Currant Oatmeal Scones

Do you like scones? I sure do, and every time I make them, I think, "Why don't I make scones more often?"

I particularly like this recipe because it contains oatmeal which makes for a nice hearty and tasty crumb. With only a bit over 1/3 cup sugar, it's just slightly sweet too. It's also the perfect recipe for you to put in whatever fruit you might like, such as raisins, currants, cranberries, raspberries, etc.

Adapted from Joy the Baker website. Thanks Joy. Great scone recipe!

1 egg
1/3 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar
1 stick plus 2 tablespoons cold butter
1 2/3 cups flour
1 1/3 cups oatmeal
1/2 cup buttermilk
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 cup currants
Brown sugar for dusting

In a mixing bowl beat eggs together with sugar then mix in buttermilk. In a separate bowl cut in the butter into the flour. Use a pastry cutter, or your fingers until the flour and butter are the size of pebbles.

Add the oatmeal, baking powder, baking soda, salt and nutmeg. Mix in the flour/butter mixture until incorporated. No need to overmix. Fold in the currants or whatever fruit you are adding.

Place parchment paper on cookie sheet and use an ice cream scoop to drop balls of Scone dough onto sheet about 2 inches apart. Dust with a coating of brown sugar.

Bake at 400 degrees for 20 - 25 minutes until golden brown.

Let cool a bit and serve slightly warmed or at room temperature.

Buttermilk English Muffins

Who knew? Seriously, who knew? Who knew English Muffins were this easy to make at home?
And who knew they were this good?

OK, maybe all of you knew, but I sure didn't. I made them, and have been enjoying them for breakfast all week long. Check it out.

2 1/4 cups flour
1 package active dry yeast
3/4 tablespoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon shortening or butter (room temperature)
1 cup buttermilk (slightly heated)
cornmeal for sprinkling

In a bowl, add heated buttermilk, shortening or butter, sugar, and dry yeast. Stir and let sit for 20 minutes to make sure yeast proofs and the mixture puffs up.

Add flour, salt and mix with dough hook until well incorporated and a sticky ball of dough is formed. Add more flour in 1/4 cup increments if necessary, but you want a pretty sticky dough.

Scrape dough out onto a floured board or surface, sprinkle with flour, and knead BRIEFLY. We want the traditional nooks and crannies in the finished product, and the more you knead, the finer the "crumb" will be.

Drop dough into a greased bowl, turn over, cover with plastic wrap, and let rise in a warm area (I use a slightly warmed oven, just turn the temp to 350 for 45 seconds and turn off) for at least one hour.

After it's risen, scrape out onto the same floured surface, do NOT punch down. Knead once or twice and shape or roll into rectangle about one inch thick.

Using biscuit cutter, or a knife to form into 4 inch squared, cut and shape into rounds.

Spread cornmeal over parchment paper, or a board, or whatever. Place the cut and shaped circles of dough onto the cornmeal. Dust the tops liberally with cornmeal also. Top with plastic wrap, and let rise for another hour.
Heat a dry griddle or skillet to medium heat, carefully place a few dough rounds onto the skillet and brown on each side, about 5 - 9 minutes per side.



Remove and let cool for 20 minutes before tearing into one, and slathering it with butter and jelly.
Note: Don't use a knife to cut open the muffin. Use a fork, worked around it in a circle to maintain the holes and internal texture in the muffin.

Enjoy!

One more thing, I was reading other recipes for English Muffins and this one site suggested, cut open the muffin, spread one side with peanut butter, add a slice of fresh tomato, and top with the remaining half of the muffin. I have NEVER heard of this, but am tempted to try it. If YOU do, let me know....thanks.

Cinnamon Roll Muffins

I must give credit to Joy the Baker for this recipe. I surfed her site and just had to make this recipe. And her photography and method came out a lot better than mine, lol, but I'll catch on, don't worry. I did modify the recipe slightly, but only to add real vanilla bean to the dough.

I think we all love cinnamon rolls, but they are labor intensive aren't they? And take a long time? Here, you mix up a yeast dough, add the cinnamon sugar to the dough, and bake in cold oven as you turn the heat on, it quickly rises the dough. I was amazed at how quickly this was done, and how good they were.

I also messed them up royally (more on that later) but they still were delicious.

Here we go:


Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/3 cup sugar
1/4 tsp salt
2 packages active dry yeast
2/3 cup warm milk (100-110F)
3 tbsp vegetable oil
1 vanilla bean, cut open and seeds scraped into the mixture.
1 large egg

Filling/Topping:

3 tbsp butter, room temperature
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon

Icing

1 cup powdered sugar
1-2 tbsp milk or cream

In a large bowl, combine flour, and salt. Dissolve the yeast in a measuring cup filled with the warmed milk, and sugar and let sit for 15 minutes to assure the yeast "proofs". If, after 15 minutes the milk and yeast mixture is foamy, then you are good to go. If not, start over.

