Pumpkin Oat Scones

Starbucks has amazing scones, but they're huge and usually have tons of calories. Which is fine, if you're eating a scone for a meal, or if you split it or save some for later. But let's face it: you're going to Starbucks for a fancy drink and you're planning on eating the whole thing. That's why you're there!

If you look up a recipe for scones with the intention of making them at home, and, theoretically, lower calorie, I think you'll still be disappointed. Most recipes I found were still pretty hefty in calories.

So, I adapted a recipe to make it a little lighter. They came out fantastic! Around 100 calories, and not the size of a piece of birthday cake.

Pumpkin Oat Scones
(recipe and nutritional information)


Ingredients:

1.5 cups wheat flour
1.5 cups oats
1 tbs baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ginger
1/4 tsp cloves
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup butter
1/3 cup pumpkin
1/2 - 3/4 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla

Directions:

1. Combine dry ingredients, then add in wet ingredients. Mix until just combined.
2. Split dough into two balls. Roll each ball into a disk about 1/2" thick, and cut into 8 slices.
3. Bake at 375 degrees for 20 minutes.
   

I also made some apple butter in the slow cooker. The two were an amazing match. (The apple butter was also an amazing addition to a boring oatmeal packet, but I digress.) But, I'd recommend freezing half until you want them; I ended up throwing out quite a few because they got moldy. Sad times, but I'll be making these again!

Donuts

Cooking fancy dishes is fun, but sometimes cooking with a neat trick is even more fun. Did you know you can make donuts out of pre-made biscuits?


I wouldn't recommend it.

1. Frying is a pain. No matter what. You can see some of those little guys are burned, and that's because I hate frying.
2. Pre-made biscuit dough sometimes has these enormous salt crystals in them. For whatever reason, that grosses me out a little.
   
3. Those little holes? They don't stand a chance. (I won't judge.)
4. You could easily eat a whole can of biscuits, which is about 1,200 calories not including any glaze you might want to add. Again, I won't judge, but just think about that a minute.
   

Just walk yourself down to 7-11 and pay the $2 for coffee & donut tomorrow, OK?

Irish Soda Bread

So let's try again.

Remember when I graduated from school and said I was going to sleep for a month? I may or may not have done that. And then everything was supposed to be all easy and fun.
Instead all this other stuff happened. I was blogging and that was kind of fun, but I never really advertised it because I really don't like attention (true story). But here's the other part of the story: there's a whooooole lot of life outside my kitchen. Plus most of my work is sitting on the computer, so guess what I don't want to do when I get home? There's this huge world of stuff to see and do and being on a computer all the time = not fun for me.

Not to mention the pressure. I cook a lot, and the photos are a pain to edit and upload and all that garbage (I don't like to read blogs without photos). So those add up. Maybe I got burned out on cooking, too, since I felt like I always had to make something new and exciting. Dumb, I know.

But people see my pictures on facebook. Actually, lots of people. So maybe they're not interested in a blog about how to actually make the stuff, but it sure does help me - I make the same thing over and over again if it's good, and every time I make it I think "ooh, next time, I'll do this!" And promptly forget.

Here's the deal: I'll do 50% catch up, and 50% new stuff. Here's catch up #1:

Irish Soda Bread.

Around St. Patrick's Day (MARCH, people), the internet was all about making Irish foods. I resisted, because this must have been around the time that I was getting a little burned out. But then at the last minute, I really, really wanted to jump on the bandwagon.

Hence, the Irish soda bread, which was what I could make late on St. Patrick's Day with stuff on hand. It came out ugly, but so good. There's about 1,000 recipes, but this one worked just fine.

Stick around and if you're nice, I'll let you in on the other good stuff I've been cooking.

Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls

Most of my holiday cooking plans were based around dinners and cookies, but I did have one big idea for Christmas morning breakfast. When I was little, we'd get up Christmas morning (early at first, and later and later as I got older) to open presents together. After that, my mom would cook a great big breakfast. Coffee cake, bacon, eggs ... an epic kind of breakfast. I was never a morning or breakfast person, but Christmas was always the exception.

I could have kept the tradition I love so much, but I found this recipe to try. And then I found out my brother in law (can I just call him my brother? OK thanks.) is a huge Cinnabon fan. That just sealed the deal.

What could prompt me to make cinnamon rolls? Pumpkin cinnamon rolls, of course.


Most recipes will call for just one cup of pumpkin puree, and a can is generally 14 or 16 ounces. So there's always a bit left over, that I'll typically put in the refrigerator with grand plans for the future, only to pull it out and discover it's turned fuzzy. Last time I put the leftovers (about a cup) in a box in the freezer. After all, there was a canned pumpkin shortage!

Even though this was properly thawed in the refrigerator days before, the pumpkin had a lot of water in it. (Cue foreboding music.) Which made it heavy, so the dough didn't rise much. Which meant when I pulled out the saran-wrapped dough roll a day or two later, it was squishy. As they baked, they seemed to dry out even more! After much panic I just put about a quarter of an inch of water in the bottom of the pan around the rolls. So, although they were sort of dry on the outside, they were still cinnamon rolly inside.

Would I ever make cinnamon rolls again? Probably, on special request. I don't think I would use whole wheat flour, and I'd have to reevaluate the pumpkin part. But these were otherwise easy to make.

Next year, I'm sticking to bacon, eggs, and coffee cake.

Cinnamon Raisin Bread

Hi. Happy new year!

I used the month of December 2009 to enjoy the holidays, and I hope you did too. Here's what's happened in between now and then:

• All the California family got together for Thanksgiving. I loved it.
  
• I worked at my new job.
• I helped hang gutters before the first big rain in our new house, and it ended in tragedy. OK, not really, but it's a funny story. Well, maybe not so funny as gory. Let's just say ... I haven't run in a month.
  
• I got the house (specifically, the upstairs bathroom and guest bedroom) in order for family to visit. Had no idea that picking out, much less hanging, curtains was such a pain.
  
• Re-caulked two bathtubs. One failed. I hate caulking.
  
• In-laws came, and drywalled in the garage. Not kidding. Luckily this distracted everyone enough not to notice that I picked out a superbright sea green for the laundry alcove. Heh heh heh.
• I read the first three Twilight books. You see, my popular culture knowledge drops off around 2004, when we decided cable was just not worth it (and proceeds to become less worth it). Since everyone's been going on about it, I gave in. I'll have to say it wasn't as bad as expected, although keep in mind that my expectations were very, very low. This about sums up the first book. And if you'd like to know what I thought about it, go read this guy's blog. I guarantee it's a better use of your time than actually reading the books. Really, this is what people think is healthy? Yikes, guys. Husband: thank you for not eating me. (I'm still waiting on the Life of Pi and Sense and Sensibility from the library, so don't judge.)

Obviously, I wanted to spend the holidays entertaining and having fun with family and friends. I hope you did too! This meant a lot less computer time. And I'll be the first to say I didn't miss being tied to my email/google reader/bank accounts.

Meanwhile, in the kitchen ...

I was on a cinnamon raisin bagel kick for a while. Actually, cinnamon raisin anything. So I got some raisins and tried making this cinnamon swirl bread. I don't have a bread machine, so I'm not quite sure why I didn't get the kind of dough that you can roll out and roll up to make that pretty swirl.

It still looked pretty nice! There was enough dough for two loaves, so I made some mini loaves as well. And it satisfied my cinnamon raisin craving just fine.

Time went on and I didn't really do anything with this loaf. It just kind of sat on the counter for a while.

Then one morning, I was thinking about french toast. I've never actually made it; it seemed really hard (and who could go up against IHOP?). But this loaf was going to go bad, so I consulted the Crocker Oracle for french toast.

I'm lame, I know. It's easy to make. I was intimidated for nothing.


Even with fairly thick slices, a whole loaf of bread makes a lot of french toast. There's probably still some in the freezer. Yes! You can freeze french toast!

This has to make you think: why not make french toast out of any bread that's been around a little too long? Or what other kinds of bread can you make in to french toast? Gingerbread? Pumpkin?

South Beach

Yes dears. It seems that somewhere between the summer and fall, I gained some weight. This pan of mini-quiches could only mean one thing: it's diet time.

Before you get all critical on me, hear me out. There are some good things about the South Beach diet. One being you get to eat these for breakfast, and they're really good. They suggest dinners like grilled salmon and veggies with butter, if you like it like that.


