I know oranges are available year round but for some reason the only time I actually want to eat a whole orange is in the early months of year when my two favorite varieties are available: Cara Cara and Blood Oranges. When they show up at my grocery store I start hording them so I’ll be able to eat as many as possible before they disappear again. I haven’t been to the grocery in a few weeks, so when I went on Monday and saw they finally had blood oranges I grabbed a bunch and decided it was a sign that I had to make something delicious out of them. I was so energized by the idea that I found myself in the kitchen at 11pm later that night making these scones. If I had any regrets about staying up too late I forgot them as soon as I took a bite of one the next morning.

As I said last fall, cream scones are the only way to go. All the scones I’ve tried to make without cream were dry and dense and almost inedible. After some searching I think I have finally found the ultimate cream scone recipe. I say ultimate, because they are literally all cream scones. There’s no butter, there’s no eggs, there’s just lots of sweet, sweet whipping cream and these scones are all the better for it. Heck, there’s hardly any sugar in the recipe, if it weren’t for all the cream it could practically be health food. I thought the lack of sugar and butter were going to result in dry scones but these are soft and fluffy and light. I even substituted some whole wheat flour for the white flour but other than the scones being a bit flatter than they were supposed to be the texture wasn’t really affected.

I adapted to recipe to make use of my oranges by mixing in some of the zest and also making some more orange sugar to sprinkle on top. I also mixed in a bag of one of my favorite snacks, dried tart cherries, which compliments the orange flavor perfectly. This recipe is ridiculously easy—the less you handle the dough, the better these are going to be—and has very few ingredients so you could easily adapt it to use your favorite citrus and dried fruit mix-ins. I’m already planning a blueberry-lemon version. You could even replace all the citrus zest with a spice. Apple-cinnamon maybe?

I really wanted to showcase those blood oranges so when I found this blood orange caramel sauce recipe I knew it would be a perfect way to finish these scones. I know it may seem like sugar overload to put a caramel sauce on top of something that is sprinkled with sugar but the scones only have 1/4 cup of sugar in them, so they are just barely sweet by themselves. As long as you drizzle the caramel on lightly it’s not overpowering at all. It’s sweet but the juice from the blood orange adds a wonderful tartness to it. It was hard to drizzle it on the scones and not just eat it by the spoonful! These scones still taste great with only the orange sugar on top so feel free to omit the caramel sauce but it’s a real treat if you want to make the effort for it.

The way I know I finally found the perfect scone recipe is that my boyfriend loves them. This is a big deal because he hates scones. He’ll usually eat anything you put in front of him and doesn’t complain but we’ve actually had discussions about his hatred of scones because of how dry they are. When he grabbed one this afternoon I told him he’d hate it but he ate it quietly and then 10 minutes later went back for another. According to him, these can’t be scones because they’re actually good. I guess that’s the power of whipping cream.

Click here to get the recipe for Cherry-Orange Cream Scones with Blood Orange Caramel Sauce »

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Hello January, we meet again. I used to try to make resolutions, the usual ones about going on a diet, exercising more, etc. but after years of pretty much not ever following through I’m officially giving up resolutions. I know it’s the New Year and that seems like a great time to “start over” but January just never works for me. The cold weather makes it hard for to get motivated to go walking (the only form of exercise I enjoy) and I crave lots of warm and hearty foods that are rarely low-calorie. And even if I do make some progress in January, February comes along and there’s Valentine’s Day and my birthday and I lose all my motivation.

So I’m not going to bother going on a diet this year or maybe ever again. I’m just going to keep doing what I’ve been working on since I started this blog: eat more real food like fruits and vegetables and a little less carbs, sugar and processed crap. That’s why I was really happy to get this new cookbook for Christmas, Green Market Baking Book which is a beautiful cookbook filled with recipes that use natural sweeteners like maple syrup and honey instead of processed sugar.

This butternut squash cake was the first thing that popped out at me because I had two butternut squash waiting for me to do something with them. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting this cake to be that good, but I figured it was worth a try just to use up some squash. Besides being made only with maple syrup, this recipe uses oil instead of butter and I figured without butter or sugar that it would wind up being dense and flat. But it’s always nice to be surprised, so I was glad to find out that all my preconceptions about this cake were totally wrong.

