Pumpkin Cupcakes with Almond Buttercream Frosting

October 28, 2013 by

All year long, I look forward to pumpkin. It’s such a seasonal flavor that only seems fit for the fall season. I wait until October to start baking with pumpkin – just like I have to wait until the month of Halloween to watch horror movies excessively.

So, the Friday before Halloween becomes a crafty day of finishing my homemade Poison Ivy costume to accompany boyfriend Bane to a Hallowbash that night, while baking Homemade Pumpkin Cupcakes with Almond Buttercream Frosting to contribute to the party’s feast.

I clipped this recipe out of Better Homes & Gardens, where they were originally called Football Cakes. But because I’m going to a Halloween party, not a Super Bowl party, I’m ditching football from the title.

Pumpkin Cupcake Recipe
2 cups flour
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground cloves
Stir together these dry ingredients in one bowl.

In a separate bowl, combine:
4 eggs, lightly beaten
1 (15-oz) can pumpkin
2/3 cup packed brown sugar
2/3 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup vegetable oil

Add flour mixture to the pumpkin mixture, one-third at a time, stirring each time just until combined. Spoon about 1/4 cup batter into paper-lined muffin tins. I baked these at 325 degrees for just shy of 15 minutes, but my oven tends to run hot. The original recipe called for 15 minutes in a 350-degree oven. Just check on them every 5 minutes or so until the toothpick test comes out clean.

Almond Buttercream Frosting
1/3 cup butter, softened
3 1/2 to 4 cups powered sugar
3 Tbsp milk
1 tsp almond extract (the original recipe called for vanilla)

Beat butter with an electric mixer until smooth. Gradually add a couple cups of the powered sugar, beating well. Beat in milk and vanilla. Gradually, add in as much of the remaining powered sugar needed to reach desired consistency. Spread it on!

To turn seasonal fall pumpkin cupcakes into spooky Halloween cupcakes, specifically, I used matching black and orange bat liners and decorative picks that I found on clearance. These cupcakes don’t taste too pumpkin-y at all; it’s almost more like a spice cake.

Filed Under: cupcake recipes, dessert recipes, Food Tagged With: , ,

Breakfast of Champions: Pancakes, Sausage & Poached Eggs

October 24, 2013 by
A hearty Breakfast of Champions if ever there was one:
Silver Dollar Pancakes
Poached Eggs
Grilled Sausage Links
Blackberries
pancakes sausage links poached eggs blackberries breakfast recipe
Not just once, but two days in a row.
How do you follow up a breakfast like this?
The rest of the day’s meals have a tough act to follow.

 

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Asian Fruity Fish Salad

October 21, 2013 by

We start with two salmon fillets on a foil-lined pan, topped with a few shakes of extra virgin olive oil, lemon juice and fish oil, with ground garlic, ground ginger, and a fresh grind of black pepper and sea salt. These bake at 350 while we get the rest of the salad ready.

Next, we saute a handful of raw peeled shrimp with fresh minced garlic, fresh minced organic ginger, and mandarin orange juice along with a few slices. This boils until the sauce is thick and the shrimp is pink. We strain out the shrimp and let them cool, adding the liquid mash to the top of the salmon baking in the oven.

The salad is a simple shred of organic green chard topped with: sliced organic celery, sunflower seeds, fresh minced organic ginger, raspberries, blackberries, and mandarin oranges:

Asian Fruity Fish Salad with berries

It’s topped off with shrimp, a slab of saucy salmon, and a shake of rice wine vinegar to become Asian Fruity Fish Salad:

With (and before, and after) the meal, we shared a bottle of Zin Your Face wine. Of course, a white probably would have been more appropriate, but with an evening rain storm rolling in and Nightmare on Elm Street playing on TV, it felt more like a red wine night. A raspberry-colored wine with a plummy, nutty scent, it comes in jammy and finishes off with spicy tannins and tobacco. Like any good and dangerous wine, it gets tastier the more you drink.

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Sweet & Spicy Salmon, Shrimp & Chard

