Raspberry Oatmeal Scones

Let’s just pretend that it hasn’t been months since I updated. There, wasn’t that fun?

Pinterest is awesome and dangerous and dangerously awesome and if only you could see my “edibles” pin-board. Wait, maybe you can. You tell me.

I’ve been collecting recipes I want to try, and some that I have tried, and that’s the source of today’s post (and my attempt to return to food blogging since I moved apartments and have no counter space but a free butcher-block table, so that’s awesome): Raspberry Oatmeal Scones.

I made these ages ago. No really, like over a month ago. I’ve just been busy and distracted and forgetful. But don’t let that fool you into thinking these weren’t delicious. That would be wrong. These were amazing, because, as the original blog post author points out, I could freeze the unbaked scones and pop them in the oven in the mornings.

Let that sink in. Fresh-baked scones every. day. Life was grand back then, my friends.

Buttery…

…fruity scones, every day. The raspberries totally cancel out the butter, true story.

I got to use my new pastry cutter on this dough. Batter. What would one call scones before they are scones?

And then I smashed everything down to a flat surface and cut the individual scones out of the dough (I’m going with dough for the time being). Next time, I may be less quick to smash and work more on making artful scones. And I’ll add more baking powder. Because these suckers didn’t rise at all.

But when you can have a delicious warm breakfast every morning thanks to your toaster oven (let’s all just appreciate the miracle that is my inability to walk in a straight line in the morning while still managing to turn on a toaster oven and bake something)…

Non-rising baked goods are forgiven.

I know you can be underwhelmed…

Hey. It’s been a while. In case you forgot what is sort of happening here, I’m blogging my way through five muffin recipes from the May 2011 issue of Cooking Light magazine. I even managed to blog about two of them, the Pistachio-Chai Muffins and the Chocolate-Chocolate Chip Muffins. Finally, we came to the Bacon-Cheddar Corn Muffins, and someone give me a gold star, I have process photos and everything.

When I first read the magazine, I was immediately enthralled by the idea of bacon, cheddar, and corn muffins all together. That sounds amazing! And then I started making them.

I don’t know why, but that just looks really weird to me. Flour and cheddar cheese and then sugar. I admit it, I twitched a little bit at this step.

While wandering around the store looking for bacon (an aside: I’m not that inept, I was just seeing what all my options were, aside from the deli), I came across these pre-cooked bacon strips, and I will totally admit it—sometimes, I’m incredibly, inexplicably lazy. Bacon does not take much effort to cook, and yet, this happened. But it was okay, I could crumble up the bacon and add it right away, without having to cook it and then wait for it to cool.

This whole process started to look more and more strange. There’s bacon and cheddar and flour, still okay with, but I know there’s sugar in there too, and that’s counterintuitive to my brain.

Mixing it all up did not help matters. Now it’s bacon, cheddar, flour, jalapeño, and sugar, lumped together. I don’t know why the sugar bothered me so much.

They baked nicely, with a little bit of rise, while remaining fairly dense.

…but I don’t love them. I wanted bacon-cheddar-corn amazement; I got what tastes like corn bread with some jalapeño. And corn bread with jalapeño is awesome, but where’s the bacon? Or the cheddar? I want all the flavors!

I have decided that my favorites of this bunch are the Tuscan Lemon muffins (forgot to blog those) and the Chocolate-Chocolate chip. I’m taking a break from muffins, though, and making banana bread, from Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything. It involves coconut. We’ll see how I deal with that.

Chocolate-Chocolate Chip Muffins

Finally, I remember to photograph and blog about a muffin recipe. These Chocolate-Chocolate Chip Muffins are the fourth of five muffin recipes that were originally scheduled for “testing” in my kitchen; that list has grown considerably, but I’m still working my way through these five first.

The recipe calls for unsweetened cocoa, which I did have in bar form, but not so much in powder form. So I improvised and used this Mayan cocoa mix I bought at Savory Spice shop. It’s a bit too strong for me in drink form, but I figured it would come in handy for baking, and boy howdy.

The peppers in the powder give the muffins a nice little kick at the end, as well as emphasizing the chocolate chips.

