An Ode to Snúður

My love for cinnamon rolls has been well documented. So you can imagine my happy dance when I found extra special and extremely fluffy and enormous cinnamon roll type pastries in Iceland. Apparently they are called Snúður (no, I cannot correctly pronounce that - anyone want to help?) and they are delicious. 

Below is my little (ehem, gigantic) cinnamon-y and cardamom-y friend from Akureyri. What follows afterwards is my attempt at recreating that doughy goodness - snúður-like cinnamon rolls perfect for brunch or decadent coffee break. Hope you enjoy!

Maybe not the most logistically practical road trip snack, but it was SO SO GOOD.

My Snúður-like creations

Ingredients:

For the dough:

• 75g unsalted butter
• 250ml whole milk
• 3 tsps dry yeast
• 50ml sugar
• pinch of salt
• 1 tsp ground cardamom 
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon powder
• 420g self-raising flour

For the filling:

• 70g unsalted butter (room temperature)
• 100g sugar
• 2 tbsp cinnamon

For the icing:

• 4 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 60 ml milk
• 200g brown sugar

Directions:

Warm the milk over low/medium heat, stirring constantly. Stir in the sugar and yeast, then set aside for 5 minutes.

Mix together the flour, cinnamon, cardamom, salt, and butter. Add this mixture slowly to the wet mixture, then pour the entire lot into a bread machine and set to "dough". You can, of course, also choose to make this the traditional way by kneading the dough then covering and leaving in a warm place to rise for at least 60 minutes or roughly doubled in size. I have trouble with room temperature consistency in the tiny London kitchen, so jumped at the chance to use Mom's more accurate bread machine (so fluffy!!!). 

After the dough has doubled in size (60-90 minutes), flour your work surface and rolling pin and roll out half of the risen dough into a roughly rectangular shape about 1 cm thick. Then thoroughly blend the filling ingredients - unsalted butter, sugar, and cinnamon - together and spread half the mixture evenly over the dough, leaving a filling free frame of about 1 cm all around. 

Now carefully roll the dough up as tightly as you can. Let's say side A of the dough rectangle is longer than side B. You will roll side B. So you should be rolling more rather than less - got it?

Using a very sharp clean knife, cut the rolled up dough log into 3 cm wide pieces and place each one swirly side up on a lightly greased baking tray, leaving a little space between each piece. I used both cake tins and cookie sheets/baking trays for my Snúður. With baking trays you can space the cinnamon rolls further apart and they will have defined edges. If you chose cake tins, the rolls will smush together, leaving you with softer, pull apart edges. The choice is yours!

Repeat the rolling and filling spreading steps with the remaining half of dough and filling.

Cover the cake tins/cookie sheets/baking trays with a cloth and leave the dough rolls in a warm place for another hour for the second (and final) proofing. The Snúður should nearly double in size again!

Finally preheat your oven to 200C and bake the Snúður for 7-8 minutes. When finished they should be lightly golden brown on top. Remove from the oven and allow to cool for a minute or two before tucking in.

While the Snúður are baking, you can prepare (if you'd like) the icing. Melt the butter in small saucepan, then add the brown sugar and milk, stirring constantly. The icing should begin to thicken after about 2 minutes. Once the icing has reached a smooth consistency, take the saucepan off the heat and set aside for a few minutes to cool. Then spoon on top of the Snúður and enjoy!

These spiced spirals of doughy deliciousness are also excellent (and slightly less sweet) without the icing and/or served alongside Skyr or Smari (a Skyr-like alternative you can find in some US grocery stores).

I hope you enjoy these as much as I did!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Hoping everyone enjoyed their St. Patrick's Day festivities and that you've all made a full recovery by now! Did you make anything particularly tasty, have a festive pint or two of Guinness, or wear a lot of green? I was shocked SHOCKED to learn from the Irish fellow that pinching non-green-wearing folk on March 17th was/is unheard of in Ireland. What gives, America? I want those 14 anxious days of my school experience back please and thank you!

