Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Muffins with Strawberry Butter

This morning, I made a choice between hiking through half a mile of snow or paying almost $2 to ride a bus. This afternoon, I had to make the same decision again. In fact, because my town doesn't salt or plow some of the sidewalks I use, I'll have to make this choice each and every day until the snow melts.

However, in some places, the weather in early March is a little bit more desirable, and luckily there are some ways to enjoy the perks of those warmer climates even if you find yourself under Punxatawny Phil's curse for a few more weeks.

The trick? Strawberries. Right now, in Florida, it's strawberry season. That means east coasters can get the juicy, red fruits shipped from down south instead of out west. For those of us in the mid-Atlantic, this means fresher, sweeter, and cheaper berries than we could get earlier in the winter. 

Next time you're in your grocery store, look for strawberry labels from Plant City, FL. These berries may be a little smaller than the California variety, but trust me, they are so worth it. Rinse them and eat them for breakfast. Put some in your cereal or a spinach salad. Or, blend them up into a sweet strawberry butter, perfect for these oatmeal chocolate chip muffins.

Plant City strawberries are basically all the best parts of the weird Florida seasons, without having to actually move there and deal with summer.

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Muffins

1 1/4 c Quick oats
1 c Whole wheat flour
1 tsp Salt
1 Egg
1 1/4 c Milk
1/2 c Vegetable oil
3/4 c Brown sugar, packed
2 tsp Baking soda
2 tsp Cornstarch
3/4 c Chocolate chips

1. In a medium bowl, combine the oats, flour, baking soda, cornstarch and salt, and mix thoroughly.
2. In a large bowl, combine sugar, oil, milk, and egg. Once mixed well, gradually stir in the dry ingredients.
3. Stir until just mixed, and then let sit for about 10 minutes.
4. Fold in the chocolate chips and separate into a greased or lined muffin pan.
5. Bake at 400 F for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.
6. Remove from pan and cool on a rack. Serve with strawberry butter.

Strawberry Butter

1/2 c Butter, unsalted, softened (one stick)
3/4 c (about 5-6) Strawberries, chopped
2 Tbsp Powdered sugar
1/4 tsp Salt
Splash of heavy cream

1. In a small bowl, place the chopped strawberries and the sugar. Mash the berries and mix using a fork, pastry blender, or potato masher.
2. Add the butter to a large bowl with a splash of cream and the salt. Mix using an electric mixer on medium.
3. Add the strawberry mixture and continue mixing until fully incorporated.
4. Transfer to a small bowl or ramekin and chill in the fridge until ready to use. Or freeze for longer storage

Multigrain Cocoa-Cinnamon Buns with Brown Butter Glaze

Did you hear there was a blizzard on the east coast last week? They named it and everything. Snow storms are kind of fun. They have this huge anticipatory period where you aren't sure what's going to happen. It's usually a lot of hype, but admit it. You like to get hyped up.

I like the cliffhanger feeling: Will it snow at all? It hasn't started yet.... I also like to track the storm using NOAA's satellite imagery, especially the infrared and water vapor loops. You can learn a lot about storms from watching these change as the storm progresses. I'm kind of a weather nerd -- I track hurricanes too. When I was a kid, I had this weather kit with a rain gauge and a barometer made from a balloon and a glass jar.

We didn't get much of a storm here. Living on the edge of the weather warning zone is funny. There were a couple of inches on the ground, but nothing crazy. Not like the lake effect snow we used to get when I lived up in Rochester. It's amusing to see how a couple inches can turn this town upside down, though. Everyone gets into a panic about school closings and traffic - and we were only in the 1-3" zone!

Winter and snow make me want to bake. I want to have my oven on all the time, for both the extra heat and the amazing smells. I want some dough rising on the back corner of my kitchen counter. I want to eat warm, gooey treats and soft, fluffy breads. Then, I want to hibernate.

Cinnamon buns are basically winter in food form. I grew up popping Pillsbury cans (which terrified me, by the way) and baking those eight glorious rolls in the toaster oven. But all the white flour and overly sweet sugary cinnamon just doesn't feel like a balanced breakfast anymore.

For this recipe, I played with some grains - oats and whole wheat. But don't run away. These are anything but health food. These are so ooey and gooey and sweet and spicy. I was tempted to eat the entire pan and then lick up the glaze. I didn't. I did, however, melt some of those hot cinnamon candies into my hot chocolate and call it breakfast. Yum.

