Copycat Starbucks Bran Muffins

My husband has breakfast with his life-long buddy just about every Saturday.  Lately, they’ve been going to Starbucks for coffee and a baked good.  I asked DH to bring back one of their Bran Muffins, which are soooo yummy!

Then it dawned on me, why not make my own?  I searched the internet and settled on this recipe:

https://www.geniuskitchen.com/recipe/starbucks-bran-muffins-404763#activity-feed

Meh, not so much.  I’m not sure why I wasn’t wow-ed by these muffins… was it the recipe?  Or was it the dried Apples that I found at the local market, that had absolutely no Apple taste to them, dunno … but I’ll go back to making my standard Bran Muffin recipe, from the side of the cereal box.

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Apple Squares

I participate in several Food Forums, I may have mentioned this before; a nice gentleman posted a recipe that his Sister gave him for what they call Apple Squares, me, I say pure yumminess is much more along the line!

Apple Squares

courtesy of Andy M.

Serves 9

 

130g (1 C.) All Purpose Flour

240g (1 1/4 C.) granulated Sugar

1/2 tsp. Salt

1/2 tsp. ground Cinnamon

1/8 tsp. ground Nutmeg

2 tsp. Baking Powder

3/4 C. Chopped Walnuts (I used Pecans)

3 Macintosh Apples, peeled, cored and diced (I had Ruby Frost Apples that needed using)

2 Eggs, beaten

 

Preheat the over to 375°F

Grease and line with parchment paper, an 8″ x 8″ pan

Combine the dry ingredients in a large bowl.  Add the Apples and mix well.  Stir in the beaten Eggs thoroughly.  This makes a very stiff batter, but be patient, it will come together.  Pour the batter into the pan and spread it out evenly with an off-set spatula.

Bake for 40-45 minutes, until a toothpick test comes out clean.  Cool the cake completely on a wire rack, in the pan.

Using the parchment paper, remove carefully to a cutting board and slice with a serrated knife into 9 equal pieces.

YUM!

Why not guild the lily and serve your cake ala mode?  😀

Homemade Soft Pretzels ala Alton Brown

My husband has been trying to get me to make him Soft Pretzels for YEARS!  And I can understand, he’s from Philadelphia and loves  his Soft Pretzels 😀

Well, I have no idea what got into me, but I was in the mood for something yummy and different, so I went on the WWW to search for a good recipe.  There are several websites/blogs/vlogs etc. out there with solid techniques for making Soft Pretzels, but I settled on:

https://altonbrown.com/homemade-soft-pretzels-recipe/

This is a gorgeous dough!

I rolled out 8 ‘snakes’ of dough

… not bad for my 1st try, if I do say so myself

Boil the formed Pretzels in a Baking Soda solution …

… this makes quite the mess!

See how they puffed up?

Ooh!

Ooh my!

I thought that the finished product looked a bit fat, but DH LOVED  these.  I didn’t have Pretzel Salt, and used course Hawaiian Sea Salt, that was okay, but I really wished  that I had some Queso for dipping!  Next time, and believe me, there will be a next time, soon!

ENJOY!

 

King Arthur Flour 100% Whole Wheat No Knead Bread

After making King Arthur Flour No Knead Crusty White Bread recipe, I wondered if I could find a really good Whole Wheat Bread recipe too.

BINGO!

https://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/no-knead-100-whole-wheat-bread-recipe

Here’s what I learned while making this Bread, it’s a very sticky dough!

A plastic Bench Scraper works super  here.

I also learned a tip from King Arthur Flour, when smoothing out the top of that sticky dough, use some Cooking/Baking Oil Spray on your finger tips.

Here’s another tip: Use that Cooking/Baking Oil Spray on an old Shower Cap and cover the dough to rise.

That rose-up beautifully!  But, hmmm, what happened here?  Oops, we had a bit of a fall while in the oven  😀

Our Bread has wings!

That’s okay.  We sacrificed the wings, ate them as a snack, and we had the BEST  toast with our breakfast!

 

 

Let’s Make Some Bread!

Back in the day, I would make fresh bread often.  For some reason, I stopped doing so, probably because I didn’t have that kind of time to devote to the process.  Now that I’m retired,

Let’s make some bread!

I made a full batch of King Arthur Flour No-Knead Crusty White Bread, and got 4 nice sized loaves for us two.

Very yummy!

I left the dough to sit in the refrigerator for 4 days for the first round and then 6 days the second round.  We liked the 4 day dough better in flavor.

I think we’ll be making fresh bread more often 😀

A New Brownie Recipe for My Kitchen In The Middle Of The Desert

If you’ve been following my blog with any regularity, you’ll know that we just love our Brownies here In The Middle Of The Desert.

Rocky Road Brownies

Fudge Brownies topped with chopped Macadamia Nuts and a Chocolate Swirl

Chocolate Covered Strawberries Brownies

Salted Caramel topped Brownies

I put the Chocolate Chips and Nuts on the outside of my Brownies before I bake them and then do a swirl on top of Vanilla Candy Melts once they’ve cooled

 

I’ve made so many different kinds, flavors, add-ins and so on and so on.

Recently I found this recipe …

https://www.shugarysweets.com/bakery-style-brownies/

… on a social media site, I can’t remember which one, but they looked pretty dang good.

My go-to recipe for Brownies has been from Hershey’s, I mean come on, who knows chocolate in America better than Hershey’s… by the way, have you ever been to Hershey Pennsylvania?  The entire town smells like chocolate, the light posts have Hershey Kiss shaped shades and geez, it’s just a super neat place.

But I digress, back to the topic of Brownies.

I took Aimee’s recipe and made it my own by adding a half teaspoon of Espresso Powder to pump up the chocolate volume and a half cup of chopped Macadamia Nuts.  I think though next time, a full cup of Nuts would be better.

Look at THAT!!!

Man oh man oh man OH MAN!!  Them’s some good Brownies, let me tell you buddy.  My husband, who doesn’t comment on food too often, has exclaimed with each and every bite “… these are just the best Brownies you’ve ever made, really!”

They are quite rich and decadent, I gotta tell ya, so I cut this 9 by 9 inch block-o-goodness into 16 pieces.

This is from batch #2 made with chopped Pecans, topped with Mint Cookie Crunch Ice cream, YUM!!

AND they are over the top delicious  with a scoop of Ice Cream on top!

Brownie, Ice Cream and then warmed Blueberry Preserves over the top

OR  take it one more step with the Brownie, Ice Cream and then your favorite Preserve, warmed and drizzled artfully all over.

Mahalo, thank you Aimee, for sharing this fabulous recipe with all of us.

Did I Say That I Made Cheesecake?

Yup!  Only the second time in my entire life that I’ve ever made Cheesecake.  I had no idea where to start, so I turned to my girl Martha, Martha Stewart that is.  I kinda-sorta followed the recipe, but I remembered that the first time I did this, the recipe made me TWO HUGE CHEESECAKES!!

AND I didn’t have quite enough Cream Cheese this time around.  I had three blocks left over from my Carrot Cake frenzy of this past Spring.  When I checked the “use by” dates on them it was all hands on deck!

My changes were 3 bricks of Cream Cheese instead of SEVEN, 3 eggs rather than 5 and half of what was called for all of the ingredients for the filling.  The crust was a standard crust recipe off the box of the Graham Cracker Crumbs, simple.

It came out very dense and not as sweet, I really liked it better actually.

That’s a lot of Cheesecake for two people though, so I frozen probably half the cake, in slices, for later.