Category Archives: Quick Breads

Me?? Make something the “Normal” Way?!

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Bite your tongue! You should know better than that. If there is any way to mess up change a perfectly good recipe, I’m the woman to do it. Hmmm, coming from a food blogger, that doesn’t sound too great now does it? Let me rephrase that to put myself in a much better light shall I? If a recipe has certain inherent flaws or shortcomings, or possibly could be adjusted by adding alternate flavors or adding more layers of flavor, I am the woman who will screw up attempt it and be seen later banging my head off of a table when it fails make a roaring success of it.

So were you impressed there?? Huh huh huh? Did I use big words and sound frighteningly wonderful?! Whadda ya mean I just sounded frightening!? I’m hurt! Nay, wounded to my very core! Nay, devastated. Nay, rambling as usual!

Fine, I’ll stop now.

Living in the south, I kinda love cornbread. If you don’t, they kick you out and make you live somewhere like Siberia (prays I have no readers in Siberia cause I just spent five minutes thinking of places one wouldn’t want to live and then changing them so as to not offend anyone living there 😛 ). You also have to love sweet tea (lack of that love is why they made my native Kentuckian daughter in law move) and Paula Deen (don’t tell anyone, but while I love her recipes, but she annoys the poo out of me with her use of “Y’all” fourteen times in each and every sentence). I wrote a post back when I first started the blog about the differences between Yankee cornbread and Southern cornbread. But this post isn’t about either of them. It’s about MANLY CORNBREAD! Please make sure you say that with a sneer on your face and while swaggering across the room adjusting your crotch. And in reality, I didn’t do much changing to the original recipe. My point was just that I seem to be incapable of making things that are “normal”. Nope; have to hunt down and make the unusual ones. And as cornbread goes, this fits that criteria. It’s from Emeril Lagesse. The only thing I changed was to not use cayenne pepper because while I love spicy foods, I thought that that as well as the jalapenos may be too much for my kids. Plus, I added a good amount more cheese and threw some green onions in there too. I mean… cheese, bacon, peppers… it was just crying out for green onions.

So go get out your cast iron pan (please tell me you have one. If not, time to buy one.) and your cornmeal and get to cooking. And Kim go get me a COKE while you’re cooking, wench! 😀 And for YOU
Ann there is no cinnamon in my recipe today so you can make it hehehehe 😛

This is wonderful cornbread. Crispy and hot and stuffed full of a creamy corn and bacon mix. It has just the right amount of spice and flavor. Enjoy! As my dad would have said “Eat it! You’ll grow hair on your chest!”

Emerils Manly Man Stuffed Corbread

  • 1 pound bacon, chopped (his called for a half a pound… what can I say? I HAD to have some sitting there for noshing on didn’t I? It’s like…the law!)
  • 1 1/2 cups fresh corn kernels (I used frozen & it worked fine)
  • 1 cup heavy cream
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt, plus 1/2 teaspoon
  • 2 teaspoons unsalted butter
  • 3 tablespoons water
  • 1 1/2 cups yellow cornmeal
  • 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1 tablespoon baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/4 teaspoon cayenne (again; I didn’t use this)
  • 2 eggs, lightly beaten
  • 1 1/2 cups buttermilk
  • 3 tablespoons melted unsalted butter
  • 2 jalapeno peppers, seeded and finely chopped
  • 2 cups grated sharp cheddar cheese
  • 1/2 cup chopped green onions
  1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.
  2. Place a 10-inch cast iron skillet in the oven to get hot.
  3. In a large pan, fry the bacon over medium-high heat until brown, about 6 minutes. Remove and drain on paper towels
  4. Drain all the fat but 2 teaspoons. Return to medium-high heat and add the corn to the pan. Cook, stirring, until golden and tender, about 5 minutes.
  5. Add the cream, butter, 1/4 teaspoon salt and water and cook until thick and creamy, about 10 minutes.  Do NOT do as I did and walk away and come back just in time to prevent it from overflowing all over your stove top. Ummm… oops?
  6. Remove from the heat and mash with a potato masher, spoon, your husbands electric razor… to crush some of the corn. Let cool.
  7. In a large bowl, combine the cornmeal, flour, baking powder, baking soda, remaining salt, and cayenne (if using). Stir to combine.
  8. In a separate bowl, combine the eggs, buttermilk, and 2 tablespoons of the melted butter.
  9. Add the buttermilk mixture to the dry ingredients and mix well.
  10. In a separate bowl, combine the cooled creamed corn, bacon, jalapenos, and 1 1/2 cups of the cheese, and mix well.Remove the skillet from the oven and add the remaining tablespoon of melted butter, tilting the skillet to coat the bottom and sides.
  11. Pour half of the batter into the bottom of the skillet. Top with the corn-cheese mixture, then top with the remaining half of the batter.
  12. Bake until golden brown and set, about 30 minutes.Remove from the oven and sprinkle with the remaining 1/2 cup of cheese.

