Crispy Mashed Potato Cakes

I’m not sure what I was thinking the other night when I made dinner. I made enough mashed potatoes for an army, or at least for another family, or two. While I was mashing them, before we had even sat down to eat them, I was already trying to figure out what I would do with the leftovers. Not sure what that says about me, but I’ll go with frugal.

My mom sometimes made mashed potato cakes when we had enough potatoes left over. She didn’t do it often, but they were always good. We didn’t usually have enough to make many, usually enough to have one or two each, with other leftovers for lunch, or with eggs for breakfast. Mom liked hers with maple syrup, which I always thought was a little weird. Her mother made mashed potato cakes for breakfast when she was a girl and served them with syrup. Who am I to argue with Mom’s tastes of childhood?

We had so many mashed potatoes that I decided to make potato cakes as a side dish to go with fish for dinner the next night. Cheese goes well with potatoes, so I threw some of that in, along with an egg to hold it all together. You can certainly leave the cheese out, or use more than I did. And you will have to adjust the seasonings to your tastes. Our potatoes weren’t very salty to begin with, so I added a little salt. If I had had some on hand, I would have mixed in roasted garlic. I used just a touch of garlic powder instead, since the short cooking time wouldn’t have worked well with chopped raw garlic. Fresh herbs would have been marvelous, but I didn’t have any, so we did without.

Just a little butter on the griddle and our potato cakes fried up golden brown and crispy, with soft, cheesy centers. Calvin couldn’t stop talking about how much he liked them. And it was a good thing, since we had enough left over for several lunches, even after having them for dinner. Did I mention I had made a lot of potatoes?

Note: I had enough potatoes to make a double batch of the potato cakes, which made almost twenty. I am giving you a recipe for half that, since most normal people don’t have four cups of mashed potatoes left over – except maybe at Thanksgiving. If you do find yourself with lots of mashed potatoes, just double all the ingredients in the recipe and start frying.

Download or print the recipe here.

Crispy Mashed Potato Cakes
From The Cook’s Life
Serves 4-6 (8-12 potato cakes, depending on size)

1 tablespoon butter
1 egg, beaten
2 cups cold mashed potatoes
½-¾ cup grated cheddar cheese (I used white cheddar, any cheese will work)
⅛-¼ teaspoon salt
⅛ teaspoon garlic powder
⅛ teaspoon black pepper

Preheat oven to 300 degrees and lightly grease a large baking sheet, or line it with parchment paper. This is to keep the first batch of potato cakes hot while you cook the second batch. If you have a griddle large enough, you can cook them all at once and skip the oven.

Melt butter in a large skillet or griddle over medium heat. While pan is heating, mix egg, mashed potatoes, cheese, salt, garlic powder and black pepper together until thoroughly combined.

Spoon small amounts of mashed potato mixture into the hot pan, flattening them with your fingers or the back of a spoon. Use a little less than a quarter cup of the mixture per cake. Or make them smaller. Don’t make them bigger or they will be too hard to turn.

Cook 3-4 minutes, or until first side is golden brown. Carefully turn mashed potato cakes over and brown the other side, another 3-4 minutes. The cakes are fragile – use care when turning them.

Remove the potato cakes to the prepared baking sheet and keep them warm in the oven while you cook the second batch.

Serve the mashed potato cakes hot. Leftovers reheat well in a lightly greased skillet.

Brown Sugar Cinnamon Doughnut Bites

I realized that I only posted savory recipes last week. I was so excited about the stuffed chicken, and the ingredients that went into it, that sweet baking got the short shrift. I can’t let the situation go on any longer, so today we will turn to doughnut bites.

We usually take the time on Saturday mornings to bake something special for breakfast. I wanted to make something new this past Saturday, but I wasn’t sure what. I wanted something simple and quick, but on the decadent side. I scrolled through my archive of recipe PDFs gleaned from blogs and recipe sites and Mini Donut Muffins from Natalie at The Sweets Life caught my eye. They fit all the criteria – quick, easy and decadent.

The original recipe was for a nutmeg doughnut rolled in cinnamon sugar. I decided to change them, as I almost always seem to do with recipes. I like nutmeg, but usually only mixed with other spices in pumpkin pie or spice cake. I decided to change the nutmeg to cinnamon, and to increase the amount. I also switched the white sugar to brown sugar, just because I like it with cinnamon, and I like the caramel notes it adds to baked goods. I added a bit of salt and used white whole wheat flour for half of the flour.

