Miscellaneous Muffin Monday

Hello friends!  I hope your summer is off to a splendid start.  Although it may be hard to believe, it has actually been hot in Cleveland during the month of June.  Today we got some rain and I got to turn off the air conditioner.  Feeling like I needed an indoor activity during this less than perfect weather, I decided to turn on the oven and bake something.


Before I go to much further, I must confess that baking is not my specialty.  My mom is most certainly the best baker in our family, and if you have ever visited my parents' house, and eaten a cookie/brownie/cupcake etc. you know what I'm talking about.

Nonetheless, my mom has managed to teach me enough about baking to get by and to turn flour into something edible.  Baking is a science and requires that you actually read and digest the entire recipe before you get started.  Also, there are really no substitutions in baking, so make sure you have all of your ingredients before you get started.

Tonight I share with you two muffin recipes for you:  a healthy recipe and a not so healthy recipe.  I'm sure it will be obvious once you read through the ingredient list which is the "healthy" recipe, but I encourage you to try both and enjoy the distinctively different subtle chocolate flavor.

Chocolate Chip-Coffee Muffins

2/3 cup whole milk
5 tablespoons butter, melted
3 tablespoons instant coffee granules
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 large egg, lightly beaten
9 ounces all-purpose flour (about 2 cups)
2/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
Cooking spray

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
2. Combine ingredients first five ingredients; milk through egg.
3. Spoon the flour into dry measuring cups and level with a knife.  Combine flour and next 4 ingredients; sugar through salt in a large bowl; stir well with a whisk.  Make a well in center of flour mixture.  Add milk mixture to flour mixture, stir just until moist.  Be very careful not to overmix!
4. Spoon the batter into 12 muffin cups coated with cooking spray.  Bake at 400 degrees for 18 minutes or until done.  Begin checking the muffins at 14 minutes, it is imperative you do not overcook the muffins or they will be tough.
5. Remove muffins from pan immediate and place on a wire rack.  Then enjoy, and don't forget to warm up the muffins before you eat them the next day. 

Chocolate Nut Muffins

1 cup walnuts

4 ounces semisweet chocolate, either in chips or if in a block, broken into pieces

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

3 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

generous 1/4 cup soft packed brown sugar

1 cup milk

1/4 cup oil

a few drops of vanilla extract

1 egg

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
2. Grease a 12 hole muffin pan.
3. Coarsely chop walnuts.  Set aside
4. In a bowl set over a saucepan of simmering water, melt chocolate, stir constantly until smooth, remove from heat.
5. Stir flour, baking powder, and cinnamon into chocolate.  Add brown sugar and nuts into chocolate mixture.
6. In a separate bowl combine the milk, oil, vanilla extract and egg, and mix together.
7. Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients together and mix until blended.
8. Spoon into muffin cups and bake for 15-20 minutes until well risen and firm. 
9. Let cool in the pan for 5 minutes.  Place muffins on wire rack to cool completely.

Today's toss-up survey question: baking or cooking?

Looking forward to a lovely Tuesday!

Happy "Rain Rain Go Away" Pumpkin Wednesday!

Hello everyone!  I hope you are wearing your rain coats, rain boots and staying dry on this rainy Pumpkin Wednesday.


Please remember, as much as you are upset about the unpleasant spring weather, people in the South are struggling as the Mississippi River floods, and parts of the Southwest are laden with drought. The American Red Cross is at these sites of natural disasters, and is always in need of your financial support to aid those who end up feeling the wrath of mother nature.

I hide when the weather is bad!

I know the intro tonight seems dreary, but I want to remind everyone to be aware of the troubles others are going through and to help out however you can.

Sometimes you have to be serious on Pumpkin Wednesday

In lighter news, tomorrow is Tim's 26th birthday!  In honor of his special day, Pumpkin is putting on her birthday celebration hat a little bit early...

I am literally a party animal

Also, in honor of Tim's Birthday, I will share with you a recipe for delicious blueberry muffins (his favorite).

This recipe is courtesy of Simply Recipes, and they got their recipe from The Best Recipe cookbook.

• 3 cups all purpose flour
• 1 Tbsp. baking powder
• 1/2 tsp. baking soda
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 10 Tbsp. unsalted butter, softened (leave the butter out for about 3 hours prior to baking)
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1 1/2 cups vanilla yogurt
• 1 tsp. lemon zest
• 1 1/2 cups blueberries (you can use fresh, or frozen, I used frozen blueberries that were defrosted)
• 1 Tbsp. of Flour if using frozen blueberries

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

2. Whisk your dry ingredients, flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt together and set aside.

3. In a large mixing bowl, cream the butter (i.e. soften the butter using your hand held electric mixer, or stand mixer) and after the butter is soft, add in the sugar, beating until the egg and sugar mixture is fluffy.  Add in the eggs one at a time, beating until incorporated after each one.  Add in the lemon zest.

