Dutch Baby Pancake with Apples

Or Cast Iron Skillet Experiments #3

Cast Iron Skillet Experiments #1
Cast Iron Skillet Experiments #2

This is not a bread related post, so just a picture.Leave me a comment if you would like the recipe.

-RPH

Nutty for Oats Cookies

I baked these cookies to take along to Disneyland to share with friends who love peanut butter. I had made these once before and mentioned them in my first bread blog.

The original recipe is from the book, 'King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking: Delicious Recipes Using Nutritious Whole Grains'. I used butterscotch for the chocolate chips because RH likes butterscotch, but I didn't have enough so I used some milk chocolate anyway. Perhaps because butterscotch has a much stronger taste than chocolate, I didn't feel I needed to use the prescribed amount. I used some agave nectar in an effort to reduce the glycemic index. I could possibly reduce the sugar and oil some more next time. Here is how my modified version looked:

Original recipe	My variation
2/3 C (6.25 oz) smooth peanut butter	5 oz creamy peanut butter
4 T (54 g) unsalted butter	40 g butter 15 g vegetable oil (could be less)
¾ C (5.625 oz) brown sugar	1.5 oz brown sugar 1.5 oz agave nectar
1 t vanilla extract	1 t vanilla extract
½ t salt	½ t salt
¼ t baking soda	¼ t baking soda
2 large eggs	2 large eggs
1 C (3.5 oz) old fashioned rolled oats, ground	3.5 oz quick oats, ground
1½ C (5.25 oz) old fashioned rolled oats	5.25 oz quick oats
2 C (12 oz) chocolate chips	2.5 oz butterscotch chips 2.5 oz hazelnut chocolate (IKEA)
C = cup T = tablespoon  t = teaspoon	-

Method:

Mix wet ingredients in the order butter, oil, sugar, essence, baking soda, eggs
Mix in oat flour and oats until just mixed.
Stir in chocolate chips / melted chocolate
Drop by tablespoonfuls on parchment paper / silicone mat / greased baking sheet.
Bake in 350° F oven for 11-13 minutes until sides are beginning to set.

In pictures

The ingredients (Baking powder was not needed)

Butter, oil, sugar and essence blended in. Eggs next.

I usually chop the butterscotch / chocolate chips. This time I melted
them using a double boiler method on low heat

Second batch ready to go in

I love the silicone spatula. It helps clean the mixing bowl really well,
reducing any wastage. Note how clean the bowl with the chocolate is.

Out of the oven. 32 cookies in all.

Close up

The cookies came with us to Disneyland and were nice to have around. They were very soft and moist with a distinct peanut butter taste with a hint of butterscotch. I have frozen a third of them for later. These are not low calorie or low fat, but one cookie is sufficient for a sweet craving. And peanut butter and oats are healthy, right?

-RPH

Lemon Cranberry Walnut Muffins

I got lemons from a colleague last week and wanted to put them to good use while they were still juicy. I also wanted to bake something slightly-sweet to have as dessert. I looked around for recipes of muffins that used lemons and found that lemon-poppy was the most common combination. I don't care much for poppy seeds, so I thought I could improvise my mixed berry recipe from last week as the base and replace the berries with lemon and something else. Cranberries and chopped walnuts sounded good.

I had buttermilk at hand from the soda bread and buttermilk biscuits. I thought it would complement the lemons well. This is what I came up with:

My Mixed Berry recipe	Lemon-Cranberry-Walnut recipe
1 C frozen blueberries ½ C frozen raspberries, cut in half	1.5 oz dried sweetened cranberries, finely chopped 2 oz chopped walnuts 1 t lemon zest (up to 1 T can be used) 2 T lemon juice
2 C whole wheat pastry flour 2 T wheat germ 1 T cracked flaxseeds	2 C whole wheat pastry flour
3 T sugar 3 T turbinado sugar 2 T agave nectar	4 T turbinado sugar 3 T agave nectar
1 T baking powder	1 T baking powder
¾ t salt	¾ t salt
2 large eggs	2 large eggs
1 t vanilla extract	½ t vanilla extract (I ran out of extract)
¾ C 2% milk ½ C unsweetened applesauce	¾ C low fat buttermilk (milk is better) ½ C unsweetened applesauce
3 T butter, melted 3 T vegetable oil	3 T butter, melted 3 T vegetable oil
C = cup T = tablespoon  t = teaspoon	-

Method is the usual:
Sift dry ingredients together
Mix wet ingredients together well (in the order butter, oil, sweetener, eggs, vanilla extract, applesauce, buttermilk)
Mix wet ingredients into dry ingredients. Do not overmix.
Gently stir in cranberries and walnuts. Do not overmix.
Bake 20-22 mins in a 400° F oven.

The batter was easy to put together and it bubbled up more than expected. I need to study more about combining buttermilk and baking powder. Fortunately it was able to go in the oven right away. I didn't fill the muffin pans fully, expecting some rising, so I had some left over batter. But the muffins didn't rise a lot.

The muffins tasted good. The cranberries won the flavor war over the lemons. A little more lemon zest would have been better. The walnuts added a nice bite to the texture. These were not very sweet or melt-in-your-mouth muffins, but they were good for satisfying my sweet tooth.

-RPH

Mixed Berry Muffins

I got blueberries on a good deal at the market last weekend and I had frozen them, but wanted to bake something with them. I found a reasonable recipe in my go-to book for special meals and family dinners, Jeanne Lemlin's Vegetarian Classics. This was one of the first cookbooks I owned and almost all of the recipes I have prepared from this book have been keepers. I highly recommend this book.

I say reasonable recipe, because it doesn't use whole grains, but I have learned to modify recipes to add nutrition value. I made quite a few changes, and I need to write them down for next time, so here's a post for a non-bread baking attempt.

The last time I made 12 muffins using a berry muffin recipe I found online, the batter seemed less and the muffins barely reached the tops of the pan. This may be because I use silicone muffin pans and their volume is larger (I don't have a tin pan to compare). So this time I decided to make some additions to increase the volume of the batter, along with improving the nutrition.

I have given the original recipe and my substitutions in case you would like to make the original recipe.

Original recipe	My recipe
1 ¼ C frozen mixed berries	1 C frozen blueberries ½ C frozen raspberries, cut in half
2 C unbleached flour	2 C whole wheat pastry flour 2 T wheat germ 1 T cracked flaxseeds
½ C (=8 T) sugar	3 T sugar 3 T turbinado sugar 2 T agave nectar
1 T baking powder	1 T baking powder
¾ t salt	¾ t salt
2 large eggs	2 large eggs
1 t vanilla extract	1 t vanilla extract
1 ¼ C low-fat milk	¾ C 2% milk ½ C unsweetened applesauce
6 T butter, melted	3 T butter, melted 3 T vegetable oil
C = cup T = tablespoon  t = teaspoon	-

Method is the usual:
Sift dry ingredients together (coat berries with 1 T of dry mixture and keep aside).
Mix sugars and wet ingredients together.
Mix wet ingredients into dry ingredients. Do not overmix.
Gently stir in berries. Do not overmix

Bake 20-22 mins in a 400° F oven.

Out of the oven

Nice rise. (I like silicone-ware a lot, because it doesn't need greasing
and baked goods come out easily)

Cross-section.

Muffins taste good, not too sweet not too crumbly, with moisture and tartness from the berries. Some might say they are hardly sweet, but we don't like overly sweet foods (with some exceptions, of course). These are making a good post-meal dessert for us. Best of all, they were very easy to put together.

-RPH.