Pecan Muffins

I was cruising the intertubes looking for inspiration and found this recipe at The Girl Who Ate Everything.  It is a great blog with lots of cool recipes.  I needed an appetizer or dessert in short order so I decided to try out the Pecan Pie Muffins. I ended up making some significant changes in the recipe. 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Put paper liners in muffin trays.

Mix together:
1/2 cup flour
2 cups chopped pecans

Set aside.

Combine in mixer bowl:
1 Cup packed brown Sugar
2/3 c butter softened.

Mix together until sugar it is completely blended and a bit fluffy.  (Just like creaming butter and sugar for cookies.)

Mix in:

2 Eggs
1 tsp vanilla
dash salt

Gently stir in the flour and pecan mixture just until blended.  Scoop into paper liners in mini muffin tins.  Do NOT over fill.  My batch made 36 mini muffins.  Bake at 350 for12 -14 minutes.  Check at 12 minutes.  Cool on a rack. 

*** The original recipe warns you that you need to grease the muffin tins so that these don't stick.  That is why I used the paper cup liners.  When I dropped them out of the pans, the muffin cups were soaked in grease.  Really soaked in grease.  I ended up peeling off the papers before I plated them to serve.  The muffins themselves were not that greasy.   I would do it that way again.  I may play with the amount of butter a second time but these were really yummy.  They taste just like pecan pie without all of the hassle. 

*** The original recipe tells you to mix the butter and eggs together.  The butter has to be almost molten for this to work in any reasonable way. Perhaps little lumps of butter are needed to enhance the pie like effect of these muffins, but I changed to procedure to cream the butter and sugar together.

*** I added vanilla and a wee bit of salt to the original ingredients.  I felt they were necessary to enhance the flavor of the pecans.

*** Next time I will lightly press some chopped pecans to the top of the muffins before baking or consider toasting the pecans before mixing them in.  These are tasty muffins (not a one left to take a picture) but they don't have the toasted nut flavor you get from the browned nuts on the top of a pecan pie. 

Leave a comment if you try these and tell me how they worked for you. 

Variations on a Box of Jiffy Mix

My friend Martin has asked for the Corn Bread Recipe.  Providing it is almost an embarrassment. 

I've made lots of corn bread recipes.  I've gotten stone ground from the Mill (which is amazing).  I've used sour cream.  I've tried them all.  And most are good.  Some are fantastic.  But all of them take more time than a box of Jiffy Mix.  And most days, the difference isn't worth the time. 

So... Jiffy Mix.  Follow the directions.  You have a good pan of corn bread.

Add a couple tablespoons of honey and you have a sweet treat.  It is better than shortcake with fresh strawberries and cream or strawberry rhubarb compote.  Dot it with blueberry pie filling before you bake it and you have a wonderful dessert.

Add a can of corn (well drained) or an equivalent amount of blanched fresh kernels or thawed frozen kernels and you can call it a vegetable.

Add a can of creamed corn and a couple extra eggs to the above mixture and you have a quick cheater corn bread pudding.

Add a can of chopped green chilies, drained and a cup of cheddar cheese.

Add a a cup of cheese and as much bacon as survives the frying process.

Cut up the leftovers and toast in the oven for stuffing (or dressing although why they call it dressing when it goes INSIDE the bird always escaped me... or is that the difference.  It is stuffing if it is cooked inside and dressing if it is cooked along side?)

Cut up the leftovers, toast in the oven.  Put in a greased baking dish with leftover ham, veggies, whatever you have in the fridge.  Mix in a bunch of cheese and cover it with a mixture of eggs and milk/cream/half and half.  I usually use about 8 eggs and enough milk/cream to make up to 2 cups.  Blend well.  Toss in salt, pepper, garlic, spices.  Pour over the corn bread mixture.  You want to have enough milk/egg mixture to cover the bread (some floats) and be pretty sloppy in the pan.  It is not a a science.  Go with what you've got. 

 Let stand about 10 minutes.  If it looks really dry add some more milk and an egg.  Bake until set (350 for around an hour but check... your oven and conditions may vary).

Sorry, no pictures.  Just a quick post since the "recipe" is too long to make sense in a Facebook comment. 

Bread Pudding Disguised as French Toast

Spud 3 had a game night this weekend. That meant making pizza for a house full of hungry teenagers. It also meant figuring out what to feed them for breakfast -- a breakfast I wouldn't be there to prepare.

I know, cereal and donuts are always fine, assuming you have enough cereal or can send some one out for donuts, but the adult drivers were spread pretty thin so it was better to make do. Besides, when polled about breakfast (NOT my idea) the hungry monsters in the game room wanted pancakes. Ugh. I cannot make pancakes. Really. I can't. Let's not even go there.

