Rhubarb-ginger muffins

It's rhubarb season! I found a recipe for rhubarb-ginger bread, and tried to adapt it to muffins, but they definitely need more sugar next time I make them. Granted, if you slather the muffin with strawberry jam it is perfect! I put candied ginger in these muffins, but you could probably leave that out. It just seemed like a good idea, and I wanted an excuse to buy some candied ginger.

Ingredients:
2C flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp dried/powdered ginger, or freshly grated if you have it
1/2C sugar (I would up this to 3/4 or 1 cup if you aren't going to put jam on it)
1 tbs oil
1 tbs yogurt
3/4C milk
2 egg whites (or one egg, I just happened to have egg whites to use up)
1/4C candied ginger, chopped
1-1/2C diced rhubarb (about 2 stalks)

1 tbs sugar (optional, for sprinkling on top)

Preheat your oven to 350 and grease a muffin tin. Combine the dry goods (flour, soda, powder, salt, sugar, ginger) in a big bowl, then combine the wet stuff (oil, yogurt, milk, eggs) in a 2C measuring cup or a different bowl. Add the rhubarb and ginger to the dry stuff, then mix the two together, without overmixing. It will be a pretty dry dough. The muffins are much breadier than cakey. Plop the dough into the muffin molds, sprinkle with sugar if you want, and bake for 15-20 minutes, until they are golden-brown.

Mojito Cupcakes

As I hinted in my last post, we made two batches of cupcakes. Car bomb cupcakes, and mojito cupcakes. The car bomb cupcakes were absolutely amazing, says I, but while the mojito ones were good, they weren't quite as mojito-y as I wanted. I think the first problem was messing up the lime curd that I was filling them with, and the second problem was that the only rum I had was coconut rum, so the frosting just tasted like coconut. Also, they weren't quite minty enough. Probably because the lime curd was overpoweringly lime-y, which, while good, is overpowering. Would I make these again? Definitely! But with changes.

So, we made two different kinds of lime curds. One was overcooked (the full fat version) and the other one (the healthy[er] version) wasn't sweet enough. We tried to do a mint-rum frosting, but, as I said before, it just tasted like coconut. The cake body itself was a mint chiffon cake, and tasted very yummy without all its accoutrements.

Mojito Cupcakes
1C flour
1.5 tsp baking powder
1 tsp mint extract; optional but recommended
5 tbs hot milk
1C granulated sugar
2 eggs, whites and yolks separated
1/2 tsp salt
1C mint leaves, crushed

Preheat your oven to 350F.

Heat half a cup of milk with the crushed lime leaves, bring to a simmer for 5-10 minutes, then remove from heat and drain the leaves. Meanwhile, beat your egg whites to stiff peaks. Put hte yolks, 1/2C of sugar, milk, and vanilla into a big bowl and beat them to combine. Add the rest of the sugar, the flour, salt, and baking powder, and then fold in the egg whites. I did the folding in three steps. First I folded/stirred 1/3 of the egg whites into the batter, to lighten it up. Then I folded in another 1/3 of the egg whites, and then I folded in the last 1/3.

Bake your cupcakes either in cupcake wrappers or in an ungreased pan. The batter gets its lift primarily from the eggs, and needs to be able to climb up the walls of the pan. Only fill the cupcake molds 1/2 way up, as they'll rise a fair bit. Cook them 10-20min, and let them cool completely before frosting.

Lime Curd, V1.0 and V1.1
V1.0:
1/2C sugar
1/3C lime juice
4 large egg yolks
5 tbs butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
1-1/2 tsp lime zest

Put all the ingredients into a saucepan, and heat on medium-low for 8-10 minutes. It should look slightly thickened, but it will thicken up more when cooled. Remove from heat and put into a clean bowl, and cover with plastic wrap so that a skin doesn't form. Chill for at least 1hr.

V1.1:
1/3C lime juice
1 tsp lime zest
5 tbs sugar (I suggest using more)
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

In a small saucepan over medium heat, dissolve the sugar into the lime juice. Add the zest. Lightly beat the egg in a small bowl, then whisking constantly, slowly pour the sugar/lime into the egg. Beat for 2 minutes, then transfer back into the saucepan, and heat over low, stirring constantly, until it just starts to bubble at the edges. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla. Cover with plastic wrap and chill for at least 1 hr.

