Category — Baked Goods

Late last week I had a craving for cinnamon rolls. This craving had gone on for several weeks, but every time I was out Christmas shopping at the mall, I made the decision not to cave and buy one, even though they smelled so good…

Luckily when the craving just had to be satisfied, I did a quick web search and found this “Easy No-Rise Cinnamon Rolls” recipe from The Happy Housewife. It was a great instant gratification recipe since I didn’t have to wait for the dough to rise, and it called for no oil, shortening, or refined sugar, like many other recipes I found.

I needed the whole cup of milk, and I found it only made 8 rolls, which surprised me. I used a 9″ round cake pan and it didn’t fill the whole pan, but I was able to line the pan with them and when they baked they spread out and touched each other. Before I put the rolls in the pan, I greased it with a little bit of butter and sprinkled some brown sugar and cinnamon in.

I only needed to bake them for 16 minutes, and they were yummy drizzled with some leftover royal icing I had from making Christmas Cut-Out Cookies!

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This month instead of sharing book reviews, members of the Kitchen Reader group are all sharing a holiday recipe that is special to them.

I decided to share my mom’s recipe for Christmas cut-out cookies, although to be fair, they can be and have been made many times at other times of the year. Although they are probably the most time-intensive recipe I make at the holidays (because of the decorating time), I always make at least one batch because they remind me of making and decorating them with my mom, and they make me (and the loved ones who ooh and aah over them) feel young.

I thought about tinkering with the recipe to make it fit my blog a little bit better, perhaps swapping in a natural sweetener for sugar, but ultimately decided to stick with the original. I did use wholesome ingredients (organic butter, sugar, and flour, cage-free eggs) and decided they were a treat worth enjoying (in moderation!) Here’s the recipe!

Christmas Cut-Out Cookies

Ingredients:

• 2 sticks of butter, softened
• 1.5 c. confectioner’s sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 2.5 cups flour
• 1 tsp. cream of tartar
• 1 tsp. baking soda

Directions:

1. Cream butter, confectioner’s sugar, egg, and vanilla.
2. Blend in dry ingredients.
3. Cover and chill the dough for a few hours or overnight.
4. Roll out on a floured surface and cut with favorite cookie cutters.
5. Bake at 400 degrees for 4-5 minutes per batch.

For decorating, you could make buttercream frosting or Royal icing. I made Royal icing (using meringue powder) for the first time this year because it hardens nicely and I wanted to mail some cookies to relatives we won’t be able to see this year.

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Today is my birthday, and I decided to bake myself a cake, but not just any cake…a gluten-free chocolate cake that a friend found online and emailed to me. As I’ve mentioned before, I am not allergic to gluten but am sensitive to wheat, so I try to avoid it when I can. Usually baked goods are a place where I make an exception, but this cake was too intriguing not to try! Unlike many other gluten-free cake recipes I have checked out, it doesn’t contain any difficult-to-find ingredients. Instead of flour, it uses quinoa! I love quinoa, and the idea that I can use it in a chocolate cake was just fantastic.

I made the cake this morning and was pleased with the ease of the recipe. I did have to cook the quinoa first and let it cool, and then the rest of the batter creation took place in my blender and a bowl, by hand…I didn’t even have to use my mixer! I did have a little trouble getting all of the batter out of the VitaMix blender, and unfortunately I didn’t have 8″ pans, only 9″, so my cake is a little bit larger and flatter than the photo with the recipe, but taste-wise it was a complete success!

The cake had just come out of the oven when I was leaving for a birthday lunch with a friend, so my darling husband took it out, let it cool, and had it frosted and ready on the cake stand when we returned. As my husband observed, it’s a slightly more dense cake than many made with flour, but it’s still delicious. We’ll have a few more friends over later for dinnertime slices so I will get some more opinions then, but so far it’s a unanimous success.

Here’s a link to the recipe, which comes from a book that was already on my wish list but has just been bumped to the top: Quinoa 365 by Patricia Green and Carolyn Hemming.

