*a new favorite

Earlier this year I was visiting my motherinlove and had some time to look at some of her magazines; specifically her Cook's Country Magazines!  I have always loved cook books and have several times found myself in need of thinning my collection.  My motherinlove has this disease too.  Many of my cookbooks have been passed down from her shelves to ours.

There are many reasons why I find this magazine a must have.  The Cook's Country is jam packed with useful information from recipes to tasters reviews to ratings of cooking tools.  I also like the way the pages are edited with photos of each recipe and bold and colored text throughout.

As much as I can tell, each issue has several cake recipes as well. Tomorrow I hope to make a Gingerbread Cake from one of the issues.  With the air starting to hint at Fall, I am eager to make some pumpkin muffins or maybe the Gingerbread Cake to celebrate the coming season.

Tonight I made mention of making beer bread with one of the bottles of Samuel Adams we have had in the fridge for a while. I did not get right on it, but was urged to do so by my dear hubby. His mother used to make beer bread and he has always enjoyed it.  I have made beer bread many times over the years - sometimes I am successful and sometimes not.  Now the best beer bread I have eaten was just a year or so ago while I was visiting Franziska.  Her mother came down (from her house just up the hill) with a warm loaf of Beer Bread for us.  I am almost ashamed to say the entire loaf was divied up between the five of us and out of sight in less than five minutes. It was GOOD!   So tonight, with that bread in mind.. I pulled out the Cook's Country December/January 2008 issue out and made the Beer Batter Cheese Bread.  YUM.

This bread was quite tasty. You can taste the light fermented flavor that the beer adds to this bread.  You get that yeasty taste that is yielded in about an hour as opposed to the half a day that a yeast recipe normally calls for.

Here is the recipe:
8 ounces of Gruyere Cheese
  (4 ozs shredded and 4 ozs cubed) - I didn't have any Swiss Chees so I used Sharp Cheddar
3 cups all purpose flour
3 tablespoons of sugar
4 teaspoons of baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
12 oz light bodied beer
4 tablespoons of melted butter

Adjust your rack to middle of oven and preheat to 375 degrees.
Mix all cheese and all dry ingredients together then add the beer.  Pour into a greased pan.  Pour melted butter over the top of the batter. The butter will give the bread a crusty top (you wont be sorry!) Bake until deep golden brown and toothpick inserted comes out clean.  (45 to 50 minutes baking). Cool in pan for 5 minutes, then turn out to rack. Cool completely (oops.. I cut pretty much right away). 

Enjoy.  Oh, and check out your local used book store for the Cooks Country Condensed Cook Books or their magazines - or subscribe to receive them in your mail box!