Month: August 2020

Breakfast Cookies

My office window, viewed through a breakfast cookie filter.

I don’t know about where you live, but here in Maryland we have just gotten our first glimpse of fall.

This past week overnight temps hovered in the mid-60s, and daytime highs were just around the upper 70s. Dry, clear blue skies, and the beginnings of leaves drifting out of the tops of trees.

I am predicting it here, though: we are in for a big winter. Lots of cold and snow.

This may be dire news for you, but I am here to console you with breakfast cookies. I like a warm, good-smelling house in the fall, and I also like an easy and comforting breakfast in the morning. If we were all rushing off to work and school as in the past, these would be an ideal way to get some food in you on a busy morning, too.

You can also tell yourself that these are good for you – there is very little added sugar, and really, less than that doughnut or French toast you may have been having.

Plus, even though we aren’t going anywhere anytime soon, these breakfast cookies are portable bundles of goodness. These days I like to take them with me on hikes. Quick and easy nutrition that’s not filled with preservatives.

And, in the spirit of my Depression-era grandmother, you can use whatever you have on hand for these, pretty much. Make your own granola (Best Granola Recipe included in Recipe Notes), or finish up the dregs of multiple boxes of breakfast cereal, whatever kind you like.

They are simple and ready in about 15 minutes, start to finish.

Breakfast Cookies

This recipe makes 12-14 cookies. I portion them with an ice cream scoop and freeze. Pop them in a preheated oven and you have fresh cookies in 12 minutes.

Ingredients

1/2 cup vegetable/canola oil

2/3 cup dark brown sugar, lightly packed

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 eggs

1 3/4 cups flour (see Recipe Notes)

3 cups cereal (granola, multigrain flakes, anything you like – see Recipe Notes)

Method

Preheat oven to 350. Line baking tray with parchment (or silicon sheet) and set aside.

In a large mixing bowl, combine oil and brown sugar and whisk to combine.

Add baking soda and eggs and give it a sturdy whisking until the mixture lightens slightly.

Add flour and mix well with a spatula, the add cereal and mix well with same spatula until well-combined.

Scoop onto a cookie sheet (ice cream scoop works here, or use two heaping tablespoons per cookie). Flatten slightly.

Bake for 8-10 minutes until brown and set. Cool on the pan for one minute, then move to a wire rack and cool completely. OR eat them warm, which is what I do because they smell so good when they are cooking that I cannot wait.

Recipe Notes

Best Granola Ever: Preheat oven to 250. Line baking sheets with parchment. Combine 3 cups oats, 2 cups nuts, 1 cup unsweetened coconut flakes in a bowl. In a small bowl, mix 1/4 cup dark brown sugar, 1/4 cup vegetable oil, 1/4 cup maple syrup, and 3/4 teaspoon of salt, then pour over oat mixture and stir to combine. Spread on cookie sheets and bake for an hour, stirring every 20 minutes. Remove from oven and add 1 cup dried fruit, any kind, mixing well. THAT’S IT. Substitute any kind of nut or dried fruit, add spices (cinnamon, clove, pumpkin pie spice, etc). Whatever you like.

Feel free to use any flour that floats your boat here, literally. I use my gluten-free AP flour, but I have also used oat and, when still eating gluten, wheat flour. They all work.

As for cereal, use the Best Granola Ever from above, or add literally any other kind of cereal you can imagine. Go as trashy or as healthy as you like.

MAKE THESE VEGAN: Use whatever egg replacer you normally use to replace the two eggs here.

Let’s Just Make It Easy, Shall We? Mixed Citrus Drizzle Cake

Sliced citrus drizzle loaf cake with red grapefruit and orange wedges on a wooden cutting board
Go easy.

FRIENDS. The Great British Bake-Off (The Great British Baking Show in the U.S.) has finished filming their next season, and GOOD LORD do we ever need some GBBO camaraderie.

