Wordless Wednesday (Philly Edition)

Posted on July 27, 2011 by sparecake

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French Toast Muffins

Posted on July 24, 2011 by sparecake

As most of you probably have noticed, it’s wicked freaking hot out currently. Solidly over 100 daily, which is no temp for living. It is, however, a decent temperature to warm up the butter you didn’t take out of the fridge soon enough.

Luckily Hobo Cat wasn't around to steal my butter off the chair.

These muffins use nutmeg, which I sort of hate, but usually don’t notice in the finished product. In these, it still stands out just enough that I would probably swap for cinnamon next time, but if you’re ok with nutmeg, it’s good!. The recipe also calls for maple flavoring, which had I sort of hoped just meant syrup, not a specific extract like vanilla or mint. After trying it, I think they probably did actually mean a maple extract, as the muffins had very little maple flavor. Even so, I don’t actually think it’s worth searching out such a thing – they’re delicious with just syrup. They’re also a really great texture – super fluffy. I was really pleased with the texture.

Start by combining your dry goods in a big bowl and setting that aside. In a medium bowl, beat the egg and milk together. Add the maple flavoring/syrup and butter, and mix well. This doesn’t really become evenly mixed, but that’s ok, it will later. Just blend it for a minute or so and move on.

Proper lighting? What?

Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ones and mix until just evenly combined.

Spoon the batter into a greased or lined muffin pan. I filled them to 2/3 full and got some slightly pointy muffins. You might get a 9th muffin out of the recipe if you aimed for closer to half-full. Bake for 20 minutes.

Peaky

Let cool in the pan for roughly 5 minutes and then cool the rest of the way on a wire rack.

Once they’ve cooled, prepare the topping: Mix the cinnamon and sugar together in one bowl, and the melted butter and vanilla in the other.

Dip the muffin tops in the butter and then roll the top in the sugar to coat.

Your muffins are ready to eat!

So fluffy! I love the texture of these muffins!

 French Toast Muffins

From Mr. Breakfast.

Muffins:

  • 1 and 1/4 cups flour
  • 1/3 cup sugar
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg(/cinnamon)
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1 large egg
  • 1/2 cup milk
  • 1/2 teaspoon maple flavoring
  • 1/3 cup butter – softened

Topping:

  • 1 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
  • 1/3 cup melted butter

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Grease or line a muffin pan.

In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, nutmeg and salt. Set aside.

In a separate medium bowl, beat the egg with the milk. Add the maple flavoring and butter and mix well.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix until just combined and moistened.

Dollop batter into muffin cups, filling half to two-thirds full.  Bake for 20 minutes.

Remove muffins when lightly browned and a toothpick inserted into the center of one comes out dry.

Cool muffins in pan for five minutes and then remove to rack to finish cooling.

Combine sugar and cinnamon on one bowl, butter and vanilla in another. Dip each muffin in the butter mixture and then roll in the cinnamon sugar mixture to make the topping.

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Peanut Butter & Chocolate Crescents

Posted on July 21, 2011 by sparecake

I don’t know that I’d technically call these “crescent rolls,” as they’re not a light flakey thing, but they’re crescent shaped and delicious! I love things that I can tag as both breakfast and dessert…

These are from breadworld.com, which is run by Fleishmann’s, so, not surprisingly, they use a decent amount of yeast. Sorry Catie!

Make the dough by combining four cups of flour, the sugar, yeast, and salt in a large bowl. Heat the milk and water to 120-130 degrees (hot but not burney, if you don’t have a thermometer) and stir into the flour mixture. Add the peanut butter.

When the dough is combined well enough that it mostly sticks together, turn it out onto a lightly floured surface.

Knead until smooth and elastic, adding up to another half a cup of flour if the dough remains sticky. Cover the kneaded dough and let it rest ten minutes.

You don't want to see any big peanut butter spots.

While the dough rises, make the filling by mixing the peanut butter and chocolate in a small bowl.

When the dough has risen, divide it in half and roll each half into a 14″ circle. I’m not super skilled at rolling circles, but if you start off by shaping the dough in the shape you want by hand, that helps. Cut each circle into six even wedges, and spread the filling evenly along the outside edge. (If you’re rolling the halves out one at a time, make sure you save half the filling for the other circle!)

