Cheese Puffs Pastries

 

 I cannot take any sorts of credit for this recipe. A dear sweet friend up in Washington, Lisa, gave it to me. I'm posting it here mainly so I won't lose it. They're that good.

Now I'm not the biggest fan of cheese danishes and/or pastries. My honey on the other hand LOVES them so when Lisa posted a picture I asked for the recipe. And they are incredibly easy to make.

It was so hard waiting for them to cool! Starting from the back: Plain, Blackberry Peach Jam, Orange Spice Marmalade and Elderberry Jelly

 

The blackberry peach was my favorite. The orange spice was my honey's favorite though all of them are so good. You can use any type of jam or jelly on them really. We just used what I had in my fridge. Too bad we had already finished off Lisa's Marionberry Jam than she had sent us for Yule. That would have been amazing on it. And they are even better the next day. At least to me they were. The cream cheese and the jam had more time to get happy together and soak into the puff pastry. With a cup of coffee or a strong breakfast tea....HEAVEN! 

The best thing it was really easy to make.

Cheese Puff Pastries

• 1 sheet of puff pastry, thawed
• 1 8 oz block of softened cream cheese
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• Jam/Jelly/Marmalade optional

Mix the cream cheese, sugar and vanilla together. It's important to make sure the cream cheese is room temperature. This helps making sure it's a smooth creamy texture. 

Take the sheet of puff pastry and cut into squares. You can use a regular muffin tin and make 12 smaller pastries. As you can see I used the jumbo muffin tins for 6. (I made a double batch). Put a heaping tablespoon (if you are using a regular muffin tin, start with a heaping teaspoon, you can always add more) of the cream cheese mixture in the middle of a square and fold it up and place into a muffin tin that has been sprayed with Pam or equivalent. Place a teaspoon of topping if desired on top.

Bake in a preheated 425 degree oven for 30 mins. Note: it only took about 22 minutes in my oven as it runs hot so keep an eye on it.

Note:  I suggest if you are putting any jam on top to decrease the amount of cream cheese filling slightly, maybe just a tablespoon instead of a heaping tablespoon. As you can tell from my pictures, they did overflow a little bit, which led to some slight darker color around some of the sides. It's the jam's sugars carmelizing. You could also add the jam during the cooling process but we wanted a more integrated flavor. 

Hope you enjoy and THANK YOU LISA for sharing the recipe!

Amish Friendship Bread

 So back in early November, my hubby called and asked me if I wanted a starter for Amish Friendship Bread. I said yes as I remember it back in the day. It was a dense, sweet but not too sweet bread that I enjoyed. What I didn't enjoy was the never ending cycle of starters and baking until we were sick of it. 

But now? Now I now of ways to keep, the starters can be frozen. It doesn't have to be overwhelming and never ending any more! And it's sooooo good.

The base recipe is good. We particularly love a cranberry pecan version. I recently made a chocolate version that was to die for. 

Amish Friendship Bread

 

Notes:

·        Do NOT use any metal spoons or bowls when mixing (honestly, it’s probably fine nowadays but that’s always been a thing with Friendship Bread.)

·        Do NOT refrigerate the starter.

·        If air gets into the bag let it out.

·        It’s normal for the starter to rise, bubble and ferment.

 

Baking Schedule:

Day 1: Do nothing. This is the date that you receive the bag of starter or the day that you create your own starter. Squish and mush the bag.

Day 2: Squish and mush the bag.

Day 3: Squish and mush the bag.

Day 4: Squish and mush the bag.

Day 5: Squish and mush the bag.

Day 6: ADD to the bag – 1 cup pf Flour, 1 cup of Sugar and 1 cup of milk. Squish and mush the bag.

Day 7: Squish and mush the bag.

Day 8: Squish and mush the bag.

Day 9: Squish and mush the bag.

Day 10: Baking Day! Mix and divide the starter as follows:

               Pout entire contents of the starter bag into a non-metal bowl and add:

o   1.5 cups of flour

o   1.5 cups of sugar

o   1.5 cups of milk

Mis well and measure out 4 separate batches of the starter batter (1 cup each) and place into gallon Ziplock bags. Keep one bag of starter for yourself and give the other 3 to friends, along with copy of these instructions. The batter that remains into large bowl will be used for baking your Amish Friendship Bread.

Notes: Starters can be frozen! Make sure to let the air out. It won’t freeze solid but it’ll keep for a number of months. When you want to use it, take it out to thaw, get the yeast to wake up. The next day either bake with it or start it on day one to create more starters. I’ve been told that lactose free milk works fine but I cannot attest to it personally.

 

To Prepare the Amish Friendship Bread on Day 10:

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. To the remaining batter in the bowl add:

• 3 eggs 
•  1 cup canola oil
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup milk
• 1 tablespoon of cinnamon
• ½ teaspoon vanilla
• 1.5 teaspoons baking powder
• ½ teaspoon baking soda
• ½ teaspoon salt
•  2 cups flour 
• 1 large (5 oz) box vanilla pudding mix (just the dry mix)

Spray 2 large loaf pans with cooking spray with flower and divide batter evenly between the two pans.