4. Here comes the heavy mixing:  Beat in half of the dry ingredients into your sugar/flour/butter/lemon zest mixture.  Beat in 1/2 cup of yogurt.  Beat in half of the remaining dry ingredients.  Beat in 1/2 cup of the yogurt.  Beat in remaining dry ingredients and then the remaining 1/2 cup of yogurt.  Don't overmix your ingredients, beat just until the wet and dry ingredients are incorporated.

5.  If you are using frozen blueberries, make sure they are defrosted and the excess liquid drained.  Coat them in a light dusting of flour.  Add them into your ingredients gently.

6.  Place paper cups in muffin tins.  Distribute the muffin mixture equally into a 12-cup muffin tin.  Bake the muffins about 25-30 minutes or until golden brown.  Use a toothpick to make sure the muffins are cooked in the middle.  Allow the muffins to cool for 5 minutes after they come out of the oven, and serve slightly warm.

7.  The batter makes 24 generously sized muffins.

What is your favorite breakfast pastry, and do you have a homemade recipe?

Looking forward to a lovely Thursday and celebrating Tim's Birthday!

Happy Pumpkin Wednesday!!

Quick and Easy Dessert

The other night our friends invited us over for dinner and asked me to bring a dessert.  I didn't have many ingredients on hand and didn't have a ton of time to prep anything too fancy....but not to worry, I did remember I purchased some miniature pre-made Graham Cracker pie crusts on an impulse buy earlier in the week...

Now that I had a graham cracker crust, I was pretty sure I would be trying to craft a no-bake dessert.  After deciding I was not in the mood for something with pudding, I scoured the internet and settled on a recipe for a no-bake cheesecake.

Following a super-easy recipe, I ended up with a few mini no-bake cheesecakes that turned out to be a perfect bite of dessert after our main meal.

Ingredients:
1-8 ounce package Cream Cheese, softened
1-14 ounce can sweetened condensed milk
1/3 cup fresh lemon juice
1/4 tsp. vanilla extract
Premade graham cracker crusts in tin foil pans

Directions:
Combine softened cream cheese and can of condensed milk.  Blend these two together using an electric handmixer, and beat until all the lumps are gone.  Add vanilla, then add the lemon juice slowly while blending all the ingredients together.  Spoon the mixture into the graham cracker crust cups and place in the refrigerator for about three hours to firm up.  My mixture made about 9 mini cheesecakes.  If you are short on time you can always put them, covered, into the freezer for about 45 minutes.  Because I live in the Midwest and it is freezing outside, I just covered the cheesecakes and set them out on the backporch.

I served these with some homemade whipped cream, and they were quite delicious.

Pic=not so good, Mini Cheesecakes=very good

If you are feeling adventurous you can add any type of fruit, or even chocolate or caramel sauce for more flavor/fun :)


What is the quick dessert you bring to an informal get together when you don't feel like picking up something at the grocery store?

-Looking forward to a wonderful Wednesday!

Thanksgiving Countdown

I can't believe the holiday season is on our doorstep!  I am looking forward to my shortened work week and will be heading home early to hang out with my family (minus my brother who is working out in Colorado) and enjoy my mom's delicious cooking.  In anticipation of Thanksgiving, I have done a bit of cooking and baking to highlight some great recipes and tips for pulling off a fabulous Thanksgiving meal.  So this week will feature recipes for a few traditional Thanksgiving dishes and some new things I tried this year.

So much sugar, but so delicious and fun to make

Tonight I'm still recovering from cooking a full Thanksgiving dinner yesterday, but I wanted to get in the turkey day spirit.  So here is my recipe for a sweet turkey shaped cookie treat, a.k.a, a turkey-gram.

Here are the ingredients:

• 1 package Double Stuf Oreo cookies
• 1 container store bought chocolate frosting
• 1 container cinnamon red hots
• 1 container malted milk balls
• 1 package candy corn

Step 1- Twist Oreo cookie so it is in two pieces.  One side should have all the frosting while the other is just the cookie.  It takes a gentle hand to be able to twist the cookie without breaking it, so be patient

Step 2- Apply chocolate frosting to the cookie-only side.  Make sure it's thick enough to hold a few candies

Step 3- Place 5 candy corn pieces on the frosting like so:

Step 4- This is the tricky part.  Stand the cookie with the candy corn vertically into the cookie with the white frosting.  Again, be gentle, and your cookie should now be 3D and look like this

Step 5- Add a little bit of chocolate frosting to the cookie on the white frosting and place the Whopper securely on the chocolate.