Most people don't get enough protein in their diet, anyway. I eat a lot of salads for lunch, so that's not really a major life change.

Yes, I'm aware that you don't "lose belly fat first." You lose water weight. But it gets rid of that icky bloaty feeling, and that's nice. If you're a total bread-addict, it can help break the craving (seriously!).

We won't discuss how long I lasted. We'll just say I thought about it a little more.

I like having warm oatmeal for breakfast. This is a very good, healthy thing. And even though exercise apparently doesn't help you lose weight, it does something good. Eating too much meat can be rough on your digestive system, and really not good if you're limiting fat. Then there's the holidays. It's downright rude to turn down a beautiful cookie or a perfect piece of cake this time of year.

And I love to bake. Bakers just don't do diets.

Pumpkin Cake

Since I didn't have a proper treat to take in to my last day of work, I wanted to make something quick. And impressive. And tasty.

What did I have on hand? Pumpkin.

I also had an untouched springform pan. Normally they're for cheesecakes, but why not a cake? But, I was a little squeamish about making a pumpkin cake from scratch given my recent track record and short time frame. Pumpkin bread is pretty fluffy, so why not that?

I can't remember which recipe I used, but they're all pretty close to each other. Here's a big list of them for you. Take your pick.



Springform pans are generally a little larger than regular cake pans; therefore, it came out pretty short. To be honest, it came out pretty meh. So I made a simple, quick vanilla glaze out of my Betty Crocker. I've been meaning to learn how to make it, but was always kind of intimidated. Sometimes the simplest recipes come out the hardest! Now that I know what to do, though, I expect it to be a quick add for a lot of my baked goods.

I had some green frosting left over from a previous project (I don't know what, but it wasn't the Halloween cake. This actually came before Halloween.) and these awful, awful pumpkin spice kisses. They only taste good mixed with something else. So I made a little quick pumpkin-esque decoration around the edge.

It went over pretty well at work (and, I heard later, the next day). No one knew it was bread rather than cake. This is the perfect kind of thing to bring in: sturdy, travels well, keeps for a while, and easy to make!

Blueberry Quick Oat Bread

Much like bananas in my home, it came to be that I had a substantial amount of blueberries that were not looking as appealing for my morning cereal.

So, like bananas, it only made sense to bake them. Right?

And lo and behold, here's a recipe that asks for blueberries and oats. Doesn't it just sound like breakfast in a loaf?

Normally this recipe wouldn't see the light of day in my kitchen because it requires buttermilk. As much as I like buttermilk, it's something that I don't use enough to justify buying. It'll just go bad. And then I caught wind of a magical, mystical invention: powdered buttermilk.

And sure as sunrise, there it was in a nice little can at the local Ralph's. It has to be refrigerated, but a little internet research shows it lasts forever. Plus, there's the extra possibility of freezing, as regular milk fat gets damaged when frozen.


The only thing this recipe was missing was that crunchy, sugary topping that appears on all worthwhile-calorie muffins. I just used a quick streusel recipe from my Betty Crocker cookbook. It's essentially 1/4 cup flour, 1/4 cup brown sugar, a few tablespoons of butter, and cinnamon. It shouldn't be this melty; for some reason I was convinced it wouldn't stick to the bread if the bread was almost finished cooking. But of course, the butter in the streusel melts and gets sticky! I'm glad I finally cracked the book open for this. It's the perfect substitute for frosting or glaze. This is too much for this size of a loaf, but like sweet, sugary, buttery topping was ever a problem.

I also kept in mind a lesson from earlier to go ahead and destroy those blueberries. This is a chunkier bread, though, so it's not as important.

And oh, what a wonderful bread. Highly recommended for work potlucks, especially if it will make you look like a domestic goddess to your coworkers.

An interesting story about my loaf pan: it's a little smaller than you'd expect. It's over 50 years old. Back then, banks offered extra little incentives to open an account, much like how they give out ipods or $25 now (I'd totally go for the bakeware). It sat in my grandma's attic for years in its original, unopened packaging. Sure, I'm probably adding a healthy dose of lead or asbestos to our food, but if it isn't the little trooper of a pan!