I happened to have whole milk on hand, which I rarely do. The whole milk gave them an extra richness that I think baked goods made with my usual skim milk sometimes lack. I might just have to keep a little whole milk on hand for baking. And it’s pretty good in my hot tea and coffee too.

I rolled the doughnut bites in white sugar instead of cinnamon sugar since they had plenty of cinnamon inside them. I dipped the first ones in melted butter before dipping them in the sugar, as directed in the original recipe, but I skipped the butter after the first few. The sugar stuck just fine, which saves a few calories. As if we were counting calories with these.

I was surprised how well the doughnut bites turned out, given all my changes. They were tender inside and crispy outside, contrasting nicely with the slight crunch of the sugar. We ate an embarrassingly large portion of them on Saturday and Calvin finished up the rest of them at Sunday’s breakfast. Rich and I had oatmeal.

Download or print the recipe here.

Brown Sugar Cinnamon Doughnut Bites
Adapted from The Sweets Life by The Cook’s Life
Makes 24

½ cup packed brown sugar
¼ cup butter, melted
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ cup milk (I used whole, but whatever you have will work just fine)
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
½ cup white whole wheat flour*
½ cup all-purpose flour

Topping:
⅓ cup granulated sugar

*If you prefer, use all-purpose flour instead of white whole wheat flour

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Lightly grease a 24 cup mini muffin pan and set aside.

Combine brown sugar, melted butter and cinnamon in a large bowl. Stir to combine, making sure to break up all the lumps in the brown sugar. Add milk and stir well. Add baking powder, salt, white whole wheat flour and all-purpose flour and stir gently to combine.

Divide batter evenly between the muffin cups. Bake for 10-15 minutes, or until lightly browned and firm when pressed.

Toss hot muffins gently in granulated sugar to coat. Serve warm or at room temperature. Store any leftovers at room temperature in an airtight container for a day or two. Freeze for longer storage.

Cinnamon Streusel Coffee Cake

I am currently in love with baked goods that contain sour cream. Over the past few weeks I have made sour cream blueberry muffins and a sour cream cinnamon streusel coffee cake. Twice. I had to make sure I could duplicate the results, right? The sour cream adds a nice moistness, along with a richness that you can’t really duplicate with any other ingredient.

The coffee cake is out of a Farm Journal cookbook that I picked up from the bargain table at Waldenbooks right after Rich and I got married. That dates us, since Waldenbooks disappeared into bookstore heaven eons ago. Their bargain tables were always good, unlike the bargain tables and shelves at big bookstores today. Not sure where the good cookbooks (and other books) go these days, but not anywhere easy to find. But I digress – back to cake.

I have tinkered with this cake several times since I bought the book. The cake originally called for baking it in a tube pan, and putting all the crumbs on top of the batter. This makes for a big cake, with a thick layer of crumbs on the bottom when you turn the cake out onto a plate. Or on the top, if you turn the cake back over. The first change I made was to use half the crumbs in the middle of the cake and half on top.

Baking the cake in a tube pan sometimes makes it dry, since it is so deep, so I tried it in a 9 by 13 inch pan next. That worked better, but it still made a huge cake. I don’t usually want to eat coffee cake for a week. Or, rather, I want to eat coffee cake for a week, but my jeans seem to think I shouldn’t. In the interests of health, I made a half recipe and baked it in a square pan, still using half the crumbs in the middle and half on top. Now I had a manageable-sized cake that we could eat in a couple of days.

And what a cake – rich, moist vanilla cake with cinnamon streusel threaded through the middle and on top. All it needed was a tiny, or not so tiny, drizzle of vanilla glaze to reach perfection.

Download or print the recipe.

Cinnamon Streusel Coffee Cake
Adapted by The Cook’s Life from
Farm Journal’s “Homemade Breads”
Makes 9-12 servings

Streusel topping and filling:
½ cup all-purpose flour
¼ cup packed brown sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 tablespoons butter, room temperature

Cake:
½ cup all-purpose flour
½ cup white whole wheat flour*
½ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
¼ cup butter, room temperature
½ cup granulated sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
½ cup sour cream

Glaze:
½ cup powdered sugar
½ teaspoon vanilla
2-4 teaspoons milk, approximately

*You can substitute all-purpose flour for the whole wheat, if you prefer.