Each of these recipes makes ~2/3-1C.

Mint-Rum Buttercream Frosting

1 stick butter
3C powdered sugar
1/2 tsp salt
4 tsp mint milk (leftover from the same stuff you used in the cake)
1 tsp mint extract
1 tbs lime juice
3 tbs rum

Cream the butter and salt, then add half the sugar and the milk and beat until combined. Add the rest of the sugar, the mint extract, and the lime, and beat for a while. Add the rum, and any more sugar if you think its necessary to stiffen up the frosting. Chill for at least 10 minutes before using.

Assembly
Take a cold cupcake, and cut out a reverse cone, so that part of the middle is missing but you can put the "cap" back on. Put in a dollop of lime curd, then add the top again. Frost either using a plastic bag to pipe the frosting or spread with a knife.

Car Bomb Cupcakes

For those not in the know, a car bomb is an alcoholic drink, where you take a glass of Guinness, and drop a shot-glass full of Jameson and Bailey's into the glass, and then drink it really fast before it curdles. Aside from the whole curdling thing, carbombs taste really good. I had recently stumbled across a recipe for a Guinness chocolate cake, and Bailey's frosting seemed like the perfect companion. After a brief google search, it turns out that many people have made car bomb cupcakes. And here I'm thinking that I was all original. Anyway, Patrice, a friend from highschool, was visiting, and I told her about my plans to make these cupcakes, and she got more excited than even I had been. Since we both had to bring cupcakes to various events later in the weekend (she'd forgotten a birthday, I had a bike team party), we decided to make two batches. One of car bomb cupcakes, and one of mojito cupcakes, with some twists on a recipe I'd used before. I'll post the mojito cupcakes later.

Car-bomb Cupcakes

2C Guinness Extra Stout
2 sticks butter
1-1/2C unsweetened cocoa powder
4C flour
3C sugar
1 tbs baking soda
1-1/2 tsp salt
4 eggs
1-1/3C yogurt

Preheat your oven to 350F. Bring the Guinness and butter to a simmer in a large saucepan over medium heat. Do not boil. Add the cocoa powder and whisk until the mixture is smooth. Cool slightly.

Whisk the flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl to blend. In another large bowl, beat the eggs and yogurt to blend. Add the stout-chocolate mixture to the egg mixture and beat just to combine. Add the flour mixture to the wet stuff, and fold the batter until it is combined.

Bake the cupcakes in liners, for 17-22 minutes. Allow the cupcakes to cool completely before frosting. We stuck ours in the freezer...

Bailey's cream cheese frosting

1 stick of butter
4oz cream cheese (1/2 a big block)
1/2 tsp salt
4 tsp milk
1 tbs lemon juice
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 tbs Bailey's Irish Creme
3-5C powdered sugar

With an electric mixer, cream the butter and salt for about 30 seconds. Add the cream cheese and beat, and then add about a cup of powdered sugar and the milk and beat until combined. Scrape down the bowl. Add the vanilla and lemon, and another cup of powdered sugar. Add the Bailey's. Then, as you continue to beat, add more powdered sugar until the frosting is as stiff as you'd like it, and fluffy. Be sure to taste...

The frosting can stay in the fridge for up to 4 days if tightly wrapped. Stir the frosting well before using ot get the air bubbled out of it, then put some in a plastic bag and snip off the corner to pipe it onto your completely cooled cupcakes. We found that refrigerating the cupcakes after frosting kept it looking nice.

We had enough batter for 36 cupcakes, and enough frosting for 32 cupcakes, so you might want to add more butter and cream cheese to the frosting to stretch it. Or, bake half the recipe of cupcakes and put on more frosting! These cupcakes got rave reviews from everyone who tried one. Including me.


Patrice packing up her cupcakes to take home in a nifty cupcake carrier. Later that night, I biked over to Somerville balancing a cooler full of cupcakes on my handlebars... genius.

Edit 9/14/08: Check out my version 2 of the car bomb cupcakes here!

