Homemade Granola

A couple Christmases ago, my crafty sister-in-law made granola to give as family gifts. I had never really thought about making my own granola, but hers was so tasty we quickly gobbled it all up. Since then, I've been on the prowl for a great granola recipe, but with some specific criteria, chief among them being that I didn't want to use refined sugar in my granola. Shockingly, this is not a simple task. Although one might think of granola as being a healthy, earthy-crunchy type snack, many of the recipes I found contained either white or brown sugar, or a surprising amount of added fat.

Cooling in the pan

Eventually, I found this simple recipe from the Joy of Baking site. It's sweetened with maple syrup and contains just 2 tablespoons of canola oil. And it's really easy to make. The most laborious part was gathering and scaling out all the ingredients! You just mix all the dry ingredients (except for the fruit) together, and mix the wet ingredients together and pour that over the dries. Mix well, spread out on a parchment-lined sheet pan and bake at 325 degrees, stirring once every 15 minutes or so, for 45 minutes. Let cool, add the fruit, and eat (or if you're me, eat, let cool, eat some more, add the fruit, and eat even more). I used slivered almonds in mine and wheat bran, not germ, because that's what I already had. And I learned that pepitas are the same thing as pumpkin seeds (smartphones and Wikipedia are super useful when you're standing in Trader Joe's wondering why there are no raw shelled pumpkin seeds, and what are these pepitas anyway?)!

Speaking of Trader Joe's they have this nifty packaged mixture of golden raisins, dried cranberries, cherries and blueberries that I added to my granola — a no-brainer for me!

With fruit added!

The granola is scrumptious; I particularly love the contrast between the toasty, crunchy oats and nuts and the tender bits of fruit. I also love that it's lightly sweetened, which really allows the natural flavor of the ingredients to shine through. This recipe can be endlessly adapted and I'm looking forward to trying other combinations of flavors.

scenes from a busy fall trimester...

Here are just a few of the things I've baked the past few months. There's so much more than I just didn't have time or forgot to photograph -- sorry.

Practicing Palmiers at home for my Classic Pastry practical back in October. I blame the cheap butter.

Some sort of chocolate chip bar cookie... not for school. I honestly can't remember what they were or where the recipe came from.


Dutch Apple Galette, from first day of Pies and Tarts class.


Lattice Apple Pie, also from Pies and Tarts class.

Ungarnished but partially eaten Turtle Pie.

Chocolate Cream Pie -- a big hit with the kids at Thanksgiving.

Lemon Curd Tartlets (my favorite) and Fruit Tartlets.

This is actually from the first day of Winter Trimester -- Linzer Torte from Cookies and Petit Fours class.

nick of time cranberry-white chocolate (and a whisper of oatmeal) drops

One of the perks of being a habitual baker is that I usually have a fairly well-stocked pantry. And even when it's not well stocked, there are usually enough odds and ends that I can pull something together in a pinch if necessary. Case in point -- this morning I received the call to send in a sweet goodie with L. for tonight's teen book group. After perusing my pantry, I managed to cull enough oatmeal, dried cranberries and white chocolate for this recipe from the King Arthur Flour site. I didn't have a ton of any of these particular ingredients so I halved the batch (just as well -- we have a lot of other baked stuff in the house already).

poached pears

Something else I made in class -- poached pears. Although I love fruit, cooked or raw, I had never tried poached pears before. These were Bosc pears, poached in a syrup of wine, sugar, water and assorted spices. They were surprisingly good!

blueberry muffins

The best blueberry muffin recipe yet! This one was from the King Arthur Flour website and is simplicity itself -- no spices, no lemon peel, no almond extract, just blueberries. I took the King Arthur Flour folks' suggestion and used Wyman's Wild Maine Blueberries instead of the whatever-brand frozen blueberries I normally use when it's not blueberry season. Wyman's blueberries are consistently sized (small) and this allows each muffin to have a nice, even distribution of berries. The muffins were moist and tender -- so good!

trying to get caught up

I made this Whole-Wheat Zucchini Bread last month when we had a bumper crop of zucchini, including one 2 1/2-pound zuke. The recipe is from the King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking Book. It has all good stuff in it -- zucchini, cinnamon, nutmeg, raisins and grated lemon zest -- not to mention it's good for you. On paper, it's a wonderful bread; it was moist and flavorful, qualities one doesn't typically associate with whole grain baked goods. Sadly, for some reason it just didn't hit the spot for me.

