Posts filed under 'breakfast'
American scones are different than British scones. Up until today, when I pictured a scone in my head, it was triangular, fairly large, dry, crumbly and sweet. And tasty.
Imagine my surprise when I did a google image search and saw photo after photo of things that looked like biscuits. After some research (thank you wikipedia), I realized that British scones are indeed different than their American counterparts. They’re less sweet, smaller, and fluffier–and indeed fairly similar to the US biscuit. I had to make some. And I had to eat them with clotted cream.
Now, I’ve never had clotted cream. Despite the fact that it’s definitely not vegan, it’s made with unpasteurized milk which is simply unavailable in most areas–it’s actually illegal in 25 states. From what I’ve read, clotted cream is slightly sweet, has a light tang, and is at least 55% fat. It’s usually served on scones for cream tea (tea served with scones, clotted cream and jam), so I decided that I needed to make a vegan version. Like, immediately.
Usually scones are served with strawberry jam. I decided to go with fresh, organic blueberries because I had them on hand, but any fresh berry or your favorite jam will be perfect for these. They’re really quick to throw together, so it really is a nice thing to make fresh for afternoon tea or a nice weekend breakfast. They’re best served warm, but I hear you can freeze them if needed.
These scones are very lightly flavored. I love the combination of lemon and maple, but since I was trying to emulate British scones, the flavoring is delicate. They’re good on their own, but spectacular with the clotted cream and berries. Does the vegan clotted cream tase anything like the real stuff? I have no idea, but my best guess is no. But even if it’s not the same, it’s really, really tasty.
Lemon Maple Scones with Clotted Cream
Makes 12-15 2″ Scones
2 Cups All- Purpose Flour
2 1/2 tsp Baking Powder
1/2 tsp Salt
Zest of 1 Lemon
1/3 Cup Earth Balance Margarine
3 Tbs Maple Syrup (or regular sugar)
1/2 Cup Soymilk
2 Tbs Lemon Juice
Clotted Cream
4 Tbs Earth Balance Margarine
4 Tbs Tofutti Better Than Cream Cheese
2 Tbs Powdered Sugar
Whisk the ingredients for the clotted cream together. It takes some elbow grease, but it will soon be a thick, smooth cream. Let it sit out to soften a little if needed to ease mixing. Set aside at room temperature; refrigerating will make the cream stiffer.
Preheat oven to 400º F.
Whisk all the dry ingredients together in a mixing bowl (flour through zest). Mix the wet ingredients together (syrup, soymilk and lemon juice). Using a pastry cutter or a fork, blend the Earth Balance into the dry ingredients until there are no chunks of margarine left and the mixture looks like damp sand.
Pour in the wet ingredients and mix with your hands to form a soft dough. Only mix until just combined, adding more flour if the mixture is too wet. Turn out the dough onto a floured surface and roll out to a slab 3/4″ thick. Using a biscuit cutter or a glass with about a 2″ diameter, cut out your scones. Press the scraps of dough together, roll out again, and continue cutting scones until you’ve used up your dough.
Transfer scones to a cookie sheet covered in parchment paper, or a non-stick mat. Brush the tops with a mixture of soymilk, powdered sugar and lemon juice.
Bake at 400º F for 12-15 minutes. If the scones aren’t lightly brown after 15 minutes, transfer to the broiler for 1-2 minutes, watching carefully, to brown the tops if desired. Remove to a cooling rack.
While still warm, split and slather each side with clotted cream. Add berries or jam to the top and serve with your favorite tea.
March 20th, 2008
*Recipe updated - I accidentally left out the sugar and oil
I usually think about making pancakes sometime during the weekend, but I rarely get around to it. I don’t always want to break out my whisk and bowls and create a lot of dishes that I’ll have to clean up later. Last night, I had an idea.What if I made the batter the night before, in my blender? One container for mixing. I could store the blender jar right in the refrigerator over night, and pour my pancakes from the blender directly into the pan the next morning.
Was it as easy as I hoped? Yes. Yes it was.
I used spelt flour, because once I realized it wasn’t scary at all, I figured it’d be perfect for pancakes. And it is. However, feel free to use regular flour for these, they’ll be just as good without the spelt.
Silver Dollar pancakes are the best, in my personal opinion. They’re just like regular pancakes, but they’re small, about three inches in diameter. They’re tiny enough to roll up and eat in one bite. They cook quickly, they’re easy to flip, easy to eat, and very easy on the eyes. If you’ve never made them before, give them a shot; you’ll never go back to big ones again.
