Crispy Rice Treats!

 

I can't tell you how excited I was to discover Rice Krispies Gluten Free cereal! Not because I can't eat gluten (thank goodness for that--lactose intolerance is enough to deal with), but because it's actually made with brown rice! As a whole grain, brown rice makes for a healthier option than white rice, and I sure didn't expect to find it in a name-brand cereal at Wal-Mart Market. What does this mean? It means I can listen to the familiar "snap," "crackle," and "pop" of one of my favorite childhood cereals again, knowing it might actually have health benefits! It also means I can make Rice Krispies Treats for a Red Rock hiking excursion tomorrow!

Oh how I've missed Rice Krispies Treats! Ever since Kelloggs started making them with the processed high fructose corn syrup sweetener, I've stayed away. According to Kelloggs.com, however, they don't use HFCS anymore (yay!). But given the long list of ingredients and preservatives (take a look), it might just be better to make your own anyway. They only take about 10 minutes, come out warm and gooey, and--if you make them with gluten-free brown rice--can actually have some health benefits. A treat. With health benefits. Plus, oh my gosh, it's fun! Who doesn't love to get sticky?

To whip these out I just used the recipe on the back of the cereal box, but halved the ingredients since I only had half a bag of marshmallows left in the cupboard--about two heaping cups. (That's what happens when you don't replenish your supply after making marshmallow leaf wreaths to go on pumpkin pie...). The halved recipe makes about a dozen small treats (2-inch squares), or four really big treats. I've also made them before with different whole grain cereals such as Kashi GOLEAN and Erewhon brand, but it just tastes the most authentic when made with Kellogg's Rice Krispies (which I believe is trademarked, but I don't know how to type the little trademark circle symbol on this blog...).

Thus, without further ado...Crispy Rice Treats! (so I don't have to worry about that trademark symbol...).

Ingredients:

3 cups puffed brown rice cereal (like Rice Krispies Gluten Free)
2 heaping cups of large marshmallows
1 and 1/2 Tablespoons butter
Nonstick cooking spray

Directions:

1.) In a large pan or skillet (I used a wok!) melt the butter on low heat, then add the marshmallows and stir until all the marshmallows are melted (it will be gooey, and kind of lump together, so it helps to spray your wooden spoon or other utensil with nonstick cooking spray and stir constantly once the marshmallows start to lose their shape).

2.) Remove the marshmallows from the heat, add your cereal and continue to stir until the rice puffs are evenly coated. It should look something like this:

Gooey, beautiful mess.

3.) Spray a flat container (like a brownie pan) with nonstick cooking spray and press the gooey mixture into it until the treats are flat. I like to put a plastic baggie sprayed with nonstick cooking spray on my hand to press the mixture down and shape it into something resembling rectangular.

4.) Allow the treats to cool, then cut them into squares and share with your friends! The original recipe recommends serving them the day they're made to preserve freshness, but they should keep at least a day or two longer in a sealed container. After that, they'll start to get hard, so eat 'em up fast! (Which shouldn't be a problem).

Next experiment I might try more fun shapes (pumpkin or sushi anyone?) test out a peanut butter base instead of regular butter, or dip the finished products half in dark or white chocolate to see just how tasty these brown rice treats can get! The results of such experiments will most assuredly appear on this blog, even if I end up eating the evidence....

Easy Breezy Morning Cinnamon Rolls!

And now for a change of pace. Don't worry, pumpkin, I still love you. But I opted to not add pumpkin to this particular recipe experiment since, for me, cinnamon rolls are more of a Christmas morning treat. In fact, every Christmas morning for at least four years now, I've made cinnamon rolls for breakfast--a late breakfast after our family's opened all our presents because, well, even gooey, delicious cinnamon rolls take a backseat to presents.

The recipe I use for Christmas involves a biscuit dough instead of a yeast dough so you don't have to wait for the dough to rise. Simple, short, and sweet. But last week I happened to see a freshly made, already packaged pizza dough at Whole Foods that looked awfully tempting. I wondered, could I make cinnamon rolls with pizza dough? It has been done before. As soon as I found out that the pizza dough was actually whole wheat (the only kind of pizza crust I don't feel guilty about eating, and such a rarity to find!) I was sold.

Taking the filling recipe from my Christmas Morning Cinnamon Rolls (since I know from four years experience that those always turn out awesome), I created Easy Breezy Morning Cinnamon Rolls that might just become my new Christmas morning bun. And also possibly an item for the next bake sale. Since cinnamon rolls are so much fun to make (you get to roll them up!), I took pictures of the entire step-by-step process so next time you want to bake cinnamon rolls you can know exactly how to put them together too!

P.S. Your house will smell amazing.

Ingredients:

Flour (for dusting)
1 package whole wheat pizza dough (though any kind of pizza dough will work)
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup white sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon cloves
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 Tablespoon melted butter
Nonstick cooking spray

Directions:

1.) Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Spread flour on a wooden cutting board or surface of your choice for rolling out your dough, creating a thin layer to keep the dough from sticking. Dust your rolling pin with a touch of flour as well. Then roll your pizza dough into the shape of a rectangle, slightly larger than 9x13 inches (see picture below). It should be about 1/4 to 1/8 of an inch thick.

2.) In a large bowl, combine the sugars, cinnamon, cloves, and salt. Add the melted butter and stir until the mixture resembles wet sand. Spray your dough rectangle with just a touch of nonstick cooking spray, then sprinkle the sugar mixture on top evenly, patting it into the dough. Be sure to reserve a little bit of sugar mixture for the pan.

3.) Using your fingertips, roll your dough rectangle into a log shape slowly and carefully so that it stays together and doesn't stick to your floured surface. Crimp the edges together to seal the log and then flip it over so the seal is on the bottom.

4.) Cut with a serrated knife into 8-16 pieces depending on the size of your log and how thick you want your cinnamon rolls to be. I like to cut my logs in half and then cut each half in half until I get at least eight pieces, but this time I somehow ended up with 14.

5.) Spray a round 9-inch baking pan with nonstick cooking spray and dust the bottom with the remaining sugar mixture (you may need two pans if you end up with 14-16 rolls). Place up to 8 cinnamon rolls in each pan, flattening them just slightly. You can arrange them with one roll in the center and seven around the edges. Make sure they don't touch and have enough room to expand while baking. Then bake approximately 18 minutes, keeping an eye on them so they brown but don't burn. Cool at least 10 minutes before icing.

Icing Recipe!

Ingredients:

2 Tablespoons soy creamer (or milk product of your choice--milk, half and half, and buttermilk also work)
1 cup powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1.) Carefully pour your powdered sugar in a bowl (powdered sugar always makes a mess when I use it). Add the soy creamer or milk product of your choice and the vanilla. Stir to combine then drizzle over cooled cinnamon rolls.

I've had problems making icing in the past since it used to end up tasting too much like powdered sugar for me. But using a thicker milk product (soy creamer or buttermilk instead of milk or soymilk) and adding vanilla really turns this icing into the perfect match for your cinnamon rolls.

With only one tablespoon of butter in the filling, soy in the icing, and whole wheat dough as the base of the rolls, you can actually count this breakfast treat as relatively healthy (as you nom on the gooey bottom of the roll and lick up all the frosting). So go on, have another one. Christmas is still two months away. You'll have plenty of time to make more for your family and friends then.

The gooey bottom of the roll.