Preheat oven to 350°. Lightly grease an 8 by 8-inch square pan and set aside.

Make streusel: mix flour, brown sugar and cinnamon in a medium bowl. Add butter and mix with a spoon or your fingers until you have moist crumbs that are no larger than a pea, with most of them smaller than that. Set aside.

Mix flours, baking powder, baking soda and salt together in a small bowl and set aside. Beat butter and granulated sugar until light and fluffy. Add egg and vanilla and beat well. Add about half of the flour mixture stir gently. Mix in sour cream. Add remaining flour mixture and mix until incorporated.

Spoon about half of the batter into the greased pan and spread to the edges. Sprinkle with half of the streusel. Top with dollops of the remaining batter. Spread dollops together, trying not to disturb the streusel too much. Sprinkle top of batter evenly with remaining streusel.

Bake 20-25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean, or with just a few moist crumbs, not batter.

While cake is baking, make icing. Mix powdered sugar, vanilla and 2 teaspoons milk together in a bowl. Gradually add more milk until the glaze is the desired consistency. Add milk very gradually to avoid lumps.

Drizzle warm cake with icing. You may not use all the icing. Serve the rest at the table for anyone who would like a little extra. Let cake cool for a few minutes before cutting into squares. Serve warm or at room temperature. Store at room temperature, tightly covered, for up to three days. Freeze for longer storage.

Baked Vanilla Doughnuts (or Muffins)

I baked doughnuts this week until they were coming out my ears, or at least covering the counter, kitchen table and even the living room coffee table. I have arrived at a recipe that makes beautifully browned, moist doughnuts covered with crackly glaze, all redolent of vanilla. To top it off, they are low fat and made with whole wheat flour, which no one would guess in a million years.

The recipe I had (which was a hybrid of several recipes and the result of past experiments) was supposed to make six doughnuts, but I always ended up with extra batter. So I had to cut the ingredients back and make sure those amounts worked for six doughnuts. It took a few batches, but I figured out that part. Then I had to double it all and see if that worked to make twelve. So far, so good.

I also wanted to give a muffin option, in case you don’t happen to have a doughnut pan. If you have any interest at all, though, pick up a doughnut pan. When you make muffins, you miss out on the crispy outside edges and the increased surface area to soak up glaze. The pans are pretty cheap and widely available. You can get by with one, and just bake two batches of six, if you are making the full recipe. But if you don’t want to bother, or don’t have the space to store another pan, the batter makes very tasty muffins.

Again, experiments to see how best to bake only six muffins in a standard twelve muffin pan – use every other cup instead of baking them in one end of the pan. Then I needed to bake a full recipe to see if twelve muffins baked in the same time as six – the times were very close. Now I had doughnut muffins to add to the array.

Bear with me for some baking chemistry to explain why I had to bake a few more batches. The recipe I was working from (the recipe of mysterious origins) called for cream of tartar, baking soda and buttermilk. Baking soda is a base (remember high school chemistry) and needs an acid to react with to make the carbon dioxide bubbles that make the doughnuts rise. Buttermilk is acidic, as is cream of tartar. I figured the recipe didn’t need both, so I tried cutting out the cream of tartar. At the same time, I baked another half batch of six with baking powder to see what would happen. Baking powder already contains an acid and a base, so I technically didn’t need buttermilk, but I didn’t want to change more than one thing at a time. Scientific method does have a real world application!

Both batches rose just fine, but the baking powder batch was noticeably paler than the baking soda batch.

The texture of the baking soda batch was just a bit finer and I liked it better – it got spongier, in a good way, after it soaked up the glaze. Baking soda won out, and cream of tartar went back into the baking cabinet. I was so happy with the baking soda results that I decided not to try any other experiments with baking powder. I was already swimming in doughnuts and was a little tired of being in the kitchen.

Rich’s co-workers and my fellow church choir members benefited from the baking frenzy. I have to say that I am thoroughly tired of the aroma, taste and sight of vanilla doughnuts, at least for a day or two. Now another flavor would be a different story…

Download or print the full recipe here.
Download or print the half recipe here. 

