Cooking With Hanzipan

I’ve had a craving for lavender lately. Not only is allrecipes.com a veritable wasteland when it comes to the flower so are all of the other cooking blogs I cruise through. After a bit of digging I found a Lavender Tea Bread on allrecipes and after a little pondering I decided to make it into cupcakes and, with a little lemon zest, the idea started to make my mouth water. These turned out so puffy, soft and smelled so good! I can’t get enough of them. The flowers were a little disconcerting in the dough, but by the time everything had baked I didn’t notice them anymore, they’re just pretty purple specks.

Lavender Tea Bread Recipe

Via: allrecipes.com (My alterations will be in the parenthesis)

Makes 12 cupcakes or one 5 x 9 loaf.

• 3/4 cup milk
• 3 tablespoons finely chopped fresh lavender (I used dried flowers with the same results)
• 6 tablespoons butter, softened
• 1 cup white sugar
• 2 eggs (I used one very very large local egg, equivalent to two from a regular store)
• (zest from 1 lemon)
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. (Grease muffin tins for 12 cupcakes or one 5 x 9 inch pan).
2. Combine the milk and lavender in a small saucepan over medium heat. Heat to a simmer, then remove from heat, and allow to cool slightly.
3. In a medium bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until smooth. Beat in the egg until the mixture is light and fluffy. (Add zest) Combine the flour, baking powder, and salt; stir into the creamed mixture alternately with the milk and lavender until just blended. Pour into pan (or cupcake tins until 2/3 full).
   
4. Bake for 50 minutes in pan or 25 minutes in cupcake tins in the preheated oven, or until a wooden pick inserted comes out clean. Cool on wire rack.
   

Jessie was going back to school today and she’s been wanting a pan of brownies so I decided to make some this morning to send with her. I wanted to do something that wasn’t the usual brownie because there’s something about them that I’m pretty ambivalent about until, that is, I found this vegan recipe on Bread & Honey. I was intrigued by this idea of heating flour and water in a pan until it turned into a paste. How is that not intriguing in a mad scientist sort of way? These turned out amazingly gooey and tasty right out of the oven. I think they’ve made me a convert to the brownie cause. Next it’ll be fudge. I really don’t like fudge which is sad because, like brownies, they are chocolaty and chewy and tasty.

The Best Vegan Brownies Ever
Recipe courtesy of Bread & Honey:
Ingredients:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup water
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 cup vegetable or canola oil
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup chopped nuts (optional)

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease an 11 x 17″ or 9 x 13″ pan.
Boil water and 1/2 cup of the flour in a saucepan over low heat, stirring constantly, until it reaches the consistency of a gluey paste. Remove from heat and let cool.
Mix sugars, salt, vanilla, cocoa and oil. Then add the rest of the flour-water mixture and mix well. Add the remaining 1 1/2 cups of flour and baking powder, mix well, and then stir in the chocolate chips and nuts (if you’re using them). The end mixture will be rather thick.
Spread the mixture into your baking pan. Bake for 20-25 minutes. These are much better when completely cooled.

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.

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.

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.