Apple Oat Muffins

Muffins are great but I always find that store bought muffins are way too sweet. I was originally setting out to make apple bran muffins but scratched that idea all together and started from the ground up on this recipe. It was a total shot in the dark (that started with one large egg and some makeshift buttermilk) but it turned out great!

The key to this recipe is using tart apples. I like baking with granny smith, but feel free to use whichever type of apple you'd like. Try adding walnuts or cranberries.

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Apple Oat Muffins

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Preheat oven to 350°F 3/4 C white or whole wheat flour 3/4 C brown rice flour 3/4 C rolled oats 1 tsp baking soda 1 tsp baking powder 1/2 tsp salt 3 tsp cinnamon 1 tsp vanilla extract 1 large egg 1 C buttermilk* 3-4 Tbsp butter, melted 3/8 C honey 2 medium granny smith apples, diced

In a large bowl, beat the egg. Add the buttermilk. If you are using a buttermilk substitute, make sure it is sufficiently curdled before adding. Mix in the honey and melted butter until completely combined. Sift and add the dry ingredients and mix until smooth. Add the apples. In a greased muffin pan or a non-stick pan, spoon the ingredients to the brim. Bake for 18-20 minutes or if using a convection oven, bake for about 10 or until the tops are golden and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. *Milk curdled with lemon juice or white vinegar works as a great buttermilk substitute. For one cup of buttermilk use one cup of milk and enough acid to curdle the milk.

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Quick Apple Turnovers

I bet you guys are tired of seeing recipes for triangle shaped carbohydrates at this point but I swear this one is stupidly fast, cheap, and amazing with all things considered. It's just a little bit past 1 AM as a write this and a big plate of apple turnover dumpling things are hovering in my vision just over the laptop screen. This will ultimately mean disaster, but presently means I've been good enough to resist eating all of them already. I'm so ready to pop one of those babies in the toaster tomorrow morning. Sinful.

Earlier this evening I came home craving apple pie. Pies are sort of messy to make, plus I didn't want to be tempted to eat the whole pie so I reluctantly vetoed that idea and moved onto apple dumplings. Apple dumplings are awesome but as I started rummaging through the fridge looking for ingredients I spotted a roll of crescent rolls. Yep, that's right, those delicious, fattening, fake doughy air things. Bingo! The light went off in my head, instead of making full on apple dumpling dough, I'd wrap the apples in crescent roll dough. Wrong.

What I ultimately ended up doing was going to be way faster to bake: dice an apple, add some stuff, make a crescent roll dumpling sandwich thing. Bake. Amazing. I might be a genius... or I might just be a gigantic food whore.

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Quick Apple Turnovers

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Yields 4 turnovers Preheat oven to 375°F 1 crescent roll package 1 medium apple 1 tsp cinnamon 1 Tbsp honey

Dice apple into 1/4 inch cubes. In a bowl, combine apples, cinnamon, and honey. On an ungreased baking sheet, lay out four of the eight triangles of the crescent roll dough. Scoop the apple mixture onto the triangles, place a remaining triangle on top of each of the prepared triangles. Seal the sides by pressing them together with your fingers and stamping with a fork. Place in the oven on a center rack for 11 minutes or until golden brown. Serve hot or toast tomorrow.

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Fun fact: the grand total price of these was about $3. And the time they took to make from start to consumption was about 20 minutes. There's a hash tag for that and it's "#winning".





I'm really still unsure of what to call these apple delights. Maybe just apple delight but I've definitely run though the gamut:

Apple ______

1. Hot Pocket
2. Turnover
3. Ghetto Dumpling
4. Dough Triangle
5. Wedges
6. Poptart Triangle
7. Delight
8. Sandwich

Yeah, I clearly did not stop while I was ahead. Call them what you want.

Single-Pan Apple 'Popover'

I'm used to making popovers in a popover pan, which, for those that are unfamiliar, looks much like a muffin pan but has much deeper wells so the popovers can rise. The popovers I know are much like Yorkshire pudding, or hollow rolls that are muffin shaped and are primarily egg based. They take quite a while to cook and bake at two different temperatures that results in an amazing crisp outside and a doughy yet hollow inside. Yum.

When I saw a recipe for a single popover cooked in a pan I thought to myself, that's too easy! I decided to take the recipe for a spin and of course had to adapt it a bit. The result was something unlike the Yorkshire pudding-like popovers I am used to and are more like a breakfast dish I call German pancakes (which are in fact, not German at all). The single-pan apple popover still rose but was more dense than its traditional counterpart. Don't get me wrong, it's still scrumptious and satisfies a sweet tooth, just completely different than a traditional popover!

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Single-Pan Apple 'Popover'

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Preheat oven to 425°F Fruit Mix 3 medium-large apples 1/2 C blueberries 1 Tbsp butter 1 Tbsp honey 1 tsp cinnamon Egg Mix 3 large eggs 1/2 C milk 2 Tbsp butter, melted 1 tsp vanilla extract 2 Tbsp honey 1/2 C all-purpose flour

Slice the apples into 1/4 inch slices. On a stove top, heat the butter in an 8-9 inch oven-safe pan and add the apples, blueberries, honey, and cinnamon. Mix well and cook until the apples are just soft and remove from heat. In a bowl, beat the eggs and add the milk, butter, vanilla, and honey. Add the flour and mix until completely smooth. Pour over the fruit mixture in the pan and place on a middle rack in the oven. Bake for about 20 minutes. Do not open the oven at any point in baking as the popover may collapse. You should see parts of the egg mixture begin to rise and turn golden. If the fruits are particularly watery, this may not happen, however, the mixture may begin to pull away from the sides of the pan and at this point, your popover will be near done. Remove the pan from the oven and serve immediately. The popover is great with some dusted confectioners sugar, whipped cream, or yogurt. Note: If the butter you use is unsalted, you may choose to add a pinch of salt. You can substitute the honey for sugar or any other sweetener you'd like.

