It's the Yeast I Can Do

Cinnamon pecan coffee cake, 05.02.13

“April is the cruellest month.” — T.S. Eliot

Man, I really thought after SXSW was over I’d be baking up a storm, but instead, my jobs have been eating my life, and any time I haven’t been writing or watching screeners or asleep, I’ve been sobbing softly into my keyboard, which makes reading recipes difficult.

But it’s May now, and here’s this coffee cake I did for a meeting at KUT that got cancelled, so it’s going to be sold at the Austin Bakes for West bake sale tomorrow. I’ll be at the Stiles Switch location, but there are posts all over town with bakers more talented than me, so stop by anywhere 10am-2pm; you can’t lose.

Recipe via the Cake Mix Doctor

Oatmeal pancakes, 02.24.13

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Pancakes are what lazy Sunday mornings are all about.

German pancakes, 01.05.13

Big month of baking, baking break, German pancakes. Surely you’ve caught on to the pattern by now.

Via Smitten Kitchen

Apple cider donuts, 11.14.12

Happy Newsdesk birthday! I borrowed Ozzy’s deep fryer and saved myself the headache of dealing with temperature regulation by means of candy thermometer. The folks at work seemed more than pleased by the results.

Via Smitten Kitchen

Baked mini omelets, 10.16.12

OK, so I didn’t use the veggies, and I swapped probably 1/3c Bacon Bits for the pound of meat it called for, and I used half Parmesan and half cheddar and (gasp!) didn’t measure either. But other than that … oh and the garlic salt … I totally stand by this recipe.

Adapted generously from Coleen’s Recipes

Cinnamon rugelach, 09.09.12

I think we all knew you hadn’t heard the last of the I Love Cinnamon Rolls! book. These tiny treats (no, seriously, the recipe yields 64) don’t have the burden of an extra-long rise time, so once I got all my ingredients together (this big kitchen is making grocery shopping difficult), they were a snap.

From I Love Cinnamon Rolls!

Cinnamon rolls, 09.02.12

The food editor at the Chronicle gave me an advance copy of the delightfully simply named I Love Cinnamon Rolls! last week and told me to play around with it. I spent about half an hour in line at the bank on Friday wishing I could bookmark everything, but eventually I decided on the “Big-as-a-Plate Cinnamon Rolls With Gooey Frosting” — in part because I already had everything I needed to get started (and if you look at the pictures in this book for anything longer than about eight seconds, you’ll drool all over the place), but mostly because I am a bit of a cinnamon roll purist: If you can’t make one really good plain bun, it doesn’t matter how dressed up in espresso chocolate chips or cranberries and orange glaze you make ‘em.

Despite some initial quibbles with the dough — it took me an extra quarter cup of flour to get the dough a little less sticky — I found it remarkably easy to roll out and work with, and the finished product absolutely did not disappoint.

From I Love Cinnamon Rolls!

German apple pancakes, 09.02.12

I had a truly spectacular breakfast/brunch/brulunch/lunch/thing Saturday morning. The boy and I drove out (in a … erm … roundabout way) to Bee Cave and attempted to buy all the things at Baguette et Chocolat. I settled on quiche lorraine, crêpe Normande, and raspberry and lemon macarons; he went for one hell of an omelette, the crêpe version of a profiterole, and praline and chocolate coconut macarons. (We can both now die happy.)

So, you know, Sunday morning rolls around, and deep down I’m pretty sure we both wanted to drive back to Bee Cave for round two, but instead, we got lazy and made whatever we could from the stuff in my pantry, and here we are, with, uh, German pancakes Normande? Pretty sure that doesn’t work. But these sure did.

Adapted from Smitten Kitchen

His and hers crepes, 05.19.12

Which is to say, his recipe, her stovework. Minor flipping issues forgotten about as soon as I took a bite of Nutella-slathered cinnamon crepe with a chunk of that coffee toffee in the middle. Unf.

From Ozzy

Crêffles (bake date with Michelle in VA), 04.08.12

Crêpe batter + waffle iron = crêffles. Don’t you wish you’d thought of it? Don’t we wish this stroke of genius had not been because of the death of a crêpe pan? Batter by Michelle via her French family; waffling by yours truly. Fillings included sugar, butter, honey, lemon, Nutella, and quince jelly, and favorites were most definitely not picked.