The recipe also calls for red wine vinegar which I’d never used before in any sort of chocolatey thing (well, I’d never used it before, period). I don’t know what it adds to the muffins, but it came in handy yesterday when I was making mayonnaise this weekend and did not have sherry vinegar or white wine vinegar. (Yes, I made mayonnaise; I dislike mayonnaise in general and did not want to buy a whole bottle for the little bit I used, but guess what, I think I like homemade mayonnaise.)

Half of the chocolate chips go in the muffins, the other half tops the muffins before baking, and they come out looking absolutely fantastic.

And while they sure are pretty to look at, they’re even better to eat. You know those chocolate lava cakes, where you break into the cake portion to reveal a chocolatey, gooey center? These ended up kind of like mini, healthier lava cakes.

Plus, muffins gave me another chance to use my pretty new baking cups from Bake It Pretty.

My first order (yes… first… I have a problem) included the black with pink polka dots used for the muffins. And then they had a sale on baking cups, and I’m a big sucker, so…

I may or may not have somewhere around 400 baking cups waiting to be used. Good thing I have a long list of muffins to make, eh?

My Drunk Kitchen

I was going to mention this in a previous post, but a) I forgot and b) this is so awesome, it deserves its own post.

What happens when you take one cooking adept gal and challenge her to work in the kitchen while adding her own flair? My Drunk Kitchen, that’s what. There are seven videos so far, this one is pretty much my favorite.

(She was informed later that the orange stand mixer behind her would have taken care of creaming the butter and sugar, but her take on it is priceless.)

Birthdays are big deals

I used to make a point to bake cupcakes for my friend’s birthdays. I would ask the birthday recipient for their preferred kind of cake and frosting, and find a recipe that would work, then bake the cakes the night before the big day (or whatever day we were celebrating). I loved doing this, but over time, my “crowd” sort of thinned out, and then I moved, and then I moved again, and then I got busy, and fell out of the habit.

While I’m not quite back in the saddle yet, I had the opportunity to bake some cupcakes for a friend’s birthday this past week, so I jumped on that chance. She said she preferred yellow cake—plain ole yellow cake, I could hardly believe it—but that she had no preference to frosting.

So I found a simple yellow cake recipe, which turned out to be one of the best cake recipes I’ve ever come across. It’s not overly flavorful on it’s own, but the batter was so smooth and fluffy; scoping it out of the bowl and into the muffin liners was a little bit magical. I know that sounds weird, but just try that recipe out and tell me you don’t agree. I want to try to use this cake recipe as a base for other kinds of cake in the future.

Plus, it gave me a chance to use my electric mixer, for which I have a special kind of glee. I would not ditch it entirely were I to come into a stand mixer, even though I very much want one.

This also gave me the opportunity to break into my new baking cups from Bake It Pretty. I chose to use the blue and silver damask, the gold and green plaid, and the straight up electric blue cups.

For the frosting, I wanted something that would be especially tasty with the mild cake element, while also being summery and light. I decided to turn to a fruit-based frosting, and found this Orange Buttercream Frosting recipe. It was a snap to whip up, and I took this opportunity to try piping frosting from a plastic bag.

Mixed results on the piping aspect, but these cupcakes were so delicious. The orange zest, combined with the juice, gave the frosting a potent zing that was delectably complemented by the smooth flavor of the cake. (Also, altogether, almost one cup of butter was used in these cupcakes; I’m sure that helped the tastiness.)

Orange marmalade–ginger marinade thing

Longest title ever! Definitely needs a more easy-to-say name. So in my last post, I mentioned that I had plans to take my less-than-successful marmalade and make it into a marinade for some scallops. I used a cup of veggie broth, a few tablespoons of soy sauce, about a tablespoon of fresh minced ginger, and a few tablespoons of the marinade. I did write down the specifics, but they’re at home. That’s just the way I roll.

I defrosted the scallops and then let them marinade for a little while about 30 minutes. I didn’t want to let them sit too long in the sauce, as citrus-based marinades can sort of “pre-cook” meat. And I was planning on pouring some of the reserved marinade over the cooked scallops anyway, so they didn’t need to soak a lot.

