peanut butter and jelly muffins

Here is another breakfast recipe from recipe shoebox.  This is actually the first recipe I have tried from there that I just did not have any luck with.  It looks so nice and simple on that site.  Just put the dough in the muffin tin, nicely add the jelly, top with more dough and whah la, cute little stuffed muffins.  Well, that was not the case for me.  The dough was very thick for some reason so it was semi hard to get it into the muffin tins in the first place.  Then the jam I was using was home-made and a tiny bit thin (not syrupy or anything, just not jelly, jam or preserves.)  Anyway, it tried to slide all over the place.  Then when I topped the jam with the last bits of dough, it didn't cover well.  That led to some awful problems when these cooked - the jelly melted and came out the sides of the muffin all over the top of the muffin tin.  So messy.  They were also a bit dry (maybe due to the fact that they were soo thick.)  I followed the recipe except that I used full fat peanut butter not reduced (should have made them less dry right?)  I also didn't use sugar free spreadable fruit, just regular homemade strawberry jam. I can't imagine those 2 changes making that big of a difference in the muffin.  Not sure what went wrong.
I'm not posting the recipe, just the link to the recipe.  I like the concept of these and I like the flavor of peanut butter and jelly.  If I try these again, I will probably add a bit of sweetener to the muffin dough.  Maybe honey or agave to make the batter a little less thick.   I'd probably also thin out the batter a bit. Maybe add a banana?

If you want cute pictures check out the link above.  Here are some photos of my fiasco.
You can see the mess they were.  A couple ended up with holes in the bottom and the jelly leaked.  They were a bit dry and crumbly.
Below they are in the pan jelly oozing everywhere.

carrot cake pancakes with maple cream cheese

I know I'm behind on blogging because it has been a busy week, but I can't really decide where to start, so I'll just start with this morning's breakfast.  Brandon fed everyone cold cereal while I was out running, but I didn't want that.  I've had cereal 2 days in a row, and it is Saturday - definitely not a cereal day in my book, so after much debate I decided that it was still worth making pancakes even just for me.  I was trying these for myself anyway because I love carrot cake.  I found the recipe over at recipe shoebox.  Love that site because she has tons of awesome breakfast recipes.  These did not disappoint.  I liked them a lot plain.  Of course with the cream cheese they were still good although I'm not sure which way I liked them better.  One was just different.
I do want to mess with this recipe a little bit and almost did today, but it was late and I was the only one eating, so I decided against it.  I'd love to try it with pineapple in it sometime though because that's how I love actual carrot cake.  My only other note to self would be to shred the carrots on the thinner side of the grater.  Thicker was fine, the carrots were fine, I just think they would spread out in the pancake a little better if there were more thinner shreds.  I did love the toasted flavor of the pecans.  I almost didn't toast them, but I'm glad I did.
Here is the recipe with my adaptations.

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup pecans, chopped
• 1 cup shredded carrot
• 1 1/2 cup whole wheat flower
• 3/4 cup all purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 cups milk
• 1/3 cup packed brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1/4 cup unsweetened applesauce

Directions

1. Put carrots in a microwave safe bowl.  Cover with plastic wrap.  Heat on high for 1 minute to soften.  Set aside to cool.
2. Toast pecans in a small frying pan just until fragrant.  Set aside.
3. Whisk together dry ingredients and pecans. Mix Wet ingredients.  Mix wet and dry together just until combined.  Stir in carrots.
4. Bake on griddle at about 350.  

Yield (15 pancakes for me - about 3-4 inches)

Maple cream cheese spread
Ingredients

• 3 ounces cream cheese at room temperature (I used neufchatel and nuked it for 15 seconds to soften.)
• 2 Tablespoons maple syrup
• 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

Directions

1. In a small bowl, mix all ingredients together.  Serve on pancakes.

Menu 10/20/2010

Breakfasts to try
Baked oatmeal
Cranberry orange bagels (HC p. 28)
Carrot Cake pancakes

Dinners
sweet and savory chicken sausage and apple pizza TOH p. 115, + regular pizza
Slow cooker chicken enchilada chili with cheddar cheese tortillas
Pasta fagioli Serve with Cesar Salad
Stuffed potato pancakes with green beans
Chinese BBQ pork (American Test Kitchen book.  P 182) with stir fry veggies
Kidney bean and tuna salad, serve on lettuce.  Top with chow mein noodles?  Serve with everything bread.
German style beef roast (S&D p. 17)  with feta zucchini pancakes

