Monday, April 27, 2015

Tweaking Two of My Standard Recipes

I do like to mess around with recipes, even my standard recipes I've made for years.  It's one of the perks of my job as a cookbook editor to get ideas from other peoples' recipes and then there's Pinterest, where I collect recipes that I'm curious about (and I do have a board, Recipe Verdicts, where I make notes on my results).

In this case, I was thinking of other ways to flavor sticky buns, which I usually make caramel pecan. I decided to see if I could bring in the flavors of cardamom balls, sort of a baklava-type profile.


I used my standard sweet roll dough and method (recipe in this post).  When the dough was rolled into a rectangle, I spread it with 3 Tbsp. softened butter.  I sprinkled on 1/4 cup shredded unsweetened coconut, 1 cup finely chopped walnuts, and 1 1/4 tsp. ground cardamom mixed with 1/3 cup brown sugar.  I rolled up the dough and sliced it into rounds.  I placed the rounds in a pan that was buttered with 2 Tbsp. butter with 1/3 cup honey drizzled evenly over it.  I followed the baking method for the recipe I linked to above.

Genevieve was very impressed that I was making up a recipe - she thinks this recipe could make me famous, bless her heart.  She was worried that I wasn't writing it down as I went along, so she got a paper and pencil and recorded the measurements and ingredients as I went along (I wasn't really measuring - I was guessing for the sake of her efforts).

Her book at breakfast, however, was much more fascinating than the buns.



Delicious!  I might try adding a sesame presence next time - either toasted sesame seeds in the dough, or perhaps some tahini spread inside the buns with the other goodies.


Then I took Jennifer's raves about Ruth Reichl's cherry pie to heart.  I made my standard sour cherry pie, but I used Ruth Reichl's fabulous crumb topping instead of the traditional pie crumbs I use.  Amazing!  I think I will be trying Ruth Reichl's crumbs on some other fruit pies as well.


7 comments:

faith76 said...

Both look very delicious, thanks for sharing xxxxx Leah

beth s said...

Mmmmm....You have me hungry over here. What a sweet girl you have.

Jennifer Jo said...

I like that cardamom bun creation. Orange rind would go good in it, too, I think.

And that photo of G reading---the lighting is great. It makes her look like a cartoon stick figure...in a good way.

Unknown said...

I wish I was a baker. These look so delicious and then you start talking about variations and it's almost too much !

Julian said...

I found out I really like cardamom . Good thing at 10 dollars a bottle! I have made a brown sugar cardamom cake, and hot cross buns. Yum! Christina

jenny_o said...

Both dishes look scrumptious. You are very ambitious for someone who is having a baby any day!

Margo said...

Jenny_o, the point is to not get bored - I cleared my calendar and put all my freelance projects to bed, so I've got plenty of time on my hands. And furthermore, I've heard that the best way to make a baby come is to start up a multi-step project that a baby can interrupt :)