A Gilt Nutmeg

There’s nothing better than waking up to the smell of fresh baked muffins.  While most muffins have that wonderful warm, bready-cakey scent, these particular muffins are even more wonderful because the scent of sweet honey will linger throughout your house as well.

They’re a snap to whip up for a quick breakfast and make for a great muffin to grab on the way out the door.  I left them in a bowl on the kitchen table and every day would come home to find one or two missing, as The Boyfriend and The Roommate kept snatching them to eat on the way to work!

Honey Muffins
Yields 12 muffins
From Taste of Home

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 3 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 egg
• 1 cup milk
• 1/4 cup butter, melted
• 1/4 cup honey

1. Heat oven to 400 degrees.  Grease a muffin pan or line it with cupcake papers.
2. In a large bowl, stir together the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt until thoroughly combined.
3. In a separate bowl, stir together the egg, milk, butter and honey until thoroughly combined.
4. Add the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and stir just until you don’t see any streaks of dry ingredients anymore.
5. Divide the batter evenly amongst the 12 muffin cups in the prepared pan and bake for about 15 minutes, until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.
6. Serve warm with butter and enjoy!

 A few weeks ago, my roommate told me her favorite brunch food was a Dutch Baby.  Knockawhat??  I did a double take and asked her to repeat what she just said.  I then took to the internet to make sure she wasn’t importing small children from the Netherlands to eat and instead discovered what is now one of my all time favorite breakfast/brunch items to make because a) it’s incredibly easy and b) it’s also pretty much one of the most impressive things you could possibly put on a table in front of guests, not to mention one of the most tasty.

To put it in simplest terms, a Dutch Baby is a cross between a pancake and a popover.  It’s the size of a very large pancake but it’s eggy and puffy from steam in the batter just like a popover.  The difference is that in this case the batter is sweetened or spiced and instead of serving it with Sunday Pot Roast, it’s sprinkled with sugar and spritzed with fresh lemon juice.

The reason we were even discussing Dutch Babies in the first place was because my roommate was complaining that they were hard to come by in restaurants.  I promised her I would make one for her soon and last weekend we all gathered on the floor around the coffee table and had our first Apartment 5 Dutch Baby.  Like I said, it was so easy and so deliciously sweet and tart that I’m sure it won’t be long before another one graces our brunch table–and I’ll be counting down the days until it does.

Lemon Sugar Dutch Baby
Adapted from Gourmet
Serves 4

So I have to admit something to you: these hot cross buns for Good Friday this week didn’t turn out the way I had hoped.  And since this blog is supposed to be inspirational, I want you to know that it’s okay to mess up in the kitchen as long as it’s in the spirit of trying something new.  For some reason, my cooking nemesis is yeasted bread and rolls (and meringue, but we’re slowly, cautiously becoming friends) and I will not give up until I get it right.  I don’t know what the problem is, be it too much flour or not enough flour or rising temperature or sub-par kneading skills, but my bread almost always turns out heavy and dense.  The only yeasty bread item I’ve ever made to satisfactory standards (and delicious standards) was my Fat Tuesday King Cake.  Once I save up a few pennies, I think I’m going to take a class on yeast breads just to make sure I understand the proper technique .

At least with these buns, I know what a big part of the problem was–I was softening butter in the microwave and completely forgot to take it out and add it to the dough.  Oops.  Oh well.  I also don’t have a stand mixer or bread machine so I may not have kneaded long enough.

I’ve posted the original recipe from King Arthur Flour below for you to try yourself.  I will say that, though the texture wasn’t right (again, my fault), the flavor is delicious.  Instead of raisins, currants, and all the extra dried fruit, I stuck to just a 1/2 cup (I made a half-recipe) of rum-soaked dried cranberries; it went beautifully with the spices in the buns and the whole house smelled like my favorite tiki bar– the scent of spiced rum was hanging in the air in an exotic way.  The boyfriend admitted these buns weren’t my best effort, but then he ate three of them, so I clearly got SOMEthing right and I think it was those flavors.