Roll up each wedge from the wide end, curving to form a crescent. Pinch shut the corners and push the end point in a bit to seal. Place six on a greased baking sheet.

Cover and let rise until doubled in size, 30 to 45 minutes. Bake at 375 degrees for 15 to 20 minutes, rotating pans halfway through. Remove from the oven and cool on wire racks.

Ready to be iced.

To make the icing, combine the ingredients in a bowl and stir until smooth.

You can use 2 tablespoons of peanut butter, two of cocoa powder, or one of each. You also have a bit of control over the amount of milk you add, one to two tablespoons. It took about one and a half for me to get a pourable icing – don’t use too much or it’ll just be a thin, watery glaze that half runs off your crescents.

And you’re done! Yay for that. These are fairly large – If you don’t want them to be basically a whole meal, I can see cutting the dough ball into 3, and rolling out three smaller circles. If you did that, I suggest making a bit more of the filling, and a shorter baking time. Speaking of more of the filling… These are delicious how they are. That said… I wouldn’t judge if you doubled the filling.

There's room for more chocolate in there.

I’ll be submitting this to yeastspotting.

Peanut Butter & Chocolate Crescents

From BreadWorld.

Dough:

  • 4 to 4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 2 envelopes/4 1/2 teaspoons RapidRise yeast
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1 cup milk
  • 1/2 cup water
  • 1/2 cup creamy peanut butter

Filling:

  • 1 cup semisweet chocolate pieces
  • 1/4 cup creamy peanut butter

Icing:

  • 1 cup sifted powdered sugar
  • 2 tablespoons creamy peanut butter or cocoa powder
  • 1 to 2 tablespoons milk

In large bowl, combine 4 cups flour, sugar, undissolved yeast and salt. Heat milk and water until very warm (120 to 130oF); stir into flour mixture. Stir in peanut butter and turn out onto a lightly floured surface. Knead until smooth and elastic (6-8 minutes), adding up to another half cup of flour if needed.  and enough remaining flour to make soft dough. Cover; let rest 10 minutes.
In small bowl, combine filling ingredients; blend well. Set aside.

Divide dough in half; roll each into 14-inch circle. Cut each into 6 wedges; place filling, dividing evenly, at wide end of each wedge. Beginning at wide end, roll up tightly; curve to form crescent. Arrange six crescents, seam side down, on a greased baking sheet. Pinch ends at center to seal. Repeat with remaining crescents on separate pan. Cover; let rise in warm, draft-free place until doubled in size, 30 to 45 minutes.

Bake at 375oF for 15 to 20 minutes or until done, switching position of pans halfway through baking for even browning. Remove from pans; cool on wire racks.

In small bowl, combine icing ingredients; stir until smooth. Drizzle on rolls.

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Wordless Wednesday (buying time edition)

Posted on July 20, 2011 by sparecake

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Frosted Flake Cookies

Posted on July 18, 2011 by sparecake

Ted got back from his wedding recently, and had with him the deep fryer I got him and Deborah. We used it last week to fry Rice Krispie Treats wrapped in beignet dough, which was ridiculous and good.

When I picked up the Rice Krispies, cereal was buy one get one, so I also got some Frosted Flakes. Rather than sit around and eat an entire box over the course of an afternoon, I decided to do something with them. I’ve made cookies in the past that used crushed up Captain Crunch as some of the flour. I was curious if Frosted Flakes were sugary enough to make up for both sugar and flour, and, as expected, they were. In the end, actually, Alex thought that they were just Corn Flake cookies, not Frosted Flakes! (Obvious answer: more sugar?!)

I used a food processor to grind up enough Frosted Flakes (pretty much a whole box) to get 2 1/2 cups.

Cream 3/4 of a cup of the cereal with butter and shortening. Here the cereal’s playing the roll of sugar.

Stir in the egg and vanilla, and then the remaining ingredients until evenly mixed. The cereal’s acting as flour here.

I think with a stand mixer, rather than a hand mixer, this would look a bit more clumpy and less powdery.

