Worship the Lord your God and His Blessing will be on your bread and water; I will take away sickness from among you; there will be no miscarriages or infertility in your land and I will give you long, full lives.  Exodus 23:25-26

  I made these rolls last night right before dinner, and they turned out so soft and warm and wonderful!  Sometimes my bread turns out “just ok”, but for some reason, these were GREAT!  So, I will tell you exactly what I did, and, hopefully, you can replicate it!

Put one cup of very warm water and one cup of buttermilk in the bowl of your mixer (fitted with dough hooks).  Add: 1/3 cup oil, 1/3 cup honey, 1 Tablespoon instant yeast, and 1 Tablespoon dough enhancer.

Run mixer for a few seconds.  Turn off and add 3 or 4 cups of freshly milled hard white wheat flour, 2 handfuls (yes! handfuls!) of rolled oats, and 1 Tablespoon salt.  Turn mixer on lowest setting, and let run while you add spoonfuls of flour.  Stop adding flour when the dough cleanly pulls away from the sides of the bowl.

Set a timer for 6 minutes and let the mixer run, kneading the dough.  Meanwhile, turn your oven on and let it heat up for 2 minutes.  Then, turn it OFF.  Spray a baking stone with spray.

After the six minutes, turn off mixer, and dump dough onto your counter.  You don’t need to add any flour to your counter.  Break off pieces of dough a little bigger than a golf ball.  Roll into a ball, and place on baking stone.  This recipe should make about 18 rolls.  After all rolls are formed, put the stone in the warm oven and cover with a cloth (a dish towel will do!).

Let rise.  How long? Hmm.  I think I let these rise about a half hour, but just take a peek at the rolls every once in a while.  They should increase in size and start to smell a little yeasty.

Take stone out of oven.  Preheat to 350 degrees.  Bake for 15 minutes or so.  They should get nice and brown on top.  Oh  my goodness!  These were good!!

This recipe calls for brown rice syrup, which is a wonderful natural sweetener that is assimilated more slowly by your body than other sweeteners.  If you don’t have rice syrup available, you may substitute pure maple syrup and get a wonderful result.

Combine in  bowl:  3 mashed ripe bananas,

1/3  cup oil,

1/2 cup brown rice syrup (or pure maple syrup),

2 teaspoons vanilla.

Add  2 1/4 cups freshly milled  flour,

2 ¼ teaspoons baking powder and ¼ teaspoon salt.

Stir well by hand.   Add 1/3 cup milk.   FILL greased muffin cups with batter.  Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes.  Makes 8-9 muffins.

I KNOW it is Thanksgiving week, and peanut butter has NOTHING to do with Pilgrims and turkeys, but I had a craving yesterday for peanut butter cookies!  So, I took an old recipe from a Betty Crocker’s cookbook and updated it to make it a bit more healthful.  The cookies turned out so soft and delicious!  Give them a try…

You will need…

1 stick soft butter

1/2 cup natural peanut butter (only peanuts and salt as ingredients…CHECK THE LABEL)

1/2 cup demerara sugar and 1/2 cup natural cane sugar

Mix all of the above well either by hand or with a mixer (I used a hand-held electric mixer).

Add one egg; mix well.

Dump in 1 and 1/4 cup freshly-milled soft white wheat flour, 3/4 teaspoon baking soda, 1/2 teaspoon baking powder, pinch of salt.  Mix.  Add 1 cup of chocolate chunk pieces.

This should make a wonderful soft dough.   Take globs of dough that are about the size of a golf ball, and put them on a cookie sheet (I use parchment paper on the sheet).  Bake at 375 degrees for 10 minutes.  They will be brown on top but nice and soft inside.  TRY to let them cool before you gobble them up.  There you go. . . I said “gobble”!  These will work for Thanksgiving!

Just in time for Thanksgiving!

Mix 2¼ cups freshly milled flour (any type) with:

½ cup demerara sugar,

2¼ teaspoons baking powder,

¼ teaspoon salt,

2 teaspoons cinnamon,

¼ teaspoon nutmeg,

¼ teaspoon cloves,

1/3 cup finely chopped pitted dates, and

1/3 cup chopped walnuts.

Combine in separate bowl:  1 (15 oz.) can pumpkin, 1/3 cup oil, 3/4 cup buttermilk (or regular milk), and 2 teaspoons vanilla.

Add dry ingredients to wet to form a thick batter.  You may need to add a little more milk if batter is too thick.  FILL greased muffin cups with batter.  Bake at 350 degrees for 15-20 minutes.  Makes one dozen.

Fall has definitely arrived here in Atlanta!  Chilly mornings, bright sunshine, and the changing colors of the leaves gets me in the mood for soup.  This recipe is from my friend, Amy, who is a bright ray of sunshine herself!  Thanks, Amy, for sharing it with me.