Cooking With Hanzipan

Starzipan visited me on Wednesday and we started some delicious cinnamon rolls that night and baked them the next morning. I’d done this recipe before but I didn’t have any cream cheese so I’d done a different frosting. The frosting that comes with the recipe is DEFINITELY worth using. I’m going to make some comments in (italicized parentheses)…

Cinnamon Rolls

Recipe courtesy of Inside a Black Apple:

Makes four reasonably sized rolls.

- First off, set a stick of butter out on the counter to soften…hopefully a few hours ahead of time.

- Then, gather your ingredients:
(for the dough)

1/2 cup warmed milk

1 egg
2 tablespoons melted butter
2 teaspoons vegetable oil
2 1/4 c flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 c white sugar
1 1/4 teaspoon yeast

(for slathering on the dough)
1/4 c brown sugar
2 tablespoons soft butter (I’d do 3.. maybe 4 because our rolls were a bit dry)
hearty amounts of cinnamon (adjust to your tastes)

(for the icing)
2 tablespoons soft butter
3-4 tablespoons cream cheese
1/4 teaspoon vanilla
pinch salt

1/2 c confectioner’s sugar

Now, you just fling all of your dough ingredients into a bowl, mixing thoroughly. Pretty quickly, it should become smooth enough to knead with floured hands. This dough is so smooth…it’s just beautiful to work with. When you can pat it into a ball, put it back into the floured mixing bowl and let it rest for a little while (maybe 15 minutes). If you’re going to bake them immediately, pre-heat the oven to 400.

After it has rested, come back to your dough and roll it out into a rectangle on a floured surface. Take your allotted softened butter, and spread it across the surface with a spoon or spatula. Then sprinkle liberally with cinnamon and brown sugar. Roll up into a roll, and then slice. This is where you must decide whether or not to be insane. You can form this batch into two enormous rolls, or 4 smaller, more sane ones. I recommend the sane route. The huge ones are lovely and impressive to look at, but they have trouble cooking to the center thoroughly, and quite frankly, might send you into a coma.

Now, when you have your buns, you can either pop them into your preheated oven (using a greased pan) or, and this achieves slightly better results, put them in the refrigerator overnight and bake them the next morning (we decided to refrigerate over night and next time I would make sure to take them out of the fridge for at least 30 minutes before putting them in the oven to bake the next morning). Either way, you want to bake them for around 15 minutes (or slightly more if you made the huge ones).
Then, whip together the few frosting ingredients, and spread over the warm rolls when they emerge from the oven.

One of my favorites foods is baked squash so it only makes sense that one of my favorite recipes is one I found on 101 cookbooks. I love the warm squash and the fluffy millet all mixed together with some tart cranberries topped with more than a little butter. Mom and Dad are gone for the weekend so I baked myself a batch and I’m planning on living on it over the next couple of days. For now I’m going to go sit in my stretch pants and watch a few episodes of All Creatures Great and Small with a bowl of this glorious squash extravaganza.

Beginning.

Middle.

And END!

Right before it finds a new home in my tummy.

Mark Bittman’s Autumn Millet Bake Recipe

Recipe borrowed from 101 cookbooks

I screwed up a bit and used dried cranberries. If you are referencing the photo, you’ll notice the shrivel factor. Still good. You can make this vegan, vegetarian, I used a bit of cream* - but you can use just stock or water. The real trick is getting the millet to cook all the way though, so don’t over toast it, and keep adding liquids if you need to.

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil, plus oil for the dish
3/4 cup millet
1 medium butternut or other winter squash or 1 small pumpkin, peeled seeded and cut into 1-inch cubes
1 cup fresh cranberries
Salt and freshly ground pepper
1 tablespoon minced sage leaves or 1 teaspoon dried
2 tablespoons maple syrup or honey
1 cup vegetable stock or water, warmed*
1/4 cup pumpkin seeds or coarsely chopped hazelnuts
Preheat the oven to 375F and grease a 2-quart casserole, a large gratin dish, or a 9×13-inch baking dish with olive oil.

Put 2 tablespoons of the oil in a small skillet over medium-high heat. When hot, add the millet and cook, stirring frequently, until fragrant and golden, about 3 minutes (hs note: don’t overdo it). Spread in the bottom of the prepared baking dish.