Hot Cross Buns

Adapted from King Arthur Flour

Makes 12-14 buns

• 1/4 cup dark rum (or apple juice)
• 1/2 – 3/4 cup dried cranberries
• 1 1/4 cups milk, room temperature
• 3 large eggs, 1 separated
• 6 tablespoons butter, room temperature
• 2 teaspoons instant yeast
• 1/4 cup light brown sugar, firmly packed
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1 3/4 teaspoons salt
• 1 Tablespoon baking powder
• 4 1/2 cups flour

Glaze

• 1 tablespoon of milk + the egg white from the egg separated above

Icing

• 1 cup + 2 Tablespoons confectioners’ sugar
• pinch of salt
• 4 teaspoons milk, or “enough to make a thick, pipeable icing”

1. Lightly grease a  9 x 13″ pan.
2. Put the rum and cranberries in a bowl and let them soak for about a half hour.  If you don’t have the time to wait, put them in the microwave for about a minute and then let them cool before adding them to the dough.
3. Mix together the rest of the bread ingredients except for the fruit and knead in a stand mixer or bread machine until soft and elastic.
4. Add the cranberries and any rum that wasn’t soaked up to the dough and mix until incorporated.
5. Let the dough rise for an hour.  KAF warns, “It should become puffy, though may not double in bulk.”
6. Divide the dough into 12-14 billiard ball sized pieces and arrange in the prepared pan.
7. Let them rise for another hour, until the balls are touching.  Preheat the oven to 375 degrees in the meantime.
8. Whisk together the tablespoon of milk and the egg white and brush over the buns before baking.  Bake for 20 minutes until golden brown; let cool on a wire rack.
9. Whisk together the icing ingredients and pipe them into crosses over each bun.  Enjoy!

A true testament to this recipe:  I made it two days ago and ever since have been desperately craving another slice.  I will admit right off, as I was wrapping up the bread after it cooled, I was thinking, “how on earth can this be good?  It just seems so dense and unappetizing…”  but the next day I sliced it and toasted it and spread it with butter and my plum jam and ohmigoodness.

It’s certainly not a light airy French bread, but what I thought was totally dense and unappealing (even after slicing it and dubiously putting it in the toaster), ended up being perfectly chewy and crispy and craggy in all the right places, just like an English muffin.  And like I said, I can’t stop craving it!  It comes together with minimal effort and barely any dirty dishes, so that’s always a plus in my book.  A nice toasted slice with fruit or honey on top would be perfect for a weekend spring morning, sitting in the sunshine and listening to the birds chatter (at least that’s how I envision a perfect morning…).

English Muffin Bread
Adapted from One Good Thing
Makes 2 loaves

• coarse corn meal for dusting the pans
• 2 3/4 cup warm water (105-110 degrees)
• 1 1/2 packages rapid rise yeast
• 1 Tablespoon salt
• 1 1/2 Tablespoons sugar
• 5 1/2 cups flour
• 2 tablespoons melted butter to brush on loaves later

1. Spray two loaf pans with non-stick baking spray and dust the insides with coarse cornmeal (just like a real English muffin!).  Shake the pan around until evenly coated as best you can get it, then dump the excess out.
2. In a large bowl, combine all of the remaining ingredients except for the butter and mix just barely until all of the ingredients are combined.  (Jillee of One Good Thing showed a picture of her batter and it was very very sticky, much stickier than mine, so don’t worry if it’s sticky–don’t add extra flour)
3. Divide the batter-dough between the loaf pans and use a spatula to smooth out the surface.
4. Preheat your oven now to 350 degrees, or later depending on how long it takes for your oven to heat.  Place the loaf pans in a warmish spot in your kitchen, cover with a kitchen towel, and let the dough rise until it reaches the top of the loaf pans.  This took about an hour and 20 minutes for me.
5. Bake the loaves for 35 minutes, brush the top of the loaves with the melted butter, and bake for another 5-10 minutes until the tops are perfectly golden brown.
6. Take the loaves out of their pans and let them cool on a wire rack.  Resist the urge to slice and eat them now; allow them to cool 100% completely.
7. When ready to eat, slice thickly and toast.  Top with butter, jam, honey, fruit, whatever sounds good to you, and enjoy!