Vanilla Doughnuts or Muffins
From The Cook’s Life
Makes 12 doughnuts or muffins

 If you don’t have a doughnut pan, you can bake these in a standard muffin pan.

½ cup all-purpose flour*
½ cup white whole wheat flour*
6 tablespoons sugar
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons butter, melted
2 teaspoons vanilla
6 tablespoons buttermilk
2 eggs, beaten

*These work perfectly fine with 1 cup of all-purpose flour if you prefer.

Glaze:
1 teaspoon butter (basically a pat of butter)
1 teaspoon vanilla
1½ cups powdered sugar
3 tablespoons water

Grease two 6-well doughnut pans or a 12-cup muffin pan. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Mix together flour, sugar, baking soda and salt. In another bowl, mix together butter, vanilla, buttermilk and eggs. Add egg mixture to dry mixture and stir gently until no dry pockets of flour remain. Do not beat. Fill doughnut pan, using 3 small (size 100) cookie scoops of batter per well, or about 3 tablespoons batter. Evenly space the three blobs of batter around the center post of each well. Or fill muffin cups about half full. Bake 8-10 minutes or until doughnuts (or muffins) are just golden on top, golden brown on the bottoms and bounce back when touched.

While doughnuts are baking make the glaze. In a small bowl, melt the butter and add powdered sugar and vanilla. Add a tablespoon of water and mix in as much powdered sugar as possible. Add another tablespoon of water and mix until you have a smooth, thick glaze. Add the last tablespoon of water to make a very thin glaze. It will seem like all the water will not mix in, but keep stirring until it does. Adding the water gradually helps to avoid lumps – don’t be tempted to add it all at once.

As soon as doughnuts (or muffins) are done, remove them from the pans one at a time and dip the tops in the glaze. Move to a plate to cool. If any glaze remains when all doughnuts are dipped, use a spoon to drizzle over the doughnuts. As the doughnuts cool, the glaze will dry to a clear finish. If you are doing muffins, you might want to poke a few holes in the tops and drizzle on additional glaze. They don’t have as much surface area as the doughnuts and need a little help to absorb more glaze.

As with all doughnuts, these are best the day they are made, but they are still pretty tasty the next day. You might want to warm them for 10 seconds in the microwave if you are eating them the next day.

Cinnamon Chip Scones

 

I promised a recipe for cinnamon chip scones a couple of weeks ago, when I made cinnamon chips. I have finished my experiments (at least for now) and I think I have come up with a recipe that is worth sharing.

After much poking around the internet and my cookbooks, I still really have no firm definition of a scone. Some are really just biscuits with a little sugar, some have eggs, some have lots of cream and butter and others are just not worth making (dry, crumbly, too much flour, too much sugar – I won’t bore you with more details). I can’t say I am a fan of most scones in coffee shops – usually they have been sitting around for hours, drying out. But homemade scones are pretty much the bee’s knees.

After lots of experiments with different recipes ­– none of which really impressed me – I decided to start over. I began with my biscuit recipe, but used regular milk instead of buttermilk, and added a bit of sugar. I tried skim milk, whole milk, and on one memorable occasion, cream. The cream version was exquisite, but milk made perfectly delicious scones. The whole milk scones might have been slightly richer, but the difference from skim milk wasn’t huge. If you normally have only skim milk on hand, use that and your scones will be fabulous. You could add an additional tablespoon or two of butter if you want more richness.

I used my homemade cinnamon chips in these, but you could use commercial cinnamon chips, chocolate chips or raisins. I tried making some into rounds and made the rest into my usual triangles. I used both my muffin top pan, and a cake pan, trying to contain any cinnamon chip leaks (my scones were too small for this to make a difference). Really, a baking sheet is fine, as long as you make sure not to bake them too long, which will dry them out and burn the leaking cinnamon chips.

Skip the coffee shop scones that are just a way to make you buy more coffee. Make your own and pat yourself on the back while you scarf down your fluffy, anything-but-dry scones.

Cinnamon Chip Scones
From The Cook’s Life
Makes 8-10 large scones

If you are in the mood for a treat, use cream instead of milk as the liquid in these scones. You might need slightly more than ¾ of a cup – maybe a tablespoon or two. Use the larger amount of butter if you want a richer scone.

