Baked Goodness

I hate it that I haven't updated in awhile. I've had a lot going on and nothing going on at the same time. I guess I mean I've had a lot of health stuff going on but nothing cute and fun to blog about. I'll go into all the health stuff after my appointment this coming Wednesday.

So, as I don't have much I can or want to share, I'll just throw some recipes out there. Even though I can't eat a lot of things anymore, I love cooking and especially baking. Whenever a magazine comes in the mail (my mom seriously has dozens of home mags she subscribes to), I always flip straight to the recipes.

Here is a recipe for homemade granola. I'm especially proud of this one because I created it myself! I tinkered with an old recipe of my mom's and I really think it's the best granola ever. I make it for John just about every week. My little brother's birthday was a few weeks ago and the one thing he said he wanted was my granola. Nice, eh? (I also got him a Ghostbusters tee . . . we're so crazy!) He eats it with fruit and yogurt.

The secret to this recipe is there's no corn syrup (which makes it sticky--yuck!) or white sugar . . . the sweetness comes from honey and brown sugar. Brown sugar has way more flavor and goes farther than the white stuff. (The best chocolate chip cookie recipes have more brown sugar than white, BTW.) The granola comes out crunchy, not sticky, even here with all the humidity. But I will warn you, this granola is RICH. John only eats a teacup sized portion with some milk in the morning. If it's too rich for you, you can mix it with Rice Krispies or Special K to lighten it up. But I promise you, you won't want storebought granola ever again after you try this!

 

Autumn’s Granola

4 cups old-fashioned oats
½ cup flaked coconut
½ cup wheat germ
¾ cup chopped pecans*
½ cup brown sugar
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1/3-1/2 cup honey
1 tsp. vanilla

Grease a cookie sheet and preheat oven to 250 degrees. Dump oats, coconut, wheat germ, pecans and brown sugar into pan and mix with hands. In a measuring cup, combine oil, honey and vanilla. Drizzle wet ingredients over the oat mixture in the pan. Combine with hands (yep, it’s messy, but thorough) until the granola is evenly coated. If the oats still look dry (they will be light in color if not thoroughly soaked), spray them with Pam until the mixture looks evenly coated.

Slide the pan into the oven (make sure it’s in the middle of the oven or higher so it doesn’t burn) and cook for one hour, stirring once every 15 minutes (set the timer every 15 minutes or it’ll burn!). Once cooked, spread warm granola on wax paper or foil to cool. Make sure to scrape the pan with a wooden spoon to get all the tasty scraps!

*You can substitute walnuts for pecans, or use a combo of the two (very good!). If you want to use almonds, I would use slivered (NOT sliced, those are too thin) almonds and I would not add them until the last 15 minutes of baking. Almonds are not as oily as walnuts or pecans so they burn much faster . . . So keep an eye out! If you’d like to have a special treat, I bet macadamia nuts would taste good too . . . But I would toast those separately and add them AFTER the granola is baked. Macadamia nuts burn even faster than almonds.

 

While I didn't make this next recipe up, it is a "specialty" of mine. Snickerdoodles! I made them for our Primary kids at church and two-thirds of them had never heard--much less eaten--snickerdoodles. What poor, deprived children! If you too are poor and deprived of snickerdoodles, you gotta make these. They are sugar cookies rolled in cinnamon sugar . . . only they have a better texture than plain sugar cookies. They are crispy on the outside and tender and biscuit-y on the inside. Mmmmm . . . I haven't made snickerdoodles for the Primary in over a year and those kids still ask me constantly for them. Just this week one of my old Savannah buds asked me for the recipe, so I thought I'd share it with everyone. This recipe comes from the classic Better Homes and Gardens cookbook . . . not the new one. The new recipe is not as good. Stick to this one . . . it's a crowd pleaser! Sometime I'd like to experiment and mix some real vanilla bean in and make Snickerdoodles with vanilla cinnamon sugar . . . ooohhhh . . .

Snickerdoodles

3 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. cream of tartar
1 cup of butter, softened
2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1/4 cup milk
2 tsp. vanilla
3 tbl. sugar
1 tsp. cinnamon (I actually triple the sugar and cinnamon mixture to 9 tbl. sugar and 3 tsp. cinnamon . . . that way I don't run out)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. In a small bowl mix 3 tbl. of sugar and 1 tbl. of cinnamon. Set aside. Next, cream butter and sugar until fluffy. Add vanilla, milk, and eggs and beat well. Add baking soda, cream of tartar, and flour until the dough is well combined and formed.

Make one inch balls with a cookie scoop or spoon. Roll each ball in the mixture of cinnamon sugar.

Place cookies on a parchment paper (or greased) cookie sheet and slightly flatten each ball with the palm of your hand. Bake for 8-10 minutes until light golden.

 

Happy Baking!