I can make bread pudding. But if you call it bread pudding the monsters will revolt, or be revolted. If you call it French Toast they eat it up. So bread pudding... I mean french toast it was.


melt 1/4 cup butter in the bottom of a 9 x 13 inch glass baking dish. Slop the butter around so that it 'greases the sides of the dish. (I don't know why it has to be glass, but it does. Maybe I'll do the experiment some day.) Add 3/4 cup packed brown sugar. Stir until the sugar is mostly mixed in, but don't worry too much about it. Fill the dish with slices of bread. Use whatever you have. I sliced a bunch of ciabatta rolls into 3/4 inch slices and used those. You can stack or layer or slant or whatever you want. I needed it to look like french toast so I just put them in in a single layer. Whisk 6 eggs with 3/4 cup milk, 1 splash vanilla, 1 dash salt and a bunch of cinnamon. If you want to get technical it was about a tsp vanilla, 1/2 tsp salt and about 1/2 tsp cinnamon. Pour over bread in dish. Cover. Refrigerate. This can be prepped at night and can sit until the monsters come out in the morning. As soon as you hear them starting to stir, Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Uncover dish and bake 30 - 40 minutes until the eggs are set and puffy. Serve with syrup, powdered sugar, milk and orange juice so you can tell their adults you TRIED to feed them something nutritious!

Definitely something I will keep in the kid recipe repertoire.

Sorry I don't have a picture. I was out driving spud one back to school and the scene in the kitchen when I returned wasn't pretty.

Donuts

Another Re-post! Tis the season to be too busy to keep up with the internet. I am working on collecting all my recipes in one place. This is part of that effort. And these donuts would make a great snack for a lazy holiday morning!

tasty donuts

About a bajillion years ago I was in charge of a donut making fundraiser. We ended up spending about 20 hours straight making over 800 dozen cake donuts. I still can’t stand cake donuts although I can be persuaded to eat the good yeasty kind you get at the bakery.

The spuds have occasionally asked me to make donuts and I have refused until I was sucked in by this post at the Pioneer Woman Cooks. Today I made donuts.

They were not the lovely perfection displayed on the web. But I did manage to get a pretty good sample by the time I was finished. I do have a few corrections/changes to the recipe so I am posting them here where I will be able to find them.

1. The recipe calls for adding the flour mixture to the wet ingredients without actually describing a flour mixture. I assumed it meant to mix the flour and salt together.

2. Roll out the dough to be THICK. I did the quarter inch described in the recipe. Some were thicker. In the future I will roll it out to a half inch. The thicker donuts were MUCH better.

3. Flour the cookie sheet means flour the cookie sheet. More than a dusting. I deformed a bunch of donuts prying them off of the sheet.

4. Get the cast iron kettle re-seasoned. Even the heavy aluminum kettle doesn’t hold the heat properly.

5. Better yet, research a real fryer system. Any suggestions?

6. Use lots of paper towels and do not forget the turn and blot step.

7. Make the glaze different. I didn’t like the vanilla in it. I probably should have listened and added the salt. I think thicker might be better. Although once the glaze actually set up on the thicker donuts it was pretty good.

I may have to try this again, but it probably won’t be for a while. There is just something about the lingering smell of donuts frying…

I Can Do That With Six Ingredients!

Make That Bread!

OK, I don't know if anyone even knows that game anymore but it kept running through my mind as I was preparing potluck food this morning.

I found a recipe on the internet for pumpkin corn bread. It sounded really good, but it had a whole lot of ingredients, some if which were not to be found in my pantry. If you've ever seen my pantry, heaven forbid, you would understand that that is actually saying quite a bit. I tend to have more than the usual staples on hand.) I did go get a couple of things when I was close to Global Foods yesterday. I kept putting off making it and figured I would save the idea for later.

Last night was the lock-in for the spuds at church and with it an opportunity for some adult conversation. So I stayed late rather than come home for solitary cooking spree. This morning started slow and then the spuds needed a ride and, and, and. One thing leading to another I found myself with an hour to go until the potluck, nothing prepared to take and a taste for pumpkin cornbread in my head. So, I improvised.


2 packages of Jiffy Mix corn bread mix
1 tsp pumpkin pie spice

1 15-ounce can pumpkin
2 Tablespoons honey
3 eggs
2/3 cup milk

Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit, Heat a small amount of butter, about 1 tsp, in a cast iron skillet. Lightly whisk the pumpkin pie spice into the Jiffy mixes in a large bowl. Whisk together the pumpkin, honey, eggs and milk. Gently stir into the dry ingredients until just mixed. Pour into the hot skillet. Put in the oven and bake for 25-30 minutes until the center is set and the top is slightly golden.

