Sweet & Simple's YouTube Channel

If you had told me two years ago, just before Sweet & Simple launched, that I would be sitting at my desk typing a blog post to introduce my new YouTube channel I would have called you bonkers and rolled my eyes. Seriously.

Over the summer, I needed some pictures of myself holding Sweet & Simple pre-packaged baked goods. I asked Sandra Downie and Melani Lust, with whom I worked earlier this year, if they could help me again. I also asked a friend (and neighbor) if he would join us and shoot some video footage of me talking about Sweet & Simple.

I had originally planned on one long-ish video to tell my story and promote Sweet & Simple, but that idea did not work out as well as I hoped. It turns out that telling my story to a camera is not that simple - but either is starting a small business! So, we came up with the idea of 7 mini-videos. My words were unrehearsed and unscripted which is pretty obvious. Together they tell the story of how I took an idea that started in my home kitchen two years ago and turned it into a wholesale cookie business.

Thanks for watching. And thank you, especially, for being part of Sweet & Simple - it has been an incredible journey and an extraordinary learning experience for me! I love my job.

This is me in my kitchen holding some of my Sweet & Simple pre-packaged baked goods.
Thank you, Mom, for the beautiful apron. I really do love it.

Chia Pumpkin Muffins

Sherwood Farm, Easton, CT, October 2011

Friends of mine recently started a business called Health Warrior - they sell premium chia seeds.  I’ve been enjoying their chia with yogurt and fruit for breakfast and was curious about using chia in baked goods.

It turns out chia seeds are practically made for muffins. If you’ve baked with poppy seeds, the slight crunch of chia in this recipe won’t deter you. And if you want a slightly healthier treat, this recipe is definitely for you.

I started with a simple and great recipe - Alton Brown’s Pumpkin Bread. I’ve been making his recipe as muffins for over a year, but I use canned pumpkin for convenience, omit the pumpkin seeds and add chopped chocolate or chocolate morsels.

For this adaptation, I used part white whole wheat flour, reduced the sugar, added non-fat yogurt, and a touch of ginger and vanilla. They are moist and delicious and my kids love them.

Chocolate Chia Pumpkin Muffins

As adapted from Alton Brown.

16 muffins

Preheat oven to 350°.

Prepare a muffin tin with liners and set aside.

1 cup (135 grams) all purpose, unbleached flour

1 cup (130 grams) white whole wheat flour

1 cup (200 grams) sugar

2 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp ginger

1 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

3/4 cup (161 grams) vegetable oil

3 large eggs

2 tsp vanilla extract

1 3/4 cups (425 grams) canned pumpkin

1 cup (227 grams) non-fat plain Greek yogurt

1/2 cup (120 grams) chia seeds

1/2 cup (113 grams) chopped semi-sweet chocolate or semi-sweet mini chocolate morsels

Preheat the oven to 350°.

Combine the dry ingredients with a whisk: flours, sugar, spices, baking soda, baking powder and salt.

In a separate bowl, combine the wet ingredients with a whisk: vegetable oil, eggs and vanilla.

In the work bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle, add the wet ingredients to the dry and mix until just combined. Remove the paddle and work bowl.

Workly quickly, fold in the chia and chopped chocolate with a spatula.

Distribute the mixture evenly between the 16 muffin liners. I use a heaping 2 oz scoop for the muffins.

Bake for 20-25 minutes or until the muffin tops bounce back when pressed lightly.

Cool for 5 minutes in the pan, then turn out on a wire rack to finish cooling.

I seem to be dusting all my baked goods with powdered sugar these days - they look nice with or without the sugar!

Giant pumpkin at Sherwood Farm, Easton, Connecticut, October 2011.

Sweet & Simple Apple Cake

It's fall and time for apple recipes!  Thank you to my baker friend, Jennifer, for giving me the recipe I used as a starting point for this post: Teresa Apple Cake Supreme. Any recipe with “supreme” in the title has got to be a good place to start, right?

The original recipe has more sugar, more cinnamon and a generous dose of orange juice. I reduced the sugar and cinnamon, omitted the orange juice altogether, and added unsweetened applesauce and vanilla bean. The result is a not-too-sweet cake that lets the apples shine and highlights my favorite flavor – vanilla. Vanilla beans are expensive and it’s always a treat to bake with them for family and friends. And isn’t the smell of a vanilla bean out of this world?

If you haven’t split and scraped a vanilla bean, it’s simple: Make sure your paring knife is sharp. Working carefully, split the bean down the middle, scrape down the sides, getting all the little vanilla bits.  It’s worth it to watch a brief vanilla bean tutorial – click here for an excellent one. 

What I love about the recipe – the original and mine – is how easily it pulls together. The only time consuming part is peeling, coring and slicing the apples which I  find relaxing, especially with a cup of coffee or tea and the kids stealing apple slices as I work.

A note about pans for this Apple Cake. I tried a springform, a Bundt and a 13x9 Pyrex glass baking dish. The 13x9 pan gave me the best results – uniform color and crisp-but-not-hard edges. And, at home, I always rotate my pan(s) halfway thru baking for best results.

Sweet & Simple Apple Cake

Serves 10-12

Preheat oven to 350°.

Prepare a 13 x9 glass baking dish by lightly greasing it. Set aside.

