Pizza Dough Cinnamon Buns

We had some leftover dough from a Friday night pizza and I had a craving for something sweet, so Saturday night at 10pm I decided to make some cinnamon buns. Now, they weren't as good as the ones I made from the Pioneer Woman, but they were pretty damn good for a midnight snack.

It was super easy to do, I rolled out the dough into a big rectangle, covered it in melted butter and then spread brown sugar and cinnamon all over it. I rolled the huge rectangle up, cut it into pieces and placed it in an 8 inch baking dish. I threw it in the oven at 350 degrees for about 25 minutes.

I drenched the buns in a icing made from icing sugar, milk and a little bit of vanilla, then decided to eat three of them before bed. Needless to say, I couldn't get to sleep until 2:30am because of my sugar high, so if you plan to do this, don't eat a whole bunch right before bed!

Banana Crumble Muffin Recipe

Is it bad that our family can eat a dozen muffins in one day? So, when we're running out of groceries, we go through a lot of muffins. I came across this recipe and it was DELICIOUS! Definitely one to add into the regular rotation. I did make a few substitutions as per usual. Here's what we did:

Ingredients:
1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
2 bananas, mashed
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1/3 cup butter, melted
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
2 tbsp. all purpose flour
1/8 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 tbsp. butter

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Lightly grease 12 muffin cups, or line with muffin papers.
2. In a large bowl, mix together 1 1/2 cups flour, baking soda, and baking powder. In another bowl, beat together bananas, sugar, egg and melted butter. Stir the banana mixture into the flour mixture just until moistened. Spoon batter into prepared muffin cups.
3. In a small bowl, mix together brown sugar, 2 tablespoons flour and cinnamon. Cut in 1 tablespoon butter until mixture resembles coarse cornmeal. Sprinkle topping over muffins.
4. Bake in preheated oven for 18 to 20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into center of a muffin comes out clean.

Perfect Pumpkin Pie

It's official. I made my first pie last weekend to celebrate Thanksgiving. The kids and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I didn't take a picture because I was too busy eating, is it okay that I ate 3/4 of a pie in one day???

I took my recipes for the crust from here and the pumpkin filling from here. I did end up making a few substitutions based on what we had in the house. So, here's what we did.

Pie Crust

Ingredients:
2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp. brown sugar
pinch of salt
1 tsp baking powder
1 cup of lard
1/3 cup cold water
1 egg yolk
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 tsp. distilled vinegar

Directions:

1. In a medium bowl, mix together flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Cut in lard until mixture resembles coarse meal.
2. In a separate bowl, whisk together water, egg yolk, vanilla extract, and vinegar. Stir into flour mixture and knead dough briefly, just until smooth. Allow to rest 15 minutes before rolling out. Pastry is easier to work with when chilled. Can be stored in refrigerator for up to 1 week.

Pumpkin Filling

Ingredients:
1 (15 oz.) can of pumpkin
1 (14 oz.) can of evaporated milk
2 large eggs
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp. ground nutmeg
pinch of salt

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Whisk pumpkin, evaporated milk, eggs, spices and salt in medium bowl until smooth. Pour into crust. Bake 15 minutes.
2. Reduce oven temperature to 350 degrees F and continue baking 35 to 40 minutes or until knife inserted 1 inch from crust comes out clean. Cool. Garnish as desired. Store leftovers covered in refrigerator.

We're going to attempt to make an apple pie later this week, so fingers crossed it all works out for us.

Prune Flaxseed Cookies

I bought a bunch of flax seed a few trips ago at the grocery store, but hadn't found a recipe to use them with, until I stumbled upon this recipe from Canadian Living. I've had a lot of success with all sorts of recipes from Canadian Living and this one did not disappoint either, I still did make a few changes, including the addition of the prunes.

