cranberry

Cranberry Coconut Oatmeal Cookies

Mar 24, 2013 By Love & Flour in Cookies No Comments Tags: coconut, cranberry, oatmeal

March 19th was National Oatmeal Cookie Day. All I can say in my defense is I actually made these cookies on March 19th. I had every intention of sharing them on multiple occasions this past week, but then things like work and washing the dishes and work and doing the laundry and work and packing my lunch and work and seeing my friends and work and sleep happened. I suppose we all have weeks like that from time to time.

In between all the chores and work, I had a free hour or two to bake. I wanted to bake because those lunches I was packing were in desperate need of a sweet bite. When I have limited time, I typically resort to baking cookies, and this time was no exception. I turned to a classic – the oatmeal cookie – but I jazzed it up a bit with coconut and cranberries.

The more I bake, the more I realize the oatmeal cookie lends itself to seemingly countless interpretations. In just the past few months I have enjoyed both the salted vanilla chip and the spiced raisin turned cream pie varieties. They just keep getting better!

By the time the baking was complete and the cookies were photographed and consumed, I was faced with fitting blog writing time in between all of those works I mentioned. But every time I had a few moments to spare, I found I had nothing of interest to say. This happens more often than I would like to admit. I did what I always do and went in search of a quote.

“I’d make oatmeal cookies.”
“Cookies?”
“I would. That’s just what I would do.”
“Why?”
He lifts one hand from the steering wheel and pinches his chin. “Because the world is changing so fast all the time. There’s nothing you can do but just say, ‘cool,’ and roll with it. But some things can stay the same. Flour is still flour. Vanilla still smells like vanilla. Say a giant fireball is motoring toward us right now from Alha Centauri. Okay, universe. You expect us to run and scream and kill one another? Sorry, we’re making oatmeal freaking cookies.”
― R.A. Nelson, Breathe My Name

I love it. I have no idea what Breathe My Name is about. In fact, I had never heard of the work before I came across the above. What struck me is how that exchange sums up just why I love to bake. When things are crazy-busy and the pace of life seems as though it is gaining speed at every turn, flour is still flour and vanilla still smells like vanilla. And sometimes, you just have to stop and make some oatmeal cookies. Enjoy!

Cranberry Coconut Oatmeal Cookies

Author: The Seasonal Baker by John Barricelli

Ingredients

¾ cup all purpose flour
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon salt
1½ cups old-fashioned oats
½ cup dried cranberries
½ cup sweetened coconut
½ cup (1 stick) butter
½ cup light brown sugar, firmly packed
¼ cup granulated sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Instructions

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, ground cinnamon and salt.
In a separate bowl, stir together the oats, cranberries and coconut.
In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugars until light and fluffy, about 2 to 3 minutes.
Beat in the egg, followed by the vanilla.
Reduce the mixer speed to mix in the flour mixture until just combined.
Fold in the mixture of oats, cranberries and coconut.
Roll 2 tablespoons of dough at a time into balls and place them on a parchment-lined cookie sheet. Then gently flatten the dough balls with the palm of your hand.
Bake at 350 degrees F for 12 to 14 minutes, rotating the baking sheets two-thirds through the baking time. When done, the cookies will look golden brown on the edges but still a bit soft in the centers.
Allow the cookies to cool on the baking sheet for 10 minutes. Then transfer to a wire rack to allow to finish cooling.

Cobbled Together: Apple-Cranberry Cobbler

Dec 8, 2012 By Love & Flour in Other No Comments Tags: apple, cranberry

As I was growing up, my Dad was fond of saying something to the effect that he wished he knew at my age what he knew at his age. I think most of us can identify with that sentiment as, “If only I knew then what I know now.” I never really quite grasped Dad’s version until the most recent of years. I look back on the past decade and think, “Man, if I had the knowledge I had now but the youth I had a decade ago, I could really rock a few things.” On a much smaller scale, if the person I was at 8 a.m. could have given my 5 p.m. self some advice, it probably would have gone something like this:

You can do anything, but you can’t do everything, today. Just pick something and run with it. Even though you are pretending to decide between what you should do and what you want to do, you know what the day will bring so go ahead and charge your camera battery. You haven’t received a “battery low” message as of late, but trust me, it’s dead as a door nail. That way, when you set up to take a picture as daylight is fading fast, the camera will turn on.

Accordingly, you will want to make sure the charger is fully plugged into the outlet. This will save you a lot of frustration. Repeat, a lot of frustration. And since we are on that topic now, the gorgeous photo you see accompanying the recipe write-up will look nothing like what you will actually get. The tip to tent the dish with aluminum foil in the event the topping gets too brown should really be the first thing you do because 25 minutes into 60 minutes of baking the top will be DARK.

Oh, and while you are whipping up peppermint meringues as the cobbler bakes, go ahead and trust your instinct to add the vanilla when the egg whites reach soft peaks. If you wait to add it after stiff peaks form, they will fall, and you will have no cookies. Resist the urge to throw in the towel and take a nap because you will eventually be able to get a decent picture of your ugly apple-cranberry cobbler before it gets too dark.

