Operation Blueberry Bagels #2

So here is the post with pictures that I took of my bagel making progress.. obviously not of everything since it's hard to take pictures of something you are doing yourself when your hands are dirty. But enough so you get the idea! :)

They aren't perfectly shaped but if I do it more I'm sure it'll get better! :) Either way I don't care about the shape so much as the taste.. lol. Now I let them rise, and then they get boiled in water before getting baked in the oven. 

A note to myself and for others: If you like your bagels a little smaller you could probably divide your dough into 10 bagels rather than the 8 the recipe says. They are HUGE!

Operation Blueberry Bagels #1

So I finally decided to bite the bullet so to speak. I've been wanting to do this for a while but I've never bothered to look for a recipe until someone pinned one on Pinterest and I saw it. I decided today was the day since I felt like having bagels for no real reason. I could go to the store and buy them, but sometimes reading labels makes me go crazy. The amount of garbage that goes into food we buy is ridiculous!

Anyway so I changed a few things from the recipe so here is what I did.


2 cups soft white wheat flour
2 cups unbleached white flour

1 Tbsp sugar
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 Tbsp vegetable oil
2 tsp instant yeast
1-1/4- 1-1/2 cups of warm water.

1/4 -1/2 cup blueberries.

**the bolded items are what I changed/added.

Now for the rest of the instructions here is the link for the webpage I followed:

http://johndlee.hubpages.com/hub/Homemade_bagel_recipe_Make_great_nadrolled_water_bagels__its_as_easy_as_baking_a_loaf_of_bread


As well as below :)


I've made a lot of bagels in my time. I owned a bagel restaurant for years, and you would find me every bleary eyed morning kneading the dough and hand rolling all the fresh bagels for the day.
I've since gotten out of the bagel game (Yay sleep!) but I still love a great bagel.

People think that making outstanding bagels at home is really difficult, but it's really no harder than making a loaf of bread...and can be done within about an hour.
Don't be discouraged if your bagels look at bit funny at first, you'll get the hang of it in no time, and those curiously shaped bagels will still beat supermarket bagels hands down.

What makes a bagel different from other breads is the two stage cooking process. A bagel is first briefly boiled, and then baked. I worked the meat counter in a Jewish deli as a teenager, and as my boss would say, an unboiled bagel is just a roll with a hole!


Homemade bagel recipe
4 cups bread flour
1 Tbls sugar
1 1/2 tsps salt
1 Tbls vegetable oil
2 tsps instant yeast
1-1/4- 1-1/2 cups of warm water.


Mix all the ingredients in a bowl. You don't have to worry about soaking the yeast when you use instant yeast (most yeast sold these days is instant yeast). The dough should feel stiff, but add the extra water if it's really stiff, or you can't get all the dry flour incorporated.
Plop the dough down onto the counter, and knead for about ten minutes, or until the dough is uniform and smooth.

Cut the dough into 8 equal sized balls, and let rest for 10-20 minutes.
Pre heat your oven to 425.

Now, take each of the dough balls and using two hands, roll it into a little snake on the counter. When the snake is longer than the width of your two hands, wrap it around your dominant roiling hand. The dough rope should be wrapped so the overlapping ends are together at your palm, near the start of your fingers. Now take the two overlapping ends, and use your palm to squish/roll these two ends together. Once the dough is fused, you should have a perfectly circular bagel-to-be! This is the only part of the process that can take a little practice before your bagels will look really professional. Don't get discouraged if they don't look perfect, it just takes practice!

Let your bagels rest on the counter for about 20 minutes, and meanwhile, bring a pot of water to boil, and grease a large baking tray lightly. You can just rub a splash of vegetable oil and rub it around.
After the 20 minute wait, your bagels will start to look puffy, and it's time to get them boiling! Add them as many at a time as you can to your boiling water without crowding them. Boil for about a minute, turn them over, and boil for another minute. Take them out a let dry for a minute and then place them on your oiled baking tray. Repeat until all the bagels are boiled.


Add the tray to the oven, and after 10 minutes, flip the bagels over, bake for another ten minutes; and they're done!

Let them cool for at least 20 minutes, get the cream cheese ready, and feast on what's got to be one of the best weekend brunch treats possible!


You can add any toppings you like to these. To make sesame, onions, poppy seed, caraway etc. etc. bagels just have a dry plate ready with the seed or spice topping spread out on it. After the bagels have come out of the boiling water, place them face down onto the seeds, and then place the seed side up onto the baking tray. Bake and flip as for plain bagels.

What's Baking In My Kitchen: Inside Out Carrot Cake - Muffins

So I came across this yummy looking recipe the other day and just HAD to try it because it looked and sounded so good! I've made mine "healthier" by substituting the sugar for Xylitol (A natural sweetener- better for diabetics) So I'll be marking the changes in bold as we go through the recipe.

Preheat the oven to 400°F. Lightly grease a standard 12-well muffin pan.

