Pumpkin Whole Wheat Cinnamon Rolls with Maple Glaze

I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before, but one of my favourite fall flavours is pumpkin, tied with apple caramel and then maple syrup. I've been looking forward to being able to bake with pumpkin all year, and was so excited to try using it with cinnamon rolls! This was in large part due to the fact that I have never made cinnamon rolls before, and have been waiting for a good time to make them, as I can't very well make 12 rolls for just Sean and I! (Although I've come up with a plan, to be discussed shortly)

These rolls were fantastic, and perfect for brunch! They were light and fluffy, and definitely had me going back for seconds. I didn't find that I could taste the pumpkin flavour that much, and so because I really enjoy that flavour I'll use just a tad more pumpkin pie spices in the mix to enhance it. And this is the type of breakfast that you don't need to feel [too] guilty over- it's almost half whole wheat and has over a cup of pumpkin puree in it. I mean, it's practically healthy!

It was really fun making these. I've made several bread doughs before, but never experienced what it was like to roll out dough and really work with it. It's quite the unique experience for those who haven't tried it! I'm not sure how to describe it, but there's something really special about getting your hands on a warm fluffy mound of dough and then smashing the air out, followed by rolling it out with a pin. I can't wait to try it again!

Ingredients:
Dough
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup butter
1/4 cup sugar
scant 1 cup pumpkin puree (if using store-bought, make sure to buy the plain puree and not the pumpkin pie filling)
1/2 tablespoon dry yeast
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 3/4 cups while flour
2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice (for those of you whole can't find pumpkin pie spice, or when you do realize it's stinkin' expensive, it's very simple to make. You can find a recipe through Annie's Eats)

Filling
1/4 cup butter, softened
1/2-1 cup brown sugar
2-3 tablespoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice

Glaze
2 cups powdered sugar
1/4 cup milk
1 tablespoon melted butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon maple extract
pinch of salt

Directions:
Combine butter and milk in a sauce pan and heat on low until butter has melted. Once butter has melted, add sugar and stir well to combine, until sugar is melted. Remove from heat to let cool.

Add yeast to 2 tablespoons warm water (make sure it's not too hot, just warm to the touch). Let the yeast dissolve into the water.
 
Once butter, milk and sugar has cooled down to warm (not hot), combine it with the yeast and water mixture in a large mixing bowl. Add in pumpkin puree, flour, pumpkin pie spice and salt. Stir to combine; you may need to work the ingredients together with your hands to fully incorporate flour.

Once combined, set bowl, covered with a towel, in a warm draft free spot for 1-2 hours to rise. I find the most effective way to do this is to heat your oven for 1-2 minutes until it has just warmed up. Then, place a small bowl of boiled water directly underneath the bowl with the dough in it (in the oven). Heat and moisture creates the best environment for dough to proof.

After dough has risen (it should double in size), punch it down and prepare to roll it out. Cover your work surface in flour and set dough on surface. Knead dough six to seven times. Roll out with a rolling pin into a large rectangle. If dough is sticky, add a bit of flour to it, as well as your rolling pin.

Once dough is rolled out, brush softened butter over dough. Sprinkle on cinnamon and pumpkin pie spice followed by brown sugar.

  
Tightly roll dough up, starting from edge furthest from you. (Roll tighter than mine if you can!)

Continue to roll until you've reached the end. Slice cinnamon rolls into 12 even pieces.

Set cinnamon rolls in a greased 9x13 pan. At this point you can bake your rolls, cover and refridgerate for 24 hours, or place in the freezer to be used later. The latter is what I did. I individually wrapped each piece in saran wrap, and then put it into a freezer bag. If using from frozen, remove from the freezer and let thaw for at least an hour and a half to two hours. You want them to be at room temperature and starting to rise a little bit again, so it may take over an hour. If using from the fridge, take them out about 30-45 minutes before baking.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Bake the cinnamon rolls for 18-25 minutes, until tops are golden brown and centers look firm. Remove from oven and let cool for approx. 5 minutes.

