Cinnamon Roll Muffins

Let me just start off by saying these are not at the top of my "must-make-all-the-time" list... you could possibly say this was a recipe fail.  There's nothing more frustrating than spending an hour an a half of your day on something that you end up throwing in the garbage in the end.  If I were truly a dedicated food blogger, I would clean off my hands and go at it again, trying to get that perfect recipe to show your readers.  Seeing as how I have about 5 readers, family included, I don't quite feel up to perfecting this thing.  I'm just going to chalk it up as a failure.  

Easy ingredients, easy recipe.  For those of you who have made cinnamon rolls from scratch... bravo to you.  I'd like to shake your hand.  As much as I love them, the idea of spending that many hours making them has always seemed daunting and thus, I have avoided doing it.  However, this recipe does not require the many hours of waiting for the bread to rise or rolling the dough to get the perfect cinnamon:bread ratio.  Prep time is actually about 20 minutes and cooking time is about 20.  Not too shabby. 

So far so good...

Now here's where we run into the problem.  The recipe called for a pretty large sized bowl of the cinnamon sugar mixture.  With a recipe providing such an immense amount, one thinks that entire amount must be used.  wrongo.

Notice the burned cinnamon sugar around the sides? There was, alas, a too little bread: cinnamon ratio. The sugar overflowed (even though I mixed a lot of the sugar into the dough... as I was told to) and burned the crap out of my pan.  And my cinnamon rolls.

The insides were delicious, but unfortunately, the outsides were just too burnt to continue.  I would suggest NOT trying to use all of the sugar mixture that was in the recipe... Just lightly dust it.  You will probably end up with a large bowl of sugar left but, hey, some pumpkin pancakes could use some!

You can find the recipe here! I really would suggest making these... they were super easy but dumbo over here used too much sugar. Easy problem to fix!

Pumpkin Pancakes

Well, I'm back.  I've decided to start the blog up again.  Maybe it's a New Year's resolution.  Maybe it's just boredom during my last week of break.  Regardless, I'm back... with some changes.  I'm hoping this blog will be a little bit more structured... more cooking focused, less rambling.  I received a new camera for Christmas that will allow me to take a lot better photos of the food I cook.  I'm so looking forward to learning more about it and hopefully improving my cooking skills along the way.  Unfortunately, the photos don't turn out as great on this blog as I had hoped they would but still better than the camera I was using before! My horrible kitchen doesn't really help either.... I'm stuck having to take photos in fluorescent light.  Ick. Hopefully, my next kitchen will provide me some natural light!

I adapted this recipe from the Good to the Grain cookbook.  Kim Boyce does a great job of incorporating very different flours (aside from the traditional white flour) into the recipes while maintaining simplicity.

The recipe called for Kamut flour but seeing as how I really don't even know how to pronounce that word, I traded it out for whole- wheat flour.

 I also halved the recipe... the original yielded 20 pancakes.  That's a bit much for a girl and her dog to eat.

The topping she suggested and included the recipe for was a spiced sugar blend.  Sounded delicious but I'm more of a syrup/ fruity kind of gal on my pancakes.   I added a little bit of apple butter to the pancakes and it turned out divine.  The apple butter complimented the pumpkin and cinnamon in the pancakes, making for an overall delicious (and healthy) breakfast!

Recipe:

Yields about 20 pancakes

Ingredients

Butter for the pan

Dry mix:

1 cup whole-wheat (she used Kamut flour) flour

1 cup all-purpose flour

2 tsp. baking powder

3/4 tsp. kosher salt

1/2 tsp. baking soda

1/4 tsp cinnamon

1/8 tsp allspice

Wet mix:

3 Tbsp. unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly

1 1/4 cup whole milk

1 cup buttermilk

2/3 cup pumpkin puree

2 Tbsp. honey

1 egg

Spiced Sugar:

1/3 cup sugar

2 tsp. freshly grated nutmeg

3/4 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 tsp. allspice

Directions:

1. Sift dry ingredietns into large bowl. set aside.

2. In medium bowl, whisk wet ingredients until thoroughly combined.

3. Using spatula, mix wet ingredients into dry ingredients.  Gently fold batter together with spatula.  The batter should be the consistency of lightly whipped cream and have a subtle orange hue.

4. Mix together spiced sugar. Set aside. 

5. Heat a 10-inch cast- iron or griddle over medium heat until water sizzles when splashed on pan. Rub the pan generously with butter. 

6. Dollop 1/4-cup mounds of batter into the pan (2 or 3 at a time). Once bubbles from on top of pancake, flip over and cook until pancake is dark-golden brown.

7. Wipe pan with cloth before next batch.

8. Serve pancakes hot, with spiced sugar sprinkled on top.