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Every so often my extremely healthy-eating husband will request something decidedly unhealthy, like one of the sugary cereals he loves: Fruity Pebbles or Cookie Crisp. I repeatedly say no to those (and since I do the grocery shopping, they just never make it into the house) but when he requests baked goods, I have trouble saying no. Monkey Bread I tend to put off at least for a while, but when he asks for something easier like chocolate chip cookies or, like tonight, lemon bars, I often acquiesce pretty quickly.

Tonight after dinner he mentioned lemon bars for, oh, the third time in as many days, so we got out the family cookbook that his mom put together and lo and behold, I had all of the ingredients on hand. So I set out to make him some lemon bars, which was fun because he stayed in the kitchen to help me! He actually did quite a few of the steps himself, all the while declaring that these were going to be the very best lemon bars EVER made, because he was helping. He even documented the process with his camera.

First you mix butter (the original said shortening but we used butter), flour, and powdered sugar and press them into a 9 x 13 pan.

That goes into the oven at 350 until golden brown…this took about 25 minutes in our oven.

The next step is to combine eggs, sugar, baking powder, lemon zest, lemon juice, and more flour—this is the top layer. My husband did this part, and commented that it was really hard to mix…and more cloudy than he expected…he remembered the top layer being kind of transparent, and maybe even brighter yellow…but oh, well.

The mixture gets poured over the baked crust, and then the whole pan goes back in the oven for another 25 minutes.

When it comes out, it gets a sprinkling of powdered sugar. Let cool, then cut and enjoy!

When the bars were done and ready to sample, we were both surprised that the layers had similar consistencies and the entire bar was a little more “cake-y” than we expected. We figured we were both just remembering a different lemon bar recipe.

Then, as I sat down to write this post and transcribe the recipe, I noticed that flour is listed in the ingredient list twice…because you use it in the first step (2 cups) and in the 2nd step (4 Tbsp.) Unfortunately, when my husband read “Combine eggs, sugar…and flour,” he then looked up at the ingredient list, and added 2 cups of flour. Oops. That explains the blister he got whisking all of those ingredients together and trying to get them smooth!

OK, so it wasn’t a perfectly executed recipe but we had fun, the bars are still tasty, and we got a good laugh once we discovered what went wrong. But according to him, the baking is going to be left to me from now on…or at least the recipe-reading! I hope I can convince him to try again, though, because the group effort made it more fun.

What funny mistakes have you made by misreading a recipe?

Lemon Bars
(A family favorite)

Ingredients:

• 1 cup butter
• 2 cups flour for bottom layer + 4 Tbsp flour for top layer
• 1 cup powdered sugar, divided (1/2 cup for bottom, 1/2 cup for sprinkling on top)
• 4 eggs, beaten
• 2 cups sugar
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• zest of 1/2 lemon
• 6 Tbsp. lemon juice

Directions:

1. Combine butter, 2 cups flour, and 1/2 cup powdered sugar. Press into prepared 9 x 13 pan and bake at 350 degrees until golden brown, about 25 minutes.
2. Combine beaten eggs, sugar, baking powder, lemon juice, lemon zest, and 2 Tbsp flour.
3. Pour onto hot crust and bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes.
4. Remove from oven, sprinkle 1/2 cup powdered sugar on top.
5. Let cool, cut, and enjoy!

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This bread should also be  known as the easiest homemade bread recipe EVER.

It makes a yummy, beautiful loaf of artisan bread that you can totally pass off as one you got fresh at a local bakery or farmers’ market, but why would you want to do that? Take credit for your (practically effortless) creation! Seriously, the hardest part about this recipe is remembering to throw the ingredients in a bowl before you go to bed the night before you want to bake it.

This recipe is adapted from one of my favorite blogs, Dinner: A Love Story, where it was adapted from Jim Lahey’s recipe. The bread in her photo looks even better than mine—I think if I had a slightly smaller Le Creuset I would use it and end up with a taller loaf, but the “squat” loaf works just fine for slicing up and making sandwiches, serving with tomato and basil salad, or about a million other things!

