Fiber Fool

Several weeks ago I saw a pin on Pinterest for Smitten Kitchen’s Gingerbread Dutch Baby from her recently released cookbook posted on My Daily Morsel. I was intrigued. Anything that uses molasses and gingerbread spices is right up my alley! I knew I liked the nutrition info of my whole wheat German pancake recipe already, so I altered it rather than following the dutch baby recipe.

To boost the protein of the German pancake we frequently serve it with yogurt. Sometimes we use Greek yogurt and a favorite homemade jam or fruit butter. Other times we use a locally made Australian style yoghurt, Noosa. Most often I’d say we use the strawberry rhubarb Noosa, but when I thought about became obsessed with a gingerbread version I couldn’t get the honey Noosa out of my mind.

So a week ago or so we gave it a go and *loved* it. Though for some reason we had a fair bit of sticking going on in the stainless steel skillet I generally use. I don’t know if that skillet is up for a light scouring or if the sugar and molasses added to the batter is to blame. But when we declared the recipe a success. We set out to make it again on this past snowy Sunday morning so I could take pictures, but we opted for the new environmentally friendly non-stick skillet we got for Christmas thanks to my grandparents.

The non-stick worked really well. In fact, there was enough slip that I could have put it on a platter to cut and serve it. Though if you compare the final product of this version to my original whole wheat version you’ll see this one is lacking the varied topography. I can’t say for certain that is due to the non-stick. It could also perhaps be due to over blending since taking pictures slowed things down a bit. But I’m thinking it was the non-stick. We did miss the crevices. Though it still tasted great and was a wonderful brunch for a snowy Sunday morning.

Whole Wheat Gingerbread German Pancake

Inspired by The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook, Adapted from Designedly, Kristi
Ingredients

• 2 Tablespoons butter, unsalted
• 3 eggs
• 2 Tablespoons blackstrap molasses
• 1/2 cup 1% low fat milk
• 1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour
• 1-1/2 Tablespoons dark brown sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon, ground
• 1/2 teaspoon ginger, ground
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg, ground
• 1/4 teaspoon clove, ground
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• toppings such as powdered sugar, maple syrup or yogurt

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Once preheated, place 9-10” skillet with butter into the oven to melt the butter.
2. In a blender, whip eggs until light colored. Add remaining ingredients except butter and blend until mixed well.
3. Pour batter into preheated pan with with melted butter. Bake 15-20 minutes or until the pancake is puffed and slightly darkened.
4. Remove from oven, cut and serve promptly.
5. Top as desired and enjoy!

It goes together super quickly when using the blender and there are little other dishes dirtied unless, like me, you prepped the dry and wet ingredients before adding them to the blender. But even that only dirties on to two extra pieces.

If you don’t have a blender you can just use a whisk or a handheld electric mixer. The result might be a tad denser, but until recently I always did my German pancake by hand.

About eleven years ago or so I set up a YahooGroup, printed some posters and starting planting my butt on a couch with my knitting in hand at a near by coffee shop in hopes of meeting some fellow knitters close to my age. I had been knitting at the main LYS at that time, but I only met much older women who were not the same type of knitter I was. After a couple of weeks of knitting alone a few people started dropping in. I never dreamt in a million years what an impact that simple act would have on my life eleven years later!

I’m only in touch with one of the very first members of the group, Ashley, who no longer lives here but has occasionally been able to visit due to work duties. Amanda is probably the next longest member of the group who is still attending our weekly gatherings. Over the years the group has experienced some very interesting people and situations. Eventually we tired of the abuse - expected free knitting lessons, free child care, outright insults of knitters when we were in the majority, people who came but refused to support the businesses that hosted us, etc. We eventually closed ranks and began meeting at houses instead of coffee shops.

The advantages of meeting in a home rather than in public were so much greater than I had imagined. I almost wish we had started doing so earlier. Though I’m afraid if we had our group wouldn’t be what it is now. We can talk freely about whatever topics we wish with no worries of offending someone with our views on controversial topics - politics, religion, the usual. Everyone knows everyone well. We can eat and drink what we like - including sharing homemade goodies. We can keep whatever hours work for that week’s hostess. And really the list goes on.