david lebovitz's roasted banana ice cream

This is another of David Lebovitz's recipes from The Perfect Scoop. The Traveler's Lunchbox posted a terrific interview with David a couple of years ago and included this recipe. It is sooooooo good -- I was standing over the sink scraping the dregs out of the ice cream maker bowl with a spatula because I just couldn't stand any going to waste. It's so simple to make -- you roast cut-up bananas with a smidge of butter and some brown sugar, then puree the resulting gooey goodness with whole milk, a skosh more sugar, vanilla, fresh lemon juice and a little coarse salt. Chill and then freeze in an ice cream maker (The Traveler's Lunchbox provides an alternate method using an immersion blender for those who don't own an ice cream maker). The ice cream is rich and creamy, surprising when you remember that there's no cream in the mix. There are endless possibilities for different variations -- looking at other blogs I see that people have added chocolate chunks, nuts, rum, raisins, even peanut butter. I love it as it's written -- it's summertime comfort food!

birthday blueberry muffins

My eldest turns 15 today. One birthday several years ago, he decided he would like blueberry muffins for breakfast and the tradition stuck. Occasionally his special day would fall during our vacation week and he'd have a blueberry muffin from a Cape Cod Dunkin Donuts instead of a homemade one, and the years we were home, very often the "homemade" muffins were from a boxed mix.

This year's birthday muffin recipe is the Our Favorite Blueberry Muffin from the King Arthur Flour site. It's a little different from many that I've looked at -- a little almond extract, no lemon zest, and the muffins are topped with a sprinkling of cinnamon sugar. They are very tender and light, and very fitting for a special birthday breakfast. Happy Birthday, L.!

lemon blueberry muffins

Here are the facts about me and blueberry muffins. I've never had a store-bought or bakery-made blueberry muffin that I've liked. I generally like my own homemade (from scratch) blueberry muffins (made from a variety of recipes). Lastly, my favorite blueberry muffins are from the packaged mixes that contain the little cans of "wild blueberries."

My son L. is a great connoisseur of blueberry muffins. He loves them so much that they are his chosen birthday breakfast each July. So who better to critique these muffins from The America's Test Kitchen Family Baking Book? L's verdict -- "They're really good." Did I mention L. will be 15 next month? He's a teen of few words. :-)

I will elaborate -- they are tender and moist, and surprisingly very lemony (there's only zest in the batter, no juice). In fact, the lemon flavor almost overwhelms the blueberries. This won't be my go-to blueberry muffin recipe, but it's wonderful for a change of pace (or for the lemon muffin lovers out there).

david lebovitz's strawberry frozen yogurt

I bought an ice cream maker last June, and spent much of last summer making ice cream from the recipe booklet that accompanied the machine. I even made up some recipes of my own. And I was pretty content to leave it at that. There was one ice cream cookbook that piqued my interest though -- pastry chef David Lebovitz's The Perfect Scoop. Every time I saw it at my local bookstore, I would look through it longingly but decided I would wait to buy it this summer. Since I am now on a cookbook acquisition moratorium, that purchase will have to wait. Thankfully, David's recipe for Strawberry Frozen Yogurt is posted on his blog so I don't have to miss out. The recipe is so simple. First you cut up strawberries, add sugar and let sit for a couple of hours.

Then the strawberries go into the blender with yogurt, a smidge of lemon juice and a dribble of vodka or kirsch (if you wish). Pulse until almost smooth.

Then pour the mixture into your ice cream maker and whirl away until frozen. It takes about 20 to 25 minutes in mine.

Put it in the freezer to freeze until hard. It's really yummy stuff -- so bright and fresh tasting. And I love the simplicity of the ingredients. I just can't wait for summer weather to come to New England so we can really enjoy it in earnest!

cranberry-white chocolate muffins

My husband often teases me about how I would rather spend untold amounts of money to use up leftover ingredients than simply discard them. Followers of this blog are aware that last November I overbought fresh cranberries whilst in the throes of autumnal mania and have been chiseling away at them ever since, little by ever so little. This morning I finally used up the last of my formerly fresh, now frozen cranberries. (And there was much rejoicing.)

I've long been a big fan of the flavor (and color) combination of cranberries and white chocolate and have made cookies and scones on many occasions featuring these two ingredients. While pondering what to do with my remaining cranberries I had a flash of inspiration -- why not give them the cranberry and white chocolate treatment?!

