Recipe Overload

The past week has been a little rough for me. One of my wish kids (a kid who's wish I helped grant) lost her 5 year battle with cancer at the young age of 11. She was such a sweet, strong, and courageous girl who was always smiling, even when she wasn't feeling the best. My heart has been heavy for her family, who laid her to rest this afternoon. I can't even imagine what they must be going through. Well, when I find myself in these moments where I feel low and sad, I know that if I just bake something, I'll feel a little better. I can't explain why, but it just seems to help. I guess baking is my own personal therapy. Oh well!

So, yesterday, I decided to take on the challenge of making homemade bagels and blueberry muffins. This may be recipe overload for you, but bear with me because it's not as difficult as it seems. Let's start with the bagels. I did make a few modifications to the recipe (adding a few ingredients) to make them flavored bagels. This recipe is for plain bagels. If you want flavor, you'll have to add it yourself.

For the recipe, you will need:

4 cups bread flour

1 T sugar

1 1/2 tsp salt

1 T vegetable oil

2 tsp instant yeast

1-1/4 - 1-1/2 cups of warm water

Start by mixing all the ingredients in a bowl. The dough should feel stiff, but add extra water if it's really stiff, or you can't get all the dry flour incorporated.

Plop the dough down onto the counter (flour the counter in advance), and knead for about 10 minutes, or until the dough is uniform and smooth.

Cut the dough into 8 equal sized balls, and let rest for 10-20 minutes.

Now, take each of the dough balls and using two hands, roll it into a little snake on the counter.

When the snake is longer than the width of your two hands, wrap it around your dominant rolling hand. The dough rope should be wrapped so the overlapping ends are together at your palm, near the start of your fingers. Now take the two overlapping ends, and use your palm to squish/roll these two ends together. Once the dough is fused, you should have a perfectly circular bagel-to-be!

Let your bagels rest on the counter for about 20 minutes, and meanwhile, bring a pot of water to boil and lightly grease a large baking tray. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

After the 20 minute wait, your bagels will start to look puffy, and it's time to get them boiling!

Add them as many at a time as you can to your boiling water without crowding them. Boil for about a minute, turn them over, and boil for another minute.

Take them out and let them dry for a minute and then place on your oiled baking tray. (and add any toppings to them at this point) Repeat until all the bagels are boiled.

Add the tray to the oven, and after 10 minutes, flip the bagels over, bake for another 10 minutes and they're done! Let them cool for at least 20 minutes, get the cream cheese ready, and feast on what's got to be one of the best weekend brunch treats possible!

You can add any toppings you like to this recipe. To make sesame, onions, poppy seed, caraway, etc. bagels, just have a dry plate ready with the seed or spice topping spread out on it. After the bagels have come out of the boiling water, place them face down onto the seeds, then place the seed side up onto the baking tray. Bake and flip as for bagels.

**For this recipe, I made cinnamon & raisin bagels (adding cinnamon and raisins into the bagel mix. I also made asiago cheese bagels by adding shredded asiago cheese in the bagel mix. (in hopes of duplicating Panera's bagel) After boiling the bagels, I added a mixture of cinnamon and sugar to the cinnamon & raisin bagels and for the asiago bagels, I added some shredded asiago cheese.

I will say that they turned out better than I'd expected for my first time making bagels. Not all recipes will always turn out perfectly and this one could use some tweeking. I'll have to keep working on it to perfect it, but for now, it's not too shabby!

Now for the blueberry muffins.....

You will need:

2 cups all-purpose flour

3/4 cup sugar

2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon

Grated zest of 1/2 lemon

1/4 tsp. salt

1 egg, beaten

5 T unsalted butter, melted

1 cup buttermilk

2 cups fresh blueberries or 2 1/2 cups frozen unsweetened, blueberries, unthawed.

Topping:

1/3 cup sugar

3 T all-purpose flour

Grated zest of 1/2 lemon

2 T unsalted butter, melted

1/3 cup pecans, finely chopped (optional)

Preheat oven to 375. Put paper muffin cups in muffin pan.

To make the topping, in a small bowl, stir together the sugar, flour and lemon zest. Stir in the melted butter until the mixture is crumbly. Add the pecans and stir to combine. Set aside.

To make the muffins, in a bowl, stir together the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, lemon zest and salt.

Make a well in the center and add the egg, melted butter and buttermilk. Stir just until evenly moistened. The batter will be slightly lumpy. Sprinkle with the blueberries and gently fold in with a large rubber spatula just until evenly distributed, no more than a few strokes. Take care not to break up the fruit. Don't over-mix.

Spoon the batter into the prepared muffing cups, filling each to a bit above the rim of the cup. Top each muffin with the topping, dividing it evenly (the sugar will melt and produce a glazed effect).

Bake until the muffins are golden, dry and springy to the touch, and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, about 25-30 minutes.

Transfer the pan to a wire rack and let cool for 10 minutes. Unmold the muffins. Serve warm or at room temperature, with butter. Makes 12 muffins.