Scatter the squash or pumpkin cubes and the cranberries on top of the millet. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and the sage and drizzle with syrup. Carefully pour the warmed stock over all (hs note: I did about 1/2 cup stock & 1/2 cup cream based on one of his variations). Cover tightly with foil and bake without disturbing, for 45 minutes.

Carefully uncover and turn the oven to 400F. As discreetly as possible, sneak a taste and adjust the seasoning. If it looks too dry, add a spoonful or two of water or stock. (hs note: This is key! The millet should be close to being cooked through at this point, if not you need to add liquid and keep it moist and cooking - I used another 1/4 cup+ of stock here). Sprinkle the pumpkin seeds on top, and return the dish to the oven. Bake until the mixture bubbles and the top is browned (hs note: and the millet is cooked through), another 10 minutes or so. Serve piping hot or at room temperature (hs note: drizzled with the remaining olive oil if you like).

Serves 4 to 6.

*In the end, I used 3/4 cup stock + 1/2 cup cream

Dad and Mummy are headed up to Whistler for the weekend and I wanted to send them off on their 7 hour drive with something tasty to snack on. I’d found an amazing scone recipe over at The Black Apple a few weeks ago and that sounded just right. I didn’t glaze them because they’re still warm and they need to make their trip in a  ziplock baggie. Sweaty scones are definitely NOT attractive.

Glazed Orange Scones For Your Weekend Breakfasts

Recipe borrowed from Inside a Black Apple

(Makes about 8 medium sized scones)

Ingredients:
1 3/4 C flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
1/3 C white sugar
pinch salt
5 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/2″ chunks
1/2 C orange juice
1/4 c sour cream
1 egg
1 teaspoon milk
Zest of 1 orange

1.   Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F/200 degrees C

2. Sift the flour, baking powder, sugar and salt into a large bowl. Add the butter using a pastry tool or your hands, until the mixture is crumbly and there are still pea-sized lumps of butter visible. Stir in the orange zest. Mix together 1/2 cup orange juice and sour cream in a measuring cup. Pour all at once into the dry ingredients, and stir gently just until blended. Do not over-do the blending.

3. With floured hands, pat scone dough into balls 2 to 3 inches across, depending on what size you want. Place onto a greased baking sheet, and flatten lightly.  Whisk together the egg and 1 tablespoon of milk. Brush the tops of the scones with the egg wash. Let them rest for about 10 minutes.

4. Bake for around 12 minutes in the preheated oven, until the tops are just golden brown. Transfer to rack to cool.

5. Once cool, you can leave them be or glaze them as I did. To make the glaze, I combined about 1/2 orange juice, the zest of 1 orange, and about 1/2 an orange cut into small chunks. I simmered the mixture lightly for about 10 minutes, and then took it off the heat and allowed to cool. Once cool, add confectioner’s sugar until it reaches a good glazing consistency, and stir til’ smooth.

6. Squirrel away any that remain in a tightly sealed container at room temperature.

Today I made an apple pie. This is a place-holder, as I have not yet taken pictures of the pie and don’t feel like typing up the recipe :-P. Both the crust and the filling were prepared from the Joy, which is the way my dad does it(mostly, he does a bit more eyeballing than me). It is a beautiful pie and I’m sure it will be delicious.

Oh Bread & Honey, you are the source of all things delicious. Today I made a half batch of their Country Crust bread. I’ve made it before and it was wonderful THEN. Now it’s downright amazing because I’ve gotten it turn out golden and puffy TWICE. It’s a record. I like that you can (in theory) stick the dough in the fridge for up to four days… so I could do all the work one day and reap all of the benefits several days later. That’s my kind of style!

A few glamour shots. This load deserves it.

Can a loaf of bread pose for a camera? I think so.

Now, for the good part!