Ingredients:
1/2 1/2cup cup(125 mL) softened butter
1/2 cup packed brown sugar 1/2 1/2cupcup packed brown sugar
1/3 cup granulated sugar 1/3 1/3cup white cup white sugar
1 egg 1 eggegg
1/2 tsp vanilla 1/2 1/2tsp vanilla
1 cup all purpose flour 1 1cup cupall purpose flour
3/4 cup quick cooking rolled oats 3/4 3/4cup cuprolled oats
2/3 cup flaxseeds 2/3 2/3cup flaxseeds
1 tsp baking soda 1 1tsp tspbaking soda
1/2 cup chopped prunes

Directions:

In bowl, beat together butter and brown and granulated sugars until light; beat in egg and vanilla.

In separate bowl, whisk together flour, oats, flaxseeds and baking soda; stir into butter mixture until soft dough forms.

Add chopped prunes.

Drop by level tablespoonfuls, 2 inches apart, on u baking sheets. Bake at 350°F until golden, 12 minutes. Let cool on pan on rack for 2 minutes.

Baking

Sometimes as I'm sorting through the pictures on my phone, I come across things that I'm pretty sure I was going to blog about, but then can't remember exactly what they are.

For example, this muffin is?

All gone. They may have been carrot bran muffins, I vaguely recall peeling carrots in the past week. Obviously, the recipe I had wasn't spectacular otherwise I probably would have been more careful to save it.

And these are chocolate oatmeal cookies, which the recipe I used was WAY too sugary, which still didn't stop me from eating about two dozen of them in a day. Maybe I should get more organized on my blogging adventure? Hmm....that seems like effort, not sure that's for me.

Chocolate Cupcakes

We were in charge of making the cake for the birthday party (do you see a theme to this week's posts?), so we decided to go with cupcakes, since they travel the best and work well for 6 kids under 3.5. I came across this recipe and thought it fit our description pretty well. Keeping in mind, that prior to starting this second mat leave I've never made cupcakes from scratch, and when I go back to work, the box variety will probably become our go to item again. But, these were simple and delicious, I'd definitely make them again. We had very few changes to the recipe except to remove the salt.

Ingredients:
1 cup sugar

1 cup brown sugar (not packed)
1 3/4 cup flour

3/4 cup cocoa powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

2 eggs
1 cup milk
1/2 cup canola oil

2 tsp vanilla

1 cup boiling water

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Fill muffin pans with 24 cupcake liners. Sift dry ingredients into a mixing bowl. Add eggs, milk, oil and vanilla. Stir until your arm gets too tired to continue. Add the boiling water, and beat, just until blended. The mixture is very watery, but turns out wonderful. Pour the batter into the liners. Bake for 20-25 minutes, until the center of the cupcakes springs back when lightly touched. Cool and frost.

We used the same Vanilla Butter Cream Icing as posted and it was deliciously sweet.

Ingredients:
1/3 cup butter, just slightly cooler than room temperature

3 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1/4 cup milk

1 1/2 tsp vanilla
food coloring, if desired

Directions:

Beat butter in a medium-sized mixing bowl until creamy. Gradually beat in 3 cups of the powdered sugar. Beat in milk and vanilla. Blend in remaining 1/2 cup powdered sugar. If desired, tint with food coloring.

How Cute is this?

My parents came across this birthday cake at the market they frequent recently.

It has two layers of vanilla cake on the top and bottom for the bun, a layer of chocolate cake in the middle for the patty, and icing in various colours for the fixings. There's even a sugar coating on the top for sesame seeds. I think I need to host a burger party just so I can attempt to make this. Who wants to come?

Strawberry Muffins

After a large purchase of strawberries, I needed something to do with them. I stumbled upon a blog that suggested this recipe was delicious. So, the kids and I got to baking, and they really were pretty good. I made one fatal error when making these, so follow the directions closely.

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups chopped fresh strawberries
1/2 cup white sugar
1/4 cup white sugar
1/4 cup butter, softened
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon ground Cinnamon

Directions
In a small bowl, combine the strawberries and 1/2 cup sugar. Set aside for 1 hour (DO THIS, do not assume 10 minutes is the same as an hour, it's not at the muffins are a little too tart). Drain, reserving liquid and berries separately.

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C). Grease a 12 cup muffin tin, or line with paper liners.

In a medium bowl, cream together the butter and 1/4 cup sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then stir in the vanilla. Combine the flour, baking soda, salt and nutmeg; stir into the creamed mixture alternately with the juice from the berries. Gently stir in the berries. Spoon batter into the prepared muffin cups.