This is called a cake, but it actually reminds me more of a quick bread like my mom’s Applesauce Bread, it’s filled with spices like cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg, which are really what give it flavor, while the pureed butternut squash adds moisture. Butternut squash is pretty much interchangeable with pumpkin so you can easily substitute pumpkin puree instead if you still have tons of canned pumpkin in your pantry. I’ve made this recipe twice, first as cupcakes and now in mini loaf pans; both times they have come out fluffier and more moist than just about any cake or muffin I’ve ever made.

Using maple syrup as a sweetener gives the cakes a subtle sweetness that’s nice but not cloying. I added a maple-cream cheese glaze on top since it seemed kind of plain on it’s own. The glaze does contain powdered sugar, but I couldn’t really find an alternative. I originally tried a cream cheese frosting that was sweetened with only maple syrup, but it just didn’t taste good. The cream cheese was too overpowering and it wasn’t sweet like a frosting should be. This glaze has maple syrup and sugar, so it wound up being much more successful. And that nice sharp cream cheese flavor contrasts well with the spices in the cake. You don’t even need very much glaze, just a little bit drizzled on top is perfect.

Click here to get the recipe for Butternut Squash Cakes with Maple-Cream Cheese Glaze »

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I almost didn’t think I’d make it, but it looks like I’ll be able to squeeze in one final post in 2011. I was in crazy work deadline mode the week before Christmas and barely had time to cook anything much less photograph and post it here. After I got all my work done, I went a little cooking crazy figuring something I make over the weekend would be worth posting but it turns out everything has already been posted! I made Chicken and Dumplings and Honey Cornbread on Christmas Eve. The next day, we had our traditional Christmas dinner of glazed ham and my mom’s famous “Pineapple Stuff.” For dessert I made mini Oreo and Peppermint Bark cheesecakes and we snacked on my favorite Mint-Chocolate Shortbread Cookies all weekend long.

It was definitely a satisfying Christmas, food and gift-wise, but I couldn’t help but feel a bit panicked on Monday morning when I realized I didn’t have any new recipes. And after cooking and baking so much over the weekend I was feeling too lazy to make much else, especially anything else with a ton of sugar. So I did what I always do (at least in the past few months) when I feel too lazy to cook: I made grits. And then as I was spooning them into my mouth, straight from the pot (why bother having to wash another bowl!) I realized this was the perfect thing to post this week.

Since I grew up in Mississippi and Tennessee grits were always a staple at our breakfast table, but I kind of forgot about them when I started cooking for myself. I was reminded of how much I like grits when I made Shrimp and Grits awhile back and I’ve been eating them regularly again ever since. Grits are wonderfully warm and comforting and they are dead easy to make. Perfect for after a major holiday when you don’t want to cook or anytime when you need a quick, easy breakfast or dinner.

Grits don’t really have much of a taste on their own, they are basically a, well, grittier form of cornmeal. Most of the time I eat my grits plain with butter, salt and pepper. It’s simple, but it’s still delicious. But grits are also a great vehicle for different meats and cheeses and it’s fun to experiment with them when I’m feeling adventurous. We still had tons of ham leftover from Christmas so this turned out to be a great way to use some of it up. And you can’t wrong by adding cheese to anything.

If you follow the instructions on the back of the grits container, you’d think grits were made with all water. But anyone who does that is missing out! I always use half water and half milk in my grits. The milk makes them smoother and creamier and just plain better. And since it’s still December and I’m not in “diet mode” yet, I splurged and used half & half instead of my usual 1% milk to make these grits extra creamy and rich.

This is a really flexible recipe, obviously bacon or pancetta would work just as well as ham and you can substitute any number of cheeses. Or you can omit all that stuff and just make plain ol’ grits. Whatever version you settle on, it’s the perfect comfort food for a cold winter day.

Click here to get the recipe for Creamy White Cheddar Grits with Ham »

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I went to high school in a teeny-tiny mountaintop town in Tennessee. At the time it only had two options for fast food: Hardees and a rundown Dairy Queen (it later got a McDonald’s because even teeny-tiny towns on a mountain need a McDonald’s) I don’t even like Hardees, but when you’re in boarding school and the only other option is cafeteria food, you’ll eat pretty much anywhere else when you get the chance.