For the past couple years we’ve had a very generous default hostess, Dee. She houses us nearly every week as she has a house of her own with no one to inconvenience with our presence. When she is out of town or hosting other guests I often step in and host since I am only inconveniencing DH. There is one problem with that tactic - Dee never gets a week off combined with enjoying our group. So, last week when I was to have the house to myself on a Monday night I offered to be the temporary “clubhouse” for the week.

I always love playing hostess, even if I tend to get myself overexcited and stressed with all the things I want to do in terms of cooking and cleaning. But this time I think I managed it quite well. I only made a dip and mini doughnuts. I did have veggies to wash and cut up, but it really only took me about 20 minutes on the previous afternoon so was no big deal. The rest was bought - cheese, crackers, pistachios, tea. Of course everyone in the group is generous so there were contributions from several of the guests as well. Dee even brought a wonderful Mediterranean spiced nut and coconut mix - and I really should ask her for the recipe. As for the cleaning, I make sure there isn’t a ring around the toilet and that any dog hair bunnies are not bigger than the actual dogs and leave it at that because these women have become family. A little dust or clutter is not something to stress about.

As usual, there was way too much food, especially once you added in the contributions of others. It left a bit of an aftermath. But really I had everything put right within about 30 minutes of everyone leaving - including almost all of the dishes! I really need to give Dee a week off more often! Of course I’m not sure many would welcome my dining room come July with it’s western exposure and lack of AC - at least Dee’s house is well shaded. But, there are a few months to go before we get there.

I’m so grateful for this special group of women. We cover a broad spectrum of ages and life experiences. But we all have an analytical bent to our thinking (several are engineers, a scientist, an accountant, researchers etc.) so conversations around the table, be they about knitting or not, are always stimulating. It is also a nice break from other obligations during the week and none of us need to plan dinner on Monday nights. Plus, it gives us something to look forward to after getting through that first work day of the week!

Do you have a special group of people you gather with regularly? A crafty group, or book club, or dinner club? I just read this week about a gardening group that rotates each week. They share food and drink and then get to work in the hostess’s garden. That seems like a fun idea. What makes your group special to you?

Oh, dear readers, I tried to have a new recipe for you today for a refrigerator or icebox cookie. I find making such cookies meshes with the work schedule well. I can quickly whip together the dough one evening and bake it the next. Or even just slice and bake fresh as needed if I freeze the roll of dough.

My goal for this recipe was to have something semi-healthy, only slightly sweet, and sized so I could have 2 or 3 for a reasonable calorie count with my coffee for mid-morning fika. I find, even if small, I’m more satisfied mentally with multiples. I hit all those marks. They are good. They are about 50 calories a piece. But, they taste “everyday,” if that makes sense.

I can’t help but feel the recipe isn’t quite ready even though the results were met with much praise at knitting Monday night. The baggie (yes, an inelegant baggie, because if I had run the 2.25 miles to The Clubhouse with them in any other container they would have been refrigerator crumbs and not cookies) made two loops around the already laden table. Amanda was the only one to offer up a suggestion for improvement and that was to dip them in dark chocolate. And let’s get real, what isn’t improved by a quick dive into a pool of rich, dark chocolate? Very little if you ask me!

I do have a few ideas rolling around in my head for possible enhancements without resorting to the magic of dark chocolate. I haven’t settled on one yet. I may have to try a couple of the ideas. If waistlines in our house are to maintain their smaller dimensions I’m not making more than one batch a week! Okay, maybe I will and we’ll just bake as needed so we can taste test side-by-side. I may also need to coerce more taste testing from the knit gals to help me pick the best version.

I want to be able to present you with an easy, satisfying and somewhat special recipe, not an “everyday” one. I definitely do not want to post it as is just because it is Wednesday and I don’t have anything else food-related to share this week. I won’t promise to have it for you next week either. Maybe. But know it is coming soon!

What kind of cook or baker are you? Are you always tweaking, trying to make things better or do you follow all recipes as is and just forget them if it doesn’t really suit you?

One of the treats I’ve missed most in my two year adventure in healthier eating has been doughnuts. I’m a huge cake doughnut fan, especially of the chocolate with chocolate icing or glazed pumpkin or applesauce varieties. But dang, the calories on those are crazy. I’d have to run for nearly an hour to burn them off!