While the cinnamon rolls are cooling, mix up glaze by combining milk, powdered sugar, melted butter, vanilla and maple extracts, and salt in a bowl and mix well. The glaze should be pourable. If it's too think, add a little bit of milk at a time.

Pour the glaze over cinnamon rolls. Serve immediately or allow to sit. Store covered.

Source: slightly adapted from Love From The Oven

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Lady Baltimore Cake

I was enlisted by my mother to make a Birthday cake for my Oma (grandma) recently, who just turned 89 years old! Wowza- and that's nothing if you compare her to my Opa, who is now 93! I have to admire them, they are still living in their home with not much support other than a house keeper and the occasional drop-ins from family. Unfortunately that doesn't mean they're doing great anymore, and so we cherish the times that we do have together.

I had a lot of things go wrong with this cake- so I can't honestly comment on how it might have turned out had everything go smoothly. For starters, the raspberry curd that I was going to use for the filling never thickened up as much as I wanted to. I attempted to thicken it further by cooking it down more and creating a slurry (mixture of cold water and corn starch) to add in, which seemed like it might have worked at first. However, for some reason later on clumps of cornstarch started appearing (despite my using the correct slurry) and you could taste the cornstarch. So if anybody has any hints or tips as to why this happened, you can let me know. THEN, I didn't read the directions properly and failed to whip the egg whites (added them into the butter-sugar mixture), which is what contributes to a light and fluffy cake. And lastly, about 5 minutes into baking the cake I accidentally turned the oven off without realizing it until 20 minutes later, so I'm not sure how that affected things. Regardless, the cake tasted fine but was somewhat dense and a little dry- which I attribute to the non-whipped egg whites and the baking time.

ANYWAYS, I imagine that the cake would taste amazing if done correctly, so I'm still going to give you the recipe! I divided the original recipe to fit 2 6-inch pans (to make a 4 layer cake). You also can use really whatever you'd like for the filling, but I think something light and fruity works best. I used a Vanilla Italian Meringue Buttercream that I have used many times before, which you can find in my post on Strawberry Cupcakes. Simply multiply the recipe by 1.5 x if using a different filling for the cake, and you will have enough.

Yield: 1 9-inch cake
Ingredients:
3/4 cup butter, at room temperature
2 cups sugar
grated zest of one lemon
3 cups cake flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup water
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
6 egg whites

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease 3 9-inch cake pans with shortening or butter and line bottom with parchment paper. Grease on top of the parchment paper and flour lightly.

Cream butter, sugar and lemon zest together until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Sift flour, baking powder and salt together in a separate bowl and set aside.

Combine milk, water and vanilla. Add a third of the flour mixture to creamed butter mixture, alternating with the milk mixture until everything is incorporated. Beat until just smooth.

Beat egg whites in a separate bowl until stiff and gently fold into batter. Pour into prepared pans and bake for 20-25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. The cakes shouldn’t get very brown on top. Allow to cool for 10 minutes in the pans, then transfer cakes to wire wracks to cool completely.

Source: Sing for Your Supper

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A Birthday Specialty!

Happy Birthday to me! And to one of my best friends Jaylene! We share a unique bond. Can you guess what? Our birthdays are the same! Let me tell you a story. Jaylene and I met on the first day of University (not technically the first day), but the day that we were scheduled to move into our residences. We we sharing the same rez suite; I was lucky enough to have a single room and Jaylene had a double room with one of her best friends from home, who also grew to be one of my closest friends, Robyn. In the next days to come, we discovered that we shared the same birthday. Over the years we became closer and closer, and found more and more similarities between our families (primarily that both our mother's shared pretty much the same person and were kind of identical in most respects).