Bake for 18 to 20 minutes in the preheated oven, or until the tops spring back when lightly touched. Cool in the pan on a wire rack.

Sugar Cookies

Big N and I attempted to make some treats for our annual family camping trip. We decided to go with letter cookies spelling out the name of the camping trip. The cookies were definitely cute and helped Big N learn some more letters (because not everything is the letter A). We used a basic sugar cookie recipe, that I can't find now, and the plan was to add icing, however, we just ran out of time. So, until I find a really great sugar cookie recipe, I'll leave the googling to you.

Blueberry Muffins

Blueberries were on sale recently at the grocery store, so of course I took the opportunity to stock up and wound up freezing a few pounds. These are the days I wish I had a bigger freezer than just the top of my fridge because I could have done enough to last through the winter, but alas, we're still debating the big freezer purchase.
I used this recipe as a guide and wound up making my muffins like this:

Ingredients:
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 cup butter
1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
3/4 cup milk
1 1/2 cups frozen blueberries

Directions:

In bowl, combine flour and baking powder. In separate bowl, cream butter with sugar; beat in eggs one at a time. Gradually stir in milk (mixture may appear curdled). Make a well in centre of dry ingredients; pour in liquid and stir just until moistened. Gently fold in blueberries.
Spoon into large paper-lined or well-greased muffin cups, filling to top. Bake in 375°F (190°C) oven for 20 to 25 minutes or until tops are firm to the touch.

These were delicious muffins and since we still have a few blueberries left, I'm excited to make more.

Banana Prune Muffins

So despite the misleading title, these are actually a pretty tasty muffin. Can you see we've been eating a lot of prunes lately? I think my family LOVES it. I googled prune recipes, and found a muffin recipe that seemed tasty enough, but I made enough variations, that I don't think it was even the same recipe at all. Here's what I did: Ingredients:
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup canola oil
1 egg
1 cup mashed banana
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup white flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 cup chopped pitted prunes

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. In a large bowl, combine sugar, oil and eggs. Beat until smooth. Blend in banana and vanilla. Mix together flour, baking powder, baking soda and cinnamon, then stir into egg mixture until just moistened. Mix in the prunes. Spoon into muffin cups.
3. Bake for 20 minutes.

Pepper Cookies

Two year olds have some strange requests, think back to the Popcorn Cookies, well today Big N wanted to bake cookies, and when asked what flavour she wanted, the response was Pepper. What the heck are pepper cookies I thought, but I went over to Google and found out, there was such a thing as pepper cookies. We came across this recipe and made a few variations, based on availability, but this is what we came up with.

Ingredients:
1 cup butter
1 cup sugar
1/2 tsp. vanilla
1 3/4 cups flour
1/2 cup cornstarch
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
1/3 cup milk

Directions:
Cream the butter, sugar, and vanilla until light and creamy.
Combine the flour, baking powder, and spices. Add the dry ingredients to the creamed mixture alternately with the milk. It may be a bit stiff.
Shape into small balls, or drop from a teaspoon, onto ungreased cookie sheets.
Bake at 350 degrees for about 12-15 minutes. Cool on rack.

These turned out somewhat similar to a crinkle cookie, and were quite tasty. You could taste a hint of pepper if you knew that's what was in them, otherwise, you really couldn't tell at all, except for that one cookie that had a whole peppercorn in it, now that wasn't so tasty.

Slender Blondie Brownies (with Prunes!)

Big N and I were looking for a recipe to make the other day the involved prunes, since we had a whole package of them. We came across this recipe for Slender Blondie Brownies and decided to give it a whirl. We made a few variations, and this is what we did:

Ingredients:
Nonstick cooking spray
3⁄4 cup white whole wheat flour
1⁄2 teaspoon baking powder
1⁄4 teaspoon baking soda
1⁄4 cup canola oil
2⁄3 cup packed light or dark brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1⁄2 cup chopped prunes
1⁄4 cup milk chocolate chips

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Coat a 9-inch square pan with cooking spray. Sift together the flour, baking powder and baking soda. Set aside. In a large bowl, beat the oil and sugar until smooth, 1 to 2 minutes. Mix in the eggs and vanilla. With a wooden spoon, stir in the flour mixture until just combined. Fold in the prunes and chocolate chips. Spread the batter in the pan. Bake 25 to 30 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in the center comes out clean or with moist-looking crumbs. Cool 5 minutes in the pan, then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely. Cut into 12 pieces and store in an airtight container for up to 5 days.