I kept seeing baked doughnuts on Pinterest and finally caved this summer and bought a doughnut pan for baking cake doughnuts at home. The first few recipes I tried from various blogs were less than satisfying. The results were rather shallow little doughnuts. The flavors were good, but the format left me still craving a doughnut. Then I decided I wanted some recipes that had been hopefully tested so I bought Lara Ferroni’s Doughnuts: Simple and Delicious Recipes to Make At Home. Success at last! I really just needed to fill the doughnut pan more and reduce the servings per recipe to get a satisfying doughnut.

Most of the baked recipes are certainly an improvement over the fried bakery variety in terms of calories and fat grams, but that was pretty much the only improvement in nutrition. They still had refined flour and sugar, things I’m trying to reduce as much as possible. So, I started tweaking the basic baked doughnut recipe of Ferroni’s to include more whole grains. The result? These Whole Grain Chai Baked Doughnuts that have on the order of 150 calories less than your standard bakery-bought variety and nearly 4g of fiber per doughnut so they will stick with you and reduce spikes in your blood sugar levels.

You start out the base doughnut recipe by scalding milk. This changes the chemistry slightly and can really aid in maintaining tenderness in baked goods. It is a common step in my most of the Swedish baked goods I make. For chai doughnuts though you add black tea to the scalded milk and let it steep for 5 minutes. It really makes the difference between chai doughnuts and say a spiced or snickerdoodle doughnut. You can use any black tea, but I used the darjeeling that I use when I make my chai concentrate.

Lara’s original recipe does call for some whole wheat pastry flour so it was not a complete departure. But I decided to add more of it, and sub the remainder of the AP flour with white whole wheat flour. If you haven’t heard of white whole wheat flour you’ve been missing out! It is naturally white, made from a different type of wheat (softer, spring wheat if I’m remembering correctly). It is *not* white because the bran has been stripped off. The bran is intact. The different protein make up of this type of wheat makes it much closer to AP flour in how it behaves and I find has an even milder flavor than traditional whole wheat flour. I frequently sub it 1:1 for AP in recipes with great results. That said, whole wheat flour, even white, can have a strong flavor, especially if you are new to increasing your whole wheat consumption. This makes these doughnuts a great place to start. The tannins in the black tea and the strong spices of chai all work together to mask the whole wheat flavor.

Speaking of spices, do yourself a favor and buy your cardamom (an essential spice in Indian cuisine and chai especially) in pods. The flavor is astronomically different than even unground, but shelled cardamom. It takes a little extra time, but is totally worth it. It actually grinds quite easily in a mortar and pestle, though you could use a spice dedicated coffee grinder too. I’d also encourage freshly ground nutmeg in this mix. If using pre-ground of either nutmeg or cardamom I’d be really tempted to nearly double the amounts so they hold up against the stronger flavors of cinnamon and ginger.

I’m often a tad lazy and don’t bother with the sifter, opting instead to just whisk all the dry ingredients together. But don’t do that here! Sifting works a good amount of air into the ingredients that actually remains in the final product and helps it develop a really nice crumb. It also serves to catch the little bits of cardamom that didn’t get ground quite fine enough.

Once all the dry ingredients are mixed, I add in the butter. The goal of this step is to coat most of the flour in fat which will impede gluten formation once we add the wet ingredients. This again helps with the crumb, keeping the donut light and cakey rather than chewy and bread-like. I find it easiest to accomplish this by cutting the butter into tiny, tiny cubes - like 1/4″ tiny. Then with just my fingers work it all into the dry ingredients until it is a consistent texture that will hold a shape if squeezed, but easily break back apart. It should seem a lot like a boxed cake mix.

Once the butter is all incorporated, I add the remaining wet ingredients to the cooled milk tea (also known as a cambric) - greek yoghurt, egg and vanilla extract and whisk it together well.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry and fold it together until everything is incorporated and then stop. The less you mix it the loftier and airier your final doughnuts will be. Since they won’t be shocked with hot oil this has proven to be one of the keys to a successful baked doughnut in my experience.

Now, transfer the batter to a piping bag with a large tip attached. If you don’t have a piping bag you can also put it in a plastic bag and snip the corner off. I find the doughnuts look more authentic when piped into the greased doughnut pan rather then spooning them. Plus it is less messy in my experience with no drips on the pan and what not.