Inside out stuffed cabbage

This is what we had last night.  Yet again DH made dinner.  I was still busily cleaning up and trying to get stuff ready for preschool this morning.  It turned out pretty well.  I liked the flavor.  I remember wondering when I saw the recipe if it would be too spicy but it wasn't.  Brandon actually added hot sauce.  If I weren't afraid of hot sauce I may have added a dash myself because it did taste like it could use a bit more bite.
The recipe comes from my taste of home simple and delicious magazine.

Ingredients

• 1 lb ground beef
• 2 cups cubed peeled butternut squash
• 1 medium green pepper, chopped (we used red)
• 6 cups chopped cabbage
• 1 can (11.5 oz) spicy hot V8 juice
• 1 cup water
• 1 envelope beefy onion soup mix
• 1 Tablespoon brown sugar
• 1/2 cup uncooked instant brown rice.

Directions

1. In a dutch oven, cook beef, squash and green pepper over medium heat until meat is no longer pink; drain.  (We used pre-cooked beef, so we just sauteed the pepper and squash for a few minutes, then added the beef with the next set of ingredients.)  
2. Stir in cabbage, juice, water, soup mix and brown sugar.  Bring to a boil.  Reduce heat; cover and simmer for 8-10 minutes or until cabbage is tender, stirring occasionally.
3. Stir in rice.  Cover and cook for 5 minutes.  Remove from heat; cover and let stand for 5 minutes or until rice is tender.

Confetti rice

I had planned to make this with a pork chop meal because it was pictured with it in my Taste of home magazine. However, I ended up making it with a chicken meal.  It went well with the meal, but I had just made Mexican white rice.  This was too much rice too close together for me.  While this was good, I prefer the Mexican white rice.  Something about the sweetness of the toasted corn, and the addition of milk really make it a nice side dish.
Don't get me wrong, this was a lovely side dish of rice.  I liked it, thought it would look great at Christmas with the red peppers and green peas. I did double this, but I'm writing the single recipe.

 Ingredients

• 2 cups chicken stock
• 1 cup rice
• 1/4 teaspoon oregano
• 1/8 teaspoon pepper
• 1 cup diced red pepper (or 1/2 green, 1/2 red)
• 1/2 cup frozen green peas

Directions

1. Combine all ingredients in a large saucepan.  Bring to a boil.  Reduce heat; cover and simmer for 20 minutes.

(I just read the actual instructions and they had you add the peas at the end then let them sit while they warmed up.  Probably would have made for sweeter peas which would have been yummy.  I will try that next time.)

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Lemon herb roast chicken with pan gravy

I'm getting a bit behind with my blogging for some reason.  I got 2 done this morning, but I still have 2 or 3 to go not to mention the pictures I haven't added.

This recipe is from my dinner on Sunday.  It came from my Taste of home magazine, but it was actually a Campbell's recipe.  I changed it up a bit by using split chicken breasts instead of a whole chicken.  I almost bought the chicken, but then I remembered that I had the split breasts in the freezer so that won.  It worked out better because we invited extra people over and this gave us more meat.  My plan was to serve this with green beans, but our guest was bringing a salad, so I made confetti rice.

They baked up beautifully.  We just popped a kitchen thermometer in them and let them get to 160.  Not sure how long that took.  They were good with the gravy as well.

DH was in charge of making the gravy.  It called for white wine.  I'm pretty sure he used chicken stock instead so that is what I'll write in the recipe.