No-Knead Bread

• 3 cups all-purpose or bread flour, more for dusting
• 1/4 teaspoon instant yeast
• 1  tablespoon sea salt
• 1 heaping teaspoon sugar

1. In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, and salt, and any flavorings (rosemary, thyme, Parmesan) you want to add.
2. Optional step: In a small bowl, combine the yeast and 2 Tbsp of warm water and wait a few minutes for the yeast to get a little foamy. I have found this makes the bread rise better, even when I use instant yeast…feel free to skip this, just increase water in next step to 1-5/8 cups.
3. Add 1-1/2 cups of warm water + the water with the yeast in it, and stir until blended; dough will be shaggy and sticky.
4. Cover bowl with a large plate and let the dough rest for at least 12 hours, preferably about 18, or even as much as 24 at a warm room temperature, about 70 degrees.
5. If possible, after about 6 or 8 hours, give the dough a good folding for about fifteen seconds. (I often do this 9-10 hours later, because I am asleep after 6-8!)
6. After 18 hours, the dough will be batter-like and spongy. Use a rubber spatula and fold it over on itself a few times.
7. At least a half hour before the dough is ready, heat the oven to 450 degrees. Put a 6- to 8-quart heavy covered pot (Le Creuset, cast iron, enamel, Pyrex, or ceramic) in the oven as it heats.
8. When the dough is ready, carefully remove the pot from the oven. Sprinkle flour in the pot (this will keep the loaf from sticking). Note: The flour doesn’t usually do the trick completely but I always forget to try using some sort of oil or baking spray!
9. Slide the dough into the pot, sprinkle some flour on top of the dough, and cover it with a lid. Bake for 30 minutes.
10. Remove the lid and let it bake for another 10 to 15 minutes, until the loaf is beautifully browned.
11. Remove from oven, remove bread from pot, and let it cool on a rack.

Tip: I always have trouble getting the bread out of the pot. My clever husband suggested using some string/twine to slide under it to separate it from the pot. It’s a little tricky getting the string in there, but I use a spatula and manage to do it, and it works like a charm!

Related Tip: If you burn yourself by touching the hot pot, immediately put lavender oil on the burned spot. I have used this trick on burns from hot pans, splattering oil, and a variety of other silly kitchen mishaps, and it works marvelously. Pain is eased, and no blister. One time recently, though, I was too lazy to run upstairs to my bathroom to apply the oil, and I was rewarded with 2 ugly little burn blisters on my arm. So keep lavender oil on hand if you are accident-prone like me! Bonus: it smells good, too.

Tonight we had this bread with a vegetable tian I made using the veggies from the farmers’ market. I used the same recipe I have shared previously, but this time added eggplant, snuck some orange bell peppers into the bottom layer, and instead of mixing my own herbs and olive oil, I used an olive oil that was infused with garlic, basil, rosemary, thyme, and oregano that I received as a hostess gift. Of course I had to take a photo (or 10!) Yum!

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This cake does not belong in the health food category, but it’s made with love using the most fresh, natural, whole ingredients available, and I believe that counts for something. In fact, I think it counts for a lot.

I know it will be enjoyed by family and friends this weekend, and I can feel good knowing that although I didn’t provide a low-calorie dessert, I did provide one made from scratch with real ingredients!

To create this recipe, I started with my mom’s classic pound cake recipe but instead of vanilla and almond for the flavorings, I used vanilla and fresh lemon juice and zest, and then added a lemon glaze on top.

P.S. Since this cake has to travel tomorrow, I couldn’t put it on my adorable new cake stand, but I couldn’t resist setting it on there on its plate anyway and taking a photo to share!

Lemon Pound Cake

• 16 oz. cream cheese (not low fat or fat free), softened
• 2 sticks unsalted butter (fresh from farmer’s market if available!), softened
• 3 cups sugar (I used 1.5 cups regular, and 1.5 cups organic evaporated cane juice sugar)
• 6 large eggs (pastured and fresh from farmer’s market if available!)
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 2 Tbsp. fresh lemon juice
• 1 Tbsp. lemon zest (from organic lemons!)
• 1/4 tsp. baking soda
• 3 cups organic unbleached flour

1. Beat cream cheese and butter.
2. Beat in the sugar.
3. Beat in the eggs.
4. Beat in the flavorings, baking soda, and flour.
5. Spoon into your choice of:
   • 6 greased & floured mini loaf pans, and bake at 325 degrees for 40 minutes.
   • 1 large bundt pan, and bake at 325 degrees for approximately 90 minutes (but start checking every 5 minutes after 75).
   • 1 large bundt pan AND 1 mini loaf pan (if your bundt pan gets really full like mine did!), bake at 325 for 75-90 minutes but take out mini loaf pan around 40 minutes.
6. Cake(s) will rise and become golden brown on the edges/top. Check with toothpick and be sure the middle is done before removing from oven.
7. Let cakes cool a bit before removing from pans.
8. When cake(s) are completely cool, prepare glaze and pour over the top.
9. Cakes can be wrapped in plastic wrap and kept in fridge or freezer. They freeze and thaw/reheat very well!

