Healthy Yogurt Muffins

So after playing around with a cake mix, I wanted to play around with some recipes. People always say that cake mixes aren't the time savers they claim to be, that from scratch can be just as fast. So I thought I'd see--plus I wanted to try using the mini donut pan I bought! I have two cookbooks with lemon yogurt muffin recipes--very different approaches, though both claim to be healthy and low calorie. At first I'd planned on a half batch of each, but ended up accidentally adding too much at one point of yogurt, so ended up with full batches.

Lime-Pomegranate Yogurt Muffins

Ingredients:

1 c whole wheat bread flour
1 c all purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
`1/4 c granulated sugar
3 tbs light butter
1/3 c egg subsitiute
1 c fat free pomegranate Greek style yogurt
2 limes juiced and zested

Glaze

1 lime juice and zest
confectioners sugar

 The butter and sugar are creamed together, then the egg, yogurt, lime juice, apple sauce, and lime zest are added. In another bowl, the dry ingredients are sifted together and then quickly added to the moist ingredients. This makes a pretty thick batter--more like a dough. Which was pretty hard to get into the donut tin.These bake at 350 for 18-20 minutes. Since they aren't very sweet, I dipped them in a little lime juice and powdered sugar.

Verdict: In making this, I used up the leftovers of the substitutions I'd used in the cake mix experimentation, so it was a little off from the original. I did think it was a little doughy and heavy--the wheat made it taste "healthy" not in a good way. It is very muffiny--heavy not light, and didn't work well in the donut mold.

Lemon Cornmeal Muffins

Ingredients:

3/4 c granulated sugar
1/4 c light butter
1/4 c egg substitute
lemon juice and zest from one lemon
1/4 c lite coconut milk
1 c all purpose flour
1/4 c cornmeal
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/8 tsp salt
1/2 c non-fate light lemon yogurt
1/2 c mixed berries
leftover blueberry lemon compote

Beat the wet ingredients together in a large bowl. In a different bowl mix the dry ingredients--I followed the recipe exactly, except I added the salt--it seems baking needs some salt. Then quickly combine the two, being careful not to overbeat. This is a much looser batter--and I poured it in a bag so I could better distribute it into the donut pan. It is important not to overfill the pan, so I put a bit in each and baked them for 12 minutes.


They cook fast, so keep an eye on it. The donuts are really small, so this made 46 mini donuts--some of which I added fruit to, some I added sauce, and some I did plain. I also topped some with leftover blueberry lemon compote after cooking.

The Verdict: These worked perfectly in the pan, turned out light and airy, with just a bit of a crunch from the cornmeal. Whether plain or with berries, they are tart and delicious. There is only one downside to these, they are small so it is easy to turn around and discover you've eaten 10. The good thing is that is still fewer calories than a large bakery muffin. This is a recipe I'd make again and again--the very best baked good I've made all weekend long!

Spinach, Onion, and Mushroom Whole Wheat Pizza

 So I was trying to decide what to do with my leftover caramelized onions, and I realized that with all the bread books I've checked out from the library, I cold combine the onions with baking and make a pizza. Of course I had this brainstorm at work on Friday, when I wouldn't have time to throw together a crust for dinner that night. But on Saturday I got up first thing and threw one together--I selected the recipe from the Cooks Illustrated Baking Illustrated book, because it had an option for whole wheat and had instructions for kneading by hand.

Dough Ingredients:

1/2 c warm water (110 degrees)
1 envelope instant yeast
1 1/4 c room temperature water
2 tbs olive oil
11 oz bread flour
11 oz whole wheat flour
1 1/2 tsp salt

The warm water and yeast is combined in a large measuring cup and left to sit for 5 minutes until it had foamed and activated. Then the rest of the water and oil are added in to combine. Add half of the flour and salt to a large bowl and all of the liquid ingredients and using a large spoon combine. Then add the rest and mix until all the flour is absorbed, then dump the dough onto a lightly floured work surface. Then knead the dough until smooth, about 7 minutes.


 The dough goes into an oiled bowl and rises for about 2 hours, or until doubled. At this point it can be divided into three portions and refrigerated or frozen or baked into a pizza! I froze two portions, and put one into the fridge for pizza!

Before I got to making my pizza, I put my pizza stone in the oven and cranked the temperature to 500 degrees. It needs time to preheat so the stone will have the heat to get a crispy crust. The dough also needs to come out of the fridge and come to room temperature.