Thai Rice Pudding

I picked up an interesting bag of rice during my last grocery shopping expedition. Sweet rice, also called glutinous rice, is related to arborio rice, the common Italian rice used to make risotto. Like arborio rice, sweet rice has a lot of starch (not glutin, glutinous rice is a misnomer), and while cooking the starch leaches out and thickens the dish. Perfect for making a delicious rice pudding!


To prepare sweet rice you first soak it at least 6 hours. You then steam it wrapped up in cheesecloth for 20 minutes like I have in this picture . While it's almost done steaming, you heat up your liquids for the pudding. For the ~1 cup of rice that I made, I used 1/2 can of coconut milk and 1/2 c of water. I didn't add spices for the first go, but I think spices like cinnamon or cardamom would work nicely. Once the liquids are boiling, and the rice and cook until it thickens. Lemme just say this was delish! Next time I want to serve with some mango slices, and I hope to get a better finished dish pic then.

Pretzels!

(this one is cheese-filled, and some of the cheese oozed out... yum!)

I'm not going to lie, the only thing I did here was take the pictures and eat the pretzels. Oh, and I preheated the oven. I got home and Ed was making pretzels, which sounded like a fantastic idea. One of them had cheese in it, and really, that was the best one, according to me. Ed thought the ones without cheese were better. They were good, don't get me wrong, but generally, melted cheese makes anything better in Alex-land.

The recipe came from the King Arthur Flour book, and Ed cut it in half since he didn't know what he'd do with 16 pretzels. I guess that was smart. The recipe is the same as a basic bread recipe, then you let it rise until doubled. Cut the dough into 8 pieces, roll them into snakes, let the snakes relax a bit, roll them out some more, twist them up, and let them sit for 20min. About. Then boil them for a minute, brush with egg wash and salt, and bake in a hot oven. A bunch of steps, but overall pretty easy.

Ingredients:
3C all-purpose flour
1-1/2 tsp yeast
1-1/2 tsp sugar
1C warm water
1-1/2 tsp salt
3-4C grated cheddar cheese (optional)

6C water
2 tbs baking soda

1 egg and 1 tsp water for the egg wash

The Method:
Dissolve the sugar into the water, then add the yeast. Let that sit until the yeast is all activated and bubbly, then add a cup of flour. Stir that in, then add the salt. Add the rest of the flour. It might not mix completely, that is fine, you can finish adding it all as you knead. Knead the dough for about 10 minutes, until it is very smooth and shiny and stretchy. Grease a clean bowl, and let your dough rise until it's about doubled in size.

Divide the dough into 8 pieces (use a big knife for this). Roll each piece into the longest snake you can manage. Let the snakes sit for a couple minutes to relax, then roll them out again. Then you can twist them up into pretzel shapes. Let them sit for (ideally) 20 minutes. We got away with 10 minutes.

Cheese-filled pretzels
If you want to make cheese-filled pretzels, use a rolling pin and flatten out the snake as wide as it will go. Using about half a cup of cheese per pretzel, pack some cheese against one of the edges of the flattened snake. Roll the snake from the long end, to close up a tube of cheese. Pinch the long edge firmly shut once you're done rolling, or else the snake will come undone and cheese will ooze everywhere. Pinch the ends shut, then twist up your pretzels into pretzel shapes and continue with the regular instructions.

Cooking the pretzels
Preheat your oven to 450F. Bring 6 cups of water and 2 tbs of baking soda to a boil. You'll want to reduce this heat a little when you start cooking the pretzels, so that you don't deflate them. Apparently, any sudden movements will deflate the pretzels, so be very careful moving them around. Simmer each pretzel for about one minute, then remove them with a spatula or slotted spoon to the greased baking sheet, brush with the egg wash, and sprinkle with coarse-grained salt or herbs or something. Bake the boiled pretzels in the upper third of the oven for 10-15 minutes, until golden brown and done-looking.


A plateful of pretzels!

Maple Pecan Scones

I like scones. I like maple syrup. I like pecans. I'll put them all together! I put maple icing on half the scones, and an egg wash on the other, and I think I prefer the ones with the egg wash. The maple icing is very sweet, works for dessert, but not breakfast.

