This week has been busy to say the least, but in quite a wonderful way. My best friend, Kiija (kah-eye-ya) and her husband Brent have been visiting and we’ve had quite the food tour of Portland! I ate here for the first time last night, it was pretty amazing.
Kiija and I have a mutual love for all things food, especially baked foods. We started young, getting into the kitchen together and trying to “create” new recipes 
. When Kiija and Brent come into town, they do what they love best–cook! I literally woke up from a nap one day to find my house filled with the delicious smells of cinnamon and sugar, only to find that they had made baked doughnuts while I was asleep! Now that is what I call friendship . “We’re on vacation!” they said when I told them how awesome this was albeit unexpected, “we love cooking for an audience!” So, I let them go at it and since we’ve had several amazing meals because of it!
This coming week I’ll be focusing on those persimmons I have laying about the house ripening . Someone mentioned persimmon butter which I think I’ll have to try. And most definitely that persimmon pudding. But until then, enjoy this recipe for a wonderful, light, yeasted doughnut. They are amazing and such a treat. Especially when you wake up to them:).
Baked Doughnuts, via Kiija and Brent via 101 cookbooks
*Don’t over bake these, if anything, under bake them a bit – they will
continue baking outside the oven for a few minutes. You want an interior
that is moist and tender – not dry. Also, be sure to cut big enough holes in
the center of your doughnuts – too small and they will bake entirely shut.
Remember they rise, and they rise even more when they are baking. These
really need to be made-to-order, but you can make and shape the dough the
night before if you want to serve them for brunch. Instructions: after
shaping, place doughnuts on baking sheet, cover and place in the
refrigerator overnight. Pull them out an hour before baking, and let rise in
a warm place before baking.*
1 1/3 cups warm milk, 95 to 105 degrees (divided)
1 packet active dry yeast (2 1/4 teaspoons)
2 tablespoons butter
2/3 cup sugar
2 eggs
5 cups all-purpose flour (alternately, white whole wheat might work -
haven’t tried it yet)
A pinch or two of nutmeg, freshly grated
1 teaspoon fine grain sea salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 tablespoon cinnamon
Place 1/3 cup of the warm milk in the bowl of an electric mixer. Stir in the
yeast and set aside for five minutes or so. Be sure your milk isn’t too hot
or it will kill the yeast. Stir the butter and sugar into the remaining cup
of warm milk and add it to the yeast mixture. With a fork, stir in the eggs,
flour, nutmeg, and salt – just until the flour is incorporated. With the
dough hook attachment of your mixer beat the dough for a few minutes at
medium speed. This is where you are going to need to make adjustments – if
your dough is overly sticky, add flour a few tablespoons at a time. Too dry?
Add more milk a bit at a time. You want the dough to pull away from the
sides of the mixing bowl and eventually become supple and smooth. Turn it
out onto a floured counter-top, knead a few times (the dough should be
barely sticky), and shape into a ball.
Transfer the dough to a buttered (or oiled) bowl, cover, put in a warm place
(I turn on the oven at this point and set the bowl on top), and let rise for
an hour or until the dough has roughly doubled in size.
Punch down the dough and roll it out 1/2-inch thick on your floured
countertop. Most people (like myself) don’t have a doughnut cutter, instead
I use a 2-3 inch cookie cutter to stamp out circles. Transfer the circles to
a parchment-lined baking sheet and stamp out the smaller inner circles using
a smaller cutter. If you cut the inner holes out any earlier, they become
distorted when you attempt to move them. Cover with a clean cloth and let
rise for another 45 minutes.
Bake in a 375 degree oven until the bottoms are just golden, 8 to 10 minutes
- start checking around 8. While the doughnuts are baking, place the butter
in a medium bowl. Place the sugar and cinnamon in a separate bowl.
Remove the doughnuts from the oven and let cool for just a minute or two.
Dip each one in the melted butter and a quick toss in the sugar bowl. Eat
immediately if not sooner.
*Makes 1 1/2 – 2 dozen medium doughnuts.*
Tea. I love it. I drink it every morning with a few pieces of toast liberally spread with coconut oil, agave nectar, and a sprinkling of cinnamon.
I drink tea throughout my day. Actually, I have a total schedule for it: black tea first thing–no more than two mugs, green tea after 11am until about 3pm, herbal tea until I go to bed. And I literally drink it morning through night–my house is cold and it is a good way to stay warm and hydrated .
I also love to drink it with a friend, which is what I did today. It was good to catch up. She made this lovely Cardamon Fig Bread, it was delicious. She even served her homemade preserved plums with it! They were stewed in vanilla beans and a cinnamon stick before canning–completely amazing.
How do you like tea–with friends, alone, as a boost, only green, a comfort? I’d love to know!