The Great British Bake-Off is the nicest competition on TV. If you have been living under a rock, you might not know that this show pits 12 or 13 bakers in three specific tasks, one weekend a month for two months until the final baker is crowned the winner and receives…

A cake plate.

That’s it. All the final contestants get the same bouquet of flowers, but the winner gets a cake plate.

Yes, the winning spot comes with some amount of prestige and visibility, but the relatively low stakes means that these genuinely nice-seeming folks are supportive and wonderful with each other. There have been some controversial moments, but in general, the show has maintained its lovely manner.

The Great British Baking Show also gave us Mary Berry.

She likes to drink, and she eats out the side of her mouth, biting the fork every. Single. Time.

Annoying as hell, but one of the things she does that is incredible and revolutionary (besides knowing more about baking than most people forget) she calls the “all-in-one” method.

When it comes to cake, Mary Berry doesn’t cream the butter and sugar and then fuss about alternating dry and wet ingredients. She dumps everything into the bowl and beats the shit out of it, and it all works out fine.

This method, my depleted state, and my belief that we all really need a fucking break, has inspired this cake.

Also, the fact that I have excess citrus in my ‘fridge even though I am not a fan of citrus. You can use whatever you have, to taste.

AND. This cake comes together in less than ten minutes. Seriously. So like the lovely people across the pond, you could theoretically have fresh cake ready by teatime. If you are currently entertaining children at your home or trying to figure out WTF to do with them, this is a great cake for them, too.

Mixed Citrus Drizzle Cake

I am a big fan of using what’s laying around, especially now that going to the store is not always possible. This recipe is all about pantry ingredients. If you choose to use gluten-filled flour, don’t beat the cake batter as much or it will be tough. Otherwise, have at it.

Ingredients

For the cake:

10 tablespoons butter, very soft

1 3/4 cups gluten-free AP flour

1 cup sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

3 eggs

6 tablespoons milk (any kind – I used oat twice)

Zest of one grapefruit (see Recipe Notes)

Zest of one orange

For the drizzle:

1/4 cup sugar

1/4 cup citrus juice (see Recipe Notes)

Powdered sugar (see Recipe Notes)

Method

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter (or spray with cooking spray) an 8″ x 4″ loaf pan and set aside.

Ready? Dump all cake ingredients in one bowl and beat with a hand mixer (or a whisk – your choice) until it becomes light and fluffy.

Pour/shovel/scoop into prepared tin and smooth the top.

Place in oven and bake for 45-50 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. Remove to a wire rack to cool completely.

While the cake is baking, dissolve sugar in the citrus juice. When the cake comes out of the oven, poke holes in the top with a skewer and brush, pour, or spoon the drizzle on top.

Let the cake cool completely in the tin, and then unmold. Sift powdered sugar on top before serving. If you’re fancy and want to be very British, melt chocolate (milk or dark) and drizzle on top instead of powdered sugar.

Recipe Notes

The citrus zest combo is all up to you. I used all grapefruit, one grapefruit and one orange, and lemon for this cake. Mix and match with whatever you have. You are looking for a tablespoon or two of zest for a nice punchy flavor.

Juice is also up to you. If you have straight orange juice, lower the sugar a tad to balance the sweetness. All lemon? Bump it up to make it sharp (as Paul Hollywood says) without searing off your tastebuds.

Self-Heal: Si, Se Puede

Prunella vulgaris

I have been in the past, and still am, if I am being honest (which I always try to be), a cynical person to varying degrees. I have referred to myself as an optimistic pessimist – things could get better, but they probably won’t.

But then here comes COVID and the asinine people who refuse to wear a mask because ‘MURICA, and all things Black Lives Matter and the repeated and unanswered request that rights extend to all of the people in the U.S., not just the white ones, and I can feel the pendulum silently swinging to the pessimistic side of things.