Overall, these blondies were surprisingly delicious, and I'd definitely make them again. The prunes came out tasting more like raisins than I had anticipated, which was actually probably a good thing. Although R said he didn't like the raisins in the blondies, and when I told them it was prunes, he was happier with it. I guess some people are just okay with eating prunes.

Cornflake Squares

It has been a little warm here for the past week, which means, I really don't want to turn on the oven, because I really don't want to turn on the air conditioner. I think I have a phobia of air conditioners, because my reasoning for not turning it on is that once it is on it is ALWAYS too cold. It probably stems from working in an office building for the past five years where you end up wearing winter clothes in the middle of summer because it's so freakin' cold.

I still wanted a tasty treat one day, and something to do with the kids to take our minds off of how we were sweating while sitting still. So, we produced a batch of cornflake squares which are a regular family treat in my family growing up.

Ingredients:

3 cups of Corn Flakes (or whatever cereal is handy)

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup peanut butter

1/2 cup corn syrup

Mix the brown sugar, peanut butter and corn syrup in heat proof bowl and microwave for about two minutes, just about to a boil. Stir in the Corn Flakes while still hot. Spread into 8x8 greased baking dish or something of a similar size and let set prior to eating. Depending on how hard you press the squares down will be how hard they are upon setting. If you double the recipe it fits nicely into a 9x12 pan as well.

For the past five years while making these, I've never once waited for them to set, and a few times haven't even bothered to put it into a baking dish, I have a problem with patience, but these are delicious while still warm.

As you may be able to guess from the picture, we only had cheerios on hand the day we decided to make these squares, and they were still delicious. I've tried the recipe with bran flakes as well, and although it's a little bit chewier, it's also a little bit healthier, so it's another viable option.

Apple Carrot Muffins

We eat a lot of muffins in this household, especially when I'm avoiding going to the grocery store out of pure laziness. A tray of muffins can easily push us through one more day until we're out of a few more ingredients to make the trip necessary.

I found this recipe and decided I had the majority of the ingredients, so I could continue with the muffins. But, as I started making them, something seemed very very wrong (i.e. there wasn't enough liquid and there was no way it was going to make 24 muffins). So, after quite a few substitutions, I made my own version of this Apple Carrot Muffin, and a few things still went wrong, but the muffins turned out delicious albeit a little on the ugly side (it makes more than 12 muffins, but definitely not 24).

Ingredients:
3 eggs
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
3/4 cup vegetable oil
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup white flour
1-1/4 cups brown sugar
2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp baking powder
2 carrots, grated
2 apples, peeled, cored and grated

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 F (180 C).
In a bowl, combine the wet ingredients. In another bowl, combine the dry ingredients. Add the first mixture to the second. Pour into muffin cups. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes.

Oatmeal Apple Muffins

I found a new muffin recipe site and decided to check out their recipe of Oatmeal Apple Muffins, since I had the ingredients handy. I made a few changes to the recipe, so mine looked a little more like this:

Ingredients:
2 cups old-fashioned, large flake rolled oats (not quick-cooking oats)
1 1/2 cups milk
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 Tbsp. baking powder
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
1/2 cup butter, melted and cooled slightly
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup finely chopped apple

Directions:
Preheat oven to 400° F. and grease a 12 cup muffin tin.

In a medium bowl, mix the oats and the milk and set aside for 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, in a large bowl, mix together the dry ingredients, making a well in the centre. Stir in the liquid ingredients and the oatmeal mixture just until combined, being careful not to over-mix. (Batter may be lumpy). Fold in chopped apple.