Blackberries…Cake…Breakfast….I think that The Boyfriend has never heard a more delightful combination of three of his favorite words in the same phrase.  Needless to say, this was an absolute hit.  It was a little more light, airy, and crumbly than normal cake, which must be why it’s called “breakfast cake”, since it really lent itself to being paired with other hearty breakfast items (like the phenomenal Baked Eggs Benedict my dear friend Anna made) without being overbearing and too filling.

The recipe I found on The Dainty Chef (via Pinterest) uses blueberries and my intention was to do the same until I went to the store and was faced with a sign declaring “Buy one carton of fresh blackberries, get TWO free”.  I don’t even like blackberries, but it was such a crazy deal that I still bought them, hoping maybe The Boyfriend would eat them, since I know he enjoys them.  I think they really went perfect with the cake recipe; because the berries are so big and there are so many of them, the cake ends up delicate and full of berry flavor in every bite.  If berries are showing up in your market, jump on this recipe right now!  If not, promise me you’ll tuck it away to try this summer the instant you spot any kind of berry.

Buttermilk Blackberry Breakfast Cake

Adapted from The Dainty Chef

• ½ cup unsalted butter, room temperature
• 2 tsp. lemon zest or more — zest from 1 large lemon
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 egg, room temperature
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 2 cups flour
• 2 tsp. baking powder
• 1 tsp. kosher salt
• 2 containers of fresh blackberries or other berries (I’m referring to the small flat containers my grocery store offers blackberries in.  You want at least 2 cups of berries, whatever you choose)
• ½ cup buttermilk
• extra sugar for sprinkling

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees and grease a 9X9 inch baking pan.
2. Cream the butter with lemon zest and sugar for 2-3 minutes.
3. Add the egg and vanilla, beating until combined.
4. Whisk together flour, baking powder and salt in a separate small bowl.
5. Mix a little of the flour mixture into the butter and sugar mixture, then a little of the buttermilk, combining thoroughly each time and continuing to alternate between the two until everything is mixed in.
6. Gently fold the blackberries in to the mixture.
7. Spread the batter into the prepared baking pan and bake.  Dainty Chef said to bake 35-45 minutes, but I think I let mine in for closer to an hour or even a little more.  It could be because I was in a strange mountain cabin with an oven I’m not used to, but I definitely went way beyond 35 minutes.
8. Let cool for 15 minutes and enjoy!  It would be great with whipped cream if you want to eat just that, but eggs and bacon are perfect too!

I think I’ve found my new favorite breakfast–so easy to put together the night before, so the next morning practically all you have to do is throw it in the oven.  Not to even mention that it’s French toast.  And what’s more, it’s French toast that is so perfectly sweet and crunchy and custard-like in different places that to drench this in overly saccharine maple syrup would just be a crime!

I’m posting it now in case you don’t have anything planned for breakfast on Christmas morning, but really this recipe is great for any time of the year when you have guests (or not) and want a deliciously impressive breakfast that doesn’t take much effort at all in the morning.  I admit, the recipe uses canned peaches, which I feel is breaking some sort of “I’m-a-food-blogger-so-I-grind-my-own-wheat-for-flour” rule, but it just makes the recipe that much simpler and it means you’re not forced to wait until summer time to make it!

That said, I absolutely cannot wait until summer time to try this recipe with all the fresh fruits of the season–fresh blueberries and peaches, strawberries, raspberries…the possibilities are endless!  T-minus 5 months and counting…

Peaches & Cream French Toast
Serves 6
Adapted from All You via My Recipes

• 1 8-oz. loaf French bread, sliced (I found a 16 oz loaf at Trader Joe’s, it’s just a half
• 8 large eggs
• 2 cups whole milk
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 cans (15-oz.) sliced peaches packed in juice (not in syrup!), drained
• 1/2 cup dark brown sugar (I think I used more like 3/4 cup, though)
• plenty of cinnamon for sprinkling
• 1/2 cup heavy cream

