Cinnamon Sugar Donut Muffins

When I was a kid my parents owned and operated a small pharmacy in Brooklyn, me and my brothers and sister were practically raised there. We have tons of old photos of my mom pregnant, with one of out of the four of us, behind the counter. Photos of us kids playing in the back room, or sleeping in a playpen. That old Brooklyn pharamacy has so many great memories for me.

My dad used to go to this one bakery in the neighborhood and get us the BEST sugar donuts. To this day when I think of the pharmacy I think of the donuts and vice versa.

The other day I was looking through a blog I had just come across, http://vanillakitchen.blogspot.com/ and came across this recipe for Sugar Donut Muffins. I knew immediately that I had to make these. I tweaked it a bit based on some of the suggestions on the blog and I loved them. So simple and the perfect reminder of our Brooklyn pharmacy.

I took it a step further by spreading Nutella on a few of these, giving it an extra kick of flavor.

Cinnamon Sugar Donut Muffins
adapted from http://vanillakitchen.blogspot.com/2009/01/sugar-donut-muffins.html

Ingredients:

1 cup sugar
1 large egg
2 cups all purpose flour
1 ½ tsp baking power
¼ tsp salt
¼ tsp ground nutmeg
¼ tsp cinnamon
Zest of ½ an orange
¼ cup plus 1 tbs vegetable oil
¾ cup plus 2 tbs buttermilk
1 tsp vanilla extract

For topping:
4 tbs butter, melted
½ cup sugar, for rolling
1 tbs cinnamon, for rolling

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350F. Lightly grease a muffin tin with cooking spray or vegetable oil.
2. In a large bowl, beat together sugar and egg until light in color. Add in all the vegetable oil, all the buttermilk, vanilla extract and mix well.
3. In a small bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, salt, orange zest, cinnamon and nutmeg; add this to the wet mixture.Divide batter evenly into 12 muffin cups, filling each about 3/4 full.Bake for 15-18 minutes, until a tester inserted into the center comes out clean.
4. While muffins are baking, melt butter in one bowl and in another bowl pour in the ½ cup sugar, plus 1tbs cinnamon.
5. When muffins are done, take muffin one by one and brush top of muffin with melted butter then dip into cinnamon sugar mixture. Cool on a wire rack.Makes 12 muffins.

Juicy Strawberry Scones

As I've said on here before, I love anything strawberry. When I was a kid I was Strawberry Shortcake for Halloween one year (remember when plastic masks and a plastic tie back dress were the ultimate Halloween costume?). This is me, I don't even know how old I was here, 6 maybe 7? I look so happy with my plastic mask and dress, posing in front of the blue floral wallpaper in our old house.
Maybe thats when my love for strawberries started. Maybe I just love how pretty and simple and sweet they are all on their own. Maybe I love that they go with so many different foods, you can have strawberries in your healthy spinach salad or in a (somewheat unhealthy) strawberry cupcake.


When I came across this recipe on goodthingscatered.blogspot.com I was a little bit sceptical, see while I love strawberries, I do not like scones. I had only hada scone once, years ago and I hated it. It could have just been that I had a not so great scone, but for some reason it stuck with me and I never had one again. After ready some of the comments on Katie's blog I decided to give this recipe a try. She staed that these are a morebiscuit like scone, as opposed to a crumbly texture (which is what I had tried before and didn't care for).

The result was amazing, so soft and juicy. A great morning treat!

Juicy Strawberry Scones
(http://goodthingscatered.blogspot.com/2008/05/juicy-strawberry-scones.html)

Ingredients
2 1/4 - 2 1/2 c. all purpose flour (depends on how ripe your strawberries are)
1/4 c. granulated sugar, plus extra for sprinkling
1 Tbsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 stick (8 Tbsp) butter, chilled and cut into small pieces
1 egg
1/4 c. yogurt
1/4 c. milk
2 tsp orange zest
1 c. fresh strawberries, diced


Directions:
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line baking sheet with parchment
- In small bowl, combine egg, yogurt, milk, zest, whisk to combine thoroughly and set aside.
- In large bowl combine flour, sugar, powder, salt, and whisk to combine.
- Using pastry cutter or two knives, cut butter into flour until all pieces are smaller than pea-sized.
- Add strawberries, and toss to coat.
- Add wet ingredients to dry and mix in lightly with fork until dough just comes together.
- Turn dough out onto well floured work surface and pat into large ball.
- Cut dough in half.
- Shape half of dough into flat disk shape and cut into 8 slices.
- Place on baking sheet and repeat with other half of dough.
- Sprinkle tops of scones with sugar and place in the oven.
- Bake until turn slightly brown, about 25 minutes.
- Remove from oven and let cool on baking sheet for 10 minutes.
- Transfer to a wire rack and let cool.

