Hawaiian Sweet Rolls
It’s that time of year. Homemade for the holidays. These easy golden brown fluffs beg for a slathering of butter and immediate consumption. Make an extra batch if you want to allow pre-dinner sampling.
This version is based on a batch of sweet bread recipes I’ve tweaked slightly. My mom used a similar recipe, but made the dough a day ahead and let it take its first rise in the refrigerator overnight. She used it to make cinnamon rolls and coffee cakes for holidays.
Hawaiian Sweet Rolls 
The finished rolls are great for Thanksgiving dinner, but also are perfect for leftover turkey sandwiches. Or use a knife to cut a deep “X” in the top of each roll. Stuff each with a squished roasted garlic clove, some shredded cheese and a little splash of broth. Cover with foil and reheat.
Make 15 rolls
1 (1/4-oz.) package instant yeast
3/4 cup lukewarm water (or a combo of milk and water)
1/4 cup melted butter
3 to 3 1/4 cups bread flour (all-purpose flour works too)
1/3 cup sugar
1 teaspoon Kosher salt
Melted butter (optional)
1. Combine all ingredients except for the optional melted butter. I like the feel of dough, so I stir as much as I can together with a wooden spoon, then knead with my hands until it becomes a soft, smooth dough. A mixer with a dough hook works, too. Put dough in a lightly greased bowl, cover, and let rise until double. I like to put the bowl on the bottom shelf of my oven with the oven light on. (Do not heat the oven.) The oven light provides just enough warmth to hasten rising.
2. Punch down dough and divide it into 15 pieces. Shape into balls and place in a greased 9×13-inch pan.
Cover pan and let rise until almost double, about 45 minutes. Bake in a preheated 325° oven for 20 to 25 minutes or until golden brown.
Pancakes for Two
Almost-Empty-Pantry
Pancakes for Two
While practicing social-distancing, all by myself, I can’t invite anyone over to help eat everything I love to cook and bake. And we all know that most bloggers, cookbooks, food magazines, and recipe developers discriminate against small—or solo—households. Well, this “family of one” is tired of eating leftovers.
Today, I was hungry for pancakes but didn’t want to make a giant batch. I know, I know, pancakes freeze well. But I have a craving for pancakes once or twice a year, so I don’t need a freezer full of them.
So, I created this recipe that could easily serve two people, but I may have eaten a little bit more than my allotted three 3-inch pancakes. Come on! It’s Sunday brunch. Don’t judge.
First I made a teeny, tiny test pancake to make sure the skillet was at the right temperature!
Alas, I was out of milk for the pancakes (because my local grocery store can’t fill my order for another week!!!). But there’s only a splash of milk in my favorite fluffy ricotta pancakes, so I was pretty sure water would be fine. Didn’t have ricotta, either, so I gave Greek yogurt a try. It all worked! The pancakes have a teensy hint of yogurt tang, but by the time you syrup ’em up, you don’t even notice.
Of course I didn’t have syrup, maple or otherwise. Made some with two ingredients: brown sugar and butter (plus water). OK…Plus rum! I added a splash of rum at the end because, well, it’s Sunday brunch, people. And I had one lonely banana so I was thinking bananas foster pancakes. Had some blueberries, too (one of those Costco packages of blueberries lasts me forever…same with toilet paper, which is why I didn’t join the hoarding crowd! I bought a monsterous package of Costco T.P. in the fall which will last me another year or two. The best benefit of being single!)
And because this pancake batter is thick, it’s easy to spread it into any shape that makes you happy. I picked hearts today!
Et voila!
A splash of rum in homemade Brown Sugar Syrup and a pile of sliced bananas turn these pancakes into a bananas Foster kind of breakfast!
Yogurt Pancakes with Brown Sugar Syrup
Serves 2 (about six 3-inch pancakes)
1/4 cup flour
1 Tbsp. sugar
1 tsp. baking powder
Sprinkle of salt (1/8 tsp. if you really want to measure)
1/2 cup Greek yogurt (ricotta cheese, if you’ve got it)
1 egg, beaten
2 Tbsp. water (milk, if you have it)
1/2 tsp. vanilla (or not)
Sliced bananas and/or blueberries
Brown Sugar Syrup, below
1. Combine all the ingredients, except for the syrup. This batter should be more thick than thin.
2. For each pancake, pour, ladle—whatever—a little less than 1/4 cup batter onto a hot, lightly oiled skillet. Gently spread into a 3-inch circle, or heart, or Mickey Mouse shape. (Plan to ruin the first one. Or make a teensy-tiny one as a tester.) Cook over medium heat until top starts to bubble and bottom is golden brown, about 2 minutes. Flip; cook another 1 to 2 minutes. Serve with bananas and/or blueberries and Brown Sugar Syrup.
