Cheesy Sweet-Hot Beer Bread

All I can say right now is….what on earth took me so long to make a beer bread?!  I remember years ago when I was married to my first husband, he wanted to make beer bread and I went right ahead and said go at it.  I had no interest.  Not sure why, maybe because back then I really didn’t care much if I had beer to begin with.  Lord knows I certainly didn’t have any problem making anything else for him.  I don’t even remember eating any of the bread he made.  For some reason I don’t remember it being something that even appealed to me.  Jump ahead 20+ years and here I am, making my own beer bread.  Dana might even be proud of me today because it was an awesome bread.  One thing he and I had in common was definitely food and cooking it.  (besides loving our two wonderful sons).

It is a little ironic that what brought me to make this bread was The Secret Recipe Club and Krista of Meet the Swans.  I’ve read Krista’s blog for quite a while now.  I remember how precious her love story was and I even commented on her about me section way back when.  Krista is a sweet little thing who grew up on a farm (almost ditto here…my dad went into farming after I was in HS).  I love her enthusiasm and her love of baking….even if most of it is chocolate.  ;o)  I thought about baking a treat as she has mostly baked goodies on her blog, but I haven’t been making much sweets to have around us for a while now and I was feeling like something savory.  I searched and searched and in the midst of all her chocolate I found this Beer Bread.  Bingo.  I thought to myself that I really should try it out.  After all, I was early in the challenge and if I messed it up I would make the Almond Crescents (which I happen to LOVE – but have never made myself).

Such a simple recipe and as soon as I read the ingredients and saw it called for some sugar, I knew I was going to put some kind of heat in it.  I went searching through my cupboards for some pickled jalapeno’s thinking for certain I had to have some, after all, I’m a hot pepper fanatic.  No such luck, but I did find something even better.  I found some pickled hot peppers that my dad had given me from their canning shelves the last time I was home.  I couldn’t wait to try this recipe out!

While I was going to make the bread, I also didn’t want to take the chance that I would have a full loaf of bread and neither Grumpy nor I would want to eat it.  So, I decided to make half the recipe and make mini loaves.  Well, I won’t have to half the recipe next time for certain!  I could have eaten a whole mini loaf by myself that afternoon.  I stopped myself at half a loaf though and then decided that I would have more when we ate dinner.  ;o)  Yes, it was that good.

I took some sneak peeks while the bread was in the oven because I was really curious as to how it would rise.  It was more like a batter bread and I also was curious about how the top of the bread would look.  I was far from disappointed.  I was strongly reminded of Red Lobster’s cheese biscuits.  So much so that I melted some Best Life butter and stirred in some garlic powder to brush over the top of the loaves.  Oh, sweet, heavenly YUM!  I sinfully even spread some more of that garlic butter on my individual slices, not that it needed it.  I just wanted to be bad.