1. There are two different approaches to arranging this recipe.  If you use a 9×13 glass baking dish, you’ll be overlapping your bread slices, which is what the original recipe calls for, which I imagine will give an over all more custardy-creamy texture.  I was at a friend’s house and didn’t have a dish like this available so I just found whatever oven-safe dishes I could scrounge up and laid the bread out flat in each dish (as in the photo).  I suspect this is how we got such a great crunch on the edges.  You can use whatever technique will give you your desired results (or just what will fit your dishes!).
2. In a large bowl, whisk together eggs, milk, sugar and vanilla until well combined and pour the mixture evenly over the bread slices, then sprinkle the slices with cinnamon.
3. Drain the cans of peaches and arrange peach slices on top of the bread, then sprinkle another round of cinnamon on top.
4. Cover the dishes with saran wrap or tin foil and refrigerate overnight, for at least 8 hours (this allows the bread to soak up all the egg mixture).
5. The next morning, preheat the oven to 350 degrees and pull the dishes out of the fridge and let them sit on the counter for 30 minutes (don’t worry, you have stuff to do while it warms up).
6. Pour the 1/2 cup of heavy cream into a small saucepan and bring to a boil.  Let it boil for 10 minutes until it is reduced to half.  I was worried that it wasn’t going to be enough cream, but you really just want enough to drizzle over the peaches, so it was just the right amount.
7. Sprinkle the brown sugar over the top of the peaches and drizzle the cream over the peaches.
8. Let the dishes bake for about 50 minutes.  I kept checking mine and probably let it go an extra 10-15 minutes so that it was extra crunchy and golden brown along the edges.
9. Let it sit for 10 minutes before serving and enjoy!  Like I mentioned before, it doesn’t even need syrup for it’s just the right amount of sweetness already.  My dear friend Anna made some eggs to go with it and served some extra fruit on the side and it was the perfect breakfast.

Snowy weather in the forecast would always mean what my family called “French Toast” weather. This is because everyone would rush to the store to buy milk, eggs and bread, and what else can you make with milk, eggs and bread, but French toast? Well today was a “Sausage and Biscuits” kind of day. Now that Thanksgiving is over, I was taking stock of what was in my fridge besides leftovers and found half a package of sausage (the other half was used for stuffing), a half used gallon of milk (used for the turkey gravy and other assorted baked goods), and a carton of buttermilk (bought one too many cartons for brining the turkey). There’s only one thing I can think of to be made with sausage, milk, and buttermilk and, despite the last time I tried making them being a complete failure, I can finally call myself a proper Southern cook: after all these years, I have finally mastered biscuits and sausage gravy that taste just like home.

I’ve always been too impatient in the kitchen and would often end up with basically inedible lumpy gravy. Worse, instead of big lumps of flour, I would whisk so vigorously that my gravy would have millions of tiny lumps that were absolutely impossible to get rid of and extremely unpleasant to look at. Wondra Flour helped me avoid those lumps but then Wondra failed me (I think the canister was finally too old) and I realized I was going to have to learn without any cheats. The secret isn’t necessarily patience; it’s just all in the technique…

First, you should have some sort of liquefied fat in the pan, be it drippings from the meat or melted butter if your meat didn’t give off enough drippings. Second, add flour, a tablespoon at a time, until you have a paste (called a roux) in the pan. The paste will turn golden brown the longer you cook it (a dark roux is always the start to a good gumbo). Third, instead of just dumping milk in and hoping to stir it to smoothness, add the milk, a splash at a time, whisking until the paste fully absorbs the milk each time. As you continue to do this splash by splash, the paste will start to look more like a dough, and later still, more like a thick batter. Finally after all the milk is incorporated, you’ll end up with gravy that looks and tastes like perfection and without a gross clump of flour in sight. It’s a little confusing going from a liquid in the pan, to a paste, and slowly bringing it back to liquid again, but it’s exactly the trick to perfect gravy every time.

The biscuits are buttermilk biscuits from the author of my new favorite cookbook, Sarabeth’s Bakery by Sarabeth Levine. It had been on my wish list for ages and I found it at Borders during their closing sale (there may have been tears shed on my part) for 50% off. Borders’ untimely demise, while terribly sad, brought me what is likely going to be one of the most treasured cookbooks to ever grace my shelf.

