Easy English muffin recipe!

Here's another first for me and something else I didn't expect to be making myself at home: English muffins!  I can hardly believe I made these and how incredibly easy it was!  I'd already hit the jackpot recently with the easy bagel recipe but, believe it or not, these English muffins could well be even easier and just as good.  I'm floating on cloud nine in the kitchen lately.

English muffins are actually one of my favorite things.  Whether slathered with almond or peanut butter, or in breakfast sandwich form, they feature heavily in my breakfast routine.  I really never felt the urge to make them given how complicated and mysterious the process seemed - from the yeast dough to shaping them into tart rings and then cooking over a griddle rather than baking in the oven.  I was satisfied with the English muffin bread recipe I learned a couple years ago.

So what changed?  Well, I was watching Gesine Bullock-Prado's show (which is really terrific), Baked in Vermont, and she said making English muffins was as simple as making pancakes!  She said she wasn't kidding, and let me tell you...she really wasn't kidding!  

I was a little skeptical that it might be too good to be true but there was little risk to trying so I decided to make a half batch of 4.  I literally stirred the dough together right before I left to pick up my son from school and the dough was ready when I got home.  Using instant yeast, it only takes a half-hour rise before the dough is ready to be cooked over a griddle!

I did not use tart rings to cook these English muffins.  I simply shaped them with wet hands into a rough round; I don't know about you but the English muffins I buy are never perfectly round and I'm more than fine with that.  The dough is sticky and is firm and thick enough to handle and to hold its shape.  I cooked the first side for about 10-12 minutes under medium-low heat, then flipped it and let the other side cook for the same amount of time.  It was truly minimal work and I was shocked!

I was amazed to see English muffins in my kitchen in such a short time and almost equally surprised when I sliced it open for breakfast the next day and saw nooks & crannies accounted for!  I used an equal mix of all-purpose flour and white whole wheat flour.  Since these are made via a quick rise, I thought they would be quite bland but I think the whole wheat flour added a great nutty flavor to them that I always enjoy.  They were really terrific - just toasted and slathered with butter and whatnot.

Equally, they made excellent bacon, egg, and cheese sandwiches!  My son actually said these English muffins are better than the regular ones that I buy.  That is a serious testimonial.  I just couldn't believe I made breakfast sandwiches using homemade English muffins.  It took me a few days to get over the wonder of that...

Yeasted coffee cake

My friends, let's talk about yeasted coffee cake!  Did you know there was such a thing?  Maybe it's just me but I'd never thought of it or had it before...at least not knowingly. 

Maybe it's not a huge stretch of the imagination when we think about yeasted sweet doughs we know and love - everything from cinnamon rolls to brioche, to babka. Well, now I've had yeasted coffee cake and I'll just say it is big-time tasty!  Not only that, this recipe is easy...oh so very dangerously easy...

This recent sweet breakfast came to be thanks to my son's love of these coffee cake muffins - we adore the small-batch recipe from Dessert for Two so much that I now have to double the recipe when I make it!  So I went looking for other ideas and came across a yeasted version of coffee cake that had me totally intrigued.  

Like many of Christina's recipe, it seemed almost too good to be true, too easy to be the case but again, the proof was in the results.  The process is so simple.  Just mix the ingredients together to form the dough, then spread it into a loaf pan (this is a small-batch recipe, perfect for feeding my family of 3) - no kneading involved!  All you need is about 45 minutes to an hour of time for proofing, to let the dough do its magic.  If you plan to serve it for breakfast, I can tell you it's a great do-ahead.  I made the dough and crumb topping the day before and stored everything in the refrigerator.  In the morning, I let the dough proof before popping it in the oven and we had warm, fragrant yeasted coffee cake to start the day with.

Through the magic of yeast, the cake is soft, fluffy, and a bit chewy; it has a wonderful light texture.  The crumb topping is what you know and love, with an added chocolate bonus!  I thought of the cinnamon rolls I make and how I always include a little chocolate in the filling; in that vein, I scattered a couple of tablespoons of mini chocolate chips among the streusel for this cake and it was lovely; I highly recommend it. 