Pumpkin Pie Smoothie

Are you sensing a theme here? Ah, the image below that I saw on Pinterest (originally from MemeBase.com) sums it up nicely:

So after previously blogging about pumpkin pie and pumpkin cupcakes, why not blog another pumpkin experiment--this one you can drink. I also found this recipe on Pinterest, originally from the RedHead Recipes blog. Pumpkin Pie Smoothie. This one (unlike the cupcakes, sorry) has a few more health benefits, and some of my favorite staple ingredients including nonfat Greek yogurt and soy milk (though I actually used almond milk--my milk of choice). The resulting smoothie had a perfect creamy pumpkin pie taste, though seemed to be lacking a little sweetness. If I were to make it again, I would cut back on the ice that I think watered it down a little, and either use sweetened vanilla yogurt or add a little maple syrup. Yum! For now, though, here is the original recipe.

Ingredients:

1 small banana, frozen, peeled, and diced
1/3 cup canned pumpkin
1/3 cup nonfat Greek yogurt (I like the FAGE brand)
3/4 cup vanilla unsweetened almond milk (might try it with the sweetened kind or light soy milk next time)
A few shakes of pumpkin pie spice
Pinch of cloves
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
4-5 ice cubes (might skip the ice cubes altogether and add an extra half of frozen banana)

Directions:

1.) Add all ingredients in the blender and blend for approximately 10-15 seconds until the banana chunks have broken down and the smoothie is smooth.

2.) Pour into a glass and sprinkle the top with a little more pumpkin pie spice and cloves.

That's it! Smoothies are pretty easy to throw together, though it takes a few experiments to get the flavors and textures just right. Be mindful of how powerful your blender is and how thick or thin you prefer your smoothies to be. This makes a great breakfast and a nice, healthy snack!

Pumpkin Pie Cupcakes

Bake sale recipe #3! More pumpkin....

This was a brand new one for me. I don't usually buy cake mixes in a box so I didn't know much about the FUN da-Middles product, which turned out to be the main ingredient in this recipe. But anything with "pumpkin" in the title always immediately intrigues me. When I was introduced to the website Tablespoon.com, the first recipe that caught my attention was one for Pumpkin Pie Cupcakes. Did that just say "pumpkin pie" and "cupcake" in the same sentence? Yes, please!

The neat thing about FUN da-Middles compared to other cupcake mixes is that they come with a packet of cream filling that you can bake right into the center of each cupcake. The neat thing about the Pumpkin Pie Cupcake recipe I followed for my final bake sale item was that you could make that filling taste like autumn with a little maple syrup in the center of the cream.

This recipe I pretty much followed exactly according to smwise--another blogger named Stephanie who originally posted the Pumpkin Pie Cupcake recipe. You can check out her awesome directions and photos here, but I'll still re-post the recipe below!

Ingredients:

1 box Fun da-Middles yellow cupcake mix with creamy vanilla filling
3/4 cup water
1/3 cup canned pumpkin
2 eggs
2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
maple syrup

Directions:

1.) Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and line a cupcake tin with paper liners. Then beat together the cupcake mix, water, pumpkin, eggs and pumpkin pie spice. (It's recommended to use an electric mixer on a low speed for 30 seconds and then a medium speed for 2 minutes, but I just used a fork and my arm muscles to power through as I counted in my head).

2.) Fill each cup in the tin about 1/3 of the way up. Knead the filling packet 20 times to mix it up, cut the corner off, and then squeeze the filling into the center of each cup, dividing it equally until it's all gone. Add a couple drops of maple syrup to the center of each filling, then scoop the rest of the batter on top of the cups until all are filled to the top and the cream is completely covered.

3.) Stephanie (smwise) recommends topping the cupcakes with pecans (which I love), but I was in a hurry to get these done before the bake sale, so you can always skip that step, especially if you plan to frost the cupcakes after they've cooled. Bake approximately 24-29 minutes, then cool 20 minutes before removing the cupcakes from the tin. Frost or drizzle with more maple syrup if you desire.

Unfortunately I didn't get to taste test these because I can't eat the cream filling, and they disappeared before I had a chance to find out if anyone liked them. I'm assuming their disappearance is a good sign....