Southern Sausage Gravy & Buttermilk Biscuits
Buttermilk Biscuits adapted from Sarabeth’s Bakery
Sausage Gravy is my own recipe
Yields 4 single servings or 2 servings for 2 hungry breakfasters, plus extra biscuits

Gravy

• ½ tube of country sausage (like Jimmy Dean)
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 3 tablespoons flour
• 1 ½ cups milk
• Up to ½ teaspoon salt
• Fresh ground pepper

Biscuits

• 1 5/8 cups flour (I measured out 1 ½ cups and then filled my ¼ cup measuring cup just about half way)
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 3 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• Pinch of salt
• 6 tablespoons chilled unsalted butter, cut into cubes
• ¾ cups buttermilk

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees and cover a baking sheet with parchment paper.
2. Set sausage cooking in a pan over low-medium heat. I like to keep it low so that by the time I get the biscuits in the oven, the sausage is almost ready and I didn’t have to worry about it burning. Also, one of those round mesh screens that you lay across your pan is very nice to have in this case, so you don’t have grease splattering all over your stove while your back is turned.
3. Sift the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt into the bowl of a food processor. Scatter the cubed butter around the bowl and pulse the processor until the mixture looks like coarse meal.
4. Instead of pulsing, turn the processor on and drizzle the buttermilk through the open feed tube. Continue processing just until the dough forms into one or two large balls, which won’t take too long.
5. Lightly flour a surface and turn the dough out onto it. Knead the dough just a few times to bring it together, sprinkle flour on top of the dough, and roll it with a rolling pin just until ¾” thick (this is SUPER thick—I admit I rolled mine just a little and measured it and realized it was already 1/2” thick so I had to fold it over and roll it out again, which breaks Sarabeth’s “handle this dough as little as possible” rule).
6. Cut the biscuits with a round biscuit cutter, about 2” wide. Sara warns you can gather up the scraps and re-roll them out once, but not a second time or else you’ll be over-handling the dough which results in tough biscuits. Cutting the initial batch and then re-rolling the scraps just the one time gave me 7 biscuits.
7. Bake the biscuits for 15-18 minutes, until golden brown on top. And while the biscuits are baking…
8. Once the sausage is fully cooked, transfer the sausage to a separate bowl, leaving as much of the sausage grease behind in the pan as you can (gross sounding, but oh so delicious). My sausage didn’t leave behind much grease, so I added 2 tablespoons of butter to melt in the pan. If your sausage gave off a lot of grease, you can use less butter.
9. Turn the heat to low and add the flour to the fat in the pan, one tablespoon at a time, whisking thoroughly after each tablespoon until a thick paste is formed. It will darken quickly if your heat is too high.
10. Add the milk to the pan, one splash at a time, whisking thoroughly after each addition until the paste has fully absorbed the liquid. After all the milk has been added, you may notice that your gravy is a little thin, but this is fine since the gravy will thicken up as it simmers.
11. Add the sausage back to the gravy and add the salt (to taste) and plenty of fresh ground pepper. Let the gravy simmer on the stove for at least 5 minutes until it thickens up a bit and reaches a consistency to your liking. (The biscuits are probably out of the oven by now)
12. Split a hot biscuit in half and place the top and bottom halves on a plate with the insides facing up. Top with hot sausage gravy and serve immediately to your hungry Southern breakfasters!

I’m not sure if there is a cuter idea out there than cinnamon rolls baked as if they were cupcakes and I’ve been dying to try this from the moment I saw them on Pinterest!  While I love a big gooey messy cinnamon roll that you have to eat with a fork and knife just as much as the next person, there was something so quaint and wonderful by being able to peel the wrapper off just like a cupcake and eat it out of my hand.  I would imagine these being great for brunches or breakfasts with kids around so you can just hand them a roll and send them on their way.

They’re certainly not for the completely novice baker, as they have a lot of steps involved, but if they weren’t doable, I wouldn’t be posting it for you try, so get in that kitchen!