Multigrain Cocoa-Cinnamon Buns with Brown Butter Glaze

Ingredients:

Multigrain Dough:
3/4 cup warm Milk (110F, heat in microwave for about 1 minute)
2 1/4 tsp Yeast (or one packet)
1 1/2 cups All purpose flour, plus 1/4 cup for kneading
3/4 cup Whole wheat flour
1/2 cup Quick oats
Salt
2 Tbsp Butter
1 Egg
3/4 cup Brown sugar
Canola/vegetable oil for greasing

Cocoa-Cinnamon Filling:
2 Tbsp Butter, melted
1 Tbsp Cocoa powder
1 Tbsp Cinnamon
1/3 cup Sugar

Brown Butter Glaze:
2 Tbsp Butter
2 tsp Whole milk
1/2 cup Confectioner's sugar
1/8 tsp Vanilla extract

Instructions:

1. Add the yeast to the warm milk and let sit for about 5 minutes, or until bubbly and foamy.
2. While waiting on the yeast, in a large bowl, mix the flours, oats, and salt. Once thoroughly mixed, add in the egg, brown sugar, butter, and yeast mixture. Stir until everything is incorporated and you have a soft, sticky dough.
3. Knead the dough for a few minutes on a floured surface. Then place into a greased bowl. Put a little oil on top of the dough and cover with plastic wrap. Place a clean kitchen towel over the bowl, and let sit in a warm, dry place until doubled in size, about an hour.
4. While waiting, you can make the filling: in a small bowl, whisk the cocoa, cinnamon, and sugar together.
5. Once the dough has risen, roll it out on a floured surface until it is about 12" x 18"
6. Melt the 2 Tbsp of butter for the filling, and spread evenly across the surface of the dough, leaving a 1/2 inch margin on one of the short sides. Then spread the cinnamon-cocoa sugar evenly across the buttery dough.
7. Starting at the short end without the margin, roll the dough like a jellyroll. Once completely rolled, seal the seam with wet fingers.
8. Mark your cuts, then cut into 9 rolls. Place them in a greased square baking pan. Cover, and let rise until they have double in size, about an hour.
9. Preheat the oven to 375F, and bake the rolls for 15-20 minutes.
10. While baking, prepare the glaze: Brown the butter by cooking over medium heat, stirring regularly, until it begins to smell nutty and you see little gold flecks along the bottom. Add in the  the milk, vanilla and sugar to create a thin glaze, keeping it on low heat until the buns are ready.
11. Remove the buns from the oven, and let cool about 10 minutes. Drizzle the glaze over top while they are still warm. Allow them to cool in the pan, and then transfer to a cooling rack or plate to serve.

Serve these immediately, while warm or store in the fridge in an air tight container for up to 2 days. Warm in the microwave for about 20-30 seconds before eating. My mom likes to unwrap and spread some softened butter onto the cinnamon side, but if you're impatient like me, just bite right into it!

Things I Loved This Week (And Last!)

Sneak peak: Next week's multigrain cocoa-cinnamon buns!

What I'm Reading

All Roads Lead to Home (Bellingwood Series): I started reading this book series, and I absolutely love the characters! But Diane Greenwood Muir doesn't let the plot suffer either. There is mystery and intrigue, and I am totally hooked! Here's a quick plot description to draw you in: "Polly Giller returns to small-town Iowa from Boston ready to start a new life. She is renovating an old school building and while getting to know new friends, two sets of bones fall out of the ceiling."

Around the Web

When I see the phrase "Amazon bestselling author," I assume your book hit #1 in some obscure category like Underwater Locked Room Mysteries.
— Chuck Wendig (@ChuckWendig) January 27, 2015

A backlit Belgian Trippel, follow me on Instagram for more!

#TheWriteParty: I joined my first Twitter chat this week and it was awesome! I met some fantastic writers, and learned some new points of view about the creative process. Are you a writer too? Join in Thursday at 7, hosted by TheWriteWoman

I write by pen and paper. Tedious, yes. Old school, yes. But, oh the catharsis. #TheWriteParty
— amber thomas (@mrthomasandme) January 30, 2015

This article from Business Insider uses Richard Feynman as an example to show that having more mental models can make unsolvable problems solvable: "If you only have one framework for thinking about the world, then you'll try to fit every problem you face into that framework."

