Caramel Rolls, Hot from the Oven

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I don't know if there is any treat that tastes as good on a snowy Nebraska day as a nice, hot caramel roll, right from the oven! Loaded with cinnamon sugar and butter on the inside and gooey, made-from-scratch caramel on the outside - Mmmm!

 



The rolls are just a basic, sweet roll recipe (I use unbleached flour, organic unbleached sugar, yeast, sea salt, butter, and eggs), and the caramel sauce is made by slow-cooking corn syrup (or maybe some organic brown rice syrup - it's a bit healthier and adds a unique taste), sugar, sea salt, butter, and cream (milk or half and half will do) in a very particular manner.

Want to spice things up a bit? Try adding canned pumpkin and extra cinnamon and sugar to your rolls to make pumpkin caramel rolls. If you don't have the time to make a nice, slow-cooked caramel sauce, here's a trick my daughter uses that makes a really tasty caramel sauce, especially on the pumpkin rolls: Just mix melted vanilla ice cream equal parts with brown sugar and put your sliced, unbaked rolls on top. Bake as usual. Different taste and texture, but still very yummy!

Homemade Apple Nut Bread

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There is just something so wonderful about making homemade bread. I love the kneading: It makes me feel like Caroline Ingalls in my little house on the prairie. Okay, so I don't have a little house, and there is no prairie, but when that bread comes out of the oven, I get a country feeling every time.

This particular loaf of bread was made with unbleached white flour, whole wheat flour, oat flour, freshly squeezed apple juice, fresh apple bits, and chopped walnuts. It was really wonderful toasted and slathered with real butter.

I wish I could give the exact recipe. I hardly ever measure when I'm making bread, so it gets a bit challenging to share recipes. Basically, I started with a cup of warm water and a cup of fresh apple juice, added a rounded tablespoon of yeast, and let that sit a few minutes. Then I added about 2.5 cups of unbleached flour and let my sponge form for an hour or so. Then I added about a teaspoon of salt, two tablespoons of sugar, and - here's where the real guessing comes in - about a cup of oat flour, a cup of whole wheat, and then I kneaded in more whole wheat flour. I left the dough a little soft, because I knew the flours would expand once they got wet. After rising another hour to hour and a half, I shaped my loaves (it made this one big loaf and two mini-loaves), and let them rise another half hour or so. Times are very approximate, and always depend upon things like room temp and humidity. I like to go by the look of my dough rather than the time to decide when it's finished rising.

Anyway, very, very yummy!

Traditional Welsh Cakes - Delightfully Different!

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I first found recipes for traditional Welsh cakes when I went searching for traditional Welsh recipes after reading an article about Welsh shepherds. I was a bit reticent at first. A rolled dough cooked up on a griddle? But I fell in love with them! 

They are a bit different - kind of like a cross between a scone and a cookie. I followed the recipe found on the You Tube video found HERE, but I added cloves, cinnamon, and nutmeg, as suggested in other Welsh cake recipes. It made a nice combination with the currants. Or you can omit the currants and spices and add lemon and lemon zest for a nice variation. I should tell you, however, that I got a message on another blog from a lady in Wales saying that Welsh cakes with the spices and variations are not really Welsh cakes. I say, do your own thing, at least when it comes to goodies.

Traditional Welsh cakes are easy to make and a nice take-along snack.

Fluffy Pancakes

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Pancakes were the first thing I ever learned to make well, so I get an especially good feeling when I make them. This recipe is actually one I came up with on my own, about thirty-five years ago, messing around with it until I got it right. At the time, I knew absolutely nothing about cooking, so it's amazing it turned out so well. It was several years, though, before I learned the real secret, which is not an ingredient, but a technique--letting the batter rest for 20 minutes before cooking the cakes. It lets the gluten chains form and results in a much fluffier pancake.