Tablespoon flax meal
2 eggs or flax egg equivalent
4 ounces melted coconut oil

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Puree 2 ounces orange juice with the asparagus. Add additional orange juice to make 8 ounces of liquid. In a medium bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking soda, cinnamon, orange peel (I used dried) and flax meal. Whisk to incorporate. Add pureed asparagus-orange mixture. Fold in. Add eggs and coconut oil to the empty container, and whisk (is it called whisking? the thing you do to eggs to scramble them?) together. Add to batter, and stir to incorporate. Prepare three small loaf pans with cooking spray of choice. Divide the batter evenly between them. Bake at 375 for 1 hour to 1 hour 15 minutes OR until a knife inserted in the middle comes out clean. Cool in the pan for an hour before removing and slicing.