An extremely interesting story by Zachary McDermott, where he discusses his mental illness from a first person perspective: "I could tell the people on the sidewalk were actors, but just barely. They resembled the normal East Village lot, but they were archetypes"

Awesome Instagrams

• This shelf office set-up is basically my dream. Loving the vertical space use!
• This hippo is so happy! I hope everyone has a day like this.
• Food52 regrammed this delectable looking salted hot chocolate. Yum!
• The hot air balloons just make these rock formations even more stunning.
• Beautiful watercolor and good advice all in one gram? Love it.
• Take me to New Orleans please! I can't resist the French Quarter arhcitecture.
• These gorgeous drinks are making me consider some day cocktails
• Canyonlands is definitely on my list. I need to get to traveling!
• Can everyday be National Peanut Butter Day if we get these cookies?

The whiskey is downstairs. I am upstairs. This is #thestruggle.
— Jessica Stapf (@jstapfinator) January 24, 2015

White Honey Milk Bread

Have you tried stress baking?

I have to highly recommend it, especially when you're unemployed and just having one of those days where the job hunt is not working at all in your favor. In college, I used to make cupcakes around finals. Not only did mixing the batter and frosting ease my mind, but I also got to eat cupcakes.

Today, I wanted something a little more cathartic than icing miniature cakes, though. So, it was time to bake some bread. A lot of people think making bread is hard, especially when you can buy a loaf for $1.50 in the grocery store, presliced and everything.

It's not hard. It's hard work, but it's not hard. Bread is a lot of waiting. Mix. Rise. Punch. Rise. Separate. Rise. Bake. Cool. Three of those steps involve actual doing, while the others are just waiting.

But the waiting is fantastic. Your whole house starts to smell like yeast, and that is just perfect. The smell of yeasty rising bread is never a bad thing.

I have three favorite parts of making bread:

1. When you're mixing with a spoon and adding flour, the dough suddenly becomes too difficult to pull the spoon around the bowl. This is when you flour your hands and get them in there and messy. Consider it a bonus if someone else is around, and you get to wiggle your doughy fingers in their face saying, "Mmm dough!"

2. When you leave the bread to rise and don't peek for an hour, when you come back, it will have doubled in size. What once fit in the bowl is now overflowing it. So you punch it down, and you can feel the air bubble compressing and collapsing. So relaxing.

3. Obviously, eating the bread.

I based my bread on some generic recipes for honey milk bread, but found that they called for far too much flour. I used six cups measured and mixed in before flouring my hands and throwing in little bits until the texture was right. My recipe is below.

White Honey Milk Bread
Makes 2 loaves, Bake at 375 for 30 minutes

Ingredients:

2 1/2 cups milk, warmed in the microwave for 1:30
2 packets (or 4 1/2 teaspoons) active dry yeast
1/3 cup honey
1/4 cup (or half a stick) unsalted butter, melted
1 teaspoon of salt
6 cups flour, plus up to 2 cups extra for kneading
Oil for greasing

Instructions:

1. Mix the yeast into the warm milk until mostly dissolved in a very large bowl. Then add the honey, butter, and salt and keep mixing until smooth
2. Add the flour, one cup at a time, incorporating it completely into the wet ingredients. When it gets difficult to mix with a spoon, flour your hands and begin mixing with those instead.
3. Continue adding flour a little at a time until the dough is stretchy but not overly sticky. Knead any excess flour from the bowl edges into the dough
4. Grease the top of the dough with a little bit of oil and cover the bowl with plastic wrap and a clean kitchen towel. Place the bowl in a warm, dry spot to rise.
5. After the dough has doubled in size (about an hour) remove the towel and plastic wrap and punch it down.
6. Break the dough into two halves, and place each in a greased loaf pan. Grease the top of each loaf, and cover with plastic wrap and a towel.
7. After the dough has double again (about half an hour) bake at 375 for 30 minutes, or until golden brown and dry on the top.
8. Remove loaves from oven and pan, cool on a cooling rack and place covered  in a cool, dry place until ready to serve.
9. Cut yourself off a slice and spread some honey butter or strawberry preserves. Mmm. 

Buttery and Chocolate-Filled Croissants

My Starbucks drink changes depending on the season. In the winter, I used to get a Caramel Brulee or Gingerbread latte, until this year when they released the Chestnut Praline (which tastes like Christmas!). In the summer, I opt for an iced Americano, room for cream, and two shots of Toffee Nut flavor. Occasionally, I'll even change it up completely and get a half sweetened iced green tea.

However, the one thing that never changes is that I always get a croissant. A butter croissant, a fruit-filled croissant, a chocolate croissant. It doesn't matter, as long as it's that flaky, golden, French pastry.

The smell and taste are perfect: buttery, like a young unoaked Chardonnay. The texture, flaky, as it melts in your mouth. But what really gets me is the sound, when you break it in half. That light "crr-aunch."

