The difference between sticky buns and cinnamon buns is that sticky buns have a sticky caramel topping that is baked onto the buns and cinnamon buns don’t, and are typically finished off with a drizzle of icing. The caramel for sticky buns is made at the bottom of the baking pan with butter and sugar and the unbaked buns are placed on top of that layer. After baking, the buns are flipped upside down and you’re left with a gooey, sticky and completely irresistible breakfast favorite.
These Sticky Buns with Golden Raisins are the perfect dish to make for a weekend brunch. They are delicious and not as difficult to make as they might look. The base for these buns is a simple yeast dough that is very soft and lightly sweet. The dough is made and allowed to rise for about 90 minutes. Then, it is rolled into a big rectangle to be spread with butter, cinnamon, brown sugar and raisins before being rolled up into a tight spiral and cut into buns. You could actually place them on a baking sheet and turn them into cinnamon rolls with icing added after) at this point, but I put them into a baking dish I had prepped with butter and brown sugar to bake.
The finished buns are light and tender, with a very soft crumb and a lovely layer of caramel on top. The light, caramely sweetness of the golden raisins is a perfect contrast with the golden brown sugar used to make the caramel in these sticky buns. Regular raisins will still work perfectly well, and you can also switch up the type of brown sugar to use whatever kind you have on hand. You could also add a handful of chopped pecans into the baking dish with the caramel if you like your buns with a little bit of a crunch, too. However you put them together, these buns are at their best when they’re warm – so dig in when they’re fresh from the oven and don’t hesitate to look for an excuse to bake some soon.
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Cranberries may be a staple of fall baking, especially around Thanksgiving, but these sweet-tart berries can be a welcome addition to recipes any time of the year. These Cranberry Chocolate Chunk Muffins are a perfect example. In them, whole cranberries add bright bursts of color to the muffins and contrast very well with the chunks of rich chocolate that also stud these brunch time treats. They’re topped off with a little bit of sweet streusel. The muffins are buttery, light and have a nice vanilla flavor that allows both the cranberries and chocolate to stand out.
You can use both fresh or frozen cranberries in this recipe, whichever you have on hand. Since the berries are fairly large, big chocolate chunks work quite well in these muffins. You can chop up your favorite dark chocolate bar (choose a good quality chocolate!) to get a really chunky feel to your chocolate, or you can simply use chocolate chips. Semisweet and dark chocolate go a little bit better with the cranberries than milk chocolate does in this recipe.
The recipe makes slightly more than a dozen muffins, and one of the reasons for that is that there are so many mix-ins in the muffin batter. I wanted the muffins to be packed with chocolate and cranberries, then leave a little room for streusel on top, and that left me with enough batter for a few more muffins. Fortunately, in this case, it is a pleasure to have a few extra muffins available.
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Mother’s Day is not always the most personalized holiday. A bouquet of flowers and a card, along with a trip out to brunch or dinner, is generally the extent of the celebrations. Flowers are always nice, of course, but what is even nicer is getting Mom a gift that she can really use and enjoy. For instance, The Baking Bites Cookbook is a great Mother’s Day gift that will definitely come in handy throughout the year. Here are five more great baking-related gifts for Moms who probably spend the rest of the year cooking up cakes and cookies for you and the rest of your family to enjoy:
- A sourdough starter is a great gift for Moms who like to bake bread. It requires a little bit of maintenance, but it will help to produce some amazing loaves of bread right in your own kitchen. A stoneware crock is a nice container for a starter if you want to improve the presentation, although any container where you can keep it covered will ultimately work just fine.
- Nothing beats a lazy brunch with family on the weekends. Pancakes, waffles and french toast are breakfast staples, but an Aebleskiver pan makes a great gift and introduces something new to the line up. This pan makes spherical Danish pancakes that are often filled with fruit or jam, and they’re as fun to make as they are to eat. A cookbook about these treats would make a great gift to go with the pan.
- If cakes are your mom’s specialty, you can’t go wrong with a new bundt pan. There many amazing designs out there to choose from, but the Nordicware Heritage Bundt Pan is probably the most striking you’ll find. I recently added this pan to my own collection (and reviewed it) and every cake that has come out of it has been a showstopper.
- A stand mixer is a great splurge gift, but stand mixer accessories are great gifts for Moms who already have one. A Beater Blade or a KitchenAid Flex Edge Beater are bowl-scraping stand mixer attachments that virtually eliminate the need to scrape down the sides of the bowl as you mix. An extra mixer bowl for a brand of stand mixer she already has would probably be very well received, also.
- Last but not least, you can opt for something small and from-the-heart, like a big batch of homemade cookies or a homemade cake in your mom’s favorite flavor. These are gifts that you don’t have to buy, but ones that will definitely be well-received because you’ll put a little bit of love into the batter of your Chocolate Chip Cookies, Snickerdoodle Blondies, Cheesecake Brownies or Angel Food Cake (my own mom’s favorite), just like your Mom does when she bakes for you and the rest of the family.
The only baked good cuter than a cupcake is a mini cupcake, but there aren’t as many recipes out there for these downsized goodies as there are for their full-sized counterparts. Fortunately, it is not difficult to turn a batch of full sized cupcakes into miniature ones as long as you have a mini muffin pan to work with.
Most cupcake recipes can be made into mini cupcakes. Mini cupcake pans hold roughly 1/3 of the amount of regular cupcake pans, so if you have a recipe that yields 12 full sized cupcakes, you’ll get 36 minis from the same amount of batter. It is much easier to start with the full recipe and make a big batch of minis than to cut down the recipe, as there are some recipes that don’t take well to downsizing.
Once you have your batter, fill up the mini muffin pan as you would a regular muffin pan (filling each cup somewhere between 2/3 and 3/4 full) and pop the tray in the oven. While most cupcakes take about 15-20 minutes to bake, most mini cupcakes take from 9-14 minutes or so to reach donenss. Check your minis at 9 or 10 minutes with a toothpick and bake longer as needed. The only thing you really need to look out for is the fact that it is easy to overbake these miniature cakes, so keep a close eye on them while they’re baking and check them at very short intervals when they’re close to being done.
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Girl Scout cookie season is just around the corner. As usual, I’m not really planning to buy any of the Girl Scouts’ offerings – although I am happy to support local troops in other ways – because I know that I can make cookies that are as good or better at home. Girl Scout cookies still contain partially hydrogenated oils, even if they have decreased the amount to come in under the FDA’s definition of “zero trans fats per serving” (no more than .5g per serving). Homemade cookies are made with real ingredients – butter, sugar, flour, chocolate – and really do have zero trans fats. They’re still indulgent treats, but treats you can feel good about eating!
You can find recipes for four of the Scouts’ best sellers here, including an easy to make version of Thin Mints that you don’t need a cookie cutter to shape:
If you prefer your cookies gluten free, I’ve got that covered, too:
And if you’ve had enough of the cookies on their own, try using them in another way:
