Tag Archives: baking

Muffins of Win

No photo of these guys because they didn’t last long enough.  🙂

As usual, this was a heavily modded version of an Allrecipes recipe.  Here’s what I did:

  • 1/2 c. butter
  • 1 1/2 c. white flour
  • 1/2 c. whole wheat flour*
  • 1 1/4 c. sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 1/2 c. yogurt**
  • 2 tsp. baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1 tsp grated orange zest
  • 1 tsp nutmeg
  • 1 handful slivered almonds
  • 2 handfuls dried cranberries

*  You can probably go as high as half and half for your whole-wheat-to-white ratio, but muffins are delicate creatures, so I didn’t risk it on the first try.

**  The kind with fat in it, not strawberry flavor.

Anyway.  Preheat the oven to 350º.  Mix all the dry ingredients in one bowl.  In  a mixer, cream together the butter and the sugar.  Add the eggs to that, mix well, then add the yogurt, mix, then the dry ingredients, mix.  Stir in the cranberries and almonds last, by hand.  Drop into muffin pans and bake 25-30 minutes.  Try tapping the tops with your finger (it won’t burn you) and take them out when they don’t feel liquid inside anymore.

These are best served right out of the oven with immodest amounts of butter.

Awesome Molasses Wheat Bread

How do I describe the flavor of this bread?  Something along the lines of OMG I never want to buy store-bought wheat bread again.  The flavor is nutty and sweet and strongly of molasses, the texture’s nice and dense, the aroma is so, well, bready.  This bread is so substantial, just a little butter on it and an apple to the side, and you’ve got a lovely meal.  (And if you opt to add the nuts, it provides a complete protein.  Okay, I’ll get off my soapbox now.)  Adapted from James Beard.

  • 1 package yeast
  • 2 cups warm water
  • 1/4 cup molasses
  • 1 tablespoon salt
  • 2 tablespoons oil
  • 2 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
  • 1/2 cup oatmeal
  • 3 cups all-purpose baking flour
  • (optional) 1 handful of raisins and 1 handful of nuts

Stir together the yeast and 1/2 cup of the warm water in a little bowl and set aside.  In a large bowl, mix the rest of the water, molasses, salt, oil, and whole-wheat flour.  Add the yeast mixture and stir again.  Slowly add the white flour until it looks like bread dough.  Put it on a floured surface and knead until everything is nicely mixed.  Put in an oiled bowl, cover with a slightly damp towel, and let sit for 1 1/2 hour.

Take the dough out and punch it down.  If you like, make a dent in the middle, throw in the nuts and raisins, and knead them in.  Once it’s nice and mixed, put the dough onto an oiled baking sheet.  Or you can split it in half and put it into two oiled 8 1/2 by 4/12 loaf pans.  Cover with a slightly damp towel again and let sit for 1 1/2 hour.

Uncover, bake at 375 for 40 minutes.  The bread’s done when you knock it and it sounds hollow.

Yellow Cake and Beefless Stroganoff

Just a couple of new culinary experiments.  Four-egg yellow cake is from Allrecipes.com with pretty much no modification.  I tried sprinkling M&Ms on top 10 minutes into the baking time, but they still sank to the bottom.  They still tasted good, though.  The cake has an excellent texture, bland, but you want that in a cake.

Beefless stroganoff I made up.

Beefless Stroganoff

  • Whole-wheat pasta
  • 1 can pinto beans
  • 1 can navy beans
  • 1 large onion
  • Plenty of garlic
  • Dash of half & half
  • Dash of white wine

Chop the onion so the slices are going to be in long strips.  Sauté that with the garlic in butter until caramelized.  While it’s going, boil pasta.  Stir beans into onion mixture, then cooked pasta, then salt & pepper.  Add half & half until texture is the way you like it, then add white wine to taste.

Sweet Potato Cranberry Casserole

First of all, I hope all of you out there in cyberspace had a wonderful Thanksgiving with friends and family and no epic turkey disasters.

There’s a pecking order to family cooking affairs. Mom and Aunt Sue were the unquestioned empresses of the turkey this year, their respective offspring were in charge of the lesser dishes, and the menfolk were wise to keep out of it and helped out with chairs. This year, for the first time in recorded history, I got to participate in the madness as an adult (I’m 21). I got to bring a side dish.

Sadly, there are no photos available of the sweet potato cranberry casserole because some of the older folk don’t get the whole blogging thing and would have thought I’d gone round the bend if I’d whipped out the digital camera in the kitchen. Look, here’s a picture of a sweet potato:


Yeah. So. It was an adaptation of an Allrecipes.com Sweet Potato and Apple Casserole. I knew I wanted to make something like this, then went looking around on the Internet for what ingredient proportions other people tried and liked. There’s a variation on the Allrecipes site with pineapple, which is probably scrumptious.

Ingredients:

3 large sweet potatoes
1/2 c brown sugar, packed
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
1/3 package fresh cranberries

Topping:
1/4 c flour
1/4 c brown sugar, packed
1/4 c butter
mmmarshmallowsssss…

Preheat oven to 350. Lightly grease a casserole dish with cooking spray. Boil sweet potatoes in large soup pot until tender when poked with a fork, about 20 min. Let cool, then slip them out of the peels and cut into about 1″ chunks. Add those to a mixing bowl, then snip cranberries in half with scissors and add those, too. (Breaking the cranberries’ skin ensures that they become one with the sweet potato while baking. Otherwise you’ll find yourself biting into a tart surprise.) Add the sugar and spices and stir just until the sweet potatoes are coated.

Spread the mixture out in the casserole dish. Cream together the flour, butter, and sugar with an electric mixer, than crumble that on top like a streusel topping. Bake about 25 minutes. Then pull the dish out of the oven and apply marshmallows to taste (that is, liberally). Return to oven and bake until the marshmallows are just getting golden on top. Enjoy!

Update: The pineapple version is even more delicious than the cranberry.