3C flour
1 tbs brown sugar
1.5 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2C pecans
6 tbs frozen butter
1/4C buttermilk
3/4C milk
1/2C maple syrup
1 egg

Toppings:
1 egg for egg wash
2 tbs maple syrup
3/4C icing sugar
1 tsp water

Preheat your oven to 375F. Mix the dry stuff well. Use a cheese grater and grate the frozen butter into the dry goods. Mix the butter pieces with your fingers for a bit, not too long. Add the pecans. In a separate bowl, beat the egg and the other wet stuff. Combine the two, do not mix too much.

Form into three ball, flatten them a bit, slice into 8 slices for each disc of dough. Brush with egg wash if you want them shiny, or if you want to glaze them, bake as they are. Bake at 375F for 15-20min.

To make the icing, mix 3/4C icing sugar with 2 tbs maple syrup and 1 tsp water. It is really sweet. Once the scones have cooled completely, you can ice them.

This makes 24 scones.

Lo Mein

I generally have a cooking sucess rate around 50%. I think it's cause I enjoy experimenting, but certain combos that sound really good in my head (like sesame ginger muffins) are not that good in real life. Today's meal though, was a fantastic success. I feel I have the right to brag because of a few recent failures.

I'm still on an Asian food kick after visiting the Hikari market, so I decided to do something a little more interesting than just stir fry with my new yellow noodles. I decided to give lo mein a go. Lo mein is characteristically a saucy noodle and veggie dish.

The noodles came wrapped up like little ball, and I used 3 of these, which resulted in 2-3 cups of cooked noodles. I then stir fried my veggies in a mix of canola, sesame, and spicy oil. The sesame is too strong on its own, but it gives a really deep flavor as part of the mix. The spicy oil has chili and ginger in it and gives the dish a good little bite. I used cabagge, carrots, red peppers, and onions as my veggies, but anything would work well with this.

I then prepped the sauce:
3/4c veggie broth
1/4c tamari (higher quality soy sauce, it's all I use now!)
1T cornstarch

Stir the cornstarch until dissolved, then add it to the veggies when they're cooked. Let the sauce bubble thicken for about a minute. Then throw in the cooked noodles and mix mix mix.


The problem with having a culinary breakthrough is that I don't have anyone to share it with. So Alex, the next time we hang out we should consider giving this a try!

Jiaozi

There's a little Asian food store down the street from my house, but previously I had been buying all my groceries from Wegman's, which does a nice job with the international foods. I had heard though that stuff was cheaper here, and if you went on the day of their shipment, you could find some fresh veggies too. Inside it's super cluttered and it's almost hard to walk around. There were so many weird things here without any English written on them. The meats were kinda out in the open, and you had to scoop them up yourself an drop them in a plastic bag (I don't think I would eat it even if I was a meat eater). Everything else was pretty good looking, and I spent a while in here having a hard time deciding just what to get.

I ended up deciding to make chinese dumplings, or jiaozi. I bought some premade wrappers, napa cabbage, ginger, onions, and tofu. I chopped up the ingredients and sealed them in the wrappers by wetting the edges of the wrappers with water. I then fried them in sesame oil and steamed them until they were finished. I served them with a chili sauce I found at the store. According to my Taiwanese friend that's more of a potsticker recipe, but it came out tasty nonetheless. For dessert, I took some of the remaining wrappers and filled them with sweetened adzuki beans, which I think is a little more Japanese inspired. Although I probably screwed up the authenticity of these recipes, they still turned out pretty damn good.

Cilantro-Yogurt flatbread

Stolen from epicurous, these were awesome. Basically, you throw together some flower, baking soda, salt, coriander, and cilantro. Then you mix it with some yogurt, pat it out flat, and fry it in olive oil.