Brown Sugar Syrup: In a small skillet over medium-high heat combine 1 cup brown sugar, 1/4 cup butter, and 1/4 cup water; bring to boiling. Cook and stir until sugar is dissolved and butter is melted, about 2 to 3 minutes. If desired, add 1 tablespoon rum or 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract or maple extract.
Valentine’s Day Happy Heart Lemon Cookies
Must love lemon! The secret to these lightly puckery, tender cookies is lemon peel. There’s a bit in the cookie dough plus some in the glaze. But fear not, there’s enough sugar and butter involved to mellow the tartness. (And didja know adding a bit of confectioner’s sugar makes a cookie tender rather than super crispy?)
Like most recipes, this one comes with a story and lots of memories. What’s your favorite recipe and its story?
Happy Heart Lemon Sugar Cookies
About 3 dozen 2- to 3-inch cookies
Beat until creamy:
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
2 tablespoons powdered sugar (it adds a light texture)
1 to 2 tsp. lemon peel (I use a Microplane to remove the lemon peel in fine shreds)
1/4 tsp. salt
Add and beat until combined:
1 egg
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1/2 tsp. baking powder
Add and beat on low (or stir with a wooden spoon) until combined:
2 1/2 cups flour
Divide dough into thirds, flatten into disks, and wrap in waxed paper. Refrigerate about 30 minutes.
Preheat oven to 350°F.
Using 1 part of dough at a time, roll dough on a lightly floured surface to about 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick. Use a 2- to 3-inch cutter to cut out cookies. Place on cookie sheet about 1-inch apart.
Repeat with remaining dough. Pat dough scraps together and roll and cut.
Bake 10 to 12 minutes or until edges get a hint of brown. Do not over bake. Remove to a cooling rack. When cool, frost with Lemon Glaze. Add little red hearts or pink and red sprinkles, if desired. (I used Wilton’s Jumbo Heart Sprinkles and a few random jimmies.)
Lemon Glaze: Whisk together 1 1/4 cups powdered sugar, 2 to 3 Tbsp. lemon juice, 1 tsp. lemon peel, and 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract.
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Easy Cranberry Cake Pie
If you have a stash of fresh (or frozen) cranberries, here’s what you do. Pour a couple of cups of cranberries into the bottom of a buttered pie tin (or 9-inch round cake pan), sprinkle with sugar, add walnuts if you like and whip up a buttery cake batter to pour on top. Bake. Cool. Share.
I can’t take credit for this recipe. It’s got history. And it’s everywhere. I made so many for Christmas gifts one year that I memorized the recipe. It’s that easy.
There’s a version called Nantucket Cranberry Pie in an old cookbook called “More Home Cooking” by the late Laurie Colwin (many credit her for the recipe). The King Arthur Flour site calls it Nantucket Cranberry Cake. Ina Garten does a variation with apples and brown sugar and sour cream and calls it Easy Cranberry and Apple Cake.
Next time I might add a little orange peel and cinnamon to the batter. I might even add a simple icing drizzle on top. (You know: confectioners sugar plus milk).
For Christmas gifts I bake them in foil pie plates and add a note that says they freeze easily (in case the recipient wants to save them for New Year’s eve!)
They’re great served at brunch. Or as dessert with a bourbon-laced whipped cream. Or whenever the spirit moves you.
Easy Cranberry Cake Pie
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Best Ever Irish Stout Chocolate Cupcakes
Photo by Richard Swearinger
St. Patrick would be proud. It’s easy to dive face first into these chocolate cupcakes flavored up with Irish stout. You only need 1/2 cup or so to make this Double Chocolate Stout Cupcake recipe. We like to use chocolate stout, but any old stout will do. (You know what to do with the remaining stout, right? Slàinte!)
Double Chocolate Stout Cupcakes
Makes 12 cupcakes
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup chocolate stout
1/2 cup butter (unsalted, please. If you’re using salted butter, ditch the salt, above)
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
3 ounces dark unsweetened chocolate, coarsely chopped, or semisweet dark chocolate chips
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
2 slightly beaten eggs
Dark Chocolate Frosting (next page)
Coarse sea salt
12 bite-size pretzels
1. Preheat the oven to 350* F. Line muffin pan with 12 paper liners. Set aside. Stir together flour, soda, and salt. Set aside.
2. In a medium saucepan over medium heat, bring stout, butter, and cocoa just to simmer; stirring frequently. Add dark chocolate, stirring until melted. Remove from heat. Add brown sugar, stirring until smooth. Whisk in eggs until combined. Add flour mixture, beating until smooth.
3. Fill cupcake liners about ¾ full. Bake for about 15 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. (Or just tap the top of the cupcake with your finger. It should bounce back.) Cool in pan on rack for 5 minutes, then carefully remove cupcakes from muffin pan and cool completely on rack.