1. Put 1 c. powdered sugar in bowl.
2. Add 2 tsp. lemon zest.
3. Slowly pour in up to 2 Tbsp. of lemon juice, whisking as you add.
4. If too thick, add extra juice, if it gets runny, stop adding juice.
5. When desired consistency is reached, pour over cake(s)!

Lemon Pound Cake

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Whether your motivation is to sneak a healthier ingredient into a treat for your family, or simply to use up an abundance of summer zucchinis, this recipe for zucchini chocolate chip cookies is a winner. I found it in one of my new favorite books, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, and have made it several times with positive reviews. In fact, this weekend my parents are having a cookout, and I convinced them to drop the “gourmet” cookies from Costco from the menu by offering to make these instead!

I have adapted the recipe slightly to make it a little more “sneaky,” which meant mashing my zucchini into a pulp in my VitaMix blender rather than just shredding it. If you want your cookies to taste a bit more like zucchini bread, don’t grind your zucchini until it’s totally pulpy, and just double the amount of nutmeg in the recipe. Both ways result in tasty cookies!

If you prefer the sneaky route, follow the recipe below and you could even leave out the nutmeg altogether (although I can’t really taste it in the most recent batch I made). Even with pulpy zucchini you may spot a few green flecks, but for the most part the dough (and the cookies) look and taste like regular chocolate chip cookies. Yum…cookie dough…

The recipe below is also doubled from the original (which yielded me close to four dozen cookies, not two as the recipe said it would), because I have always found that doubling a chocolate chip cookie recipe results in better cookies (and you can enjoy them longer and share them with more people)! Enjoy!

Zucchini Chocolate Chip Cookies

Adapted from the recipe found in the Animal, Vegetable, Miracle website and book

Yield: approx. 90 cookies

Ingredients:

• 2 eggs, beaten
• 1 cup butter, softened
• 1 cup organic turbinado (or simply brown) sugar
• 2/3 cup honey
• 2 Tbsp. vanilla extract
• 2 cups white flour
• 2 cups whole wheat flour
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1⁄2 tsp. salt
• 1⁄2 tsp. cinnamon
• 1⁄4 tsp. nutmeg
• 2 cups zucchini, cut up and beat to a pulp in a food processor or blender
• 20 oz. chocolate chips

Directions:

1. Combine eggs, butter, sugar, honey, and vanilla in large bowl.
2. Combine flours, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg in a separate, small bowl and then blend into liquid mixture.
3. Add zucchini and mix well.
4. Stir chocolate chips into mixture by hand.
5. Optional: chill dough in refrigerator for a few hours or overnight. I find especially in the summer, this tends to be beneficial and makes dough easier to work with!
6. Drop dough by spoonful onto greased baking sheet, and flatten with the back of a spoon.
7. Bake at 350° for 13-15 minutes.

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Ever since I bought some millet to experiment with in order to write my upcoming “Great Grains” post about the little-known grain, it has been staring at me from a jar on my kitchen counter, basically daring me to give it a try. I’ve gathered up a few recipes now, but until today, hadn’t tried one…of course, being a baked good AND giving me a chance to try making flour in my VitaMix for the first time locked in this recipe as my first millet experience!

The muffins turned out tasty and not overly sweet, which I like. They are somewhat dense, which surprised me since the original post said they turned out fluffy. I’m guessing the denseness may be because there are no eggs and/or because it didn’t require me to use my KitchenAid–I just beat all the ingredients together by hand, and maybe should have beat them more? Regardless, they are yummy, and I love that they have little tiny banana slices on top! The fact that they are made without any refined sugar, of course, makes me happy too!