Or line the pan with paper muffin cups, and grease the cups. More on this later.

Let’s start with the filling. Place one unwrapped, 8-ounce package cream cheese or Neufchâtel cheese in a microwave-safe bowl, and heat on low power for 40 seconds.

Stir in 1/8th a cup of Xylitol

Stir until smooth. Set the filling aside while you make the muffin batter.

Whisk together the following:

2 1/4 cups (9 1/2 ounces)
1/4 cup Xylitol

1/8 cup dark brown sugar, firmly packed
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
¼ teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
3/4 teaspoon ground ginger
3/4 teaspoon salt

Place the following in a measuring cup or small bowl:

2 large eggs
3/4 cup water
1/3 cup vegetable oil

Whisk until well combined.

Stir the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients.

Add 1 cup grated carrots, lightly packed; about 2 medium-large carrots.

Stir to combine.

Note the word “stir;” beating isn’t necessary, and will toughen your muffins.

OK, time to experiment. To paper, or not to paper… that is the question. Will papers affect how the muffins bake? Will it make them easier to get out of the pan? And, is it necessary to grease the papers? We shall see.

Drop about 2 tablespoons of the batter (a tablespoon cookie scoop works well here) into each muffin cup, spreading it to cover the bottom.

Dollop on a heaping tablespoon of filling; a level tablespoon cookie scoop works well here, in the center of each.

 Cover with enough batter to fill the muffin cups quite full. The batter will come to within about 1/4″ to 3/8″ of the top of each muffin cup.

Bake the muffins for about 20 minutes.

When they’re done, a toothpick inserted into the cake part of one (not into the cream cheese filling) will come out clean. The tops of the muffins will feel firm to the touch.

Remember our paper/no paper experiment? The muffins on the left are in papers; on the right, no papers. Clearly the no-paper muffins rise more quickly. Which makes sense; there’s no paper insulating them from the oven’s heat.

By the end of the bake, though, the papered muffins had caught up, height-wise. So far, then – it’s a tie.

Remove the muffins from the oven, and immediately tilt them in their cups; a fork works well here.

I found it easier to tilt the papered muffins; they didn’t stick at all. The muffins without papers needed to cool a bit longer before they’d release from the pan. And, as they cooled, they were steaming a bit; which made their bottoms a bit tough.

Score one for papers.

Shall we break one open now, or wait for them to cool?

Now!

The center is molten. It’s actually a decadent experience, licking the melting, sweet cream cheese off your fingers.

But, if you’re not the finger-lickin’ type, wait 30 minutes or so for the muffins to cool a bit; the filling will stiffen up.

Oh, let’s finish our muffin papers experiment. Should the papers be greased, or not?

Definitely greased; the greased papers released the muffins without any sticking at all, while the ungreased papers tended to cling a bit, taking off a layer of crumbs as you removed them.

To see the originally recipe you can go to the King Arthur Flour Blog

Note: I lowered the amounts of sweetener aka Sugar in my recipe which I tend to do a lot, but also exchanged it for the Xylitol like I mentioned other than the brown sugar. Which I cut back on as well!

Chocolate Cake w/ Peanut Butter Frosting..

WARNING: HAZARDOUS TO YOUR HEALTH lol :) BECAUSE, YOU EAT THIS ONCE YOU WANT IT AGAIN!!!

Well, I've been craving this for a while again but didn't want to make it because who ends up eating almost the whole cake?.. Alise.. LOL :) Anyway Cynthia found the recipe in a magazine and tried it first.. then I got the recipe and made it as well, but with just regular Cream Cheese frosting (I eliminated the P. Butter). Loved it.. anyway tonight I asked John.. so p. butter frosting or not? he voted yes.. ummm why did I ask him :( I much prefer regular frosting.. Anyway so here is some pictures and then the recipe for this yummy, moist chocolate cake with frosting!

Peanut Buttery Chocolate Cake

Cooking spray

2 cups all purpose flour

2/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

2/3 cup oil

2 cups granulated sugar

2 eggs

1 cup milk

1 cup brewed coffee, room temp

1 tsp vanilla extract

Frosting 1 (8 ounce) pkg cream cheese, softened

1/4 creamy p. butter

2 cups icing sugar

2 tbsp milk

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

miniture chocolate chips (optional)

Preheat oven to 350. Coat a 9x13 with oil

  Mix together flour, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.

Combine oil and sugar in large mixing bowl using a mixer beat at medium speed until well mixed add eggs beat well, add flour mixture alternately with milk beginning and ending with four mixture, beat well after each addition and scrap down sides of bowl, then stir in coffee and vanilla (batter will be thin)

Pour bater into pan and bake for 35-40 min, or until toothpick comes out clean, cool completely

Icing

combine cream cheese and p butter. beat until smooth. add sugar milk and vanilla

spread over cake and sprinkle chocolate chips for garnish, store in refridgerator.

 

Eet Smakelijk! :)