Currant Scones & Molasses Frosting

We started from this recipe on epicurious, added some cinnamon and then made up our own molasses frosting! Yum!

Ingredients:

2 cups all-purpose flour
1/3 cup sugar OR sucanat
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teasp
oon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
8 tablespoons unsalted butter, chilled
1 cup heavy whipping cream
1/2 cup currants, cranberries or raisins

1 cup heavy whipping cream
1 tablespoon molasses
cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and ginger to taste

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Lavender Lemon Cookies

Adapted from When Harry Met Salad Check out the blog for some more gorgeous photographs!

Ingredients:

¾ cup sugar OR sucanat
2 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons dried lavender
1¾ cup whole wheat flour (or a mixture of ww & white)
¼ teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
12 tablespoon (1½ sticks) cold butter cubes
1 egg yolk
½ teaspoons vanilla extract

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Whole Wheat Molasses Waffles

Ingredients:

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup whole-wheat flour
2 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1/4 cup plus 1 1/2 teaspoons grapeseed oil
3 tablespoons honey
5 large eggs
2 cups milk, plus more as needed
1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1 tablespoon molasses

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Esalen Banana Coconut Bread

Straight from the Esalen Cookbook. Healthy, moist, sweet (but not too sweet) and yummy! Perfect straight out of the oven, just cool enough to handle with butter melted over it!

Ingredients:

5 tablespoons butter, softened
1.25 cups sucanat
2 eggs
1 cup mashed ripe banana
1/3 cup buttermilk
1 cup unbleached flour
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 cup unsweetened coconut
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
chopped walnuts for topping (or any other type of nut, if desired)

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Snickerdoodles

All right. Here they are. The world famous (infamous?) cookies… they’ve been called snickerdoodles, sugar cookies and even the “crack” cookies. These are the cookies that people eat so many of they literally make themselves sick. We take no responsibility for stomach aches. If you can’t control yourself, don’t make them!

These cookies have literally been passed down from generation to generation… with no actual instructions, just the ingredient list, the temperature and cooking time. We’ve included some helpful tips to get the softest, most addicting cookies possible!

Ingredients:

1 cup butter
1 1/2 cup granulated white sugar
2 eggs
1/4 teaspoon vanilla
2 3/4 cup white flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda

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Bacon Waffles

Surprise your sweetie this Valentines day weekend with the only way you can possibly make waffles better… with bacon! And brown sugar!

Adapted from joythebaker.com

Ingredients:

10 slices of bacon
1/2 cup brown sugar
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 Tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2/3 grapeseed oil
4 large eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups buttermilk
(we made our own butter milk with 2 cups of milk and 2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar)

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Upside-Down Apple Sour Cream Cake

From our guest baker/blogger Laurie. Adapted from a recipe she found on epicurious.com, we totally love her version–just the perfect amount of sweet. We were all talking about second helpings before we even finished our first slice! Yum!

Cake Ingredients

1 1/2 cups cake flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon nutmeg
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
2/3 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 Golden Delicious apple, peeled, cored, finely chopped (about 3/4 cup)

Apple Ingredients

6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) unsalted butter
1/3 cup (packed) dark brown sugar
2 8-ounce Golden Delicious apples, peeled, halved, cored, cut into 1/4-inch-thick slices

Find full instructions on epicurious.com

Banana Muffins

These muffins can be made as healthy as you want… use all sprouted whole wheat flour instead of a mixture of wheat and white, don’t add the topping to cut out more sugar (in the form of honey), use whole milk or lowfat milk… there are lots of ways to customize this recipe!

Muffin Ingredients:

1 egg
1/2 cup coconut oil
1/4 cup raw honey
2/3 cup flour
2/3 cup whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup whole milk
1 1/2 cups cubed fresh bananas

Topping Ingredients:

1/4 cup whole wheat flour
2 tablespoons oats
1 tablespoon raw honey
1 tablespoon coconut oil

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Esalen Artichoke, Yam & Blue Cheese Scones

Here’s our declaration of the week: we’re going to cook our way through the Esalen Cookbook!

It’s not quite as ambitious as the Julia Child cookbook, but it should be a yummy challenge! So far we love everything we’ve tried from the cookbook and are excited to sample everything! Just a note: while these are healthy, mouth-watering recipes they are not generally quick; so we’ll make sure to mix it up with some less time-intense ideas!

We hope you enjoy our culinary journey, we sure will!!!


Ingredients:

1 large yellow onion
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 medium yams
8 ounces artichoke hearts in water
1 3/4 cups whole wheat pastry flour
1.5 cups whole wheat flour
1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1.5 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
pinch cayenne pepper
1 cup unsalted butter
2.5 cups Asiago, grated
1/2 pound crumbled blue cheese
2 tablespoons chopped sage


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Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

There are a couple options when making these cookies… you can make them the healthy way or the good way! We’re all for healthy desserts, but this time the healthy option just doesn’t measure up to the white flour and sugar version! We made them with sucanat & whole wheat flour and then sugar & white flour. There was no contest. The sugar & white flour version has a much smoother consistency, though if you were only presented with the sucanat and whole wheat flour version you probably wouldn’t complain… they just can’t hold their own in a comparison.

Two warnings:

#1 These cookies are super addicting!
#2 We’ve made these cookies without the chocolate chips and had friends ask why we wasted our time not putting chocolate chips in!

Ingredients:

1/2 cup butter
1 1/2 cup sugar OR sucanat
1 egg
1 cup canned pumpkin
1 tsp vanilla
2 1/2 cup flour OR whole wheat pastry flour OR a mixture of the two
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 cup+ Ghiradelli chocolate chips (optional)


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Buttermilk Biscuits

Ingredients:

3 cups flour (we used 1/2 unbleached all-purpose & 1/2 whole wheat pastry)
2 tablespoons non-aluminum baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons butter — frozen and grated
1 cup buttermilk
(we made our own by adding 1 tablespoon vinegar to 1 cup of whole milk)
melted butter or buttermilk for brushing on the tops

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