We were disappointingly un-festive here this year, so I'm posting a few pictures taken up in Donegal a couple summers back. Did you miss out on Tuesday too and now need something extra delicious to bake this weekend? Maybe these will help:

This chocolate Guinness cake recipe from The Hummingbird Bakery. I haven't tried it yet, but I've baked practically everything in this Hummingbird Bakery cookbook and have yet to be disappointed.

Or maybe you want to go SUPER decadent with a Bailey's cheesecake recipe from Nigella?

Looking for something healthier? How about this beautiful raw avocado supercake from Natasha Corrett's new recipe book Honestly Healthy Cleanse? This one is high on my avocado-loving-self's to make (and devour!) list...

I'll also be back with regular posts and a new look in April. It's something I've been working on for awhile (too many projects!), and I hope you'll all check back!

Soda Bread Muffins

Happy St. Patrick's Day! To celebrate, I adapted this Irish Soda Bread recipe from the delightful bakers at King Arthur Flour. SO GOOD for breakfast or an afternoon pick-me-up. I primarily adjusted the original recipe to work with gluten-free flour, incorporate my love of cinnamon, and use the abundance of sultanas in my kitchen!

I made these yesterday and there might be only three left. So I think it's fair to say these were a hit. Hope you think so too!

What you'll need (makes 18 muffins)

• 210g all purpose gluten-free flour blend
• 2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• pinch of salt
• 70g caster sugar
• 1 large egg
• 225g buttermilk
• 50ml milk
• 75ml vegetable oil
• 60g sultanas
• 120g currants
• caster sugar and ground cinnamon for topping

What to do:

Preheat your oven to 180C/360F.

Combine all dry ingredients - flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, sugar, salt, sultanas, and currants - in a large mixing bowl.

In a smaller separate bowl lightly beat the egg, then combine with the buttermilk, milk, and vegetable oil. Pour this mixture into the dry ingredients and stir lightly. Really a turn or two with a mixing spoon should do it. To ensure optimum fluffiness for your baked muffins, take care to not over stir. 

Line a muffin tin with papers or lightly grease the tin - I went for papers here, clearly. Fill the paper liners at least 2/3 of the way up - these muffins do not rise too much, so I had no trouble with overflow.

Once you've filled the muffin tin, mix together about 2 tablespoons of caster sugar and 1/2 tsp cinnamon, then sprinkle on top of each muffin.

Pop the filled muffin tin into the oven for 15-20 minutes, until lightly golden brown on top and/or an inserted fork comes out clean. Enjoy warm with coffee or tea! Or perhaps with a festively green juice?

The buttermilk made these surprisingly airy, and the adjusted liquid to dry ingredients ratio worked really well with the gluten-free flour blend (no crumbly mess, as is sometimes the case when you substitute gluten-free flour directly into a recipe - hurrah!).

Hope you enjoy your St. Patrick's Day! Any big celebration plans? Baking with Guinness or Bailey's maybe? I'd love to hear!

Looking for February Recipes?

This picture has nothing to do with treats, but it is pink - so it kind of matches the theme... right?

There are so many festive treats floating around the web in anticipation of February. Have you made any yet? I'm ready to try all of these! What do you think?

These raspberry coconut macaroons look refreshingly festive!

These red velvet chocolate swirled brownie bars over on Averie Cooks should hit your February chocolate cravings.

These soft m&m chocolate chip cookies would be especially delicious if you managed to stash away any of the peppermint white chocolate m&ms from the holidays...

Looking for a healthier treat? What about this delicious looking frozen pink cheesecake from Green Kitchen Stories? Why is this not in my kitchen right now?

Ginger Molasses Cookies

So there's this place in Athens, Georgia called Big City Bread Cafe that makes (among other things) really and truly delicious ginger molasses cookies. When I'm able to visit, I always try to stock up on a few. But since the delicious cookies live thousands of miles away from me right now, I'm trying to perfect my own recipe. This recipe makes chewy, not too sweet cookies with a little ginger kick. Yum!