I grilled the scallops on my grill pan, and they were quite tasty with the marinade and the pieces of orange peel. However, I feel as though the marinade needs something else; it’s quite “one note” as it is, and I feel like it needs another, deeper note, maybe on a savory level. Next time, I’m going to experiment with different herbs and spices.

I was also playing around with a new to me food, called an aprium. It’s a plum-apricot hybrid that looks like an apricot but tastes a little bit more like a plum. They’re kind of pretty, I have to say.

I sliced an aprium in half and tossed that on the grill pan (after sprinkling it with cinnamon and cloves), then put that over some mixed greens with some bleu cheese for a delicious salad to go with my scallops.

Recently, I’ve also baked another batch of muffins, but I forgot to take any pictures. This batch was the Cherry-Wheat Germ muffins, although I used wheat bran because it’s what I had on hand. I’m not in love with these. They’re very tasty and I enjoy eating them, but so far, I think my favorites are the Tuscan Lemon muffins that I also forgot to document. There are two more muffin recipes left to try from that issue, the Bacon-Cheddar Corn muffins and the Chocolate-Chocolate Chip muffins, so the lemon muffins may lose their preferred status.

There’s some good news on the horizon: Savory Spice Shop is opening a location in my town! I’m very excited about this. Also, Wednesday is the first day of June, and June is when my preferred farmer’s market starts up. I need to start stocking up on canning supplies—there are lots of plans for items like hibiscus peaches and pickling various veggies.

Marmalade

Amy Pennington’s Urban Pantry is a fantastic book focusing on maximizing your pantry goods for those of us in smaller, urban kitchens (great for apartment dwellers!), covering what pantry staples get the most bang for your buck, how to store them, and providing recipes for those staples. When I came across her Boozy Blood Orange Marmalade recipe, my eyes lit up, the heavens parted, and all that jazz.

I didn’t have five pounds of blood oranges at hand, and they have a short season, so I couldn’t find any. I had a few left over, and I supplemented the rest with a couple of navel oranges. I’d never tried peeling an orange with an actual peeler before, but it was sort of fun, until I peeled a little bit of my finger. That was not so much fun. (New meaning to “blood orange”?)

And then the peels, the seeds, and a couple of orange halves were happy bubbling away in a pot. The great thing about making jams and marmalades is that they don’t really require a lot of work. Throw in pot and let bubble for a while. With this marmalade recipe, the whole mixture goes in the fridge for at least six hours. I’m not sure why, I was just doing what I was told. I should have done that and been a little more patient when it came time to reduce the mixture a little bit more—I think I had the heat up a bit too much and cooked off too much liquid, because a recipe that was supposed to yield 5 half-pints gave me this.

One half-pint consisting mostly of jellied orange peel and not a lot of the jammy part of marmalade. I have to say, the orange peel is still quite tasty, but not quite what I was going for. I’m pretty sure I also need to add more liquid when for the second reduction—things to note for the future.

I haven’t had much occasion to eat jellied orange peel lately, but I have plans to take some of the peel and marmalade and mix it with some variety of liquid (I haven’t decided which to try first) and some fresh ginger and make a marinade. I’ll let you know how that goes.

Pistachio-Chai Muffins

Nothing beats being apathetic towards life (thanks, stress!) like a little vacation and getting back to baking. The May issue of Cooking Light had five different, delicious-sounding muffin recipes, and I’m determined to try them all. The first I made were the Tuscan Lemon muffins, but I apparently failed to photograph that experiment, so you’ll just have to take my word that they’re delicious and you should give them a try.

This past weekend, I got a little more adventurous and whipped up a batch of the Pistachio-Chai Muffins. I say “adventurous” because I’ve never worked with pistachios or chai, but I am delighted with how these turned out. First things first, I had to find chai tea. I asked a few of my friends if they had any I could use.

Turns out, I actually had some chai (that Celestial Seasonings box was tucked away in my tea cabinet—yes, I have a cabinet of tea). But I now have five different varieties of chai to use for future batches of muffins. Not a bad gig. I ended up using the Tazo chai tea.