 

Sweet(s Potatoes) For The Sweet??

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Ok, time to start putting up recipes suitable for the upcoming Thanksgiving (in the states) and Christmas season. Seems to me that if we bloggers wait till like a week or 2 before the holidays hit to start posting the fun stuff, you readers (and other bloggers) won’t have time to use any of them because if you’re anything like me, you start perusing cookbooks, web sites and blogs for good holiday recipes in like… ohhhhhhh… July. 😛

I absolutely adore holiday cooking! I mean, I love it! My hips? Not so much. But oh well. I’ll do what I do with other things. I’ll make it, enjoy watching others eat the things I cook and only have a little bit myself. But seriously, I have mentioned before that I love this time of year. Not just because I enjoy cooler weather, which I do, or love the coziness of shorter days and longer nights, which I also do, but because I love the foods. Especially the ones traditionally served from Thanksgiving to New Years Day. Cookies (omg, I make a TON every year. It’s a tradition I started when my 3 oldest were young because I didn’t have the money to buy them gifts but I had food and it has never stopped… mainly because my kids would kill me if I tried to stop.), candies (FUDGE!!), desserts of other kinds (I could happily live on my recipe for Pecan Pie – that is, until I went into a coma from too much sugar and died), Turkey, ham, stuffing (do you call it stuffing or dressing?) and various biscuits, scones, muffins and quick breads.

Lord, I think I just gained five pounds from just writing that paragraph above. Plus, my keyboard is covered in drool, darn it.

Moving on… (hehehe…. I wonder now how many times I’ve used that phrase since I started the blog?), where was I? Oh yeah, quick breads. I have always thought that they were called quick breads not because of the ease of prep, though they ARE easy, but because of how quickly they get eaten 😛 . I swear, if I want any when I make them, especially this one, I have to hide a slice… or twelve.

I love sweet potato casserole. Yes, I even love the kind covered in 14,000 mini marshmallows; the one responsible for the 33 million cavities gotten by children during the holidays. I could eat it until it is coming out of my ears.  So when I saw a recipe years ago on food.com for Sweet Potato bread, I had to try it. And it was good. Really really good. But it needed something. If only because I am genetically incapable of leaving a recipe alone. So I played with it. A lot. Until it really no longer resembles the original recipe. I”M SORRY! I’M A HORRIBLE PERSON WHO CHANGES RECIPES!! I NEED REHAB!!!

Ahem. Moving on. This has become a sweet potato casserole pineapple bread. I always put pineapples in my sweet potato casserole and decided to try it in the bread. it worked quite well. It adds a nice subtle tartness that goes oh so well with the dense sweetness of the bread. So give this a try. It is fairly quickly made (though a bit more involved than your normal quick bread) and it’s delicious. Sweet, moist, a fairly dense bread yet still light, with a nice crispy crust.

Sweet Potato Casserole Bread With Pineapple

  • 29 ounce can sweet potatoes, well drained
  • 1/2 cup dark brown sugar
  • 1/4 cup heavy cream
  • 1/4 cup unsalted butter
  • 2 cups sugar
  • 1 cup vegetable or canola oil
  • 3 large eggs
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
  • 1 teaspoon almond extract
  • 1 cup well drained crushed pineapple
  • 3 cups flour
  • 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 2 teaspoons sugar
  • 2 teaspoons cinnamon (optional. Sorry bout that Ann. Don’t know how I forgot it in the ingredients at first.)
  • 1 teaspoon ground ginger
  • 1 teaspoon ground cloves
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
  1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Grease and flour 2 loaf pans.
  2. In a medium heavy bottomed saucepan, combine the sweet potatoes, brown sugar, heavy cream and butter. Cook over low heat, stirring frequently, until the butter is melted. Use a potato masher to mash the sweet potatoes well, then continue cooking over low heat until the mixture is thickened and the cream has evaporated, about ten minutes. Set aside and let cool.
  3. As that cools, in a large bowl, combine the eggs, sugar, oil, pineapple and extracts. Beat well. When cooled, add in the sweet potato mixture and beat well.
  4. In another bowl, mix together the flour, baking soda, baking powder and spices.
  5. Combine this with the wet ingredients. Mix JUST until combined. never over mix quick bread or muffin batters. You’ll end up with tough tunnely (yes that too is now a word cause I said so) bread.
  6. Bake at 325 until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean; about 70 to 80 minutes.
  7. Let cool in pan on wire rack for five minutes then turn out onto the rack to finish cooling.
  8. Enjoy!!