See... I can make that recipe with 6 ingredients. All of which happened to be in my pantry or fridge. And the ladies asked for my recipe. That means it must be good. Therefore, this will be cross-posted on the church recipe blog.

*Now, this recipe is really a matter of do as I say rather than do as I do. You can see a smear of pumpkin and some clumps of cornbread mix in the picture above. That is because, in my haste, I dumped it all in the bowl together and stirred until it looked mostly mixed. I obviously missed some clumps and lumps. Mixing the wet ingredients separately will eliminate that problem.

Handy Pecan Pie

Re-posted here as part of my ongoing effort to wrassle my recipes into one convenient spot.

In a more compact, less messy and no crust to roll form. The recipe is from Pioneer Woman’s Tasty Kitchen. These are pretty tasty.

* 1 cup Packed Light Brown Sugar
* ½ cups All-purpose Flour
* 1 cup Chopped Pecans
* ⅔ cups Softened Butter
* 2 whole Eggs Beaten

A few changes for the next batch. Make sure to use salted butter or add a dash of salt. Add a splash of vanilla. While they were good and simple and come in under the 5 ingredient rule, they need something to brighten or intensify the flavor.

The recipe calls for mixing the dry ingredients and the wet ingredients separately and then gently mix them together. The tricky bit is to make sure that the butter is not too hot or to temper the eggs. If you pull the melted butter directly out of the microwave and dump in the eggs you will get scrambled eggs and not in a good way. Melt the butter first and then allow it too cool. If you are impatient you will need to temper the eggs, but mixing small amounts of hot butter into the eggs SLOWLY. It will be easier to wait.

Do NOT skimp on greasing the muffin cups. Like pecan pie, these can be sticky. The amount of butter in them helps but…

Another thing, you need to keep mixing the batter slightly as you put it into the muffin cups. Just like in a pecan pie, the pecans float to the top and if you aren’t aware of how you are distributing them you will end up with lots of nuts in the first muffins and few in the last.

I used 350 degrees for 22 minutes with normal sized muffins in silicone pans. it made 12 good sized muffins rather than the 8 described in the recipe. I will try them in the mini pans at some point in the future.

Definitely worth a second bake!

Hot Cross Buns

When I was a kid, I used to enter my baked goods into the county fair. I earned my fair share of ribbons from them. I loved going to the fair but I haven't been for years. When I happened across the Summer Fair at Generation X Quilters, I wanted to play along and enter something! The following recipe is a re-post from a few years ago. (I am slowly collecting my recipe posts from hither and yon across the internet and putting them all here so I can find them.)

This recipe is slightly out of season for a summer fair, but that is sort of how I feel posting to a Gen X group. I don't technically qualify as gen x. And yet, I find myself, the youngest in my traditional quilt group, by quite a bit and the oldest in the mommies with babies quilt group by not so much. I'll do my best to blend in...

Hot cross buns. I was challenged to make hot cross buns.

Hot cross buns are bread, rolls flavored with nutmeg and cinnamon. My mother taught me how to bake bread. Following her instructions you add flour and knead the dough until it makes the perfect thwack sound when you hold the ball of dough in one hand and strike it with the open palm of your other hand. It is a tactile and audible sensation that cannot be replicated. You then put the dough into the greased bread bowl. The bread bowl is not just any bowl. It is a very old crockery bowl with a beautiful dark brown glaze that you couldn’t afford if you could find it in an antique store. You let it rise until it pushes back just the right amount when you poke it. I really can’t explain any of it any better than this. All I can say is that until I baked bread with my mother where I was able to smell and touch and poke and listen I couldn’t bake bread. I made rocks and paperweights and doorstops and poofy,floofy pasty things, but not bread. No matter how closely I measured and timed and followed each step precisely (which if you know me you understand that much as I dislike precision I can punctiliously replicate a set of instructions) I never made bread.

The problem is that yeast is a living breathing organism. Bread is a set of chemical reactions. Slight variations can alter the chemistry and the microenvironment in ways that completely change the final product. Humidity affects the amount of flour. There are slight changes in yeast. Yeast can be less effective as it ages. Subtle changes in the size of the egg, the type of salt your use, regional differences in milk…. all affect the happy world the yeast inhabit.

This is all a round about way of saying that I can tell you how to make hot cross buns. And I can provide you with pictures, but I really cannot teach you to make them unless you are in my kitchen. You need to experience dough in the real world. I suggest you find a master baker. They are every where. Go to the nearest church supper and you will find one. Spend a day. Bake some bread. Poke and smell. Touch and knead. You will see what I mean.