But there is one thing at Hardees that I always looked forward to eating: their Cinnamon ‘N’ Raisin biscuits. If you’ve never had one before, it tastes like a cinnamon roll but it’s a cinnamon biscuit covered in icing. So basically it’s like crack. I could eat those biscuits all day long. It seriously brightened my day when my friend would come into school carrying a carton of cinnamon biscuits just for me. I don’t eat much fast food anymore, especially not for breakfast so I’ve only had the biscuits a handful of times over the past 10 years. (It’s probably better that way!) But they’ll still pop into my head on a weekend morning every once in a while and I’ll wish I had gotten up earlier.

The past week was crazy busy with work and I barely had any time to cook much less photograph and post a new recipe. But I finally finished a big project, so on Sunday morning I was excited to get back into my kitchen. The cinnamon biscuits popped into my head again, but this time I thought, Well, why don’t you make them yourself? So I did!

I started with my favorite Southern biscuit recipe as the base. I’ve tried lots of biscuit recipes over the years and these are the best I’ve found. They’re moist and fluffy and have just the right amount of butter without ending up greasy. (The one part I’ve always disliked about those Hardees cinnamon biscuits is how greasy they are so these homemade biscuits are a much better alternative.) I recommend that you go over and read Virginia’s post for lots of great biscuit making tips before you make this recipe. For instance, did you that you should press your biscuit cutter straight down and never twist it? Twisting makes the biscuits rise unevenly. I’m a lifelong biscuit twister so sometimes I still do it without thinking but I’m trying to reform my bad ways.

Instead of using raisins like the Hardees biscuits I decided I wanted to use apples instead. I like apples a lot more than raisins, plus I had somehow accumulated over 5 lbs. of apples that needed to be used up! You can substitute raisins or even throw them in along with the apples if you want. I imagine pear would also work great in these biscuits.

And since I was using apples, I decided to make a caramel icing instead of the standard cinnamon roll icing. The thought of caramel put a little fear into my heart after my last attempt at caramel which took 4 tries, but there was nothing to worry about because this icing only takes about 3 minutes to make. I was really surprised how much it tastes like caramel even though it’s so simple. The sweet, buttery glaze turned out to be the perfect topping for the apple cinnamon biscuits. The glazed biscuits are soft and warm and gooey but you still get a tender crunch of apple in every bite.

The thing I love most about this recipe is that it has that feeling of treating yourself to something decadent like a cinnamon roll but without having to bother with waiting for things to rise or cook for a long time. The biscuits don’t have many ingredients and they’re best if the dough is handled lightly and quickly, so you only need to put the smallest amount of time and effort into kneading and rolling out the dough. And then they’re in and out of the oven in 10 minutes! It’s a perfect breakfast for a lazy weekend morning.

Click here to get the recipe for Caramel Apple Cinnamon Biscuits »

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Recipe inspiration can come from some funny places. I decided to make these muffins after buying some cute red cupcake liners from Target. I just knew I had to put something with apple in them (and it helped that I had basket full of apples waiting for me at home). I promise I’ll move on to something else besides apples after this, but I had to share this recipe because I was so happy with how these turned out.

It’s a little hard to tell from the pictures what exactly these muffins are since many of the components are a similar color, so let me just describe it for you: it starts with a graham cracker crust on the bottom (like a little pie!), the muffin is a spiced applesauce cake with cinnamon cream cheese in the middle and it’s all topped with caramelized apples. Basically, I was torn between making a pie or cake, so I decided to combine them!

I got the idea for adding the graham cracker crust from a different recipe I saw on Pinterest last month and it works spectacularly well with the spiced apple cake. It’s almost like an upside-down streusel, because it adds the same kind of crunchy (but still soft and easy to bite through) texture but it’s on the bottom of the muffin instead of the top. It’s so good! I want to put a graham cracker crust on all my muffins from now on. I was this close to actually putting a streusel on top, too, but decided that simple caramelized apples would be much better. These muffins are sweet enough, they don’t need an extra sugary topping.

