Tag Archives: Breakfast

Coconut Granola

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I haven’t been baking much, and I’m still trying to decide on my next cookbook. The one thing that I have been doing is making this granola at least once a week. It’s nutty and toasty and full of crunchy things. I’ve been eating it on yogurt and straight out of the jar by the handful. I liked it so much, that I included it in my Christmas candy packages to friends and family.

The original recipe is from the Tasty Kitchen website. So far, the only change I’ve made is to not include the dried cranberries or chocolate. Honestly, I like it plain. It is plenty sweet from the brown sugar and agave syrup. One of these days, I’d like to try using honey or maple syrup instead of the agave syrup, and I’d like to experiment with different combinations of nuts and seeds. Recipe after the jump.

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Nutella Scones

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Currently cooking out of Baked Explorations by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito

These scones need to come with a warning. Something like this:

WARNING! These scones may be hazardous to your health if you like chocolate or hazelnuts.

Or maybe this:

WARNING! If you have uncontrollable urges when in close proximity to an open jar of Nutella, avoid these scones at all costs.

Holy crap, they are that good, especially if you like Nutella, that chocolatey hazelnutty goodness that I would totally make out with if I weren’t so busy spooning it straight into my mouth.

Besides being really, really good, these scones are super easy to make. They are a pretty standard scone recipe with some cocoa powder added in with the flour, baking powder, sugar and salt. Butter is rubbed into the dry ingredients until it is pea-sized, then heavy cream and an egg is mixed in until a rough dough is formed. For some added crunch, chopped hazelnuts are kneaded into the dough. Finally, the dough is patted out into a square, and Nutella is spread over it, before the dough is rolled up, pattted out again and cut into triangles (or squares or circles or whatever shape blows your skirt up).

Once the scones are baked, more Nutella is dripped over the top of them, taking their yumminess factor up by about a zillion.

Lewis and Poliafito have hit a homerun with this recipe. These scones aren’t too sweet (only 1/4 cup of sugar to 1/4 cup of cocoa powder), they are tender without being greasy, and they have a great texture due to the chopped hazelnuts. If you’d rather not gild the lilly with that last application of Nutella, these would be divine with raspberry jam. Fresh strawberries would also taste mighty good.

Did I mention there is Nutella in there?

Malted Waffles

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Currently cooking out of Baked Explorations by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito

New cookbook! One full of sugar and eggs and flour and chocolate. Oh chocolate, how I’ve missed you.

I’m not quite done with The Food Matters Cookbook. I’ll have one more recipe coming up, but I just haven’t been able to get myself excited about cooking out of it. So instead of dreading picking a recipe, I’m going to set that cookbook aside and move on.

Back to baking!

A year ago, I was baking out of the first Baked cookbook. This time around, Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito decided to focus on those desserts you’d find at a church supper or potluck, things like Mississippi Mud Pie or Buckeyes. They took these recipes and gave them a Baked twist, refining and updating flavors.

I choose these malted waffles as my first recipe, pretty much because it sounded really good. And it’s been a few weeks since we’ve had waffles around here.

This is a pretty standard waffle recipe with one exception: a cup of malt powder is added to the waffle batter (you can usually find malt powder near the hot chocolate mixes in a grocery store). I can’t really describe what malt tastes like, but if you are a fan of malted milkshakes or Whoppers, you’ll recognize the malt flavor immediately.

I really liked these waffles. The malt flavor isn’t overwhelming, but it is definitely there. It gives the waffles a toasty flavor. These waffles were so good, I liked them without syrup.

However, I did have one problem with the recipe: the batter wasn’t thick enough (my first waffle burned because the batter was so thin). I ended up adding about a half of a cup of extra flour to thicken the batter, but unfortunately, that extra flour also dulled the malt flavor. So, next time I make these, I’ll start out with just two cups of buttermilk (the recipe calls for 2 1/2 cups) and add more as needed.

Also, this makes a huge batch of waffles (I think I ended up with about 18 waffles). That’s only a problem if you are trying to watch what you eat.

The New “New Joe’s Special”

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Currently cooking out of The Food Matters Cookbook by Mark Bittman

According to Bittman, “Joe’s Special” is a ground beef and spinach hash commonly found in San Francisco restaurants that have the word “Joe” in their name. Bittman’s twist is to focus more on the veggies than on the beef.

The dish starts out by browning ground beef, onions, minced garlic and mushrooms (big chunks of mushrooms, in my case). Once browned, everything is transferred to a bowl and a big bunch of spinach is wilted in the pan. To finish the dish, the beef and mushroom mixture is added back to the pan, and an egg and some parmesan cheese is stirred into the mixture and cooked just until set. We ate the hash over some leftover brown rice.

Never having had the original “Joe’s Special,” I can’t compare the two, but I found this dish to be filling and hearty. I wish I would have browned the mushrooms a little more, and maybe added some soy sauce or hot sauce. It was just a bit bland.

Pumpkin Pancakes

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Currently cooking from Good to the Grain by Kim Boyce

Tis the time of the year for pumpkin. Pumpkin cheesecake, pumpkin bread, pumpkin whoopie pies. Why not pumpkin pancakes? With kamut flour.

Truth be told, I struggled with this recipe. It came together easily enough. Kamut flour, all-purpose flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon and baking soda are sifted together and then mixed with butter, milk, buttermilk honey, an egg and pumpkin puree to make a thin, orange batter.

