They do require some effort and the title sounds like an annoying lifestyle blogger, but they are really good.

CARDAMOM AND CLEMENTINE ROLLS

4 t. active dry yeast

1 cup 110 degree milk (dairy or non-dairy)

1 flax egg (or chicken egg)

1 t. zest from clementine

1/2 T. cardamom

1/4 c. melted butter (dairy or non-dairy)

3/4 c. sugar

4 c. flour

Filling:

1/4 c. melted butter (dairy or non-dairy)

1/4 c. brown sugar

1/4 c. granulated sugar

2 t. cinnamon

Glaze:

1 c. powdered sugar

1 T. juice from clementine

Put yeast in a big bowl (big enough to accomodate rising dough). Add the milk, making sure it is not too hot. You should be able to dip a finger in and the temp should not be uncomfortable. Stir briefly and let sit for about 5 minutes.

Add sugar, egg, melted (and slightly cooled) butter, zest and cardamom and stir. Add flour one cup at a time. Stirring after each addition. You can begin the knead in the bowl to incorporate the last of the flour if it feels too stiff for a spoon. Once the mix holds together, transfer to a lightly floured surface and begin the knead. Work until elastic. Transfer back to bowl and put a damp kitchen cloth on top and move to a warm and draft free location until about doubled in size. Should take about an hour+ depending on weather and your kitchen environment.

Once the dough has increased in volume and holds your finger imprint, dump onto lightly floured surface. Roll out into a roughly 15”x10”x.5” thick rectanglelipse.

Make the filling by combining the cinnamon and sugars in a bowl. Melt the butter needed for filling. Spread melted butter on the dough. Add the cinnamon sugar mixture across entire surface.

Begin at one end of the slab and begin to roll up as you move horizontally across the surface. Once it is all rolled up, use a serrated knife to cut into 10-12 slices and add to a prepared pan or baking sheet. Let rise once more, or refrigerate until the next day.

Pop in the oven at 400 degrees f and bake until golden. About 12 minutes.

Make the glaze by mixing up sugar and juice until smooth. When you pull rolls from oven, if you really want to make them sing, drizzle some melted honey butter on the hot rolls. Let cool a bit and then add your glaze. You know what to do from here.

FROSTED SHORTBREAD

Cookie dough:

8 oz. unsalted butter

4 oz. sugar

1 egg

12 oz. flour

Icing:

2 c. powdered sugar

2 T. half and half

Tiny bit of almond extract

Combine butter and sugar into electric mixer fitted with paddle attachment. Beat until light and fluffy. Scrape. Add egg and mix briefly to incorporate. Add flour and mix until it just starts forming a ball. Do not over mix because there will be kneading and that will end the mix.

Wrap up dough and refrigerate until ready to make cookies. At least an hour and a half and up to a couple days. It can also be frozen at this point and used much later.

Portion out the dough into quarters for easier kneading and rolling. Knead the portion you are working with for a couple seconds to warm up and finish the mix.

Roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface and cut out how you’d like.

Bake at 375 for 10-12 minutes depending on your cutter size. You don’t want to brown these cookies all over because it will make them hard.

Mix the icing ingredients in a small bowl while the cookies are baking. Add more sugar if it feels too wet or more half and half if it feels to dry.

Put 1/4 c. or so of icing in enough small bowls for your colors (if using). Add your coloring to each 1/4 c amount and mix.

Flood the cool cookies one at a time with a small off set spatula or butter knife. Then go around perimeter of the cookie with knife or spatula to stop the icing from pouring over. If you would like to add dots of colored icing at this point to drag a toothpick through, you should pipe on now. It works best if both icings are wet and not allowed to dry.

Messy but good.

CHOCOLATE COOKIES

4 oz. semisweet chocolate

1/4 c. butter

4 eggs

1 1/2 c. granulated sugar

1 3/4 c. flour

1/2 c. cocoa powder

2 t. baking powder

pinch salt

1/4-1/2 c. powdered sugar

Get yourself a double boiler situation going. Put in your semisweet chocolate and butter. Combine and melt together. Mix eggs and granulated sugar together until light in color and thickened. Add your sort of cooled chocolate butter mix. Combine with a wooden spoon.

Add your dry ingredients and stir until just combined. Put some sort of wrap or cover on the bowl and refrigerate the mess until more like a cookie dough. This usually is about 2 hours. It is going to be more like a brownie batter at the start.

Turn oven to 350. Once it is to the point where you can work little cookie balls, pull from fridge and work into said little cookie balls. Enrobe in powdered sugar. Now you are in it. Work quickly so that each ball does not absorb powdered sugar. You want the cookies to flatten and maintain an inkling of their enrobement. Place each cookie ball on a prepared baking sheet. Bake until they flatten out a bit and begin to take on a sort of crackled top. About 12 minutes depending your oven. They will still be a bit soft to the touch right when you take them from the oven. This is great because they still have some flattening and firming to do. They will sort it out on their own once out of oven and on a cooling rack.

It’s good. Promise. Not chewy and it has fooled many carnivorous people into thinking that it must have butter and eggs.