Toppings:

1 1/2 c chopped frozen spinach thawed and drained
8 oz  brown mushrooms chopped
1 c caramelized onions
3 cloves garlic finely diced
red pepper
thyme and rosemary
salt and pepper
1/4 c lowfat ricotta
1/3 c 2% Italian cheese blend

The minced garlic, red pepper, and mushrooms go in a frying pan and are cooked until fragrant and the mushrooms start to brown. Then the onions and spinach are added, with the rosemary, thyme, and salt and pepper to taste. This cooks for a bit to get the flavors into the onions and mushrooms.

While that is cooking, the dough which has to be brought to room temperature before being used, can be spread. I put some flour on the counter and used my hands to spread it--the Baking Illustrated has a really nice illustration of how to do this.

It goes on a cornmeal dusted surface--I don't have a pizza peal, so I used the back of a sheet pan.It didn't work well for transferring to the oven. Once the dough is spread the spinach mixture is added to the top of the dough, leaving an edge around. I dotted the top with ricotta and transferred the pie to the stone, which is easier said than done, and let it cook for 12 minutes. My nicely shaped pie got all distorted, but it still tasted good! Once it was out of the oven, I sprinkled on the mixed Italian Cheeses.

The Verdict: This is a delicious pizza, with a nice crispy crust, and a good balance of toppings. When I make the next one I think I'll add some olives to give it a bit of a salty kick. It is nice to have the two balls of dough in the freezer, so I can pull them out and have pizza that evening.

Bread Attempt #2

So while contemplating my first bread attempt, with its long and relatively specific and complicated directions, I pulled another book (this one still in the library's collection) called Artisan Breads Every Day to compare the techniques. This is another long process with low kneading requirements. I don't have a stand mixer and my sister's is broken, so I wanted to give this a try to see how it compares. Partially because I wanted to make a whole wheat bread, and this book had one I had all the ingredients for in my house (I didn't have to borrow any ingredients from my sister, but I did anyways. It is good that she doesn't read this blog!)


This makes two loaves, but I'm already making another loaf, so I divided it in half. Hopefully that doesn't screw up the bread.

Ingredients:
14 oz whole wheat flour
.25 oz kosher salt
3/4 tbs agave nectar (thanks Emily!)
1/2 tbs yeast
11 oz lukewarm water
1 tbs vegetable oil


The dry ingredients are added together--including the sugar, but not the yeast (I may have done that at first and had to redo this!), and mixed to combine. The yeast is combined with the lukewarm water and the agave nectar--stirred until they are combined and the yeast has dissolved. Then the oil is added and whisked. The wet mixture is then added to the dry ingredients until the flour is all moistened.



At this point the dough is set aside for the flour to fully absorb the moisture, 5 minutes--I may have lost track of time, but came back and got on. I don't have a stand mixer, but I have a hand one with a dough hook, so I employed it for this next step. The dough is supposed to be stirred for 4 minutes at medium low speed increasing to medium high for the last 30 seconds--my dough was pretty dry so I added two tablespoons of water one at a time while I stirred. This was pretty hard for me--even with the mixer it was a lot of work.

After the dough was stirred enough I dumped it on a lightly floured surface and begun the fold and stretch part. Basically you pull from the bottom of the ball towards yourself and then wrap around to the other side, do that from each side, wrapping it. Then it goes into an oiled bowl and sits for 10 minutes at room temperature and then the same dump, pull, stretch, and wrap. This is repeated 3 additional times with 10 minutes in between.


After the final time, it goes into an oiled bowl, is covered well with plastic wrap, and goes into the fridge at least overnight, but for as much as 4 days. It does a lot of raising in the fridge--not only was it visibly bigger, but big bubbles appeared on the top. I pulled it out around 1 pm, after about 20 or so hours later.

