A quick and easy baking project on a busy Saturday. Recipe courtesy of King Arthur Flour, with festive Easter M&Ms substituted for some of the chocolate chips. The Primary and Sunday School students were very excited to eat them! One of my students said she had only had a glass of chocolate milk for breakfast, so perhaps our next snack should be bran muffins instead of cookies. Perhaps not!
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Sometimes I wonder why I receive so many e-mails from companies whose products are too expensive to buy. Other times, though, these companies send intriguing recipes, such as these Pumpkin Cookie Dough Protein Bites from Orgain. What could be better than a healthy, spicy, pumpkiny snack? I left out the vanilla extract (because it seemed superfluous with all that vanilla protein powder), used soy powder and soy nut butter instead of Orgain's protein suggestions, used cinnamon and ginger instead of pumpkin pie spice (because we don't keep pre-mixed pumpkin pie spice in the house), and chose not to incorporate the optional mix-ins. The result? Twenty delicious, nutritious treats!
The most recent Food52 e-mail included a recipe for Whole Grain Sweet Potato Muffins. I altered the recipe slightly (and will probably tweak it again next time), and this is the result. There is a link to the original recipe above. My version is below. Sweet Potato MuffinsDry Ingredients:
2 1/2 cups whole-wheat flour 3/4 cup brown sugar 2 teaspoons baking powder 1/4 teaspoon baking soda 1 tablespoon cinnamon 1/2 teaspoon ginger 1/4 teaspoon cloves Wet Ingredients: 1/2 cup (one stick) butter, melted 1 cup mashed roasted sweet potato 1 egg 3/4 cup buttermilk Mix the dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Mix the wet ingredients together in a separate bowl, then gently blend into the dry ingredients. If your sweet potato is especially dry, add a little more buttermilk. The dough will be fairly thick. Fill 19 muffin tins about 2/3 full. Bake at 350° for 15 minutes, or until they pass the toothpick test. Note: We must have extra-powerful cloves, because that was the predominant spice on the day I baked these. After chilling in the refrigerator overnight and reheating, the muffins had a more balanced flavor. Another time, I might leave out the cloves and/or add more ginger. I have never bought any Paintbox Yarn, but I have downloaded several of the free patterns designed for it. The Tropical Swing Tank looked like a perfect gift to make for a friend's baby who turned one year old today. It was fun to raid the yarn stash for three skeins that would work well together. The pattern was created by a British designer, but it had American terms in parentheses in case of confusion. The only one that was a surprise to me was "YRN", which looks like an abbreviation for YARN, but actually stands for "Yarn Round Needle" -- what we colonists generally call a yarn over or "YO" for short. This was a fun, easy project, and there is more yarn in the stash for the next first birthday party!
Red Heart sent a look book full of cute 18" doll clothing just when I was ready for a break from my very complicated fingering-weight white cardigan, so I raided the yarn stash and found some oddments to use. Abby loaned me Princess Petunia for a few days and was surprised to see her modeling a new outfit when she was ready to go home! Love My Doll was a fun pattern, especially the heart on the front of the sweater. I knit the messy bun hat in the round with double-pointed needles, which worked well and saved me a seam. The only problem with this outfit is that Abby thinks she needs a matching messy bun hat for her birthday, despite the fact that nobody wears hats in Texas! The baking ensemble is crocheted, but the stitches are simple enough that I didn't have any problems. The pattern has several more pieces, but Princess Petunia only needed these ones! The toque is just a little loose on her head, but it's very cute and works okay for playtime. The yarn I used (Caron Natura from a clearance order several years ago) is pretty stiff, so a more pliable yarn might work better.