What you'll need: (Makes 3 dozen cookies)

• 140g butter
• 100g light brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 180ml molasses (black treacle)
• 160g chopped crystallized ginger
• 2 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp ginger
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 270g flour (I used a GF blend)

What to do:

Preheat your oven to 170C/325F.

Add the light brown sugar, butter, eggs, and vanilla together in a mixing bowl. Blend with a handheld mixer on low/medium for about a minute.

Set this wet mixture aside and roughly chop the crystallized ginger. Don't worry about being too uniform, but do aim for smallish pieces. The pieces should be not much larger than a chocolate chip morsel or M&M. (Or you could use The Ginger People's crystallized ginger chips, which are already the perfect size.) Once you've chopped the ginger, set it aside for a moment.

In a separate, smaller bowl combine the dry ingredients - the baking soda, powdered ginger, and flour. Then gradually blend this into the wet mixture. Finally, mix in the molasses. Once the molasses is thoroughly blended, fold in the crystallized ginger pieces.

Evenly space rounded spoonfuls of the cookie dough (which will be on the sticky side) onto a parchment covered cookie sheet. You can also lightly sprinkle the tops of the cookie mounds with caster sugar.

Bake for about 9 minutes and allow to cool for a couple of minutes before removing from the tray if you want the cookies to remain in one piece!

Enjoy as a warming (both inside and out!) snack on a cold January afternoon!

Are you a ginger fan? I definitely am - I always bring these ginger candies with me when I travel (ginger is supposed to help with motion sickness!).

Mini Baked Pumpkin Doughnuts

Munchkin pumpkin and Mini Baked Pumpkin Doughnuts.

Bite sized doughnuts, what? Maybe more like "two bites" sized, if we're adhering to accuracy here. Consider "bite sized" a challenge, if you will. On another tangent, yes, I did spend a considerable amount of time debating "doughnuts" vs "donuts". The Google-machine has informed me that the use of the spelling "doughnuts" predates "donuts", so that swayed me. Your baking trivia for the day!

And now, on to the more salient issue of how to make these little guys in your own home:

What you'll need:

• 125g flour (any all purpose variety, GF blends included)
• 110g caster sugar
• 3 tsp baking powder
• 2 tsp pumpkin pie spice (you can be a bit generous with this)
• 25g unsalted butter (room temperature)
• 120ml buttermilk
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 eggs
• pinch of salt
• 250g pumpkin puree 

What to do:

Preheat oven to 170F/325C.

In a large bowl, combine the caster sugar, unsalted butter,vanilla extract, eggs, and buttermilk. I used a hand crank egg beater for this step, but if your electric handheld mixer has a very low setting, that would work too. It's just quite a liquid-y mixture at this stage, and anything high powered will send ingredients flying out of your mixing bowl and onto your wall. Don't ask me how I know this.

The next step is to add the pumpkin puree and keep mixing until it's delightfully orange.

Happy autumnal orange color!

In a small separate bowl, mix together the flour (I used a gluten free blend for these), baking powder, pumpkin pie spice, and pinch of salt - you can simply use a fork to do so. Then gradually add the dry mixture to the wet mixture, mixing as you go.

Once the batter has a smooth texture, you can set it aside for a moment and lightly butter the mini doughnut tin. You can, of course, use a tin that makes larger doughnuts, just remember to increase the baking time if you do so!

If you have an pastry/piping/icing bag, it will come in handy for the next step, particularly if you are actually using a mini doughnut tin. You can fashion a makeshift pastry bag from a sandwich bag or by rolling parchment paper into a funnel. Scoop the batter (it should hold together well and feel fluffy and not at all runny) into your pastry bag and pipe the batter into the doughnut rings. Fill about 2/3s of the way up.

I have no photos of the piping process because I was alone in the kitchen and maybe had doughnut batter all over my hands from an overflow incident with my parchment piping "bag". Maybe.