Scallop ceviche, and other yummy things

Saturday was a good day. The whole day had something to do with food. I slept in, ate blueberry pancakes with maple syrup for breakfast (and OH MY GOD AMAZINGNESS were they blueberry-ish blueberry pancakes!), and then we decided to go to Formaggios, a fancy-shmancy cheese shop in Cambridge, to pick out some cheese. We got there, and while we were waiting for the girl to get us some aged gouda, we oogled and oggled everything else in the store. Naturally, we walked out of there with some rabbit pate, raspberry vinegar, and bamboo rice. Apparently, bamboo rice is just short-grained rice that is steeped in the essence of bamboo, but we were strangely attracted by it's lime-green hue, and impulse-buying resulted. Driving home, we started thinking of what sort of salad we wanted to make with our raspberry vinegar, and by the time we'd gotten home we'd decided that we just needed to have some ceviche to go with our salad and bread-and-cheese course. So, we headed to Russo's to pick up some fresh veggies and lots of citruses, and then over to New Deal to get some fish. Driving over there, I started to question if we were foodies. Ed doesn't like that term, and countered with the point that pre-WWII, or in a different country now, this sort of activity (going to a specialist shop for each different type of food) wasn't such a strange thing. Probably right, but now it seems like a sort of snobbism. Anyway, I don't mind, because we had an awesome meal out of it.


Things you can get at Formaggios: (left to right) Rabbit pate, goat cheese with paprika, bunderfleish (acquired in Europe, not here, but they have it at Formaggios), aged gouda. Bunderfleish is an air-cured beef, and it is like beef jerky only about 1000 times better. Especially sliced thin and layered on a sandwich with a good swiss cheese...

At New Deal, they had some dry scallops, which was exactly what we wanted. Apparently normal scallops have been soaked in some sort of preservative chemical, and take up a lot of water in the process. Thus, when you're paying per pound you're paying for a lot of water. Dry scallops, on the other hand, haven't been soaked in whatever solution normal scallops have been in, therefore taking up flavors of cooking better, as well as being more bang for your buck. The things you learn. Anyway, buy your scallops (or fish) from a reputable source, since you aren't really cooking it with ceviche. I mean, you're denaturing the proteins, resulting in a cooked-feeling texture, but any bad things in the fish will still be there.

Scallop Ceviche
1/2lb scallops
juice of two lemons
juice of two limes
juice of 1-1/2 blood oranges
1.5 tsp salt
1 tsp chili flakes
2 cloves garlic
5 small radishes
1/2 onion
2 tbs cilantro, finely chopped
2 tbs parsley, finely chopped
lemon juice as needed



Ed made this, and his directions were that you just lump it all together and let it sit. Here is more detail: Mix together your citrus juices. Finely slice the garlic, onion, and radishes. Cut off the tough part of the scallops, and slice it into approximately 1/3 inch slices. Put everything into a big bowl, and add enough lemon juice to cover the things in the bowl if the other juices don't do the trick. Let this sit in the refrigerator for at least two hours. Then you can eat it. It's amazing, the scallops will feel like they've been cooked.



The end result was delicious. The scallops were perfectly done, and had this wonderful tangy, citrus-y flavor. The radishes were a little over sour, though. The bamboo rice? Nothing worth writing home about. The subtle grassy flavor was completely masked by the more strong-flavored foods on the plate. Save your money and stick with white rice!



Raspberry-Honey Vinaigrette*

1/4C raspberry vinegar
1 tbs good-quality balsamic vinegar
3 tbs honey
1 tsp fresh ginger, chopped finely
~1/4C olive oil
1 tsp salt
a couple grinds of black pepper
1/2 tsp ground coriander
*These values are approximate. I never measure my salad dressings... adjust ingredients as needed.

Put everything except the oil in a bowl. Whisk to combine. Add the oil, whisking as you go. Stop adding oil when it looks and tastes oily enough to you.

Raspberry vinegar, balsamic vinegar, and honey, don't like to mix without some help...

The rest of the salad was some mixed baby greens, spinach, watercress, pears (tossed with some butter and sugar and broiled until just softened), candied pecans (tossed with some butter and sugar and baked at 350 until toasted, sugar slightly caramelized), goat cheese, and craisins. This was the best salad I have had in forever and ever.

Yum.

Experimentation, and some successes

Experiment #1: Fresh Fruit Tart:





I have lots of time to play in my kitchen in April. Instead of spending the whole time making muffins (my preferred way to spend my baking time), I branched out and decided to try and make something pretty. Something worth taking a picture of. I love those fruit tart things, with the pastry cream base and lots of fresh fruit on top with a glaze over top of the whole thing--so I figured, why not? I'll make a fruit tart. Keep in mind, I've never made pastry cream, and I hate anything to do with pie crusts, except eating them.

