Tag Archives: honey

Honey Bear Blondies {Recipe}

Bars & Squares

Honey Bear Blondies | Lil Miss Cakes
It is traditional to bake with honey at the start of the Jewish New Year-it’s a wish for a Sweet New Year. I personally love honey cake and bake this one from Smitten Kitchen every year. My recipe for honey cookies is also insanely popular during this season. I also have a recipe for honey sugar cookies that are perfect for cutting out cookie shapes, apple honey crumb muffins that are moist, sweet, and delicious, as well as honey whoopie pies for the more adventurous baker. But not everybody loves the taste of honey in their desserts. For those people I present you with honey bear blondies. I call them “honey bear” because everybody knows about the plastic bears that honey comes in. Blondies, or blonde brownies are basically brownies without chocolate in the batter. I have a recipe for blondies I shared a few years ago. It makes soft, cake like chocolate chip cookie squares and it’s delicious. The addition of honey in this recipe makes super fudgy, thick, dense cookie squares with the slightest hint of honey flavor. I found 2 similar recipes for honey blondies: one from Martha Stewart, and the other from the Ovenly cookbook that is floating around the internet and used those to come up with this recipe. My recipe is dairy free, quick, and easy. All the ingredients are easy to find, I’m sure you have everything you need right in your pantry already!

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Honey Bear Blondies {Recipe}
Author: 
Serves: 16
 
Ingredients
  • ½ cup oil
  • ⅓ cup honey
  • ¾ cup brown sugar
  • 1 tsp. vanilla extract
  • 1 egg
  • 1¼ cup flour
  • 1½ tsp. kosher salt
  • ⅔ cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
Instructions
  1. Line an 8x8 inch square baking pan with parchment paper and set aside.
  2. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
  3. In a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, mix the oil, honey, brown sugar, and vanilla. Mix until it comes together and smooth.
  4. Add in the egg and mix.
  5. Add in the flour and salt and mix until combined.
  6. Stir in the chocolate chips.
  7. Spread into the baking pan.
  8. Bake for about 30 minutes until lightly browned.
  9. Allow to cool before cutting into 2x2 inch squares.

 

Our Table Cookbook {Review and Giveaway}

Cookbook Review, ,

Our Table by Renee Muller

 

 In Our Table, food stylist and recipe columnist Renee Muller shares her simple and delicious kosher family recipes. Each recipe calls for everyday ingredients, all easily accessible, and is accompanied by full color photos. Both of those components as well as the easy to follow directions and tips make this cookbook perfect for a beginner in the kitchen as well as a great resource for the seasoned chef. The cookbook is not only for the kitchen, it makes a stunning coffee table book. Renee brings her expert food styling skills to each and every photo. This is something I really look for in a great cookbook. I love looking at beautiful food and love seeing what the recipe will look like.

The book is filled with recipe tips, suggestions, and techniques to help in the kitchen. Some of the recipes also include links to online video tutorials. As Renee was writing she wished she could be there with her readers in the kitchen. “Many times while writing down recipe instructions, I wished I could just invite my readers to join me in my kitchen and cook with me.  That thought led me to create a variety of videos of some of the recipes so you can view them as you want and see some of the techniques I use when cooking my recipes.”  I love this idea, it’s like getting personal cooking classes with Renee Muller!

The categories in the cookbook include Appetizers, Soups & Salads, Fish & Dairy, Meat, Chicken & More, Snacks & Sides, Bread, Cakes & Cookies, and Desserts. Each recipe is labeled as Meat, Dairy,  or Pareve as well as Freezer Friendly or Gluten Free. There is even a Pesach (Passover) guide with substitutions so many recipes can be used over the holiday as well.

I have already made the Belgian Birthday Waffles  and My Most Favorite White Flour Challah which were both a huge hit! I cant wait to try Mommy’s Stuffed Cabbage,  Mushroom Barley Soup Done Right,  Lo Mein, Caramelized Onion and Goat Cheese Tart, Sweet and Tangy Spare Ribs, Oven Baked Honey Mustard Chicken,  Babka Swirls, Just Right Cookies, and Malky’s Old Fashioned Apple Bake.

Apple and Honey Rosh Hashanah Muffins | Renee Muller

I am delighted to share this recipe for Apple and Honey Rosh Hashanah Muffins from Our  Table by Renee Muller reproduced with permission from the copyright holder, ArtScroll Publications, October 2016.