Still Craving Autumn

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I don’t like Summer. There. My shameful secret is out. I don’t like tank tops (if you had my body, you wouldn’t either 😛 ) or shorts, I don’t like laying in the sun (I prefer no wrinkles and no invasive surgeries to cut out skin cancer) dripping sweat to obtain a skin color that isn’t what I was born with. I don’t like mosquitoes and I don’t like opening my back door on a Summer night only to have 3,897 bugs fly in the house and into my hair while I screech like a three year old who has just been shown a clown picture.

I DO however like beaches or pools and I love to grill out. But then I do that in January because I’m weird that way and unfortunately, until I can win the lottery and build a house with a very very large heated pool, I can only swim during those hot months. Darn it all anyway.

I like Autumn. I also like Winter but I KNOW that’s strange so I won’t ruin my rep too much here.  I like shorter days and longer nights. I like the smell of a wood burning fireplaces (gas logs are the devil and should be banned from the face of the earth). I like sweaters and cozy blankets to cover up with as I sit with my family in the nice warm house watching TV; preferably Christmas specials like The Grinch or Charlie Brown. I like soups and stews and fresh baked breads. I love anything made with pumpkin or cranberries and anything that smells spicy and…well… Autumnish.

I like this bread. I found the original recipe somewhere on line years back and when I made it, it was dry and heavy and just not a lot of flavor. So I played with it. Because that’s what I do. 😛 And now it is sweet and moist and bursting with the flavors of Autumn. Pumpkin and cranberry sauce and spices all meld together into a bread that tastes of Fall and football games; fireplaces and steaming cups of hot cocoa shared with those you love. It’s one of my favorite quick breads and it is oh so easy and gives you something that tastes amazing. So give this a try and then close your eyes and imagine that it’s NOT 90 degrees outside. And yes; this really IS the worlds most awesome. I took a poll. 😛 No, btw, it’s not a typo. There are no eggs in this. Yet it is still incredibly moist.

Worlds Most Awesome Pumpkin Cranberry Quick Bread

  • 3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 2/3 cups sugar
  • 2 teaspoons baking soda
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 3/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1 tablespoon cinnamon
  • 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
  • 1/2 teaspoon allspice
  • 1 teaspoon ginger
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1 teaspoon orange extract
  • 1 (16 ounce) can whole berry cranberry sauce
  • 1 (16 ounce) can pumpkin (not pumpkin pie filling; just pureed pumpkin)
  • 2/3 cup vegetable oil
  1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
  2. Grease two 9 inch loaf pans.
  3. In a large bowl, mix all dry ingredients thoroughly.
  4. In second large bowl combine all wet ingredients; mix thoroughly.
  5. Pour the wet ingredients into bowl of dry ingredients. Mix just until thoroughly combined. Do not over mix as this will cause tough bread with lots of little peek a boo holes all throughout it.
  6. Bake at 350 for approximately 60 minutes or until sharp knife inserted in center comes out clean. If necessary, cover lightly with foil during the last 20 minutes to prevent the edges from burning.
  7. Let cool in pans for ten minutes then turn out onto racks to finish cooling.
  8. This is yummy spread with cream cheese or, like I like it, with a ton of butter. But it’s also so good that leftover a couple of days later, at room temp is still pretty awesome.

 

Rhapsody On A Theme

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I mentioned on my facebook page earlier that this is one of my favorite pieces of music-

Rhapsody On A Theme Of Paganini

 

It’s also kind of the way I cook.  Well, except when the baby is whining, the teens are ornery and my husband is oblivious. Then… not so rhapsodic. 😛 But generally speaking, cooking is a sort of rhapsody to me. It’s melodies and lyrics and booming orchestras all wrapped up in my cooking. But the problem is this…. like those horrid people who cover classics and remake them in Pop music *cough Michael Bolton/Mariah Carey* cough*, I am incapable of making something and keeping it as it was originally intended to be. Sometimes, this leads to total disaster and we just aren’t going to talk about that because I’m old and vain and refuse to have you laugh at me when I haven’t meant for that to happen. 😀

But other times, it works out quite well and that is when we have “Rhapsody On A Theme”.

Today, the theme was me wishing it were already Autumn and wanting something made with Pumpkin;  preferably scones. But could I just make Pumpkin scones and call it done? Nooooooo… not me! As you already know is par for the course, I have to mess with things and make them…well… MINE. So I did. I had just brought up from downstairs a bag of butterscotch candy. You know the ones. The little hard golden yellow ones. So the thought struck me that something about butterscotch and pumpkin and all the spices going with it seemed to go together. So I crushed up some of the butterscotch and mixed it in with the scone dough. Then sprinkled some on top before baking them. Then sprinkled a bit more on after glazing. And when it comes to pumpkiny treats, I have always been of the mind that 99.9% of recipes never have enough spices. I mean, c’mon… 1/2 teaspoons of cinnamon and other yummy spices!? No way mannnnnnn. I need more! More I say!! So…erhmmm… I added more. If you aren’t as fond of lots of sweet spice, go ahead and use less.

