No-Knead Christmas Pudding Cinnamon Rolls for #TwelveLoaves

Leftover rum-soaked Christmas pudding makes a fabulously rich filling, along with more cinnamon and brown sugar, for classic cinnamon rolls.  If you don’t have leftover pud, feel free to use just brown sugar and cinnamon.  

As expats, we’ve moved around a lot.  Most houses had company furniture and the carpets and paintings and personal effects were the only things that made them feel like ours.  We’d tell our girls, “Home is where we are all together.”  This got more challenging when both girls went off to university and their father and I continued to move.  They have bedrooms with some of their stuff in our current house in Dubai, but it would be a far stretch to say it’s home for them since they’ve never really lived there, except for holidays.  This year we are taking that mantra to extremes, celebrating Christmas and New Year’s Eve in a rented house, found on Airbnb.  We didn’t know if our elder daughter would have any time off from her job and, so, if Christmas was going to be spent as a family, as it must be, we would have to come to her.  We flew in from Dubai, collected younger daughter from her school housing, elder daughter from New York, and then both grandmothers flew up from Texas.  The house is full!  It's now a home.

This is a big, long prelude to telling you that we find ourselves in the small Rhode Island town of Tiverton where the only grocery store didn’t have any yeast on Christmas Eve.  And younger daughter wanted to make cinnamon rolls to bake on Christmas morning.  In desperation, I went into the small pizza place across from the grocery store and asked if they could sell me some yeast.  The kind owner did better than that!  He handed over a large chunk of fresh yeast with a hearty “Merry Christmas!”  We had traditional cinnamon rolls on Christmas morning and then I made a pan of these non-traditional ones to bring to Classic Pizza as a thank you.  It makes the perfect recipe for my first post for #TwelveLoaves, a group dedicated to bread in all its forms.  This month’s theme is Keep It Simple, and what could be easier than a yeast bread that doesn’t requiring an electric mixer or any kneading?

Credit for the traditional cinnamon roll recipe goes to Baked Bree.

Ingredients

For the dough:
2 tablespoons fresh yeast cake or 1 package (1/4oz or 7g) dried yeast
1 cup or 240g milk
1/2 cup or 115g sugar plus 1 teaspoon for proofing the yeast
1/3 cup or 75g room temperature butter plus extra for greasing pan
1 teaspoon salt
2 room temperature eggs
4 cups or 500g flour plus extra for rolling out the dough

For the filling:
About 1 cup chopped up leftover Christmas pudding, preferably one infused with rum
1/2 cup or 100g dark brown sugar
2 tablespoons cinnamon
1/4 cup or 60g room temperature butter
or
1 cup or 200g brown sugar
2 1/2 tablespoons cinnamon
1/3 cup or 75g room temperature butter
1 tablespoon flour

Method
Warm your milk to about 125°F or 52°C.  If you don’t have a thermometer, just warm it until it’s hot but you can still put your finger in it comfortably for 15 seconds without wanting to pull it back out and shout, “Ouch.”  Pour it into a small bowl and then crumble in the fresh yeast or sprinkle on the dried yeast.  Add one teaspoon of sugar and give the mixture a gentle stir.  Set aside.

In a large bowl, whisk your eggs, butter, sugar and salt until well combined.

Check on your milk/yeast mixture.  It should look frothy on top.  If it’s not, your yeast is dead and you need to buy more.  Let’s assume yours is frothy.

Pour it into the bowl with the egg mixture and whisk well.

Add in 1/2 cup or 125g of flour and mix well.  You will have a thick batter.

Now add in the rest of the flour 1 cup or about 250g at a time, mixing with a wooden spoon or stiff spatula.

You will have very soft dough and it may look like the flour won’t all mix in.  Never mind.  We are keeping it simple!

Just trust and cover the bowl with cling film and a towel and put it in warm place for one hour.

Meanwhile, make your filling by combining all of your ingredients in a medium-sized bowl and stirring with a fork until thoroughly mixed.

Grease your baking pan liberally with butter.  Choose one that will comfortably hold about 12 or 13 large cinnamon rolls.  Mine was 11 3/4 x 9 1/4 in or  30 x 24cm.

When the hour is up, punch down the dough and sprinkle your work surface lightly with flour.

After the first rise.

Roll the dough out in a rectangle about 12 x 18 in or 30 x 45cm.

Sprinkle on your filling of choice and make sure you get some all the way out to the edges.  Roll the dough up from the long side.

Cut the roll into 1 1/2 in or 3 3/4cm slices and put them cut side up in your prepared baking pan.

