Apple Cinnamon Oatmeal Muffins

I realise it has almost literally been forever, but I have a few things to post about and the first one is some delicious, healthy muffins!



As usual, this recipe started with the dry ingredients: whole wheat flour, white sugar, brown sugar and some oats.


Next I washed two lovely Ida Red apples.


And skinned and chopped them up.


The wet ingredients: water, oil, eggs and vanilla.


I threw the wet ingredients in with the dry ingredients, and then added the apples and some cinnamon... because I forgot to add it with the dry ingredients.


All mixed up.


I filled a greased muffin tin, and put it in the oven.


They rose quite nicely and smelled amaaaazing while baking.

This is a recipe I sort of made up based on my chocolate chip muffin recipe, but it turned out so well. These are great for breakfast. It's like eating apple cinnamon oatmeal. The only thing I'd like is for them to have less sugar, so the next time I make them I will try them with less. The healthier, the better!

Recipe

Apple Cinnamon Oatmeal Muffins
1½ cups whole wheat flour
½ cup rolled oats
1/3 cup light-brown sugar, packed
1/3 cup sugar
cinnamon to taste
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup milk or water
1/2 cup oil
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla
1½-2 cups chopped apples

×××

Preheat oven to 400°F and grease a muffin pan.
In a large bowl, stir together flour, oats, sugars, cinnamon, baking powder, and salt. In another bowl, stir together milk/water, eggs, oil, and vanilla until blended. Make a well in centre of dry ingredients and add wet ingredients, stirring just to combine. Stir in apple.
Spoon batter into prepared muffin cups and bake for 15-20 minutes or until a muffins pass the toothpick test.
Allow muffins to cool on a wire rack for five minutes before removing from pan to continue cooling.
Serve warm or completely cooled. Muffins can be frozen.

Guten Appetit! Continue reading...

Filled Butter Braids

I'm here, I'm here! I promised I would be back, and here I am! I'm hoping that from now on I can find time every weekend to bake something. Anything. This school-but-no-baking thing really bites.
Anyway, last weekend, Anders was away at training camp for cross country, so I had the apartment and the kitchen all to myself. It was glorious. Except that I missed him. But then he came back and ate the food I made, so all was well.
And what did I make? I made Raspberry Butter Braids from this recipe. Except that I didn't make a raspberry one at all. Instead I used triple berry jam and Nutella. Mmm.

To begin with, meet my new kitchen:

Why yes, we do house a greenhouse in our kitchen. That's a ficus, a lemon tree, a clementine tree (both grown from seeds!) and a jade bonsai.
The house our apartment is in is over 100 years old. It originally belonged to the general manager of the train line in Kingston, when the trains used to run along the lake (the window faces the lake). So, being that the house is old and was owned by a fancy person, the windows are gigantic. The two of us have to work together to get them up and down because they're wider than our armspans. They're also heavy.

Is this a cooking blog or is a home blog?!?!

But one more thing! This is my oven/stove:

It was more or less perfectly clean and brand new when we moved in. It was like heaven.

As for the bread, I started out by scalding some milk, and then adding some butter, sugar and salt.


While that was cooling a bit, I put some yeast into a bowl of warm water and let that sit for about 10 minutes:


And while that was sitting, I beat an egg.

At which point, all the above mentioned ingredients that did their things and then sat for x number of minutes were added together.

To that, I added the four, 1/2 cup at a time.

I think I ended up using all 4 cups of flour suggested - it was a very humid day.

Then, I realised I had used my biggest bowl and needed to wash it out so that I could put oil into it and use it to let the dough rise. I'm not always the smartest in the kitchen.

This is the dough sitting in its oiled bowl.

This whole time, I had my oven sitting at the lowest temperature it would heat to (170°F). When I was finished mixing up the dough, I turned the oven off.

I covered the bowl with a clean tea towel and put it into the turned-off but still-warm oven to proof.

Success!

About 90 minutes later, it had double in size and was nice and soft.

I kneaded it a bit, then split it into two even portions.


I split each half again into three equal portions and rolled them out into long (18") ropes.


Next, I took my lovely, heavy marble rolling pin to the ropes and flattened them out a bit.

And I spread some jam (triple berry, in case you were wondering) along each one.

Closing these suckers up was the hardest part about this recipe. Especially the jam ones.

You can see that some jam escaped. And then after I took this photo the seams all came apart and the jam went everywherrrre.

But I managed to move the ropes to the greased pan and braid them, nonetheless.

It took some patience though.

The Nutella ropes were much easier to deal with.


And the braid came out much better.


Once I had them both braided and ready to go, I let them proof again in the turned-off oven for about an hour.