The result was a moist tender scone with a yummy Pumpkin spice flavor and a hint of butterscotch. That came with a spiced glaze and more hints of butterscotch. All in all, I’ll call ths one of my more successful rhapsodies 😀 These are quickly put together if you use the food processor. I didn’t use a mixer but I can’t see it taking much longer if you did. I hope you like it. If not, mail them to me. I’ll eat your share. 😛

These taste like Autumn and I don’t know about you but I’m ready.

Pumpkin Butterscotch Scones With A Spiced Butterscotch Glaze

  • 2 cups all purpose flour
  • 1/2 cup white sugar
  • 1 tablespoon baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
  • 3/4 teaspoon nutmeg
  • 1/2 teaspoon cloves
  • 1/2 teaspoon ginger
  • 1/2 cup pumpkin puree
  • 1 large egg
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
  • 3 tablespoons heavy cream
  • 7 tablespoons cold butter, cut into thin slices
  • 35 butterscotch disc candies, ground in the food processor
  • SPICED GLAZE-
  • 1 1/4 cups powdered sugar
  • 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 2 tablespoon milk
  • 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
  • 1/8 teaspoon ginger
  • 1/8 teaspoon cloves
  1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Combine flour, baking powder, 1/2 cup of the ground butterscotch discs (set remaining aside to use to sprinkle on scones before baking and after glazing), salt, sugar and spices in bowl of food processor.
  2. Add the butter to the food processor and pulse until no chunks of butter remain.
  3. Add in the pumpkin, egg and cream. Pulse until the mixture comes together into a soft ball.
  4. Dump the dough out onto a VERY lightly floured board. Pat out into a round about 3/4’s of an inch thick.
  5. Transfer dough to a lightly greased baking pan. Using a sharp knife, score all the way through the dough, cutting into 6 to 8 scones (I did six very large ones cause I know the guys I live with but normal people would want smaller ones lol) but don’t separate the scones. Sprinkle with half of the remaining ground butterscotch discs.
  6. Bake at 425 for 14 to 16 minutes or until they are light golden brown and firm on top.
  7. Cool on a wire rack.
  8. While they cool, whisk together all the glaze ingredients.  Spoon the glaze on top of the cooled scones, spreading to cover. Sprinkle with the remaining crushed butterscotch. Let the scones sit for about half an hour so that the glaze can set.
  9. Eat. Wish for a warm cozy fire and a cup of hot cider.

 

 

Reinventing The Wheel…Or Biscuit

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Can you see all the little layers?? Huh huh huh?




We’ve all done it. Or at least if you’ve cooked for any length of time and are more than a casual “I HAVE to cook so I do” sort of foodie you’ve done it. What the heck am I talking about? Food reinvention. Aka the times you want to make something you’ve made before but just want to do it differently. You want something traditional but you want something new. That train of thought has brought us so very many of the foods we all love. Though I doubt Twinkies and Cheetos were somebody’s brain child as to how to reinvent cheese and cake. Mores the pity. 😛

I have been wanting biscuits. I have also been wanting croissants. But biscuits were boring and croissants are a pain in the proverbial tushie. I can make both with no problem. You can’t live in the south and cook without learning to make good buttermilk biscuits or you may as well hide in a hole. And I taught myself to make croissants years back just cause I wanted to prove I could do it. But neither was exciting me yesterday when I was contemplating today’s post. So I figured I’d make Angel Biscuits- those biscuit/yeast roll hybrids. But I wanted to play with them and see if I could get them to be more akin to croissants with out all the trouble and time that croissants take. I have to say; I’m pretty tickled with how they turned out.

Hours before I started the dough, I cut two sticks of butter in half. Then I rolled out each half in between sheets of waxed paper and froze them. After I got the dough finished later, I did the rolling and turning technique (more or less) that you use when making croissants after inserting the sheets of butter in them. After baking, I tried one (I wanted to eat more but controlled myself lol) with some of my home made Apricot Honey Jam. All I can say is… oh my. These turned out fantastic. Are they the prettiest rolls in the world? Nope. But I couldn’t care less nor will you. I promise. These are tender and buttery and the tops and bottoms get a slight crispy almost fried taste and texture due to the butter. You can see the layers in this and they are reminiscent of the flaky biscuits you can make from a can (the ones where you can peel apart the layers) but without the canned taste, thank God and the Pillsbury Dough Boy. So give these a try. They aren’t time consuming at all and taste so darn good!