If all that wasn't enough, drizzle a bit of glaze on top and there you have a sweet breakfast worthy of waking up early on a weekend morning for.  For us, it certainly perked up a cloudy Saturday morning.

Project Pretzel

I had so much fun working on "Project Pizza" earlier this summer with my son that we decided to pick another project to play with together in the kitchen. This time around, we have Project Pretzel!  It's really chocolate brioche bread twisted into pretzel shape.  I picked it because my son loves pretzels and chocolate (of course), and I'm happy to try a recipe from the Smitten Kitchen cookbook. 

I've only worked with yeast twice and only in the last month or so, and both times with my little one at that!  I was thinking it's a little strange to pick these more complicated recipes to do with him but I think they're a little more interesting and allow for more hands-on experience.

I'm really excited because recently, I sense a shift in my 8-year old's previous disdain for things cooking-related. I've got my fingers crossed that it'll continue in that direction.  When I get my monthly Food Network magazine, I like to save the quizzes to go through together with him.  We get a good laugh out of it; he's really into learning about little-known food facts and trivia.  He was actually a bit obsessed with a previous issue featuring the 50 ice-creams of the 50 states.  It just goes to show that love of ice cream is a universal thing and you can always count on it to bond people together!

The little guy says it's like a "chocolate chip brain"!  How's that for appetizing. : )

Luckily, the little one is a hearty eater (particularly when it comes to desserts) and has a surprisingly sharp palate - though maybe children just generally have a keener sense of taste.  So even if he might not want to cook quite as much as mom does in the future, hopefully, we can still talk about food all the time together!

Now back to this pretzel project of ours.  I took a risk and divided the recipe in half to make 4 pretzels.  Can you even do that with yeast recipes?  I was about to find out.  And luckily, the answer is yes - at least it worked in this case (huge relief)!  I'd heard about this brioche dough being very thick, and it needs a long mixing/knead time using the stand mixer.  I'd actually read a few tales of broken mixers (that made me seriously nervous!) so I really wanted to turn the volume down and hopefully have an easier time with it. 

We were very excited when it worked!  The "brain" about doubled in size...

I'm glad we divided the recipe.  It was more manageable for the two of us to do it that way. But let me tell you something.  The mixing process for the dough?  The best word I can think of to describe it is...violent!  Seriously, the mixer is rocking and knocking like the bowl is about to fly out!  I used my large glass mixing bowl and I think the regular stainless steel might have been a better choice given how much rocking was going on.  I literally had to hold on to the bowl the whole time.  My son got a kick out of the drama, of course, and I am just happy to report that the mixer and bowl survived and all is well in the end.

After getting our hands dirty, rolling and twisting, the pretzels are ready for the oven.

I'm amazed we actually managed to make brioche and even got some of those signature long strains in the dough.  It's pretty neat for a little home project. These pretzels were really good warm from the oven and has that signature brioche flavor.  I'm admittedly not be a huge lover of brioche and while my son definitely enjoyed his creation, he probably prefers the typical salty pretzels given a choice.  The process itself was the highlight of this project.  We just had a really great time doing this project together!  My son tells me he doesn't really like to cook but he likes these kinds of projects.  Well, I'm willing to call it whatever he wants!

This specific project might be a one-time event (I can't live through the drama of that dough mixing again) but the amount of fun the little one and I had making these together, the chance to laugh and learn through it, was truly priceless.  

Apparently, the long mixing time creates the brioche strands in the dough

When I asked, my little one said he thought this project was even more fun than Project Pizza, which says a lot since I know, taste-wise, he preferred chowing down on that homemade pizza more.  I think getting the chance to roll the dough and shape the pretzel - all those steps - really made it fun for him, and definitely for me!  Plus, all that knocking and rocking of the mixer provided a lot of excitement.

We had 4 pretzels from our wee project.  The two of us enjoyed one fresh out of the oven and packed one up to bring over to his cousins (his youngest cousin was the biggest fan of it).  We saved the other two to share with Daddy.  What we had left over the next day, I refreshed by warming back up in a low oven for a few minutes.  It made a very good breakfast!