As you can see, when I took them out, the braid had disappeared a bit. I put an eggwash on them anyway, and put them in the oven for about 25 minutes.

And when they came out of the even at the end, the braid have almost completely disappeared!



I'm not completely sure why this happened. I think it could have been that I didn't put enough flour into the dough initially and it was unable to hold itself up? Who knows.

Now, we ate the Nutella one like it was going out of style and I only got a photo of the jam one.

Both were good, but the jam one is still sitting out of the cutting board on our kitchen table, all sad and alone.

I really like this recipe. I really didn't need a lot of ingredients that I didn't already have, and the amounts of the ingredients seem very low compared to how much product ou get out! Two loaves of bread! It's great that these are filled, too. It takes one step out of breakfast (which these work very well for), and that is always nice when you're running out the door to stupid 8.30AM classes.
I have two small problems with this recipe... and it's not even the recipe, really, both things are my fault and things that I can fix. The first problem is that the filling to bread ratio was too low. Both Anders and I (but especially Anders) thought these would be better with more filling. The other problem was, of course, that the braid really sucked in the end. And again, that was my fault. It's funny, because when I worked at the bakery I used to do egg braids almost every day. I loved doing them, actually. They were always so pretty and I got pretty good at it. You'd think that I might remember the difference between that experience and this one... but I don't. It's all a learning process though, and I look forward to making these again so that I can figure out where I went wrong!

Recipe

Filled Butter Braids

1 cup milk
½ cup butter, cut into pieces
½ cup sugar
½ teaspoon salt
1 envelope dry yeast
¼ cup warm water
1 large egg, beaten to blend, room temperature
4 cups (approximately) unbleached all-purpose flour
¾ cup desired filling (I used triple berry jam and Nutella)
1 large egg, beaten with 2 tablespoons water

×××

Scald milk in heavy, medium saucepan. Add butter, sugar, and salt. Let stand until butter melts. Pour mixture into large bowl. Cool to 105 to 115 degrees. Sprinkle yeast over ¼ cup warm water in small bowl; stir to dissolve. Let stand 10 minutes at room temperature. Add yeast mixture and egg to milk mixture. Stir in enough flour, ½ cup at a time, to form soft, slightly sticky dough. Lightly grease large bowl. Add dough, turning to coat. Cover bowl with kitchen towel and let dough rise in warm draft-free area (like a turned-off, but still-warm oven) until doubled in volume, about 2 hours. Grease two heavy large cookie sheets. Turn dough out onto lightly floured work surface and knead until smooth, 2 minutes. Divide dough in half. Divide each half into thirds. Roll each piece out between hands and floured surface to 18 inch long rope. Using a rolling pin, roll each rope into a flat strip, about 3 inches wide. Spoon about 2 tablespoons of filling down the length of each strip. Fold dough over filling to seal. You can brush the edges of the dough with a bit of water to help seal the dough. Arrange 3 ropes side by side on 1 prepared sheet. Braid ropes. Pinch ends together and tuck under loaf. Repeat process with remaining 3 ropes on second cookie sheet for second loaf. Cover each loaf with kitchen towel and let rise in warm draft-free area until almost doubled in volume, about 1 hour.
Preheat oven to 350°F. Brush egg wash over loaves. Bake until loaves are golden brown and sound hollow when tapped on bottom, about 20 - 25 minutes. Transfer to racks and cool.

Guten Appetit! Continue reading...

Healthy Banana Cookies

Two healthy recipes in a row?! Is this a baking blog, or is it a sissy natural food store blog? Okay, I didn't mean that. I like natural food stores. They have the best peanut butter. And their baking stuff is usually cheeeeap. And I like goat's milk soap. And organic produce.

Okay, let's move on...

Healthy banana cookies... it's another one of these recipes you can use your almost inedible bananas in, and I love those recipes, because I can only consume so much banana bread and so many banana muffins. And I really don't like wasting fruit. It makes me sad and I feel very guilty throwing those things in the green bin.
The other great thing about these cookies? They're easy. And another? They're soft. And another? They're chewy. And another? You can sort of throw whatever you want in. Sort of.



I started by mashing up some bananas, and throwing in oats, coconut, dried cranberries (left over from the granola bars), oil, vanilla and a bunch of cinnamon and nutmeg.


I mixed that all up and let it sit for about 15 or 20 minutes.


At that point, I decided it was too wet, so I added some more oats, and let it sit for a little while longer.

Then, I pulled out my trusty 1/8 cup measure to scoop the batter.


Seriously, 1/8 measure makes for the perfect size cookie.

These cookies don't flatten out during baking, so I used a spatula to press them down.


These went in the oven for about 20 minutes.