Croissant Style Buttermilk Biscuits

  • 2 sticks butter (1/2 pound), room temp, cut in half (preferably salted for this recipe contrary to what I usually advise)
  • 1 package (2 1/4 teaspoons) regular yeast
  • 2 tablespoons warm water (105 to 115 degrees)
  • 2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
  • 3 tablespoons sugar
  • 1 1/2 tablespoons baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 cup shortening
  • 1 cup buttermilk (you may need a touch more if the dough is dry)
  1. Put one of your pieces of butter onto a large piece of waxed paper. Fold the paper over it and smoosh the butter down. Then roll the butter out flat into a thin sheet. Do this with each of the four pieces. Put into the freezer for at least an hour.

    See? The butter doesn’t have to look pretty. Just nice and thin and flat. 🙂

  2. When the butter has been in for about 50 minutes, preheat your oven to 400 and start your dough.
  3. Mix the yeast with the warm water in a small container. Set aside.
  4. Mix the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a large bowl. Cut in the shortening with a pastry blender until mixture is the consistency of fine crumbs. Stir in the buttermilk, then the yeast. Mixture should leave sides of bowl and be a cohesive mass. If not, add a little more buttermilk at a time until it does.
  5. Place the dough on a generously floured board. Knead until it comes together smoothly. Gently roll out the dough into a rectangle. It doesn’t need to be perfect.
  6. Place one of the frozen butter sheets on it and fold the dough in half, enclosing the butter. Seal the edges well.  Gently roll back out into a rectangle large enough to insert another sheet of butter.
  7. Do this three more times with each of the other pieces of butter. Make sure your board stays decently floured. Seal the dough well after inserting each sheet of butter using fingers moistened with a bit of buttermilk if necessary. Cover any cracks with a light sprinkling of flour and just continue on as you have been doing. Work quickly so that the butter doesn’t have time to soften up too much. The steam is what helps create the layers and warm butter won’t steam as well. When you have all the butter rolled in, you will end up with a thick fairly heavy piece of dough that looks more or less like this:
  8. Roll out a LITTLE bit. You’re not trying to flatten it out again just make it a touch bigger. Once you have this done, cut the dough into 16 pieces. Bake in a preheated 400 degree oven until golden brown, about 20 minutes. Serve with jam or preserves or chocolate sauce if that makes you happy. But you won’t need butter on these I promise you. 😛

 

This Is Not Another Muffin Post

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Ok, I lied. Yes it is. Blame the people who follow my facebook page. I had a muffin idea in mind and asked there if they would revolt were I to post another muffin recipe and they got all excited about one more. So you can see that it’s all their fault right?? Yes… you and you and you. I’m looking your way! They forced me!!! They really did!!! I could have said no and posted sayyyyy… a liver recipe but then I would have felt horribly guilty and probably would have been turned off of cooking for weeks as I sat in bed and read cheap romance novels and ate Cheetos and Twinkies. Wait, I do that anyway. Ummm… I would have eaten ho hos as a change. Yeah, that’s the ticket. Then I would have gotten queasy and felt worse for over eating and it all would have led to it being weeks… nay, MONTHS before I posted another recipe and THEN where we would all be?! So this was the lesser evil. Honest.

So all of this is why you are getting another muffin recipe. The fate of humanity hung in the balance. Society NEEDED this recipe.

Ok, I’m gonna shut up now and post the recipe.

These were me playing around. I had been craving something mapley (yes, that too is now a word) but didn’t want pancakes. So I decided on muffins. What I ended up with was a mildly sweet muffin with the flavor of maple. I topped it with an oat, raisins (or ray-rees as my two year old calls them), pecan and maple syrup praline-ish crumble. I have to say, I was pleased with how these turned out. They aren’t too sweet which makes them a good bet for breakfast (or a snack, or dessert covered in more syrup and 32 scoops of vanilla ice cream or dinner if you’re not very hungry, or dinner if you want to eat 15 of them). So basically these muffin  are the perfect all around food. Aren’t you glad you have me here to make sure your dietary requirements are met? No no don’t thank me… just throw money. Large bills please.

This makes a lot of muffins (I got 24 regular sized ones and 4 large ones so it could be cut in half if you’re not feeding the hungry mongrel hordes)

Maple Muffins With A

Pecan & Maple Crumbly Praline Topping

  • 4 cups all purpose flour
  • 1 cup packed dark brown sugar
  • 1/2 cup pecans (can use more but I didn’t want a ton)
  • 4 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1 1/2 cups milk
  • 1 cup melted butter
  • 1 cup maple syrup (use the real stuff)
  • 1/2 cup sour cream or plain yogurt
  • 2 large eggs
  • 3 teaspoons vanilla extract
  • 2 teaspoons cinnamon
  • 1 teaspoon nutmeg
  • TOPPING-
  • 1 cup rolled oats
  • 1/2 cup maple syrup
  • 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 3/4 cup chopped pecans
  • 1/2 cup raisins
  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease or line 24 muffin cups (and four big ones or do another partial batch of small ones after the first ones are done). In a medium bowl, combine the topping ingredients and stir well. Set aside.
  2. In a large bowl, combine the flour, brown sugar,  1/2 cup pecans, baking powder, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg.
  3. In another bowl (yes, you have to dirty three bowls. I’m so sorry. But if you have kids or a husband give them clean up duty.) combine the milk, eggs, syrup, sour cream & vanilla. Mix until combined, then add the melted butter.
  4. Fill the prepared muffin cups about 2/3 full with batter. Top each with a spoonful (it actually worked better when I just used my fingers and scooped it up) of the topping you set aside.
  5. Bake in a 350 degree oven until a nice golden brown, about 20 minutes. Let cool in pan for a minute or two then put on a wire rack to finish cooling. If they don’t fit on the rack, eat them. I won’t judge.
  6. Come back here and tell me how wonderful these were. Then say something mean to deflate my ego.  Then watch me weep and feel very guilty that you caused me such pain.