Cover the pan with cling film and a towel and put in a warm place to rise for another hour.

After the second rise.

When the hour is almost up, preheat your oven to 400°F or 200°C.

Bake your rolls in the preheated oven for 10 to 15 minutes or until golden brown and cooked through.

Serve plain or with cream cheese icing.

Enjoy!

Or give the whole pan to someone who saved Christmas breakfast for you and wish them a Happy New Year!

                                          

If you love bread but have found the holidays hectic, this is the #TwelveLoaves month for you!  Check out all of our recipes that Keep It Simple!

• Broiled White Free-Form Loaf by Lora at Cake Duchess
• Buttermilk Honey Bread by Renee at Kudos Kitchen by Renee
• Country Boule with Spelt and Sourdough by Karen at Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Crumpets by Felice at All That's Left Are The Crumbs
• No Knead Bread from Holly at A Baker's House
• No-Knead Christmas Pudding Cinnamon Rolls by Stacy at Food Lust People Love
• Pumpkin Bread by Alice at Hip Foodie Mom
• Soda Bread by Rossella at Ma che ti sei mangiato
• Sour Cream Drop Biscuits by Renee at Magnolia Days
• Sweet Potato Fry Bread by Anne at From My Sweet Heart
• Victorian Milk Bread by Deepti at Bakingyummies
• Whole Wheat and Molasses Quick Bread by Liz at That Skinny Chick Can Bake

If you’d like to join us for this month’s #TwelveLoaves Keep It Simple challenge, choose a recipe that is not overly complicated, whether in technique or ingredients.

Then share your January Keep It Simple Bread (yeast or quick bread) on your blog.

If you’d like to add your bread to the collection with the Linky Tool this month, here are the rules!
1. When you post your Twelve Loaves bread recipe on your blog, make sure that you mention the Twelve Loaves challenge in your blog post; this helps us to get more members as well as share everyone's posts.
2. Post your Twelve Loaves bread on your blog by January 31, 2014.
3. It must be a bread inspired by the Twelve Loaves Keep It Simple theme, baked between January 1, 2014 and January 31, 2014.

#TwelveLoaves is a monthly bread baking party created by Lora from Cake Duchess.  #TwelveLoaves runs so smoothly thanks to the talented and brilliant help of both Paula from Vintage Kitchen Notes and Renee from Magnolia Days.

Brown Sugar Browned Butter Maple Muffins

Browned butter and brown sugar add a depth and richness to these maple syrup muffins that make them perfect for a Sunday morning brunch or midmorning snack. 

Here’s a confession guaranteed to get me disowned by any Canadians that may have once loved me:  At our house, we use Aunt Jemima Butter Lite syrup on waffles and pancakes and French toast.  In fact, on anything that would normally require maple syrup.  Truth is, I’ve never done a side-by-side taste comparison with the real thing because we love our Aunt Jemima.  It's one of things I've hauled in great quantities to the various countries we've lived over the last 26 years. It tastes like home.  It’s sweet but not too sweet, and that added butter flavor (Yeah, I know it doesn’t have real butter and the flavoring will probably be found to cause horrible cell mutations someday but for now, we are blissful in our ignorance.) makes adding butter optional.  If anyone wants to give me a bottle of the real stuff, I promise to keep an open mind and perform a blindfolded taste test.  But just know that until then, when I say “maple,” I really mean Aunt Jemima Butter Lite.  Feel free to substitute your favorite syrup.

Ingredients
2 cups or 250g flour
1/2 cup, packed, or 100g dark brown sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup or 120ml milk
1/3 cup browned butter, at room temperature (Start with 7 tablespoons or 100g of butter and follow these easy instructions.)
3/4 cup or 180ml maple syrup
1 large egg

Method
Preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C and prepare your 12-cup muffin pan by greasing it thoroughly or spraying with non-stick spray or lining it with paper muffin cups.

In a large bowl, mix together the flour, brown sugar, baking powder and salt and stir well.

In another bowl, whisk together the milk, browned butter, syrup and egg.

Pour your wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and fold them together until just mixed.

Bake in the preheated oven about 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

Cool on a rack for a few minutes and then remove the muffins to cool completely.

Enjoy!

Muffin Monday is an initiative by Baker Street, a culinary journey of sharing a wickedly delicious muffin recipe every week. Drop her a quick line to join her journey to make the world smile and beat glum Monday mornings week after week.

Plus learn all you ever need to know about muffins at Muffin 101.