Fig Cardamon Bread, by Chelsea
1/3 cup melted butter (or olive oil she said works too)
1 1/3 cup buttermilk
2 eggs
1 1/2 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup sugar
1 heaping tablespoon honey
1 heaping tablespoon maple syrup
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cardamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups heaped with figs
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Butter and flour a 9x5x3 bread pan, set aside. Mix all the dry ingredients together, plus figs. Beat all the wet ingredients well. Combine the two and mix until combined. Pour into prepared dish and bake for 50 minutes. Serve warm.
Eat well!
Blueberries. They are here! And they are good. Both are facts (the good part being a personal fact:). But blueberries also have been said to improve memory and strengthen the immune system. Facts as well? I’d like to think so!
Berries are in abundance here in the Pacific Northwest. They are everywhere, on the sides of highways, in backyards, in parks, on farms, even ditches and alleys. They grow all over! But noticing the abundance of berries here has actually made me realize the abundance of so many other things in life. Sometimes it is hard to keep perspective on what one “has” and what one doesn’t “have”. I find myself caught up sometimes comparing myself, or feeling less than because I don’t “have” something, when in fact, I have so so much. Times are tough right now when I look at the numbers (jobs, for example, are one thing that are not in abundance), however, ideas are. Not only are ideas in abundance, but people, who are there to help me put them into action, which is amazing. The outpouring of friendship, love, and help have been overwhelming, all of which are in total abundance! Whenever I feel myself going down a worry-path (worrying can be so addictive for me! and so I have little tricks to break that cycle before it spirals too far down) I try to lift my head up and look around to see what it is I do have, and focus/utilize those. And, it really works.
It has been an interesting path of trying to stay true to myself and find what really works for me. Some of the conventional ways we are used to living, and I grew up with, work and some do not any longer. However, it has been the journey of finding out what does work for me that has been so incredible. This is not to say that there are times when I get scared or go through tough situations and I feel like there no end in sight. But the end–or the start of a new beginning, however you’d like to look at it– inevitably always comes and a lesson is learned. And if I don’t learn what I needed to learn that time around, it always finds a way to appear again in some other fashion!
So I’ve been on a ‘simple’ kick lately with the recipes I’ve been trying, which by the way, I still think is the best way to go! However, sometimes I tend to make things a little harder than necessary on myself just to see if I can do it/make it (figuratively speaking of course 
. So, I turned to Cooks Illustrated for a great blueberry muffin recipe. Call it cheating (because Cooks Illustrated recipes always tend to be excellent) or call it smart (I wasn’t going to go through all this trouble and not have it taste fantastic!), these muffins are excellent. You start by simmering a cup of blueberries with a teaspoon of sugar to make a jam. After you’ve made the batter (which is amazing in it’s own right, these are made with buttermilk which give them a cloud-like texture but with density…) you spoon about a teaspoon of the jam on top and swirl with a toothpick or chop stick into the muffin so it gets some distribution. You could even go decadent and make a crumble top for these, which I will do for the next round–this time around, I wanted to see the beauty of the blueberry color swirled on top, so simple and delicious. Good thing Andrew and I picked a ton of blueberries the other day, these have just become a household favorite for us both–I predict many more batches coming our way .
Bon Appetit!
Blueberry Muffins, adopted from Cooks Illustrated via The Bitten Word
Lemon-Sugar Topping
1/3 cup (21/3 ounces) sugar
1½ teaspoons finely grated zest from 1 lemon
Muffins
2 cups (about 10 ounces) fresh blueberries, picked over
1 1/8 cups (8 ounces) plus 1 teaspoon sugar
2 1/2 cups (12½ ounces) unbleached all-purpose flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon table salt
2 large eggs
4 tablespoons (½ stick) unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly
¼ cup vegetable oil
1 cup buttermilk (see note)
1½ teaspoons vanilla extract
Note: If buttermilk is unavailable, take a little under a cup of milk and add a tablespoon of vinegar to it. Stir and let stand for a few minutes and then use as buttermilk!
1. FOR THE TOPPING: Stir together sugar and lemon zest in small bowl until combined; set aside.
2. FOR THE MUFFINS: Adjust oven rack to upper-middle position and heat oven to 425 degrees. Spray standard muffin tin with nonstick cooking spray. Bring 1 cup blueberries and 1 teaspoon sugar to simmer in small saucepan over medium heat. Cook, mashing berries with spoon several times and stirring frequently, until berries have broken down and mixture is thickened and reduced to ¼ cup, about 6 minutes. Transfer to small bowl and cool to room temperature, 10 to 15 minutes.