Pop the mini doughnut tray into the preheated oven for about 8 minutes. The doughnuts will puff up quite a bit, and an inserted fork/toothpick should come out fairly clean when you test. After cooling for about two minutes, gently loosen the doughnuts from the tray with a spoon. If they come out with little resistance, excellent! They are ready to cool on a rack or plate for another couple of minutes before eating. DO eat this warm if at all possible.

Cooling in the doughnut pan...

About to be devoured!

See? I told you these doughnuts were tiny! They are also very light and fluffy, thanks to the buttermilk. And they have an orange vegetable as the main ingredient, so you they can feel slightly superior to other fried, non-veggie containing doughnuts out there. Not that they would be smug about it.

 Doughnuts, anyone?

Pumpkin Streusel Coffee Cake

The season of the Great Pumpkin is upon us, and what better way to celebrate than with cake? Pumpkin Streusel Coffee Cake to be exact. No, there is no coffee in this cake. Rather, it is to be enjoyed with coffee. Or tea. Or hot apple cider. With the beverage of your choice, basically. Or, heck, even ice cream if you want to go wild.

What you'll need for the cake:

• 120g unsalted butter (room temperature)
• 75g dark brown sugar
• 60g caster sugar
• 300g flour (I used a GF blend)
• 2 eggs
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 225g pumpkin puree
• 170ml buttermilk
• 2 tsp pumpkin pie spice

What you'll need for the filling:

• 120g dark brown sugar
• 1 tbsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp pumpkin pie spice

What you'll need for the streusel topping:

• 85g brown sugar
• 80g flour
• 40g pecans
• 60g unsalted butter (melted)

What to do:

Preheat oven to 350F/175C.

We'll start with the cake batter.  In a large mixing bowl blend together the room temperature butter, the caster sugar, brown sugar, and vanilla. I recommend using a handheld electric mixer, but you can get fancier if you'd like!

Once the butter and sugar are thoroughly creamed, add the eggs, buttermilk, and pumpkin puree.

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In a separate bowl, mix together the flour, baking soda, and pumpkin pie spice. Then gradually add this dry mixture to the wet mixture.

Once combined, pour (or spoon/spatula! - this is a pretty thick batter!) half of the cake batter into a buttered cake tin. 

Mix the filling ingredients - the brown sugar, cinnamon, and pumpkin pie spice - together and sprinkle over this first cake batter layer, covering thoroughly. Then spatula the remaining cake batter over the filling layer, smoothing the top down when finished.

Finally, mix together the topping ingredients - brown sugar, flour, chopped pecans, and melted butter. You can do this with a fork or by hand, until the topping mixture starts to clump together.

Finally, spoon the topping mixture onto the top layer of cake batter, and lightly pat it down to ensure even covering.

Tiny cake waiting to go in the oven...

Big cake all ready for the oven...

Yes, I made two cakes here. A normal sized cake and a mini cake. This recipe will make one large (20cm/8in tin) cake. If possible, use a springform cake tin so that you can see the pretty sides of the finished product!

Once the topping is all set, pop the cake into the oven and bake for 50-55 minutes. When it's finished, an inserted fork or toothpick should come out clean and the topping should be a nice golden brown color.

Let cool for at least 10-15 minutes before removing the side of the springform tin, and another few minutes before slicing, if you at all value cake slices that hold their shape!

Eat warm and enjoy with coffee; pumpkin decoration optional!

Or have a slice with your morning coffee the next day - it's full of pumpkin, which is a vegetable, so it's almost good for you, right? Sounds like (cake) logic to me!

Carrot Cranberry Bread

This is my first new recipe for the start of autumn this year - it's basically carrot cake's seasonally festive, slightly healthier cousin. I kept the added sugar fairly low here, letting the cranberries and carrots add the sweetness. I also used Greek yogurt instead of butter, which made for bread with a really nice and cakey consistency. Great with a morning coffee!