My anxiety has ramped up right along with COVID cases, hospitalizations, and deaths, just as media coverage of BLM protests has quietly dwindled. Since the protests have been largely peaceful, save the random snatching of protestors and well-meaning white folks hijacking the message, apparently, the call for equality is less interesting. We’d rather see Karen flinging mask displays in Target or carrying out random, odd, mask-related protests in Costco.

It’s unnerving and upsetting to see how childish and ridiculous the U.S. is.

And yet.

There remains some reassuring and incontrovertible evidence that A) the universe doesn’t really give a rat’s ass about us humans, but B) if we can get even just a little bit quiet and attend to the world around us, that same universe is actually lousy with the things we actually need.

Case in point: referring the to aforementioned anxiety, I have very specific symptoms that range from gastrointestinal malfunction (will leave it at that) to pulsating tinnitus, anger, depression, and fainting. During the pandemic, I have done my level best to practice yoga (daily in July, but that’s new) and walk outside every day. I recognized early on that as attractive as lying around binge-watching trashy television appears on said trashy television, the reality of it is a noxious stew of flab, perseverating, and self-flagellation that feeds the beast of anxiety.

So outside I go, hiking, foraging, WEARING A FUCKING MASK.

And here’s where the universe pops in. When I am experiencing some specific symptom of anxiety, for the last three months, the medicinal herb to address it has popped up in my path.

Headaches, cramps, fatigue, nausea, dizziness, shortness of breath: each time I have walked out into the world and felt one of these (COVID negative, don’t panic), I have within minutes of walking stumbled upon the natural treatment for that symptom.

This past week I was on a solo camping trip in western Maryland, and I had the great good fortune to go hiking on the Appalachian Trail. I was born in D.C., lived in Maryland for 25 years (plus these past five), and I have never once stepped on the AT.

And I almost didn’t again. I woke up on the day of the planned hike short of breath with ringing ears – two bellwethers of an impending anxiety attack. Rather than cancel the hike, I imagined the worst that could happen, made plans to address that in my head, and laced up my boots (this is my technique for dealing with anxiety. Ignoring it doesn’t work, and sometimes taking medication is not a good option).

I walked along the sunny path and headed towards the first incline, reminding myself that I could always stop and turn around, when I spotted it: prunella vulgaris. Self-heal.

I have been looking for this common medicinal plant for a month, with no success. Self-heal (also called (heal-all or allheal) is in the mint family (without the yummy smell or taste – look for a square stem and know that all plants in the mint family are edible). It is the most-studied medicinal herb ever; some cultures refer to it as “Heart of the Earth.”

Which makes sense. Self-heal:

Heals wounds, inside and out, like cuts on the body and systemic infection;

Tones and heals the thyroid;

Is an anti-inflammatory painkiller;

Helps heal gingivitis; and

Eases the pain of osteoarthritis.

In addition, self-heal is used to treat HIV, herpes, diabetes, high blood pressure, tuberculosis, liver cancer, endometriosis, amnesia, and dementia.

It’s antiviral, good for the belly, and tonifying for the whole system.

If you are grieving and sad and struggling and anxious and feel a deep and thorough exhaustion and uncertainty, self-heal is the plant ally to reach for.

So to have this plant appear in front of me seemed momentous. The world is on fire, aching with wounds both superficial and deep. The fortuitous appearance of self-heal at the beginning of my day’s journey was a reminder that we have, often right in front of us, the tools we need to heal ourselves and our communities.

It is vital to remember, though, that like other healing solutions, self-heal is not the pill that erases the symptoms. It takes time and careful attention to work, something that our myriad problems deserve.

I did not gather any self-heal to make a tincture. At my first glance, there was not a profusion of it, and I think that it’s a no-no on the AT to harvest plants. On the way down I saw much more, but by that time the medicine of knowing that plant stepped itself in front of me was enough. So I leave you with this video from She is of the Woods. This woman has SEEN SOME THINGS, and I love her for it. Here is her intro to this “plant ally”; follow her on YouTube to see how to make an oxymel, or follow my link to the dandelion oxymel here.