1 ¾ cups flour*
3 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
¼ cup sugar
4-6 tablespoons cold butter, cut into small pieces
½ cup homemade cinnamon chips or other mix-ins of choice
¾ cup milk (any kind you have on hand – see headnote)
1-2 tablespoons extra milk
2-3 tablespoons cinnamon sugar

*I used 1 cup white whole wheat and ¾ cup all-purpose flour. Feel free to use only all-purpose flour.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees and lightly grease a baking sheet, or line with parchment paper. Set aside.

Mix flour, baking powder, salt and sugar in a large bowl. Cut in butter until the mixture looks like coarse crumbs, with a few larger pieces of butter. Stir in cinnamon chips. Add milk, mixing gently until most of the flour is moistened and a shaggy dough forms. Add an extra tablespoon of milk if there is a large amount of dry flour left.

Transfer dough to a floured surface and knead a few times, no more than ten turns, adding sprinkles of flour as necessary to prevent sticking. Divide dough in half and pat each half into a circle about 1 inch tall. Cut each circle into 4-5 triangles and place on prepared baking sheet. If you want round scones, divide dough into 8-10 pieces. Gently form each piece into a ball and flatten to a 1-inch thick disk.

Brush tops lightly with milk and sprinkle with cinnamon sugar. Bake for 8-12 minutes, depending on size, until bottoms are lightly browned and tops are just starting to turn golden brown. Cool slightly. Serve warm.

Download the recipe here.

Cookies for Breakfast

I can’t believe I am advocating cookies for breakfast, but these really are healthy enough that I have been letting Calvin eat them for breakfast. They are certainly healthier than a commercial granola bar or cereal bar. If you aren’t ready to sanction cookies for breakfast, they also make a great snack, and just one leaves you more satisfied than a handful of pretzels, with a whole lot more nutrition.

I first saw the recipe on Emmy Cooks, which is worth a look, if you have time to check it out. Emmy got the recipe from another blog, Blue Kale Road, which she links to in her post. Another good read. Emmy made a couple of changes to the recipe and I made a few of my own.

The original recipe called for filling these with jam or preserves, as in a traditional thumbprint cookie. That sounded good to me, but I knew Calvin wouldn’t be crazy about them, so I filled some with raspberry jam, some with peanut butter and some with dark chocolate chips. Calvin prefers the chocolate and peanut butter ones, Rich the raspberry. I like them all.

These go together in minutes, and you only need a bowl and a wooden spoon. If you don’t keep whole wheat flour or oats on hand, these cookies are worth a trip to the store.

Play with these and see what you like the best, or what adaptations you want to make. Maybe more spices, no spices, almond extract instead of vanilla or no extract. Make changes, or make them as is, but make them. These are too good and too easy to go in the “someday” file. Post back and let me know how you like them when you try them.

Breakfast Thumbprint Cookies
Makes 24-30 cookies

I have used both imitation and real maple syrup in these. Use what you have on hand.

1 ½ cups rolled oats, old fashioned preferred
¾ cup oat flour*
1 ½ cups whole wheat flour (I used white whole wheat)
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
½ cup maple syrup
½ cup oil, olive or canola or a combo of the two
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Filling suggestions:
Jam
Peanut butter mixed with honey or maple syrup
Chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Lightly grease two cookie sheets, or line them with parchment. Set aside.

In a large bowl, mix the rolled oats, oat flour, whole wheat flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon. Add maple syrup, oil and vanilla and mix well, until there are no dry pockets of flour or oats. You might not think it will come together, but keep mixing and you will get a stiff dough.

Use a small cookie scoop (mine holds a scant 2 tablespoons) or your damp hands to make  balls of dough. Flatten each ball slightly and use your thumb and fingers to make a well in the middle, building up the edges to hold the filling. If the cookies crumble, just press the edges back together with your fingers. Keep your hands damp and the dough won’t stick to them.

Now it is decision time: If you are using jam, fill each depression with about a teaspoon of jam at this point.

If you want to use peanut butter or chocolate, you will fill the cookies about halfway through the baking time. Bake them empty for the first 5 minutes and then fill. While they are beginning to bake, mix the peanut butter with a little honey or more maple syrup to loosen it just a bit. I used about 3 parts peanut butter to one part honey. Fill the cookies with about a teaspoon of your peanut butter mixture. Spread the filling out with a damp finger – it won’t change shape in the oven.

