Molasses Buns - Sugar free, probiotic winter treat!

I have been busy baking and cooking for the last couple of days as we have had a birthday celebration as well as our little Thanksgiving, so have made a few oldies as well as some new recipes to me. Amongst them is roasted pheasant (which was delicious), molasses buns and a steamed pudding...

To be honest I haven't done any of these in years. Once upon a time I would have made roasted game birds quite often at certain times of the year. And as we approach Solstice it is nice to try out some of these and give them a trial run. I like to make things a few times to get it down pat, but also to tweak my own recipe..

Another recipe I tried out on the gang here was old fashioned molasses buns - this is something I would have grown up eating as molasses is a common enough additive in Newfoundland. However, my children would have never eaten this type of food, until we bought molasses to make feed for the goats!

So, now we have organic molasses and I have been itching to bake and use it in my cooking... So far I have made these buns and of course they are great and very easy to make. Actually we used to refer to them as hockey pucks growing up, come to think of it they do look a little like that.

To make molasses buns you would start off with all the usual ingredients....

Molasses Buns

4 cups spelt flour

1 duck egg

1 cup molasses

1 cup butter (melted)

¼ cup agave syrup or honey

½ to ¾ cup goat’s milk

1 cup raisins

2 teaspoons baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon, cloves or allspice (or 1 teaspoon of a mixture of these)

Preheat your oven to 180°C and line a large cookie sheet or some other pan with parchment paper. Measure out the flour, baking soda, spices and salt into a deep bowl and sift together. 

In a small saucepan melt the butter and add molasses and honey to this mixture. Add the milk to the egg and whisk well. Pour these wet ingredients into the dry flour mixture and stir until a soft dough forms. If too dry, add a little more milk as you add the raisins.

Roll out onto a generously floured surface to about 4 or 5 cm thick or more if desired. Using a cookie cutter or a glass, punch out round shapes and transfer these onto the cookie sheet. Then quickly into the hot oven.

Bake for about 14 -15 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean. These are delicious warm with butter and a tart jam or on their own with a cup of herbal tea. 

A little taste of something very old and wintery - but also great as a gut probiotic! 

April

Floury Molasses buns

Cinnamon Cake - Loved it!

A few posts ago, I mentioned how I was having a cake week - it was during my last Master Cleanse, I made a few cakes and put them in the freezer because I was in the mood for baking that week. Well, last Sunday I took out a piece of the cinnamon cake I had made and it was one of the nicest cakes I have ever tasted....

We all enjoyed it - I even kept wondering if it had improved with the freezing process (not likely) but it was so moist, tasty and light.  Well, because of all that - I wanted to recreate it and of course see if I could improve on it. 

You know, make it even better, if that was possible. 

It is a challenge to make these things when I don't use sugar, wheat flour and anything processed - we have become so accustomed to those flavours, we often feel at a loss when trying to find ingredients to use in place of this. 

And for me, it has been over 8 years since I ate sugar, wheat, cows milk, caffeine or many other of these foods - and I still have to stop and think about replacement ingredients for certain foods I want to make. Yet, I know that is also part of the process here, find the old ways some of these recipes were made or come up with new ones.

I am never one to back down from a challenge, so in wanting to improve on an already great recipe for the cinnamon cake I decided what it needed was something like a coffee cake crumble over the top. Only it would be without the sugar....

I went back to the drawing board here and made my cake with the standard fare - 2 duck eggs, 1 cup milk, 3 cups spelt flour, 1/2 cup butter, baking soda etc. But then I added in 1 cup of ground almonds, 1 cup apple butter and extra cinnamon with some of our own honey.

These ingredients were all mixed in a deep bowl to form the cake batter which I then poured into a bundt pan. For the topping, I mixed up 3/4 cup oats, butter, milk, cinnamon and maple syrup in a small bowl. It did not look like quite enough, I could have done with more, but I thought it would give me an idea of how this would taste.

I crumbled the topping mixture over top of the batter and then placed it in a hot oven for about 40 minutes or so. Once it was cool I could not wait to taste how this one turned out - I tried to stick to my original recipe (thank goddess I keep notes!) so I hoped it would be as nice as the last one.

It was better! I loved it. Tonight I made a little icing (didn't need it but what the hell!) from creamed goats cheese and maple syrup to drizzle over each slice. It was delicious - my new favorite recipe, for today anyway!! LOL

April

Cinnamon cake with crumble topping