Easy Coffee Cake

I may have mentioned this before but in case I haven’t, here it is…. I enjoy and prefer baking from scratch. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that when I was a child, even though my mom was a good cook, she usually baked with mixes…cake, brownie and even used a box mix for her pie crust. I rarely had a baked good that was made from scratch. I’ll get more into that subject in a future post. Even though I prefer baking from scratch, I am not completely against using shortcuts from time to time, especially when I come across recipes that use mixes as an ingredient and that look and taste good, not to mention are so easy to prepare. I have a few of those kinds of recipes that I’ve already posted about and here is one more.

I can’t remember when or where I found this recipe, but it’s another one that I used to make often and then eventually, after a while, I guess got bored with so stopped. It was very popular at work and it was easy enough to make that I could even prepare it in the morning, put it in one of those Pyrex carriers and it would be nice and warm by the time I and my co-workers arrived at the office. Because it’s so easy to make, It’s a great recipe to make on Christmas morning…..a nice warm coffee cake to have with a cup of coffee, tea or glass of milk….yum!

Easy Coffee Cake
Print Recipe

1 cake mix (spice, caramel or yellow)
1 cup chopped nuts
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup butter (1 stick), melted

1. Prepare cake mix according to package directions. Pour into a 9x13 inch cake pan. After 15 minutes in the oven at the temperature stated on box, remove cake and sprinkle on a mixture of the chopped nuts, sugar and cinnamon. Then pour melted butter over all. Continue baking until done, 15 to 20 minutes.

2. Serve warm

3. May be frozen

Notes:
I've made this using a yellow cake mix and a spice cake mix, which are both good, but I prefer the caramel. The problem with using the caramel mix is that it isn't easy to find, the only place I'm able to locate it is at Meijer.

One cake mix, whatever ingredients that are needed to prepare the cake mix (the Duncan Hines caramel mix uses, water, oil and eggs), nuts, sugar, cinnamon and butter. When I first started making this, the Duncan Hines Caramel mix was easy to find....not so easy now. As I stated in the recipe notes, I'm only able to find it at Meijer.

Prepare mix, according to package directions and pour into a 9x13 pan that has been coated with butter/oil and flour. I use either Baker's Secret or Pam for baking. Love the ease of just spraying it on in the pan.

Place in preheated oven (temperature that is listed in the cake mix directions) bake for 15 minutes and remove.

Combine nuts, sugar and cinnamon. I usually do this while the cake is baking.

Sprinkle mixture on cake.

Pour melted butter over cake.

Return cake to oven and bake and additional 15-20 minutes or until cake is done.

Hmmm, looks like someone was doing a little tasting while I had my back turned.

This was as good as I remembered. It smelled so good…the aroma of the caramel cake and cinnamon was wonderful. Apparently it was too much for Michael to stand since, as you can see from the previous photo, he tasted it as soon as it came out of the oven.

Pumpkin Chip Muffins

This time of year I’m all about all things pumpkin…I love pumpkin and have many recipes that include pumpkin in the ingredients. This happens to be one of my favorite recipes because #1 it contains pumpkin, lots of cinnamon and it’s a muffin recipe. Muffins are easy to make and are great for breakfast, brunch, coffee or tea breaks or simply a snack. I discovered this recipe several years ago while searching for recipes on the King Arthur Flour site and if you like to bake as much as I do, you really should take a look at this site. Not only do they have a lot of recipes, there is also a store where you can purchase ingredients, bake ware, etc.….there is also a friendly online community where you can share recipes, discuss baking and get loads of help if you need it.

So, let’s move on to the recipe……..

Pumpkin Chip Muffins
Print Recipe

Muffins
1 2/3 cups flour
1 1/3 cups granulated sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 cup chocolate chips or cinnamon chips
1/4 cup toffee flavored chips (optional)
1/2 cup diced walnuts or pecans - I sometimes omit the nuts.
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/3 cup melted butter, melted vegetable shortening or 1/3 cup vegetable oil
2 large eggs
1 cup solid-pack pumpkin (not pumpkin pie filling) (half of a 15-ounce can)
1/3 cup water

Glaze*
1 cup confectioners' sugar
2 tablespoons melted butter
1 tablespoon milk
1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon (1/8 to 1/4)

In a large bowl, whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and nutmeg. Stir in the chips of your choice. In a separate bowl, whisk together the vanilla, melted fat, eggs, pumpkin and water. Make a well in the dry ingredients, fill it with the liquid ingredients, and mix vigorously until everything is well blended, scraping the bottom and sides of the bowl as you go.