Step 6- Add a tiny bit of chocolate frosting to the malted milk ball near where the turkey gobbler would be.  Secure the cinnamon red hot candy to the malted milk ball.

Hello Turkey!

Step 7- Repeat steps 1-6 and make enough turkeys to share with friends!

So many turkeys

What are the special sweets (besides pies) you make for Thanksgiving?

-Looking forward to the Holiday!

Pumpkin Wednesday!

Hello all, and welcome to Pumpkin Wednesday.  Congratulations! We are halfway through the work week!

Pumpkin has had a relaxing day hanging out in a cardboard box.  I wish my life were so simple where I could get so much joy from jumping in and out of a box that was destined for the garbage.

Pumpkin loves the cardboard box.

Continuing this October routine of discussing pumpkin flavored items, I finally got my act together and made some pumpkin bread.  Now I have never made pumpkin bread before but really wanted to try this recipe.  I made a few substitutions, and here they are

• took the advice of another reader and reduced the sugar to 2 1/2 cups.  I used 2 cups white sugar and 1/2 cup packed brown sugar.
• Didn't have ground cloves in the cupboard (I'm rebuilding my spice collection)  so I went without.  I decided not to increase any of the other spices just to be on the safe side.
• I only had a 15 ounce can of pumpkin, not 16 ounce can.

The final product looks a little something like this:

Certainly they are not perfect, but the bread tastes great!

For all you bakers, any secrets for making the perfect loaf of pumpkin bread or pumpkin spice muffins or the like?

-Almost Thursday!

Back from the Blogging Hiatus

Sorry to disappoint all those who take the time to read this blog/procrastinate.  I have not been diligent about writing for the past week, and I couldn't even get Pumpkin to give me a good idea for her weekly post. But not to worry.  I am back, and ready to post, post, post all those questions related to domestic matters...

A quick recap of things I have cooked/baked this past week:

Thursday:  My friend Ashley was so wonderful and invited a group of us over for dinner.  She made the main course (delicious pasta), tomato and mozzarella and warm biscuits.  She asked me to bring something for dessert and I didn't have much time to put together anything too crazy.  My mom recommended this wonderful recipe from epicurious.com for a quick apple tart.  I recommend following the recipe exactly as is, and the result is a delicious, impressive and delightfully simple dessert.  I also added some homemade whipped cream to the top.

You can arrange the apples however you like.  When I make this again, I will cut the apples thinner.

Saturday:  My family came to my apartment, and although I had invited them, I wasn't sure they would make the stop.  However, when they called on about an hours notice, I was glad I had a few snacks on hand to keep everyone happy during the Michigan State-Michigan football game.  This somewhat unexpected arrival reminded me why it's nice to keep the fridge stocked with a few types of cheeses, some fruit and veggies and a box or two of crackers.  Without too much effort I was able to make an impressive cheese plate for everyone to nosh on.  If you are a cheese-lover like myself, it's never a much problem to have a few extra cheeses on hand in case people come over.

Sunday:  Ashley, being a wonderful hostess, again, invited us over for a bit of tailgating before watching the Browns game at her apartment.  Again, I needed to bring something and had bought the ingredients to make chicken wings a few days beforehand.  I used a recipe from Ina Garten that suggested broiling the chicken wings instead of deep frying them which gives them that nice crisp flavor without all the hot oil.

But the real funny part of this story is how I prepared the actual chicken wings.  Although you can get your butcher to give you precut chicken wings (like the kind you get at your favorite sports bar), you can also cut your own from the chicken wings you buy in the grocery case.  The problem I ran into was that I didn't have a very sharp knife, and the cracking of bones was just too much for me at 8:30 in the morning.  I made my boyfriend cut up the chicken wings, which turned out to be sooo difficult because we were doing it wrong...

All I can say is if you are interested in cutting your own chicken wings, which I would totally advise because it shouldn't be too hard and is cheaper, watch this one minute video for a simple explanation about how to make cutting them a painless process.

Anyway, here is how the chicken wings looked once they were cut and were getting sauced

Love Frank's Buffalo Sauce

And here is how happy everyone was at our tailgate!

What is the kitchen/cooking process you made much more difficult than it needed to be?

-Almost Halfway Through the Week!