As I said, these are soft, and chewy and flavourful and light and delicious. And they're healthy. It's great. So next time you have brown bananas, make these!

Recipe

Healthy Banana Cookies

3 ripe bananas
2 ½ cups rolled oats
¼ cup dried coconut (optional)
1 cup dried fruit (like cranberries, raisins, dates, etc.)
Cinnamon to taste
Nutmeg to taste
1/3 cup canola oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

×××

Preheat oven to 350°F. In a large bowl, mash the bananas. Stir in oats, dried fruit, spices, oil, and vanilla. Mix well, and allow to sit for 15 minutes. Using a ¼ cup measuring cup, scoop the batter and drop it onto an ungreased baking sheet. Bake for approximately 20 minutes, or until lightly brown. Allow to cool slightly and then remove cookies to cool completely on a wire rack.

Guten Appetit! Continue reading...

Granola Bars

I'm here, as promised, to update you on the myriad things I've baked and cooked recently. This morning I pushed my camera's memory card into the slot on my computer and thought "oh crap, what was I thinking not posting these things as I did them. Work be damned, I shouldhave just updated the blog instead!!" Now, I have four recipes to post. Maybe that doesn't sound like that much but look at my previous posts! They're long and detailed. And even as I type this I'm trying to figure out how to do it... all in one post or a post for each one. I think the latter is probably a better idea. So here we go...

I'm going to start with granola bars. Oh. My. These bars make me wonder why mass-produced granola bars even exist, or why anyone has ever bought them, or thought they were healthy. These are so simple and customisable, I really have no reason to ever buy granola bars again.

This process started with a lovely trip to Bulk Barn.


This places rocks (my gypsy soul?). It's easy to spend a lot of money though. Especially when you're like me and you buy things like dried pears, instead of the normal dried fruit... whatever.

I got this recipe from Kitchen Wench, and shock and awe, I basically followed it. Because the recipe is in weights (which I'm very much not used to, being a silly North American and all), I had to pull out my mum's trusty kitchen scale.


I actually shouldn't comment on its trustworthiness... I think I've used it about three times. It's because I'm a silly North American and hardly any recipes even mention the weights of ingredients.

For these bars, I decied to use dried cranberries, golden raisins (much better than red), and dried pears.


I took a knife to them and chopped them up to about the size of sunflower seeds.

I kind of splurged and used hazelnuts for these bars... I also used roasted (unsalted) peanuts, and sunflower seeds.


I had to chop up the peanuts and hazelnuts, as well.

Then, I threw the fruits and nuts into a big bowl with some organic muesli. It was supposed to be rolled oats, but I saw the muesli at Bulk Barn and just bought it... I'm impulsive like that. I also threw in some coconut.


This on its own would be delicious for breakfast.

To hold all this together, I had to used a few sticky ingredients, including honey (and some Nutella, because I didn't have enough honey), peanut butter, oil and brown sugar.




I let that all melt and get gooey in a pot.

While it cooled a little bit, I threw some flour into the dry ingredients and mixed it all up so everything was coated.


And then I dug a little hole into it and poured in the wet ingredients.


Mixing it all together was fun... sticky and gooey.


To bake the bars, I lined a pan with parchment paper, and then pressed the granola mixture into the pan.


It was amazing how much these would compact.

The pan went into the oven for about 35 minutes, and then came out and cooled for about 20 minutes before I cut them up. I couldn't let them cool completely, or they would have just shattered when I put the knife anywhere near them. It was easy to remove from the pan, too, with the parchment paper. I cut the mass that would soon be bars in half, lengthwise, first, and then cut each half into 10 3/4" width bars. That's right... 20 bars from one recipe... that's right, enough for two people for two work/school weeks. Could this recipe be any better?!

And look how delicious they look!




Mmm. These really were great. Healthy and chewy and easy to take to work, or pick up for a quick snack before my run. Next time, I would use a bit more wet ingredients, because the bars did tend to break up a bit. I also wouldn't bake them as long. After 35 minutes in the oven, these were a bit more roasted than I would like. But they really were worth making and I will be making them again as soon as I can get out to Bulk Barn!

