What's Baking? April: Mini/Bite Sized Treats

This month's What's Baking theme was chosen by Amanda of Our Italian Kitchen, and she chose mini/bite sized treats. Great idea! At first I was going to copy the yummy brownies stuffed with rolos and baked in a mini muffin tin that my boss made for our work party a couple weekends ago, but then one of my friends posted this delicious recipe on facebook.

I made mini blueberry cobblers. These have the basic baking ingredients you already have on hand (just change up the fruit to suit your taste/contents of your fridge or farmer's market) and were super quick. In the time it took for my oven to heat up to 350F, I had already mixed everything and assembled all the ingredients in the muffin tins.

Since I found this recipe on facebook, I have no idea where it came from- it included no citation. So if you can tell me its origin, I'll edit to include that! It's a great idea, someone needs credit for this.

Mini Blueberry Cobblers
recipe from...??

Makes 12 mini cobblers

1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup sugar
1t baking powder
pinch of salt
3oz (3/8 cup) milk
12t butter
12 dashes of cinnamon or cinnamon sugar
2/3 cup blueberries, or other fruit (peaches, raspberries, strawberries, etc. If using apples I'd consider sauteing them a bit first)

Turn the oven on to preheat to 350F.

Place 1t butter in each well of a 12-muffin tin (the recipe said 1t, I used as small a slice of butter as I could consistently cut). Pop this in the oven for a few minutes, until the butter has melted (you don't need to wait for the oven to come to temperature).

In a medium bowl, beat together the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and milk. Place 2T (one cookie scoop-full) in each muffin tin well, on top of the butter. Drop a few berries (I like 8-10 of the big fat blueberries) on top of the batter.

Add a dash of cinnamon/cinnamon sugar.

Bake at 350F for 20-25 minutes (the original said 12 minutes, this was way too little). Let cool for a few minutes in the pan, then remove.

Note: I did not spray the pan, and they were easy enough to get out. They didn't slide out, but only one fell apart. I might add more berries next time.

I can't comment on how long these will keep, because we ate them all in one day :-/ YUM. The batter is nice and sweet, so the berries don't need any extra sweetening- I used cinnamon sugar this time but next time I may just add cinnamon straight to the batter. I predict that I will make these many, many times over the next few months, especially as berry picking season starts.

Summertime, and the eating is good...

Yeah that doesn't really work with the melody of "Summertime", but it's accurate. The eating is very good in our house.

But I have NEWS. Food-related news. I am on a "diet"! I "" it because I stopped thinking about "dieting" as "dieting" 12 years ago when I started going to weight watchers. I prefer to think of it as "rethinking what I eat." Because what good is going on a diet for a month, losing 10 or 15 or 50 lbs or whatever (don't lose 50 in one month, that's not healthy!) and then realizing you can't maintain your new "diet" long term, and gaining all or most back? That's just depressing. As someone who is more interested in eating delicious food than making sure it's healthy (there's something to be said for that, and you definitely can make delicious and super healthy food, but I have a serious sweet tooth and am somewhat lazy), I'd rather just educate myself on my food intake.

I also went to a new ear doctor at the beginning of July who recommended a low salt, low caffeine and low alcohol lifestyle to keep my ear stable (fluid is vital to ears, and a high salt diet will really mess up the equilibrium), so it was then that I started really thinking about what I was eating. Also, when I went to the national DAR meeting at the end of June last year, I was so busy and was basically eating just fruit and yogurt in any spare minute I could find, not the lavish sit-down meals at Old Ebbitt's Grill that we'd enjoyed in previous years (best crab cakes ever!), that I lost almost 5 lbs in 9 days, which made my size 8 capris fit and me very happy. This year, I was just as busy but sadly did not lose any weight , but a week after we got back, I shot up to a somewhat horrifying weight I hadn't seen since high school. I realized an immediate change, a "rethinking" was in order.

Step 1: I began to write down everything I ate. I didn't count any calories, I just acquainted myself with what I was eating. I learned that I snack a LOT. And I make very poor choices when I snack.

Step 2: I downloaded the My Fitness Pal app on my iphone (it's free!). I did start calculating calories after that first week, and then my husband said, you know, I bet there's an app for that. There is indeed. It's easy to input your food and it helps you calculate the calories and other nutritional info. Based on your current weight and height, your normal activity level and your desired weight loss rate, it calculates how many calories you can have in a day. There's a spot to enter in your current weight. And even better, it remembers the food you've eaten before, so if you eat the same thing every day (like I do, for the most part) it's right there and you just need to select it.

Step 3: I actually haven't gotten here yet: exercise. I am lazy and hate to exercise. I walk instead of driving whenever it's possible, but I choose not to count it as exercise, especially since I'm pretty sure each walk is burning less than 100 calories.

Since the day I stepped on the scale and saw the "horrifying weight", I've lost 11 lbs. I've set my app to lose only 1lb a week, and it's been a month, but I'm still overeating (according to their calculations) yet still losing. This makes me think I was horrible, horrible snacker before.