Spoon the batter into the lightly greased or paper-lined cups of a 12-cup muffin pan. The muffin cups should be filled quite full, using a generously rounded 1/4-cup of batter for each muffin. Bake the muffins in a preheated 350°F oven for 25 to 30 minutes, or until a cake tester inserted into the center of a muffin comes out clean. Remove the muffins from the oven; let them cool for 5 minutes, then transfer them from the pan to a rack to cool completely. Just before serving, stir together the glaze ingredients, and drizzle over the muffins.

Yield: 12 muffins.

*Although these muffins are wonderful with the glaze, I've made them without and they are still delicious.

I usually use just the cinnamon chips, toffee chips and omit the nuts.
I use 1/4 tsp. cinnamon in the glaze.
If the glaze is too stiff, add more milk. If it's too runny add a little more confectioners' sugar.

I like to buy the whole nutmeg and grate it myself....the whole nutmeg has a longer shelf life than the grated.

Whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and nutmeg.

Cinnamon chips.....these may be a little difficult to find. Hershey's makes cinnamon chips and they can be found in some supermarkets but I prefer to either buy mine at the local bulk food store or online at King Arthur Flour....the chips from these two places are mini and seem to melt into the batter a little better than the regular sized chips. Another online source for cinnamon chips is The Prepared Pantry, although I've never ordered from there yet.

There are two different types of toffee chips, You can either get the plain toffee chips, I can't remember who makes them, or the Heath Bar Toffee Bits. I think I like the Heath Bar Bits best because they are covered in milk chocolate.....you get two different flavors in this one.

Add chips to the dry ingredients.

Stir to combine.

In a separate bowl, whisk together the vanilla, melted fat, eggs, pumpkin and water. If you are wondering why my pumpkin is such a light color, it's because I used fresh pumpkin puree instead of canned.

Make a well in the dry ingredients, fill it with the liquid ingredients, and mix vigorously until everything is well blended.

Since I'm making these for Thanksgiving, I wanted to use some fall themed cupcake liners. Aren't they cute?

Spoon the batter into the lightly greased or paper-lined cups of a 12-cup muffin pan. The muffin cups should be filled quite full, using a generously rounded 1/4-cup of batter for each muffin.

Bake for 25-30 minutes. Now you can stop here and these muffins will be delicious but to take them over the top, make the glaze.

I had these on the cooling rack and caught Michael trying to sneek one....I told him he couldn't have one yet because they needed to cool, have glaze put on them and I needed to take photos of the finished product.

Mix together; butter, confectioners sugar, milk and cinnamon.

And here is the finished product. These are moist and light textured and full of flavor and they go great with a glass of cold milk....ask Michael, he knows, he's had three already.

Fluffy Oven Eggs and Bacon

Happy New Year!

Since Michael and I rang in the New Year in such a wild and crazy way....he napped until about ll:45, then we watched Dick Clark's Rockin' New Years Eve until the ball dropped, toasted to the New Year with sparkling grape juice, (no midnight kiss...he has a cold and I didn't want his cooties) then went to bed....we decided to take it easy this morning and not rush out to breakfast. By the way, we decided that we are really old...not only did we have a difficult time staying awake until midnight, but everytime a new entertainer would come on the show, we would look at each other and ask, "who is that?"  We also decided that we couldn't understand how the young people today could listen to that music...our music (music from the 70's) was much better. Yes, our generation gap was definitely showing last night. Anyway, back to food, I went to one of my favorite breakfast recipes..Fluffy Oven Eggs and Bacon...an egg casserole...I love these things!

I got this recipe from a friend and former colleague, Cindy Keller. She brought this in for one of the many breakfast parties that we had at work. That's usually how we celebrated, we all loved to eat but really loved breakfast so for any going away party (like mine) we had breakfast. If I remember correctly, she told me that she got it off the back of the Bisquick box.

Whenever I make this for myself, I make it as the recipe reads...I have enough for that meal and plenty leftover for a few more. When making it for Michael and me, I triple the recipe, except for the bacon (just used one pound), and the salt.

½ lb. bacon
onions, finely chopped (to preferred taste)
½ c. Bisquick® baking mix
3 eggs
1¼ cups milk
¼ teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper
½ c. shredded cheddar or Swiss cheese

Heat oven to 375°. Grease 1½ quart casserole dish. Cut bacon slices into thirds. Cook and stir bacon in 10-inch skillet over medium heat until almost crisp. Add onion. Cook, stirring frequently, until bacon is crisp; drain. Spread bacon and onion in bottom of casserole.

Beat baking mix, eggs, milk, salt and pepper with hand beater until almost smooth. Slowly pour egg mixture over bacon; sprinkle with cheese. Bake uncovered until knife inserted in center comes out clean, about 35 minutes.

If using a glass baking dish, lower oven temperature by 25 degrees.

I sometimes triple this recipe for a 9x13 dish. Add about 5 or 10 min. to the baking time too.

One pound of bacon cut into thirds. Next time I make this, I may chop the bacon...I think I would like it better in smaller pieces.