Easy Weekend Pancakes
Makes about 25 Silver Dollar Pancakes, enough for two people
1 1/2 Cup Soymilk
1 Tbs Sugar
2 Tbs Oil
1 Cup Spelt (or all-purpose*) Flour
1/3 Cup All-Purpose Flour
1 tsp Baking Powder
1/4 tsp Salt
1 tsp Extract (any flavor, I used orange, but vanilla is a no-brainer)
1-2 Tbs water, to thin batter if needed
*If using only all-purpose flour for this recipe, you may need to add more liquid. Regular flour absorbs more moisture than spelt.
Add soymilk to your blender. Add remaining ingredients except the water and blend for a few seconds until combined. Scrape down any dry flour stuck to the side of the jar and blend again. Place the top on the blender and refrigerate overnight. You can also use the batter immediately.
In the morning, place the blender back on the base and add 1-2 Tbs of water, blend to mix. This re-thins the batter that had thickened overnight.
Preheat oven to 200º F, or the lowest setting, and put an oven-safe plate on the middle rack. Heat a non-stick skillet over medium heat for a few minutes. Pour the batter directly into the center of the UNgreased heated pan. I like silver dollar sized pancakes, 2 1/2 to 3″ in diameter, but you can make any size you want. This batter should create fairly thin pancakes.
After a few minutes of cooking, you’ll see the bubbles form and set on the uncooked side of the pancake. The batter will start to set, and it will change color from white to dull yellow. This is when you should flip. If your pancake isn’t brown by this time, turn your heat up. If it is overly brown, your heat is too high.While cooking the pancakes, place the finished ones directly into the oven on the plate. Stack the pancakes as you go. This will keep the whole stack warm while you’re cooking them.
While the pancakes are cooking, feel free to add blueberries, chocolate chips, or anything else you can imagine. Serve with vegan margarine (Earth Balance) and maple syrup.
Oh, and in case you were wondering, the Martha Stewart Show taping went great. It was a lot of fun, and everyone who works on the show was really wonderful and talented. Martha was a lot of fun to work with, and I’m really glad to have had such a wonderful experience at her studio. I’ll post more info and a clip of the segment after it’s aired on Monday, so check back here in a couple of days. In the meantime, I’m going to spend the weekend relaxing and eating more pancakes!
February 23rd, 2008
I have to admit, I’m not an equal opportunity flour employer. I reach for wheat without a thought, except for perhaps whether I want to use high gluten, all purpose, whole wheat, or pastry flour. A few days ago, however, I got a really fun package from Celine of Have Cake, Will Travel (one of my favorite food blogs, by the way). She generously gave me a bunch of fun flours/startches from Bob’s Red Mill, and included was a bag of light spelt.
Let me be the first to point out that spelt is wheat. It’s not a huge step out into unknown territory, but it is a start. I’m treating spelt like training wheels before I graduate to other types of grain and bean flours. Because spelt is wheat, I figured it’d be a good candidate for a head-to-head comparison. Gluten-free flours (which spelt is most definitely not) are usually best in combination with other GF flours, so it’s difficult to compare them to wheat in the same way. It can be hard to tell what you’re tasting. With spelt, I could substitute 1:1 without additional ingredients. For the purposes of this post, I’ll refer to spelt as spelt, and wheat as wheat, even though spelt is just as much wheat as wheat is. (It hurt my brain to write that sentence, but it was necessary.)
I thought it’d be fun to make two identical batches of muffins, with one major difference. One batch is 100% All Purpose Wheat (King Arthur), and the other 100% Light Spelt (Bob’s Red Mill). That way I’d be able to see exactly how spelt behaves and tastes in a relatively unchallenging, easy to duplicate recipe. The results, my friends, were surprising. Here’s the recipe:
Brown Sugar and Peach Muffins
Makes 12 Muffins
2 Cups Flour (spelt or all-purpose wheat)
1/2 Cup Brown Sugar*
2 tsp Baking Powder
1 tsp Baking Soda
1/4 tsp Salt
1 Cup Soymilk (+ 2 Tbs more for all-purpose flour)
1 Tbs Lemon Juice
1/3 Cup Oil (like canola)
1 tsp Vanilla Extract
1/2 - 2/3 Cup Peaches, chopped (fresh or canned)
Extra Brown Sugar, for sanding
Preheat oven to 400º F.
Line your muffin tins with muffin cups. Mix the dry ingredients together.
*If needed, you can make your own brown sugar by adding 1/2 - 1 tsp of molasses to 1/2 cup of sugar and mixing well. It takes a little while to mix completely, but you can make it as light or as dark as you wish. It’s my understanding that commercial brown sugar is made by mixing molasses back in to processed sugar, so it’s really not any different than store-bought.