Now this dress fits! Much excitement :)

Fortunately, with the farmer's market just down the street, it's very easy to eat large quantities of nutritious and low-calorie food, like beets, cabbage, zucchini, etc. I'm not overly hungry, and sometimes when I have a very large helping of veggies (such as the night I decided to just cook up all the broccoli, it was a very small head of broccoli and I'm the only one here who likes it) I'm pretty full. The nestle's chocolate chip cookie recipe comes out to 150 calories per ounce of dough. My "big" cookies are about 1oz. I think my big splurge right now is corn on the cob (usually no butter), it looks healthy but it's like 90 calories an ear.... and I can easily gobble up 4 ears of corn at dinner- I loooove fresh corn.

Anyway, that's my current update. Please note: this isn't necessarily right for everyone. It may not even be the best thing for me, but I feel good, I'm healthy (my doctors agree) and I'm sticking to it. The only thing I can recommend is being fully aware of what you eat. If you're not happy with your weight, write down your food intake. Pay attention to your activity. A lot of weight-gain seems to be because people just aren't paying attention to what they're doing. It's far too easy to open that tupperware container of chocolate chip cookies and lose track of how many you've eaten.

Because of my efforts, I'm not baking much (except bread, since I have toast for breakfast every day) unless it's to bring somewhere or give someone. I reallllly want to make some jerky, we bought some at the VT beer festival and it's delicious, makes a very filling snack (even just a couple bites) and it's only 70 calories an ounce! 1oz of jerky is kind of a lot, too.

But now to the recipes. We've been eating a ridiculous number of turkey burgers. At about 300 calories a burger, plus an ear of corn and some broccoli or a helping of corn and blueberry salad, it's a very filling dinner for a decent number of calories. I've also been playing around with a lot of Penzey's spice blends: Northwoods on corn on the cob makes you forget you ever even put butter on corn in the first place, and Muskego Ave seasoning on broccoli will make you devour the entire head of broccoli (unfortunately, both of these blends contain salt so watch out).

Turkey Burgers

recipe adapted from a recipe from the July/August issue of Everyday Food

1lb ground turkey

3T panko

1T whole grain mustard

1t dried sage

salt and freshly ground black pepper

Mix all together. Form into 5 patties, and grill or broil until done (like 5-7 minutes on each side)

Easy peasy! We've been buying some delish whole wheat ciabatta rolls at the grocery store, which are 140 calories each, although the photos here are of kaiser rolls- we've tried just about every roll they carry. I should dig up my burger bun recipe and just make my own, because those were pretty darn good.

Blueberry Corn Salad

loosely adapted from Two Peas and Their Pod

kernels from 3-4 ears of cooked (steamed, boiled, grilled) corn, cut off (however much you have)

3/4-1 cup blueberries (or more, or less)

2T lime juice

1T honey

2T minced pickled jalapenos

1/2t cumin

1/4t chipotle powder (or less)

dash salt

Whisk the lime juice, honey, and spices together, then toss with the corn, berries and jalapenos. 

This is delicious. I've made it like 5 times now. Last night I actually got a little crazy and substituted this for corn and bean salad for our fish tacos. There is about 400-500 calories in the entire salad (depending on how much corn and how many blueberries you use, last night's batch was 312g corn (312 cal) and 300g blueberries (170 cal), and we usually get 6-8 servings out of each batch. Help yourself to seconds!

You also see on my plate onion rings. These are not healthy. They're not exactly unhealthy, since they're baked. They're dipped in flour, dunked in flour/egg/buttermilk and coated in panko drizzled with olive oil. They are ridiculously good, but I haven't made them nor calculated the calories since I started paying attention to my food intake. I'll report back when I figure it out! I like to eat them with storebought BBQ sauce. This is also not all that healthy, but it's my little indulgence!

What's Baking? July: Summer Fruits

This month's What's Baking? theme of "Summer Fruits" was chosen by Jaida of Sweet Beginnings. This was perfect for me because one of my favorite summer activities is picking fruit from Tougas Farm in Northboro! I was very eager to get over there on July 6th, as soon as I was back from traveling. I hadn't picked blueberries at Tougas before, only because of the timing in previous years, and I forgot how slow-going it is- I picked by myself and it took me 1.5hrs to get 8.5lbs. I really wanted 15lbs (bulk discount on 15+lbs) but by 8.5lbs I was DONE. Fortunately, I've been able to stretch these berries all month, and will use the last of them tonight in my 4th (or 5th?) batch of blueberry corn salad- our favorite new recipe of the summer.

I picked these blueberries on Thursday, and on Friday we had a seriously blueberry-themed dinner. When I asked Clint what he wanted, he said blueberry cake (not pie? no, cake. That was ok, since it was hot and I was pretty sure pie crust would not cooperate anyway.) and how about blueberry bellinis? I'd never have thought of bellinis. Now we are down to only 2 bottles of wedding prosecco left (September is our 3rd anniversary, so maybe by then we'll finish it all off!)

Blueberry Bellinis, from The Cookin' Canuck

(they look a little weird, from the floating/oxidation of the blueberry puree, but boy are they tasty!)