I started with the recipe for Big Beautiful Muffins in The America's Test Kitchen Family Baking Book. Like many other recipes from the folks at America's Test Kitchen and Cook's Illustrated, the instructions suggested many different ways to adapt the recipe to suit my fancy, so I felt comfortable playing around a bit. I added 3/4 cup of chopped cranberries (still frozen) and 3/4 cup white chocolate chips to the batter. Those amounts seemed appropriate when compared to the other variations, but in the end, I felt the muffins could've used more of both, perhaps a cup of each instead. The recipe makes a dozen and are big as advertised, perhaps a bit too big for a standard muffin pan. The muffin tops fused to each other and required a bit of pulling apart when I removed them from the pan. This resulted in jagged edges -- not all that pretty. The good news is the muffins were tender (I didn't overmix -- yay!). An additional note: I substituted 2 ounces of unsweetened applesauce for 2 ounces of the 4 ounces of melted butter, and didn't miss the fat in the finished product at all.

Next up... getting rid of those chopped dates from last December!

zucchini-cranberry muffins

I'm still trying to get through my frozen cranberries from last fall. Who knew it would be so tough? It seems like a lot of recipes call for dried cranberries, and those that don't are of the cranberry-orange flavor pairing. And I've exhausted the cranberry-orange canon.

I found this recipe by way of The Food Librarian's wonderful blog. It's originally from Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook. I'm not ordinarily a Martha fan. I don't want to go into it; I've never met the woman so it wouldn't be nice for me to expound on my feelings about her in a public setting. But the idea of a cranberry muffin recipe that called for fresh or frozen cranberries and no orange sucked me in. I substituted 2 ounces of unsweetened applesauce for half of the vegetable oil, but I otherwise made it as written. They are lightly sweet and making them without wrappers makes the outsides have a little crunchy chewiness to them -- yum! I felt they could use a little more cinnamon though -- I'll double the amount next time and maybe substitute in a little whole wheat flour, because... I still have more cranberries in the freezer!

susan ziegler's lemon squares (via ruhlman)

I'm trying to get caught up with my blog posts -- it's been really busy this week and while I continue to bake, I just haven't had time to post.

Michael Ruhlman is an author, food writer and blogger. His latest book, Ratio, has quite the buzz going in foodie circles right now. I haven't read it yet, but it's on my list. He recently wrote a post about his disdain over the use of boxed lemon square mixes. I have to confess, I've only ever made lemon squares from a mix -- and I thought they were pretty good. But it's been a few years and I now try to not use boxed baking mixes at all and his post inspired me to make them for Easter. Actually, if it were a perfect world, I would've baked a lemon meringue pie but my last attempt was so abysmal I thought it best not to (I can't get the meringue to not weep, and that makes me weep). Lemon squares are an acceptable substitute.

Ruhlman's lemon squares (actually Susan Ziegler's, his childhood neighbor) are equal parts base and curd. He says one can tweak the balance as one sees fit, but 50/50 is fine with me. The finished lemon squares were a little fragile but had terrific flavor -- tangy, sweet, buttery. I loved the shortbread quality of the base, and by Day 2 the base had acquired a little bit of a very pleasant crunchiness. The recipe makes 16 fairly small squares, so if I were planning on making enough to share I'd make a second pan.

irish soda bread muffins

There's something so much more appealing to me about muffins over their larger quick bread loaf cousins. Quick breads seem to dry out when they're sliced, the slices don't transport well and the serving size is inexact (my slices seem to exceed the recommended limit) and I would like to continuing baking while wearing my current clothing size. And maybe there's just something about individually sized baked goods. Anyway, I was thinking about how it's the time of year for Irish soda bread again when I saw the Baker's Banter post on Irish Soda Bread Muffins. Perfect!