Those things I did today, at the expense of Christmas shopping and reading a great book, were yoga and baking. One of the studios where I practice yoga issued a 62-day challenge on November 1. This is pretty much just what it sounds: practice 62 times in 62 days. I accepted the challenge because I wanted to reintroduce some discipline to my life and, frankly speaking, hoped it would help me fit in my pants again. Just when I thought the pants thing was not going to happen, I was able to wear my jeans with no discomfort yesterday. In fact, I buttoned them and didn’t think a thing about it until I was eating and thought, “Hey, my pants aren’t hurting my stomach!”

The frustration I felt in class today was the perfect foreshadowing to the baking I attempted. I practiced with a teacher who was new to me, and I had a difficult time following her cues. Instead of flowing through poses, it was very start-and-stop. I was pretty much over the whole experience when I happened to see a girl in front of me do this crazy arm balance. Oh, come freaking on.

As the class was drawing to a close, I noticed a few girls behind me were pretty much just sitting on their mats and taking it all in. I knew one of those girls was new only because she had stopped me in the hall earlier to ask where she could find a mat. When I saw them sitting there looking utterly defeated, it hit home that they might be thinking, “Oh, come freaking on” towards me when I was in one of the arm balances I can manage. They couldn’t have possibly known it took me a good 10 months of practice to get to the point they witnessed today.

This led me to think about something I have been considering quite a bit as of late: beginnings. It is so easy, at least as adults, to quit something new before we give it a chance to bloom. So many around us have achieved a level of proficiency that intimidates or frustrates to the point that, when we compare ourselves to where they are, it makes it easy to quit. For me, yoga is a great example. I tried Ashtanga in April, and I haven’t practiced it since May simply because I couldn’t get my butt off the ground. (That will make zero sense to anyone who has never heard of this style of yoga – and just eight months ago I would have been in that group – but to those who have, it will make perfect sense.)

Thank the heavens above a yoga teacher who makes her living teaching Ashtanga recently posted a YouTube video in which she said it took her three months to get her butt of the ground. Perspective can be everything, and hearing her say that reminded me of the way I used to think. Ironically, this shift in my thinking occurred in a yoga class. I saw a girl get up into a bird of paradise and instead of thinking, “I will never be able to do that,” I thought, “Wow, I could do that if I stick with this.”

So, the next time you are doing something new – whether it be trying a recipe or contorting your body in a yoga class – and things aren’t going so well, remember what you have to look forward to if you keep going. Just because things did not go smoothly this one time, failure is not necessarily a given. When cobbled together, the eventual outcome can be a delight, or in this case, delicious. My path today looked much more like a wild zig-zag than a straight line, but I got to where I wanted to go: writing a blog post and sharing a recipe. Enjoy!

“You give up on what you need to be doing because you forget that you’re worth it. This is why most people aren’t leading exemplary lives.You have to believe in yourself so much that you’re willing to do what’s uncomfortable, time-consuming, inconvenient, and on occasion seemingly impossible. When you don’t believe in yourself this much, pretend.” ― Victoria Moran

Apple-Cranberry Cobbler

Author: very slightly adapted from Parade magazine, November 11, 2012

Ingredients

For the Filling
5 Granny Smith apples, chopped
1½ cups cranberries
¼ granulated sugar
¼ brown sugar
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
⅛ teaspoon ground nutmeg
⅛ teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons cornstarch
1 lemon, juice of
½ cup (1/2 stick) butter
For the Topping*
¾ cup milk
1 cup all-purpose flour
½ cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt

Instructions

Place all of the filling ingredients EXCEPT the butter in a large bowl and toss to coat.
Go ahead and place the butter in a 9 X 13 baking dish.
Put the dish with the butter in the oven and start heating it to 350 F. Keep an eye on the dish and remove when the butter is melted.
Meanwhile, make the topping by whisking those 5 ingredients together.
When the dish with melted butter comes out of the oven, pour the fruit and spice filing in the dish.
Then pour the topping over the fruit.
Bake for one hour or until the juices are bubbling and the topping is golden. Cover the dish with aluminum foil at any time it the topping gets too brown. I reccommend starting out with it covered.

Notes

Feel free to peel your apples before chopping. The original recipe called for a 9-inch pie plate. I have no idea how all of the filling would fit in a pie dish, but feel free to go for it. *I ended up making an additional ½ batch of the topping as the yield did not appear to offer much coverage in a 9 x 13 baking dish.

Challenged! Spiced Orange Cranberry Morning Rolls

Oct 16, 2012 By Love & Flour in Other 1 Comment Tags: cranberry, orange, spice

Over the past two weeks, I have been baking dessert-y type breakfast items as part of a series of Willow Bird Baking Challenges. When the challenges began, I was wrapping up my Oktoberfest posts. So I figured I would write up one just on blog post to reflect upon my experiences after the challenges were said and done.

Then I realized people were visiting my blog, perhaps in search of the particular recipe “innovation” I had shared. Finding nothing but beer-related recipes, I began to wonder if others wondered just what the heck was going on. So, here I am in the midst of Challenge 3, playing catch up with a Challenge 1 recipe for Spiced Orange and Cranberry Morning Rolls.

