Pumpkin Cinnamon Roll Pancakes

Yesterday I mentioned to my roommate and her sister a recipe I ran across for Pumpkin Cinnamon pancakes. They voted that we make them this morning for breakfast. I wasn't prepared to say no to that so, here we are. Gooey, cinnamony pancakes. 

The recipe can be found here.

The only change we made was to use 2% instead of whole milk, and it all turned out just fine. They were still more than rich enough, I had to stop after only two pancakes... which was sad since they were so delicious.

We did have some problems with the cinnamon filling kind of oozing/cooking out when the pancakes were flipped. Any suggestions on that front are more than welcome!

Daring Baker's: Povitica

The Daring Baker's October 2011 challenge was Povitica, hosted by Jenni of The Gingered Whisk. Povitica is a traditional Eastern European Dessert Bread that is as lovely to look at as it is to eat!

This past month, I decided to be daring and brave and bold and... ok, ok. All I really did was join Daring Bakers. I'd heard about Daring Bakers at the beginning of 2011 from a friend, who at one time was an active member of the group. I kind of hemmed and hawed and put off any serious thought of joining until just recently, when I thought, hey, why not? I can always join, see if I like it, and stick around if I do. And I most definitely do.

The challenge this month totally threw me when I first saw it. Povitica? How do you say that? What is that?

I had some huge reservations at first. Mostly because of the walnut filling. You may have noticed, but I am not an overly huge fan of nuts. So I was a little downcast that my first challenge kind of centered around them. In addition, most of my interaction so far with yeast has involved a bread machine. Luckily, fond memories of a walnut dumpling from a trip to China this past summer popped into my head. Ok, I can handle this walnut business. Hopefully.

The recipe turned out to be fairly straightforward. The part I was most concerned about, making the dough, turned out to be a cinch. How did I not know it was this easy to make dough? Activating yeast? Combine, stir, and let sit. I can so do that. From there, mixing in the rest of the ingredients, kneading, and letting the dough rise flowed on by. I think the hardest part for me ended up being the transfer of the final log of dough/filling from counter to loaf pan. Though, with practice that would probably get easier as well.

The end result was decent, there were some nice swirls of walnut. I'll probably revisit this at some point. For me, there was too much walnut, or perhaps the swirls were just to thick. Admittedly, I did throw in the extra half cup or so of ground walnut I had into the filling. I mean, what was I going to do with leftover ground walnut? So next time I'll probably grind smaller batches of walnuts until I have an amount closer to what the recipe called for.

I'd also like to try other fillings, something more akin to cinnamon rolls. Or something involving cheese, because well, who doesn't love a nice cheesy piece of bread?

Povitica
makes one loaf

To activate the Yeast:
1/2 tsp sugar
1/4 tsp flour
2 tbsp warm water
1 1/2 tsp yeast

Stir sugar, flour and yeast into 1/2 cup warm water and cover with plastic wrap, let it stand for 5 minutes. I used a 1 cup liquid measuring cup for this and it was plenty big enough.

Dough:
1/2 cup whole milk
3 tbsp sugar
3/4 tsp salt
1 egg
1 tbsp unsalted butter - melted
2 cups flour

Heat the milk, stirring constantly. Let it go until just before it'll start to boil and then remove from the heat and let sit for just a bit.

Mix the milk, sugar, and salt. Add in the eggs, activated yeast, melted butter, and about half of the flour. Mix well, adding in flour just until the dough starts to form a ball.
Flour whatever surface you'll be kneading the dough on, and knead the dough. Slowly add in remaining flour until the dough is no longer sticking at all. I used all 2 cups, and maybe slightly more.

Oil a bowl and place the dough inside, covering with plastic wrap and a towel. Leave it in a warm place and let rise for an hour and a half.

This gets more appetizing, promise

Filling:

1 3/4 cups ground walnut

1/4 cup whole milk

1/4 cup unsalted butter

1 egg yolk

1/4 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 cup sugar

1/4 tsp cocoa powder

1/4 tsp cinnamon

Mix the ground walnuts, sugar, cinnamon and cocoa. Heat the milk and butter. Once it's boiling, pour over the walnut mixture. Add in the eggs and vanilla, and mix. If the filling thickens up too much stir in a bit of warm milk.

Assembling:

See-through dough!

Cover a table with an old (but clean!) sheet. Flour a good sized portion where you will be rolling out the dough. Don't skimp too much on this, my dough ended up sticking slightly at the beginning, so I had to scrape it away a bit and add more flour.

Use a rolling pin to roll out the dough. You'll want this to be super thin, don't be afraid to put a little muscle into it. When you get the dough about a foot in diameter brush a bit of melted butter over it and continue rolling it out. You will want to see the design on your sheet through the dough!

Once the dough is appropriately thin, carefully spread the filling out over the surface. Leave about half an inch clear around the edges too leave room for oozing when you roll the dough up into a log.

Pick up one edge and gently roll the dough, forming a log. Carefully lift and place the dough into a loaf pan. I would suggest folding the dough in half and placing this in the pan, leaving the ends hanging out. Then fold the ends over top.

Cover and let rest for about 15 minutes. During this time you can set your oven to 350. Uncover the loaf pan and let bake for 15 minutes. After that, turn the temperature down to 300 and let bake for another 45 minutes. Be careful to watch. If it looks like it'll get too dark before it's done baking you can cover with a bit of aluminum foil. I peaked in about every 15 minutes, mostly out of paranoia. 

Once it's done, let it cool in the loaf pan for a good 20 minutes or so before removing and letting cool the rest of the way.

I recommend toasting a slice and slathering with some butter, yum!

