Spiced Brown Sugar Carrot Bread

So, I get that this makes me a total technology fail, but I finally figured out how to get my scheduled posts to go out on time.  I'm hoping this is going to make me a much more consistent blogger, which is a great thing.

In other news, JT has finally managed to bring sexy back.

Just kidding.  That hasn't happened yet. 

Excuse my carbaholic tendencies while I post another bread recipe, will you?

This bread is lightly sweetened and perfectly appropriate for breakfast.  It's not one of those "cake" loafs; it really is more of a sweet bread.  Go heavy on the spices if you like a strong spice flavor.  I like to heap mine.

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Lemon Glazed Bread

One thing I hate about living in the tundra is that you can't grow citrus trees outside.  I dream about retiring on a big orchard someday, and diving into pools of freshly picked citrus fruit.

One of these days I'm going to get me a little indoor dwarf lemon tree but until then I still have to go to the store every time I want to make this bread.

This  recipe is really versatile. You can  add blueberries* if you want. I also don't see any reason you couldn't make an orange version of this bread.

The glaze on this bread is SO yummy. It tastes like lemonade and gives this bread a tart bang of flavor.  Don't skip the glaze.

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Cranberry Walnut Cinnamon Cream Cheese

My New Year's Resolution this year is one word:  Balance.

In everything.

I am an OCD perfectionist.  If I do something, it needs to be done 110%.  Which makes balancing things really hard.  I'm not great at juggling lots of things.  I get stressed out easily.

I am great at developing tunnel vision and spending an entire week a) reading a whole book series b) making forts with my children, creating snack drawers for them with little baggies of portioned snacks, and laminating everything in sight to use for an  upcoming preschool unit c) opening a closet to find a mess and spending the week reorganizing every drawer, closet, shelf, and crevice in the house (that was last week), or d) baking, photographing, and blogging 13 recipes and posting them all in one day.


This tunnel vision method just isn't working for me.  I want each day and each week to be balanced.  And it's ridiculous how hard this is for me, and how much of an adjustment it is for me to live that way.  It is taking awhile but I think it is coming along.


Obviously my other New Year's Resolution involves eating copious amounts of bagels and cream cheese, because they're so healthy and everything.


Derr.

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Pumpkin Pie Cream Cheese Spread

This spread tastes like pumpkin pie and you can eat it for breakfast.  That's all you really need to know.  It's perfect on a cinnamon crunch bagel!

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Raspberry Swirl Rolls {& Sweet Roll Tips!}

I used to not be a good sweet roll maker.  Mine always turned out dense and dry.  After lots of trial and error I discovered I was adding WAY too much flour, especially in the rolling out process. My mind-frame of what the dough should look and feel like was totally wrong. I thought if it was sticky at all I hadn't added enough flour.

Lately I've discovered the secret to good sweet rolls is actually adding the least amount of flour possible.  This is what will make your rolls tender and moist.  Your dough should still be very sticky when you put it in a bowl for it's first rise.  After the first rise it loses some of it's stickiness and you can get a better idea of whether you need to add a little more flour or not.

One of the best things you can do to help you use the right amount of flour is use a kitchen scale to measure it.  I've included flour weight below for this recipe like I always do for my cookies.  This really takes a lot of guesswork out of baking sweet rolls.  Especially if you're at a high-altitude.

The other thing I do is use Pam spray instead of flour when rolling out my dough.  Sometimes you will have to add a bit more flour to get your dough to rolling consistency, but rolling the dough on a flour covered surface can really drown your dough in flour unnecessarily.  By spraying your rolling surface and rolling pin with Pam you can keep the dough from sticking, while avoiding adding excess flour.

Finally, make sure you take your rolls out of the oven when they're just barely done.  You don't want raw dough but you really don't want to overbake either or your product will be dry. 

For these raspberry swirl rolls I used raspberries from my garden and the filling was a bit tart.  Taste your berries before beginning and if they're tart add some extra sugar to your filling.   These are best the day they're made.  After that they will begin to dry out like most sweet rolls. These are tender and yummy but I think they would be even better with a cream cheese frosting, so feel free to substitute that for the glaze if you want.  

Happy carbohydrate inhaling!