 

 

Muffin Overload Part Drei (Cause I don’t know how to spell three in French)

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But I’m letting you know here and now. I kinda like citrus flavors. I know; shocking huh? You never would have figured that out if I hadn’t offered the info, would you? I hide it so well. Did you know about the Twinkie and Cheeto addiction? Ok, I’m pushing it now huh?

I seriously do have a thing for citrus though. Especially Lemon. No wait… limes. But then again the orange family is kinda cool. Ooo, ooo, oooo, I forgot grapefruit. Sigh. I can’t choose. This is why you all get subjected to so many citrus recipes. Somehow I doubt too many people mind though. I have noticed that after chocolate (before in some cases but I figure they need massive therapy) citrus recipes, especially lemon seem to be among the most popular. Be it sweet or savory, they seem to rule the foodie roost. Why do I suddenly have a mental image of a big lemon chicken crowing?

I wanted to make something lemony for the last part of the muffin overload series. But plain old boring lemon muffins are…well… boring. Not that these have had any drastic changes made to them. I just played enough with a basic muffin recipe to give them some oomph (add that one to the list of  “where the heck did that word come from” words. I mean… seriously? Oomph?) I added a dollop of lemon curd to the center and used Greek yogurt to the batter for richness, moisture and even a modicum of nutrition (scary huh?) Then I coated then with a very sunnyish (yes, that is now a word. Love me, love my quirks 😛 ) honey lemon glaze (there’s that honey lemon thing peeking it’s head up again huh? What can I say? I enjoy the combo.) If you don’t want the lemon honey glaze you could go with a lemon and powdered sugar glaze or just leave them naked. But if you do, they will be very embarrassed. Lemon muffins are timid creatures. Did I mention that love me, love my quirks thing? Just checking. But try these timid muffins. The muffin is a sweet lemony flavor with a tiny bit of tang yet the curd and the glaze add a yummy lemony tartness. This can be cut in half if 24 muffins is too much for you.

Triple Lemon Muffins

  • 1 cup unsalted butter, softened
  • 1 1/2 cups sugar
  • 4 large eggs
  • 2 2/3 cups all purpose flour
  • 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • zest of two large lemons
  • 1/2 cup lemon juice
  • 1 cup plain Greek yogurt
  • 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons lemon extract
  • 2 teaspoons almond extract (yes, almond extract. It adds an indefinable something to so many fruit recipes. Trust me.)
  • 1 jar store bought lemon curd (the home made version is too soft to work well)
  • 4 tablespoons lemon juice
  • 4 tablespoons honey
  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line 24 muffin cups with paper or foil liners.
  2. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar. Add the eggs, extracts and lemon juice. Beat in the yogurt.
  3. In another bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and lemon zest.
  4. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and pour in the wet mixture all at once, Stir until just combined.
  5.  Spoon batter into lined muffin cups, filling about 2/3 full. Add a small spoonful of the lemon curd to the top of each cup of muffin batter.
  6. Bake at 350 for about 20 minutes or until a light golden brown. Remove from pan and let sit on a wire rack.
  7. Mix the honey and remaining lemon juice. Drizzle or spoon glaze over the tops of the warm muffins. Let finish cooling on the rack. Store in your belly. 😀

Do You Know The Muffin Man?

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If not, well, you know me right? I can be “The Muffin Top Woman”.

I like muffins. I like anything that can be made in a muffin pan. In other words, cupcakes, mini pound cakes, muffins, pot pies, Hershey’s chocolate nuggets (WHAT!? If I take some, unwrap them and put them in a muffin tin before eating them, it counts!), Baileys Irish Cream (it falls under the same heading as above), steaks, french fries….

Betcha didn’t know muffin tins were so versatile huh? Stick with me kid… I’ll train you right 😀

I decided to nix the High tea theme for now. I just kept thinking to myself that while baked goods are wonderful any time of the year, a high tea theme that involved turning ones oven on for hours at a time and suffering heat stroke was more suited for cooler weather. Since it is close to 90 here today, that doesn’t really fall under the cooler weather unless you normally live on Mercury. But I will definitely get back to it when Autumn gets here.

