Baking Challenge Week 33 (Almost Caught Up!) - Vegetables - Carrot Muffins

So good, they get a real beauty shot.  I'm serious.  These muffins are amazing.

It took me twenty minutes to grate the carrots for this on my crappy little hand grater, and the whole time, I was trying not to skin my knuckles and thinking, "These better be worth it."

They are.  I would make them again in a heartbeat, even at the risk of knuckle damage.

And next time, I think I'll put streusel on top.  Or add walnuts.  Or both!

Carrot Muffins
(adapted from Complete Baking)

• 3/4 cup margarine, at room temperature
• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 egg, at room temperature
• 1 tbsp water
• 1/2 lb. carrots, peeled and finely grated
• 1 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 350 F.  Grease a 12-cup muffin tin, or use liners.

Cream together the margarine and sugar until light and fluffy.  Add the egg and water and blend well.

Stir in the carrots.

In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, spices, and salt.  Gradually blend into the carrot mixture.

Spoon into the prepared tray, filling cups almost to the top.  Bake 25-30 minutes, until tops spring back when touched lightly (or when a tester inserted in the center of a muffin comes out clean.)  Let stand ten minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool.

Baking Challenge Week 25 (Late!) - Coffee Cake - Cardamom-Pecan Coffee Cake

It's hard to bake when you don't have a working oven.

I went to put something in the oven, and I saw a spark and heard an awful hissing/buzzing noise.  Then there was an incredibly tiny fire in the back of my oven, which actually put itself out, it was so small.

I thought I had just gotten lazy and let my oven get too dirty, and something had built up on the bottom and caught on fire.

As I discovered the next day when I went to clean it, that is not, in fact, what the problem was.  The spark had come from the lower heating element when it snapped clean through.

My landlady is a lovely woman, who promptly ordered a replacement, which didn't get here until our resident handyman was on vacation....of course.  Hence, the delay.

Not that I missed baking much in that heat wave, so I suppose that was the best time of year to have the oven break!

Time to catch up, though.  Here's my coffee cake, based on the yabluchnyk I made for the Russian week of the cooking challenge.  I liked it enough to play with some variations...

Cardamom-Pecan Coffee Cake

Cake

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1 egg, lightly beaten
• 1/3 cup milk

Streusel

• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 cup graham cracker crumbs
• 2 tbsp flour
• 2 tsp ground cardamom
• 2 tbsp cold butter
• 1/3 cup chopped pecans 

Preheat the oven to 375 F, and lightly grease an 8x8" baking pan.

Sift together the flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder. Cut in the butter until the mixture is crumbly.  In a separate bowl, stir together the egg and milk, then add to the flour mixture and combine thoroughly.

In another bowl, combine all the streusel ingredients except the butter and pecans.  Cut in the butter until crumbly, then stir in the pecans.

Press half the cake dough into the prepared pan.  Sprinkled half the struesel mixture on top, then repeat with the rest of both.  (As the dough is quite sticky, getting even layers is challenging, so don't worry too much if the top is a bit rough.)

Bake 25 minutes, or until the struesel is crisp and brown, and a cake tester stuck in the middle comes out clean.

Cooking Challenge Week 11 - Breakfast - Bacon and Bell Pepper Strata

Yes, I realize that this also qualifies for the week 11 savory baking challenge.  I consider the two challenges to be related but separate, so I don't double up.  Even though this succeeded where the cheesecake so seriously failed.

No recipe here because I didn't measure anything!  I've made so many bread puddings, and so many quiches, that when I discovered their bastard love-child strata, I dove right in without a recipe.

The breakdown?  It's a 13x9 dish.  I sauteed half a pound of chopped bacon, took it out to drain, then cooked two chopped bell peppers (one red and one green) and half an onion in the bacon fat.  Cube a mini-loaf of stale french bread, layer that with the bacon, veggies, and a few handfuls of shredded cheddar cheese.  Whisk together 4 eggs and 3 cups of milk, season with salt and pepper, pour over.  Bake at 350 F, covered in foil, for half an hour, then take off the foil and bake another 20 minutes.  Let it cheese down (that's cool off, to people who aren't me and my husband) for ten minutes before serving, or risk that impatient I-burned-the-roof-of-my-mouth feeling. 

Baking Challenge Week 5 - Breakfast - Spiced Pear Muffins

I go through distinct muffin phases--for a month or two, I'll make at least a batch a week, and then, suddenly, I won't bake a single muffin for months.

The muffin that has broken me out of this last dry spell?  A recipe that I created!  It's packed with pear and golden raisins, flavored with two of my favorite spices, ginger and cardamom.  Cardamom might, in fact, be my favorite spice ever.  I should have been born Swedish, they put it in everything they bake, I swear!

Spiced Pear Muffins
(makes 12)

• 1/2 cup oat bran
• 1/4 cup light brown sugar
• 2 tbsp vegetable oil
• 2 tbsp water
• 1 medium pear, peeled, cored, and roughly grated (about 1 cup packed)
• 1/2 cup golden raisins
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp ground cardamom
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 egg

In a bowl, combine the oat bran and brown sugar.  Add the oil and water, mix well, and set aside 15 minutes to soften the bran.

Add the grated pear, raisins, flour, baking powder, cardamom, ginger, and salt.  Stir until evenly blended, then add the egg and mix just until everything is bound together.  (It will still be fairly stiff and lumpy.)

Divide the batter evenly among 12 muffin cups lined with paper liners.  Bake at 350 F for 20-23 minutes, until slightly risen and golden brown.  Serve warm, or cool completely on a wire rack.

Start with the brown sugar and oat bran.

Looks like the worst oatmeal ever, at this point.

I thought the grated pear looks a little like tiny french fries...

Everybody (but the egg) in the pool!

Now it looks like a fruit crumble gone horribly awry, but I promise, it will get better...

Fill those cups, and bake!

And try to resist eating them all at once...

Spiced Cranberry-Apple Oatmeal

I have a confession--I used to hate oatmeal.  I wanted to like it.  I tried  to like it.  But while the taste was fine, the texture was incredibly off-putting.

Then I discovered the existence of steel-cut oats.  As it turned out, I only hated instant oatmeal.  Steel-cut, I adore.

They do take a lot longer to cook, but it's an easy weekend breakfast, and if you make a double batch (which I often do) you can divide it into individual servings and fridge them all week, just popping them in the microwave to reheat.  (If you do that, I'd recommend leaving off the garnishes until after reheating.)

Also, I deliberately developed this as a lightly-spiced and lightly-sweetened dish.  If you like your oats bolder, feel free to add more of the spices and/or sugar.

Spiced Cranberry-Apple Oatmeal
(4 servings)

• 1 cup steel-cut oats
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 tsp each ground cinnamon, cardamom, and ginger
• dash ground cloves
• 3 cups water
• 1 cup milk
• 1 apple, peeled and diced
• dried cranberries, slivered almonds, and honey, to serve

In a saucepan, mix together the oats, sugar, and spices.  Add the water and milk and bring just to a boil.  Reduce the heat to low to maintain a simmer, and add the diced apple.  Cook, stirring frequently to avoid burning, 30-35 minutes or until the desired consistency is reached.  Divide among bowls and garnish with the cranberries and almonds, and drizzle lightly with honey.