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Whoops! This is totally a camera phone photo. When making a gigantic popover at 10 PM, there really isn't anything left in you to go pull out the DSLR.

Gluten Free Scones

I love scones. There is something about them that is so inviting and homey. Maybe it's because the oven always makes the kitchen warm and butter really can't do anything but remind you of home cooking. I recently moved out to LA so I am finally experiencing some cooler weather. Coming from the east coast I never thought I'd feel autumn in southern California! What a relief.

Baking is one of my guilty pleasures but catering to those that aren't so hot on gluten is a whole different sort of baking (read: lots of failure). I made this recipe as a half recipe out of fear of gluten free baking. Luckily the recipe was more than a success. This size recipe works perfectly if you want to have breakfast for two and still feel stuffed. It yields about six medium sized scones. This is a perfect base recipe to work off of and throw in different ingredients to make savory scones, etc.

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Gluten Free Scones

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Yields six scones Preheat oven to 425°F 1 C brown rice flour 2 tsp baking powder 1/4 C cold salted butter* 1 Tbsp lemon zest 1/2 C buttermilk** 1/4 C raisins /currants / craisins

Grease a baking sheet with butter. Combine the flour and baking powder in a medium sized bowl. Cut the cold butter into the dry ingredients using a pastry cutter or two knives. Add the lemon zest and create a well in the center of the ingredients. Pour in the butter milk and add the raisins. Mix until just combined. On a floured board press out the dough into a rectangle until about 1/2 inch thick. Be sure not to overwork the dough or you will loose the flaky texture and create a gluten free, cardboard mess. Cut out into triangles and place on the baking sheet. At this point you can choose to brush some melted butter on top or stay "healthier". Bake for about 15 minutes or until the tops/edges are golden brown. Serve hot with honey and Greek yogurt. Yum!

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* I used salted butter because that's all I had. If you have unsalted, used the same amount and add a pinch of salt (less than 1/4 tsp) to the dry ingredients.

** I didn't have buttermilk on hand so I used an old trick that has always worked for me: Curdle your own milk by adding lemon juice or white vinegar to whole milk. The ratio I typically use is 1/2 C whole milk to 1 Tbsp lemon juice/white vinegar.

Extra notes: the scones were so delicious hot that I honestly did not have time to pull out my camera. Hence, you get a scone drawing. Yay photoshop! :) You can also make these scones with the same ratio of all-purpose flour.

Shashouka for Breakfast

I have a confession that is probably not news to you: I'm a serious food whore. I grew up in a family that ate and cooked everything from your standard American meatloaf to chicken feet. Yep, chicken feet. I blame all of this on my half-Asian upbringing but really know that I just have a problem. So here comes the touche topic of the amazing combination of meat and cheese. I'm talking German sausage with a side of cheesy spaetzle, ham and Gruyere on a baguette... I digress, and it goes on. While I love my meat and cheese, it's not exactly Kosher. Which obviously presents a problem for all food things of Israeli origin, except the food is so good that I honestly don't care there is no meat and cheese hand-holding.

There is an amazing Israeli cafe in my town called the Art Cafe that makes all sorts of desirable baked goods, has delicious coffee, and Israeli staples such as malawach, shashouka, and borekas. I could literally eat at the Art Cafe every day but my bank account would cry, so this morning I decided to make my own shashouka (poached eggs in a spicy tomato sauce) for breakfast. It turned out wonderfully and was surprisingly easy to make!

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Shashouka

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Adapted from Smitten Kitchen 1/4 cup olive oil 3 jalapeños, stemmed, seeded, and finely chopped (you really need to test the spiciness of the peppers to know how many you will need) 1 medium purple, chopped 5 cloves garlic, minced 1 teaspoon ground cumin 1 tablespoon paprika 6-8 medium tomatoes (you can use a big can of tomatoes too, but I prefer the fresh stuff) 6 eggs 1/3 cup feta cheese, crumbled 1 tablespoon chopped flat-leaf parsley

Heat oil in a 12-inch skillet over medium-high heat. Add chiles and onions and cook, stirring occasionally, until soft and golden brown. Add garlic, cumin, and paprika, and cook, stirring frequently, until garlic is soft. Slice up the tomatoes and crush them into the skillet. Be sure to add their juice too! Add 1/2 cup water to the pan, reduce heat to medium, and simmer, stirring occasionally, until slightly thickened, about 15 minutes or so. Crack eggs over sauce so that eggs are evenly distributed across sauce’s surface. Cover skillet and cook until yolks are just set, about 5 minutes. Using a spoon, baste the whites of the eggs with tomato mixture, being careful not to disturb the yolk. Sprinkle shakshouka with feta and parsley.

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You can choose to add salt, however, I tend to shy away from salt especially when there is super salty feta in the dish already. You can serve this dish with warm pita too!

I'm really amazed that I let myself five seconds to photograph this dish. I was so eager to dig in because it smelled AMAZING. Apologies for the crappy photography, my stomach knows no restraint. Let me know what you think of this dish. :)