 Here's our dinner for the evening, which has been repeated endlessly- I'd say ad nauseam, but each repetition is just as/more delicious than the last! Baked onion rings, mustard and sage turkey burgers, and corn and blueberry salad. Stay tuned for those recipes.

But the cake is really want you bakers want to see! I found this on tastespotting and of the cake recipes I found, I chose this for its simplicity.  It also seemed healthier than the other recipes I saw, it uses only one stick of butter (but then, it only makes one 9in round pan of cake, so it's about a normal amount of butter for a cake). It also looked a lot prettier than some of the other things!

And I seem to have chosen right, it's quite delicious. I made it the following weekend for a potluck picnic and it was *devoured*. It doesn't have a huge amount of sugar, so I didn't feel guilty having a piece for breakfast, either ;)

Blueberry Buttermilk Cake
recipe from Kitchen Confidante

1 stick of unsalted butter, at room temp
1/2 cup + 2T white sugar (original was 3/4 cup)
1 egg
1 cup flour (on my second batch I used 1/3 WW flour and 2/3 AP)
1/2 t baking soda
1/4t salt (I used a pinch, having made this 3 days after my doctor recommended a low-salt diet :( )
1/4t allspice (original recipe called for 1/8t cinnamon, but allspice is now my spice of choice when using blueberries)
1/2 cup buttermilk (seriously, don't bother buying is: 1/2 cup milk + 1/2T white or cider (depending on what you're baking) vinegar. Let sit for a few minutes before using)
1-1.5 cups of blueberries, divided

Preheat oven to 350F. Butter/flour (or Pam-spray and flour) a 9inch pie dish.

Cream the butter and sugar, add the egg and beat til fluffy, a few minutes. Whisk the dry ingredients and add in small batches to the butter/egg mixture, alternating with the buttermilk. Finally, fold in half the blueberries gently, and transfer batter to the prepared baking dish. Drop the remaining blueberries on top.

Bake for 25-30min (more like 35-40 for me, my oven has issues (even though the thermometer says the temp is accurate!)), until the top is golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

Serve alone for breakfast, with whipped cream, ice cream or a sprinkle of powdered sugar for dessert, double it and bake in a 9x13 (with enough batter leftover for a loaf pan) and cut into squares for a quick snack. The only thing I can't recommend is baking these in a muffin tin, because somehow that completely failed for me- no idea why.

But do you notice how quick the instructions are? The first night I made this, I turned the oven on, got all the ingredients out, made the batter, washed the berries, added them, got the batter into the pan, all before the oven was up to temp! This is the perfect weeknight dessert.

The cake itself is incredibly light and fluffy, and for some reason I'm used to cakes with fruit being heavier, like a pound cake (my mom's favorite blueberry cake is in a bundt pan and pound cake-like, but oh boy that's delicious, she's been making every summer that since Martha Stewart had it on in like 2001) or more like a gingerbread cake consistency. But this is the ideal cake for a hot summer day- and fortunately, I've been living on our screen porch just off the kitchen, so I'm perfectly happy to have the oven on! :)

Happy Pi Day!

First of all, in case you didn't know, we're kind of nerdy in our household. Clint's a computer guy, I'm a biochemist. He goes on and on about computer stuff and coding and scheduling, and I get all excited by protein-protein interactions and diagrams of such. In the grand scheme of things, that's pretty nerdy.

And we both have an intense love of pie. Apple pie, blueberry pie, chicken pot pie, lemon meringue pie... we love it all.

So it's not surprising that we both freaked out for awesomeness when we saw this picture

First of all, HOW DID WE NEVER NOTICE THIS BEFORE?!? I love this, I'm still laughing over it now, a day after I first saw it.

So in our extreme nerdiness and love of food, we had pie for pi day. I always intend to make pie for pi day, but in the past it's just never happened. So this year I made up for lost time with three pies.
Chicken pot pie with biscuit crust (blogged previously here), apple pie and blueberry pie.

This chicken pie is one of my new favorite dinner recipes. This may be its last hurrah before fall returns, because it's great for a chilly night. It's the perfect way to use up leftover chicken- a week ago, I boiled up 2 split breasts and 4 bone-in thighs to make chicken stock. We made pizza and tacos with the chicken, but still had quite a bit left, so I tossed it all in here. And used the chicken stock for the gravy!

I don't use recipes for my fruit pies. It always causes a little trouble when people ask for a pie recipe- honestly all a fruit pie is is pie crust lining a pie dish, filled with your choice of fruit tossed with some sugar and spices of your choice, and baked. If you're using wet fruit (like frozen berries with a lot of ice crystals on them, or fresh peaches), I also toss the fruit in flour or cornstarch to soak up the liquid. I like tossing apples with cinnamon and cardamom, and blueberries with allspice.

The one exception to my "no recipe" pie rule is my infamous Lime-Peach Pie. The pie I worked so hard on, combining the delicious flavors of fresh peaches and fresh limes, inspired by a peach margarita... and when I entered it in the Cornish Fair, the judges ruled that it had "overwhelming citrus flavor". Which was the WHOLE POINT OF THE PIE. But I'm not bitter- more pie for me!

Did you enjoy pie for pi day?