VEGAN TART DOUGH

14 T. vegan butter (Miyoko’s has a really close consistency to real butter and works well)

1 c. powdered sugar

2 flax eggs (2 T. flax seed and 4 T. water mixed together)

1/2 c. almond meal

2 3/4 c. flour

pinch salt

Mix up your flax eggs with a fork. The ratio here is not the normal flax to water ratio as some eagle eyed vegan viewers may recognize. This recipe works best with minimal liquid though. Let the flax mix sit for about 5 minutes to thicken up. Beat sugar and butter in mixer fitted with paddle attachment until light and fluffy. Scrape down a couple times. And once more when fully incorporated.

Add flax mix and mix on low to blend. Scrape again. Add flours and salt. Blend until it starts to form a ball. It is okay if there is a bit more dry than wet remaining in clumps here and there. You will finish the knead out of the bowl.

Dump the mix onto lightly floured work surface and knead to smooth out the dough and then wrap in reusable wrap…because jeez. You are making vegan dough…are you really going to use plastic wrap and then just throw it away? Stick in fridge for a couple hours or a day or two ahead of anticipated bake.

When ready to use, pull from fridge and cut into workable portions large enough to fill your tart pan. Roll from center outwards and fill with whatever tart ingredients sound good. Bake at 350 for as long as it takes to set your filling and brown the crust. You can (oat)milk wash your crust prior to baking if you really want to feel fancy.

This one goes out to every kid who has ever loved a funfetti cake. To every kid who has ever loved a cinnamon roll. To every kid who just wanted the two of those things together. It is a good idea.

RAINBOW ROLLS

4 t. active dry yeast

1 cup 110 degree milk (dairy or non-dairy)

1 flax egg (or chicken egg)

1/4 c. melted butter (dairy or non-dairy)

3/4 c. sugar

4 c. flour

Filling:

1/4 c. melted butter (dairy or non-dairy)

1/4 c. brown sugar

1/4 c. granulated sugar

2 t. cinnamon

1/4 c. rainbow sprinkles

Put yeast in a big bowl (big enough to accomodate rising dough). Add the milk, making sure it is not too hot. You should be able to dip a finger in and the temp should not be uncomfortable. Stir briefly and let sit for about 5 minutes.

Add sugar, flax egg, melted (and slightly cooled) butter and stir. Add flour one cup at a time. Stirring after each addition. You can begin the knead in the bowl to incorporate the last of the flour if it feels too stiff for a spoon. Don’t break your spoon. Someone probably worked really hard on it. Once the mix holds together, transfer to a lightly floured surface and begin the knead. Work until elastic. Transfer back to bowl and put a damp kitchen cloth on top and move to a warm and draft free location until about doubled in size. Should take about an hour+ depending on weather and your kitchen environment.

Once the dough has increased in volume and holds your finger imprint, dump onto lightly floured surface. Roll out into a roughly 15”x10”x.5” thick rectanglelipse.

Make the filling by combining the cinnamon and sugars in a bowl. Melt the butter needed for filling. Spread melted butter on the dough. Add the cinnamon sugar mixture across entire surface followed by sprinkles.

Begin at one end of the slab and begin to roll up as you move horizontally across the surface. Once it is all rolled up, use a serrated knife to cut into 10-12 slices and add to a prepared pan or baking sheet.

From here, you may choose to cover and refrigerate it in order to impress your family or co-habitants with warm rainbow rolls upon their awakening. Or you proof the lot one more time in their prepared pans. Either way, lightly cover. If you plan on baking today, let the cut rolls rise another hour. If you are baking tomorrow morning, just cover and put in the fridge. Be sure to pull out of fridge at least a half hour in advance if baking tomorrow.

Turn oven on to 400 degrees f. Add a quick milk wash to rolls before you put in oven. Bake until golden brown and studded with ROYGBIV, about 10 minutes.

These fridge cleaning nuggets were born out of early quarantine necessity. Like most people trips out of the house are made these days when things are really dire. You don’t just go to the store to pick up a few things these days. Makes you wonder when express lanes will become obsolete. Sweet or savory and for everything in between. Find some stuff nearing their end and put them in pie dough and you’ve got dinner. Or something.

TRASH DUMPLING DOUGH

10 oz. pastry flour

3.5 oz. cold shortening

3.5 oz. cold butter (dairy or non-dairy)

3 oz. ice water with 1/4 t. apple cider vinegar in it

pinch salt

The key to good pie crust is cold ingredients and minimal touch. If you can, scale and freeze the fats on a small baking sheet prior to use. It also seems really high maintenance to use ice water, but it will be worth it. And yes, so isl the vinegar addition.

Combine flour, salt, and fat with a pastry blender until you have a flour mix that looks like little frozen peas are in it. Add some of the water (but not the actual ice). Fold with a wooden spoon. If it looks really dry, add water as needed. Right before the mix is fully incorporated, lightly dust your work surface with flour and dump the mix onto said work surface.

Work with hands until just combined. Do not overdo it. Put in wrap and refrigerate for 4 hours.