Whisk the wet ingredients together until incorporated and thickened. Add wet to dry and gently fold the until the flour is moistened and there are no dry spots. Add the chopped peaches and fold in gently.
Fill muffin cups 3/4 of the way. Sprinkle with extra brown sugar, and add extra peach pieces on top if desired. Bake for 18-22 minutes, or until lightly browned and a toothpick comes out clean. The centers should also bounce back when pressed lightly.
First off, let’s get appearances out of the way.
The one you’re guessing is spelt–the squatty, sad looking one–is indeed spelt. Check out the difference from another angle, wrapper removed:
Want to see the insides? Okay:
In general, the spelt muffins were darker, flatter, and more moist than the wheat muffins. I think the rising issue can be resolved, or at least improved. The spelt batter was a lot wetter than the wheat batter. It’s possible I accidently added too much liquid, but it seemed that the wheat was more absorbent than the spelt. I think the wetter batter contributed to the spelt muffins not rising as much as the wheat. More on that in a second.
If I were truly dedicated I would have made a third, dryer spelt batch to test my theory, but two dozen muffins is plenty for my husband and me. If I made three dozen we’d still eat them all, which is why it’s really important for me not to make them. Next time, I’ll shoot for a light and airy batter that’s just barely thick enough to hold air bubbles, instead of a drippy, pancake-like batter.
But what about taste?
If I saw these two muffins sitting out, I’d grab a wheat muffin. They just look better, don’t they? But after tasting both muffins, I have to say that the spelt muffins weren’t just good, they were superior.
The spelt tasted better!
I went into this test fairly prejudiced. I was expecting to report to you all that the spelt tasted “fine, but wheat is definitely better.” Several back-to-back bites confirmed my initial decision. The spelt is definitely better. The spelt muffins taste richer, almost buttery. The wheat muffins taste good on their own, but when compared directly with the spelt, their flavor is flat and sponge-like. I was really expecting the spelt to taste “off” - not bad, but different enough to make my wheat-tuned palate complain. I’ll have to use spelt in some other recipes to confirm, but in this recipe it’s the clear winner when it come to taste.
But back to the less-than-spectacular appearance of the spelt muffins. The crumb of the spelt was definitely more delicate than the wheat - the muffins fall apart with only the slightest coaxing.
The gluten present in spelt is more delicate than in regular wheat; overmixing, undermixing, too much or too little liquid–all these can cause a less-than-spectacular finished product. If you hit the sweet spot, the gluten develops enough to hold in gasses that provide a beautifully risen product. Too much mixing (or kneading if you’re making bread) can break the gluten, not enough prevents it from forming at all. With these muffins, I think the batter was so wet that it became too heavy for the delicate nature of spelt, preventing prettily puffed muffins.
I’m surprised that I actually prefer the taste of spelt over regular wheat. You should try it, you might too! Also, I could be crazy, but it smells a little like popcorn when it’s baking. Fun!
Special thanks to Celine for broadening my grain horizons.
February 1st, 2008
I really loved the apple and brown sugar flavor of those instant oatmeal packets when I was little. (I might even still like it now, but I’ve done my best to eliminate anything labeled “instant” from my diet.) We had an insta-hot faucet, so I could dump the powdered, sugary oats into a bowl and turn it into a snack as quickly as I could stir. This recipe is the adult version, using a fresh apple and steel-cut oats. There’s also a little dash of nutmeg, and little dashes of nutmeg remind me of donuts, which is never a bad thing in my opinion.
So let’s talk about oats.
Steel-cut oats are the less processed version of the oats we’re more familiar with, rolled oats. At least, rolled oats are the oats I’m most familiar with. While rolled oats are just as much a whole grain as steel-cut, they have been steamed, flattened, steamed again and then toasted dry. A steel-cut oat is simply cut into three or four pieces and then dried. Some people say the rolled oat, being more processed, has less nutrition and less flavor than the steel-cut variety, but I haven’t found any conclusive proof of that (in three minutes of googling).
There is a clear difference between the two; steel-cut oats take much, much longer to cook than rolled oats. It can take steel cut oats up to 40 minutes to cook, compared to rolled oats which finish up in a mere 5 minutes. Steel-cut retain their texture better after cooking, resulting in a chewier breakfast than standard rolled oats provide. Some people who are really into their oats insist that the steel-cut version has a nuttier, fuller flavor. You’ll find many people willing to invest the time in steel-cut oats just for their toothsome texture and full flavor.
