Alright, alright. I can hear you all rolling your eyes and looking at that picture saying “Oooh, Karly can open up a tube of crescent rolls and bake them! She’s magical!” Quit with the sarcasm, people.

Those crescent rolls up there are special. I really am magical! It’s true. You see, I took a boring (but delicious) tube of refrigerated crescent rolls and I opened it up. It was hard, lemme tell ya. Sometimes the tubes don’t pop the way they are supposed to! It’s horrible! And turrible. Just turrible. (Also, yes, I meant “terrible” but my husband says it with a “u” and I kinda like it.)

After I had those crescent rolls open do you know what I had to do? I had to unroll them! Oh, the work. I wasn’t sure I was going to make it!

Then I did something wild and crazy. Also, magical. Very magical, indeed.

I placed two squares of Hershey’s milk chocolate right in the center of each little crescent roll triangle. Then I rolled it all up, popped it in the oven, and sat back and congratulated myself on the magic that I had just created.

Seriously, y’all, the chocolate just transforms inside the crescent roll into something amazing. Chocolate is good, but chocolate baked in a crescent roll is super-fantastic. It’s almost like the frosting you lick off a donut. What? You don’t lick the frosting off your donuts? The crescent rolls really aren’t very sweet so they play against that yummy chocolate just perfectly.

Whether you make these for a super simple breakfast or totally easy after school snack, you are going to go nuts for these things. Absolutely nuts. In a good way, I hope.

Chocolate Crescents

• 1 tube crescent rolls (I prefer Pillsbury)
• 2 bars Hershey’s milk chocolate candy (you’ll have some left over for snacking on)

Pre-heat your oven per the directions on the tube of dough. Unroll each dough and place on the baking sheet. Place 2 small squares of chocolate in the center of each triangle of dough. Roll dough up in a crescent shape over the chocolate being careful to seal the edges so the chocolate doesn’t leak out. Bake as instructed on the crescent rolls packaging. Devour while warm with a glass of cold milk.

To kick off Bacon Week, I thought it would be best to start at the beginning and by beginning I mean breakfast. When I think breakfast, I think bacon. I also think scrambled eggs and english muffins slathered in butter. Plain ol’ fried bacon would probably be a rather boring start to Bacon Week though (delicious, but nothin’ new or exciting), so I whipped out my trusty Taste of Home bacon book and I came across this amazing concoction.

As soon as I read the words bacon butter, I knew I was in trouble. Those are my two favorite foods! Why had I never though to combine them? Because, let’s face it, this really isn’t much of a recipe. It’s more of an idea. A very good, very tasty idea.

Softened butter, fried and crumbled bacon, and the teensiest weensiest little bit of dijon mustard. This stuff will blow your mind.

Don’t forget to email links to your favorite bacon recipes you’ve posted on your own blog! I’ll feature them here at the end of the week. Email karly[at]bunsinmyoven[dot]com by July 1st and feel free in include a picture (sized 625px wide or smaller) and I’ll include that as well!

Bacon Butter
recipe from Taste of Home

• 1/2 cup softened butter
• 4 pieces of bacon, fried crisp and crumbled
• 1/2 tsp dijon mustard

Mix ingredients together and spread on toast or english muffins. Refrigerate leftovers.

Bread. It’s a beautiful thing. All floury and chewy and warm and, well, bready. I love bread. So do my kids. My daughter has been known to order a cheeseburger at a restaurant and then eat nothing but the bun. We’re bread people.

This bread is a bit different. It’s full of blueberries. I’ve had banana bread and pumpkin bread, but I’d never had blueberry bread before this. I’m not sure what the heck I was waiting for. This stuff is delicious. It’s also the healthiest dang bread recipe I’ve ever made. Even more shocking, it didn’t start out all super healthy, I adapted the recipe to make it that way. Usually I adapt recipes by adding more butter or sugar, but this time I was replacing oil with applesauce and using whole wheat flour in place of white. I’m not sure what was going on. Alien abduction? Mind control? Who knows.

Even with all the healthifying I did to this recipe, it was still delicious.

The next time I make this I’ll add in a cup of chopped walnuts. Walnuts just belong in fruity breads. It should be a law.

Blueberry Bread
adapted from Betty Crocker

• 2/3 cup packed brown sugar
• 3/4 cup milk
• 1/4 cup applesauce
• 1/4 cup canola oil
• 2 large eggs
• 2 1/4 cups King Arthur white whole wheat flour
• 1 cup rolled oats
• 3 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 cup fresh blueberries
• 1 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

Heat oven to 350 degrees and grease the bottom of an 8 or 9 inch loaf pan.

In the bowl of your mixer, add sugar, milk, applesauce, oil, and eggs. Mix well. Mix in the remaining ingredients except for the blueberries and mix until combined. Fold in the blueberries.

Pour in the loaf pan and bake for 45-55 minutes or until a tester comes out clean. Cool in pan for 10 minutes and then remove from the pan and cool on a wire rack.

When was the last time you made breakfast for dinner? I’ve been trying to make it more often, just because it’s quick, simple, and budget friendly. I usually make eggs, bacon, biscuits, and potatoes. This week I decided to make doughnuts.

You heard me.

I made doughnuts for dinner. No eggs, no bacon. Just doughnuts. My children think I am the best mother ever. Or, at least they did, while they were eating, but then I shouted at them to clean their rooms not too long after dinner and I went back to being mean mommy. It was nice while it lasted, though.