Roll the dough into walnut-sized balls, and place on a lightly greased cookie sheet. You can put them fairly close together.

Bake, rotating the pans halfway through if you have more than one pan in the oven. Halfway through, mine didn’t look like they’d changed at all. They spread a tiiiiny bit by the end.

Alex and Kyle liked these, and they’ve really grown on me over the last few days. I thought they were a bit too salty, so I’ve cut the salt in the recipe below.

Worth the price of the cereal! =P

Frosted Flake Cookies

  • 1/3 cup shortening
  • 1/3 cup butter
  • 1 egg
  • 1 teaspoons vanilla extract
  • 1 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 2 1/2 cups crushed Frosted Flakes (nearly a box of uncrushed cereal), split 3/4 cup/1 3/4 cups

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and lightly grease 2 cookie sheets.

Cream butter, shortening, and 3/4 cup of the cereal. Beat in the vanilla and egg. Add the remaining ingredients and blend until well mixed.

Roll dough into walnut-sized balls and place on your cookie sheet. Bake 12 minutes, rotating halfway through. Move to a wire rack to cool.

Cookie!

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Banana Coffee Cake with Chocolate Chip Streusel

Posted on July 15, 2011 by sparecake

It’s time for another delicious breakfast food! I’ve been eating this for the last few days (it lasts well!), and it’s actually surprisingly filling. I make it past 9:05 am without wondering when second breakfast is, which is practically unheard of!

If you don’t have buttermilk, and don’t want to buy it for a recipe that just uses a few spoonfuls, remember that you can make buttermilk by adding lemon juice to milk and letting it curdle for 5 minutes. The generally accepted measurements are just under 1 cup of milk to 1T lemon juice (or white vinegar), but, since I didn’t need that much, I just sorta …winged it? wung it? Guesstimated with less milk, and it came out tasting fine.

Begin by greasing and flouring an 8X8″ pan. Make the streusel by just mixing the ingredients together, and then set it aside. You could use chocolate chips and walnuts, but that’s gross so I just used even more chocolate.

Mm, sugary!

Mix the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in a bowl and set that aside as well.

It’s then time to mash your bananas, and, yes, set that aside too.

Way easier than potatoes!

Beat together the egg, sugar, and butter until light and fluffy, and then beat in the bananas and buttermilk.

Erg...

Beat the flour mixture in until well mixed.

Spread half the batter in your pan and smooth out.

Sprinkle half the streusel on top.

Repeat with the other halves, and then bake for 45 minutes.

Cool in the pan, and then eat the heck out of this!

Banana Coffee Cake with Chocolate Chip Streusel

Adapted from Lovin’ From the Oven.

Streusel:

  • 1 cup chocolate chips
  • 2/3 cup packed brown sugar
  • 1/2 cup chopped walnuts/more chocolate chips
  • 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon

Batter:

  • 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
  • 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
  • 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 3/4 cup sugar
  • 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
  • 1 large egg
  • 4 mashed bananas
  • 3 tablespoons buttermilk

Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter and flour 8×8 baking pan.

Stir chocolate chips, brown sugar, cinnamon, and walnuts if using; set aside.

Mix the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt into medium bowl. Set aside. Mash bananas and set aside as well.

Using electric mixer, beat sugar, room temperature butter, and egg in a large bowl until fluffy. Beat in mashed bananas and buttermilk.  Add flour mixture and blend well.

Spread half of batter in prepared baking pan. Sprinkle with half of streusel. Repeat with remaining batter and streusel.

Bake coffee cake until tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 45 minutes. Cool coffee cake in pan on rack.

Posted in Breakfast, Brunch | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Pear Bread

Posted on July 12, 2011 by sparecake

I got a bundt pan weeeeks ago, but had never used it, which was basically a tragedy. So here’s my first bundt, a tasty pear bread for breakfast. If you’ve got a bundt pan you don’t use nearly enough, you should check out the Food Librarian, she seems to be obsessed with them. (In good way!)

Other than grating the pears, this bread comes together really fast.

Begin by combining the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon in a large bowl and mix.