First, the pie crust. I've made plenty of pie crusts, but I really just hate making them. I'm probably just not a good roller-outer. I used the Joy of Cooking's recipe for a tart crust, with powdered sugar in it. I also incorporated (this might be the problem) some of Alton Brown's (of the TV show "Good Eats") wisdom, using a tablespoon of whiskey in the dough instead of straight water. His reasoning is that when you mix alcohol and flour, the flour doesn't bind as well with the alcohol, resulting in less gluten formation, whereas water and flour bind quite well and the gluten does it's thing and makes the dough all tough. So, I used some whiskey. Rolling out the dough wasn't that bad, but I didn't exactly make it look pretty in the pans, and surprisingly enough it didn't end up looking any prettier after baking. The recipe:
1-1/4C flour
1/3C powdered sugar
1/4tsp salt
4 tbs chilled butter, cut into cubes
1 tbs whiskey
4 tbs ice cold water
Mix the powdery stuff in a food processor, then add the butter and process until its in really tiny lumps. Add the liquid one tablespoon at a time until you can pinch the dough and it sticks together. Dump it in a pile on a table, and form it into a ball. Wrap with plastic wrap and refrigerate 30-60 minutes. Roll it out, put it in whatever pan you plan on baking it in, and blind bake it until golden brown at 400F.

Next was the pastry cream. Again I turned to the trusty Joy of Cooking. Their recipe for pastry cream didn't seem overly complicated, so I gave it a try. Recipe:
4 egg yolks
1/3C sugar
2 tbs flour
2 tbs corn starch
1-1/3C milk
3/4tsp vanilla
Beat on high speed until thick and pale yellow, about 2 minutes, the sugar, flour, corn starch, and yolks. Meanwhile, in a medium saucepan, bring the milk to a simmer. Gradually pour 1/3 of the milk into the egg mixture, whisking to combine. Pour the egg mixture into the pan and cook over low to medium heat, whisking constantly and scraping the bottom and corners of the pan to prevent scorching, until the custard is thickened and beginning to bubble. Then continue to cook, whisking, for 45-60 seconds. Using a clean spatula, scrape the custard into a clean bowl. Stir in the vanilla. Cover the surface of the custard with a piece of wax paper to prevent a skin from forming. Cool, then refrigerate before using. This keeps, refrigerated, for up to 2 days.

I guess I didn't cook my custard long enough, because it was a little too runny. Somewhat custard-like, but definitely a runny custard. I also forgot to glaze my fruit, or put jam down on the crust to prevent leaking. The assembly is to spread some warmed jam on the crust, glop in some custard, and artfully arrange some fruit. Then you can pour some warmed (microwaved) jam on top that will work as a glaze.

So, my fruit tart definitely looked pretty. It tasted delicious, too, although I would much prefer my custard a little less runny. And don't worry, you can't taste any whiskey in the crust!

Experiment #2: Maple Walnut Sticky Bars!


These bars tasted amazing. But my filling stayed a little runny. Talking to Ed about it later, we realized that I had used maple syrup that is hand-bottled in a kitchen operation by his aunt Marion, just down the road in Newton. Now, her syrup is delicious, eaten straight, but our hypothesis was that it is not boiled enough with the same precision as a larger operation, meaning that adding more sugar won't cause it to crystalize like normal syrup would do. Just another reason to try these bars again with a different maple syrup!

Crust:
1-1/4C flour
2 tbs sugar
1/4 tsp salt
8 tbs butter (1 stick)
2 egg yolks

Filling:
1/2C maple syrup
1/3C brown sugar
1/2C heavy whipping cream
3 tbs butter
1/2 tsp vanilla
1-1/2C walnuts

Mix together the flour, sugar, and salt. Add the butter, softened, and mash it around with the back of a fork until the dough is all in little balls. Add the egg yolks, then press into a buttered pan and dock with a fork or add some baking beans. Blind bake at 400F for 20 minutes, until it is fully cooked and golden. Brush with another egg yolk and cook for another 2 minutes, until a hardened glaze is formed.