In the meantime, here is a very Spring/Summer type of muffin. With fresh Blueberries and fresh Peaches in it, it is a perfect way to enjoy those fruits you bought 10 quarts of because they were on sale. Or is it just me that does that and then wonders what I was thinking? As I look downstairs to the 60 ears of corn I bought yesterday with the ambitious notion of cutting them off the ear and freezing them, I have the feeling that yes, I AM the only doofus wasting nice weather by being inside preparing corn for freezing 😛

This makes a LOT of muffins. I got 24 regular size and 4 large from it. So it’s perfect for potlucks or sharing or freezing.

BLUEBERRY PEACH MUFFINS

  • 4 peaches, peeled and chopped
  • 1 pint blueberries
  • 4 cups all purpose flour
  • 2 cups sugar
  • 1 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 1 1/2 tablespoons baking powder
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 cup oil
  • 1 stick butter, melted
  • 1 6 ounce container peach yogurt
  • 1/4 cup peach (could sub Apricot) preserves
  • 1 1/4 cups milk
  • 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
  • 2 teaspoons almond extract
  1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Prepare 36 regular sized muffin pans (If you don’t have three pans, just do it in batches.) or 24 regular sized and four large ones. Peel and chop your peaches. Easiest way to peel peaches is to put them in a pot of boiling water for a minute or two then dump them into a bowl of ice water. The peel should slip right off then.
  2. Combine the flour, sugar, cinnamon, baking powder and salt in a large bowl. Add the rest of the ingredients except for the peaches and blueberries and stir just until combined.
  3. Fold in the fruit. Don’t over stir.
  4. Bake at 350 for 22 to 27 minutes or until tops are golden brown and they are firm to the touch in the center.
  5. Cool for a few minutes in the pan on a wire rack then take them out and finish cooling them on the rack.

But What Will I Leave The Children?!

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I’m not a wealthy woman. So far from it it’s giggle worthy. I have the same pipe dreams as everyone else about winning the lottery and living a life of leisure in my 4 bedroom house that has a library with floor to ceiling bookshelves. I’d eat seafood every night except for the nights I was eating steak of course. My kids would never need anything and I would be able to leave them large inheritances…such large ones that I would have around the clock security and metal detectors at the front door for when they came over to fawn over me and ask about my health. What?! I believe in being cautious!

But in real life… the same one where I clean my own toilets, clean up cat poop. have cooked approximately 10,000 meals since I entered adulthood (who am I kidding? I still haven’t entered adulthood. I don’t think you are allowed to say that until you prefer something other than Ho-Hos for dinner), did NOT pay someone else to give birth to six children (wouldn’t that be awesome!? Childbirth by proxy! Yeah baby!. Sorry. Moving on.) and have carpets desperately in need of steam cleaning, I don’t have large inheritances to leave my kids. So what will they be fighting over? Besides my collection of old rock and country albums and cassette tapes (yes, I have cassette tapes. Shush.) 300 gazillion books, more spices than any one household should have, stuffed animals older than dirt and the worlds strangest collection of knick knacks (including Stanley the Pig) that is? I was going to leave them my recipes. I had grand plans of making 6 different hand bound copies, lovingly hand printed, of all the recipes they grew up with and loved. My spaghetti sauce, lasagna, sticky buns, chicken curry, homemade rolls, banana bread, cranberry pumpkin bread, homemade apple butter and so many more. Mind you, in reality, they would have been left with rubbermaid containers and drawers (not to mention the top of my hard drive which is groaning under the weight of miscellaneous paper)  filled with about 3000 printed out recipes and some hand written ones but hey, my intentions were good. They will have to find the correct recipes (that is assuming I even HAVE a recipe for whatever they are looking for. Most of my cooking is just trial and error) and then figure out how I changed them because I never write down my changes. Between you and I, part of that is because I’m a stingy cuss who doesn’t want anyone to have my recipes 😛

But now that I have started this blog, my poor kids are screwed. They get nuthin’. Cause all my recipes are going to end up on here eventually. Such as today as I post my chocolate chocolate chip banana bread recipe. So what will I leave the children? Some Andy Gibb albums, figurines of a pig, old clothes and Bobby Goldsboro cassette tapes.

So kids… don’t fight over it all. And be nice to the piggie.