In a small bowl, combine ¼ cup of sugar with 1 teaspoon of cinnamon. Sprinkle the top of each loaf with the cinnamon sugar.

Bake in the oven for about 1 hour or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack and then remove from pan. If you kept a starter for yourself, you can repeat the bakinf process every 10 days.

 

To prepare a new batch of starter:

In a small bowl, combine 1.4 cup of warm water and 1 packet of dry active yeast (2 ¼ teaspoons). Set aside until bubbly, about 5 to 10 minutes.

In a large non metal bowl mix together 1 cup of ap flour and 1 cup of granulated sugar. Stir in one cup of milk and the yeast mixture. Cover loosely and leave on the countertop at room temperature until bubble.

Place starter in a large gallon Ziplock bag. Seal bag and squish and mush until well combined. Let stand at room temperature overnight. The day that you prepare the starter is DAY 1. Proceed with 10-day baking schedule outlined on previous page.

Variations:

Add a ½ cup each of dried fruit and nuts (such as cranberry and pecan)

Substitute unsweetened coco powder for cinnamon and use a chocolate pudding mix – Can even add chocolate chips

Change the flavor of pudding mix to try something new! As long as you keep the base recipe the same the pudding flavor, cinnamon can be switched around as well as adding dried fruit or other items. Just be careful of adding to much ‘wet’ type or moisture heavy items as that may affect the outcome of your bread.

Bread can be wrapped and frozen as well up to a few months. It never lasts that long here.

Lemon Scones

My husband and I love scones. It is not something I make often though, I don’t want us to get tired of them. I promised that I would make him some this weekend and he requested that I make Lemon Scones. This recipe turned out so yummy. The scones was tender and flaky. They were dense but not heavy as some scones can be. They were soooooo good.

Lemon Scones
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup cold unsalted butter (one stick cut into pieces)
1 cup heavy cream
zest of one lemon
2 tablespoon lemon juice
Additional sugar

Mix all the dry ingredients together with a fork. Add the butter pieces and mix until it resembles coarse crumbs. Add zest, lemon juice and cream and mix until incorporated. It is easiest to mix with your hands at this point to get it mixed. Trust me. Place dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead a few times. Pat the dough into a circle about 1/2 inch thick. Cut into pieces – you can get anywhere from 4 to 8 pieces depending on how big you cut them.
Lightly brush the flour off the dough before placing on a greased cookie sheet. Make sure you have at least an inch of space in between the scones on the baking sheet. Sprinkle some sugar over the tops. Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for about 10-15 minutes. I normally start checking them at 10 minutes. You want them to turn to just a light golden brown. Let scones cool for about 10 minutes before glazing and serve.

Glaze
1/4 cup confectioner’s sugar – shifted
1 tablespoon of lemon juice

Shifting the sugar helps eliminates the clumps. Slowly mix the lemon juice until smooth. If you want the glaze to be thinner you can add a little milk to it but do so a teaspoon at a time.

Enjoy!

Cookie Adventures!

The past few years I have been helping my mom bake cookies to give out as gifts. Last year it was my sister, her and I doing the mad cookie experiment. This year it was my mom, my aunt and I. it was fun, tiring but fun. And we made a lot of cookies...like 33 dozen or so.

We started around 7:30 am and my aunt and I left at 4, leaving my mom to finish baking the last few remaining trays. It is always an adventure baking with my mom. She does a few things like her rum cake really well but then it gets interesting. Like last year thinking one box of butter and one 5 pound bag of flour was going to be enough butter for the 10 different types she wanted to make.

This yeas she was a little bit better. I had warned my aunt ahead of time so we came with extra flour, butter, sugar and eggs. So when we arrived, my mom is already flustered with the sugar cookie dough as it is incredibly sticky. She didn't want to wait so she made a package of sugar cookies (I despise the package cookie mix but I digress). She was trying to roll out cookie dough on wax paper. Yes you read that right. Gotta love her. So I take over and the dough is really sticky...too sticky but I make it work and get about 3 dozen star shaped cookies cut out for her. Found out that she used tub margarine instead of stick butter for the recipe...which was the culprit.

See you never want to use tub margarine for baking if you can help it. If you have to use margarine always go for it in the stick form. It's the consistency in the tub stuff that makes it more sticky and spread more. 

It became apparent at that moment that I was going to be in charge of making the cookie doughs, especially since I brought my KitchenAid mixer with me. That baby can whip through making cookie dough like there is no tomorrow. I swear I love my KitchenAid. I whip up a batch of vanilla wafer cookies and as we are baking them my mom brings out all these bags of chips that she wants to use in the cookies. The three of us start talking flavors and then my aunt and I talk Mom out of putting the butterscotch and peanut butter chips in the same cookie...see this is why I was in charge of making the dough.

By the end of the day we made:
3 dozen sugar stars
6 dozen vanilla wafer cookies
5 dozen chocolate chip, walnut and heath bar cookies
5 dozen chocolate chip and toffee cookies
4.5 dozen peppermint white chocolate cookies
4.5 dozen oatmeal butterscotch cookies
5 dozen peanut butter cookies with peanut butter chips

I like the oatmeal butterscotch cookies the best. I got the dough just right so they spread out lovely and came out almost like the oatmeal lace cookies.