Online shopping. Isn't it a beautiful thing?
I am so grateful for online shopping. Days like the past week, where it's about 12 degrees out, the last thing I want to do is drag my 1 year old and 2 year old from store to store, inevitably leading to fevers and snot. Lots of snot. It gets tricky this time of year, especially with my husband being gone... I know I will probably have to decide on a day and get a sitter to really knock out the rest of our shopping. I can be sneaky with the cart sometimes, but they tend to notice when I'm trying to stuff a giant box on the undercarriage...
I have a problem with online shopping though sometimes. I have a tendency to go to a page, spend an entire hour looking at all the great deals, put things in my cart, and then just close the page. It's really imaginary shopping, I guess... I mean, I guess that is better than really buying everything and draining the bank account... But if I really went through with the transaction, at least then I'd have something to show for wasting so much time!!! Right? Well anyways...
I had accumulated two surprise rewards cards from Victoria's Secret recently. These cards were good for the month of December, and could be worth $10, $20, $50, and so on, up to $500... Well, in the weeks leading up to the opening day, I'd convinced myself that surely this was my time to shine, and ONE of these cards was the magic $500 card... This is a dangerous imagination I have! I had already started a shopping list of ideas on how I could spend such a gift card... It would be amazing.
That was really silly of me to do... OF COURSE they were only worth the $10 off...
Well, it was fun to dream.
But anyways, on to better things... on a recent post, I talked about making wheat versions of the Texas Roadhouse rolls... and the pinwheel cookies... at the time, I had wanted to post my recipes, because they are actually quite different than the versions I had looked at, but I'd been too sleepy... so I'll go ahead and post 'em up now! (And p.s. the rolls get softer and better every day! Yum Yum!)
Here goes!
Stacy's Better-for-you wheatified texas roadhouse rolls
Wrap tightly with saran wrap and place the dough back in the refrigerator and let chill for 2 hours. (If you see the original recipe, you'll see that I didn't use the sprinkles on the outside (sugar), but I did sprinkle a little evaporated cane juice over the tops of them). The sprinkles were cute, but just didn't seem necessary for me!
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I am so grateful for online shopping. Days like the past week, where it's about 12 degrees out, the last thing I want to do is drag my 1 year old and 2 year old from store to store, inevitably leading to fevers and snot. Lots of snot. It gets tricky this time of year, especially with my husband being gone... I know I will probably have to decide on a day and get a sitter to really knock out the rest of our shopping. I can be sneaky with the cart sometimes, but they tend to notice when I'm trying to stuff a giant box on the undercarriage...
I have a problem with online shopping though sometimes. I have a tendency to go to a page, spend an entire hour looking at all the great deals, put things in my cart, and then just close the page. It's really imaginary shopping, I guess... I mean, I guess that is better than really buying everything and draining the bank account... But if I really went through with the transaction, at least then I'd have something to show for wasting so much time!!! Right? Well anyways...
I had accumulated two surprise rewards cards from Victoria's Secret recently. These cards were good for the month of December, and could be worth $10, $20, $50, and so on, up to $500... Well, in the weeks leading up to the opening day, I'd convinced myself that surely this was my time to shine, and ONE of these cards was the magic $500 card... This is a dangerous imagination I have! I had already started a shopping list of ideas on how I could spend such a gift card... It would be amazing.
That was really silly of me to do... OF COURSE they were only worth the $10 off...
Well, it was fun to dream.
But anyways, on to better things... on a recent post, I talked about making wheat versions of the Texas Roadhouse rolls... and the pinwheel cookies... at the time, I had wanted to post my recipes, because they are actually quite different than the versions I had looked at, but I'd been too sleepy... so I'll go ahead and post 'em up now! (And p.s. the rolls get softer and better every day! Yum Yum!)
Here goes!
Stacy's Better-for-you wheatified texas roadhouse rolls
4 tsp. active dry yeast
1/2 c. warm water
2 c. total milk (I used 1c. skim, 1c. soy milk), scalded and cooled to lukewarm
3 Tbl. of melted butter, slightly cooled
1/4 c. sucanat (this stands for "sugar-cane-natural"-- the most natural form of sugar, can probably be found at most bulk food stores like Sunflower (which is awesome) or for C-U'er's, Strawberry Fields--although try to find it elsewhere-- that place is a ripoff!!!)
1/4 c. maltitol sweetener (is a liquid, can be found here)
2 quarts flour (7-8 cups) (I used a bread flour, about 3 cups, the remainder, I used whole wheat spelt flour, but regular whole wheat flour is good too!)