4. Pipe or frost with Dark Chocolate Frosting (below). Sprinkle coarse salt over each cupcake. Top with a pretzel. (Or skip the salt and crush the pretzels and sprinkle on top.
Dark Chocolate Frosting
Makes enough to cover 12 cupcakes
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup dark chocolate chips (or 4 ounces dark chocolate, coarsely chopped)
3 cups sifted powdered sugar
¼ cup milk (add a splash of Irish cream, if you’d like to be more decadent)
1. In a small saucepan, heat the butter and chocolate over very low heat until butter and chocolate are melted, stirring constantly.
2. In a bowl, stir together powdered sugar and milk. Add melted butter and chocolate. Beat by hand until smooth. Cool to room temperature. Frosting will thicken as it cools. Stir in additional milk, 1 tablespoon at a time, if frosting is too thick.
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Crazy good fudgy brownies
One pot uber-fudgie brownies. No mixer required.
It’s a brownie baking kinda night. I typically double (in a 15 x10 inch pan or 13×9) or triple the recipe and put them in a half-sheet pan (18×13) because these brownies are meant to be given away. They’re loaded with walnuts and well, chocolate. Don’t like nuts? Leave ’em out.
But, remember, walnuts are high in good-for-you fats that provide protection against a host of health problems. And dark chocolate, including bittersweet, has heart-healthy antioxidants and has been found to lower blood pressure. Never mind the butter and sugar. Surely the nuts and chocolate cancel out the butter-sugar concerns. I like to think these brownies are a health food.
Double batch of walnut-loaded fudge brownies baked in a jelly roll pan.
Walnut-Studded Dark Chocolate Brownies
1/2 cup butter
4 ounces bittersweet chocolate (70% cacao), coarsely chopped (bittersweet chips work, too)
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/2 cups coarsely chopped walnuts, toasted
1/2 cup milk chocolate or semisweet chocolate pieces
1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease an 8x8x2-inch or 9x9x2-inch baking pan; set aside.
2. In a medium saucepan, combine butter and bittersweet chocolate. Cook and stir over medium heat until butter and chocolate are melted. Remove from heat. Using a wooden spoon, stir granulated sugar and brown sugar into chocolate mixture until smooth. Add eggs, beating with spoon until well combined.
3. In a small bowl, combine flour and baking powder. Stir flour mixture into the chocolate mixture just until combined. Stir in nuts and milk chocolate pieces (batter will be thick). Spread in prepared pan. Bake for 25 minutes or until top is set but still soft. (A toothpick inserted in center will come out slightly gooey.) Cool on a wire rack. Cut into bars. Makes 16 brownies.
Tip: The secret to fudgy brownies is to make sure you don’t overcook them. For easy clean up, line the baking pan with foil or baking
parchment, leaving an overhang on two opposite sides. Butter the foil. When brownies are baked and cooled, lift out the foil along with the slab of brownies. Remove foil and cut brownies.
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Pumpkin Cinnamon-Cardamom Bars Reprise
Autumn in Milwaukee
In case you missed this post from a few years back. These are the most amazing pumpkin bars, if I do say so myself.
It’s Fall, Y’all!
Went out for a contemplative walk, but kept getting distracted by nature. First the trees with their distracting oranges and reds and yellows against the sky-blue sky. And the slightly deeper blue of Lake Michigan in the background. And the crunch, crunch, kick, crunch, flutter of the leaves underfoot. And the sunshine which made the day look like it should feel warmer, but instead simply verified what the trees know: Fall is here.
And so it’s time for Pumpkin Cinnamon-Cardamom Bars.
Baking them results in aromatherapy of the highest order. Happiness guaranteed.
And yes, I know that they are more cakey than bar-like, but they’re called bars anyway.
I’ve been baking these for-almost-ever. And tweaking them a bit over the years. The original recipe included 1 cup of oil, so I experimented with half oil, half applesauce. It works, but makes the texture a little gummy. So I tried this version with 1/4 cup applesauce. Thumbs up. (You can skip the applesauce and use 1 cup of oil, if there’s no applesauce in the house.)
The spices are subject to your whim or your pantry. I’ve been loving cardamom lately so I added some. Sometimes I include a dash of cloves and/or ginger. But always, always cinnamon.
The frosting is barely sweet, the way I like it. Oh, and I almost always add pecans. But you’ll notice there are none in the photo. That’s because I was entertaining someone with nut allergies. They were still good (but even better with pecans!)
Pumpkin Bars Minus the Pecans
Pumpkin-Cinnamon-Cardamom Bars
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
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Dad’s New Potato Hash (sort of)
While he was cooking, my father was an intense maestro, focusing on getting dinner on the table every night after work. “Outta MY kitchen,” he’d say, waving a spatula or a ladle or a chef’s knife at those who dared to offer help or peer over his shoulder as he was peeling and chopping and sautéing.