The other night we watched Ratatouille, and there's a scene where Colette is explaining to Linguini (And Remy, hidden under a hat) that you can tell a perfect baguette by its sound. This is how I feel about croissants.

I've probably spent hundreds of dollars eating these delectable pastries over the years, never giving a thought as to how I'd make my own. I didn't even bother.

But when I saw a recipe in Homemade Decadence (the cookbook by Joy the Baker, check it out!) I decided I had to make my own. I was a little disappointed that hers didn't include a recipe for the puff pastry, but with a little digging I found this one from Food Cookture.

I made six plain croissants and six chocolate-filled. I just used semi-sweet chocolate chips in a pile in the middle of a triangle and rolled them up like Pillsbury crescent rolls. I even gave them a little curve, so they would be that perfect moon shape.

I wish it were a little warmer outside so that I could make a cafe au lait, and sit out on my porch wearing a striped sweater, pretending that I'm in a little French bistro. However, with the negative windchills of late, I'll stick to indoor seating for these little munchie. I'll still have the coffee though, please and thank you.

Easy Homemade Puff Pastry recipe from Food Cookture
Yields enough for two dough pieces of approximately 12x10in (30cm x 25cm) in size
Prep time: 20 min + resting time (at least 30min)

Ingredients:

• 1 3/4 cups (250g) flour
• 11 TBL (155g) unsalted butter (you can even use as little as 8 TBL (115g) for even lighter pastry but it will be a little flatter, which is ok for tarts)
• Pinch of salt
• 10-12 TBL ice-cold water (start with 10 TBL, depending on the flour, you may need to add another tablespoon or two)
• *plus 1 egg for the egg wash before baking (see note below)

Directions:

1. Sift flour and salt in a bowl. Add the ice water to the flour mixture.
2. Cut butter into small cubes and add to the flour mixture using a pastry blender (or a food processor) cut through the butter into the flour. You should still have little pieces of butter Note: If you do not have a pastry blender or a food processor, you can use a fork to cut through the butter in the flour. Avoid using your hands so the butter remains cold.
3. Once you obtain somewhat of a dough mixture (the dough will get smoother once you roll it), transfer to a lightly floured surface.
4. Using a rolling pin, start rolling the dough while bringing loose pieces of flour and butter into the mixture. Note: Flour the rolling pin often so the butter does not stick to it while you roll the dough.

See the rest of this recipe at Food Cookture.

Friday Five Things: 10/04/13

Welcome back to Friday Five Things, and my first edition brought to you from the great state of Arizona. You already know a lot about me moving across the country, so I'll try not to talk too much about the actual moving process or decorating, since there will be plenty of posts dedicated to those topics.

Pancake Cookies and Whip

Wait, wait. Two cooking posts in one week. Yes.

I'll tell you why. These are worth it. They are so, so worth it. I honestly think I may have just invented the next trendy dessert. It's really a shame only about fifteen people will see this, because these cookies are super delicious.

Almond Cookie Sandwiches

Macarons are delicious.

Delicious, but hard to make. Trust me, I tried one time and it was a pretty spectacular failure. The cookies weren't structurally sound and melted when I added the cream. They were delicious but fell apart in your hands.

June in Review

Wow. Can you believe that June is over already. It's July, and 2013 is halfway done, which is completely crazy to me. Time is a strange phenomena. It's amazing how quickly and slowly it can go at the same time. Thinking about that always reminds me of one of my favorite quotes:

Texas Sheet Cake! My favorite summer picnic dessert. Yum!

“When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That's relativity.” - Albert Einstein

Pie

I'm an advocate of pie (as well as pi).

Today, to me, will forever be Pi Day - a day on which we celebrate mathematics and eat delicious baked and filled confections. I know some of the male persuasion would consider today a different holiday, but I'm against that one as much as it's predecessor on February 14.

Random Things I: Edibles Edition

Some random facts about me, specifically relating to food and my kitchen.

1. There is always leftover Chinese food in my fridge. If there is not, that means it's time to order Chinese food. Essentially, I can buy $30 worth of the stuff and eat for a week. It's not ideal, but it's an addiction.

Chocolate Butterscotch Cupcakes

There's this little ice cream join in the town in which I grew up in New Jersey.

It's called Jersey Freeze. Maybe you've heard of it from being a local or from the travel channel feature (or food network, or something. It was on tv, okay). Maybe not.

Either way, I used to go there all the time when I was younger, and I would never order anything different from my usual.