Weekend breakfast pastry: Toffee Schnecken

Toffee Schnecken -- gooey, chocolate-y and warm from the oven

Do you have a sweet tooth? I sure do!

Friday morning I begin to think about Saturday breakfast treats. (Okay, I'm stretching it a bit to say Friday morning. This week I was thinking about Saturday's treat on Thursday evening. Yep! I've got a sweet tooth!)

Many weekends it's whole wheat cinnamon buns. A fresh-from-the-oven cinnamon bun with coffee, now that's my idea of a Saturday breakfast that is tempting enough to get the troops out of bed in a hurry!

This week, I was in the mood for something a little different. I perused several cooking sites, then I remembered my mom's recipe for Toffee Schnecken. I hadn't made this in a while, so it seemed the perfect treat-y item. (Treat-y -- is that even a word? We'll just say it is!)

Scnecken (or schnecke), by the way, is German for snail, often used to refer to sticky buns made in the rolled up and sliced fashion. Toffee Schnecken is a rolled and sliced sticky bun pastry, filled with toffee bits, chocolate pieces and nuts. It's baked in muffin tins, so the bun grows up, instead of expanding sideways, and looks a bit like a snail, but in a good way!

As luck would have it, I still had a package of toffee bits in the pantry. I bought these on sale, and never got around to using them. I like my Toffee Schnecken with chocolate pieces added. But they're entirely optional. My mom's recipe did not call for the addition of chocolate. So, it's up to you -- chocolate, yes, or chocolate, no.

Toffee Schnecken

2 packages active dry yeast, or 5  1/2 teaspoons (27.5 mL)
1/2 cup (120 mL) lukewarm water
1 cup (240 mL) lukewarm milk
1/2 cup (120 g) butter or margarine (I used margarine)
1/4 cup (50 g) granulated sugar
2  1/2 teaspoons (12.5 mL) salt
1 large egg, beaten
4  3/4 (570 g) to 5  1/4 cups (630 g) flour (I used about 3  3/4 cups white flour and 1 cup whole wheat -- so that it's healthy-like, ya know?)
1/3 cup (80 g) butter, softened (nothing but the real thing here in the filling, the flavor matters most here, but you could use margarine)
1/4 cup (50 g) granulated sugar
1  1/4 cups (185 g) toffee candy bits (sold in the baking section, often next to the chocolate chips, otherwise, you could take a few Heath Toffee bars, and smash them up)
1/2 cup (84 g) chocolate chips (optional, but oh, so yummy!)
1/2 cup (75 g) chopped pecans, walnuts or almonds (optional, when I'm out of nuts, I don't sweat it, they're quite good without the nuts, even)
corn syrup

The dough:

• In a large bowl, dissolve the yeast in the water. Add milk, 1/2 cup butter or margarine, 1/4 cup sugar, salt, egg and 2 cups of flour. Beat well.
• Mix in enough flour to form a stiff dough. Turn out onto a floured surface, add more flour as needed, and knead until smooth and satiny (about 7-8 minutes).

• Cover with plastic and a towel. Allow to rest on the counter for 20 minutes.

• Butter well,  2  12-count muffin tins. Spoon 1 teaspoon (5 mL) of corn syrup into each muffin tin section (this forms a gooey underside to each pastry).
• Punch down the dough, divide into 2 portions, and make your filling.
• On a floured surface, roll each portion of dough out to 12 X 9 inch rectangles.

• Spread half of the filling onto one rectangle. Roll up, jelly roll style, beginning at the wide end of the rectangle. Slice the roll into 12 pieces, and place into prepared muffin tins.
• Repeat with the other portion of the dough.

The filling:

• Cream the butter and 1/4 cup sugar together. 
• Stir in the toffee bits, chocolate chips and nuts.

Cover the filled muffin tins with plastic, and refrigerate for 2 to 24 hours. These can be prepared the day before baking, up to this point, for a fresh schnecken in the morning, if desired. They don't require additional rising time -- just set on the counter for 10 minutes and bake.

Just before baking, remove from the refrigerator, uncover and allow to stand at room temperature, while the oven preheats to 350 degrees F (176 C).

Bake for 20 to 25 minutes. 

Quickly turn the pastries out of the pan, immediately after baking, onto a rack to cool briefly before serving. If any stick to the pan, slide a table knife around the edges. As the syrupy bottom of the schnecken cools, it will harden. The last couple of pastries may need to be popped back into a warm oven, to remove them from the pan. Makes 24 pastries. 