My most vivid memory of preparing these rolls came as I was rolling out the dough. The dough was soft. I mean, really soft. I am talking the sort of soft that calls to mind how my upper arms will feel when I am an old woman unless I start lifting weights soon. I believe this characteristic is great for dough. Not so much for triceps.

As you may notice, the rolls I made are very small. I halved the dough and froze a batch to see how that would work out, and it worked out just fine. I did notice the jam wanted to squish out when rolling the dough. Gently lifting the dough ever so slightly up and over the jam helped. That said, I would still recommend rolling the filled dough on a sheet of parchment. That way, one can easily slather whatever jam oozed out onto the tops.

As I prepared for this challenge, I watched the Chow Obsessives Marmalade video. Near the end, featured marmalade maker June Taylor remarked when she first started preparing jam, she craved precision. She wanted to know exact measurements, “not this go by sight and feel” nonsense. But she learned that it really did take time to learn all there was to know.

I think baking gets an unfair reputation based on this same premise. Known as the precise sibling to the happy-go-lucky cooking, people shy away from baking before they give it a fair chance. Am I suggesting we all just throw in a pinch of baking powder and a dash of baking soda in lieu of measuring out teaspoons? No. But I am suggesting we all give baking our best effort.

Case in point, I had no idea how these rolls would turn out. Are they perfect? Not by a long shot. But do I now have knowledge I can rely on the next time I try a similar recipe? You bet.

While I am writing up my experiences for Challenge 2 and baking up Challenge 3, be sure to click on over to Willow Bird Baking to check out all of the lovely morning – and evening – rolls created by Challenge 1 participants. It is not to late to join in the fun should you be so inclined!

Spiced Orange and Cranberry Rolls

Author: based on Willow Bird Baking’s Buttery Coconut & Almond Morning Buns

Ingredients

For the Rolls
1 package (2¼ teaspoons) active dry yeast
¼ cup warm (not hot) water
2 tablespoons white vinegar
2 cups milk minus 2 tablespoons, at room temperature
⅔ cup cold shortening (butter flavored Crisco works well)
3 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
5 cups flour
2 tablespoons butter, melted, for after baking
For the Filling
2 cups high-quality orange jam or marmalade
1½ cup (3 sticks) butter, melted
½ cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon cardamom
¾ cup dried cranberries, chopped
For the Glaze
1¼ cups confectioners’ sugar
1 teaspoon orange extract
2-3 tablespoons milk to thin the glaze to a drizzling consistency

Instructions

Mix the warm water and yeast in a medium bowl and let the yeast foam for about 10 minutes.
Put 2 tablespoons white vinegar in a measuring cup and then add milk up to the 2 cup line. Set aside.
In a separate large bowl (or the bowl of a mixer fitted with a dough hook), whisk together the flour, sugar, salt, baking soda, and baking powder.
Cut the shortening into the mixture using a pair of forks or a pastry cutter until the shortening looks like small peas.
Stir the yeast mixture and the milk mixture into the dry ingredients.
Mix well, but knead the dough for only a few turns to fully incorporate.
Transfer the dough to a bowl lightly sprayed with non-stick cooking spray, cover tightly with plastic wrap, and store in the refrigerator overnight.
The next morning, turn the chilled dough out onto a lightly floured surface and roll it into a large rectangle about ⅛-inch thick. Cutting the dough in half to work with just half at one time makes this step much more manageable.
Stir together the orange jam, melted butter, sugar and cardamom.
Spread this mixture over the top of the dough. (If you halved the dough, remember to reserve half of this mixture for the second batch.)
Sprinkle the chopped cranberries over the top of the the filling mixture.
Lightly spray two 9 x 13-inch baking dishes with cooking spray.
Gently roll the dough into a spiral and cut it into rolls, placing them close together in the prepared baking dishes. (This is where you may wish to wrap and freeze – see Notes).
Cover the rolls you wish to bake with a piece of plastic wrap or clean dish cloth and allow them to rise in a warm spot until nearly doubled, about 1½ – 2 hours.
Near the end of the rise, preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
Bake the rolls for about 15-20 minutes or until browned on top.
Brush with 2 tablespoons melted butter and return to the oven for 1 additional minute.
Whisk together the glaze ingredients (adding milk to get it to drizzling consistency) and drizzle the glaze over the warm rolls. If you want the glaze to harden rather than sink in, allow the rolls to cool nearly to warm temperature.
Serve immediately upon glazing.

Notes

Note from Julie at WillowBird: I don’t recommend halving yeast recipes; instead, if you don’t want 24 rolls at once, consider freezing some for later. To freeze some of the unbaked rolls, just wrap them well before the second rise and freeze them. Once frozen, pop them out of the pan all together and store in the freezer, wrapped in plastic wrap and in a zip top bag or wrapped in foil. When you want to bake them, stick them back in a greased pan, thaw them in the fridge overnight, proof for the instructed amount of time, and bake like usual. Note from LeAndra at Love & Flour: I followed these instructions. It worked out fine.

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