Inspiration

and a bit of nothing in the house for breakfast.

I have long been a fan of spice cakes, and Taneasha's post (with lovely guest Elise Logan) totally reminded me of that. I also had no cereal or bread in the house this weekend. And grocery shopping on an empty (but caffeinated, always have coffee in the house) stomach is not a good idea. So, before I ventured forth to restock my pantry I needed some breakfast.

Cake!

What? If I'd made it in muffin tins, no one would even blink. But because I put it in a square pan and call it cake, it's no longer appropriate for breakfast?

Breakfast Cake

What you need:

• 3 eggs
• 1/2 c melted butter
• 1 orange
• 1/2 c sugar (or honey, totally doing it with honey next time)
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 c flour
• 1 c almond flour (aka finely ground almonds)
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp cardamom
• 1/4 tsp allspice

 

What you gotta do:

I suppose I should admit here that I was totally winging it with this one. Granted, I had recently bought some almond flour and had been researching recipes, but still, flying by the seat of my pyjamas on this one....

I did remember to preheat the oven to 350.

And to use some of the melted butter to butter an 8x8 square pan, and then also to butter the parchment that I lined the pan with. Didn't remember to take a pic to prove it though, so you'll just have to trust me. Trust me.

In a medium bowl, beat all 3 eggs with a fork. (Oh, um, I hadn't washed dishes either, so I was working with the bare minimum of tools). Beat in the melted butter and the sugar. And then add the zest from your orange. Yes, the whole orange.

In another bowl, combine the flours, spices, and salts (sodium bicarbonate is chemically a "salt").

At the last minute add the vanilla that you forgot to put in the ingredients pic to the egg bowl. Yes, there is yogurt in the pic, and no, I didn't use it. Changed my mind.

Now, dump the dry into the wet and mix with a fork.

And then dump it all into the pan.

I sprinkled mine liberally with cinnamon sugar. Perhaps a little too liberally...

I'm not convinced that an excess of cinnamon sugar is a bad thing, mind you.

Bake for 20 minutes.

When I poked it with a toothpick after 20 minutes, it was definitely done. But then the middle fell...

I'm not sure another 3-4 minutes would have made the difference in keeping the middle up though, because with only 1/2 cup of wheat flour, I was concerned about leavening anyway.

The batter definitely rose (likely mostly thanks to the eggs), but the lack of gluten may have made the structure a little flimsy at the points where it needed the most help.

Muffins might have been a better idea after all.

Sure tasted damn good. Amazingly moist too. Definitely need to try this one again.

Yay cake for breakfast!

What's your favourite questionable breakfast?

cookie d'oh!

It's round, pink, has a hole in the middle, and is covered with sprinkles.

Apparently to my coworkers, that means something dirty. And telling them it was Homer's doughnut didn't help.

A little while ago one of my coworkers offered to bring me some sprinkles that were taking up space in her cupboard.  I'm never one to turn down offers of ingredients, even sprinkles, so I accepted. I had no idea exactly how much space was being taken up by sprinkles. 

The next day I found one of those large "gallon" sized zip bags on my desk.

A large zip bag can hold a lot of sprinkles.

And since I was still kinda feeling like making other desserts into cookies, I decided to do doughnuts. Homer's doughnuts. Round, pink, with a hole in the middle, covered in sprinkles.

Also, it just so happens that "National Doughnut Day" just passed. Once again, we at Authors Kitchen are totally on top of all the important holidays.

Plain old sugar cookies are perfect for doing silly things to. (perv)

Sugar Cookies

What you need:

• 1 c butter
• 1 c sugar
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 2 eggs
• 2 tsp milk
• 3 c flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt

(this is a double batch which makes about 4 dozen cookies, and easily cut in half if you are looking to eat them all in one night)

What you gotta do:

In a large bowl, cream the room temperature butter with the sugar until it's all soft and fluffy. You'll start to lose the gritty feeling from the sugar if you do it long enough.

Add the eggs, vanilla, and milk.

Beat this again with your Popeye arms, or your fancy schmancy mixer that has its own speshul place on the counter, until it's shiney and kinda looks like cake frosting. (Really, it kinda is cake frosting).

Normally, I'd just dump the flour, baking powder and salt into the bowl and stir, but I had a minion with me, and so I employed him to sift the dry ingredients together in a small bowl.

I also had him crack the eggs into the creamed butter. No shells this time!

Add the sifted flour to the creamed butter and egg mixture in two batches.

After the second one, you'll have a soft, but not quite sticky dough. In order to handle it and roll it, you'll need to chill it a bit first.

Divide it in half, wrap it in plastic, and let is sit around in the fridge for at least half an hour. I don't like to leave dough in the fridge too long because it becomes too stiff to handle. It should be pliable, and not too cold to the touch.

Liberally flour your counter, your rolling pin, and the dough. At first, you're going to want to move it around and reflour everything regularly so it doesn't stick to the counter. If your dough is stuck to the counter, there will be no saving the shapes you cut, and you'll have to do it all over again.

Roll the dough to just under a quarter inch thick.

If you don't have cookie cutters, a wine glass works nicely to make round cookies.

I'd finally found a doughnut cutter so I cut doughnuts and holes. Either save up and reroll the holes to make more doughnuts, or bake them all separately so they don't get overdone.

You want the cookies to lose their gloss, and be just barely golden on the bottom.

7-8 minutes at 350 will do that. I know you already preheated your oven. You're smart like that. Just like me.

"I am so smart. S-M-R-T."

To make the pink glaze you need:

• Icing (powdered) sugar
• Milk
• Red Dye
• Some kind of flavourant (vanilla is best, but I'd managed to run out, so I used peppermint)

One of these days I'll actually measure how much icing sugar and milk I use to do this kind of thing. Really, just dump a bunch of sugar in a bowl. Add milk a tiny splash at a time, a few drops of flavourant, and keep stirring until you have something the consistency of really thick laundry detergent.

It should blob off the end of a spoon at first, but then turn into something ribbon like.

Two bloody drops was all I needed

to make Pepto-Bismol Pink!

Lay the cookies out on parchment paper as close together as you can. Dribble and blob the glaze all over the cookies. Then add sprinkles by the handful.

If you don't have a gallon of sprinkles, you might want to work on accuracy in your application. It also might help your cookies not look like they were made by a five year old.

I'm okay with my cookies looking like they were made by a five year old.

Let these set on the counter for about 20 minutes. The glaze will harden just enough that it holds onto the sprinkles and looks solid, but it will still be soft and gooey when you bite it.

 Did you know there was a National Doughnut Day??