Coincidence (noun): a striking occurrence of two or more events at one time apparently by mere chance.
Serendipity (noun): good fortune; luck; the faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for.
Was it a coincidence or serendipity that just days after bookmarking these roasted pear and chocolate chunk scones, I discovered that the Sourdough Surprises project for this month was sourdough scones?
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Pumpkin spice muffins are one of those things that seem to spring up in every coffee shop and bakery on the very first day of fall. The ones I’ve had the most are the Starbucks version – not because they are the best, but because they are everywhere. The Starbucks pumpkin spice muffin is more like a pumpkin cupcake and has a cream cheese filling inside, which, while a good idea, has sort of an odd, gelatinous texture. My ideal pumpkin spice muffin – which I have been on the hunt for – is denser, warmly spiced, and has a cream cheese filling with a much more cream cheesey texture. I tried to create such a muffin last year and failed miserably, so I’m happy to say that this recipe pretty much nailed it.
Oh hai, Riley-cat!
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On weekdays I leave the house before 7 am to commute to work, and while I used to favour some kind of egg-and-toast combination for breakfast, I simply don’t have the time to coordinate that kind of thing anymore before rushing out the door. Toast and jam just weren’t cutting it – I needed something with a little more nutritional oopmh to start my day. I’ve been reading Christina‘s recent nutrient–packed muffin posts with great interest, and prompted by several rapidly blackening and fruit fly-attracting bananas in my fruit bowl, I came up with these bad boys. I added (quite a lot of) whey protein powder, and used oats (blended in a food processor) and rice flour so they just so happen to be gluten-free (which was a happy coincidence, as my wheat-free Aunt was visiting when I made them). And with only 1/3 of a cup of sugar for 16 muffins, I can honestly say these are probably the healthiest baked good that has come out of my kitchen in, well, a long time….
(Besides eating them with butter and jam, of course.)
One of my favorite ways to enjoy an English muffin is in eggs benedict with soft poached eggs and lots of hollandaise sauce. However, in my experience, making hollandaise at home can be a bit of a pain – you need a lot of egg yolks, a ton of butter, and a fair amount of patience, which I don’t always have in the morning when I’m craving a decadent breakfast. So instead, I like to make cheese sauce to smother everything with. It’s not exactly eggs benedict anymore, but it’s delicious.
My Dad taught me how to make this cheese sauce and pour it over eggs. I like to add sautéed mushrooms because it reminds me of mushrooms and cheese on toast, which is another of my favorites. Other good things to layer under the poached eggs include ham or bacon, sliced tomato, sautéed spinach – pretty much anything you might want to put in eggs benedict. This was great with homemade English muffins, but any kind of toasted bread will work. Cheese sauce is kind of like chocolate that way – you can put it on practically anything and it will be good!
Serves 2.
In a small saucepan, combine:
a good handful of grated cheese (any kind – I used orange cheddar)
a small teaspoon of all purpose flour
1 – 2 tbsp milk (you can always add more to thin it out later, but it’s hard to thicken up if you add too much milk to start)
Put the saucepan over medium heat and stir the sauce with a whisk as the cheese melts. When it starts to bubble and get smooth, season it with salt, pepper, and cayenne or hot smoked paprika (I love the smokey flavour it has) and remove it from the heat.
I usually make the cheese sauce first and then sauté the mushrooms, poach the eggs, and toast the muffins. Then when I’m ready to assemble, I warm the sauce up over low heat and add a little milk to thin it if necessary.
You will need:
2 English muffins, split and toasted
sliced mushrooms sautéed in butter with salt, pepper, garlic powder and Worchestershire sauce (and/or whatever else you want to use)
4 poached eggs (I love this method for poaching eggs)
Butter the English muffin halves. Top them with the mushrooms and poached eggs. Pour a big spoonful of cheese sauce over the top and garnish with chives if you’re feeling fancy.
English muffins just happen to be one of my favorite breakfast foods (only partly because they form the base for eggs benedict) and they are one of those things that I keep meaning to make but never get around to doing. Enter Sourdough Surprises. This is the third time since I started baking with the group that the monthly project has coincided with something on my “to make” list! Perfect!
As always, I am kind of awe-struck that a bubbly mess of flour and water can so easily be turned into something like this:
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Big announcement time: Nate and I bought a house!!
We moved in the middle of August and have settled in pretty quickly – we love it here. We are in Shawnigan Lake, about 40 minutes from Victoria where we both still work, but we traded up for lots of privacy and green space. 🙂 Plus the Cowichan Valley has a seriously thriving local food scene, which I am very much looking forward to exploring!
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This month’s Sourdough Surprises project was bagels, yet another item that just so happened to be on my “summer to-make” list. The recipe comes from Susan at Wild Yeast, a fantastic blog and resource for all things concerning bread and the home of YeastSpotting, a weekly round-up of user-submitted blog posts featuring bread and yeast (to which this post has been submitted!).
You should really head over to read Susan’s original post of this recipe, because not only is it witty, it is also very informative. I’ve never made bagels before, but I do agree with many of her opinions, including the one that the only good bagel is a chewy bagel. This means kneading the heck out of the dough, and unless you have arms of steel and a lot of free time, you’re going to “knead” a stand-mixer. (Sorry, that was terrible.)…
This is the second post in a series of three – click to read Part I and Part III.
As promised, here’s the follow-up to my last post on Danish pastries: how to shape and fill the Danishes. So fun!
I got really excited about the different Danish shapes I was going to make, so I tried a whole bunch of them. They were all pretty successful so I’m confident that I can pass along my skillz ;). I only used half the batch of dough to make these (I couldn’t justify making sixteen Danishes for only two of us) so I will be experimenting with the rest of the dough sometime soon… stay tuned for Part III! ;)…
This is the first post in a series of three – click to read Part II and Part III.
In my last post, I was extolling the virtues of making something simple from scratch. Now I am going to extol the virtues of making something rather complicated from scratch: Danish pastries using sourdough starter. Yes, we are doing this!
At the end of April, I wrote a list of stuff I wanted to make for this blog over the summer, and Danish pastries was on it. I had my first taste of making laminated dough when the Daring Bakers made croissants a while back, and I wanted to try it again. But I was kind of putting it off because it’s a lot of butter and a lot of work: all that rolling and folding and rolling and folding and resting and waiting. Then, during the Daring Bakers reveal last month, I came across Sourdough Surprises, which is another baking group that a few Daring Bakers members have created to bake together once a month using their sourdough starters. And their recipe for May was sourdough Danishes! Well, it seemed like fate. I was in….
On weekends, I love a big breakfast of eggs benedict or something similar, but on weekdays, I try to go for something a little lighter. Enter: the smoothie. Mine usually includes frozen berries, orange, banana, plain yogurt, ground flax seeds, cinnamon, maple syrup or honey, water or almond milk, and (this is where it might get weird for you) kale leaves. This is results in a not-quite-green smoothie that tastes nothing like kale and everything like deliciousness, but still makes me feel like I’m eating a leafy green vegetable. Sometimes I’ll also add half an avocado (I know, weird again), which makes it super creamy and smooth….