I adapted the recipe somewhat based on what I had at the ready in my kitchen. I substituted the same weight of 100% whole wheat flour for the white-whole wheat, even though I know that the whole wheat is slightly heavier than the white-whole wheat. I compensated for this by adding an additional tablespoon of milk to the batter. I also substituted dried cranberries for the currants/raisins, making it a truly Irish-American creation. The result was a slightly sweet, moist and tender muffin -- perhaps a bit sweeter than I would've liked, but chockfull of cranberries. I wish now that I had added a bit more caraway seed (I love caraway) -- the recipe suggested a possible range of 1/2 teaspoon to 2 teaspoons. I think it could've definitely used the additional teaspoon. All in all, this one is a definite keeper. Éire go Brách!

raspberry cream cheese brownies

I used to really dislike any sort of fruit flavoring combined with chocolate. You know those fruit cream filled chocolates in the Russell Stover's boxes? Like that. But I've come around on the raspberry-chocolate combo in recent years, partly because of my affection for the chocolate raspberry nut bars from Nestle's Very Best Baking. And I've always loved cream cheese brownies. So I was hopeful that a marriage between raspberry, cream cheese and brownies would be a winner. And it was! I made a huge pan of about 4 - 5 dozen brownies (cut small -- they are rich, as you would expect) and P. took a platter of them to church. [Insert giant hoovering sound here] they were gone in a flash. :-)

cranberry whole-grain muffins

Now this is a proper whole grain muffin! It's made with whole wheat flour and oats, and also has fresh cranberries, orange zest and chopped walnuts. The original recipe actually calls for an orange glaze, but I omitted it because I didn't feel it needed more sugar. Without the glaze, the muffins still have a touch of sweetness which contrasts very nicely with the tartness of the cranberries. And best of all, they are moist and tender, not tough like I feared a whole grain muffin might be.

cocoa-nana bread

This is another Dorie Greenspan recipe I made for the Chocolate Auction. I renamed it "Choco-Nana Bread" for the auction because I didn't want the bidders to hear "Cocoa-Nana" as "Coco-Nana" and think that the bread contained coconut. This is a rich chocolate and banana bread riddled with semisweet chocolate chips.

whole grain banana muffins

I'm perpetually on the hunt for THE banana muffin. And these days, I've been consuming so much bread (and other white flour baked goods) that I've become a little preoccupied with adding more fiber into my diet. So when I had a couple aging bananas on my counter, I decided to try this oatmeal banana muffin recipe from the Quaker Oats site. Really, it just has oats in it, so I'm not sure it qualifies as Whole Grain with the more earthy folks, but it works for me.

For the chopped nuts, I used some chopped hazelnuts I had in my freezer, and I cut out one of the tablespoons of butter (so I used 4 rather than 5). I also added a teaspoon of cinnamon. And finally, I opted to use a whole egg instead of the 2 egg whites. The muffins are really tasty and aren't overly sweet. They have a little chewiness to them from the oats, and a little crunch from the nuts, and are moist from the bananas. I can see them being good with some grated coconut or dried pineapple in them, but they're great with just the banana too.

apple danish

This weekend, I tackled a longtime baking fear of mine -- laminated dough. Ever since I watched Julia Child make puff pastry on one of her shows (I was so traumatized I couldn't retain that information), I thought -- "that is something I will never, ever, make."

Making laminating dough involves alternating layer upon layer of dough and butter. Puff pastry, probably the most well-known laminated dough, apparently has 729 layers. My laminated dough had just 81. (I still can't imagine ever making puff pastry.)

One of the end results of my dough production were these apple danishes. I sprinkled cinnamon sugar on the dough before I coiled them into the classic danish shape. I also filled them with an homemade apple filling -- I wasn't thrilled with it, but I thought it would cook down more in the oven (it didn't). I didn't glaze them with the traditional confectioners' sugar/water glaze because I was still out of confectioners'. As a result they are barely sweet, which is actually kind of nice. Although I wished they had browned more, the pastry is flaky as promised, and they still really, really good. And what's more, they taste better the day after.

amo il panettone!

Panettone is an Italian yeast bread (almost like a cake though -- light and sweet), enriched with eggs, sugar and honey, and dried or candied fruits. It's traditionally eaten at Christmastime and there are many legends surrounding its creation. I'm actually a fairly recent convert to panettone. For years, I'd see those blue and red boxes in stores during the holiday season, but I hesitated trying it because I feared it would be heavy and fruitcake-like. A few years ago, I finally gave in to curiosity and discovered that panettone was more airy bread than cake and had just a touch of sweetness -- I loved it!

Homemade panettone is an elaborate, time consuming process. Because of the high sugar content, the dough takes many hours (close to 10 for mine) to proof, but the resulting bread is very delicate and melt-in-your-mouth. I didn't have the traditional panettone papers, so after some experimenting, I ended up taking a cue from Baker's Banter (although I didn't use their recipe) and baked it in a bundt pan. If you love panettone, I strongly urge you to make your own. It really is that good.