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 teaspoon lemon zest (1 1/2 -2 lemons)
• 1 Tablespoon lemon juice (only 1/2 -1 lemon)
• 1 can Cream of chicken soup (I use the lower fat one.
• 1 Tablespoon chopped fresh rosemary leaves (or 1 teaspoon crushed - we used fresh here)
• 1 Tablespoon chopped fresh thyme leaves or 1 teaspoon dried thyme leaves, crushed (used dried here)
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 roasting chicken 5-7 lbs.  (we used split breast 6-7 lbs -6  breasts)
• 1/4 cup chicken stock
• 1/4 cup water 

Directions

1. Heat oven to 375.  Place chicken into a shallow roasting pan (we don't have one.  We roasted ours on our cooling rack on a cookie sheet.) Roast chicken for 20 minutes.
2.  Meanwhile, Stir lemon zest, lemon juice, soup, rosemary, thyme and garlic in medium bowl.  Reserve 1 cup soup mix for gravy.  Brush chicken with 1/4 cup soup mixture. 
3. Return to oven and roast 1 hour 15 minutes or until chicken is cooked through (160 on meat thermometer.  Pretty sure this took less than 1 hour and 15 - more like 45-60 minutes for us.)  Remove chicken to a serving platter.  
4. At this point you can spoon off the fat from the pan juices then make a gravy in the roasting pan, but we didn't use a roasting pan, so we just heated the soup mix in a saucepan adding a bit of the drippings along with the chicken stock and water.

Wheat bread 2

So I finally ventured away from my wheat bread recipe and tried something new.  I have wanted to try a new recipe for a long time, but I really like my recipe so I haven't attempted it.  I have really wanted to try the bosch recipe (found here on page 27) ever since I got my bosch, but I have never had Dough Enhancer.  Another reason I haven't tried something different.  I saw that Mel and My kitchen cafe  had made it without the dough enhancer.  I also liked that she let the yeast sponge for a bit, and I was very curious to try her method to cook the bread - putting it in a cold oven.  The bread I make has multiple dough enhancers, so I decided to try my hand at bosch bread - upping the yeast like mel did, letting it sponge like mel, and baking it like mel, but I added 2 Tablespoons of buttermilk powder, 2 Tablespoons of potato flakes, and 2 Tablespoons of vinegar.  The resulting bread had a wonderful texture.  It was nice and soft.  I prefer the flavor of my other bread a little bit, but this was still very good.    I ended up adding all 15 cups of flour, and making 5 loaves (but one of my pans is a 1.5 lb pan.)  Here is what I did.

Ingredients

• 6 cups warm water
• 2 1/2 Tablespoons instant yeast
• 2 Tablespoons salt
• 1/2 cup oil
• 2/3 cup honey
• 2 Tablespoons vital wheat gluten
• 2 Tablespoons buttermilk powder (or powdered milk)
• 2 Tablespoons potato flakes
• 2 Tablespoons vinegar
• 12-15 cups whole wheat flour (fresh ground is best if possible)

Directions

1. Mix warm water, yeast and 8 cups flour in the bowl of a bosch.  Stir to combine.  Let sit to sponge for 10-15 minutes.  (I got the rest of my stuff together while I was waiting -ground the 2nd half of my wheat, and got out the rest of my ingredients.)
2. Add salt, oil, honey, gluten, buttermilk powder, potato flakes, and vinegar.  Mix to combine.  Add flour until the dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl.  Continue mixing for 5 -8 minutes.  
3. Spray loaf pans with cooking spray.  Spray hands and counter with cooking spray.  Turn dough onto counter and divide into 5-6 pieces.  Put into prepared loaf pans.  Cover and let rise until they are 1 inch over the pan.  (This time I actually sprayed my loaves with cooking spray and covered them with plastic wrap.  I really like to make my microwave a proofing box by boiling some water in there and then when it is nice and steamy, putting the loaves in there.  I wasn't sure all of the loaves would fit, and I didn't want to get out the microwave shelf and try it today, so I didn't, but usually, that is what I do.)
4. When bread is risen, place in a cold oven.  Turn oven on to 350 and bake for 38 minutes.  

This baking method worked pretty well.  I wish I would have rotated my bread at about 32 minutes and maybe left them a total fo 40 minutes so that they would have been more golden everywhere, but part of that is also my pans.  I love my chicago metal loaf pan, but I only have 1.  It turned out much better than my pyrex pans or the silicon pan I have.  I have the 1.5 lb size, but I think I will order some in the 1 lb size so they will fit into bags a bit better.  They really are a great loaf pan.  I think next time I will also get the nonstick so I can use them to bake the 5 minute a day type bread.Chicago Metallic Professional Nonstick 1-Pound Loaf Pan