2 whole eggs
2 tsp. salt
Dissolve yeast in warm water with a teaspoon of sucanat. Add yeast, milk, sugar and enough flour to make a medium batter. Beat thoroughly. Let stand until light and foamy. Add melted butter, eggs and salt. Beat well.
Add enough flour to form a soft dough. Sprinkle a small amount of flour onto counter and let dough rest. Meanwhile, grease a large bowl. Knead dough until smooth and satiny and put in greased bowl; turn over to grease top. (I used the dough hook on my Kitchen-Aid to knead this for about 4-5 minutes). Cover and let rise in a warm place until double in bulk. Punch down. Turn out onto a floured board. Divide into portions for shaping; let rest 10 minutes. Shape dough into desired forms (I used a dough scraper to cut into squares). Place on greased baking sheets. Let rise until doubled.
Bake at 350 degrees for 10-15 minutes or until golden brown. Baste immediately with butter (Or I used Brummel and Brown spread made with yogurt). Yield: 5 to 6 dozen.
YUM!
And to continue with the yum....
Stacy's Better-for-you Wheatified Peppermint Pinwheel Cookies!
Ingredients
- 1 1/4 c. unbleached AP flour (yes, a rare visitor in my kitchen...)
- 1 1/4 c. whole wheat spelt flour
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 cup unsalted butter, softened
- 1/4 c. maltitol
- 1/4 c. stevia
- 1/4 c. coconut sugar
- 1/4 c. evaporated sugar cane juice
- 1 egg
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 teaspoon peppermint extract
- 1 tablespoon red food coloring.( I highly recommend the gel variety. You can buy it at any craft store. It is much brighter and you can use less)
- flour, for rolling out dough
- 3 tablespoons almond milk
DIRECTIONS
Sift together the flour, salt and baking powder and set aside.
Cream butter and sweeteners together in another large bowl. Add egg, vanilla, milk and beat until incorporated. Gradually add the dry mixture, beating until combined. Remove half of the mixture from the bowl. Add red food coloring and peppermint extract (I only added it to the red half, the white half remained plain cookie, which I think made for a more subtle cookie, but it's your call!), beating until fully combined. You may have to knead the colored dough a bit to get it mixed thoroughly. On a sheet of waxed paper, roll out dough to form a large rectangle, about 1/4-inch thick. Repeat this step with the other half of uncolored dough with no food coloring.
Now very carefully, slide the red dough on top of the white dough and slide the parchment paper out. Trim edges if uneven and patch if necessary. Roll dough into a log, creating a swirl effect. NOTE: do not worry if the dough starts to tear a little when you are rolling it. This is normal. Simply mend it with your fingers as you go along.
Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
Slice the dough into 1/2-inch slices and place on a parchment lined sheet tray about 1-inch apart. Bake for 10-15 minutes depending on how thick you sliced the cookies.
If you'd like to see photos, you can check out the original recipe page here.
These cookies were awesome and I shared them with about ten others that thought they were awesome too! (Which is good; sometimes, I get scared that everything tastes good to me, but it's actually nasty.... lol)
OH! And just a side note... my last tray of wheat rolls didn't get the royal treatment like the previous three trays; (an unplanned phone call caused me to forget to set the timer)... So they got a little toastier and crunchier than I would've liked... well. What do you do with too-toasty bread? You make french toast of course! Typically, we stick to making "specialty" type breakfasts on Saturday... but this morning, we were up early and the girls and I conversation with Daddy was shorter than our usual morning conversations, so I decided Why Not?! An egg, some almond milk, cinnamon, and a couple packets of stevia, and we were set... I've gotta say, these crunchy rolls turned into some delicious french toast nuggets... AND this gave me an excuse to try out one of my new products, the sugar-free Nature's Hollow sugar-free maple syrup, made with xylitol.... which was also a winner!
I was able to use up all the crispy little rolls, bag them up, stick them in the freezer, and now we can pull them out and toast them up in the toaster! Quick and so good!
I was able to use up all the crispy little rolls, bag them up, stick them in the freezer, and now we can pull them out and toast them up in the toaster! Quick and so good!
Alright, enough food talk... it's making me hungry! But remember, just because you've got a recipe, don't be afraid to make it a little better for you! And if you ARE afraid, send it to me and I'll experiment until I figure out how to make it just as good!)
I'm going to leave you with a quote that someone posted yesterday on good ol' facebook. I am pretty sure it came from one of the "quote of the day" pages, but you know how it goes, sometimes, the message just comes at the right time!
" Don't try to be better than someone else. Try to be better than who you were yesterday."- Johni Pangalila
(Um, I'm not sure why my page looks crazy, but oh well...)
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