3. Whisk flour, baking powder, and salt together in large bowl. Whisk remaining 11/8 cups sugar and eggs together in medium bowl until thick and homogeneous, about 45 seconds. Slowly whisk in butter and oil until combined. Whisk in buttermilk and vanilla until combined. Using rubber spatula, fold egg mixture and remaining cup blueberries into flour mixture until just moistened. (Batter will be very lumpy with few spots of dry flour; do not over mix.)
4. Following photos above, use ice cream scoop or large spoon to divide batter equally among prepared muffin cups (batter should completely fill cups and mound slightly). Spoon teaspoon of cooked berry mixture into center of each mound of batter. Using chopstick or skewer, gently swirl berry filling into batter using figure-eight motion. Sprinkle lemon sugar evenly over muffins.
5. Bake until muffin tops are golden and just firm, 17 to 19 minutes, rotating muffin tin from front to back halfway through baking time. Cool muffins in muffin tin for 5 minutes, then transfer to wire rack and cool 5 minutes before serving.
Streusel Topping
Follow recipe for Blueberry Muffins, omitting Lemon-Sugar Topping. Prepare streusel by combining 3 tablespoons granulated sugar, 3 tablespoons dark brown sugar, pinch table salt, and ½ cup plus 3 tablespoons (3½ ounces) unbleached all-purpose flour in small bowl. Drizzle with 5 tablespoons warm, melted unsalted butter and toss with fork until evenly moistened and mixture forms large chunks with some pea-sized pieces throughout. Proceed with recipe as directed, sprinkling streusel topping over muffins before baking.
Buckwheat is one of my favorite grains. I’ve been experimenting with everything from pancakes to yakisoba to both quick and yeasted breads; I enjoy all forms this wonder grain comes in! It has a bad reputation for being super heavy, languid, and mushy. It makes things overly ‘complicated’ I’ve been told, giving breads a lead-like feeling. Hmmm. I felt compelled to prove this theory wrong and put one of my favorite grains to the test.
It’s been unseasonably cool here in Portland this past week. (July is normally nice and warm, dry, and always sunny!) I think this is why I’ve been craving things like buckwheat, because of their nourishing, warming, and grounding effects. When I found this recipe, I immediately went out and got the ingredients I was missing and set to it. There is something so satisfying about making a loaf of bread; I like how it takes the good part of an afternoon or evening, it gives me a chance to multi-task and feel like I am getting so much more done! ha .
This bread has everything you are looking for in a breakfast bread plus more. The buckwheat makes it sustaining, giving you long lasting energy that doesn’t weigh you down. The cinnamon and raisins in it compliment the buckwheat flavor and offer just the perfect amount of spice and sweet for your morning palate. I like it spread with some sweet cream butter or apple butter, it’s incredible!
Bread, especially yeasted breads, take a little bit of patience. It can be daunting to think that you have to wait around for this bread to rise three times when you have so much else to do! So you might want to do other things while you wait for it to rise a few times, just timing your other activities to coincide with the bread. It helps if you have a bunch of stuff to get done around the house and you know you’ll be home for an afternoon. Set a timer and go about your other activities, so you don’t forget when to knead, punch, and bake . I really enjoy the kneading part, it’s a great arm workout and helps me think. But I also use my stand mixer with the bread attachment for kneading sometimes; not with this bread though. Bread also has a reputation for ‘complication‘ but I would encourage you to try it if you’d like. If you mess up, oh well! Try it again, and maybe try an easier recipe like a basic french loaf. The smell of bread rising in your house, the taste of warm bread from the oven with melted butter and jam, there is nothing like them! Bread might be the answer to making the world a happier place I think, at least it does for me!
Bon Appetit!
Buckwheat-Raisin Bread, adopted from Deborah Madison
The Sponge
1 1/4 cup warm water
2 1/2 teaspoons (1 package) active yeast
1 1/3 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup dried buttermilk or non fat milk
3 tablespoons honey
The Bread
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 3/4 teaspoons salt
1 1/2 cup dark raisins
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 cup buckwheat flour
1 – 1 1/4 cup all purpose flour
Mix everything for the sponge in a blow until smooth, cover and let rise in a warm place for one hour.
Stir down the sponge and add oil, salt, raisins, cinnamon. Stir in buckwheat then work in flour until you can’t work it any more. Turn out the dough onto a floured surface and knead until resilient, about 6 minutes. Put into an oiled bowl and let rise until doubled, about 1 – 1 1/2 hours.
Punch down dough in the bowl and let rise again about 40 minutes. Preheat oven to 375 F, and brush with an optional egg glaze or dust with a little buckwheat flour and bake 45 minutes. Enjoy!
What do you do with left over five foot long bread? French toast! While in Seattle this weekend, I stayed with some lovely family and as a thank you, I made them breakfast the following morning for being such gracious hosts!