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White Chocolate Berry Burst Bread

So, I'm wondering, is it normal to have a whole shelf in the pantry that's your shelf??  (Aka- "Children if you eat this I will personally throw all your nerf guns into the wilderness and escort you to the orphanage.")

I walked in to our secondary pantry yesterday and realized I had an entire shelf of hidden food.  Banana Nut Crunch (Dude, children, that stuff is expensive.  No, you cannot have a bowl), Chocolate Peppermint Stick Luna bars, Honey Nut Shredded Wheat.  Gingerbread Oreos.  It's kind of gotten out of control.

Is this normal?

Is this a rite of motherhood or do I have a strange hoarding problem I never realized before?  I really don't want to be on the show hoarders.

On the other hand, when you hoard berries from your garden all summer and hide them away in the freezer, you get to make this bread.  So sometimes hoarding is a good thing, right?


This bread is full of berries and is lightly sweetened.  You can substitute some quick oats to make this healthy enough for breakfast, or you can add extra white chocolate chips to turn this into a sweeter snacking/ dessert bread.

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Spiced Apple Cider Streusel Muffins

It's officially Fall.  I know because I caught my first nasty illness of the season.  I'm not sure if it's strep or just a monster sore throat but it's preventing me from eating and that just makes me grumpy.  Boo.  My secret cure to a sore throat is that Alpine sugar-free hot spiced cider that comes in little packets.  Seriously nothing cures a sore throat better than that.  Try it out! 

Turns out cider is also great in muffin form.

My secret to this recipe is to condense the apple cider nearly in  half to give it a distinguishable cider flavor.  Be sure not to mix the batter more than necessary or the muffins will be dry and dense.  These aren't super sweet so if you go slightly heavy on the sugar I won't snitch.  ;)

Happy Fall!!

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Lemon Pull-Aparts (& a Key Lime version)

In honor of my mom, the biggest citrus lover I know, I thought I'd post these sweet glazed lemon/key lime rolls today.  I really wish I could send you some of these through the computer.

(Seriously... we can send people to the moon, but we can't figure out how to send food through the internet?  Come on now. 

Some smarty pants from Harvard better be inventing *that* in his dorm room right now.)

Mom, Thanks for changing my diapers, letting me wear my shoes on the wrong feet, and teaching me it's okay to change your name. (Also for constantly watching my children who love you to PIECES.)

Happy Mother's Day to my mom and all moms! May your children be grateful and your husbands not forget lest they all be sleeping on the couch next week.

(Based on the flowers, cards, and candy practically barfing out of Walmart's Enter/Exit doors for at least a month in advance can you believe anyone forgets??  I so don't understand.)

These rolls are great for brunches and holiday breakfasts and since they use Rhodes rolls as the bread base, they are easy peasy.  I have tried an orange version of these and didn't care for them much, so stick with lemon or lime.

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Cinnamon Scones

Normally I quite like where I live. But I have two major pet peeves that get me all fired up about Utah.

Number one- pictures of Jesus with blue eyes.

*NEWSFLASH*   Jesus was Jewish.

Number two- the use of the word "scone" referring to Indian fry bread.

It's really disappointing to go to a place called SCONECUTTERS and find out that all they sell is Navajo tacos. Really, I think I might be emotionally scarred from that experience.  I know this is a difficult concept, but scones are supposed to be sweet little British biscuits that are usually triangular and served with tea.

I'm sorry, I just die a little inside every time I hear Indian fry bread referred to as a "scone".

Anyway.  These English scones are delicious and rich and triangular.  You could probably make them half this size.  Also they don't turn out a freaky deeky yellow color, I just added that effect to see if I could make them look jaundiced.

Maybe they need a bili-bed.


Hahaaaa.


It's ok if you don't get my joke... Let's just move right along to the recipe so things don't get awkward, shall we?

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Graham Streusel Coffee Cake

I am a fan of coffee cakes.  To me they are just an acceptable way to eat cake to eat for breakfast, so what's not to love?  This is even more true for this recipe, because it uses a spice cake mix as the base.  Just ignore the fact that you're adding even more butter and sugar to it and calling it breakfast.  Your tummy with thank you.  (But in spirit of full disclosure, your thighs probably won't.)

