cinnamon loaf recipe

it seems that perhaps having a toddler may improve my baking. with the rainy weather lately and a couple days that tim took the truck to work, i had to come up with something to do to keep ben occupied in the house. last week, i baked banana bread and today (yep, tim's working on a saturday!), we tried out a cinnamon loaf.

in an attempt to not eat all the banana bread on my own, i cut it up into slices and wrapped each slice individually and put them in the freezer. then tim could grab a frozen slice for his lunch and it would be thawed by lunch. i was also hoping that the frozen state of the bread would deter me from eating it. but what are microwaves for? though, i did pretty well and only pulled out a piece to nuke it once.

as for the cinnamon loaf this morning, i'm pretty sure that will be fully eaten in the next few days - it's so good. i'd been feeling like coffee cake so i called my mom for a recipe but her coffee cake recipes called for ingredients that i didn't have on hand. then she suggested this one and after it's been made, it was exactly the flavour that i'd been craving in the first place! i've eaten two warm slices already...this is why i shouldn't be baking... but here's the recipe if you're looking for something:

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup shortening (i used butter)

2 eggs

1 cup sour milk or buttermilk - my mom suggested i use almost a cup of milk and mix a couple tablespoons of vinegar in and let it sit a bit before using it - it did the trick.

2 cups flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp baking powder

a pinch of salt

save for the end: 1/4 cup of sugar and 1 tsp of cinnamon

Cream the sugar, butter, and then add eggs. Add half the flour, the other dry ingred. and half the milk and stir. Then add the remainders of the flour and milk and stir. (apparently this makes it fluffier) Pour batter into a greased loaf pan and pour the sugar/cinnamon mixture on top. "swirl" with a knife (i didn't quite do this right as there are huge patches of no cinnamon in my loaf but it still tastes good). Bake at 350 for about an hour.

There wasn't enough ingredients for Ben's liking and he continued to pretend pour things into the batter after everything was in. But it was just right for me. Enjoy!