CHOCOLATE CHOCOLATE CHIP BANANA BREAD

  1. 2 cups flour
  2. 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
  3. 1 teaspoon salt
  4. 2 teaspoons baking soda
  5. 1 cup butter (2 sticks), softened
  6. 1 cup sugar
  7. 6 to 8 mashed bananas
  8. 1 1/2 teaspoons banana extract
  9. 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
  10. 4 large eggs
  11. 1 1/2 cups chocolate chips
  12. 1 cup walnuts (optional; I rarely use them)
  • Preheat oven to 350 degrees
  • Grease and flour two loaf pans or use the cooking spray that has both oil and flour in it. Either nine inch or eight inch will work. I use nine inch and that is what my cooking time is based on.
  • In a small bowl,mix together the flour, cocoa powder, salt and baking soda.
  • In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar. Add the bananas and mix well. Mix in the eggs, vanilla extract and banana extract. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix just until combined. Mix in the chocolate chips and walnuts if you are using them.
  • Pour into the two pans and bake for 60 to 70 minutes or until a toothpick or skewer poked into the center of the loaf comes out almost clean. It’s ok if there are a few moist crumbs on it.. Let it cool for five minutes in the pan then turn it out onto a wire rack to finish cooling.

I Scream Scones

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HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAA!!!! I crack me up. I scream scones. Get it? Huh? Huh? Huh? You get it right? Don’t you? Sigh. No one ever understands the mind of a comic genius. Or me either for that matter 😛

I’ve always loved Scones. They are one of those things that I feel always need to be eaten wearing a fancy dress, big feathery hat and with ones picky sticking out as you drink English breakfast tea. I have to say, my husband and boys look great in a fancy dress and feathered hat. What?! They wanted the scones. I have rules! Conditions! Lots of emotional issues! Nobody forced them to wear the dresses. Well, not real force anyway. There were no weapons involved unless you count scones filled with ham, cheddar and dill as weapons. The sad part is that they all looked better in the clothes than I ever did. Something there is not right.

But seriously (I see you rolling your eyes at reading me say the word seriously. I can be serious sometimes!) I do love scones. But they have to be made a certain way. They have to be wedge shaped. None of the round ones for me. They have to be served with some sort of horribly decadent spread. Yeah, you’d never expect that last part from me huh? I’m just such the queen of healthful eating says the woman who ended up having a can of Hormel chili and Tostitos for dinner last night. and they have to be flaky. I can’t stand dense flat scones.

I started these with Ina Gartens Cheddar Dill scone recipe here On Food Network but changed them up quite a bit. I also made a oh so yummy caramelized onion cream cheese spread to go on them. The spread is good enough to just eat off of a spoon. Which I did. A  lot. Together, the scones and the spread give new meaning to “Bloody good old chap!”. Ok, so they are delicious. I just wanted to type something that was going through my mind in a British accent. We’ll get to my penchant for talking and thinking in foreign accents another time. I’ve traumatized you enough for now.

Ham, Cheddar & Dill Scones

  • 4 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
  • 2 tablespoons baking powder
  • 2 teaspoons salt
  • 3/4 pound (3 sticks) cold unsalted butter, diced
  • 5 large eggs, beaten lightly
  • 1 cup cold heavy cream
  • 1 pound extra-sharp yellow Cheddar, grated
  • 8 ounces diced ham (you can use leftover or they have small packs of already diced in the packaged meats section of most stores. Also, make sure your ham has been patted dry with a paper towel or your dough will be too moist)
  • 2 tablespoons dried dill weed

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

Combine 4 cups of flour, the baking powder, dill and salt in a large bowl. Add the butter and cut into the flour mixture with a pastry cutter until the butter is in pea sized crumbs. Stir in the cheese and the ham. Combine  well. Mix the eggs and heavy cream and quickly add them to the flour-and-butter mixture.  Mix until they are almost incorporated.

Dump the dough onto a well-floured surface and knead it for 1 minute, adding a bit more flour if needed to make a smooth cohesive dough. Divide dough in half and pat each half doen into a greased 9 inch cake pan. Score the tops of each dough round into 8 pieces. Bake at 400 for 20 to 25 minutes or until they are golden brown and cooked on the inside. Serve with butter or the “Omg, I love this” caramelized onion spread.

Caramelized Onion Cream Cheese Spread

  • 1 8 ounce package cream cheese, softened
  • 1 stick unsalted butter, softened
  • 2 small onions, cut into half moon slices
  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • 1 teaspoon sugar
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons salt (or to taste)

Slice your onions in half then slice thinly into half rings. Add the olive oil to a  medium sauce pot. Over medium heat, add your onions to the pot. Stir to get all the onions covered in oil. Cover the pot and turn the heat down to low. Let the onions cook until wilted and soft, about 10 minutes.  Uncover the pot and turn your heat up to medium. Sprinkle the sugar over the onions and stir to combine. Stirring frequently to prevent burning, cook the onions until they are a nice golden brown color. This may take up to 20 minutes or so. Take them off the heat and let cool.

When the onions are cool, add your butter, cream cheese and salt to the pot with the onions (why mess up more dishes?). Beat well until mixture is creamy and well combined.  There ya have it… it’s done. The hardest part of it is cooking the onions.