I Baked!

Obviously, I have not had a ton of time for baking lately, however, this past weekend I came across a recipe that I really wanted to try. Eleanor and I went through a phase where she would let me eat breakfast and have a cup of coffee while she would play on the floor. Most days, especially in this past week or so that she hasn't been feeling well, I only have time to grab something quick which isn't always the most nutritious. Also, Hub likes to eat something on the way into the office with his coffee so when I came across this blueberry muffin recipe and saw how simple it was, I knew it had to be made.

I got up Sunday morning to make them and decided I needed to just do a double batch so it would last a couple weeks and I could put half in the freezer. As I was mixing everything, I started to panic that I was using all these ingredients and they weren't going to turn out. The only reason I thought this is because of the few un-mainstream baking ingredients I was using--whole wheat flour, coconut oil {in place of the butter}, applesauce and agave nectar. Not that I don't have faith in my baking but since I don't use these types of substitutes that often--which I want to change--I just didn't know how they were going to work out.

But I continued mixing away.

They turned out!


They are really yummy. Not too sweet and even Ben likes them who sometimes rolls his eyes when I try to make healthy items or use "weird" ingredients.

So I followed that recipe but tweaked a couple things so here is my doubled recipe:

2 cups of apple sauce 

1 cup plus 2 tbsp of agave nectar

2 teaspoon of vanilla

2 egg

2 tablespoons of coconut oil

3 cups of whole wheat flour

1 cup of unbleached flour

2 tsp of baking soda

1 teaspoon of salt

2 handfuls of whole oats

honey (optional)

3 cups frozen blueberries {from Costco, they are SO good}

Preheat oven to 325. Mix dry ingredients, sift and set aside. Mix wet ingredients in a big bowl then add dry ingredients to the wet mixture. Fold in blueberries. Drop into lined muffin tin, sprinkle oats on top and drizzle with honey if you like. {I forgot to sprinkle and drizzle} Bake 24-26 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.

Enjoy!


**Just an unrelated sidenote: I feel like I have been a little absent here and not that I post all the time or regularly anyway but I was commenting pretty frequently on most blogs I read daily and I haven't been. I have been reading blogs mostly in Google Reader while nursing so I can't comment much. I apologize and do comment when I can! Still loving my daily reads! And I hope once little Miss feels better and we get back to a little bit of normal around here, I can even post a little more!**

Recent Grub

I have definitely been neglecting the topic of food around here. Don't worry, we are eating, I guess I just haven't thought a lot of it to be post-worthy.

But here are a few things I wanted to share.

Apparently, steel cut oats are good for lactating mamas so of course, I wanted to try them out. Also, I like to try to eat a hearty breakfast if I can because sometimes lunch comes a little late for me. The only issue I have with this breakfast is that when I am home alone, it is a little time consuming with boiling and stirring so the babe has to be on her best behavior. I cook 'em up, slice up some fresh fruit, throw in some dried fruit, a little brown sugar, cinnamon and almond milk and yum, yum!

Next up, we have some cookies. Again, another recipe that caters a bit toward the lactating mama, but they are a little healthier, Ben eats them and they are good. They aren't too sweet which makes them a good snack. I saw them posted on Whitney's blog and the recipe is from here. I don't pump my milk very often so I don't have a great gauge as to whether they work or not, but I figure, hey, they are healthy-ish and it can't hurt right?

Moving right along, we started to get a bit unhealthy. While Ben was off last week, we tried a couple of new things. I have always wanted to bake bread from scratch but am always scared. I know. Scared of what? Don't  you just try something and if it works is does and if not oh well? Well, yes. But I pretty much like to succeed in the kitchen. Not fail. I'm the first born, what can I say?

We sometimes enjoy watching the Sandwich King on Sunday mornings. we have tried a couple of his recipes and liked them. So for some reason we think we should try Pretzel Buns with Grilled Dogs and Spicy Cheese Sauce. Yeah. Okay, so we make the buns which turned out delicious. the only complaint we had was that we used wax paper on the baking sheet and the buns stuck like a mother. Other than that, complete success. We were pretty proud of ourselves considering we used yeast, had to let them rise, boil them and bake them. 