Recipe

Granola Bars

320g rolled oats
1/3cup plain flour
100mL vegetable oil
200g mild honey (try 100g honey and 100g golden syrup for a deeper flavour)
50g brown sugar
2-3 tbsp smooth peanut butter (or Nutella)
40g shredded, unsweetened coconut
150-200g of assorted nuts and seeds
150-200g assorted dried fruit

×××

Preheat oven to 325°F, and line an 35×25cm (or close) baking pan (Pyrex or a metal cake pan both work) with parchment paper.
Roughly chop the nuts and larger pieces of dried fruit into smaller pieces (about the same size as a sunflower seed). Then place the chopped nuts and fruit into a bowl with the oats, coconut and flour and stir together with a wooden spoon until well combined. Slightly heat the honey in a pot on the stove, then add the sugar, peanut butter and oil and whisk together thoroughly. Pour together the wet and dry mixture and mix to combine. If the mixture does not seem to stick together well enough, add more honey. Dump the mixture into your prepared pan. Wet your hands with some cold water, and using both the wooden spoon and your hands, pack the mixture down flat, making sure to get it into the corners.
Bake for 25-35 minutes if you prefer a softer, chewier bar, and up to 50-60 minutes if you prefer a crunchier one (the longer baking time will roast the ingredients quite a bit). During the baking process, use a wooden spoon or rubber spatula to press down on the mixture every 10-15 minutes.
Allow to cool for 15-20 minutes after baking, then carefully remove from the pan. Using a sharp knife, cut into bars. These can be stored in an airtight container in a cool place for up to 2 weeks. Keep a sheet of parchment paper between each layer of bars.

Guten Appetit! Continue reading...

Banana Pineapple Muffins

Oh. My.
Everyone who reads this is probably so tired of reading about muffins. Lots and lots of muffins, I know! But muffins are good! Breakfast, dessert, a snack... they're multi-talented, let's face it. And these ones. Well, I could gobble down about 12. Whole. That's how good they are. Except if I ate them whole I guess I wouldn't really taste all the banana pineapple goodness. And I certainly wouldn't want that.

Anyway, my original inspiration for this recipe was, naturally, bananas going bad on our counter. Also, this recipe from The Crepes of Wrath. This recipe looked reeeeally good. Except I don't like coconut (not shredded coconut anyway, I like the flavour though!) or dried pineapple. Or raisins in my baking. Uhhh. But I still thought it looked great and interesting. Especially since I was trying to use up bananas and we had fresh pineapple in the fridge. Of course, my recipe is far far different, so it's posted below.

There were a lot of bowls in this recipe, which I'm not a big fan of. I like one-bowl recipes... they're so uncommon though.

ANYWAY.

Instead of using butter, I used (surprise!) olive oil. I was going to use honey, as well, until my naive illusions were crushed and I found out bright yellow sugar has fewer calories and carbohydrates than honey! Can you believe it? All I had to do was read the labels. Who would have thought to do that? Especially someone who is watching what they eat. Man, I'm dull. Anyway, I was actually pretty excited, because brown sugar has a lot of flavour, and honey... not so much. That said, I know that honey is still better for you because it's unrefined, unlike most sugars. My next goal is to find sugar that actually has some good flavour and won't kill you.

I started by mixing together some olive oil, bright yellow sugar, vanilla, and rum.

Oh yea... real rum.

Next, I crushed some bananas up with the eggs.


In the end, these are what the bowls looked like:

Oil doesn't mix very well with brown sugar, apparently.

But all was well when the two separate bowls of ingredients got together.


The dry ingredients consisted of flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon and nutmeg.


After I mixed in the dry ingredients, I chopped up about a cup of fresh pineapple and threw that in, too.


And scooped the batter into my greased muffin tin and put them in the oven.


20 minutes later, these smelled irrestibly delicious. I cooled them in the pan for a few minutes.


And then turned them out to cool completely on my wire racks.




While the muffins were cooling, I made surprise lasagna for myself and my parents...

after which we gobbled down some of these muffins:


Seriously. I can't believe how good these muffins are. They're so moist, and the pineapple adds a nice punch of flavour to what would be otherwise normal banana muffins. Not that I don't like banana muffins. I really do, but they're tried and true, easy, comfortable, simple, etc. The pineapple is such an amazing touch. Also, rum? Freakin' add it to anything you bake with bananas. It's so. good.

Recipe

Banana Pineapple Muffins

½ cup olive oil
½ cup packed brown sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 teaspoons rum
3-4 ripe bananas, mashed
2 large eggs
2 cups all-purpose flour
¾ teaspoons baking soda
¾ teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
¼ teaspoon nutmeg
½ cup pineapple

×××

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease a muffin tin. In a large bowl, beat together the oil, brown sugar, vanilla, and rum. Combine the mashed bananas and eggs in a separate bowl and add to the sugar mixture. Beat until thoroughly combined. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon and nutmeg. Stir it into the banana mixture. Chop up a cup of fresh pineapple and add to batter. Spoon the batter into the muffin cups. Bake the muffins for 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the centre comes out clean. Remove from the oven, and let cool in the tins before removing to cool completely.

Guten Appetit! Continue reading...