Country Crust Bread
From Bread & Honey

Ingredients:
2 packages active dry yeast
2 cups warm water (105 to 115 degrees)
1/2 cup sugar
1 tablespoon salt
2 eggs
1/4 cup oil
6 to 6 1/2 cups bread flour
soft butter or margarine

Directions:
Dissolve yeast in warm water. Stir in sugar, salt, eggs, oil, and 3 cups of the flour. Beat until smooth. Mix in enough remaining flour to make dough easy to handle. Turn dough onto lightly floured board; knead until smooth and elastic, 8 to 10 minutes. Place in a greased bowl; turn greased side up. (At this point, dough can be refrigerated for 3 to 4 days.) Cover; let rise in a warm place until doubled, about 1 hour (Dough is ready if impression remains.)

Punch down dough; divide in half. Roll each half into a rectangle, 18×9 inches. Roll up, beginning at short side. With side of hand, press each end to seal. Fold ends under loaf. Place seam side down in greased loaf pan. Brush loaves with a little oil. Let rise until doubled, about another hour.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Place loaves on lower oven rack so that the tops of the pans are in the center of the oven. Pans should not touch each other or sides of oven. Bake 30 to 35 minutes or until deep golden brown and loaves sound hollow when tapped. Remove from pans. Brush loaves with butter; cool on wire rack.

Makes two loaves.

Bread & Honey has a recipe for Austrian Jam Cookies that I wanted to try and I’m oh so glad I did. These cookies combine some warm almondy, vanilla flavor with lava hot jam when you pull them out of the oven and pop them directly into your mouth. That almond flavor makes my mouth water just thinking about it.

There are two things I like about this recipe: 1. that it’s written with a vegan alternative, even though I didn’t use it… and 2. that the dough didn’t need to be refrigerated and it was really REALLY easy to make. I’m going to make my comments on the recipe in italics, the parenthesied bits were already there from the ladies over at Bread & Honey.

Austrian Jam Cookies
from Bread & Honey

1 cup margarine or butter
1 cup granulated sugar
2 1/2 cups flour
2 eggs or egg replacer “eggs”
2 tsps vanilla extract (or almond extract, or both) I did 1.25 tsps vanilla + .75 tsps almond… yes I eyeballed it.
jam (or filling of your choice) I used strawberry preserves from trusty Trader Joes
slivered almonds (optional) I rolled them in almond meal

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
In a large bowl, preferably with an electric mixer, beat margarine or butter, sugar, eggs, and extract(s) until smooth and creamy. Sift flour in 1 cup at a time. Roll dough into balls. Roll in slivered almonds (optional). Place on cookie sheet and thumbprint each cookie. Scoop jam into dented center (I find it best to use a small kid’s spoon for this).
Bake for 12-14 minutes (I baked them for 15, it took a long time for those bottoms to even HINT at getting golden), until bottoms are golden. Remove from cookie sheet after a few minutes to cool.

I had this urge to make pink cupcakes so I took the White Christmas Cupcake recipe and Kid Simple Frosting from Cupcakes! by Elinor Klivans. I feel guilty for posting so many of her recipes online, in case someone would have otherwise bought the book but can get all the recipes from me for free. I recommend you buy the book, it’s really really good. The cupcake recipe is on page 128 and the frosting is on 34. 

I also tried to pipe the frosting on the cupcakes using a pastry bag and tips I got from Big Lots. 

The results were difficult

The middle cupcake represents my anger at how unnecessarily difficult piping is.

I wanted to make breakfast this morning and I’d found bag of whole wheat flour lurking in the back of the kitchen cupboard that I wanted to use. I found this Whole Wheat Apple Muffin recipe on Smitten Kitchen that was calling my name and away I went! You can use the link to see Smitten’s recipe, below is my version (I needed to do some tweaking because I only had one tiny apple and I wanted to put some more things in them).

Whole Wheat Apple Muffins

Adapted from Smitten Kitchen

makes 15 muffins (weird number, huh?)

1 cup  whole wheat flour
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup granulated sugar (I didn’t have any so I used raw cane sugar which is fairly coarse and works just fine)
1/2 cup dark brown sugar, packed
1 large egg

1/4 cup applesauce (unsweetened works the best)
2/3 cup buttermilk
1 medium/large apple, cored, and coarsely chopped

1/2 cup raisins

1/2 cup chopped walnuts

1 tablespoon cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 450°F. Grease and flour an 18 cup muffin tin and set aside.