Cake:

3 (405 grams) cups AP flour

2 (400 grams) cups sugar

3 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

4 large eggs

1 cup (215 grams) vegetable oil

1/2 (123 grams) cup unsweetened applesauce

1 1/2 tsp vanilla

Apples:

6 cups (1,020 grams) apples sliced thin (I use Granny Smith)

1 tbsp lemon juice

2 tbsp sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

1 vanilla bean, scraped*

  

Toss the apple slices with lemon juice, sugar, cinnamon and vanilla bean. Set aside.

Whisk together the dry ingredients.

In the mixing bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, combine dry and wet ingredients. Mix until just combined. If there are any dry crumbs at the bottom of the bowl, gently work them in with you hands.

Take half the cake batter and spread in the bottom the prepared 13-x9 glass baking dish, using a butter knife or small offset spatula to spread the batter evenly in the pan. Take half the apple mixture and spread evenly over the batter. Repeat.

Bake in a preheated 350° oven for approx. 1 hour.  When the cake is done, the apples on top will be wilted and lightly browned and the cake will be set in the middle. Let cake cool in the pan.

Serve warm from the oven, room temp or cool from the fridge. I prefer this cake after it has had a chance to sit – I like to bake one after dinner for breakfast the next day! Just before serving, if you wish, dust the cake with powdered sugar. Or, dust each piece individually with powdered sugar just before serving. For a homey dessert, try the Apple Cake with, a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Mmmm. Enjoy!

*If you prefer not to use a vanilla bean, increase the vanilla in the cake to 2 1/2 tsp.

Apples in Vermont, September 2011

Sweet and Simple In Westport Magazine

Sweet and Simple appears as a feature article in the July/August 2011 issue of Westport Magazine. Read about baking up entrepreneurship from scratch by downloading the .pdf.

Sweet and Simple In Patch

Sweet and Simple was recently featured in the local Patch network for Fairfield County. You can read more about my sweetly mixed life here. [Source: Patch Fairfield]

Sweet and Simple In The Academy

The good folks at The Academy, an online magazine devoted to small business culture, recently sat down with me to ask questions about how it all started. I think really, though, they were after some free cupcakes. You can read the fresh dish here. [Source: The Academy]

Sweet & Simple Spice Cake

I have a weakness for vintage cookbooks. They’re just fun.  SO fun.  For this blog post, I decided to give a recipe from a vintage cookbook a whirl.  The recipe, for an old-fashioned spice cake, was inspired by Green Mountain Kitchen Recipes (Elizabeth McWhorter, 1948).  I found this spiral bound collection of recipes in a community thrift shop in Vermont last winter. It has sweet illustrations and several wonderful recipes – and it cost a $1.

Some vintage recipes take a matter-of-fact-no-hand-holding approach with the reader. For example, Ms. McWhorter’s instructions for this cake: “Mixed and baked by the conventional method, the cake calls for the following ingredients…” The ingredients are then listed and the baker is expected – expected! – to know in what order to mix the ingredients and how to bake the cake. Yikes! 



Sure, sure, you and I both know to cream the butter and sugar together, add the eggs, add the molasses and then alternate adding the dry and wet ingredients. Of course we do! But a jumble of ingredients with no instructions may as well be a description of my pantry.  So, I’ve made sense of the original recipe, tweaked it here and there [Hello, touch of nutmeg! Hello, orange zest!], and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

Sweet & Simple Spice Cake*

Makes one lovely bundt cake

Preheat oven to 350°

Prepare a 10” bundt or tube pan (butter and lightly flour the pan, shaking off the excess flour). Alternately, you may coat the pan with a no-stick vegetable oil cooking spray (I won’t tell).

Have all ingredients at room temperature.

1 cup (225 g) light brown sugar

1/2 cup (112 g) unsalted butter

5 large eggs

1/2 cup (170 g) molasses

1 cup (250 ml) buttermilk

2 tsp orange zest

2 tsp vanilla

2 1/2 cups (338g) unbleached all-purpose flour

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1-1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp cloves

1/2 tsp allspice

1/4 tsp nutmeg (freshly grated is best)

1/4 tsp salt

Sift dry ingredients together and set aside.

Combine buttermilk, vanilla and orange zest and set aside.

In the mixing bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle, combine butter and sugar and beat well (the mixture will look like a grainy paste). Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Scrape down bowl twice. With the mixer on low speed, add the molasses in a slow, steady stream.  Scrape down bowl again. Beat until well combined. The mixture will look a little soupy at this point.

Alternate adding the dry ingredients and buttermilk/vanilla/orange zest, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients.

Mix until just combined.

Pour the batter into the prepared bundt pan.

Bake for 40-45 minutes, or until cake bounces back when pressed lightly, and/or a cake tester comes out with a few moist crumbs attached.

Cool in the pan for 5 minutes, then unmold and finish cooling the cake on a wire rack.

To finish the cake, when cool dust lightly with powdered sugar. Serve slices with a dollop of freshly whipped cream. Garnish with an edible flower or a pretty, slim slice of orange or both!

*Note: my Sweet & Simple Spice Cake recipe originally appeared as a guest post for The Fat Expat - a fun blog with interesting peeps and clever writing.