The best part about these rolls is that you don’t have to wake up at 4:00 in the morning in order to have fresh-baked cinnamon buns in the morning–I’ve included instructions for par-baking, which means baking the rolls just until they’re set, but not golden brown and perfect yet.  Then you can just throw them into the freezer until you’re ready for them, move them to the fridge the night before, and then just pop in the oven the next morning for ten minutes.  Only 10 minutes to an amazing, cinnamon-y, sweet, delicious breakfast!

Buns:

• 1 cup warm milk
• 2 eggs, room temperature
• 1/3 cup butter, melted
• 4 1/2 cups bread flour or regular flour (bread flour makes for a lighter cinnamon roll)
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1 pkg yeast (1/4 ounce)

Filling:

• 1 cup brown sugar, packed
• 2 1/2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
• 1/3 cup butter, softened

Icing:

• 8 oz cream cheese, softened
• 1/4 cup (4 tablespoons) butter, softened
• 1 1/2 cups confectioners’ sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/8 teaspoon salt

1. Microwave milk for 30-40 seconds in the microwave (you want milk to be about 110 degrees). Dissolve yeast in warm milk in a large bowl.
2. Add sugar, butter, salt, eggs, and flour; mix well.
3. Knead dough into a large ball, using your hands dusted lightly with flour. Put in a bowl sprayed with cooking spray and cover tightly with plastic wrap. Let rise in a warm place about 1 hour or until dough has doubled in size; line 2 cupcake tins with cupcake liners and lightly spray the cupcake liners with baking spray.
4. In a small bowl, thoroughly combine brown sugar and cinnamon.
5. Sprinkle flour on the surface you’re going to roll the dough on.  Roll dough into a 16×21 inch rectangle about 1/4 inch thick. Spread dough with 1/3 cup softened butter (if your butter isn’t soft enough at this point, put it in a bowl and smear it around in the bowl with a wooden spoon until you can whip the spoon around through the butter) (other note: I used an offset spatula for spreading the butter and it was the PERFECT tool for the job).
6. Sprinkle buttered dough evenly with sugar/cinnamon mixture. Roll up dough starting with the longer side and cut into 24 evenly sized rolls–to ensure even slices I just keep dividing each portion in halves or thirds (if you’re just doing normal rolls and not cupcake-style, cutting into 12 pieces is preferable)
7. You’ll likely need to un-roll and re-roll the buns to fit in each of the cupcake lined spots.  Or, if you’re not in the mood for the cupcake-style, arrange the rolls in a lightly greased 9×13 inch glass baking dish.
8. Cover and let rise until nearly doubled, about 30 minutes; in the meantime preheat oven to 350 degrees.
9. If serving immediately, bake the cinnamon rolls for 15-20 minutes until golden brown.  If par-baking the cinnamon rolls to freeze for a later date, bake for 10 minutes until mostly baked but not browned.  Pull the buns out and let them cool completely before wrapping them tightly in saran wrap and tin foil and putting in the freezer.  The night before serving the rolls, unwrap them and put them in the fridge overnight to defrost.  The next morning, preheat oven to 350 degrees and bake for approximately 10 minutes until soft and golden brown.
10. While in the oven, beat together cream cheese, butter, confectioners’ sugar, vanilla extract and salt. Spread frosting on while they are still warm so that the frosting melts into the roll.

Who on earth thought you could make doughnuts at home?  I always just thought they were something that magically appeared in boxes labeled “Krispy Kreme” on Sunday mornings.  Even once I actually went to a Krispy Kreme store and saw the factory machine churning out glazed doughnuts, it still felt more like a Disneyland attraction than actually connecting in my brain as the creation of food I was about to eat, much less food that I might be able to make at home myself.

I can’t remember how I came across this recipe on a great blog, Not So Humble Pie, for French crullers, but I do know that something struck me about this recipe.  It was the first recipe for doughnuts that I came across that I actually felt I could make at home.  Bonus: Crullers are the healthiest doughnut you can enjoy because they’re so airy which means fewer calories.