A bittersweet turn to the story happened just in the last few months. Jaylene and I (and Robyn) went our separate ways. Robyn stayed in Ottawa to work and continue schooling, I moved to London to do my Masters degree, and Jaylene moved back to her hometown (temporarily) before leaving to teach English in South Korea just last week! This is the first time in 6 years that we haven't been together for our birthday :(, but we are both doing such amazing things (although I think I'm more jealous of what she's doing now that I've got a crap load of work to do).

So I decided to celebrate (somewhat) online by making confetti cupcakes and sweet sugar cookies for our birthday. While Jaylene couldn't enjoy the spoils, she was able to see the pictures and my classmates got the spoils! P.S. Forgive my crappy picture taking, there may be several posts like this. Lately I'll finish something late at night and then only have a very short amount of time in the wee-early hours of the morning to take pictures, so lighting has been abominable.

The cupcakes were interesting- not in a bad way, they were very tasty! I may have kept them in the oven a minute too long, I'm not sure, but the tops of the cupcakes became a little crispy. Upon doing a quality control test Sean deemed that they were the best cupcakes he'd had because he liked the texture so much. They were topped with a sweet and airy simple American Buttercream... yum! If you're interested in making decorated sugar cookies, check out this post on Baby Shower Cookies.

Yield: 24 cupcakes
Ingredients:
1 cup milk, room temperature
6 large egg whites, room temperature
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
2 cups sugar
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
12 tablespoons (3/4 cup) unsalted butter, room temperature
6 tablespoons rainbow sprinkles

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line 2 12-cup muffin pans with paper liners. Whisk the milk, egg whites, vanilla and almond extracts together in a medium-sized bowl.

Add the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt to the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Mix on low speed briefly to combine. Cut the butter into 6 pieces and add them to the mixer bowl. Mix on low speed until the mixture is coarse and sandy. Add milk mixture and beat at medium speed for 1-2 minutes. Scrape sides of bowl and continue beating for 20-30 seconds. Use a spatula to gently fold in the sprinkles.

Divide the batter evenly among the wells 1/2- 2/3 full. Bake for 20-22 minutes or until toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Transfer the pans to a wire rack and let cool for 5 minutes, then remove the cupcakes from the pan and allow them to cool completely before frosting.

Vanilla Buttercream (American)
2 tablespoons heavy (whipping) cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
pinch of salt
20 tablespoons (2 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
2 1/2-3 cups powdered sugar, sifted

Stir the heavy cream, vanilla extract and salt together in a small bowl. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter on med-high speed until smooth. With the mixer on low, slowly add the powdered sugar until it is completely incorporated and the mixture is smooth. Scrape down the sides of the bowl, then beat in the heavy cream mixture. Increase the mixer to medium speed and beat until the frosting is light and fluffy, about 4 minutes. If the frosting is too soft, simply add more powdered sugar, and vice versa if it is too stiff, add more heavy cream.

Sources: Cupcakes from Baking Bites and Frosting from Cooks Illustrated via Tracey's Culinary Adventures Pin It

Spiced Apple Pecan Oatmeal

I love love love dried apples, the kind seen in the background of the picture above. I remember my Opa (Grandpa for those not familiar with German/European languages) drying apples with some ufo-looking device when I was younger. And oh how I enjoyed those apple slices! Moist, chewy, almost gummy in texture, they're packed full of flavour and great for putting in oatmeal, or as I like them best, just alone as a snack!

This is a great breakfast that's very simple to make. It's the kind of oatmeal that 'sticks to your ribs', ie. meaning, it's pretty pasty/gummy. I don't mean that in an unappetizing way, some people love their oatmeal this way, including Sean. Personally it's not my favourite, I prefer the kind of oatmeal from Quaker  (ah-hem, yes, the instant oatmeal packages) where the oats are still in existence after cooking them. However, the flavour was great and it made enough to last Sean and I for the next several mornings.