Combine the maple syrup, brown sugar, cream, and butter in a saucepan, and bring to a boil. Boil for 30 seconds, then remove from heat and add the vanilla and nuts. Pour the hot filling into the crust and bake for 15 minutes, until the middle is bubbly. Cool, then chill for at least 1 hour before cutting it open.

This recipe was stolen from epicurious.com.

Veggie Muffins

I've experimented with vegetable/savory muffins in the past. Rarely are they worth mentioning, not to mention eating. This time, however, I think I hit it on the nose. I used the Canadian Baker's veggie muffin recipe, and it is pretty fantastic. These are not sweet muffins--they are a way to bring vegetables for lunch without a tupperware, essentially. The muffins have a very custardy/quiche-y texture, probably because of the eggs, and they remind me a lot of the monster pie recipe I've made before from the King Arthur Flour book. If I ever make that again I'll post the recipe with a picture.

Anyway, the recipe was a real snap, provided you have a food processor. Without that, I'd say it'll take you a good half hour to get through all the chopping. Otherwise you're looking at 5-10 minutes prep and 20-25min baking time. Cleanup is easy too. Do I have anything else to rave about? Oh yeah, the muffins taste awesome, and they freeze well for future lunches!


Ingredients
1/4C white flour
1/2C wheat flour (or any permutation on these amounts)
1.5tsp baking powder
1/4tsp salt
1 tbs dried herbs (your choice; I used basil, marjoram, sage, and rosemary)
3 eggs
3 tbs olive oil
1 tbs yogurt
1.5C chopped vegetables, your choice (I used broccoli, kale, and carrots, but I might omit the carrots next time, they were too sweet)
1 onion
1/3C grated cheese, your choice (I used parmesan. Remember, parmesan comes in a block of cheese, not a green can)

Put the flour, baking powder, salt, and herbs in a big bowl. Mix that together thoroughly. In another bowl, whisk the eggs, oil, and yogurt. Add the wet to the dry and stir just until no flour streaks remain. Chop the veggies in a food processor to a small size (you decide how big you want your veggies) and fold those into the batter. Grease a muffin tin and bake at 375 for 20-25 minutes.

This recipe made nine muffins for me. The Canadian Baker said it would make six, but I had way more batter than that. I filled the muffin tins all the way to the top and they did not overflow.

Muesli

It's hardly a recipe, its so simple, but the pictures were pretty. I found some strawberries on sale at the corner fruit stand in Boston, and naturally I bought them, but they were perfectly ripe, meaning they needed instant consumption. While I have been known to eat a pint of strawberries in one sitting, I restrained myself and only ate half the box at a time. I tossed them with a little sugar, then put some yogurt on top (I only have plain yogurt, since I cook with it, therefore it needed sweetening), and then I added some oats, and then I added some nuts, and then I added some wheat germ, and then I realized I'd just made muesli and it would be a lot easier to just scoop some pre-mixed stuff onto my yogurt rather than rummaging around my cupboards in the morning.

Muesli:

3C rolled oats
1/2C craisins
1/2C chopped mixed fruits (apples, prunes, apricots, and pears)
1/3C pecans
1 tbs walnuts
2 tbs sunflower seeds
2 tbs wheat germ

Mix it all together, store in an airtight container. You can use any sort of dried fruit or nut or seed, add different grains, whatever. This made 5 cups of muesli.

So how to do you eat this stuff? You can pour milk on it and eat it cold, or you could start with this:


add some of this:

(yogurt and honey)

And top with some of these (maybe a few less than I used...):


And because its breakfast food, and therefore should be healthy, I calculated the nutrition information for the macronutrients for this stuff:
1/2C of muesli:
180 Calories
6g of fat
27g of carbohydrates
4g of protein
And loaded with all sorts of good things for you, like fiber. and nuts. nuts are good for you too.

Oreo Cuppers

Woohoo first post! Thanks to Alex for letting me write up my crazy cooking on her blog. Ok, so I made these vegan chocolate cupcakes with oreo frosting. For those of you that are kinda wary about vegan food, just chill. There are no weird ingredients in these cuppers, unless you consider soy milk to be weird I guess. They are super yummy and probably really unhealthy for me... whatev!