Monkey Bread

I was looking for a breakfast recipe before, and while I've never had monkey bread it looked delicious, and it turned out better than I expected!  The dough was perfect, but the goo between the dough balls needs some work -- I have ideas.  I based it on this recipe, but only made 1/4 of the original recipe, which was perfect for two people.

If I were making it again, I would:
- Use butter instead of margarine in the goo
- Add more flavor to the goo -- cinnamon & other spices, or nearly-applesauce apples
- Maybe follow some of the comments on the recipe, particularly rolling the balls in just butter, then brown sugar, so they get more on them

1/2 teaspoon active dry yeast
1/4 cup water

1 tablespoon white sugar

3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
1-1/2 teaspoons margarine, softened

3 tbsp margarine
3 tbsp brown sugar
3 tbsp raisins

Heat up the water in the microwave -- warm enough to stick a finger in it & feel it's warm, cool enough to keep the finger there.  Mix in the sugar in, then the yeast.  Let it sit for 5-10 minutes until there's some amount of froth (I didn't get much froth -- I think the water was slightly too cool -- but it worked out anyways).

Mix flour, cinnamon, and salt together.  Add liquids and margarine.  Knead it just enough to mix everything together.  Cover with a damp cloth & let rise until roughly doubled, about 45 minutes.

Melt the remaining margarine in the microwave.  Mix in the brown sugar & raisins.

Squish the dough back down.  Tear off chunks & roll into 1 inch balls.  Roll those balls in the brown sugar goo.  Set them into a greased pan on top of each other -- I used pyrex & it turned out well.  Let rise for another 15-20 minutes.

Bake at 375 for 20-25 minutes, or until it's golden brown.  Flip pan over onto a plate & eat.

We ate this too fast for me to take pictures of it.  It didn't stay together, because it stuck to the pan & didn't have enough goo between the doughy bits, but it was very tasty.

Notes from making it a second time:
- The rise depends a LOT on temperature.  I left the dough out on the (cool) counter for 45 minutes, and it didn't rise at all.  I then moved it into the oven (slightly warmed then turned off), and it doubled in about 10 minutes.
- This time, I changed the goo.  First I peeled, halved, and boiled half of a small apple (the kind you get in the big bags) for 20 minutes until it was very soft.  Then I heated the butter, brown sugar, raisins (only 2 tbsp), and mashed up apple in a saucepan until it got slightly caramel-like.  This seemed to stay between the dough bits better.  I'd also recommend tending towards smaller dough bits -- the bigger ones were multiple bites, which isn't what I was going for.

Pumpkin Cream Cheese Muffin Cupcakes

I love pumpkin.  Pumpkin flavored things are the best.  And now it's close enough to fall (even if it is nearly 90 degrees here) that I don't have to feel bad about using it!

I saw these on reddit & thought they looked fantastic; I thought right.  I ended up putting off making them for almost a week because I kept forgetting to create the little cream cheese filling bites in the freezer early enough that I could do the whole process.  I'd call them closer to cupcakes than muffins; they're ridiculously sweet & too squishy to be a muffin.

http://www.annies-eats.com/2010/10/08/pumpkin-cream-cheese-muffins/

I only filled 5/8 of the muffins, and I only made half as much topping as suggested (so that I could leave some of them plain), but other than that I basically followed the recipe.

For the filling:
5 oz. neufchatel cheese (the lower fat version of cream cheese)
5/8 cup powdered sugar

For the muffins:
2.5 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 tsp. ground cinnamon (heaping)
1 tsp. ground nutmeg (heaping)
1 tsp. ground cloves (a little less, because it turns out grinding cloves with a mortar & pestle is really difficult)
1 tbsp. plus 1 tsp. cinnamon + nutmeg (because I didn't have pumpkin pie spice & it's close enough)
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking soda
4 egg substitutes
2 cups sugar
2 cups pumpkin puree
1¼ cups vegetable oil

For the topping:
1/4 cup sugar
2.5 tbsp. flour
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
2tbsp. cold(ish) unsalted butter, cut into pieces

Make the filling by mashing the two ingredients together.  Shape into 15 roughly equally sized piles/balls on wax paper (the piles should be small enough around to fit well inside the muffin cups).  Stick it in the freezer for an hour or two.

Mash together the topping ingredients until the butter's in tiny pieces & the color is mostly uniform.  Set it aside.

Mix together the dry ingredients (except sugar), in another bowl mix together the wet ingredients (plus sugar).  I couldn't get the wet ingredients to combine very well (oil + water-based egg replacer = no mix), so I just dumped them all together and mixed them there & it worked out fine.  This is a big recipe.  It was almost too big for my biggest bowl, so keep that in mind if your bowls are smallish.

Put paper cupcake cup liners into your cupcake pan.  Put a little bit of batter in the cup (it's ok if you almost totally fill it, you'll just have to press the cream cheese bit down into it), put in the cream cheese piece, then cover it with more batter.  If you follow the recipe above you'll get 15 +cream cheese, 9 -cream cheese.  Cover the cupcakes with the topping (be generous enough to cover the whole thing, but you don't need to heap it on.  One forkful was enough for each of mine) -- the recipe above will give you 18 +topping, 6 -topping.

Stick them into a 350 degree oven for 20 minutes or so.  If your oven cooks unevenly like mine does, turn them 180 degrees after 15 minutes.  Take them out, let them cool (the filling is pretty warm), then avoid eating too many in one sitting.

My picture ended up a little discolored -- believe me when I say they're as delicious looking as they were on the website, with gorgeous streuselly topping on top.

Cinnamon rolls

Found this gem while browsing the baking subreddit:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Baking/comments/1ig2fl/mini_cinnamon_rolls_not_all_perfect_but_delicious/

I halved the recipe & it made 8 totally delicious cinnamon rolls.  They weren't hard at all to make.  I skipped the glaze -- I like icing better, and these were plenty decadent without it.  They also only needed about 8 minutes in the oven.  They were perfect when they were hot & fresh out of the oven; the filling gets a little crumbly once they cool, but it's still delicious.

Here's the recipe with instructions.

Dough:
2 cups flour
2 tbsp sugar
4 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
3 tbsp butter, softened/melted
3/4 cup milk (I used almond milk and it was fine)

Filling:
4 tbsp butter, melted
1 cup brown sugar, packed
3 tsp cinnamon (+ a dash extra because it's delicious)

Combine all the dough ingredients in a bowl.  Spread the dough out in a rectangle-ish shape on a not sticky surface (I used a plastic cutting board).  If you're making the full recipe, you may want to make 2 rectangles instead.  Make the filling.  Spread it all over the dough, getting it as close to the edges as possible (especially the long edges -- you can leave a little bit of dough exposed on the short edges).  Roll up the dough into a tube (put the long edges with all the goo on them at the ends of the tube).  Slice the tube into whatever thickness you want your rolls to be (mine were about 3/4 inch, & I got 8 from the half recipe).  Bake at 400 for 8 minutes or until done looking.

Edit: If you're going to eat these after they cooled (I had 2 for breakfast and am snacking on the other 2 now), you could definitely get away with less filling, since it just crumbles all over the place and is super sugary.