English Muffins

English Muffins

http://growingupgabel.blogspot.com

I've never been a big fan of English muffins. I went through a phase in my early 20s where I ate them instead of bagels (less calories, I think), but I didn't like it. My husband, however, loves English muffins. I am happy to buy them for him, but they are expensive and it's hard to find an organic version. I looked in to making them, but every recipe I saw called for English muffin rings and I just didn't see the point in buying something I could only use for one thing (well, I could use them for hamburger buns, too).

I was pretty excited when I found this recipe -- no rings and basic ingredients. English muffins are "baked" on the stove top in a frying pan or skillet. They are super simple to make, but they take some time so don't start them if you are in a hurry. They taste absolutely nothing like the store bought brand. They are much better!

English Muffins
1 3/4 cup warmed milk
2 teaspoons yeast
3 Tablespoons butter
2 Tablespoons sugar
1 1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 egg
4-4 1/4 cups flour (white, whole wheat or any combination thereof)
Corn meal

Put milk, yest, sugar and butter in the bowl of a stand mixer. Allow butter to mostly melt. Add rest of ingredients. Mix until well combined. Remove bowl from stand mixer and fold dough over a few times while in the bowl. The dough will be sticky so you may need to use a tad of flour. Either grease bowl of stand mixer or lightly grease another bowl and allow dough to rise in a warm place for about an hour.

Punch down dough. Roll dough in to a rectangle on surface lightly dusted with corn meal. Using a 3" round cookie cutter, cut out dough. Re-roll and re-cut as needed until all the dough is used up. Place cut dough on cookie sheets and cover with a wet towel. Allow to rest for 20 minutes.

Warm a large pan (with a top) over low heat on stove top. Sprinkle pan with corn meal. Cook muffins for 6-7 minutes on each side, covered. Be gentle when turning so as not to deflate the muffins too much. Cool on a rack. These are freezable!

Pumpkin Pancakes

Recipe: Pumpkin Pancakes

from Frugal Upstate by Jenn @ Frugal Upstate

Looking for something slightly different for breakfast?

Pumpkin Pancakes

1/2 C Flour
1/2 C Whole Wheat Flour
2 TBS Sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
2 eggs
1 C milk
1/2 C canned pumpkin (not pie!)
2 TBS oil

Combine all dry ingredients in a bowl & wisk to combine

In another bowl, mix eggs, milk, pumpkin & oil.

Pour wet ingredients into dry ingredients and stir to combine.

Drop by 1/4 C onto a medium hot greased griddle. Cook slowly & flip when bubbles appear.

Note: you may want to thin with more milk. Cook on a lower than normal setting or the outside will get too brown before the inside is done.

These are a bit more dense & moist than regular pancakes.

Baked Oatmeal

Baked Oatmeal

http://www.mamasheartblog.com/?p=1778

• 3 c oatmeal (I use quick oats, but regular oats would work fine as well)
• 2 T cinnamon
• 2 t. baking powder
• 1 t. sea salt (I like Real Salt)
• ½ c. brown sugar
• ½ c. honey
• 1 ½ c. cultured buttermilk
• 2 eggs
• ¼ c. coconut oil (or butter), melted
• 2 t. vanilla
• 1 c. fruit; raspberries, blueberries, mashed bananas, apples, etc.
• ½ cup of pecans (optional)

Mix dry ingredients together, add to wet ingredients in mixing bowl. Combine thoroughly (I let the Bosch do the work). Allow to rest for 5 minutes to increase loft (from buttermilk/baking powder combination), pour in to well-greased 9×13″ pan and bake at 350F for 30-40 minutes. Center should be firm and poke-able just like a cake; top should be lightly browned.

Cut in pieces and serve warm (or cold) – it’s especially delightful with a pat of butter and a drizzle of maple syrup.

Homemade bagel recipe

Homemade bagel recipe. Make great handrolled water bagels, it's as easy as baking a loaf of bread!

By John D Lee

photo credit: tabacoa.com

photo credit: the freshloaf.com

photo credit: antarcticsun.com

Homemade bagels taste better!