I think it's pretty obvious from the ingredient list that this is a sweet coffee cake, so if you can't handle sugar in the morning, you can feel free to eat it for snack or dessert instead.  

I on the other hand do not function properly without massive amounts of sugar, so I have no problem having a slice for breakfast, brunch, lunch, and afternoon snack.  And maybe a teeeensy slice for midnight snack.  

This is because I am actually an alien and my blood has been replaced by extraterrestrials with pure glucose.  

Which, of course, I need to keep regenerating by constantly consuming sugar.

duh.

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Downeast Maine Pumpkin Bread

Ok, can I just tell you guys, I love when you leave me comments? I love ALL comments, but I especially love the ones where you ask a question and you sign them "Anonymous". So then I get to write, "Dear Anonymous".  It makes me feel like a spy, or Ann Landers or something.  I'm a fan.

Anyways, since I've made this bread every year of my existence (not really), I probably need to share the recipe with you.  It's so moist and perfectly spiced.  I can't live through the Fall without baking some of this up.  I like to use a heavy hand on some of the spices (just be careful with the cloves), and if you're feeling crazy you can add some mini chocolate chips. 

Update 8/24/12:  I tried this recipe substituting half the pumpkin for shredded zucchini (excess from the garden!) and it turned out great! I put my first 4 ingredients in the blender, including the shredded zucchini, to avoid stringiness that you sometimes get from using zucchini.  I also made them into muffins instead of bread.  Instructions below. 

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Cinnamon Honey Butter

The thing about being a stay at home mom (or stay-in-bed mom if you're Lindsay Bluth) is everyone expects you to be all domestic.  They expect you to bake your own bread, and sew your own Halloween costumes and scrapbook every time your child picks their nose.  Well... when we first got married, I was not domestic-like.  At all.  I called my mom on more than one occasion asking how to bake a potato. 

I'm working on all that domestic-goodness, but if you, like me, struggle with domesticity (say it out loud.  it's fun.)... just whip up some of this butter.  It takes five seconds.  (Well probably like 5 minutes).  And then you can tell everyone you made your own butter.  Personally I told my mom I churned it myself from the cow I milked out back, but if you're not a high-roller, you can leave that part out. People will still be impressed and want to be you.

PS-I made this because somebody on Pinterest claimed it's just like Texas Roadhouse honey butter.  Moral of the story- do not trust strangers on Pinterest.  It doesn't taste exactly like TR honey butter... but it's pretty dang good. I found it a bit strong on the honey flavor, but I have a bit of an aversion to honey. Probably cause when I was little my sister always told me it was bee's barf. While I was eating it.

Now that you're salivating... feel free to try some honey butter.

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Pumpkin Cream Cheese Muffins with Pecan Streusel

To every 10 year old child within a 40-mile radius of my house,

I know you think those rolling skatey shoes are super cool.  It's probably kind of like taking the moving sidewalk (also known as a travelator, but I'm guessing that wasn't on your 5th grade vocab list) at the airport when everyone else has to walk.  If I were you I would probably think they were "the bomb" as well.  I mean, I like to take pictures of my friends crashing into displays at Target and post them on the internet too. However, no offense, but you look kinda dumb.  Also you're not making a great case for lowering the driving age to eleven.  And plus, since I write my local governor daily urging him to pass a law outlawing these maniacal shoes, that have almost claimed my life twice, I'm pretty sure they will soon be illegal as well.  I sympathize with you.  Really I do.  But cut your losses and scrap the shoes immediately.  Maybe your mom will buy you some super awesome toning shoes instead.

Thanks.
Katie

PS- Have a muffin

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Peach Cobbler Muffins

Because everybody needs a peach cobbler muffin for breakfast now and again.

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Triple Berry Coffee Cake

When I was a kid I thought being an adult would be awesome because I could do whatever I wanted. Party until all hours. Eat ice cream for dinner. (For the record- a strawberry cheesecake ice cream cone, dipped in nuts, totally covers 5 of the 6 food groups. And in my opinion vegetables shouldn't be a group at all so we can just pretend that group doesn't exist.)

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