Soft Buttered Pretzels

Soft Buttered Pretzels

These were ridiculously addictive. My dad and I made these together on a beautiful afternoon. Make sure you have people around to share these with so that you don't eat the whole lot of them by yourself!  We got this directly off of the flour bag - guess what brand it is? 

Prep time: 1 hour, 40 minutes

Bake time: 10 minutes

Ready in: 2 hours

Ingredients:

3 to 3 1/5 cups flour

1 tbsp. sugar

1 tsp. salt

1 (1/4 oz) package active dry yeast (or 2 1/4 tsp) 

1 c. water

1 tbsp. vegetable shortening

6 c. water

1/4 c. baking soda

2 tbsp. butter

Coarse salt (kosher salt is best), seseme, or poppy seeds

What to do: 

1. Combine 1 c. flour, sugar, salt, and yeast in a medium bowl. Blend well. Heat 1 cup water and shortening in a small saucepan to 100-110 degrees F. Add liquid to flour mixture. Blend at low speed with an electric mixer until moistened. Beat 3 minutes on medium. Stir in by hand an additional 1 1/2 to 1 3/4 c. of flour or until dough pulls cleanly away from the sides of the bowl. On a floured surface, knead in 1/2 to 3/4 c. flour, until dough is smooth and elastic.  Place dough in greased bowl. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and a cloth towel, letting it rise in a warm place (80-85 degrees) until light and doubled in size, about 45 minutes.

Spray 2 cookie sheets with non-stick spray. Punch down dough. Divide into 12 pieces. Roll each piece into a 16 inch rope. Form into pretzel shape like so (this took so long to get right - see photo above to see the only one that turned out perfectly hanging out front and center).

 Photo credit: 

http://unamericanaincucina.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/pretzel_shape.jpg

Place pretzels on greased cookie sheets. Cover. Let rise in warm place about 15-20 minutes. Adjust oven rack to top position and heat to 400 degrees. Combine 6 cups of water and baking soda in a shallow sided saucepan. Bring to a gentle boil. Slowly drop pretzels into water, one at a time, cookie 15 seconds on each side. Remove from water with a slotted spoon, return to greased cookie sheet. Sprinkle with pretzel salt and/or seeds.

Bake for 8 minutes. Brush with melted butter. Bake 22 additional minutes or until golden brown. Immediately remove from cookie sheet. Brush generously with remaining butter, and serve warm.

Makes 12 pretzels.

And here's the original recipe from the flour bag:

Strawberry Oatnut Muffins

I went strawberry picking and decided to make muffins out of my berries that needed to be used up, which turned out to be a delicious way to use them. This is a mash-up of my favorite muffin - the Banana Split Muffin by the Flat Belly diet people and some oat strawberry recipe I found online. I got it into my head that oats needed to happen, and the addition of walnuts makes them nice and filling for a breakfast on the go. I found a website where I could plug the ingredients and measurements in for a recipe and it would spit out the nutritional facts, which are included at the bottom. So here they are!

1 c. oats
1 c. chopped walnuts
1 c. flour
1 tbsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 c. brown sugar, packed
1/4 c. canola oil
1/4 c. yogurt
1/4 c. milk
2 large eggs
1 tsp. almond extract
1 c. Strawberries, diced

Grease and flour 12 muffin cups or use paper liners. Set oven to 400 degrees.

Grind walnuts in food processor into fine meal. Add in oats, flour, eggs, milk, oil, and extract, and blend until oats are smooth. Transfer to bowl. Stir in sugar, baking powder, and salt until well blended. Fold in strawberries.

Bake at 400 for 18-20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean and tops spring back at touch.

Spinach Manicotti with Italian Sausage Marinara

Decided to make manicotti this go-round because I couldn't find jumbo shells at the store to make stuffed shells. Great results ensued from this off-the-cuff recipe, and I'm going to try to remember this for later. Hence, here it is!

A couple of things to preface this recipe -- the back of the manicotti package said that 15 oz. of ricotta would fill 8 manicotti. With the spinach added in to my 15 oz. ricotta, I ended up filling all 14 manicotti in the package, but I did underfill them a bit to stretch the mixture. But even underfilled, my husband and I were full after 2 manicotti each.  I cooked some tonight, and froze a casserole pan with the rest for later, so this will last us.

Spinach Manicotti with Italian Sausage Marinara

Ingredients:

• 14 manicotti, cooked according to package (about 9-10 minutes, al dente)
• 5 oz. spinach (frozen is fine-- thaw ahead)
• 15 oz. ricotta
• 1 egg
• 1 clove garlic
• 1 cup shredded Italian blend cheese
• 1 jar marinara sauce
• 1 lb. sweet Italian sausage
• Italian cheese to throw on top

What to do:

1. Cook manicotti according to package, and set aside.
2. Cook Italian sausage fully, drain. Pour in marinara sauce.
3. Blend ricotta, egg, garlic, spinach, and 1 c. shredded cheese in food processor until smooth. This is the filling.
4. Heat oven to 350 degrees.
5. Spread some marinara on bottom of pan to prevent sticking, and pipe filling into the manicotti (*see helper hints below). Pour marinara with sausage over top, and then cover with a nice layer of cheese.
6. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes. Enjoy!

*Manicotti are annoying to fill. Pour the filling into a freezer bag, cut a SMALL hole in a bottom corner, and pipe it out. I emphasize small because I always cut it way too big and make a giant mess.  Another hint I
read online was to just slit the manicotti open, fill them, and then reseal them, but I feel like that defeats the purpose of having a closed tube pasta, and then it spills out everywhere when you go to eat it. I mean, it will taste the same, but doesn't hold together the same.

Other notes: Normally, I would be lazy and skip the food processor so I don't have to clean it. Don't do that! If you add spinach, it makes it such a nice texture and consistency when you throw it all in the food processor. And you can probably throw it into the dishwasher anyway.