The next steps were easy: make a cheese sauce and grill the dogs. We didn't love the cheese sauce as we followed the recipe and used Velveeta. Not awesome. The next day when we ate left overs, we just used regular hotdog toppings: ketchup, mustard and relish and like them a lot better. I think the fakey Velveeta was a little much. A lot much.

Last but not least, we went for homemade pizza. 

We have a confession. Most Friday nights we get a Papa Murphy's take and bake pizza. I don't know why this started but it's typical. We actually hadn't done it in awhile, maybe because we are on a tighter budget, we have been having leftovers or whatever. Anyway, last Friday we decided we wanted to make our own pizza including the crust. Since we had succeeded with the pretzel buns, we deemed ourselves seasoned bakers and figured we couldn't go wrong.

We got the crust recipe out of my trusty Better Homes and Gardens cookbook and went to town. We didn't want to go to the store so we used all ingredients we had on hand: made sauce from scratch, ground pork, tomatoes, cheese and jalapenos. It was delish. I don't know if Ben and I will keep it up now, but I definitely think it will be fun to have a weekly family pizza making night with kids.

Nothing too exciting, I suppose, but it always feels good to try new recipes, discover healthy recipes we like and eat yummy food at home!

Baking Binge

I am very happy to report that I have gotten back into enjoying cooking. For a couple of months there, I just really didn't want to do it. I did. But wasn't really loving it like usual. I would get hungry but just really wanted someone else to prepare the food for me.

I am also happy to report that with the cooking has come baking. Maybe it's me getting into the nesting phase. We shall see.

First off, last week, I started with Chocolate-Buttermilk Brownies. I got this recipe out of my trusty standby:

I'll spare you the step-by-step directions because you can simply visit their website to see for yourself but here is what my pan looked like. I added pecans to the frosting which was delicious and I love nuts in my brownies. They also were a little more like a cake and in the cookbook it says that another name for the brownies has been known as a Texas sheet cake. Whatever you want to call it, we called it yummy.

Next up, I had never made anything with yeast. Or that needed to rise. I don't know why. For some reason, bread just sounds intimidating to me. I feel like if one little thing went wrong, I would get discouraged and give up. I know, right? Great attitude. 

Anyway, I was flipping through my Pioneer Woman cookbook and decided I would give her cinnamon rolls a try. The recipe says that it will make 40-50 rolls. Well, Ben and I don't really need that many cinnamon rolls and I didn't want to use all those ingredients if they weren't going to turn out. I mean, 9 cups of flour is a lot! So I decided to cut the recipe into a quarter. I know, it's kind of weird but I thought half even still sounded like a lot. 

I even wrote in the cookbook what the measurements would be so I wouldn't get mixed up. However, for some reason when I got to the flour I only cut it in half. So I heated the milk, oil and sugar like the recipe says. 

Then I added the yeast.

Then I added too much flour. And the mixture was really dry. However, I still didn't catch my mistake. So, I mixed it the best I could. And set it out to let it rise. I let it "rise" for about two hours. I came home and it looked exactly the same.

I was discouraged. My mom stopped by and looked at it. We couldn't figure it out. All of a sudden the light bulb went on and I remembered how much flour I put in. I started over. First two steps down, mixed in the flour, let it rise and the rest was history.

Oh yeah, I added pecans to these, too. We like pecans.

Frosting mixture.

Well, hello lovelies.

On goes the goodness.

These were so good. I am so happy they turned out because I would have been discouraged if they didn't. Now that I have made them and know what to do, I would up the batch next time. They also really aren't that time consuming. Just simple, sugary, buttery, cinnamon-y goodness. And the maple frosting is to die for. We enjoyed them all weekend. Go to the PW website and make these and I promise you will please anyone  you want with these babies.

Tasty Tuesday: A Myriad of Baked Goods

Since I have slacked off a bit over the past few weeks with my Tasty Tuesday postings, I thought I would post a few recipes here today that I have experimented with and have definitely been successful with. I figured they could all be posted together because they all have one thing in common. They go in the oven. Who doesn't love sweets, savories, pastries, etc. that come from the oven? If you don't, you may want to shy away from this post.

