Recipe: Baked Apple Pancake

Looking for a delicious family breakfast or a new go-to brunch idea.....how about a Baked Apple Pancake? Easy and inexpensive, but packed with flavor. Not to mention the fact that it will make your house smell heavenly. Give it a try......you're going to like it!

Baked Apple Pancake

SERVES 6

Ingredients:

2 apples, thinly sliced

1/2 stick of butter

1/2 cup brown sugar

1.5 teaspoons cinnamon

5 eggs

1/2 cup flour

1/2 cup milk

Directions:

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. 

Melt butter, brown sugar and cinnamon together in a bowl.  Toss the apples into the butter mixture and stir to combine.  Place coated apples into a large pie dish.  

In a blender, combine eggs, flour and milk.  Blend well.  Pour mixture over apples in pie dish.  Place pie dish on top of a baking sheet (to catch any drips).  Bake for 45 minutes or until top is golden brown and a knife inserted in the center comes out clean.  Dust with powdered sugar and serve with a drizzle of maple syrup.

YUM!

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Lemon Lavender Tea Cookies

My mom and her husband, Allen (aka Pepo), recently attended the Lavender Festival in Blanco, Texas and they sent me this wonderful lavender cookbook and culinary grade lavender.  I had no idea there were so many ways to cook with lavender.  I thought these Lemon Lavender Tea Cookies would be just perfect for Matilda's "Tea for 2" party and they definitely were just right!

These cookies are light and contain absolutely no eggs, so they are definitely more of a shortbread.  Be careful though, because the dough tasted so yummy that I'm surprised I even got some cookies out for the party!

Makes 24 cookies
From the "Local Flavor of Lavender" cookbook
Ingredients:
1 tablespoon dried culinary lavender
2 cups all purpose flour
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 cup unsalted butter (room temperature)
2/3 cup sugar
Zest of one lemon
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 tablespoon milk

Directions:
Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

You will need to use dried culinary grade lavender for this recipe since that is what is suitable for human consumption.  Above is the lavender that was sent to me by my mom from the festival.

Finely chop 1 tablespoon of lavender.  If you have a coffee grinder used for grinding herbs, that would be a great thing to use or you could also use a food processor.  I opted for a basic knife.

Zest one lemon.  I like to use my microplane for zesting, but a box grater would work just as well.  Make sure you only zest the yellow part of the lemon.  The white can be pretty bitter.

Cream wet ingredients, lemon zest and sugar with a hand-mixer.  Then add in dry ingredients.  Stir until dough comes together.  It should not be dry, but not too sticky either.  If you think it is too dry, keep stirring, it will come together.

Place dough in refrigerator for 1-2 hours, until firm, or overnight.  Remove from refrigerator one hour before rolling out dough.  The next part is up to you.  You can make these like regular cookie cutter cookies and roll your dough 1/4" thickness and cut with a round or heart shaped cookie cutter.  Or you can do what we did, which was to roll the dough into two logs and slice the cookies, then coat them in sugar.  Either way, they will turn out great.

Bake for 15-20 minutes or until cookies are slightly brown on the edges.  Transfer cookies to a cooling rack and let cool completely.

The dough can be made up to two days in advance and cookies can be baked one day in advance.  Freeze any leftover cookies for a sweet treat on another day!  These cookies will have your guests talking because they are delicious and a unique flavor.

The next time you have the ladies for tea or coffee, give these a try, they will love them, that is, if you don't eat all the dough first!

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Lemon Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

I love lemon.  I love lemon bars, lemon pound cake, lemon poppy seed muffins, and I REALLY love lemon cupcakes.  Here's a great recipe for lemon cupcakes with the best (in my opinion) cream cheese frosting!

Lemon Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

(Makes 24-30 cupcakes) 

Ingredients:
3 cups self-rising flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
2 cups white sugar
4 eggs
1 cup whole milk
2 tablespoons lemon zest
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons lemon juice
Cream cheese frosting (recipe below)

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Beat sugar and softened butter together in a large mixing bowl.  Add eggs, vanilla extract and lemon zest.

Add the salt to the flour and add flour/salt to the wet ingredients (butter, eggs, sugar, ect), slowly.  Then add half the milk, then lemon juice and then the other half of the milk, beating the mixture in between.  Do not over-mix.

Line your muffin pan with cupcake liners.  Fill each muffin tin 3/4 full.  Place in oven.

Bake cupcakes for 18-21 minutes until the tops are golden brown and a toothpick inserted comes out clean.  Allow to cool before removing from muffin pan.

Once the cupcakes have cooled completely, the next step is adding the frosting..........