As always a few notes before beginning:  you’ll need a pastry bag with a star tip.  I bought a little kit for $5 from Sur la Table–50 disposable pastry bags and 3 plastic tips, including a star tip.  The recipe says to let the doughnuts cool before glazing them.  Truthfully, I think the texture was much better when they were still warm, so I would advise you have the glaze ready to go before you start frying up the doughnuts (just whisk briefly if it starts to harden up).  If your honey has been sitting on the shelf for too long like mine had, 20 seconds or so in the microwave will liquidize it again.  Finally, this recipe is certainly a long process the first time you give it a go, so don’t plan on having these ready before the rest of the household wakes up.  Go into it knowing that and you can have them good to go for a nice brunch.

French Cruller Doughnuts with Maple Vanilla Bean Glaze
Adapted from Doughnuts: Simple and Delicious Recipes to Make at Home via Not So Humble Pie

• 1 cup water
• 6 tablespoons butter, cubed
• 2 teaspoons sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup flour, sifted
• 3 large eggs
• 2 large egg whites
• vegetable oil for frying
• 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar, sifted
• 1 tablespoon honey
• 1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste or vanilla extract
• 3 tablespoons milk

1. Mix butter, sugar, salt and water in a medium sauce pan and to a rapid boil.
2. Have a wooden spoon in hand and be ready because this next step goes quickly: add the flour to the pot of boiling mixture, stirring like crazy to make sure the flour is fully incorporated.  It will go from liquid to dough almost instantly.  Keep stirring and mushing it around the bottom of the pot for about 4 to 5 more minutes.  You’re going to get a film coating the bottom of your pot, but it’ll clean up easy later.  Not So Humble Pie pointed out the reasoning is to remove as much moisture as possible so the pastry is lighter than air so cook until there is no steam coming from the pastry any more.
3. Transfer the pastry to a mixing bowl and beat it with your electric mixer for a minute or so to cool it off, then beat in the eggs one at a time, making sure the egg is completely incorporated before adding the next.
4. The amount of egg white you add will change with each recipe.  You want to add enough egg white to make the batter glossy (egg white will make the doughnuts light and airy later).  Add too much egg white and the dough will be too soft and the pretty piping won’t hold and your doughnuts will be flat.  Truthfully, I just added both egg whites and didn’t worry about it and my doughnuts ‘wilted’ just a little.
5. Cut out four 3″ squares of parchment paper (we’ll be reusing them) and lightly grease them.
6. Heat 2″ of oil to 375 degrees.  Keep your instant thermometer in the oil the whole time so you can keep a close eye on the temperature and keep it as close to 375 as you can.  Also, don’t get impatient and just crank up the heat to get the oil hotter faster–once it reached 375 I turned down the flame, but it kept soaring up past 400 and I just had to wait for it to cool down again.
7. While the oil is heating, line a table with a stack of paper towels and set out a wire cooling rack.  Also, whip up the glaze by mixing the powdered sugar, vanilla, honey, and adding 3 tablespoons of milk.  If the glaze is not pourable, add one more tablespoon of milk.
8. Back with the doughnuts, fill a pastry bag fitted with a star tip with the dough and pipe it into a ring shape on each square of greased parchment paper.
9. Once the oil is hot enough, take one square of paper and gently drop it into the oil, doughnut side down.  The paper will magically unstick and float off the doughnut in just a few seconds; use tongs to pick it up out of the oil and let it drain on the paper towel lined plate.  Fry the dougnut for a few minutes on each side–they should be a deep golden brown color all over.  Transfer completed doughnuts to paper towel lined plate and then over to the cooling rack while you finish the others.
10. Luckily, you won’t have to grease the squares again, considering they’ve been sitting in a vat of hot oil.  Continue piping rings of doughnut dough onto the squares and frying them until you’re out of dough.
11. Glaze the doughnuts by flipping them upside down and dipping them in the glaze.  Set them back on the drying rack with some paper towels underneath so that the glaze doesn’t drip all over your table!  Let the glaze dry a little and then enjoy!

Every fall I eagerly await apple season: it means apple juice, apple sauce, and caramel apples (never mind the fact that I’m actually allergic to apples…I just pretend like I’m not).  My favorite of all apple treats though, is apple butter.  But looking at the calendar, it’s in the middle of summertime and apple butter time isn’t even close!  That said, summertime is a cook’s dream because of the wide variety of fresh produce available.   So instead of whining about apple butter not being in season, why not take summer’s best fruits and make them into fruit butter instead??  And thus, plum butter was born.