That's it for my bake sale recipes! (I figured there was no need to write about my bake sale caramel apples since I covered that recipe in a previous September blog post, here). Even more pumpkin goodness to come soon! Because I just can't get enough of the stuff....

Traditional Pumpkin Pie

Bake sale recipe #2! It's PUMPKIN TIME!!!

Every year I wait for late September/October to roll around. Yeah, the weather is getting cooler and Halloween can be fun, but what I'm really waiting for is super special treats that are only--say it with me--seasonal.

Pumpkin Spice frozen yogurt at Red Mango.

Pumpkin Spice Frappuccino at Starbucks (with soymilk, please)

Pumpkin breads, pumpkin cakes, and quite possibly best of all...Libby's canned pumpkin returns to grocery stores so that I can make Libby's Famous Pumpkin Pie!

Of course, what would even the most traditional holiday recipe be without a little experimentation? I could just follow the recipe on the can every single time, but I've made variations of this recipe with pumpkin butter, with different spices, and even with sweet potato! But if you need a go-to Thanksgiving Pumpkin Pie recipe, this one really can't be beat!

Ingredients:

3/4 cup white sugar
1 and 3/4 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice (a substitution that Libby's recommends instead of cinnamon, ginger, and cloves--I prefer the pumpkin pie spice since it has a little bit of nutmeg in the mix, which goes exceptionally well with pumpkin)
2 eggs
1 can (15 oz.) pumpkin (make sure it is 100% pumpkin and nothing else!)
1 can (12 oz.) evaporated milk (not condensed milk, which I tend to keep calling it accidentally. Also, I prefer to use Nestle brand fat-free if possible, or at least 2%).
2 empty 9-inch pie shells (I like using whole wheat crusts from Whole Foods, but any 9-inch pie shell will do. You can also make your own! But I don't have a recipe for that yet...). 

Directions:

1.) Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Combine the sugar and spice in a small bowl and mix well.

2.) In a large bowl, beat the eggs, then stir in the pumpkin and the sugar mixture. Gradually stir in the milk.

3.) Pour into the pie shells, filling them as much as possible (if you're using a deep-dish pie crust that Libby's recommends, you might only get one pie out of this). Line the edges of the pies with crumpled foil to protect the outer rim of the crust from burning (a pie crust shield will also work for this if you spray it with nonstick cooking spray first so it won't stay stuck to your pie after baking).

4.) Bake at 425 degrees for 10-15 minutes, then lower the temperature to 350 degrees and bake another 40-50 minutes (I find that 10 minutes, then 40 minutes works well for cooking without burning, but oven temperatures do vary). Cool pies about two hours before serving, or refrigerate overnight. (To me, they taste best cold, straight from the fridge, with a dollop of soy whipped cream).

My twist this year for the bake sale was a fun idea to decorate the pie that wouldn't melt in the fridge the way whipped cream eventually does. I wanted to use one of the leaf-shaped cookie cutters I got from Williams-Sonoma as well, but didn't have any extra pie crust to use them to decorate the edges (also, I'd tried this before at Thanksgiving one year--the pie dough leaves ended up falling into the filling or burning...). If only there was something I could cut into the shape of a leaf that wouldn't perish and could still look pretty. I searched my cabinets, trying to come up with something. Then I spotted a product I'd bought recently for future s'mores experiments: Kraft Jet-Puffed StackerMallows. That's right, flat marshmallows!

The results:

Ah, I love this season.

Peanut Butter Thumbprints

 
Bake Sale recipe #1! I call these cookies "thumbprints" because traditional recipes involve pressing your thumb into the center of each ball of dough in order to make a spot for your filling (chocolate, jam, etc). In my simple recipe, however, you need only press your chocolate into the center of each baked cookie while they're still warm. Saves you time. Saves your thumbs. All you need to remember is the K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple, Silly!), with a pile of handy HERSHEY'S KISSES.