Normally it would be divided into two loaves, but I'd split the recipe in half. So I dumped it on a floured surface and formed a loaf by pulling the edges towards the center. The book had some nice illustrations to demonstrate how to do this. I'm not sure I did it right but it is supposed to be a homestyle hearth loaf, not a fancy shaped loaf. I placed it on a sheet of parchment paper with cornmeal on bottom on top of an inverted sheet pan. It is covered with an oiled plastic sheet and let rise for about 3 hours until it had doubled or more. I kind of lost track of time, so I'm not sure how long it was, but you can see how much bigger it is.
The oven requires a specific set up for this type of bread--different from the last one, but a similar principle. The idea is to create a heated place to put the bread, rather than just put the pan in a preheated oven. So this is trying to recreate your stone hearth of yore or brick oven. I didn't have any kind of pizza stone, tile, or stone anything. But my sister had this heavy duty stoneware casserole that I borrowed--I'm dog sitting and she told me to make myself at home so I did. It goes into a 500 degree oven, along with a sheet pan. The two racks are moved to the bottom two slots, and pre-heat for at least 40 minutes. They need to be really hot to create the right environment to cook the bread.

About 15 minutes before it needs to cook, I took off the plastic and cut two parallel cuts in the bread dough and let it relax.  Then it is transferred into the prepared oven. This was pretty tricky with the casserole as opposed to a pizza stone or other flat stone. So the loaf got distorted, and since it was so hot it really started to bake right away. I poured a cup of very hot water into the sheet pan below, and reduced the oven's temperature to 425 and cooked for 15 minutes and then turned the pan and cooked for another 15 minutes. It had browned very well so I pulled it out and let it rest for 15 minutes before tearing into it.

The Verdict: This is a nice soft intensely wheaty bread. The wheat is perhaps a little bitter--it could use more agave or honey or sugar to balance out the amount of wheat. That said, it has a really nice crumb, with a lovely texture. I'm actually surprised at how soft and moist it is considering it isn't enriched. The crust isn't too hard, but goes well with the soft interior. I will try this again, increasing the sugar and maybe cutting the whole wheat with some white flour to moderate the taste--or adding some flavor counterpoint.

Kneadlessly Simple--my first loaf of bread

I'll admit to being a breadlover--while I don't pair every main course with a carb, I just love a good bread, and so does my family. We used to joke that we could eat our fill out of the bread bowl at family dinners and not even need an entree. But I can't say that we ate a lot of homemade bread growing up--besides the good old bread machine. I have to say I didn't love the texture of the crust on it, though it never stopped me from eating it. So in my quest to learn to cook, baking bread seemed like a skill I would naturally love to develop. I even had a book in my collection that made it sound easy, so I'm giving it a try.

The book I'm baking from is called Kneadlessly Simple and promises Fabulous, Fuss-Free, no-knead breads. While it says simple and easy, this is no quick recipe where you toss a few things together and have results right away. Rather it is putting things together and letting time do its business. Lots of hurry up and wait.

Ingredients:
3 cups unbleached bread flour
1/2 c yellow cornmeal, plus some for garnish
1/2 c old-fashioned rolled oats
1/2 c whole wheat bread flour (the original called for rye, which I didn't have)
1 tbs granulated sugar
2 tsp salt
3/4 tsp fast rising yeast
2 c ice water
cooking spray

Baking like this is a lot of science, so I broke out the scale to get exact measurements--I borrowed the bread flour from my sister--if she was not out of town I'd get her to try some of the bread. Mix dry ingredients thoroughly--including the sugar and yeast--and then add the cold water. I added it slowly to try and get the dry ingredients moistened slowly, since the flour seemed to absorb as much water as it could and was kind of difficult to get all of the flour mixture moistened. The dough was, as the recipe indicated, quite stiff. The dough is sprayed with the cooking oil, covered, and stuck in the fridge for 3 to 10 hours.

The book says two rises--but there are really three in the book. First is when it rises in the fridge--which it does quite a bit, and then in a cool place for 12-18 hours, and then a regular raise in a warm place. These three rises are supposed to substitute for kneading, with the flavor developing as well. The idea is that while this takes more than 24 hours to make, most of it can be done while you sleep or at work.


Anyway, around 8 at night, I pulled the dough out of the fridge and set it on the counter top to raise. I lowered the temp in the house to a cool 66 degrees, so the bread would have a nice slow time rising. I covered it with plastic wrap and sprayed the top with oil.





         In the morning the dough had doubled, and you could see an incredible array of bubbles and air pockets along the side of the bowl. I liked being able to see the dough in the clear bowl--science in action! I let it work for a few more hours, not starting the second rise until after my water aerobics.