The little doll clothes were so fun to make. . .maybe Princess Petunia will have more outfits to try soon! When the Wilton Countless Celebrations cake pan and accessories arrived at the house, I knew I needed to try it! The pan has a grid on the bottom, so it's easy to tell where to put the rectangular inserts to form any letter or number imaginable. It comes with diagrams, too. In theory, it looked easy, but I thought it might be tricky to execute. As the Fourth of July is coming up, an American theme seemed to be in order, and since my taste in cake is different from most of my family, I used Martha Stewart's yellow sheet cake recipe (from Martha Stewart's Cakes, of course!) for the U and our family's standard buttermilk chocolate cake for the S. It was not tricky at all! The inserts kept all but a very small amount batter out of the center areas, and they came out easily after baking. The triangle cutter was so easy to use to create the angled edges of the letters. And the non-stick pan did its job well, so no tears or disasters at all. Frosting was a bit time-consuming, with all those edges to cover, and then it was time to add a few M&M's. Conclusion: This pan is great! I'm looking forward to making more letters and numbers -- although not all at once, because we can't handle that much cake!
There was plenty of Sucanat left over after making the ooey-gooey caramel bars to try another recipe. This one is called Sucanat Fudge Cake, but as I started measuring ingredients, I realized that it is very similar to our family's beloved Sour Cream Chocolate Cake! I made the cake as explained in the recipe, except that most of my ingredients were not organic or free-range or whatever other expensive adjectives Wholesome might have used. We had plenty of frosting in the refrigerator (left over from previous delicious cakes), so I just brought it to room temperature, beat it all together, and spread on top of the by-now-cooled cake. This made a good Friday treat. It would also make a good Saturday or any other day treat. It's always a good day when there is cake!
It was time to make snacks for Sunday School, and I had a jar of Gooey Cookie Caramel that was dying to be used in oatmeal bars. Rather than using a recipe from the family archive, I searched for one on the Wholesome Sweetener website and found Oatmeal Chocolate-Chip Brownies. Substituting all-purpose flour for their specialty items and adding a swirl of caramel instead of the chocolate chips and walnuts yielded these ooey, gooey, sweet and slightly spicy bars. Not too labor-intensive, and everyone was happy. This was my first time using Sucanat, which has a surprisingly floral fragrance. It worked well in these bars, complementing the gingerbread-flavored caramel. I think these would also taste great without the caramel, perhaps with a penuche frosting or a light glaze or some streusel on top.
This is a hybrid confection -- the fig filling from the Fig Bars on page 78 of Martha Stewart's Cookies (using more water in place of the red wine), plus the crust from Wholesome Sweeteners' Vanilla Date Squares (see this post about how amazing they are with the date filling). The result was beautiful and delicious, and there was a little extra fig jam left over to put on sandwiches! As a side note, the crust calls for Wholesome Sweeteners Organic Light Brown Sugar. I won a bunch of Wholesome products in a Facebook contest, and this is my favorite so far. It is a beautiful color and looks so moist and molasses-y, and it smells wonderful. No photograph can do it justice, but here is an attempt anyway. So pretty! So delicious! So happy!
The last time I brought cookies to Sunday School, one of the students said that she hadn't had time for breakfast or lunch, so they were the first thing she had eaten all day. Because of that comment, I thought it would be good to make something a little more nutritious, so I browsed all of the muffin recipes I had bookmarked. Despite my good intentions, the muffin I chose to try is not particularly nutritious and probably should be called a cupcake. I doubled the recipe, made several changes, and should have made several more (for example, the streusel made as written did not come together very well), so my version of the recipe, with a much shorter title than the original, is below. Bakery-Style Maple Muffins Streusel Topping:
Use a pastry cutter to mix all streusel ingredients together until they form coarse crumbs. Set aside. Muffin Batter:
Cream butter and sugars. Beat in eggs, then add maple syrup and vanilla extract. Add dry ingredients alternating with buttermilk. Fill muffin papers with batter. Sprinkle streusel on top of batter, pressing in a little if desired. Bake at 350° for 20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of a muffin comes out clean. Allow to cool completely. Milk Glaze
Maple Glaze (see note)
Notes:
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