What you'll need:

• 250g grated carrots (3-4 medium sized carrots)
• 300g low fat plain Greek yogurt
• 340g flour
• 100g light brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp ginger
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• pinch of salt

What to do:

Preheat your oven to 170C/340F.

Spend an inordinate amount of time (not really...probably about 5 minutes, depending on your level of coordination) grating 3-4 carrots. Or rope someone into helping you. Unfortunately, no one else was there for me to Tom Sawyer into grating carrots. Seriously though people, is there a faster way of doing this? 

Hold a minor celebration when you are finished grating the carrots. Then, in a large mixing bowl, combine the eggs, Greek yogurt, light brown sugar, and vanilla extract. I used a hand powered mixer for this step. Once everything is thoroughly mixed, fold in the grated carrots.

In a separate bowl, mix together the dry ingredients - the flour, cinnamon, ginger, baking powder, baking soda, and just a pinch of salt. Once blended, gradually fold the dry mixture into the wet mixture. Make sure to smooth out any flour and/or sugar lumps.

Next, lightly grease a cake tin (I used a bundt tin, which baked nice and evenly) and pour the batter into it. Smooth down the top of the batter with a spatula, then pop into the oven. Bake for 35-40 minutes, until an inserted fork comes out clean.

Let cool for about 5 minutes before slicing. Enjoy the first slice while it's still warm!

If you find that you still have some bread left over after 2 days or so, it's also really nice toasted with a bit of cream cheese or honey spread on top.

Happy First Day of Autumn!

I am maybe a little bit too excited about the first day of autumn - even though it's kind of grey and overcast here - because autumn means that my baking habits can unashamedly veer towards all things pumpkin, cinnamon, and/or apple related. SO cosy.

Here are a few very tasty looking recipes I am looking forward to trying to kick off the season:

These overnight buttermilk cinnamon rolls from Averie Cooks

This recipe for at home pumpkin spice latte syrup over on A Beautiful Mess. I've been adding pumpkin pie spice to my morning coffee for about a week now, and am excited to try a fancier at home coffee treat!

These adorable apple pie cookies from Smitten Kitchen

This recipe for pumpkin pie pop tarts over on Ambitious Kitchen

And I think I may need a special occasion/party to try this recipe for salted caramel swirled pumpkin cheesecake bars (also from Averie Cooks). They look like they'd be dangerous otherwise...


Do you have any autumn baking favorites or recent delicious discoveries?

When Your Baking Experiment Crumbles...

Embrace it and actually make crumble from it!  I have done this with several batches of banana bread and the like in the past, but most recently I had a bit of a cinnamon roll fail. I am choosing to blame out-of-date yeast for their less than stellar texture outcome. Rather than letting the batch go to waste, I converted it to apple crumble!

What you'll need:

• One batch of banana bread, cinnamon rolls, cake, etc that didn't quite turn out as hoped
• 80-100g unsalted butter
• 4 baking apples
• 1 tbsp flour (of your choice)
• raisins or sultanas to taste
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon (optional)

What to do:

First I crumbled the decidedly un-fluffy cinnamon rolls onto a cookie sheet and lightly toasted their crumbled remains in the oven.

Let the toasted pieces cool for 5-10 minutes before combining them with 80-100g unsalted butter (depending on how dry your original baking disaster was...). If the oven is not already heated to 170C/350F, then start to preheat it now. 

Next, knead the butter into the toasted crumbles until you have a firm cookie-dough-like consistency. Set aside for a moment.

For the apple filling, I followed a very similar recipe to what I did for my Almond Apple Berry Crumble. Roughly chop 3-4 cooking apples. Then mix the apple chunks and raisins (if desired) in a mixing bowl and toss lightly with 1 tablespoon of flour. If you'd like, also toss with 1 tsp ground cinnamon. I didn't do that with this batch, since I was already using the remains of cinnamon rolls!