Big Bread French Toast
6-12 eggs, depending on how thick your slices of bread are and how hard they are (I used close to a dozen eggs for about 8 pieces, but they were thick and hearty)
1/4-1/2 cup heavy cream or half and half
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 capful of vanilla extract
Whisk together ingredients in a big bowl. Place your first few slices in there and let them soak up the mixture for a few minutes. Warm up your pan with a good sized pat of butter, place the slices on the pan with heat on medium to low heat. Brown on both sides until done. You might want to check the middles if they were especially thick slices to make sure it’s cooked through. While cooking, soak the next round of bread in the egg mixture!
Berry Compote
If you have some fresh berries around, clean and cut them up to serve with it. Take half of them and mash with a potato masher and/or fork for a nice compote to spread over the french toast!
Eggs a la Julia
3-4 eggs (serves 2)
3 tablespoons half and half or heavy cream
1 tablespoon butter, approx.
Coat a small skillet with butter all along the bottom and sides. Combine eggs and cream in a bowl. With a fork, gently stab each egg until broken, but not whisked! Just break the yolks gently and pour the egg mixture into the pan. Turn on low heat and cook for about 10 minutes. After you notice it beginning to cook, gently pick up the skillet every now and then to move the egg mixture on top around. You will not be disappointed with these eggs!
I’ve been thinking about granola for a few months now. Every time I go for my favorite box of granola in the grocery store, a little voice in my head can’t stop itself from saying “you could make that! And easily…” With so much going on lately, I’ve gotten used to this repeat occurrence, simply taking a deep breath and mentally rolling my eyes, appeasing myself with something along the lines of “later”. Finally, with the oral defense complete (and successful!) I’ve had some time to myself. For the first time in months, I have been able to wake up in the morning and do exactley what I want and need! These past few days have been luxurious because I have been able to get some much needed rest, organized months of accumulation, and even watched a movie!
But homemade granola was the first thing that came to mind, again, after this big ending. I could not come up with a good excuse to not make it and why should I? So I set out on my bike with the days to-do list, stopping here and there, finished up a screen print project for my friend Abby, had a tea with friends, and finally, gathered all the materials I needed for this granola.
Now I must say, I did not grow up in a household where we ate any granola or even organic foods. My mother, who worked full time, cooked because she had to and never enjoyed it. She did make sure we had fresh fruits and veggies on the most part, but our relationship with food growing up was one of necessity, not something that was savored. So where did this craving from granola show up from? Living in Oregon? A challenge from myself? A backlash from my childhood? I am still not quite sure, maybe all three. Or, more than likely, my body has been needing specific nutrients that it has not been getting that it could get from this granola: flax seeds, whole rolled oats, sunflower and pumpkin seeds, all have amazing nutritional properties that maybe I have been needing to replenish. Granola somehow embodies sheer health, and sheer health does not mean tastes bad (like cardboard). In this case, that couldn’t be further from the truth. This granola could not have surprised me more, especially how much I liked it!
My mind was actually a little blown when I tasted the first batch! This is an amazing recipe, simple, and easy to do. I added a little bit of cardamom to give it a little bit of complexity with the cinnamon undertones.
It’s amazing how something as simple as listening to yourself (even if it only a nagging voice to make granola) can be so grounding and fulfilling. Something I keep coming back to and am constantly reminded of through different experiences is, my gut is never wrong (all puns intended!). When I listen, it is always without fail, right. But those times I choose to ignore it, things do not happen as I foresee them to and usually turn out not so great. Sometimes, my gut tells me things that may seem a little wacky at the time (gut-to-me: make this granola NOW girl!) or down right outlandish (gut-to-me two years ago: move across the country, leave all your friends and family, and start a new life NOW girl!), but I’ve learned to trust myself, my instinct/gut, and go with it. And so far, it’s worked .
Granola from The Kitchen Sink Recipes
3 1/2 cups rolled oats
1/2 cup coconut flakes, unsweeteend
3 tablespoons flax seeds
3 tablespoons sesame seeds
1/4 cup sunflower or pumpkin seeds
1/2 cup toasted mixed nuts, chopped (I used pistachios and almonds here)
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon sea salt
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup canola oil
2 tablespoons honey
1 tablespoon pure maple syrup
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
2 cups mixed dried fruit (I used raisins and dried cherries and cranberries here)
Preheat the oven to 375. Line a rimmed baking sheet with aluminum foil. In a large bowl, combine all the ingredients except the dried fruit. Stir well to incorporate. Spread the mixture on the prepared baking sheet, spreading it out into an even layer. Bake for 20 to 30 minutes (depending on the depth of goldenness you’re looking for), stirring every 10 minutes. Remove the granola from the oven and and cool completely, in its pan, on a wire wrack. Once the granola is cool, mix in the dried fruit.
ps- My favorite way to eat granola is over warm oatmeal with a dollop of plain yogurt, yum!
Have a great weekend!