I’ve run across some recipes that call for the wells to be filled less than 1/2 way but those resulted in rather flat doughnuts. They tasted good, but they never satisfied a doughnut craving. I fill mine about 3/4 full for a more normal-looking doughnut. It does result in more calories, but if I don’t end up stopping at the bakery for a more satisfying doughnut the next day, I’m ahead! And it is still significantly fewer calories than a bakery doughnut. You could probably get away with 2/3 or 1/2 full and get 8-10 donuts rather than my 6 if you really want. I definitely wouldn’t recommend stretching the batter any farther than that. I like the 6 because I only have to go through one baking cycle and I’m done and I’m lazy that way. There are also always the mini donut pans if you want a smaller portion size. I have one on my wish list so I can make small donuts for SnB.

Another trick I’ve found for baked cake doughnuts is to pull them from the oven when they still look a little underbaked. They may have darkened just a titch, but while in the oven you likely won’t say they’ve turned color. You need to leave them in the pan for 5 minutes or so and they’ll continue to carryover cook for that time. The baking time really is less than ten minutes in the oven, even with that much batter! Don’t second guess it, you’ll be sorry, we were for a few batches when I first started baking doughnuts.

I start mixing the glaze as soon as I pop the pan into the oven. This glaze is your standard milk and powdered sugar glaze, though you use some of the milk tea that was leftover and I add just a tiny bit of cream cheese or butter if I have it on hand because I find just a hint of fat help curbs the cornstarch-y flavor of powdered sugar. Since I’ve dirtied the sifter already I do go ahead and sift the powdered sugar for a smoother glaze. Once the doughnuts have come out of the pan and are just a bit warmer than room temp you can dunk them in the glaze. I always put the parchment paper I use while sifting underneath the cooling rack so any drips land on that for easy clean-up.

One thing of note about glazed doughnuts – you need to eat them pretty quickly. Without the fat from frying, the glaze tends to soak right into the doughnut after sitting for a few hours. If you won’t be eating all six in a couple of hours I’d either glaze as needed or opt to do a cinnamon-sugar coating by spraying the doughnuts with an oil mister or cooking spray and dipping in the cinnamon-sugar.

Whole Wheat Baked Chai Doughnuts

Serves 6, Adapted from Doughtnuts: Simple and Delicious Recipes to Make at Home
Ingredients
Batter:

• 1/2 cup 1% fat milk, scalded
• 2 tablespoons black tea
• 2 tablespoons (1 ounce) unsalted butter, chilled throughly
• 3/4 cup (90 grams) white whole wheat flour
• 2/3 cup (60 grams) whole wheat pastry flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon, ground
• 1/2 teaspoon ginger, ground
• 1/2 teaspoon cardamom, ground
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg, ground
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/3 cup (75 grams) sugar*
• 1/4 cup plain yogurt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 egg, beaten

Glaze:

• 1 1/2 cups (150 gm) powdered sugar, sifted to remove lumps
• 3-4 tablespoons tea infused milk
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly grease doughnut pan and set aside.
2. Cut butter into many small pieces and place in the freezer to chill thoroughly.
3. In a small saucepan, scald the milk. Add tea leaves and steep for 5 minutes. Strain out the tea leaves and set aside to cool.
4. Sift together the flours, baking powder, spices and salt. Make 3 passes through the sifter for maximum air incorporation. Place in a large bowl and whisk in the sugar.
5. Using your fingers, work butter into the flour mixture until thoroughly incorporated; there should be no discernible bits of butter. The mixture should clump together when squeezed but break apart easily.
6. In a small bowl, mix together 1/4 cup of the tea infused milk with the yoghurt, extract and egg. Reserve the remaining infused milk for the glaze.
7. Add the wet ingredients to the dry and mix gently until just combined. Over mixing will cause chewy doughnuts.
8. Put batter into a piping bag fitted with a large tip and pipe into doughnut pan, filling each cavity 3/4 full. Make sure the center post stays clear of batter.
9. Bake for 6-10 minutes, just until set and the doughnuts have taken on a slight golden blush. Let cool in pan for 5 minutes, then move doughnuts to a cooling rack.
10. While the doughnuts bake, mix together the glaze ingredients, adding a bit of milk at a time until you reach the proper consistency.
11. Once the doughnuts have cooled, dip in glaze and place on the cooling rack to set.

Nutrition Info (1 doughnut, without glaze): 208 calories; 5.5 g fat; 2.9 g sat; 31.9 g carbohydrate; 3.5 g fiber; 12.5 g sugar; 5.9 g protein.

