I LOVE bread. Never once did I think I cold ever do one of those low-carb diets. It simply is not in my DNA. I NEED unrefined, processed, bleached flour. Preferably with butter. Unfortunately my efforts to make bread haven’t been very successful. It is not from a lack of trying, but if I do end up with a worthwhile product, often times I can’t honestly say it was worth the effort. I mean really – you can pick up a good loaf of bread at most grocery stores now days with zero effort. All this has changed now with this recipe…
Seriously, it takes TIME (you know the dough rising and all that), but in terms of actual hands on time, it is maybe ten minutes for the whole recipe. You dump everything in your mixer, let it mix for a few minutes, then let it rise, covered with a cloth overnight (in the same bowl – no transferring the dough to an oiled bowl or anything). The next morning shape it into a loaf, let it rise for one hour and then pop it in the oven for thirty minutes. Voila! Crusty, warm, homemade bread. Delicious!
Country Bread
Adapted from King Arthur’s Flour
Ingredients
1 1/2 cups water (temperature doesn’t matter, you don’t need to proof the yeast – LOVE THIS!)
2 1/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 cup ground flax (if you don’t have this, just up the whole wheat flour up by another 1/4 cup)
1 1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. active dry yeast
Directions
Stir together all of the ingredients in a stand mixer with the dough hook. The dough will come away from the sides of the bowl and look like this:
Cover the bowl with plastic wrap or a cloth and let it rest overnight or for at least 8 hours.
Turn the dough onto a lightly floured surface and shape it into the loaf shape of your choosing on lightly greased sheet pan. Let the dough rise for 1 hour. It will look like this:
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees and bake for about 25-30 minutes until the bread is golden brown. That’s it – how easy was that?!
I woke up on Saturday morning with this ridiculous urge for donuts – homemade donuts. Fresh, hot and right out of the oil. I couldn’t resist the urge and dug up an old recipe for some Zeppole, that are known as italian donuts.
I love this recipe because there is no rolling and they go straight from your saucepan to the hot oil without the mess of a rolling pin or a floured board. The result is a light, airy donut, zeppole, whatever you want to call it. To me and my family they are just fabulous. Unfortunately for my husband, he was golfing Saturday morning and there was only one left when he got home. Maybe next Saturday he will be around to enjoy some straight out of the oil…
Saturday Morning Donuts
Ingredients
3 tablespoons granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup butter
1 cup water
1 1/4 cups sifted all-purpose flour
3 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Cottonseed or vegetable oil for frying*
Cinnamon Sugar (1/4 cup sugar plus 1 T cinnamon) or Powdered sugar for Dusting
In a heavy 2-quart saucepan (non-stick), combine sugar, salt, butter, and 1 cup water. Bring to boiling: butter will melt. Quickly add flour all at once; beat with wooden spoon until flour is moistened. Cook over medium heat, beating vigorously until dough forms a ball and leaves side of pan. Remove from heat.
Add eggs, one at a time, beating with electric mixer at medium speed after each addition. Continue beating until the mixture is smooth, shiny and satiny and forms strands that break apart. It should hold its shape when beater is slowly raised. Beat in vanilla. Dough should be fairly stiff, but sticky.
In electric skillet or large, heavy skillet, heat 1 to 2-inches of oil to 375°F (185°C) on deep frying thermometer. Using a small ice-cream scooper or 2 small spoons, carefully drop about a tablespoon of the dough into the hot oil, frying in batches. Turn the donuts once or twice, cooking until golden and puffed up, about 3-4 minutes. Drain on paper towels. Toss with cinnamon-sugar or powdered sugar. Arrange on a platter and serve immediately.
I love a delicious cookie that I can whip up in a snap. Even more important with recipes like this is knowing that I will always have the ingredients on hand. Such is the case with my favorite shortbread recipe. Not only is it easy, but the recipe is incredibly versatile. In this version I combined chocolate and rosemary, however you could also switch it up by omitting the rosemary all together or using white chocolate. Some orange zest would be amazing as well. Ooooh, I may try that one nex time.