I picked up the pistachios in the bulk aisle of Whole Foods, and I have to say, chucking pistachio shells is not a bad thing to do first thing in the morning—fairly mindless and strangely satisfying in some way. And then I got to dump them in my choppermajig (technical term, that).

The mixing and the baking are all fairly standard, I’m sure you’ve seen that sort of thing before. These finished muffins are a thing of beauty, if I do say so myself.

I left off the little bit of frosting that’s called for in the recipe, partly because I was lazy and partly because I wasn’t sure it would freeze or re-heat well. So these are slightly less fabulous than they might have been had I been serving them up right away, but they’re still super yummy. The pistachios add a salty, nuttiness to the sweetly spicy chai muffin. It’s a fantastic flavor combination that satisfies both sweet teeth and savory taste buds.

I also tried my hand at making marmalade this weekend, but I’ll save that for a future post.

Sugar and spice

I’ve been having a rough go of things lately. Nothing too bad, but there’s been some extremely long days that turned into seemingly unending weeks. Things are starting to turn around now—there are still some very busy weeks in my future, but there’s also a bit of fun and travel and trying new things. But in the midst of my chaos, I discovered I have some truly amazing friends. A good number of them—many of whom I had never met in person, but only know through a crafting forum—got together and put together a “care package” for me, and part of it included the most amazing variety of salts, sugars, and other spices.

General spices: Curry powder, Cajun seasoning, ground cardamom pods, Ceylon cinnamon

Salts. I can’t remember all of them, but I know there’s vanilla bean salt and espresso brava salt, and I’m tempted to use one or both of them and make another batch of salted fudge brownies (because I still have 100% cocoa from the last batch).

Sugars. Lots of sugars. I can’t remember what kinds of sugars, but there’s fruity sugars, and citrusy sugars, and spicy sugars…

I was bowled over by the generosity my friends displayed—I knew they were kind and loving and wonderful people, but to have tangible evidence is overwhelming. And now I get to think of them every time I bake or cook with some of my fun new flavors, which has the added bonus of making me want to cook more. I have some ideas, people. You should probably be a little scared.

Lost Bread

A Facebook friend asked me about the French Toast bagels, wondering if they were too mushy on the sliced edges. This made me realize that I forgot, entirely, to talk about the process and the results of French Toasterizing (yes, I’m going with that as a word) the bagels. I was really tired yesterday. Sorry about that.

While the inspiration for my bagel French Toast has local-ish roots (biscuit French Toast, people; I don’t know if it’s going to be around forever, and it’s an in-store item only, so you have to go to the Denver Biscuit Company proper and not just stalk follow the Biscuit Bus), the actual origin of French Toast is kind of interesting. According to Wikipedia, pain perdu is first mentioned in a collection of recipes dating back to the 4th or 5th centuries. It’s an economical way of using up stale bread (“pain perdu” translates as “lost bread’). Take slightly stale bread (or biscuits or bagels), dunk it in milk, cook for a little while, et voilà—previously hard, crusty, not very tasty bread is a delicious treat.

So when I decided to use bagels for this, I made sure the bagels were stale. I’d bought them on Friday, stored them overnight, we ate more of them on Saturday, and when there were still a couple left over, I decided to give this a try. Being slightly stale means that they didn’t soak up too much of the milk; I also mitigated that by only dunking the “exposed sides,” if you will, for a few seconds (maybe 5–10), whereas I left the outer edges in the milk mixture for closer to 45 seconds. There’s no rhyme or reason to the timing; I just thought it seemed a good idea to let the crusty side soak a little longer. Next time, I’d probably let it go even longer, or perhaps very thinly slice off the outer crust, as even with the longer soaking time and slightly longer cooking times, the outside edges were kind of tough and chewy.

With your usual bread slices of French Toast, you don’t have to wait for the bread to get stale, though you probably wouldn’t want to dunk the slices for very long. But if your bread’s been sitting in the fridge a little too long and has become a little bit stale, making French Toast is a great way to use it up and have a delicious treat at the same time. I don’t know that I would try this with fresh bagels, as the middle parts might just get too mushy.