I freeze half of the pastries, for grab-and-go breakfasts during the work week. I just do a double wrap in plastic, and I am good to go.

Grabbing a cup of coffee and pastry at Starbucks can become an expensive habit, over $4 just for one person. I make pastries at home, as a way to treat my family to something special, in an affordable way. This recipe (made without nuts -- I was out of nuts), cost me about $4 for the batch of 24 pastries, or 17 cents per pastry. A home-brewed cup of coffee and 2 Toffee Schnecken will run about 50 cents. Not bad at all for a Saturday morning treat!

An easy sewing project: pj bottoms

two pairs of pajama bottoms, all tied up in ribbon for gifting

I hope your week is going well. In our house, we call Thursday, "Friday Eve". So, happy Friday Eve!

I had some serious sourdough bread cravings earlier this week. I got my sourdough starter fired up again, after a lot of neglect this winter. I left the sourdough sponge on the counter overnight, hoping to achieve a really good tang. It still turned out rather mild. I'll keep working on that tang that I crave.

one of two loaves of sourdough bread -- it goes fast around these parts

For now, though, I thought I'd share my adventures in sewing pj bottoms for my two daughters. For anyone interested in learning to sew, I wanted to show the process, so that you could determine for yourself if this was a project you would want to undertake.

Remember, I was making these as my Valentine's gift for my two girls. (from the post The Valentine Dog)

I have a short attention span for these sort of projects. I don't like to unnecessarily frustrate myself with a long stretch of sewing or other needlework. So, I limited myself to about 45 minutes to 1 hour at a stretch on these. It took 4 days of work to complete both pairs. If I was one who could tolerate doing it all in one stretch, I could have made these two pairs in about 3 hours (but I would not have been a happy camper at the end of it all -- hence breaking my work up into chunks).

I worked on the 2 pairs simultaneously. I pinned and cut out both pairs together. I sewed seams one pair right after the other. I hemmed and put in elastic waists, one pair followed by the second. This seemed to be the most efficient use of my time. My only wish is that I'd done a third pair, one for me!!!


Day 1: I sized down the pattern that I had for my own pajamas, from a Women's size 6-8 to a Junior's size 3-5. It was all guess work, as these were to be a gift, so done in secret. I used white tissue wrapping paper to transfer my pattern to. It's not as transparent as pattern paper, but it worked fine.

First, I laid out the old pattern on the table, traced the cutting lines for my size onto the white tissue paper. Then, I re-drew the cutting lines about an inch in on the straight side seams, and took up the hem by several inches. That was it for Day 1. It took about 45 minutes (a lot of time spent wondering if I was on the mark, size-wise).

Day 2: I pinned the new, white tissue pattern pieces to the fabric, and cut out. Again, for both pairs, this took about 45 minutes.

Day 3: I pinned my seams to be sewn,

then, sewed the two front halves together, two back halves together, the inner leg seam, and the side seam.

I trimmed and reinforced all seams with a zig zag edge, very close to the straight stitching.

This took me longer than previous days' work, about 1 hour 15 minutes.

Day 4: I made the casing for the elastic waist, hemmed the legs, ran the elastic through the casing (using a safety pin to help thread the elastic), and sewed the little flower trim to the center front. I was done in about 45 minutes.

And both pairs were complete.

Pj bottoms are a fairly simple project for a beginner. If you take your time and break the work up into several sessions, a beginner could definitely do these. (Although, I would not recommend sizing down a pattern for a beginner. I'm just cheap frugal and didn't want to buy a new pattern.)

• For winter wear, I used flannel. Summer pj bottoms could be made from a woven cotton. I'd like a seersucker pair myself for wearing around the house on lazy summer days.
• Pj shorts would be even quicker to whip up, with shorter seams.
• If you have several kids to make pj bottoms for, (and you'd like them all to be of the same fabric -- some families do this at Christmas), you can use flannel sheets for the fabric, and save some money on the project.

You can see how they turned out. I was surprisingly close to accurate in my guesses on their size. I had left a tiny bit of stitching undone on the waistband casing, so that I could adjust the waist if necessary. After they tried them on, I closed up that small gap, and now I can hardly get my daughters out of their pjs on the weekends.

I'm beginning a small sewing project, using the scraps from this pillow that I made for the family room. More on that project another day.

Thank you for visiting today. It's been good to have you here.
I hope that you found inspiration, ideas, or just moral support, for your next project. 
May your day be full of cheer!