August 27, 2013 by
When you forget to thaw any meat before you get hungry, go straight for the seafood. Fish and shrimp are easy to “quick thaw” in a colander under cold running water. Then, they bake and saute quickly. And, for some reason, they seem far fancier than the chicken or pork that usually stocks my freezer and takes hours just to thaw.
But besides the time savings, the health benefits of fish abound. Just 4 oz. of salmon can contain more than 2 grams of omega-3 fatty acids, which is more than most adult Americans get from their entire diet over several days. Omega-3 fats fight inflammation, cancer, macular degeneration, and even promote cognitive function, youthful-looking skin, and lustrous hair.
A beauty food that gives me less time in the kitchen and more time to strut my stuff? Sold.
So, in the few minutes that the salmon filets and shrimp sit under running water, I start tearing up green Swiss chard, which brings its own punch to the plate. One cup of it, just 35 calories, provides more than 300% of your daily Vitamin K, plus healthy doses of Vitamins A and C, magnesium, potassium, iron and fiber. .
Meanwhile, my sous chef starts the mashed potatoes. OK, I’ll admit, the instant mix probably isn’t the healthiest way to go about this, but we are making this dish because we wait to the last minute without planning ahead, remember? To the standard instant mix and water, he adds a tablespoon of butter, 4 minced garlic cloves, garlic, cayenne, salt and pepper. And, because I love how mashed potatoes taste when served with a steak smothered in sauce, he adds a “tidge” of A1 Steak Sauce.
As soon as the salmon thaws, I sprinkle them with salt, pepper, turmeric, lemon juice and extra virgin olive oil. While it bakes on tin foil in a 375-degree oven, my sous chef whips up a glaze of maple butter and raspberry preserves – a combo that resembles peanut butter and jelly until he heats and reduces the sweet sauce.
Next, I add the shrimp to a skillet with extra virgin olive oil and douse generously with Tastefully Simple’s Red Thai Curry Rub, cayenne, and a garlic chili grind. At the same time, in the other half of the skillet, I heat the chard in butter. Eventually, this all gets stirred together, coating it all in a spicy heat that will be a delicious complement to the sweet glaze on the salmon. With a nice cut of bitterness from the salty chard and an echo of garlicky heat in the potatoes, this dish came together so stunningly it’s hard to imagine it thrown together last-minute.

 

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Chicken Pear Protein Salad

July 29, 2013 by
The latest healthy meal in my recent kick was inspired by, well, the ingredients in the fridge that needed to be used up. When you stock your fridge with fruits and veggies, you get salads packed with anti-oxidants, protein and – most importantly – variety from boring ol’ greens.
You get something like:
Chicken Pear Protein Salad
chicken pear protein salad recipe
  • We start with the leftover Mango Salsa from the Meal of Mangoes, and add a heavy sprinkle of sunflower seeds, chia seeds and hemp seeds. This goes into half of a red, round bowl.
  • Into the other half of the bowl goes a leafy mix of spinach and kale, both organic, of course.
  • Meanwhile, the chicken breast left over from Enchilada Night grills on the Foreman. Then, sliced, it tops the salad.
  • Meanwhile, one sliced pear with a handful of dried cranberries saute in the skillet with olive oil, balsamic vinegar and wasabi powder. The fruit, along with any remaining ‘warm dressing,’ then top the chicken atop the salad.
  • For a final touch, some sliced scallions top the pears atop the chicken atop the salad. Ta-da.
Of course, variety is the key to any tolerable salad IMHO: fruits and veggies, nuts and berries, greens and reds and yellows. And here, even the cold crunch of chilled veggies contrasts with the warm tenderness of the pears and chicken for a variety of textures and temperatures that almost makes me forget I’m eating a salad at all – and, to me, that’s a good salad.
Filed Under: chicken recipes, dinner recipes, Food, salad recipes Tagged With: , , ,

Enchilada Night

July 28, 2013 by
I know enchiladas are not difficult or daunting to prepare by any means, but they do take a whole pan’s worth of commitment to make. I can recall countless times helping my mom throw a pan together to feed the whole family. But, until tonight, I had never created a pan of enchiladas – let alone a complete Mexican meal.
homemade shredded chicken enchiladas with chicken rice, refried beans and guacamole ethnic mexican recipes
OK, so I just followed the basic recipe on the can of enchilada sauce, and the refried beans and rice came straight from a can and box, respectively. But still – I made a complete Mexican meal on my own.

Easy Shredded Chicken Enchiladas:

  • Grill 2 chicken breasts, totaling about one pound, on the trusty Foreman to peak juiciness. Shred (which can be great angst-relief).
  • Combine the shredded chicken with 3/4 cup of enchilada sauce and a handful or so of shredded mozzarella cheese. (Officially, I think it called for 1 cup.)
  • Spoon this filling into tortilla shells. Tuck in the ends, fold one side of the shell over, and roll the rest of the way closed so the seal is on the bottom of the pan. Oh yeah, we’re using a 13×9 pan, right? And the oven should probably be heating up. (Because I made big fat enchiladas, I stuffed 5 with this filling recipe…which allegedly makes 8-10 regular skinny-chiladas.)
  • Pour the remaining enchilada sauce over your enchiladas, no matter how fat or skinny they are, and sprinkle with another half cup (or smaller handful) of shredded cheese.