German Apple Pancake

My husband loves apple pie, how could he not, its a classic! Usually when I bake we'll enjoy the goods, then bring whats left to work or to one of our parents. But when I bake an apple pie, its not going anywhere, Samer loves eating it for breakfast. So when I came across this recipe for a German Apple Pancake in the All American Test Kitchen book, I figured why not. It was a cross between an apple pie and a pancake. It was simple enough to make and I had all the ingredients on hand.

It was lighter than I'd expected, but filling at the same time, I used granny smith apples, so it wasn't overly sweet, just sweet enough for breakfast.

German Apple Pancakes

The All-American Test Kitchen Family Baking Book

INGREDIENTS

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

1 tbs sugar

1/2 tsp salt

2/3 cup half and half

2 large eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 tbs unsalted butter

1 1/4 lbs (3 0r 4 large) apples, peeled, cored, quartered and sliced 1/2 inch thick

1/4 cup packed light brown sugar

1/4 tsp fresh lemon juice

Confectioners sugar for dusting

** Be sure to use half and half, if you use milk or heavy cream the pancakes will have a slight egg-y taste.

1. Adjust the oven rack to upper-middle position and heat the oven to 500*F. Whsik the flour, suagr and salt together in a large bowl. In a small bowl whisk the half and half, eggs and vanilla togther. whisk the half and half mixture into the flour mixture until smooth, with no lumps.

2. Melt the butter in a 10 inch oven proof non stick skillet over medium-high heat. Add the apples, brown sugar and cinnamon ad cook, stirring often, until the apples are golden brown, about 10 minutes. Off the heat stir in the lemon juice.

3. Quickly pour the batter into the skillet, then over the apples. Place the skillet in the oven and immediately reduce the oven temperature to 425*F. Bake until the pancake is brown and has risen above the edges of the skillet, about 18 minutes.

4. Loosen the pancake-edges from the hot skillet with a spatula and flip the pancake onto a large plate. Dust with confectioners sugar, cut into 4 wedges and serve immediately.

I Dream of Costco

I've been married 2.5 years, crazy!! I still remember our first morning back from our honeymoon, we woke up and my husband turned to me and said he was hungry, lets have eggs. I sat up and thought about it for a minute before I turned to him and said, me too, but I have no idea how to make eggs. The look on his face said it all. See I was never much of a cook, at the time I knew how to make two, maybe three dishes, nothing fancy. Not saying that eggs are fancy, but I had just never made eggs. We ended up at Dunkin Donuts that morning.

As time went on, I started cooking more and more, and somewhere along the way I really began enjoying it. I began planning menus and making trips to the supermarket and even started shopping at Costco. Now, I love Costco, even though its just me and my husband I love shopping there, but with just the two of us living in a one bedroom condo, buying bulk doesn't really make a lot of sense. I would always go in and buy a big bag of bananas, I mean how could you resist the price, about $1.30, for 7 or 8 bananas!! We'd always have a few that would go bad and I would just throw them away, such a waste. One morning I was looking at my very, very ripe bananas and decided to find a recipe to use them up. I came across this recipe from Allrecipes.com for Banana Crumb Muffins and decided to give it a try. I figured I would eventually have to tackle breakfast, especially after the egg episode (which my husband still tells people about to this day!!).
They were delicious, moist and crumbly. Both my husband and I loved them and I've been making them ever since. That was the first time I had ever baked anything from scratch, and it was when I fell in love with baking.

INGREDIENTS

Muffins:
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 ripe bananas, mashed
1/2 cup white sugar
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 egg, lightly beaten
1/3 cup butter, melted

Topping:
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 tablespoon butter

DIRECTIONS
1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Lightly grease 10 muffin cups, or line with muffin papers.
2. In a large bowl, mix together 1 1/2 cups flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. In another bowl, beat together bananas, sugars, egg, vanilla and melted butter. Stir the banana mixture into the flour mixture just until moistened. Spoon batter into prepared muffin cups.
3. In a small bowl, mix together brown sugar, 2 tablespoons flour and cinnamon. Cut in 1 tablespoon butter until mixture resembles coarse cornmeal. Sprinkle topping over muffins.
4. Bake in preheated oven for 18 to 20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into center of a muffin comes out clean.