Or use about 5 chocolate chips per cookie. The chips will melt during the second half of the baking time. After the cookies come out of the oven, use the tip of a spoon or knife to gently smooth the chocolate.

Bake the cookies for 10-12 minutes, or until the tops are just starting to brown. If you are using peanut butter or chocolate, fill the cookies after 5 minutes in the oven.

Carefully remove cookies from baking sheets and allow to cool completely on racks. These keep well at room temperature, or you can freeze them for longer storage. The chocolate ones are good warmed in the microwave for a few seconds to melt the chocolate.

*If you don’t keep oat flour on hand (and I don’t) you can make it by grinding oats finely in a food processor, blender or coffee grinder. I find that ¾ cup of oats makes slightly more than ¾ cup of oat flour. Grind the oats, then measure the oat flour. Use any leftovers in pancakes, muffins or cookies.

Download the recipe here.

Easier Buttermilk Biscuits

 

I wrote a post last week on buttermilk biscuits. They were the traditional roll and cut biscuits, complete with flaky layers. I have talked to several people since then who really wanted biscuits after reading the post, but haven’t had the time to make them. Or some of them are dieting and don’t want to fall off the wagon with biscuits. I can’t help with the dieting thing, but I can give you a recipe for drop biscuits that will have hot, homemade biscuits on the table in no time.

If you aren’t familiar with drop biscuits, the dough is wetter than regular biscuits. Instead of rolling and cutting the dough, you use a spoon to drop the dough onto the pan, using your finger or another spoon to help. It is very similar to making cookies, but the dough is stickier and wetter than cookie dough. I usually make drop biscuits instead of rolled biscuits, because they are quicker, make less mess and are sometimes lighter.

My dad made a lot of biscuits when I was growing up, and they were usually drop biscuits. In fact, when you say, “biscuits,” to me, I think of drop biscuits. It was my mom who made rolled out biscuits, only occasionally and usually to go with dinner instead of breakfast. Not sure why that was, and I probably have selective memories when it comes down to it. Maybe Mom and Dad will chime in on the comments to set the record straight.

Mom and Dad used white flour and Crisco when I was growing up, as did my grandma. I usually use butter now, along with a good portion of white whole wheat flour. These biscuits will work just fine if you prefer to use only all-purpose flour. You can use butter or Crisco, depending on your preference.

If last week’s post got you thinking about buttermilk biscuits, but you were intimidated by the directions, or just didn’t want to deal with the mess, try drop biscuits. They soak up the butter just like regular biscuits, if that helps convince you to make them. Sorry to all my dieting friends!

Drop Biscuits
From The Cook’s Life
Makes 9-12, depending on size

1 cup white whole wheat flour*
¾ cup all-purpose flour
¼  teaspoon salt
2 ½ teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
4-6 tablespoons butter or shortening (the larger amount makes a richer biscuit)
1 cup buttermilk
2-3 tablespoons buttermilk, regular milk or water (if the dough is dry)

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Grease a baking sheet or one large or two medium cast iron skillets or flat griddles. Set aside.

In a medium bowl, mix together white whole wheat flour, all-purpose flour, salt, baking powder and baking soda.

Cut in butter or shortening until mixture looks like coarse crumbs. Make a well in the center and add 1 cup of buttermilk all at once. Mix well, until dough forms. If there are still dry pockets of flour, add buttermilk, milk or water, a tablespoon at a time, until the dough comes together. There should still be wet-looking patches and it will be too soft and wet to knead.

Drop by heaping tablespoons on prepared pans. Leave space between the biscuits, as they spread as well as rise. Err on the side of small, because they rise quite a bit. Bake 10-12 minutes, depending on size and desired doneness. Biscuits should be brown and crispy on the bottom and lightly browned on top when done.

Serve hot, with butter, jam, honey or your choice of toppings.

*You can use all-purpose flour in place of the white whole wheat flour, if you prefer. You may not need the extra liquid in this case.

Download the recipe here.

Granola –From Trendy to Trendy

As a child of the 70’s and 80’s, with parents on the fringes of the back-to-earth movement, granola was familiar to me as a child. I had friends who had never heard of it and friends whose parents bordered on growing their own oats for it. Mom made our granola from Quaker Oats, honey from Dad’s beehives and quite a bit of oil. She made it in the crockpot and it cooked all day, giving off heavenly aromas of toasting oats and hot honey.