Divide the apple filling evenly into the four ramekins, then press 1/4 of the dough mixture on top of the apple filling. The filled ramekins should look like this:

Pop into the oven for about 30 minutes, let cool for 5, and enjoy!

I Tried It: The Best Lemon Poppyseed Bread

Joanna over at A Cup of Joe was not kidding! This is some seriously good lemon poppyseed bread. I didn't even use lemon glaze, and I probably ate close to twenty percent of this cake while it was still warm. It's so light and fluffy that it made me think of this clip...

The original recipe for this delicious bread can be found at A Farmgirl's Dabbles (c/o A Cup of Joe). Below is my adapted version.

What you'll need:

• 225g flour 
• 120g caster sugar
• 160ml buttermilk
• 120ml oil
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tbsp poppyseeds
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1.5 tsp almond extract
• freshly grated zest of 3 lemons
• a squeeze of lemon juice (about a half lemon's worth)

What to do:

Preheat your oven to 350F/175C.

Zest your lemon. I agree, it is one of the more tedious aspects of lemon-related-recipe-prep. But I promise, it will be worth it.

Combine your dry ingredients - the flour, caster sugar, salt, baking powder, and poppyseeds, in a mixing bowl.

In a separate mixing bowl, combine the wet ingredients - the buttermilk, oil, eggs, vanilla extract, almond extract, lemon zest and the juice from half a lemon. Blend with a handheld mixer, and then gradually add in the mix of dry ingredients. Blend for another minute or two, until all lumps have disappeared.

Lightly grease a bundt tin (or load tins, or muffin tins if you prefer!), pour the batter in, and bake for about 45 minutes - until an inserted fork comes out clean.  Let cool for at least 15 minuets before attempting to dislodge the cake from it's tin.

If you'd prefer this WITH the lemon glaze, check out Brenda's original recipe over on A Farmgirl's Dabbles.


(Thank you Brenda and Joanna!)

Pumpkin Muffins

It's September, and do you know what that means? At least according to elementary/primary school students it is now fall/autumn. Which, to me, means pumpkins! Okay, who am I kidding? I'd eat pumpkins year round. But apparently autumn and winter are the socially acceptable pumpkin eating seasons. 

So to kick off September in proper pumpkin style, I'm sharing one of my many Pumpkin Muffin recipes. They're also gluten and dairy free (although you can adjust this recipe if you like gluten and/or dairy)!

What you'll need: (makes 12 muffins)

• 150g pumpkin (canned or cooked - I used Libby's)
• 1 egg
• 120ml unsweetened almond milk (I like Blue Diamond)
• 20g melted coconut oil
• 1.5 tsp pure vanilla extract
• 200g self-raising flour (I used Dove's Farm GF blend again - does that make me predictable?)
• 40g light brown sugar
• pinch of salt
• 1.5 tsp pumpkin pie spice
• 1.5 tsp baking powder
• pecans (optional)

What to do:

Preheat oven to 180C/360F.

Combine the pumpkin, egg, coconut oil, vanilla, and almond milk. I used a handheld beater for this, you could use a whisk though. Definitely don't go high powered on this stage, as it is mostly liquid and will go everywhere!

Next add the flour, baking powder, salt, and pumpkin pie spice directly to this mixture.

Blend thoroughly. It should look like this:

Finally, blend in the light brown sugar, continuing to mix until you achieve this consistency:

Next, lightly grease a 12 muffin tin with a bit of coconut oil. I know in my pictures I've used paper muffin liners. But unless you want to be picking bits of paper off your muffins before you eat them (Mmm, fibre. Haha!) I would highly recommend just using coconut oil instead.

Finally, if you'd like to, top each muffin with a pecan half. Another option with the pecans would be to chop a decent sized handful and blend into the batter. I've tried it this way too, and it's tasty!

Pop into the oven and bake for 15-20 minutes, until you can insert a toothpick or fork and it comes out clean.

I've been eating these bad boys with my coffee for the last two days. Nom nom nom. Pumpkin.

Ed: These are best eaten within 24 hours of baking!