Cream Cheese Frosting

(24 cupcakes)

Ingredients:

1/2 bar cream cheese, softened

4 tablespoons butter, softened

1 cup powdered sugar

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:

Beat cream cheese and butter together in a medium-sized mixing bowl, then add vanilla extract. Incorporate powdered sugar, slowly.  Beat until you've reached a nice, creamy consistency (see above).  

You can also add lemon juice or lemon zest to this frosting if you would prefer more lemon taste.

Finally, frost your cupcakes.......

And enjoy!

Cottage Mama's Note:  This frosting is SO delicious.  If you like lots of frosting, I would suggest doubling the recipe.  It's not too sweet and has a really great cream cheese flavor.  I also like to add extra coarse sugar on top for added crunch and sparkle.

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Buckeyes: Chocolate Covered Peanut Butter Balls

About a week ago on The Cottage Mama facebook page I had posed the question "What was everyone's favorite holiday cookie?".  Well, my husband was the first to chime in and said "Buckeyes"! 

And though I had not anticipated on him participating in our daily facebook chatter, I knew that I better get on top of making him his most favorite Christmas cookie!

Buckeyes

Chocolate Covered Peanut Butter Balls

25-30 individual balls

Ingredients:

1.5 cups creamy peanut butter

1 cup butter, softened

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

6 cups powdered sugar

4 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

Directions:

Mix the peanut butter, softened butter, vanilla extract and powdered sugar in a large mixing bowl.  Lay a piece of wax paper or parchment paper onto a cookie sheet.  Roll balls of peanut butter mixture and place on cookie sheet.  Dip your hands in water to avoid too much stickiness.  Once you have used up all of your dough and made the balls.  Place them on the cookie sheet in the freezer for about an hour.

Prepare your double-boiler on the stove.  If you do not have a double boiler, fill your saucepan with about 3-4 inches of water and place a heat-proof glass bowl on top.  Place chocolate chips and vegetable oil into the top of your double boiler.  Allow chocolate to melt completely (stirring occassionally).

Next drop balls into chocolate and coat completely.  To make true buckeyes, you leave the top of the peanut butter ball exposed, but I find this to be a little more time consuming, so I just coat them completely.  Place chocolate covered balls back on wax paper on cookie sheet.  Once all balls are coated, return to the freezer for an additional 30 minutes.

Store buckeyes in the refrigerator and remove before serving. Enjoy!

My mother in law adds some paraffin wax to the chocolate mixture, this will thin it out and make it go farther.  Personally, that's just not for me, so I just use the vegetable oil for sort of the same thing.  If you use paraffin, omit the vegetable oil.

I had some extra chocolate left over in my double boiler, so I dropped in a bunch of pretzels to coat them with chocolate as well.  Before the pretzels set, I sprinkled them with fine red sugar and coarse white sugar.

Happy Holiday Cookie Season!

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Individual Pecan Bread Pudding

We spent this past Sunday celebrating Father's Day at my in-laws.  We had a fabulous dinner (shrimp, chicken and steak) and my mother-in-law made my father-in-law his favorite dessert (fruit soaked in Grand Marnier) and I made my husband a new recipe for Pecan Bread Pudding.

I'm usually not a huge fan of bread pudding, but this turned out great!  This is my version of a Paula Deen bread pudding (let's just say mine has a whole lot less sugar.....if you can believe that).  The pecans and brown sugar on top added a lot of extra crunch - serve it with vanilla ice cream and you've got heaven on a plate!!
 

Pecan Bread Pudding

Serves 8-12

Ingredients:

3/4 loaf french bread, cut into 1" cubes or 4-5 cups

5 eggs

1 cup white sugar

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 cup light brown sugar

1 cup chopped pecans

1/2 stick butter, softened

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

In a large mixing bowl, combine eggs, sugar and cinnamon.  Add bread and toss to coat.  Allow the bread and egg mixture to sit for 10 - 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, combine brown sugar, chopped pecans and butter.  Mix together to make sort of a crumble.

Get out a muffin pan or pop-over tray.  Coat with cooking spray.  Stuff the egg soaked bread pieces into each muffin holder.  After you have filled all of the muffin holders, sprinkle the brown sugar/pecan mixture on top (divide evenly among all 12).

Place muffin tray on top of a baking sheet (just in case any of the brown sugar spills over).  Bake for 20-25 minutes, until top is golden brown and bubbling.

Serve with vanilla ice cream.  If you really like sweet stuff, take it over the top by drizzling caramel sauce on top and sprinkle with powdered sugar.  Enjoy!

Cottage Mama's Note:  I didn't have my camera at my in-laws so this is not the actual picture of my bread pudding that I made this past Sunday, but I promise it looked VERY similar!

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