So with an oiled rubber spatula I lifted from the corners and folded it into the center to deflate it and begin the second raise. I turned the heat back up and let that rise for two and a half hours. About twenty minutes before it was to go into the oven, I put my dutch oven in the oven and preheated both to 450. The book suggests dropping water in to make sure it is hot enough--it got sizzling!

The dough is dumped into the screaming hot pan--which is easier said than done. It turned out somewhat inelegantly in the pan and it was so hot it started cooking right away and couldn't be shifted. I used a pair of scissors to cut a circle in the top of the bread, sprinkled the top with water, and sprinkled it with cornmeal.

I lowered the temperature of the oven to 425, and the bread goes into the oven with the lid on for 50 minutes. During that time the whole house begun smelling deliciously of baking bread. At 50 minutes cooking, the lid comes off and it bakes for another 15 minutes, or until the thermometer reads between 210-212. I have to say mine didn't get quite that high, even though I let it bake the 15 minutes and then the extra 5 minutes it recommended. The top was getting really brown, and I was worried about burning it. I pulled it out and let it sit in the pot for a good 15 minutes, and then tore into it and had a big chunk with my beef and vegetable tagine.

The Verdict: This is a crusty bread with a surprisingly moist interior. I expected such a lean bread to be drier, but it is deliciously tender, with a really crunchy crust. There is a good amount of flavor developed here from the long rising and the four grains. I have to admit I want to eat this whole loaf in one sitting--but it is so good warm and delicious out of the oven. I am pretty proud of my very first loaf of bread--it is a big step above being just edible!

Popovers or Yorkshire Pudding?

My Grandma, I wish I'd understood her more.

 After I brought in the mystery cupcakes to work, I decided I needed to bring in some savory treats, since right now half of the staff have sworn off sugar. So when I found a recipe for "Rosemary Popovers, with Lemon Butter" in the Weight Watcher's 2005 annual recipe book, I was intrigued--a savory roll that didn't have baking soda or powder or yeast. Sounds easy enough, and I have most of the ingredients already, but I wasn't sure what a popover was supposed to be like. So I hit up the internet--and it turns out I do know the popover--as Yorkshire Pudding!

My grandmother was born and raised in Yorkshire before WWII and used to cook us Toad in the Hole, Roast Beef and Yorkshire pudding, and once even liver and onions! Sadly, none of her recipes have been passed down to me--she said the secret to Yorkshire Pudding was something that couldn't be taught, and couldn't be captured in a recipe. The secret was the scorched and seasoned pan, crusty and black with years of puddings and roasts. I'm not sure what happened to her pans--she passed away several years ago. But instead of trying to capture that Yorkshire spirit, I'm going to attempt some popovers!

Ingredients:
3 tbs butter softened
1 tsp orange or lemon zest
1 cup milk or milks substitute
1/2 cup egg substitute or 2 eggs
1 cup flour
1/2 tsp salt
cooking spray



Preheat the oven to 450 degrees, and get out the butter, milk, and eggs so they can get to room temperature. Put the pan in the oven to heat up for at least 5 minutes. Mix the butter and half of the lemon zest and set aside.

Once all of the ingredients are at room temperature put the milk, flour, egg, salt, and half of the zest in a large bowl and whisk until smooth. This is a lot like a crepe batter--very liquid. I went with orange zest, but these could be made with a huge variety of seasonings, sweet or savory. I let the batter rest for a little, about 5 minutes, though longer is better. In fact, like crepe batter, I bet the batter could be made in advanced and just whisked up and baked when needed.

I pulled the heated pan out of the oven, sprayed it with cooking spray, and divided the batter between the
pans. They went into the oven for 15 minutes, and then the oven was lowered to 350 for another 15 minutes. They came out of the oven toasty and popped up--though not really over the top. I think if I had used real eggs, and not the substitute, they may have popped more. I pulled them out of the pans to cool--I'd read online to poke a hole in the bottom to let the steam out, but most had holes in the bottom already!

The Verdict: These were eggy and addictive--I meant to try one hot out of the oven and then eat them with leftover chili for lunch. But before I knew it I'd inhaled 4 along with my bowl of chili. They have just a faint hint of orange, and could be savory or sweet. The recipe called for using the orange butter with them, but they were just as good without or dipped in chili. I can see how they would be better fresh, hot out of the oven, served along with something to dip or smother them. Next time I will make up a batch of the batter and make a few at a time as I need them, so I can have them fresh for lunch and dinner!