Now having said that, I am going to give you the road map to hot cross buns. Not a recipe, a road map. Some of the measurements are precise. I’ll try to explain what and why. Some are not. Again, I’ll try to explain what and why. Try it for yourself. And if you have the magic words to explain dough, share them in the comments.

Hot Cross Buns

Oil a medium sized crockery bowl and set aside in a warm spot.
Set out two eggs to bring to room temperature.
Melt 3 Tbsp butter and set aside.

Heat one cup of whole milk in the microwave or in a pan on the stove until it is very warm to the touch. The amount of liquid you start with really determines the size of the batch of dough. One cup of milk makes enough dough to fill my 9 x 13″ rimmed cookie sheet.

Pour the milk into the bowl of your mixer. Sprinkle one package (2 1/4 tsp) yeast over the top. Sprinkle 1/4 cup sugar over the top. (Sugar is a relative thing as long as you don’t overwhelm your dough with it. I never measure precisely but I seldom use more than 1/4 – 1/3 cup.) Slip 1 tsp salt down the side of the bowl. (Salt is important. I almost never cook with salt and I always try to skimp if I do use it, but it is a critical part of the chemistry of baking. Use what the recipe calls for. No more. No less.)

Let the whole thing stand for 5 – 10 minutes until the top is a tan-colored foamy sponge. This step proofs the yeast and lets you know that it is viable. If it doesn’t turn foamy you may have the milk too hot and killed it. It may be too cold and just take longer. It may be that your yeast is too old. Test your yeast by adding some to a bit of warm sugar water. You should see it bloom on the surface in short order. If your yeast is active, start over but don’t get the milk as hot. If it doesn’t spread out and start to open up and blossom, get new yeast. If the whole thing feels cool, try setting your mixing bowl in a bowl of very warm water or in your oven set at 130 degrees fahrenheit for a while.

Add about 1/2 tsp nutmeg. (I used freshly grated. If I was using the usual preground I would add up to a 1 tsp.)
Add about 1/2 tsp cinnamon. Use more if you want a stronger cinnamon taste. I keep the cinnamon light. The real and distinct flavor of all the hot cross buns I’ve ever had is nutmeg.

At this point you can start to mix your dough. First add your melted butter which should have cooled but not solidified by now. Crack your eggs into a small bowl and beat them with a fork or whisk until they are well blended. Add them to the bowl and mix them in.

Start adding flour. You want to have at least 3 – 4 cups of flour (as determined by the scoop and level method) handy. You may use less. You may use more. but make sure you have that much handy. You can add the first 1 – 1 1/2 cups of flour in one dump. Start mixing. you will get a very soft dough that pools in the bottom of your mixer. Your dough hook will pull through it, but it won’t form a ball. Scrape down the sides if you want. Once that first bit of flour is incorporated, you can start adding more flour. The next couple additions can be 1/2 cup at a time. Add the flour and then let the dough hook work its magic until the flour is completely incorporated. By now, the dough should start forming a ball and climbing up the dough hook. The sides of your bowl will still be covered with dough and flour and the dough will stick to the bottom of the bowl when you pull the hook up. At this point you start adding smaller and smaller amounts of flour each time. You can probably make a few quarter cup additions. The dough will start to form a slightly firmer ball. It won’t stick to the bottom of the bowl and the sides of the bowl will become clean. If you touch the dough — with the mixer off silly! — it will still feel sticky. Little bits will stick to your hand as you pull it away from the dough ball. You will probably have to scrape it off your hand and back into the bowl. You are getting close. You need to add a few tablespoons of flour at a time. Let each addition become fulling incorporated and handled the dough before you add anymore. Sometimes the flour will stay on the bottom of the bowl and the dough nearest to it will look like it is getting dry and nasty while the dough climbing the top of the hook looks like dough. Stop the mixer. Give it a few turns in the bowl to mix it all up and knead it together then restart your mixer for a few more turns. If the dough is still sticky to the touch you will need to add a bit more flour. Once the dough is smooth to the touch and all forms a nice smooth ball it is ready to rest. This is the point where you give it a thwack. You should see a nice hand print in the dough ball with nothing sticking to your hand.

Take your perfect ball of dough and roll it around in your oiled bowl until all sides are covered with oil. Note how much it fills the bowl. Cover with plastic wrap or clean dish towel and set in a warm spot. Let it sit in a warm room for an hour or two. I use my oven set on its proofing temperature which is about 130 degrees Fahrenheit for half an hour.