First up we have a Dutch Baby. I am going to credit my friend, L, with this recipe. The same L that I borrowed the Irish blessing from. This recipe is in her family cookbook and I owed Hub a breakfast one morning {due to some bet I lost, which for the life of me I can't even remember what it was now....} and she showed me this recipe. Isn't that a great idea? A family cookbook. They compiled recipes from everyone and had it bound and everything. I loved it and maybe someday may think of doing one for our family.

Anyway, back to the Dutch Babies. In her grandma's recipe, they are to be baked in separate dishes, however I did not have enough of the right size oven-proof dishes, so ours ended up in one dish. A pie plate.

I know. It looks a little crazy. Exactly what I thought when I pulled it out of the oven. But, oh, so delish. And oh, so easy! Heres how you can make your own Dutch Baby. Or babies. Whatever your kitchen supplies allow.

Preheat oven to 425. Place 1 tbsp. butter in 4 oven-proof ramekins with 1 1/2 cup capacity. Or one pie plate. Place the dishes in the oven so the butter melts while the oven is warming. Don't let it brown.

1 cup of flour

1 cup of milk

Mix together in a blender or with a wire whisk.

4 eggs. Add one at a time beating well after each addition.

Add 1/8 tsp. salt and 1 tbsp. sugar. Mix.

Pour batter into containers or pie plate and bake for 25 minutes. DO NOT OPEN THE OVEN!

Top with lemon juice, powdered sugar, syrup, fruit, or whatever else you like to top your pastries with. You won't be disappointed.

Next up, we have Beer Bread. I have always wanted to try it so I decided, why not? I had read a couple of different recipes but found this one and decided it was best for me. {Mostly because it lacked self-rising flour, which I had none of.} I found my recipe here  and this is what I came up with:

It was so yummy, so easy and is a great accompaniment to dinner, breakfast or heck, just a mid-afternoon snack! But if you go with the amount of butter they tell you to top it with, you may want to head to the treadmill after that mid-afternoon snack. Hub couldn't stop raving about this bread. 

Last but not least for today I have Blondies for you to drool over. I was perusing one of my favorite sites Simply Recipes and found myself in the Cookie section and decided a short baking project was what I needed for five o' clock on a Monday evening. Out of the oven popped these bad boys.

Gooey, rich and oh so yummy topped with some ice cream. I highly recommend the ice cream. Here is the recipe and my mix-ins were semi-sweet chips, white chips and walnuts.

So there you are, my friends. Sorry about the absence on Tuesdays but I hope this at least makes up for it a little bit. I mean, a good apology comes with baked goods right?

What are you baking lately? Any quick-breads, cookies, or breakfast pastries that you care to share?

Tasty Tuesday

I have not been very diligent about posting recipes lately so I am starting a weekly post called "Tasty Tuesday." I will hopefully be posting a recipe that I have prepared that week, however, it could also very well be something I have saved my archives that I am pulling up.

Tasty Tuesday 

Yesterday I woke up with a sweet tooth. I don't know what it was because usually I am a savory breakfast kinda girl. I went and looked in my trusty

and found this recipe. We have only used our waffle maker maybe once before so I am not so familiar with it. It took a couple of tries and they didn't turn out perfectly, pretty but they sure tasted good!

1 3/4 c. all-purpose flour

2 tbsp. sugar

1 tbsp. baking powder

1/4 tsp. salt

2 eggs

1 3/4 c. milk

1/2 c. oil

1/2 tsp. vanilla

1. Mix together the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Make a well in the dry ingredients and set aside.

2. Slightly beat the eggs and add milk, oil and vanilla.

3. Pour wet mixture all at once into dry mixture and mix. Batter will still be slightly lumpy.

I used a 1/3 c. measuring cup to portion my waffles into the maker and I also added blueberries. I topped mine with butter and boysenberry syrup, Hub used regular maple.

Enjoy!

Feel free to link up with your favorite, your go-to, or you family's favorite breakfast recipe!