Cut dough into more manageable amounts, or just plop onto floured surface and roll out dough. Be sure to roll from the middle outwards. Again, sounds really picky, but pastry dough is a princess.

Cut into crescents or squares or really happy circles. Add whatever innards you wish to get rid of and top with more dough, or simply bundle up the packets as is. Be sure to cut some venting holes somewhere on the tops of your little dumplings to let hot air escape safely.

Bake at 365 or so until light golden brown. And everyone will say, “Trash Dumplings?” and then they will eat them and say, “Trash Dumplings!”

A favorite from childhoods spanning the 80’s and 90’s. We always made ours during the holiday season. I think we made them with the infamous spritzer cookies with red hots and green sprinkles. When my mom would pull out the box for the spritzer mold and waxed paper I knew it was officially the holidays. I can almost hear Bing Crosby on that translucent blue cassette tape now.

BUTTERSCOTCH PRETZELS

2.5 c. pretzels

1 c. butterscotch chips

Melt chips over a double boiler until it is soft and swirlable. Add pretzels and stir. Break some up or leave them whole. This is your kitchen. Dump out onto waxed paper and allow to cool. May want to separate them into bundles or stacks otherwise it is just one big pretzel pack.

Vegan cake doughnuts that are baked. But at least they have a chocolate glaze and rainbow sprinkles.

CAKE DOUGHNUTS

Doughnut batter-

1 c. non-dairy milk

1 t. apple cider vinegar

1 1/2 T. cornstarch

1 1/2 c. flour

3/4 t. baking powder

1/2 t. baking soda

1/4 t. ground nutmeg

1/4 c. canola oil

3/4 c. sugar

Chocolate glaze-

3/4 c. milk (dairy or non-dairy)

2/3 c. chocolate (chips or broken blocks of a mix of semi, dark, milk chocolate)

2 t. agave or maple syrup

Preheat oven to 350 and prepare doughnut pans. Norpro makes a good doughnut baking pan if you don’t have one.

Put the milk, apple cider vinegar and cornstarch into a measuring pitcher and set aside. In a large bowl, combine the dry ingredients. Now, back to the wet: add the oil and sugar to the measuring pitcher and stir well with a fork to get the cornstarch mostly mixed in.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry and stir by hand with a wooden spoon. You do have a wooden spoon, don’t you?

Gently add the batter to the prepared pans. Don’t get greedy and fill them full…you will get some weird looking doughnuts if you do. Like my greedy mutant doughnuts below. Bake for about 20 minutes until you can press on a doughnut and it is not squishy. Pull from oven and let cool.

Let’s make the glaze now.

Heat milk over low-medium heat until it starts to bubble even when you have stirred it. Do not scald it though. It is doing its best. Remove from heat and add the chocolate. Cover with wrap or a plate and set aside for 5-10 minutes. Then stir it until the chocolate and milk are nice and combined and thick and you want to stick your face in it. Then add syrup and give another brief stir.

Get the doughnuts out of the pan before they have completely cooled. I like to use the part that was baked at bottom of pan as the top of the doughnut, but I am not telling you how to live your life. Glaze the doughnuts by dipping, spreading or pouring. Adorn with sprinkles.

One more pumpkin recipe for the road.

This is a big bakery recipe that I have tried to scale down. But this is as small as I have gotten it to where it still yields a good batch. It makes about 3 loaves of bread. Unfortunately, for this batch of it I only had enough butter to make 1/4 of this amount…and the results were less than impressive. Scaling down from this batch amount is not very consistent in results.

PUMPKIN BREAD

12 T. unsalted butter

2 c. sugar

4 eggs

2/3 c. orange juice

2 c. pumpkin

3 1/3 c. flour

1/2 t. baking powder

2 t. baking soda

1/2 t. salt

1 t. cinnamon

1/2 t. cloves

Cream butter and sugar until fluffy. Add egg one at a time, mixing after each addition. Scrape down bowl. Add orange juice and pumpkin and mix at low speed or by hand until just incorporated. Sift dry ingredients into bowl and add pumpkin mixture to the dry ingredients and stir.

Prepare 3 loaf pans by greasing and putting a small rectangle of parchment at the base of each tin. Divide batter among the 3 tins. Bake at 375 for almost an hour. It may seem slightly unbaked as you pull it out of the oven, but will set up over the next couple hours. Just make sure that a tester comes out clean when deciding to take them out of the oven.

CARAMELIZED APPLE

2-3 tart apples

2 T. brown sugar

1 T. butter (dairy or non-dairy)

Chop apples into small pieces. You leave the skins on which makes this the easiest way to deal with apples and makes for a delightful taste. Heat brown sugar and butter in a skillet over medium heat and stir until it all starts to bubble. Add your apples and stir to coat evenly. Stir occasionally. This way the water will have time to release and evaporate. Then the sugar and butter starts to get kind of stringy. This is a good thing. It’s how caramel is made.

The apples should be looking caramelized at about 12-15 minutes. At this point, transfer to a bowl to cool. You may choose to add these into a vanilla cupcake batter, fold at the very end into cinnamon pancakes or roll into cinnamon rolls before baking. Caramel apples get invited to most parties.