Stir milk mixture, vegetable oil, vanilla extract and egg into the flour mixture. Mix well, until very smooth. Let dough 'rest' for 20 minutes.

While the dough rests, mix together butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon in a small bowl using a fork until all the butter has been incorporated into the sugar and mixture is crumbly. Divide the batter between 12 greased muffin cups. Sprinkle evenly on top of rested dough and press the mixture down into the dough with your fingertips (or swirl in with a spatula.)

Place pan into a cold oven, then set the oven temperature to 350F.

Bake for about 20 to 30 minutes minutes, until bread is lightly browned at the edges and the center of the bread springs back when lightly pressed. Some of the sugar mixture on top may still be bubbling.

Cool for at least 30 minutes before whisking the powdered sugar and milk together to form an icing and drizzling it onto the bread.

Serve warm. Leftovers can be reheated in the microwave.

Now, confession time. Although these look good, and tasted delicious, I messed them up. What I did is NOT swirl the cinnamon sugar mixture down INTO the muffin! As a result the mound of sugar sitting on top bubbled up, melted, and ran all over the muffins, all over the muffin tin, and ALL over the bottom of my oven. What a mess.

So, make sure you push the sugar/cinnamon down into the muffin. In fact, the next time I make these I think I will add half the dough, then the sugar and then top with the other half of the dough.

Yeah, that's the ticket.

Snicker Doodle Muffins

So although my blog is very new, someone asked me the other day, what made me start one. So I thought I would blog it along with a new recipe.

First of all, I'm a self-taught cook who years ago just got sick of the stuff I would fix for myself. I mean I was limited to a baked potato and a 12 inch Hibachi. (Remember Hibachi's or am I dating myself?)

Although, my Grandma Patterson story helped spark an interest early on, I still wasn't very good.

In any event I made a concerted effort to learn to cook better. I remember buying a Graham Kerr
cookbook, which turned out to be incredibly complicated and advanced. But, I continued to use it, and although a lot of it was over my head at the time, I did learn to make a french omelette, a roux, certain sauces and reductions, and to even roast meat.

I then started having children, (well I wasn't having them I was fathering them) and children seem to like to eat so I was always cooking for them, and it has continued.

My children are now grown so I find I don't cook or bake nearly as much as I used to.

Anyway, to get to the point, last Christmas, at work we had a two week interval where each day someone would bring in cookies or bars or whatever to share with others at work during the Holidays.

Somebody brought in the following:


A Snicker Doodle Muffin! It was so good I bugged him for the recipe. He finally remembered and his wife sent me the link to the recipe and it turned out to be one link in a food blog called Culinary Concoctions by Peabody. So I spent some time going through her food blog and it was an extremely well done site with what seems like hundreds of recipes.

So I thought about it and decided to Google and find the TOP rated blogs for food. That's where I came across The Pioneer Woman's Blog. I can only tell you it is a phenomenal blog which covers Food, Cooking, Photography, her family, and her life on the ranch. Check it out yourself.

Anyway, that's it. After reading those two blogs and a few others, I decided to make my own newbie attempt at one and you are now reading it.

I find it so enjoyable as it's gotten me back to cooking and baking, and is probably becoming a hobby.

I told this story to Peabody of Culinary Concoctions and she gave me permission to use and blog her recipe for the Snickerdoodle Muffins, so here you go......and thank you Peabody!

(psst, her photos are so much better than mine, it's embarrassing, )

So I made them today and they really, really are a great muffin.


But, of course there is a punchline to this particular day's effort. I decided NOT to follow Peabody's recipe exactly. I figured instead of rolling sticky dough around in cinnamon sugar and then maybe having them stick in the muffin tins, I would just spoon the dough into muffin
liners, and sprinkle the cinnamon sugar over the top.

I admit they look nice in their little liners, and in fact they taste out of this world. BUT, I also made a couple without liners and rolled them in the sugar as Peabody suggests and here's the result.....:


Apparently, the dough will STICK to the liner and not rise up as much as without a liner. And, let's face it, having cinnamon sugar all over the muffin is the only way to go.

My muffin pan happened to be teflon but you might want to grease the muffin tin a bit when
not using liners.

Lastly, I found it was much easier to work the dough into a ball and cover with the cinnamon
sugar if the dough was refrigerated first for 15 minutes.