Fluffy Pancakes

I hardly ever have time in the mornings to make actual breakfast food before work. Ok, well, if I woke up half an hour earlier I would... but who wants to do that? So when my day off rolled around today, I jumped at the chance to make something breakfasty. 

I found this recipe a while back on the Kitchn. Having grown up with pancakes more akin to crepes, yet still delicious of course, I was intrigued by these supposedly cloud like pancakes. And given that thes pancakes contain a whopping tablespoons of baking powder, they would be defying chemistry to not be fabulously fluffy, right? 

Pancakes

makes about 12 pancakes

2 cups flour

4 tbsp sugar

4 tbsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

2 eggs

2 cups milk

4 tbsp vegetable oil

Pancakes are super easy. Mix the dry ingredients, add the wet ingredients. Stir. This batter turns out kinda lumpy, and that's just fine. You don't want to over stir and deflate all that wonderful fluffiness from the baking powder. 

I like to turn the burner on while I'm finishing mixing up the batter, so the pan is hot for the first round of pancakes. I'd say medium or medium-low heat, but it's hard to tell with a gas stove. I used a nice sized serving spoon to portion out the batter, maybe a third of a cup or so. Let the edges of the pancakes start to turn up before flipping, you'll also start to see little air bubbles coming up.

Do be careful, when I first made these it took a pancake or two to get the timing right. These seem to be so fluffy that if you aren't careful the middle will still be bit gooey. 

Taste of DC 2011

So I was completely oblivious to the fact that Taste of DC was occurring over Columbus Day weekend until that Saturday, when someone off-handedly mentioned it. And I was like, say what?! At that moment, I knew what my weekend goal was; make it into DC for some delicious food.

I held off until Monday, in hopes that tourists and all those folks who had to work would be otherwise occupied. And, it actually wasn't so bad. The lines were good, we didn't have to wait more than a few minutes at any of the booths we stopped at. Granted, the one booth I really wanted to stop at (Wicked Waffle) had a line significantly longer than the others... so we skipped it.

Our first stop was at Ben's Chili Bowl. Where I got this

A chili half-smoke. Yum, the chili was perfectly spicy. My first Ben's experience was delicious, maybe I'll attempt the trek out to the actual shop sometime...

Next up was some Indian food, from Nirvana Express. I chose the samosa, which was delicious. Mostly filled with potato, the occasional other veggie mixed in as well. What really sold me on the samosa though was the sauce that they drizzled over top before handing it over. I have no idea what it was, but I do know that it was mighty tasty. 

From there we moved on to Irish. Sort-of. James Hoban's had a booth, and given the amount of food I'd already consumed, I thought well, I can probably handle a baby quiche. Is quiche Irish? Have I just missed this fact all these years? Oh well. It turned out to be more than I was expecting in a serving, but it was very tasty. Nice and eggy with little bits of ham and cheese. And on a side-note, next time someone tells you that the 'baby quiche' is made with babies... ask them if the babies are real or fake, as you only eat real babies... trust me, the reaction is awesome* 

To end the deliciousness I chose a simple bag of cinnamon almonds. These are a new favorite of mine after years of shunning any sort of nut. I wish they had been warm though, freshly made cinnamon almonds are hard to beat.

* not intended to offend anyone, sorry if it did. You're just getting a better picture of my bizarre sense of humor...

Cinnamon Chip Muffins

This is probably one of those muffins that is more dessert than actual muffin. Though it includes applesauce, so I like to think of it as healthy... ish. Soft and moist with delicious cinnamon throughout, these are so good fresh from the oven and slightly warm. To push it decidedly over into the dessert category I'll sometimes add a small scoop of vanilla ice cream on top. Otherwise the muffins will get a drizzle of powdered sugar glaze.

The recipe comes from Hershey, originally a coffee cake recipe. 


Cinnamon Chip Muffins


1 cup butter, softened
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla
3/4 cup applesauce
2 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
10 oz cinnamon chips
powdered sugar glaze - optional

Preheat the oven to 350°
Cream the butter and sugar, beat in the vanilla and eggs.
Add in the flour, baking soda, and salt.
Stir in the cinnamon chips.

Fill muffin tins about 3/4 of the way, bake for 18 minutes. Let cool and, if desired, drizzle powdered sugar glaze across the top.

Alexandria Cupcakes

Here it is, the promised review of Alexandria Cupcakes.


My sisters and I all went one weekend, each getting a different flavor. Between us we tried the Blackberry, Lemon, and Raspberry cupcakes. We did share little nibbles of the icings so we could all get at least an idea of each.

I got the blackberry cupcake. First bite was just so-so. But it grew on me. By the end I was really enjoying the flavor in the icing. I assume the icing was a buttercream, just because that's what the general cupcake is iced with. If it was, it was a good one. I tend not to like buttercreams as they can well, get a little too buttery. There was enough Blackberry flavor to it though that I didn't notice. Again, if it was a buttercream. The cake part wasn't too flavorful, or the icing just overpowered. It was also kind of a not so fabulous color, a greyish purple-y color. Ignoring that, it was a decent cupcake, maybe slightly on the dry side.

I didn't hear any complaints from my sisters, so I assume their cucpakes were good. As far as the icing flavors go I ranked them: Lemon, Raspberry, and then Blackberry.

Overall, a decent cupcakery. I have no idea if they're connected at all, but, the cupcakes have always reminded me a little bit of Georgetown Cupcakes. To which I have been but will likely never go back to, for many reasons... I won't go into it.

In the end though, if you are in Old Town and looking for a cupcake, I would recommend Lavender Moon over Alexandria Cupcakes.

Just to note: there isn't much seating; one table. So don't expect to be able to sit down and eat in. This isn't a big deal, unless you like to stage and photograph your food... but uhm, who does that...