Stir together white sugar, 1/4 cup of the brown sugar, butter and egg. Plop the apple sauce in then gently stir in the buttermilk until just combined. Toss in the baking soda, powder, salt and cinnamon (I forgot to do it in the batter so I just sprinkled it on the tops of the muffins which worked really well) and stir until combined. Add both flours and then toss in the chopped apple, walnuts and raisins, stirring until it’s all folded together and one big lumpy bowl of goodness. Pour into muffin tins, filling them 2/3 of the way. Sprinkle tops with cinnamon if you didn’t add it into the batter then sprinkle the rest (and maybe a touch more) of the brown sugar on top of the muffins. Stick them in the oven for 10 minutes then turn the heat down to 400 for another 7 minutes or until they pass the toothpick test. Allow to cool in the pans for about 10 minutes then transfer onto a wrack. Enjoy!

From the book Cupcakes!  by Elinor Klivans

Ingredients:

Swirl and Topping:

• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

Cupcakes:

• 1 cup grated peeled apple (1 large apple)
• 2 tablespoons cinnamon sugar (from above)
• 1 1/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 large eggs
• 1 cup canola or corn oil
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line 12 muffin tin cups with paper cupcake liners.

Make the swirl and topping. In a small bowl, stir the sugar and cinnamon together.

Make the cupcakes. In a small bowl, mix the grated apple and the 2 tablespoons cinnamon sugar together; set aside. In a large bowl, stir the flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt together. Make a well in the center of the flour mixture and add the eggs, oil, and vanilla, stirring until the ingredients are smoothly blended. Stir in the reserved apple mixture, with any juice that has been released.

Spoon about 2 tablespoons of batter into each paper liner. Sprinkle 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon sugar over the batter in each liner. Spoon the remaining batter over the cinnamon sugar, using a scant 2 tablespoons of batter for each cupcake. Use a pastry brush to dab the top of the batter with the melted butter. Sprinkle the remaining cinnamon sugar over the top.

Bake just until the tops are light brown and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 25 minutes. Cool the cupcakes for 10 minutes in the pan on a wire rack. Remove the cupcakes from the pan to the wire rack to cool completely. 

They may be covered and stored at room temperature for up to 3 days.

This recipe is from the book Cupcakes! by Elinor Klivans.

Filling

• 1  8 ounce package cream cheese, at room temperature
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 large egg, at room temperature
• 1 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest
• 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Topping

• 1/2 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
• 1/3 cup packed light brown sugar
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

Cupcakes

• 1 1/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 large egg
• 1 large egg yolk
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup canola or corn oil
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup sour cream

Position a rack in the middle of the oven. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Line 12 extra-large muffin tin cups with paper cupcake liners. Spray the inside of each liner with nonstick cooking spray.

Make the filling. In a large bowl, using an electric mixer on low speed, beat the cream cheese and sugar until smoothly blended. Beat in the egg. Mix in the lemon zest, lemon juice, and vanilla. Set aside.

Make the topping. In a medium bowl, using a large spoon, stir the flour, brown sugar, and salt together. Add the melted butter and continue stirring until crumbs form.

Make the cupcakes. Sift the flour, baking soda, and salt into a medium bowl and set aside. In a large bowl using an electric mixer on medium speed, beat the egg and yolk and sugar until thickened and lightened to a cream color, about 2 minutes. Stop the mixer and scrape the sides of the bowl as needed during mixing. On low speed, mix in the oil and vanilla until blended. Mix in the sour cream until no white streaks remain. Mix in the flour mixture until it is incorporated and the batter is smooth. 

Spoon 3 tablespoons of the batter into each cupcake liner. Spoon 1 1/2 tablespoons of cream cheese filling into the center of each; the soft filling will spread slightly over the batter. Sprinkle a generous tablespoon of crumb topping over each. the paper liners will be filled to about 1/2 inch from the top. 

Bake until the edges brown lightly and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 25 minutes. The cupcakes will rise to the top of the paper liners. Cool the cupcakes for 20 minutes in the pan on a wire rack. Remove the cupcakes from the pan and allow to cool completely on a wire rack.

Dust the cooled cupcakes lightly with powdered sugar before serving. The cupcakes can be covered and stored at room temperature for up to 2 days.