I've made a lot of bagels in my time. I owned a bagel restaurant for years, and you would find me every bleary eyed morning kneading the dough and hand rolling all the fresh bagels for the day.

I've since gotten out of the bagel game (Yay sleep!) but I still love a great bagel.

People think that making outstanding bagels at home is really difficult, but it's really no harder than making a loaf of bread...and can be done within about an hour.

Don't be discouraged if your bagels look at bit funny at first, you'll get the hang of it in no time, and those curiously shaped bagels will still beat supermarket bagels hands down.

What makes a bagel different from other breads is the two stage cooking process. A bagel is first briefly boiled, and then baked. I worked the meat counter in a Jewish deli as a teenager, and as my boss would say, an unboiled bagel is just a roll with a hole!

Homemade bagel recipe

4 cups bread flour

1 Tbls sugar

1 1/2 tsps salt

1 Tbls vegetable oil

2 tsps instant yeast

1-1/4- 1-1/2 cups of warm water.

Mix all the ingredients in a bowl. You don't have to worry about soaking the yeast when you use instant yeast (most yeast sold these days is instant yeast). The dough should feel stiff, but add the extra water if it's really stiff, or you can't get all the dry flour incorporated.

Plop the dough down onto the counter, and knead for about ten minutes, or until the dough is uniform and smooth.

Cut the dough into 8 equal sized balls, and let rest for 10-20 minutes.

Pre heat your oven to 425.

Now, take each of the dough balls and using two hands, roll it into a little snake on the counter. When the snake is longer than the width of your two hands, wrap it around your dominant roiling hand. The dough rope should be wrapped so the overlapping ends are together at your palm, near the start of your fingers. Now take the two overlapping ends, and use your palm to squish/roll these two ends together. Once the dough is fused, you should have a perfectly circular bagel-to-be! This is the only part of the process that can take a little practice before your bagels will look really professional. Don't get discouraged if they don't look perfect, it just takes practice!

Let your bagels rest on the counter for about 20 minutes, and meanwhile, bring a pot of water to boil, and grease a large baking tray lightly. You can just rub a splash of vegetable oil and rub it around.

After the 20 minute wait, your bagels will start to look puffy, and it's time to get them boiling! Add them as many at a time as you can to your boiling water without crowding them. Boil for about a minute, turn them over, and boil for another minute. Take them out a let dry for a minute and then place them on your oiled baking tray. Repeat until all the bagels are boiled.

Add the tray to the oven, and after 10 minutes, flip the bagels over, bake for another ten minutes; and they're done!

Let them cool for at least 20 minutes, get the cream cheese ready, and feast on what's got to be one of the best weekend brunch treats possible!

You can add any toppings you like to these. To make sesame, onions, poppy seed, caraway etc. etc. bagels just have a dry plate ready with the seed or spice topping spread out on it. After the bagels have come out of the boiling water, place them face down onto the seeds, and then place the seed side up onto the baking tray. Bake and flip as for plain bagels.

Homemade Pancake Mix

We normally keep a box of Bisquick on hand, but every once in a while my family has a pancake hankering after we have finished the last box on our shelf! So just in time for Christmas, I decided to share a 'pantry staples' version of easy pancake making... along with some tips from my pancake flippingextraordinaire husband!

This mix is simply made from flour, milk, and egg, butter, sugar, salt and baking powder. These ingredients should already be in your cupboards!

First, combine the dry ingredients: flour, sugar, salt and baking powder, mix well.

Next, in a separate bowl, beat the egg until it is bubbly!

Add the remaining wet ingredients with the frothy egg. (Milk and melted butter).

I add my secret weapon of pure vanilla extract! My husband brings me Haitian vanilla when he returns from his Raincathers trips! Haitian vanilla is POTENT! Yum!

Combine the wet and the dry ingredients, and this is what your batter will look like!

I need to mention a few key pancake pointers before I continue:

1. I am NOT the lead pancake maker in our home. I'm the lead dish washer!!! Dave is much more skilled than I am, but I LOVE you guys... so I persevered and 'pancaked it up' for your benefit!!!