Deliciously tart, a little sweet and a little spicy, plum butter is one of my new favorite ways to wake up on a summer morning.

Because I brought my batch of plum butter to an event in Venice and since there would be no refrigeration, I had to go through the canning process to ensure the people taking home my plum butter wouldn’t keel over with botulism.  That said, while hot and steamy for sure, the canning process is really not the big deal everyone makes it out to be.  Three easy steps:  1) heat the jars in water so they don’t break when you put hot food in them 2) fill with food 3) boil the jars for 5 minutes and then turn off the burner and let the water cool for 5 minutes before taking the jars out of the water.  Seriously, that’s it.  I couldn’t believe it either!

Even better news: if the plum butter isn’t leaving your house and you’re planning on eating it within a few weeks, then all you need to do is stick it in the fridge and call it good.  No steamy canning needed!  If you want to make a lot and store it in your pantry, then canning is necessary.  Truthfully, I haven’t tried freezing it yet, but I bet that would be a great option if you have just an extra jar or two but don’t want to go through the canning process.  Anyone out there who tries it, let me know!  So now, without further ado…summer’s finest at it’s most concentrated deliciousness.

Note: I made two batches of butter, one in my cast iron Le Creuset and the other in my normal stainless steel cookware.  The batch made in my Le Creuset thickened much faster than the one in my stainless steel pot.  I highly suggest using a cast iron pot if you have it.

Also Note: The canning instructions I wrote out below are for sea level altitude, since I’m right here on the coast.  Apparently boiling times are longer for higher altitudes.  Of course, I am no canning expert, this being my first time, so definitely consult the instructions that come with your new tray of canning jars!

Plum Butter
makes about 4 cups
adapted from Martha Stewart

• 3 1/2 lbs plums (I used the larger black plums instead of red plums)
• 1 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 cup water
• 3/4 teaspoon cardamom
• 3/4 teaspoon cinnamon

1. Dice plums into approximately 1″ pieces (about 8 pieces per half) and discard pits
2. Put plums, sugar, and water into 6 qt pot, bring to a boil then reduce to a simmer (I forgot what I was doing and it boiled over, just fyi, it could happen to you); cook until fruit is very soft, approx 20 minutes
3. Puree contents of pot in blender.  I used a food processor, which worked fine, but it is not liquid tight and I certainly had to wipe down the base of the processor after it a all said and done because some of the puree had worked its way up up under the blade and out underneath the workbowl.
4. Return puree to sauce pan and add cinnamon and cardamom, stir.
5. Cook puree down until thick and spreadable, about 3 hours, stirring often to prevent scorching.  I used a regular balloon whisk to stir the butter and by the end, when you take the whisk out, it is thick enough that you will see an imprint left behind of the whisk tines.
6. While the puree is in the homestretch of thickening, place your mason jars and the flat parts of the lids into a large pot, cover with water and turn the burner on very low.  The point is just to warm up the jars and lids so that they won’t shatter when you put hot food into them (leave the rings out of the water so they’re cool for you to twist them onto the jars later).
7. When the jars are warm and the butter is fully thickened to your liking, fill the jars up with butter, stopping about a 1/2 inch from the top of the rim to leave some air in the top of the jar.  Place a flat lid on the jar and twist on the ring.
8. Heat up another large pot of water to simmering and put jars full of butter into the simmering water.  Turn up the heat to boil the water; boil jars for 5 minutes.  Turn off the burner and leave the jars in the water (you’ll see bubbles still escaping from under the jar lid during the cool down phase, this is good).  Take the jars out and set them on a towel on the counter top.  The instructions say to leave the jars undisturbed for 12-24 hours (I did not have that luxury of time).  You’ll know you’ve done a successful canning job if the lid is firm and doesn’t pop up and down when you press on it.  Some of mine popped slightly after I took them out of the pot, but were firm when I came back in the morning.  If the jars still pop, put them in the fridge and just eat them soon instead of shelving them.

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