* I used turbinado sugar, though the original recipe calls for superfine. Next time I make them I think I’ll try coconut (no, it doesn’t taste like coconut) palm sugar or date sugar.

If you require gluten free goodies, Lara Ferroni’s book has basic recipes for gluten free doughtnuts to which you can easily add the required spices to make it a chai variety. I highly recommend the cookbook as there are basic recipes for cake and raised doughtnuts, each baked and fried, and gluten free varieties as well. All the special flavors and what not are just changes to those basic recipes so you can choose the base recipe that works for you. The same thing applies to the glazes, frostings and other coating options. Once you read through the variations it is even easy to come up with your own doughnuts and finishing touches.

Yes, my plans were quite lofty for the weekend. While I can’t check off everything I mentioned I feel like the weekend was successful — a nice combination of getting stuff done and resetting for the week to come.

For post-birthday hangover recovery (I’m kidding, I didn’t drink anything besides water on Friday night and DH didn’t even come close to over imbibing) we had a warm, chewy bowl of steel cut oats topped with virgin bananas foster. The bananas were virgin due to the lack of dark rum in our liquor cabinet, but it still tasted like an awful decadent bowl of oatmeal. I had wanted to make the maple roasted apple and cheddar cheese oatmeal from the Kitchn, but discovered we had only one apple. We did have a bunch of not quite ripe bananas so I improvised by sautéing one large one in 1-1/2 tablespoons of butter with 3 tablespoons brown sugar and a tiny pinch of sea salt and divided it amongst our bowls of oats. Some pecans would have been a nice touch.

I don’t know about you, but both DH and I seem to do much better if we have one day out of the fray. No driving, no crowds etc. So Saturday kind of turned into a PJ day. I knew I needed a rest day after two runs with less than 24 hours between them. We were extremely leisurely about breakfast, loitering around the table discussing various and sundry things while sipping locally roasted coffee from the French press. I put together a batch of new tea for kombucha and left it to cool. By late afternoon we retreated to the basement and an embarrassingly long marathon of Lost Girl on NetFlix. I don’t know what it is, but I am totally hooked on that show. DH thinks it is the outcast discovering there is a hidden world in which she fits in. He may be right.

Sunday was our “do” day, but there was plenty of rest mixed in. I took a decent soak in the tub and read a bit first thing. Then DH and I took care of the kombucha, bottling the last batch and getting the next batch going with the cooled tea from the day before. Then, we hopped on our bikes – yes, in late January. Despite this being my 14th January in Colorado it still boggles my mind to see temps near 60 degrees and weather favorable for biking in January. Sadly, it was my first January bike ride ever. We logged nearly 9 miles at the end of the day, with some decent walking in between the rides. Not too shabby of a calorie burn! My sitz bones are definitely protesting today, but the rides overall were not as bad as I feared given the time away from the saddle. There was lots of stretching upon arriving home, a little more reading and some Downton Abbey and more Lost Girl viewing to end the day.

I also baked some multi-grain bread. I used the bread machine for the dough and then did the final kneading, shaping, rise and baking myself. It was *amazing*! We had a little taster after dinner. It was so good DH and I both thought it tasted like another slice even though we weren’t really hungry. We were good and resisted seconds. It was based on the Daily Whole Grain Bread recipe from Beth Hensperger’s The Bread Lover’s Bread Machine Cookbook. I used cooked quinoa, did fake buttermilk by mixing 2 parts milk to 1 part greek yogurt and upped the whole wheat by ½ cup and reduced the bread flour by the same. We did have to add almost 2 tablespoons of water, likely due in part to the yogurt thickening the milk and the higher whole grain content, plus my quinoa was slightly dry/al dente and not as moist as say the rice I’ve used in the past. I think it was a combo of the ¼ cup of rolled oats and the yogurt that gave it such great flavor plus a bit extra time on the second rise. We’ll definitely be revisiting that one whenever we have left over cooked quinoa that needs using!

How was your weekend? What did you do? Did you manage to get reset for the week to come?

Some food I’m contemplating this week:

• Ginger Noodles with Kale & Shiitake Mushrooms (I’m leaning towards soba noodles as calorie-free food weirds me out
• Pasta with Lemony Brussel Sprouts
• Baked Spaghetti Squash and Cheese

Some making I’m contemplating this week:

• A clever way to maximize the length of skirts made from refashioned tees
• Seaside Bath Salt Soak