This recipe has a lot of ingredients and components, but don’t be intimidated! You will have most of these ingredients in your kitchen already and each component is very simple and easy to prepare. Everyone knows how to make graham cracker crust, right? (If you don’t, it’s time to learn!) The muffins are based on my tried and true applesauce bread recipe, which I modified to be a bit healthier by adding some whole wheat flour and subbing some nutrient-rich maple syrup for the sugar. To caramelize the apples you just need to cook them on the stove with a little butter, cinnamon and sugar until they’re nice and tender; it takes less than 10 minutes. While the apples cook, you can (literally and figuratively) whip up the cream cheese filling in a mixer.

I just find these apple pie muffins so satisfying. To take a bite and get all the flavors from graham cracker crumbs, apple pie spices, cream cheese and caramelized apples just makes me happy. One muffin with all my favorite things! They’re perfect for breakfast or dessert on another lovely fall day.

Click here to get the recipe for Apple Pie Cream Cheese Muffins »

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I hope you guys like pumpkin and apples because those are pretty much the only two ingredients I’m interested in baking with for at least another month (ok, that’s probably not true…I may have to use chocolate at some point). In fact, I’ve been going back and forth since last week about whether I should post another apple recipe or another pumpkin recipe and finally the idea came to me to put both of them together in one recipe for pumpkin-apple pancakes!

Brandon is on a business trip this week which means I’m not putting effort into making dinner, instead I’ve been eating lots of pancakes. You see, I was looking for the best pumpkin pancakes to share which meant I had to try several different recipes. I know, it was a tough job. But ultimately the one I like best is this one from Nicole at Pinch My Salt. The recipe is healthy and mostly whole wheat but you still get light and fluffy pancakes.

After how great my apple scones turned out last week, I want to put grated apple in everything so adding it to pumpkin pancakes sounded like a good idea. Plus, I already know those ingredients work well together from making Pumpkin Apple Streusel Muffins. I also added in a little apple cider to amp up the apple flavor. That plus the grated apple makes these pancakes extra moist and adds natural sweetness.

I had lots of apple cider to use up after buying a bottle of it for another recipe, so when I saw the recipe for apple cider syrup I figured it was worth a try. I’m so glad I did because this stuff is delicious! It’s sort of a cross between a sauce and syrup and it tastes just like cooked apples but without any of the actual apples. I kind of want to put it on everything now…or maybe just eat it by the spoonful. It would be great on ice cream or an apple version of these dumplings.

This recipe is handy because it’s two in one. You can make pumpkin-apple pancakes or you can omit the apple/apple cider and just have plain pumpkin pancakes. And the apple cider syrup is going to be good no matter what kind of pancakes you pour it on. If you’re like me you may want to make extra just so you can have these pancakes for breakfast and dinner.

Click here to get the recipe for Pumpkin-Apple Pancakes with Apple Cider Syrup »

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I’ve been learning to cook for several years now and I finally feel like I’m getting a handle on adapting recipes and improvising to suit my needs, but since I never went to culinary school or anything like that some of the science behind making food still eludes me. Baking can be especially tricky since I’ve been trying to use more whole grain flours and they don’t have quite the same properties as white flour. Today’s recipe comes from what I originally thought of as a baking failure, but through some quick thinking I was able to turn it into something pretty awesome.

This started out as a recipe for apple scones because I needed to use up some of the apples I’ve been getting in my CSA box the past few weeks. I like scones but have always had trouble making them on my own. I can’t think of any scones I’ve made that didn’t turn out dry and crispy. Blech. That is until these apple scones. It turns out the secret to soft and moist scones is using cream. And here I’ve been trying to make low fat scones for years not knowing that you just shouldn’t bother. Seriously. Some things just aren’t meant to be low fat and that’s ok. I’d rather treat myself to a couple of absolutely delicious scones and give the rest away than have to eat a bunch of rock hard cardboard scones that are low fat.

Even though I made my peace with using cream and butter I decided to try to offset that stuff a little bit by replacing some of the white flour with oats and whole wheat flour. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize that this would keep the scones from rising at all. I was all set to be angry and declare them a failure until I tasted one. It was the best scone I’ve ever tasted. Despite its flatness it was soft and moist and slightly sweet with just enough apple pie spice in it. Just perfect. I had been worried that the grated apple and oats would wind up making the scones kind of chunky but both ingredients basically disintegrated in the oven so the crumb turned out very smooth and fluffy.