The first three steps in this recipe can also be used for plain peanut butter cookies without the chocolate KISSES. I first learned it from my aunt/Godmother when she found out I liked to bake. It's a quick peanut butter cookie recipe that only requires three ingredients, and not even any flour! So when I'm not in the mood for chocolate, I just take a fork sprayed with a touch of nonstick cooking spray and make a criss-cross pattern on the top of each ball of dough to flatten it. The finished cookies instead will look like the ones below.

For Peanut Butter Thumbprint cookies, however, you can get a great presentation without that much extra work. So for a bake sale that requires a lot of product to sell, I knew this would be the perfect recipe to utilize.

Ingredients:

1 cup peanut butter (I use Skippy Natural (Creamy) as it doesn't have hydrogenated oils but is still nice and smooth).
1 cup white sugar
1 egg
12-18 chocolate KISSES (for the bake sale I went with milk chocolate, but previous batches I've made using dark chocolate--see the picture above "About Me and This Blog"--since it's healthier and also better on my stomach).

Yes, that's really all you need!

Directions:

1.) Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. In a large bowl, combine the peanut butter, sugar, and egg. Stir well until the egg is no longer visible.

2.) Form the dough into 1-inch balls (you can vary the size, going a little bit smaller if you want the cookies to match the size of the KISSES or larger if you prefer big cookies). Place on an ungreased cookie sheet and flatten just slightly with your hand.

3.) Bake approximately 10 minutes (keep an eye on them so they don't over bake).

4.) Remove from oven and immediately press a chocolate KISS into the center of each cookie. Allow to cool on the baking sheet for 5 more minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely and allow the chocolate to harden again. You want the bottom of the KISS to melt into the cookie just a bit while the tip keeps its pointy shape. Or, if you prefer traditional "thumbprint" cookies, you can press the kisses flat and have a little pool of chocolate in the center of each cookie instead.

And that's all there is to it! Simple, quick, pretty, and delicious! My older brother is a big fan of this cookie because he loves peanut butter, and apparently it was a hit at the bake sale too--my boxes of thumbprints disappeared before the end of the first sale day, so I made more to bring for day two.

Bake Sale!

I feel like it's been far too long since I've blogged. Fortunately, this isn't because I haven't been baking. Quite the contrary--I've been too busy baking! As recently as Friday and Saturday I faced one of my biggest experiments yet that I was all too eager to take on: a bake sale! Not only was this my first bake sale ever (so excited, so excited!), but the money raised is being donated to the library district where I work through the Henderson Libraries Foundation! Books and baking? Definitely a fundraiser I can get behind!

The biggest challenge was deciding just what I was going to bring to the table, and when I'd have the time to bake it all. My final menu ended up being: 15 Caramel Apples, 48 Peanut Butter Thumbprint cookies, 12 Pumpkin Pie Cupcakes, and 3 good old fashioned Pumpkin Pies! These sounded like perfect fall treats, were a great mix of successfully tested recipes and recipes I'd been wanting to try, and were easy enough to make in the short period of time I had free after work Thursday evening (four hours of baking from 8:30 p.m. to 12:30 a.m.) and on Saturday morning (another hour and a half before work).

I wasn't the only one baking, of course. Our talented library staff pulled out all the stops with a variety of goods that included cupcakes, muffins, cookies, brownies, cereal bars, lemon bars, sheet cakes, cake pops, cinnamon rolls, dinner rolls, breads, Buckeyes and more! Tomorrow I'll learn the grand total amount of just how much we raised together. I couldn't be more proud. And more inspired to bake than ever.

I don't know if I'll ever own my own bake shop (maaaybe one day...) but I can go all out with any bake sale I encounter, having a blast baking up big batches of treats for the members of my community and wrapping them in eye-catching adornment from craft shops like Michael's for the perfect presentation. I live for this kind of thing.

My experiences with each bake sale recipe, and my personal twists on those recipes, coming soon!