Keep in mind oats come in more than these two versions. You can find whole oat groats (Wow. Oat groat? That’s really the term for it?), which are the least processed and take the longest to cook. The next step down from the whole oat groat is steel-cut, then rolled oats, quick-cooking oats, and instant oats. Generally, avoiding both ends of the spectrum is the best advice. Whole oat groats take forever to cook (I think pre-soaking is even recommended) and instant oats are so mushy and formless, they’re not worthwhile when you can make quick cooking and even rolled oats in under 5 minutes.
While I’m geeking out about oats, I should mention that quick cooking oats are generally preferred for making oatmeal cookies. I read that rolled oats can be used, but the dough should be refrigerated for 20 minutes to let the oats soften up by absorbing some moisture before baking. I’ve definitely used rolled oats in cookies without doing the refrigeration trick, so feel free to ignore this paragraph entirely if you’ve got a cookie recipe that works for you.
Apple Cinnamon Steel-Cut Oatmeal
Serves One Hearty Breakfast Portion, Two Petite Portions
2 tsp Non-Hydrogenated Vegan Margarine
1/2 Cup Steel Cut Oats
1 1/2 Cups Hot water
1/4 tsp Cinnamon
1 Pinch Salt
1/2 Cooking Apple, diced
1/4 Cup Soy, Oat, or Nut Milk
1-2 tsp Brown Sugar (or regular sugar with a small drizzle of molasses)
1 Tiny Pinch Nutmeg, optional
Heat margarine in a small sauce pot that has a tight fitting lid. Add oats and toast them for 1-2 minutes, until fragrant. Add cinnamon and salt, stir well. Stir in hot water and bring to a brisk boil. Cover and turn down heat. After 15 minutes, add apple, milk, and sugar and stir. Cook for another 5 minutes uncovered, stirring occasionally.
If after 5 minutes you’d prefer your oatmeal to be thicker, cover and turn off heat and let sit for an additional 5-10 minutes. This gives the oats a chance to absorb more liquid without running the risk of burning the oatmeal. Also, the oatmeal at this point is approximately the temperature of magma, so you might as well let it cool down a bit before you dig in.
If you feel like dressing up your oatmeal, drizzle it with a small amount of molasses and a pinch of nutmeg, or sprinkle it with additional brown sugar, or add a fresh apple slice or two to the top.
November 6th, 2007
Well hello there!
I do apologize for my absence, but I have a good excuse. I’ve finished the manuscript for my cookbook! We hope to have the book available for pre-order November 1st, and to start shipping December 1st. Hooray!
This also means I’ll be able to focus on the blog again. To celebrate all this wonderful news, I thought I’d share a recipe that will be in the book. Who doesn’t like blueberry waffles?
These waffles are great, but I especially like making waffles because they freeze so well. Having a waffle just out of the iron is a wonderful experience, but for me, it’s equally as wonderful to be able to go from sleepy pillow-creased face to homemade waffle breakfast in less than five minutes, just by popping some frozen waffles in the toaster.
When I created this recipe I was out of maple syrup, so I concocted a lemon icing to go with the waffles. It’s a super tasty way to enjoy them, but you can never go wrong with maple syrup in my opinion.
Edited to add: These work as pancakes, too! Thanks for reminding me, Esme!
Fresh Blueberry Waffles with Lemon Icing
Makes 10 Waffles
2 Cups All Purpose Flour
2 tsp Baking Powder
1 tsp Baking Soda
1/2 tsp Salt
3 Tbs Sugar
1 Container Blueberry Soy Yogurt (Scant 2/3 Cup)
1 1/3 Cup Soy Milk
5 Tbs Water
1/3 Cup Oil
1 Cup Fresh Blueberries (*see note about using frozen)
Spray Oil for the waffle iron
*If using frozen blueberries, keep them in the freezer until the last second. Reserve 1-2 Tbs of your dry mixture. When you’re ready to add the blueberries, take them out of the freezer, measure them and mix them with the reserved dry mixture. Then fold them into your mixed batter in NO MORE than three (3!!) folds. This will prevent your batter from turning a gray-purple color.
Preheat your waffle iron.
Mix all the dry ingredients together well with a whisk. In another bowl, whisk the wet ingredients together. Combine wet and dry, then gently fold in berries.
Spray your waffle iron with a little bit of oil and make a test waffle. In my waffle maker, 1/2 cup of batter is perfect for a single waffle, and they cook for 10 minutes. Follow the instructions or your preferred directions for your waffle maker. This recipe makes 10 waffles if each waffle uses 1/2 cup of batter.
Lemon Icing
1 Cup Powdered Sugar
1 tsp Lemon Juice
Zest of 1/2 Lemon
2-4 Tbs Soy Milk
Mix in a blender until smooth. You can do it without a blender if you feel like sifting your powdered sugar to make sure there are no lumps.
September 26th, 2007
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