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Apple and Honey Rosh Hashana Muffins
Author: 
Serves: 48
 
At our house, Rosh Hashanah cannot happen without honey muffins. At least, that’s the way my kids see it. It’s a family project, and by now, a family tradition, too. This recipe was given to me by a relative in Israel who bakes them all the time and claims that no matter how many batches she bakes, there are never enough. She’s absolutely right. We once baked a quadruple batch of these (sans the apples) for a bake sale on our block and we were left without a crumb!
Ingredients
For The Apples
  • 2 Tablespoons butter OR margarine
  • 4 Granny Smith apples, diced
  • 4 Tablespoons sugar
  • 1 teaspoon cinnamon
For the muffins
  • 2 cups prepared tea, lukewarm
  • 2 cups sugar
  • 2 cups oil
  • 2 cups honey
  • 12 eggs
  • 6 cups flour
  • 2 Tablespoons baking powder
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 2 heaping Tablespoons cinnamon
Instructions
  1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Line a muffin pan with cupcake liners.
  2. Prepare the apples: In a saucepan, melt butter over a medium-low flame. Add apples, sugar, and cinnamon; cook until apples are fragrant and soften a bit, about 15 minutes. Set aside to cool.
  3. Prepare the muffins: In the bowl of a stand mixer, on medium speed, combine tea, sugar, oil, honey, and eggs. Mix until smooth. Reduce speed; gradually add flour, baking powder, baking soda, and cinnamon. Scrape down sides of bowl as needed.
  4. Fill each muffin cup halfway with batter. (I like to use a cupcake pen for this; I find it very helpful.) Top with a teaspoon of prepared apples. Bake for 15-20 minutes, or until an inserted toothpick comes out almost dry with some moist crumbs attached.
note: The apples are optional; I find that some children prefer the muffins plain. We add the apple for Rosh Hashanah (very loudly singing, “Dip the apple in the hooooneeeyy” as we do so) but throughout the year, we bake them plain.
tip: I recently discovered an amazing gadget called “The Cupcake (or Muffin) Pen.” It really removes the whole messy aspect of filling cupcake pans with batter. Look for it in specialty equipment stores.

Want to win your own copy? Artscroll has graciously offered to give one copy of Our Table to one of you! Head over to my Instagram @lilmisscakes and enter for a chance to win! US mailing addresses only-sorry!

Apple Honey Crumb Muffins {Recipe}

Cupcakes and Muffins, , , ,

Apple Honey Crumb Muffins | Lil Miss Cakes

For some reason I really like baking cookies. Alot.  Most of the recipes I share are for cookies-they look good, are easy to bake and serve and they freeze well. For the holiday season my most popular recipe is for simple honey cookies. I also shared a recipe for honey sugar cookies and honey whoopie pies which are like an elevated snack cookie/cake hybrid. So naturally when I found an old recipe for apple honey cookies I knew it would be a perfect recipe for the Jewish New Year. After baking the first batch, the cookies were just too soft and tender to hold up as a cookie, and they were coming out all wonky instead of perfectly cute and even. I thought they would be better suited as a muffin. They needed a bit of excitement though, the batter itself was a little one note for me. So I added a simple crumb topping. Then the crumb topping really just needed a bit of icing, but that’s totally optional. My family really doesn’t like traditional honey cake so I’m always looking for recipes that work in apples and honey and this one is perfect! The muffins are sweet, spiced and tender with bits of fresh apples throughout. The crumbs give the muffins a bit of a crunch and the icing adds a touch of sweetness. There is quite a bit of honey in the recipe and these muffins go perfectly with a cup of tea or coffee, but they definitely don’t taste like that old school dry honey cake.

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Apple Honey Crumb Muffins {Recipe}
Author: 
Serves: 18 Muffins
 
Ingredients
Muffin
  • ½ cup shortening
  • ¾ cup brown sugar
  • ½ cup honey
  • 2 eggs
  • ¼ cup dairy-free sour cream
  • 2 cups flour
  • 1½ tsp. baking soda
  • ¾ tsp. salt
  • 2 tsp. cinnamon
  • 1 tsp. vanilla
  • 1½ cups peeled and chopped apples (1-2 apples)
Crumb Topping
  • ½ cup sugar
  • ½ cup flour
  • 1 tsp. cinnamon
  • pinch of salt
  • ¼ cup oil
Icing
  • ⅓ cup powdered sugar
  • ½-1 Tbs. water
Instructions
  1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line muffin or cupcake pans with 18 liners and set aside.
Cupcakes
  1. In the bowl of an electric stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment beat the shortening, brown sugar, and honey until smooth.
  2. Mix in the eggs and sour cream and beat until smooth.
  3. Slowly add in the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and vanilla.
  4. Peel and core the apples and then dice them into small pieces. Stir them into the batter.
  5. Divide the batter between the cupcake pans, filling each about ¾ of the way full.
Crumb Topping
  1. In a small bowl, mix the xugar, flour, salt, and cinnamon. Pour in the oil and mix until large crumbs form.
  2. Sprinkle about 1 Tbs. of topping on each muffin.
  3. Bake for about 15 minutes until the muffins are golden brown and spring back to the touch.
  4. Allow to cool before adding the icing.
Icing
  1. In a small bowl, pour in the powdered sugar. Slowly sir in a bit of water at a time until the icing is a nice thick consistency. Use a spoon to drizzle a bit of icing on each muffin. I prefer to fill a disposable pastry bag with the icing and drizzle it that way. You can also use a Ziploc bag and snip the tiniest hole in the corner.

Some tips: I like baking with granny smith apples since they don’t break down in the oven, they really hold their shape.
Store in an airtight container, but I wouldn’t keep them at room temperature for too long, since the apples can start to go bad. Refrigerate for short term, but the fridge can cause baked goods to dry out. The best storage solution is to freeze them until ready to serve. The muffins defrost really quickly.