My problems happened when I started cooking the pancakes. I was using my electric griddle and no matter how long I cooked the pancakes, the exterior started burning before the interior was done. So I switched to my waffle maker. Unfortunately, the batter was so thin that the waffles kept burning and drying out. With just a little bit of batter left, I pulled out a heavy skillet. Heated over medium high heat and buttered, this worked the best. I got light, ethereal pancakes full of pumpkin flavor. Not quite pumpkin pie, but close, with slightly crispy edges and a fluffy interior. The original recipe called for a spiced sugar mixture to be served with the pancakes but I went the maple syrup route (surprise), and it was lovely.

The kamut flour didn’t bring much to the party, flavor wise. You could probably leave that out, or substitute another whole grain flour, such as spelt. This is a great use for any leftover pumpkin puree you might have.

Quinoa and Beet Pancakes

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Currently cooking from Good to the Grain by Kim Boyce

Coming off the very successful corn and carrot waffles, I thought I’d give another vegetabley pancake a go. I like beets; I like quinoa. However, I don’t like pancakes that contain both.

These pancakes start off by roasting, then pureeing a couple of beets. Milk, yogurt, butter and an egg round off the wet ingredients. On the dry side, you use 1/2 cup quinoa flour, 1/2 cup whole wheat flour and 1 cup all-purpose flour, along with leavening and brown sugar. I mentioned in the banana walnut cake post that quinoa flour is quite strong smelling. In the cake, you didn’t notice the quinoa flour, but in these pancakes you do. Even though there is only 1/2 cup of quinoa flour, the grassy flavor comes through loud and clear. So does the beet flavor. Put the two together and you get a pancake that is just a little too earthy for me.

Bryan, who doesn’t like beets to begin with, took a bite and grimaced. I was hoping that by roasting the beets, he’d miraculously discover that he did, in fact, like beets. That didn’t happen. He finished the pancakes I gave him (mostly by drowning them in maple syrup), but then politely declined any more.

From now on, I think I’ll keep my beets out of my quinoa.

Carrot and Corn-Flour Waffles

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Currently cooking from Good to the Grain by Kim Boyce

As I was making these waffles, I realized that Bryan and I don’t eat enough waffles (or pancakes for that matter). Our usual breakfasts consist of cold cereal or fried eggs. But things are looking to change with this book, as there is a preponderance of waffle/pancake recipes. Bryan is going to get spoiled.

This was the second recipe I made using corn flour, and although it has some strange ingredients (carrot juice, for example), these waffles were a clear winner. In this recipe, corn flour is combined with all-purpose flour and wheat germ. Brown sugar, leavening and ground ginger round out the dry ingredients. The wet ingredients include the aforementioned carrot juice, along with milk, butter, eggs and orange juice and zest.

The cooked waffles were a sunny orange. They weren’t delicate, but had body and chew to them. They were full of corn flavor, and you couldn’t really taste the carrot juice; it just added a subtle sweetness to the waffles. My only gripe was the ginger flavor. Even though it wasn’t overwhelming, I’d cut the amount down by about half next time or probably just leave it out all together.

These were really, really good with lots of butter and maple syrup.

Pear and Buckwheat Pancakes

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Currently cooking from Good to the Grain by Kim Boyce

It’s hard to overlook buckwheat flour. Some of the other flours, like Kamut or quinoa, look alike, all pale and fine textured. Buckwheat, though, is dark and earthy, sultry even; its flour is almost gritty and feels like it has heft. It’s one of my favorite flours, but I haven’t used it much beyond pancakes.

If you aren’t sure about buckwheat flour, pancakes are a good place to start. In this case buckwheat flour is paired with grated pears. The pear sweetens the batter and emphasizes the sweetness of the buckwheat flour. Boyce recommends serving the pancakes with a honey butter, but I went the traditional route and used maple syrup.

Pancakes. They were good. Enough said.

Sticky Lemon Rolls with Lemon Cream Cheese Glaze

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Lemon with cream cheese. What’s not to love? These rolls are cinnamon rolls for people who don’t like cinnamon. Or for people who like lemon. Or for people. And maybe aliens.

Seriously, these are good. The sweet, tangy filling is encased by a soft, just slightly sweet yeasty bread. The lemon flavor is everywhere. There’s lemon zest in the dough. The filling is made up of sugar, lemon zest and lemon juice. And the cream cheese glaze has lemon juice in it.

You can find the recipe here.

Fresh Fruit Muffins v4 & 5

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fruit_muffin_v4Currently baking out of Macrina Bakery & Cafe Cookbook by Leslie Mackie

Versions four and five of my fresh fruit muffins went from complicated to simple, but got better as a result.

For the fourth attempt at tweaking this recipe, I increased the maple syrup to 1/4 cup and decreased the amount of milk by the same amount. Once again, I got nicely domed tops with a tender, sweet crumb. The maple flavor was subtle and went nicely with the blueberries. As I was considering this version though, I realized how complicated it had become. I was using two different dairy products (milk and sour cream), oil and butter, and three different sweetners (white sugar, brown sugar and maple syrup). There had to be an easier way.

So, with the next version I simplified. I used all buttermilk instead of the sour cream and milk and I nixed the maple syrup. The flavor it added wasn’t enough to justify the extra ingredient. I also increased the white sugar and the oil a bit. This version was good. I didn’t miss the maple syrup and the muffins were just sweet enough. I kept the struesel topping as I liked the added crunch it gave the muffins.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that as I was researching other muffin recipes after this fifth attempt, I came across a recent Cooks Illustrated blueberry muffin recipe. Lo and behold, their recipe and my recipe are strikingly similar. They do some other things to increase the blueberry flavor, like add a homemade blueberry jam, but the basic muffin recipes are very close.

No matter. I’m going to tweak this latest version once again and will post the results soon.