Now you can find granola in every grocery store, farmers market, health food store and big box store. It usually costs an arm and a leg, even if it is from one of the big cereal makers. At my usual grocery store it is in the health food aisle, the cereal aisle, next to the yogurt case and on a display by the ice cream. All of it is either outrageously high in fat for what is supposed to be a health foods, or it is “low-fat” and bulked up with puffed rice, extra sweeteners and who knows what else.

I haven’t made granola in forever, but I have been thinking about it for weeks, months really, since I bought a copy of Melissa Clark’s “In the Kitchen with A Good Appetite.” In it she rhapsodizes about olive oil granola that she bought and then recreated. I did hesitate over the full ½ cup of olive oil she used. I looked up an old granola recipe from Cooking Light that I used to make all the time and decided that I didn’t want to go with the miniscule amount of oil it used either. I settled on ¼ cup of oil, and decided to use olive oil, which intrigues me as an ingredient in something sweet. I set out to use one or the other of the recipes I had, but I ended up coming up with my own.

I wanted to keep the focus on the olive oil, so I opted to use only honey for sweetener, and cinnamon and vanilla for other flavorings. I kept the add-ins to wheat germ for extra nutrition and sliced almonds and sunflower seeds for added crunch. I am not including dried fruit in this batch, to keep the oats as the star, but I might add a few raisins or dried cranberries to my bowl on days that I feel like it.

The aroma of the vanilla when it hit the hot honey was heavenly. The fragrance only intensified when the whole mixture started toasting in the oven. Once cool, the toasted oats dominated the flavor, with the olive oil adding a very subtle “something” to the mix. The granola is only slightly sweet, with overtones of the vanilla and cinnamon.

A Mother’s Day Breakfast Anyone Can Make – Cinnamon Toast

Breakfast in bed has never been a Mother’s Day tradition around our house, but Rich and Calvin do the lion’s share of cooking on one of the days of Mother’s Day weekend. This year I am asking for filled croissants from a local French bakery for breakfast, but if you don’t have such a bakery around the corner, you could try Cinnamon Toast. And serve it to mom (or grandma, or yourself) in bed, if you do such things around your house.

When we were first married and I asked Rich if he wanted me to make him cinnamon toast for breakfast one Saturday, he looked at me as if I were nuts. He wondered why that would be a special breakfast, since it was just cinnamon sugar on buttered toast. Ah, he had never had my mother’s cinnamon toast, which of course, I thought was the way everyone made it.

Mom’s cinnamon toast starts with softened or melted butter to which you add brown sugar, honey and a lot of cinnamon. Then you spread this heavenly mixture on your bread and bake it or toast it in a toaster oven until the topping is bubbly and the kitchen smells like cinnamon. Now that is a breakfast treat – gooey, sweet and buttery. And it is easy enough that kids can make it, with a little supervision to avoid hot melted sugar burning onto the bottom of the oven, or somebody’s fingers.

There was never a written recipe, and Mom always just eyeballed the ingredients until she had a texture she liked. I’ll make a stab at a recipe, but you will have to adjust amounts to your own tastes. You really can’t go wrong unless you add too much honey, which can compete with the cinnamon. You probably have all the ingredients in the house already, but do take a whiff and make sure your cinnamon is nice and fragrant and not too old. That never happens around here, where we go through cinnamon like it is going out of style, but if you use cinnamon like a normal person, check it since you are making CinnamonToast after all.

Mom’s Cinnamon Toast
from The Cook’s Life
serves 2-3, easy to double

All measurements are approximate. You might have to adjust them a little to suit your tastes. Use 4 of bread slices if you want a thick layer of topping, six if you want a thinner layer (I prefer using 4 to get a nice, decadent, thick layer of cinnamon mixture).

1 tablespoon butter
¼ cup packed brown sugar
2-3 teaspoons honey (clover or other light honey)
1 teaspoon cinnamon
4-6 slices bread (anything but Wonder Bread or really grainy whole grain bread, you want middle-of-the-road bread, not too soft or too full of grain bits)

Preheat the oven or a toaster oven to 425 degrees. If your butter is right out of the fridge, warm it in the microwave for about 30 seconds at 50% power until it is softened and partially melted. If you melt it all the way by mistake it will still work just fine.