2. Whether you make your pancakes on a griddle (like me) or in a pan, make sure that your surface is HOT!!! (300*- 350* if you are using a griddle). I accidentally unplugged my griddle without realizing it... so it wasn't super hot(again, this is why I'm the lead dish washer...). You can test the heat of the surface by splashing a little bit of water on the surface- and if it quickly 'dances' and goes up in steam... you're set to begin dropping batter onto the surface!

3. If your batter doesn't form perfectly round circles (like when your heat has been GREATLY reduced... or turned off), you can use the back of a spoon to help evenly spread out your batter!

4. Patience is a virtue.

Soon after dropping, your batter will begin to puff!

You will know when your pancakes are ready to be flipped on three accounts: 1. your batter will begin to bubble (let the bubbles pop!) and 2. your pancakes will stop steaming- you'll recognize this when you see it, and 3. the edges and eventually the surface of your pancake will begin to lose its shiny batter look.

Duh- lish!

This recipe makes between 8 & 12 good sized pancakes, and this recipe could easily be doubled, tripled or even quadrupled!

This, by far, is my favorite way to eat any pancake!!! I call this a pancake taco!!! No butter or syrup necessary (great for even the messiest family members!)!

Recipe Recap:

1 cup of flour

1 egg

3/4 cup of milk

2 tablespoons of melted butter

1 tablespoon of sugar

3 teaspoons of baking powder

1/2 teaspoon of salt

*1 teaspoon of vanilla*

Muffins

This is a simple and versatile recipe with ingredients that are most likely right in your cupboards! Flour, milk, sugar (in the lidded container), vegetable oil, baking powder, salt, an egg and something yummy to mix into the batter... I chose strawberries!

My son and I picked these strawberries last summer on a vacation up north...Mmmm, so yummy and special! Still frozen, I placed the berries in my food chopper.

I chopped enough for a cup's worth. The recipe that I am using (modified from Recipeczar.com) calls for just half a cup... but I prefer more yummy stuff!!!

***Keep in mind that you could use other mix- ins like blueberries, banana's or chocolate chips!

I wanted my muffins to have more of a breakfasty healthy-ness to them, so I added 1 1/2 cups of white flour and 1/2 cup of wheat flour... I'd just use while flour for more of a 'treat' type of muffin!!!

... and in goes the baking powder and the salt!

In a separate "wet ingredient bowl," I combined the milk, the egg and the oil.

Slowly, I added the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients.

Lastly, I added the strawberries- they looked so beautiful in my mix!

Since I was primarily baking these muffins for my son (he just turned two), I used my mini muffin pans- but otherwise I would have used a 12 sectioned regular sized pan for this recipe.

After baking for just 18 minutes... they were perfect!

I LOVED the pink hue of the strawberries!

And yes, my son enjoyed them... especially with butter!

Recipe Recap:

2 cups of flour

1/2 cup of sugar

1 Tablespoon of baking powder

1/2 Teaspoon of salt

1 Egg

3/4 cup of milk

1/2 cup of vegetable oil

1 cup of fruit or chocolate

Serving size, 12 muffins

Bake at 400* for 18-20 minutes!

Bakin' Bacon

My boys are bacon lovers... but I HATE the mess! So I crank up my oven to 500.*

Make sure to line your baking sheet with foil... and lay your bacon across the sheet. *I will let my slices touch since they shrink while cooking!

When the bacon has finished... well, baking, I lay a few paper towels on the foil to soak up the grease... viola!!! Easy clean up!

PS: Don't leave your kitchen- bakin' bacon is a quick process! I normally bake mine for about 10 minutes!!!

Quiche

Cheddar and Bacon Quiche
3oz bacon bits
6oz shredded cheddar cheese
1 uncooked pie crust
4 eggs, slightly beaten
1c. half and half, although we will use whole milk

Preheat oven to 400*

Mix all ingredients (sans crust) well and place into the pie crust and bake for 15 minutes. Reduce the heat to 350* and continue baking for 35 more minutes. Let your quiche cool for about 5 minutes before serving.