I used my largest frying pan for frying the bacon. Since I was frying a whole pound and was trying to keep the splatter down, I drained off the fat a couple of times. I saved it for later use....I'll be making fried potatoes later and they taste wonderful fried in the bacon drippings.

Since I was frying so much bacon, I did it in batches, I also fried it longer than the recipe says...I like my bacon well-done.

Onion...finely chopped. I didn't measure the onion...I had half of a large onion left over from something else so just used that.

Does anything look or smell better than this?

Ingredients for egg mixture

Since I was making a tripple recipe and needed nine eggs, I beat them a little before adding the dry ingredients.

Eggs and dry ingredients

Egg mixture

Bottom layer...bacon and onion

Add egg mixture

Top with cheese...I didn't measure here, just put a lot of cheese on top...we like our cheese.

This was sooo good! Of course by the time we had to smell the bacon and onions frying, then smelled it while it baked, we were definitely ready to eat. We had plenty for breakfast and enough left for a few more meals.

One thing I like about egg casseroles is that, once you have the basic recipe, you can add anything to it that you like. You can easily make this into a Western Egg Casserole by substituting ham for the bacon and adding some green pepper. Or if you want sausage instead of bacon...just use that. As for the cheese, this time I used cheddar Jack cheese...my favorite...yum!

Crepes -Strawberry Banana - International Taste Tour Crepes

Ok, the recipe is actually called Strawberry Banana Crepes, but a few days ago I noticed that all of the recipes that I've posted in September have started with a C, therefore, I decided to change the title a little in order to carry on with the "C" theme.

The project that I am undertaking for the International Taste Tour (formerly known as Coast to Coast Cooking) on BakeSpace, is making crepes. Unlike the last challenge I participated in, Saltimbocca,  I know what crepes are and have eaten them as well, but have never made them before. I have watched enough cooking shows to have seen them prepared so had a bit of an idea on what I was supposed to do......of course, watching and doing are two different things.

I checked out a few recipes and decided to "attempt" to make a dessert crepe.....I'm much better with desserts than actual cooking, so thought I would have a better chance of having them turn out edible. I looked around and found the recipe for these Strawberry Banana Crepes. Looked like something that, not only would I enjoy preparing, but also eating.

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon sugar

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 1/2 cups milk

2 eggs

1 tablespoon butter

Filling:

1 package cream cheese (8 ounce) softened

1 container frozen whipped topping (8 ounce) thawed

1/2 cup confectioners' sugar

Topping:

2 cups sliced fresh strawberries

2 firm bananas, sliced

1/4 cup sugar (optional)

In a mixing bowl, combine the flour, sugar, cinnamon, milk and eggs; mix well. Cover and refrigerate for 1 hour.

In an 8-inch nonstick skillet, melt 1 teaspoon butter. Stir batter; pour about 2 tablespoons into the center of skillet. Lift and tilt pan to evenly coat botom. Cook until top appears dry; turn and cook 15-20 seconds longer. Remove to a wire rack.

Repeat with remaining batter, add butter to a skillet as needed. When cool, stack crepes with waxed paper on paper towels in between.

In a mixing bowl, combine the filling ingredients. Spread 2 rounded tablespoonsfuls on each crepe; roll up. Combine topping ingredients; spoon over crepes.

I followed the above recipe for the most part...the only changes I made were:

non-fat milk in the crepe batter

sugar free Cool Whip

low fat cream cheese

I didn't use the sugar that is mentioned in the topping.....just placed the fruit on top of the crepes

The crepes were delicious....even with the lower calorie/fat ingredients that I used.

The dry ingredients: fllour, sugar, cinnamon, milk and eggs

Mixing the milk and eggs with the dry ingredients

The batter after it's hour long rest in the fridge.

The crepe before my attempt at turning it over....it took me a few tries to figure out how much batter to put in the pan, at first I was using too little and then finally got the right amount.

This is the crepe after I turned it over....believe me doing this isn't as easy as the professionals on TV make it look. I think I lost four crepes before I got it right...see the little boo boos on this one? The others didn't even make it this far, before they tore apart. I did finally achieve success and managed to end up with four crepes.

The filling: cream cheese, Cool Whip and confectioners' sugar

These were delicious! Adding cinnamon to the crepe batter was a great addition...loved the flavor, and the filling light...not too heavy on the stomach.  Even with the lower fat and sugar free changes that I made these were great....I imagine the full fat and sugar version is even better. I am definitely making these again.....as the saying goes, "practice makes perfect."

Note: The filling makes and excellent fruit dip. I guess losing some of my crepes wasn't too bad....I had fruit and filling left over for dipping. I think I may even fill strawberries with this and then dip them in chocolate.....yum!

Click on the map below to view more crepes in the International Taste Tour