Fill muffin cups about 3/4 full. Bake for 16-18 minutes until lightly golden or a cake tester inserted into centre of muffin comes out with moist crumbs attached.

These muffins weren't too bad, they weren't quite as delicious as I was hoping I think the oatmeal made them a little chewier than I was anticipating, but a good recipe to have handy for when you are running low on flour.

A tasty treat...

I've done my fair share of baking over the last 7 months, but nothing I've created compares to the sweet tastings from my friend over at Sweet Spell Bakeshop. The author and I went to university together and it's an honour to see her business degree being put to great use! I honestly drool every single day when I read through her pages. She inspires me to go take an actual baking class to learn some great techniques, and then I look around the room and see my two little munchkins running around, and think, I'll put that on the to do list, once I finish my designation, and perhaps get my kids in school. Anyways, I hope you enjoy drooling over her blog as much as I do.

Homemade Pretzels

I was browsing through a book I took out from the library (which you'll get a full review on once I'm done checking it out), and came across a recipe for homemade pretzels. Now, I'm not a huge pretzel fan, but I know Daddy likes salty things, and it looked like a great recipe to get Big N involved with. So, off we went on our pretzel making adventure.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups warm water

1 package yeast

1 tbsp. sugar

4 cups flour

1 tsp salt, plus more for tops

1 egg, beaten.

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. In a large bowl, dissolves yeast in warm water. Add sugar, flour and salt. Mix well, then knead dough until it is smooth and soft. Roll and twist dough into desired shapes. Lay the pretzel dough shapes onto two greased cookie sheets. Brush with beaten egg and sprinkle lightly with salt. Bake for 12 to 15 minutes or until golden. Makes 1-3 dozen depending on size.

For our first batch I made a variety of sizes, not knowing exactly how this was going to turn out. I found the ones that were a little bit bigger, but not quite as thick to be the most delicious (yes, I tried every different size just to be sure).
Big N loved brushing on the egg way more than rolling out the dough, which I was surprised by, but, all in all because it is such a simple recipe she got to help with the whole thing.

I sprinkled ours with sea salt and they are delicious! I did make one batch without the added salt so that Big and Little N could taste them without all the additional salt that they don't particularly need in their diets. If I go to make these again I may attempt to put some whole wheat flour in with the white too, as I try to make as many things whole wheat as I can, but I hate to ruin a brand new recipe without first trying it as provided.

Carrot Zucchini Muffins

When Big N was in daycare, we had muffins almost every morning for breakfast since they were so quick and easy. Over the past couple of months we had switched our muffin baking into cookies, but, since muffins MAY be just a little bit healthier we thought we'd get back into the swing of things (that and we had absolutely nothing to eat for breakfast).

In general I'm a huge fan of carrot zucchini muffins, however, these ones weren't quite as good as they could have been, so instead of posting an okay recipe, I'll tweak it a bit over the next few weeks and post the BEST recipe. I found these ones were just a bit dry (unusual for such a veggie filled muffin), and I would have really liked some raisins in there too.

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

Early last week we decided to stray from our run of the mill chocolate chip cookie in favour of an oatmeal raisin cookie, mostly due to the fact that Granny and Grandpa were coming for a visit and Grandpa really likes them. Despite making them only the afternoon before they were set to arrive only 1 of the 3 dozen cookies we made lasted the night. We used this Oatmeal Cookie Recipe from Canadian Living as our basis, but made a few changes along the way. Most notable, omitting the salt (if you haven't noticed, I don't bake with salt, I try to limit the amount of excess salt we consume in our diets, now sugar is a totally different story).


Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups rolled oats (not instant)
1 cup all-purpose
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
2/3 cup softened butter
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup raisins

Directions:

1. In bowl, whisk together oats, flour, baking powder and baking soda.
2. In separate large bowl, beat softened butter with sugar until light and fluffy. Blend in egg and vanilla. Mix in flour mixture. Stir in raisins.
3. Drop batter by tablespoonfuls onto baking sheets, about 2 inches apart.
4. Bake in centre of 375°F (190°C) oven for 10 minutes or until golden. Let cool on pans on racks for about 2 minutes. Transfer to racks; let cool completely.