I looked at my flat apple scones and realized that they looked like halves of a whole scone and that I just needed to put something in the middle. That’s when I got the idea for a fall version of strawberry shortcakes with apples and pears instead. The scones hold together great and can support the weight of a filling, but are soft enough that a fork can cut right through all the layers. I made the filling by simmering apples and pears together with brown sugar and spices until they were soft and syrupy. Then I whipped up some cinnamon whipped cream to put on top of the fruit. Finally after covering everything with another scone I drizzled on some of the leftover spiced syrup from the fruit filling.

The best part of this recipe is that you can get so many different meals out of it. Besides making shortcakes you can eat most of the components by themselves. The apple scones are great on their own for breakfast. They’re even better slathered with spiced maple butter. I’ve had honey butter before, but I think I like maple butter even better. I can’t wait to try it on some waffles or pancakes!

The spiced apples and pears double as a side dish with dinner or as a dessert that you can top with ice cream or the cinnamon whipped cream. Either way, your kitchen will smell wonderful afterward.

In the end, I think this has to be my favorite fall dessert I’ve ever made and I hadn’t even planned on making it. I can only hope that my future baking mistakes will turn out as well as this one did.

Click here to get the recipe for Spiced Apple and Pear Shortcakes (and Apple Scones) »

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It’s finally here! Friday is the first day of Fall and I’m so ready for it. The weather has even been cooperating with temps in the 60s this past week. I’ve been baking like mad since the beginning of September but these pumpkin muffins were my inaugural Fall treat and they did not disappoint. I got inspired to make them after cleaning out my pantry and refrigerator and finding that I still had 4 cans of pumpkin puree and 2 bags of frozen cranberries. I like to stock up on things, can’t you tell?

I’d been wanting to make my favorite quick bread recipe ever: my mom’s Applesauce Bread because it always feels like fall to me. But I decided to play around with the recipe and make it into pumpkin muffins. I subbed pumpkin puree for applesauce, some of the sugar for maple syrup and some of the spices for pumpkin pie spice. The pumpkin version turned out just as good as the original! These muffins have a very moist and cakey crumb and the pumpkin flavor really shines through.

The cranberries add a wonderful tart contrast to the sweet bread. I know fresh cranberries probably aren’t available in most grocery stores yet, so if you don’t have any leftover from last year or your grocery store doesn’t have any frozen ones, you could use dried cranberries. Even if you have fresh cranberries, I think it’s easier to freeze them beforehand because then you don’t have to worry about streaky batter when you’re stirring them in.

Since I love muffins with a topping and I took a page from these muffins (still my go-to muffin recipe) and sprinkled some pumpkin granola on top. Because you can never have too much pumpkin! I provided a recipe for the granola (adapted slightly from Two Peas and Their Pod’s recipe) which is great on it’s own. You can use store bought granola if you want, but the flavors in the pumpkin granola really complement the muffins.

And lastly, this is not remotely necessary (especially if you don’t want the extra calories) but it makes these muffins extra, extra delicious: I drizzled some orange glaze on top! Pumpkin + Cranberry + Orange sounds like maybe a bit of flavor overload but they complement each other so well and the orange is pretty subtle anyway. The glaze makes these muffins taste extra indulgent despite being fairly healthy. I recommend drizzling it on right before you eat the muffins so it’ll still be gooey. Perfect!

P.S. – Thanks to everyone who commented on last week’s post to enter the giveaway! The winner is G.g. Cesternino Baird. Congrats!

Click here to get the recipe for Pumpkin Cranberry Crunch Muffins »

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I go back and forth a lot on what my favorite food is, but donuts are definitely in the top five and likely to be in the top spot most days. Despite that, I don’t buy them very much. I’m just not the kind of person who can eat one donut and be satisfied. And ultimately, I don’t mind staying away from donuts because then when I do eat them they taste pretty magical.