Add the brown sugar, honey and cinnamon and mix with a spoon or spatula.

Add a bit more brown sugar if the butter is oozing around the edges of the mixture. You are looking for a wet and grainy paste that will spread on the bread.

Spread the mixture on the bread and place the slices on a baking sheet. Bake in the oven or toaster oven for 5-6 minutes, or until the topping is bubbly and the edges of the bread are starting to toast.

Remove from the oven and let cool on the pan for 5 minutes, or until the topping is a little less like molten lava. Cut each slice of cinnamon toast into triangles before serving. Serve with fresh fruit on the side to cut the sweetness a bit. And don’t forget the hot coffee or tea. If you are making breakfast for mom or another special someone, add whatever nice touches you can think of – cloth napkins and placemats, a flower or a pretty dishes that don’t get used very often.

Download the recipe here.

Dutch Apple Pancake – It’s What’s for Breakfast

Calvin spent last Friday night with my parents, which he gets to do about once a month. Everybody wins – Calvin and my parents get good grandparent/grandchild time and Rich and I get good couple time. And it means we get to eat things that Calvin doesn’t like. Not sure why he doesn’t like Dutch Apple Pancake, since he likes everything in it, but you can’t always tie logic to food dislikes.

A Dutch, or German, pancake, in case you have never had one, is a big, soufflé- or popover-like pancake that is baked in the oven. This variation starts with apples sautéed in butter and brown sugar, which makes a luscious caramel-y syrup around the apples. You then pour the batter on top and bake it until it browns and puffs. We made it a lot when we first got married. We have experimented with bananas and blueberries, but apples really are the best. We managed to burn ourselves out on it, so we are just starting to make it again.

The recipe comes from “Farm Home Journal’s Homemade Breads,” which I got on the bargain table at a bookstore right after we got married. I don’t care for the format of this recipe, because it is one of those that takes a basic recipe and then adds variations in another recipe. So the variation tells you what to add to the basic recipe, but you have to refer back to the first recipe on another page. I think it makes it really easy to get mixed up on the ingredients and forget something. And it means a lot of flipping back and forth from page to page. We made some changes, as always, so I totally rewrote the recipe to include those and to eliminate the flipping back and forth.

If you don’t have an oven-safe skillet, you can sauté the apples and then transfer them to a preheated casserole dish before adding the batter. The hot dish or skillet starts the cooking with a blast of direct heat and speeds things up, as well as aiding in the puffing of the batter.

Dutch Apple Pancake adapted by The Cook’s Life from Farm Home Journal’s Homemade Breads serves 2-4

Apples:
2 tablespoons butter
2-3 tablespoons brown sugar
2 tart apples, peeled and diced into 1/2-inch pieces
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Batter:
½ cup all-purpose flour
¼ teaspoon salt
½ cup milk
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla

Preheat oven to 450 degrees, and arrange the racks so you can bake the pancake on the lower rack, with room above it for it to puff. If you don’t have an oven-safe skillet, lightly grease a casserole dish with oil or solid shortening and preheat it with the oven. Don’t use cooking spray to grease the dish, as it can leave a sticky residue on your dish at high temperatures.

Heat a 10-inch oven-safe skillet over medium heat and add the butter. When butter is melted, add the brown sugar and stir to combine. Add the apples and spread them out in an even layer. Cook them, stirring only occasionally, until they are soft.

While the apples are cooking, combine all the batter ingredients and beat with a wire whisk for 2 minutes, or until well combined and slightly foamy.

When apples are soft, add cinnamon and stir to combine. Spread apples out in an even layer and turn off the heat.  Pour the batter over the apples and place the pan in the oven.

If your skillet isn’t oven-safe, remove the hot casserole from the oven, arrange apples in an even layer in the bottom and pour in the batter. Bake the pancake at 450 degrees for 10 minutes. Without opening the oven, reduce heat to 350 degrees and bake pancake for 5-10 minutes more, or until the top is browned and the pancake has puffed.

Remove pancake from the oven and show everyone how beautiful and puffy it is. Serve directly from the skillet or casserole dish. Pancake will fall as it cools.

Download the recipe here.