Peel and grate the pears, enough to get 2 cups. It took about 2 1/2 pears for me. Keep in mind when you’re choosing where to grate that this will get juicy. Combine the grated pear, butter, eggs, sugar, and vanilla. Stir to mix well.

Well that's unattractive...

Pour the pear mixture into the dry goods and stir until evenly mixed and the flour has just disappeared.

Pour into a greased bundt pan (or two bread pans) and bake until browned and firm on top, and a wooden skewer inserted in the center comes out clean.

Cool the pan for 10 minutes, and then turn out to cool on a wire rack to cool completely. Sprinkle with powdered sugar, or make a glaze by whisking 3 tablespoons buttermilk, a dash of vanilla and 2 cups of confectioners’ sugar together.

Tasty breakfast!

Pear Bread

Marginally adapted from smitten kitchen.

  • 3 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
  • 3/4 cup butter, softened
  • 3 eggs, lightly beaten
  • 2 cups sugar
  • 2 to 4 firm, ripe pears, depending on size
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Heat your oven to 350°F and lightly grease and flour a bundt pan.

Combine the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon in a large mixing bowl, and stir well.

Peel and grate pears to create 2 cups of grated pear.  In a medium bowl, combine the butter, eggs, sugar, grated pear, and vanilla, and stir to mix everything well. Scrape the pear mixture into the flour mixture and stir just until the flour disappears and the batter is evenly moistened.

Quickly scrape the batter into the prepared pan and bake at 350°F for 60 to 70 minutes, or until the bread is handsomely browned and firm on top and a wooden skewer inserted in the center comes out clean.

Cool the bread in the pan for 10 minutes, then turn it out onto a plate or a wire rack to cool completely, top side up. Serve it as is, sprinkle it with confectioners sugar or drizzle it with a simple glaze made from whisking 3 tablespoons buttermilk, a dash of vanilla and 2 cups of confectioners’ sugar together.

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My New Kitchen Idol

Posted on July 11, 2011 by sparecake

via Tumblr.

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Dalek Cupcakes – a picture-y post

Posted on July 10, 2011 by sparecake

After last week’s cake, I still had a whole bunch of marshmallow fondant left over in the fridge. On Tuesday someone in a Doctor Who LiveJournal group (shutup, LJ is still a good place to get news/downloads for shows you like!) posted pictures of some Dalek cupcakes she and a friend had made, and I thought they were super cute. So cute, in fact, I wanted to make my own!

Now, if you don’t know what Daleks are, go watch some Doctor Who! They’re one of the main bad guys. Big fans of killing any/everything that isn’t also a Dalek.

As of last year, they even come in colors!

To start off, I made a dozen cupcakes and a dozen mini-cupcakes. I cut off the rounded tops so that they’d lay flat upside-down.

Terrifying.

After using a big blob of frosting to hold the two together, I covered each one in frosting. Unfortunately, the cupcakes were super crumbly so I couldn’t get the sides very smooth, and lost some bits from the bottom of some of them.

Frosting cupcakes, rewatching Trigun... wicked cool kid. There are several pictures where I'm holding up a single one and it looks a lot like a poop=/

I left them alone for several hours to allow the frosting to dry/harden up a bit, and then started working on the various Dalek limbs.

I started off dying a bunch of fondant grey. As I mentioned in the post on working with fondant, adding dye later brings it back to a gross sticky mess. Uuuunfortunate!

I tried using mini-M&Ms to give some shape to the plunger arms, but in the end it was easier to just use another blob of fondant.

I made a ton of limbs, since you need 3 each for each cupcake, plus I expected breakage (which happily never happened).

Later remembered that the "eye" is blue and swapped out M&Ms.

Leaving the grey fondant aside, I made a few other colors, rolled it out, and covered the cupcake…piles. Partly because I was afraid of running out and rolled the fondant too thin, partly because the cupcakes were crumbly/lumpy, and partly because I just haven’t had much experience with this stuff, they were kinda wrinkly. Ah well. Went back to the grey, and rolled out the middle band that goes around Daleks.

Then I  stabbed in the pretzels in roughly the right places and attached the light antenna doo-dad M&Ms to the top with little drops of water.

The one in the middle in the back that you can sorta see is aimed way up was subsequently named Derp.