Chocolate Rosemary Shortbread
adapted from Melissa D’Arrabian
Ingredients
1/2 cup unsalted butter (1 stick), softened to room temperature
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon fresh rosemary, very finely minced
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/3 cup mini chocolate chips
Directions
Preheat the oven to 300 degrees F. Cream the butter with sugar using a handheld mixer. Mix in the rosemary, salt, and flour, 1/4 cup at a time. Sprinkle in the chocolate chips, and stir by hand until well-distributed. Gather the dough into a ball. Cook’s Note: If the dough begins to soften or feel greasy, chill the dough for 15 minutes.
Roll the dough out into a rectangle of 1/2-inch thickness and cut into rectangles about 1/2-inch by 2-inch. Place the dough on a cold ungreased baking sheet. Prick the top with a fork. Bake the shortbread for 25 minutes, or until the dough starts to turn a golden color. Remove the shortbread from the baking sheet and let cool completely on a rack.
Growing up my mom stayed at home and I have many fond memories of walking into a house that smelled of fresh baked cookies. There was a sense of peace I got everytime I walked into the house after school that I will never forget.
Several decades later I like to do the same for my boys. My youngest sons favorite is the standard chocolate chip cookie with both chocolate chips and M&M’s. However, my oldest son enjoys the Almond Roca cookies that I am going to share with you. Not only are these delicious, but they are easy, quick and only have a handful of ingredients.
Almond Roca Cookies
Ingredients
1 sleeve of graham crackers (you may not use all of them)
1 cup butter
1 cup brown sugar
1 t. pure vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups chocolate chips (I use milk chocolate, but use whatever variety you like
1/2 cup chopped, toasted almonds
Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Spray a 9″x9″ with non-stick cooking spray and line the pan with graham crackers. Set aside.
In a sauce pan melt the butter and brown sugar on medium heat and cook until the butter and brown sugar have melted together and the mixture is bubbly. This should take around 7 minutes. When mixture is bubbly pour over graham crackers and put in the oven. Bake for 10 minutes.
When you remove the cookies, the mixture you should be bubbly. As soon as you remove the cookies from the oven, sprinkle with chocolate chips. Wait a few minutes and spread the chocolate evenly over the butter/brown sugar mixture and sprinkle with almonds.
There is this amazing honey roasted peanut butter at Whole Foods. It is in their bulk foods section and there is this machine where you flip the switch and fresh peanuts go in and out comes fresh, honey-roasted peanut butter. I love peanut butter, but this kind is so amazingly delicious. It also happens to be something I always forget about when I am at Whole Foods. Don’t you just hate that!? During certain times of the month I have been known to make a special trip to pick some up, but with kids, the house, the pets, the husband, and just life in general, I am not always able to make a special trip when the craving calls.
Today was one such day…only instead of being at Whole Foods, I was at Trader Joe’s. Now although Trader Joe’s doesn’t sell (at least to my knowledge) honey-roasted peanut butter, they do have these scrumptious honey roasted peanuts. They are large nuts and a perfect combination of sweet and salty. I’ve seen the machine at Whole Foods take the nuts and spit out decadent peanut butter, so I thought, “How hard could it be?” Well, the answer is not hard at all. I did have to add a little canola oil to moisten the mixture a bit, which I am sure had to do with me and not the nuts, but I got a great result and something that will certainly work just as well as the Whole Foods variety when the craving strikes.
Honey Roasted Peanut Butter (yields 1/2 cup approximately)
Ingredients
2 cups honey roasted peanuts
1 – 2 T. canola oil
Directions
Place the peanuts into a food processor and process until as smooth as you can get it. I pulsed mine for about a minute total, stopping to make sure that the mixture that had stuck to the side of the bowl was reincorporated into the mixture. Add a tablespoon of canola oil in at a time until you reach the consistency you like.