But sometimes you just get a craving that won’t go away. I’ve made homemade donuts before but was not in the mood for the hassle of cutting and frying dough and I don’t have one of those donut pans to make cake donuts in. Then I remembered this recipe for donut muffins that I printed out ages ago and decided it was finally time to give it a try. Cut to this week, now the second time I’ve made them in the past month and I think I have a problem. I can’t stop making them! No, they aren’t quite as good as real fried donuts, but they do have the exact same taste and texture of cake donuts and are extremely easy to whip up. These muffins more than satisfy my donut craving.

The original recipe is just a plain muffin that you can dip in sugar or coat in glaze. They’re delicious, of course, but I found the muffins to be a bit dry, especially if you can’t eat them all within a couple days of baking them. The second time I made the recipe I decided to experiment, so I threw in a bunch of blueberries and then coated the muffins in a lemony glaze. Now I’m not sure I’ll ever want to make the plain version again. The blueberries give the muffins the moistness they were lacking and the lemony glaze adds a little “tart” to contrast with the sweetness of the muffins.

And while these muffins are not remotely healthy, (I tried to tell myself the blueberries make them good for you– not really, but it’s better than nothing!) they are large and dense so I was full after eating one or two. When I have donuts I pretty much want to eat the whole box, so these muffins are much better for me in the long run.

I made half of the muffins with the lemon glaze and I coated the other half in cinnamon-sugar. You could also coat them in powdered sugar if you prefer. Both versions are great, though next time I think I’m going to add some lemon juice and/or lemon zest to batter, not just the glaze. Lemon and blueberries are just too good together, I wanted more lemon in there!

The only nitpick I have about this recipe is that the muffins need to be eaten within about 2 days. The plain version gets too dry after two days and the blueberry version gets soggy. You may want to half the recipe if you have a small family. Otherwise, I promise you will make your coworkers, friends or neighbors very, very happy by giving away the extra.

Click here to get the recipe for Lemon-glazed Blueberry Donut Muffins »

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I have a confession: I don’t really like yogurt. I’ve tried so many times over the years to make myself like it, but it always ends with me having to throw out a bunch of expired yogurt containers. But then I made that Cherry-Rhubarb Fool last month and I realized that yogurt can be good as long as it’s the base for something else. So yogurt by itself = meh, but yogurt + fruit + whipped cream = yum.

Last week I got some absolutely gorgeous peaches and cherries from my CSA and I had big container of yogurt that was close to expiring, so I decided combining them would be a great way to use everything up. But instead of mixing it all together like I did with the fool I made it a yogurt parfait. Because what’s more fun than a parfait? It just feels so much more decadent than a simple bowl of yogurt topped with fruit. Sometimes I have to trick myself into eating things that are better for me and this is a trick that worked really well.

This is a dead simple recipe to prepare and you could substitute lots of different fruit or berries depending on what you have on hand. The fruit is tossed in a simple syrup infused with lemon and orange. I put a layer of yogurt between the fruit and then topped the whole thing with some fresh whipped cream. It makes an incredibly satisfying breakfast or dessert.

I’m glad to have found a way to make yogurt more palatable for myself, but still, I have to admit that yogurt is not terribly exciting. But Maple Granola Brittle? That is pretty exciting to me. I couldn’t really say for sure how healthy this stuff is for you since it does have quite a bit of sugar, but it at least contains lots of other good ingredients like oats and almonds and fresh orange juice. And that’s good because this brittle is addictive. I’ve been snacking on it all week long!

The recipe is relatively simple to prepare, too: start with some granola, cook sugar, maple syrup and orange juice together until it caramelizes, add the granola to the caramel and roll everything flat. It dries hard, but it’s thin enough that it’s not difficult to chew. When you break it up into smaller pieces it’s like eating little granola cookies. The maple and orange flavors really shine, so I highly recommend using good quality syrup and fresh squeezed orange juice.

This brittle is perfect to serve with the yogurt parfait since its crunchiness is such a great contrast with the soft yogurt and fruit. You can play with the granola mix to add in your favorite kinds of nuts or seeds. I don’t like lots of “stuff” in my granola so I just put in some chopped up almonds and ground up flaxseed, but you can add in or substitute pecans, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds or whatever else you like.

Click here to get the recipe for Cherry-Peach Yogurt Parfaits with Maple Granola Brittle »

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