Doughnuts definitely take a bit of time and effort, but that first delicious bite you take makes it all worth it. These aren’t difficult, by any means, just a bit more involved than I usually like. There was the rising, the flouring, the rolling, the cutting, the rising, the frying, the topping, and then, finally, happily, thankfully, the eating.

I know a lot of people are scared of yeast, but don’t be. If I can make yeasty treats, so can you. Besides, watching my flat little doughnuts magically puff up made me feel like some sort of superhero. A Superhero of Yeast.

The hardest part was getting the risen doughnuts into the hot oil without deflating them. Deflating. Is that the right word?

I found that it was best to stick my thumb through the hole and gently lift them up. It took me quite a few tries before I really got it.

I like variety, so I made glazed doughnuts, cinnamon and sugar doughnuts, and doughnuts with chocolate frosting. I’ll share the frosting recipe with you tomorrow. It’s the frosting my mama puts on brownies and I’ve been wanting to share it with you since the day I started this blog. It’s good. It’s real good.

Anyway, the glaze recipe that I used was bit chunky for some reason. They still tasted good, but they looked kinda funky.

I snapped this picture, shouted for my kids that their dinner was ready, and then, in just a matter of seconds, this is what my plate full of doughnuts looked like:

Crispy and Creamy Doughnuts
Recipe from allrecipes.com

• 2 (.25 ounce) envelopes dry active yeast
• 1/4 cup warm water (105 to 115 degrees)
• 1 1/2 cups lukewarm milk
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 eggs
• 1/3 cup shortening
• 5 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 quart oil, for fying

Pour the warm water into the bowl of your mixer and sprinkle in the yeast. (I always add a pinch of sugar to feed the yeast at this point. Not sure if that actually does anything or not, but I like to think it helps.) Let the yeast mixture stand for 5 minutes or until foamy.

Pour in the warm milk, sugar, salt, eggs, shortening, and 2 cups of the flour. Mix on low for a few minutes. Beat in remaining flour 1/2 cup at a time until the dough no longer sticks to the sides of the bowl. Knead for 5 minutes or until smooth and elastic.

Put the dough into a greased bowl and allow to rise until doubled in a warm place (your turned off oven works great for this!).

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and gently roll out to about 1/2 inch thick. Cut with a floured doughnut cutter. Cover with a towel and let rise until double.

Heat oil in a deep fryer or large pan until it reaches 350 degrees. Carefully place doughnuts into the oil and fry on each side until they are golden. Drain on a wire rack.

Glaze

• 1/3 cup butter
• 2 cups powdered sugar
• 1 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 4 tbsp hot water (as needed)

Melt butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Stir in powdered sugar and vanilla until smooth. Remove from heat and add water, as needed, to thin the icing out.

I can pretty much guarantee that now that I have discovered the beauty of scones that you will all get sick of them and wish that I would stop posting scone recipes. Please, just indulge me for a bit longer okay? I need to thoroughly explore the world of the scone and I promise to only share the very, very best scones that I make. These fit in that very, very best category.

Bacon. Cheddar cheese. Green onions. Those are a few of my favorite ingredients and each one of them is hidden away inside these delightful little scones. Well, okay, so these weren’t “little” scones. They were big. Big and hearty and filling. They’re perfect for breakfast, but I think they’d go just wonderfully with a bowl of soup for lunch.

These were a bit fussier than my last recipe for Chocolate Chip Scones, but they were so worth the extra effort. We’ve been grabbing scones for breakfast every morning this week! They are quick to reheat in the microwave, but they are even tastier heated up in the oven for a bit.

Just look at these! They’re like a clean, compact little breakfast sandwich! In fact, I think I might go eat one now. For dessert. Don’t even try to stop me.

Bacon and Cheddar Scones
Recipe from The Pastry Queen

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tbsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 tsp ground black pepper
• 1/2 cup chilled butter, cut into small cubes
• 1 1/2 cups grated cheddar cheese
• 4 green onions, thinly sliced
• 10 slices bacon, cooked and crumbled
• 3/4 to 1 1/2 cups buttermilk
• 1 large egg
• 2 tbsp water

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Fit your mixer with the paddle attachment and add flour, baking powder, salt, and black pepper to the bowl. Mix on the low speed. Slowly add cubes of butter to the flour mixture and keep mixing until it is crumbly and your butter is in small pea sized pieces. Add the grated cheese and mix until blended in.

(If you don’t have a mixer just stir dry ingredients together and cut butter in with a pastry cutter or two knives and then stir in the cheese.)

Add the green onions, bacon, and 3/4 cup of buttermilk to the flour and cheese mixture. Mix by hand until all the ingredients are incorporated. Do not overwork the dough! If the dough is still to dry to hold together, add in more buttermilk 1 tablespoon at a time, until you can form the dough into a ball.

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and form it into a ball. Using a well floured rolling pin, flatten the dough into a circle about 8 inches wide (mine was closer to 10 inches) and 1/2 inch thick. Cut the dough into 8 to 10 equal wedges depending on the size of scone you want.

Whisk egg and water together and brush the tops of the scone with the egg wash. I sprinkled a bit of kosher salt on the tops because I’m wild and crazy, but the original recipe didn’t call for this.

Place scones on an ungreased cookie sheet and bake for 18-20 minutes or until they are golden brown and no longer sticky in the centers. Serve warm!