Yeast is like Goldilocks. It wants the temperature just right. It likes warm. The warmer it is the faster it grows. Until it is too warm and you kill it. It slows down in cold. The fridge is place to stash your dough if you suddenly remember a meeting or that you have to pick up the kids. Keep your dough Goldilocks warm.

While you are waiting, oil your baking pan. Be sure to get the oil or cooking spray into the corners! The egg wash will stick like glue if you don’t. Actually the egg wash will stick like glue even if you do if it is one of those sorts of days.

When your dough is double in bulk or when you have run out of time and you absolutely must have hot cross buns in the next hour punch it down. That’s right. Take your fist and punch it right down into the bowl so that the whole thing deflates. Now is the time to knead in 1/2 cup of raisins or dried currents if you want. I don’t.

Actually, I never remember to punch the dough down. I just reach in and pinch off a wad of dough about 1-1/2 inches in diameter and start working it into a ball. You can’t really roll it like you would playdough. You need to pull it across the top and then pinch the edges together at the bottom. My mom does this funky thing where she pushes the dough up between her finger and thumb allowing the finger and thumb to pull the sides of the dough down as the rest squeezes through the middle. Then she pulls the bottom together with her hand and pinches it tight. (I think I will have to try and link a video to show that.)

Set your perfect or not so perfect dough balls in neat or not so neat rolls on your oiled baking sheet. I usually manage to get about 6 rows of 4 buns across my sheet. Leave some space in between. Cover them with plastic or a towel and let them rise again. They should fill the pan with their sides touching. In the proofing oven this takes about 15 more minutes. Your time and temperature will vary.

While you wait. Crack another egg into a teacup. (I don’t know why it has to be a teacup but Grandma always used a teacup and I don’t have a stack of custard cups handy like Mom does so use a teacup!) Add a tablespoon of COLD water. Blend or whisk this until it is a consistant pale yellow color. You do not want to be able to distinguish bits of egg white and egg yolk. So take your time and make sure it is completely mixed.

If you are using your proofing oven, take the tray out of the oven before you preheat it. Preheat it to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.

Once your buns are double in size… I mean your hot cross buns. We don’t have that long. Brush the tops with the egg wash. Bake the rolls for 20 minutes in your conventional oven. I used the bake/convection setting and they were done in 8 minutes.

Set out to cool.

Glaze/frosting.

All of the recipes call for some sort of glaze to be drizzled over or frosting to be piped on top in the shape of a cross. You could use the canned stuff, but after going to all this trouble why ruin it with canned flavor. Frosting in easy but you need to know what texture you are going for. Humidity and the size of your lemon will affect how much sugar you need. So mix and stir until you get what feels right. Besides, you can always use that extra three pounds of frosting on something else. Right?

Squeeze the juice of one lemon into a small bowl. Add about 1/2 cup powdered sugar. Mix well. Add 2 Tbsp melted butter. Mix well. Add powdered sugar a little at a time until you get a runny glaze consistency that will coat the tops and run down the sides. Or you can keep adding sugar until you get a stiffer frosting that will easily squeeze out the snipped corner of a zipper lock bag. This makes a lemony sour frosting. It goes great with the nutmeg but it is not what most people expect. You can make it more traditional by using 2 – 3 Tbsp of milk instead of the lemon juice.

Once the buns have cooled to slightly warm drizzle with glaze or pipe with frosting crosses. Serve warm.

Look at that texture. See those flecks of nutmeg. Check out that lemon icing.

I’ll make these again soon and add some pictures of the intermediate steps. As I said, this was a challenge and I didn’t have much time to get them done, let alone take pictures.

Cooking with a Two Year Old -- Pecan Rolls

It is almost never too early to start teaching kids to cook. They love to help. They love to know that they contribute to the productive life of their home. All it takes is a little patience and planning your little helper buddy can be well on his way to learning skills and making yummy treats.

I was working full time when my boys were small. Our early recipes reflect the need to keep little hands busy using fast prep foods. Not exactly the healthiest dish in the drawer, but great for a some times treat.

1 roll refrigerator biscuits.
1 - 2 Tbs melted butter in a low bowl.
about 1/4 cup sugar mixed with 1 tsp cinnamon in a small bowl
a handful of pecans.

Open the rolls. Line up the rolls, butter, sugar and pecans on the counter within easy reach of your helper. Set the baking tray near at hand. Have your helper take a roll, dunk it in the butter and then put it sugar side up on the baking tray. Add a pecan to the center.

Bake as per the instructions on the package and serve warm.

This is a great first recipe because a little lick here and there won't translate through the baking process. It is also a good chance to reinforce the hand washing, cleanliness and clean-up processes as well.

And remember, helper buddies always get helper hugs!