A heavenly dish for Dad.
The kitchen was his domain. Our garden was his market. The milkman (yup, I’m THAT old) supplied milk, butter, cottage cheese and the meat locker supplied a side o’ beef for the double-wide chest freezer in the garage. We kids acted as his crew when it came to planting and harvesting and cleaning and preserving the strawberries, raspberries, peas, sweet peppers, cucumbers, green beans, tomatoes, corn and potatoes.
But help in the kitchen fixing meals? Nope. Dad would have none of it. Well, except for the salad that the kids took turns making every night. For the most part, Dad brought home the bacon and cooked it up every afternoon after work. (Mom was the baker in the family.)
And Dad loved cooking. A couple of times a week he would say, “This meal is better than you could get in any restaurant.” Leftovers? “These would be good for breakfast with an egg cracked over it.” Or, “I can turn this into hash tomorrow morning.”
And so, in honor of my dad for Father’s Day, I created a nouveau hash this morning. I used baby new potatoes, something that would appall my dad. He always told us to leave the baby potatoes on the ground when we stooped to pluck them from the ground. “Throw those things away. They’re too small,” he’d say.
What were you thinking, Dad?
New Potato Hash with Mushrooms and an Egg on Top
No recipe here. It’s a make-it-up-as-you-go kinda dish.
1. Cook baby potatoes until just tender. (I simmered them in salted water, altho I sometimes roast or even microwave ’em.) In the meantime, sautee thinly sliced leeks and garlic scapes in olive oil. (or use chopped onion and a clove of chopped garlic. Add sliced shiitake mushrooms and baby ‘bellas. Cook and stir until mushrooms are tender.
2. Drain potatoes, cut the bigger babies in half. Toss ’em in the skillet with the mushroom concoction. Add a tablespoon or two of butter or additional olive oil, if needed. Sprinkle with a good seasoning. Maybe salt and pepper. I use Gray Sea Salt w/ Five Pepper Blend from ile de Re France. Add some chopped fresh rosemary (or whatever herb you have handy). Toss and stir for about 5 minutes to combine flavors.
3. Cook an over-easy egg (or two or three depending on who’s invited for breakfast). Put potato hash on plate(s). Top with the cooked egg(s). Add fork(s).
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Soft and Spicy Ginger Cookies
It’s beginning to smell a lot like Christmas.
Am doing my civic duty this weekend and dedicating batches of baking to the Milwaukee police precinct in my neighborhood. Still paying back the officers who tended to the emotional havoc I experienced after being held up by a gun-wielding youth a few years ago.
The Milwaukee Police Dept. has been getting a lot of bad press lately. But they have a tough job. And they’ve always been kind to me.
Anyway, I’ve been making these for years. I got my first taste of them while an editor at Better Homes and Gardens. Then again after I became editor at Taste of Home magazine when we sent batches of these to soldiers (slightly different recipe). They pack well and hold their flavor for a looong time. Ginger, cinnamon, cloves. Oh, yeah.
I can’t take credit for this version. It may have originated from BH&G; or come from a Taste of Home reader…and it’s all over Pinterest, so who knows? I always tweak recipes, so maybe it’s mine now!
I sometimes use my 1/4-cup size ice scream scoop and make GIANT ginger cookies. If you want to go that route, increase the baking time by 2 or 3 minutes. And you will only get a couple dozen big ol’ cookies out of the batch, rather than about 5 dozen cookies.
Soft and Spicy Ginger Cookies
Makes 63 cookies (1 tablespoon dough/cookie)
4 1/2 cups flour
4 tsp. ground ginger
2 tsp. baking soda
1 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 tsp. ground cloves
1/4 tsp. salt
1 1/2 cups shortening
2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup mild-flavored molasses
3/4 cup sparkling (or course) sugar or sugar
- Preheat oven to 350° F. Stir together the flour, ginger, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves and salt. Set aside.
- In a large bowl, beat shortening for about 30 seconds. Add the 2 cups sugar and beat until combined. Beat in eggs and molasses. Add flour mixture and beat until combined. Shape dough into balls (I made these exactly 1 tablespoon per ball), and roll them in the remaining sugar. Place about 1 1/2 inches apart on an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for 9 minutes. Tops will be slightly puffed and soft. Don’t over bake. Cool for 1 -2 minutes before removing from cookie sheet to rack.
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Shortcut Dark Chocolate Almost Toffee
Saltine crackers, blanketed in melty butter and brown sugar, plus a heavy-handed scattering of chocolate chips and almonds. Done.
1 1/2 cups dark chocolate chips and/or chopped bittersweet chocolate
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Nice job, Jeanne!
Thanks Tony! Eating good food is a legacy I am doing my best to uphold, which is why I’m sweating with Jillian Michaels whenever I can!