Apple Brown Betty Bread Pudding

If you’ve been reading along for a while, you might recall when I belonged to a group called Cooked in Translation.  The idea was to take a recipe and give it a twist into another culture.  I enjoyed the monthly challenge and was disappointed when the group fell apart.  This recipe is one I made for Cooked in Translation but never posted, a fusion of the American classic apple brown Betty and the English classic bread pudding.  As it’s apple season in the northern hemisphere, I thought this might be a good time to share it.  This is a comfort dessert, if there ever was one.  On both sides of the big pond.

Ingredients
1 cup or 200g dark brown sugar
1/2 cup or 115g sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 eggs
1 cup or 240ml heavy whipping cream
1/2 cup or 120ml milk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
7 slices or about 9-10 oz or 255-280g strong white or wheat bread
3 whole apples, preferably Granny Smith or similar
1/4 cup or about 55g butter plus extra for greasing the baking dish

Recommended for serving:  more heavy whipping cream

Method
Preheat your oven to 375°F or 190°C and prepare your baking dish by buttering it liberally and completely.   Don’t be shy with the butter here.

Mix the sugars together thoroughly with the salt.

Whisk your eggs with the whipping cream, milk and vanilla.

Slice bread into a small dice, or tear into very small pieces.

Peel, core and thinly slice your three apples.

Sprinkle a little less than one-third of the brown sugar in the buttered baking dish.

Then add about one-third of the apple slices then one-third of the bread cubes.

Repeat these layers twice more, finishing the last time with small chunks of butter rather than bread and the balance of the sugar mixture.

So it goes: Sugar, apples, bread - sugar, apples, bread - sugar, apples, sugar, butter.  Got it?  Easy peasy.

Pour on the whisked egg mixture and top with a bit of cling film.  Press down gently on the whole thing and leave to sit for a few minutes so that the bread absorbs the liquid.

Remove the cling film and cover the baking pan with foil.  Bake in a 375-degree oven for about 45 minutes.

Remove the foil in last five to 10 minutes of baking to brown the top.  This is most delicious served warm.

Bread pudding is one of my husband’s all-time favorite desserts and he insists that it is incomplete without a generous pour of whipping cream on top.  This now applies to Apple Brown Betty Bread Pudding.  Pour it on!

See the sticky syrup that was created?  YUM. 

Enjoy!

Banana Honey Bran Muffins #MuffinMonday

These lovely banana honey bran muffins, made with mashed bananas and sweetened banana chips, are further sweetened with honey and dark brown sugar.

In honor of the Academy Awards last night, I’d like to nominate this muffin for Best Muffin in a Supporting Role.  It’s got your fiber in the form of bran flake cereal as well as honey and egg and banana for your essential nutrients and protein.  (Did you know that honey can stop the growth of cancer?!  Read it in my local paper just this morning!)  And for a little crunch and extra banana flavor:  sweetened banana chips.  Truth be told, these are probably the healthiest muffins I’ve ever made.  (Yeah, yeah.  I know that isn’t saying much, coming from the woman who puts candy bars and cookies in muffins.)  But they are also tasty.

Ingredients
1 1/2 oz or 1 cup or 43g bran flake cereal
1/4 cup or 60ml cream
1/4 cup or 60ml milk
1 1/2 cups or 190g flour
1/4 cup firmly packed or 50g dark brown sugar
2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup  or 60ml canola oil
1 large ripe banana
4 tablespoons honey
1 egg
1 cup or 100g sweetened banana chips

Method
Preheat your oven to 375°F or 190°C and prepare your 12-cup muffin pan by inserting paper liners or spraying with a non-stick spray.

Soak your bran flakes in the cream and milk and set aside.  (If you are serious about the health thing, by all means use all milk, even low fat.)

Into a large mixing bowl, measure your flour, brown sugar, baking powder and salt.   Give it a good stir.

In a small mixing bowl, mash your banana with a fork and then add in the oil, honey and the egg.  Whisk well.

Use a sharp knife to chop the banana chips into smaller pieces and set aside about one quarter (eyeball it, no need to measure) for topping.

Add your soaked bran flakes (and any milk/cream from that bowl) into the egg mixture and stir well.

Fold the wet ingredients into the dry, stopping before they are completely mixed.  There will still be some flour visible.

Add in the bigger pile of chopped banana chips and fold some more.

Divide your batter between the prepared muffin cups.  Sprinkle the tops with the remaining banana chips.

Bake for 20-25 minutes or until golden.  Meanwhile practice your Best Supporting Muffin acceptance/thank you speech.  Don’t forget to thank your parents for raising you right.

Remove from the oven and cool for a few minutes in the pan.  Remove to a wire rack to finish cooling.

Enjoy!