Ingredients:
2 tablespoons chopped pecans
3 cups apple juice
3 cups milk
2 cups uncooked regular oats (not quick-cooking)
1/2 cup coarsely chopped dried apples
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons cinnamon sugar (half cinnamon, half sugar mixture)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
brown sugar or maple syrup for topping

Directions:
Toast pecans in a large pot or Dutch oven over medium-high heat, stirring constantly, for 5-6 minutes or until toasted. Remove pecans and wipe pot clean.

Bring juice, milk, oats, dried apples and salt to a boil in pot over high heat; reduce heat to medium-low and simmer, stirring occasionally for 15-20 minutes or until thickened. Remove from heat. Cover and let stand for 10 minutes. Stir in cinnamon sugar, vanilla and toasted pecans. Serve immediately. If desired, sprinkle with brown sugar or drizzle with maple syrup for extra goodness. 

Source: Joanna L. Smith, Maylene, Alabama, Southern Living via My Recipes Pin It

Whole Wheat Cheese Bread

 

 





My head has finally made in into fall. Perhaps it's the turn of weather from beautiful, hot sunny days to absolutely freezing days (I don't exaggerate, this morning my thermometer said 2 degrees C). Regardless, one of the things I immediately think of when fall hits is warm homemade bread, and if that's combined with a hearty soup like corn chowder or chili, it's even better! The smell of freshly baked bread filling your house is amazing, and if it's cheese bread, you can smell it even more. This was one dish that I was so excited to cut into, and when I did, it definitely did not let down. It doesn't take a lot of work, just more time to let the dough rise, so it's perfect for a side to a dinner meal. The only tricky part is kneading all of those lovely chunks of cheese into the bread. Trust me, you'll want to use chunks and not grate the cheese, or else the cheese just kind of dissolves into the bread, and that's not what you want!!

 

Yield: 2 loaves
Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups warm water
2 1/4 teaspoon instant yeast
1/3 cup oil (vegetable or canola)
1 teaspoon salt
1 egg, beaten
1/2 cup Parmesan cheese, grated
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 1/4 cups whole wheat flour
1 1/2 cups old cheddar cheese, cut into small cubes
extra Parmesan and cheddar cheese grated, for topping

Directions:
In the bowl of a stand mixer, mix the water, yeast, oil and salt with a rubber spatula. Beat in egg, followed by Parmesan cheese. Stir in white flour until just combined. Add in whole wheat flour, and using the dough hook attachment for the stand mixer, knead at low speed until the dough is smooth and elastic, about 5 minutes. Transfer the dough to a lightly floured surface. Knead just long enough to make the dough is soft and smooth, then shape into a ball.

Place the dough in a lightly greased glass bowl and cover with a tea towel. Heat oven to 350 degrees F for 2 minutes, then turn off, until oven is just warmed. At the same time, boil some water. Place boiled water in a small bowl, and then onto the lower rack in the oven. Place the dough bowl in the oven on the higher rack, directly above the bowl with steaming water (warmth and moisture produce the best environment for the dough to rise). Let the dough proof for 45-60 minutes, or until doubled in size.

Remove from oven and turn out onto a lightly floured surface. Knead in the cubed cheddar cheese until well distributed (because the cheese is cubed, this step is a little challenging). Divide into 2 equal portions. At this time, it is possible to wrap the dough up and freeze for a later date.

Shape each portion into a loaf, and place seam side down in 2 well greased and floured 8 1/2 x 4 1/2 loaf pan. Again, warm the oven momentarily and have boiled water ready so that the dough may rise for another 45-60 minutes, or until dough has risen above the top of the pan in the centre and corners are filled. Sprinkle tops of loaves with Parmesan and cheddar cheese.

Bake at 375 degrees F on lower oven rack for 30-35 minutes, until light golden brown. Remove from pans immediately and cool on wire racks. And do me a favour, cut yourself a slice while it's still warm, and top it with a bit of butter. Heaven.

Source: adapted from Robin Hood Pin It