A little bit more water to attach some more M&Ms for the bumps, and they were finished. Yay!

Exterminate!

Bad news for earth!

Derp is the right-most, and my camera lense is covered in powdered sugar!

Much better than some ugly chewed-bubble-gum-looking alien inside.

Not exactly the Genesis Ark...

Fun way to kill an afternoon, and these bad guys are delicious!

Oh, towards the end, as my shirt was getting just crispy with sugar, and the floor looked like you could ski on it, I came up with a different, far too long blog name: Eat, Drink, and Be Merry, for Tomorrow We Mop!

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Greek Orzo Salad

Posted on July 9, 2011 by sparecake

This recipe would be good to bring to a cookout. Unfortunately,I was bringing it to was work – my temp project didn’t let us work on the 4th, but wanted us to make up the hours over the rest of the week, so I needed something more substantial than usual to make it through 10 1/2 hour days. (A good rich husband is hard to find…)

I’ve beefed up the original recipe by adding chicken, which, at least to me, gives it enough variety to make it a pretty decent meal all by itself. The ingredient list may look really long, but you probably have most, if not all, of the dressing ingredients already in your cabinets.

Combine all the dressing ingredients and blend. If you don’t want to clean your blender later or don’t have one, whisking will be ok.

I do like owning an immersion blender!

Pour half the dressing into a large ziplock and add your chicken. Seal, pressing out all the air, and turn all around to make sure the chicken gets well covered. Allow to marinate in the fridge for several hours. Put the rest of the dressing aside somewhere to wait.

Once the chicken’s had time to marinate, get out your veggies and chop them into bite sized pieces. Dice the onion. The original recipe called for tomatoes, cucumber, and pepper. I’m not into peppers, so I doubled the tomatoes and added squash, but you can swap in pretty much any fresh vegetable you like if you don’t like one of those.

My mom's nauseous at the sight of so many vegetables.

Put a pot of water on the stove, and put a pan over medium-high heat. Drain any excess marinade out of the bag with the chicken, and cook the chicken until it’s no longer pink inside.

When the water reaches a boil, add the orzo and cook according to the package instructions. Cut the chicken into bite sized pieces and add to the vegetables. Drain the cooked orzo, and add to the bowl. Add the feta as well, and olives if using.

Mix/shake/whisk the remainder of the dressing back together, and pour over the mixture. Stir well and chill at least an hour before serving.

It's good!

This keeps well for days, and is filling. If you are keeping it around for days, it’s a decent idea to stir it up before taking out a portion a day later, as you don’t want your last bite to be just oil and vinegar!

Greek Orzo Salad

Adapted from my baking addiction.

Dressing:

  • 1/2 cup olive oil
  • 2 cloves fresh garlic; finely chopped
  • 1 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
  • 1 1/2 teaspoon dried basil
  • 1 teaspoon pepper
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1 teaspoon onion powder
  • 1 teaspoon Dijon-style mustard
  • 1/2 cup red wine vinegar

Salad:

  • 1 – 1  1/2 pounds chicken breast
  • 1 1/2 cups uncooked orzo pasta
  • 1/2 cup grape tomatoes
  • 1 cucumber
  • 1/4 red onion (hah, Giant didn’t have a single red or yellow onion that wasn’t rotting, I had to go with white…)
  • 1 yellow squash
  • 1/2 cup crumbled feta cheese
  • 5-10 green olives, drained and halved

Place all dressing ingredients in a blender and pulse until well incorporated. Pour half of the dressing into a ziplock and add the chicken. Allow to marinate for several hours.

Chop all the vegetables into bite-sized pieces (or smaller for the onion!), and place in a large bowl.

Place a pot of water on the stove to heat. Place a pan over medium-high heat, and cook chicken until browned on the outside and no longer pink inside.

As the water reaches a boil, cook the orzo according to the package directions.

Slice the cooked chicken into bite-sized pieces and add to the vegetable bowl.

Drain the cooked orzo and add to the bowl. Add the olives, if using, and feta, and stir well. Chill for at least an hour before serving.

Posted in Dinner, Picnic | Tagged , , | 3 Comments