A few notes for next time are that I’d like to try it with applesauce instead of oil, and I need some more practice with grinding the flour…there are definitely a few whole pieces of millet in each muffin, but no harm done!

Banana Chocolate Chip Millet Muffins
Adapted slightly from Peas and Thank You.

• 2/3 cups millet
• 1 1/2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
• 1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
• 1/2 tsp. baking soda
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
• 3 bananas: 2 mashed + 1 for slicing to top the muffins
• 1/2 cup organic turbinado or brown sugar
• 2 Tbsp. canola oil
• 1/2 cup organic milk
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 1/2 cups organic chocolate chips (I used Sunspire Grain Sweetened Chocolate Chips)

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
2. Measure the millet into a high speed blender (like the VitaMix!), food processor, or spice mill, and grind into a fine texture.
3. Pour into a large bowl and add pastry flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and salt.
4. Mash bananas and add the oil, milk, vanilla, and turbinado sugar.
5. Fold the wet ingredients into the dry ones and mix.
6. Stir in chocolate chips.
7. Fill your lined muffin cups and top each with a banana slice.
8. Bake for 18-20 minutes.

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These are delicious, healthy muffins that smell so good while baking, you’ll want to try one immediately no matter what time of day it is. I am looking forward to serving these at our Easter breakfast on Sunday morning!

Yield: 18 muffins

Ingredients:

• 1 ½ cup whole wheat flour
• ½ cup oat bran
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• ½ tsp stevia powder
• ¼ cup turbinado sugar
• ¼ pound carrots (2 cups)
• ½ cup shredded coconut (no sugar added)
• ½ cup walnuts
• ½ cup raisins
• 3 large eggs
• ¾ cup greek or goat’s milk yogurt
• ¼ cup coconut oil
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 1 Granny Smith apple

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375°F and oil eighteen 1/2-cup muffin cups.
2. In a large bowl sift together flour, oat bran, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt.
   
3. Whisk in stevia and sugar.
   
4. Coarsely shred enough carrots to measure 2 cups and chop walnuts.
5. Add shredded carrots and walnuts to dry mixture with raisins and coconut and toss well.
6. In another bowl, whisk together eggs, yogurt, oil, and vanilla.
   
7. Peel and core apple and coarsely shred. Stir shredded apple into egg mixture and add to dry mixture, stirring until batter is just combined well.
   
8. Divide batter among muffin cups, filling them three fourths full, and bake in middle of oven until puffed and a tester comes out clean, about 15-18 minutes.
9. Cool muffins in cups on racks 5 minutes before turning out onto racks to cool completely.

Muffins keep in an airtight container at room temperature or in refrigerator for 5 days. For longer storage, keep in freezer.

Source: Cameron Rupprecht

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I substituted Xylitol for the sugar in these cookies and they turned out well. Much like the shortbreads, they aren’t supposed to be extremely sweet cookies. They are meant to be very light in flavor, and they are soft and almost cake-like in texture. I’ll be serving them on Easter with coffee, and might try to make some lemon buttercream frosting and turn some of them into cookie sandwiches as suggested on AmazingMoms.com.

Yield: About 2 dozen cookies (I somehow made closer to 4 dozen!)

Ingredients:

Preparation:

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper and set aside.
2. Sift together the flour, salt, and baking powder in a medium bowl. Set aside.
3. In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat the butter on medium speed until it’s smooth. Add the sugar, vanilla extract, and lemon zest. Beat until it’s well combined.
4. Add the eggs to the mixer and beat on medium speed for at least one minute.
5. Reduce the mixer speed to low and slowly add the flour mixture a little at a time. Stop once the mixture is just blended.
6. Drop the cookie dough in roughly 1 tablespoon balls onto the prepared cookie sheet. The mounds should be about three inches apart.
7. Bake until the edges of the cookie reaches a delicate golden brown, roughly 12 – 14 minutes.
8. Remove the cookies from the oven and allow to cool on the baking sheet for about 10 minutes before transferring to a cookie rack to cool completely.
9. Repeat until all of the dough has been used.

Store these cookies in an airtight container for up to four days.

Source: AmazingMoms.com

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