Accompanied by:
  • Rice-a-Roni chicken rice (how’s that for authentic?)
  • Refried Beans
  • Guacamole made fresh in the Nutri-Bullet with organic avocados, cilantro, onion, garlic and green chili
Filed Under: chicken recipes, dinner recipes Tagged With: ,

Turkey Cacciatore Meatballs with Mango Basil Linguine

July 25, 2013 by
I never thought I could like ground turkey until I discovered Rachael Ray’s recipe for Turkey Cacciatore Burgers during my summer internship in Vail. I just happened to take my lunch break when 30 Minute Meals aired, and I’d sit in my apartment above the newspaper newsroom overlooking the mountains, eating far less nutritious less than 30-minute meals while taking down her recipes for future reference.
The favorite recipe proved rather flexible this week, too. We’d been wanting to fix stuffed mushroom caps (but I kept forgetting crab as I stocked up on fresh fruits and veggies for juicing) and stuffed peppers (even though I forgot, until now, that we planned that meal to use up the expiring can of Beefaroni in the cupboard, per an old family recipe.) Like I said, the Turkey Cacciatore recipe proved flexible in both cases, plus leftover meatballs for another day.
Here’s the basic recipe, tweaked a tad from Rachael Ray’s original burgers to become…
Turkey Cacciatore Meatballs Recipe
1 1/3 lbs ground turkey
1/2 green bell pepper, finely chopped
1/2 red onion, finely chopped
3 tablespoons tomato paste
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
the stems of the 6 mushrooms we’ll be stuffing, removed and chopped.
The one thing I clearly remember about the recipe from the TV show is that you combine all the ingredients by hand.
The meat filled 6 large button mushrooms and one large green pepper (de-seeded and cleaned, of course.) There was enough left over for about 6-8 large meatballs. Baked at probably 400 degrees for, maybe, 20 minutes? I don’t remember, just bake it till it’s done.
We had Organic Basil Linguine leftover from Bacon-Infused Seafood Alfredo night, which made the perfect bed for the meatballs, served with a sprinkle of extra virgin olive oil, a shake of Parmesan, a snip of fresh basil and splay of fresh sliced mango. Behold, Turkey Cacciatore Meatballs with Mango Basil Linguine:
Welcome to summer, spaghetti and meatballs.
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Chocolate Yogurt Cupcakes

May 4, 2013 by

OK, so I probably should have gone grocery shopping instead of baking cupcakes. But, to be fair, I was doing my part to use up old ingredients so I could make room for new.

See, I haven’t been eating any of this Greek yogurt I stocked up on, and it’s set to expire this week. The cans of frosting in the pantry, however, have no danger of expiring in my kitchen. So I need to use up that frosting before I’m tempted to eat it without the excuse of a cupcake underneath. And, since I don’t have any eggs (remember, it’s time to buy groceries), it was time for an experiment.

The original recipe was called Red Devil’s Food Cake. But in this version, we’ll call them:
Chocolate Yogurt Cupcakes

1 cup Greek yogurt (replacing 1 cup mayonnaise in the original recipe. I used yogurt that had Strawberry-Banana Fruit on the Bottom – and honestly, you’d never know.)
2 cups flour
1 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup boiling water
4 tsp cocoa
2 tsp soda

Mix it all up. Pour into cupcake liners and bake at 350 for about 10 minutes.

I remember reading before that Devil’s Food Cake doesn’t make good cupcakes. Well, I’ve also never made Devil’s Food Cake with strawberry Greek yogurt.

The cupcakes came out of the oven with plump perfect cupcake tops…

chocolate yogurt cupcakes baking substitution

…which deflated and dimpled in minutes as the dense cake settled:
chocolate yogurt cupcakes baking substitution
Oh well; that’s what frosting is for. So I topped them off with Whipped Vanilla frosting from a can, and no one would ever be the wiser. In fact, no one who tasted them could guess the secret ingredient – which made them very moist and delicious.
Chcocolate yogurt cupcake recipe with whipped vanilla frosting
The bottom of the cakes do stick in the liner a bit, but other than that, I didn’t notice any Devil’s Food disasters in cupcake form. Besides, if you’re too proper to suck all the good crumbs off the wrapper, you’re not welcome in my kitchen, anyway.
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Quick, Easy Oven-Baked Salmon

April 5, 2013 by

I’m relieved to finally have salmon in my freezer again. When it comes to remembering to thaw meat, I’m terrible. So even as much as I love chicken, it’s usually frozen beyond my last-minute (self-inflicted) time constraints.

But salmon thaws in a few minutes under running water, making it a quick, easy go-to dinner. The preparation is a snap – a few grinds of salt, pepper and garlic, then a squeeze of lemon – and it’s into the oven for 15 minutes while my quinoa cooks and then, during the last half, the green beans steam.

 

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Baking Paska Bread for Easter

March 30, 2013 by

What a beautiful, productive, sunny, springy day-before-Easter-Sunday. Beautiful, sunny and springy because the mid-50s warmth was a nice break from Cleveland’s blistery winter hangover. Productive because it brought several firsts for me:

  • First time hanging laundry on the new apartment clothesline outside
  • First time baking Paska Bread
  • First time zesting a lemon
  • First time proofing yeast

With the laundry started and towels already flapping in the wind, I got busy baking Easter goodies. First, proofing yeast and dissolving sugar for my first venture into Paska bread baking. With the first few ingredients rising in a warm, dark place (which happens to be in the bedroom), I get a head start on tomorrow morning’s breakfast. Out comes the trusty old pastry cloth and pin, rolling out dough for mom’s legendary cinnamon roll recipe – which I can never quite master to her standards.

Then spread and sprinkle, roll it carefully, and cut. Perfect cinnamon spirals ready for the oven.

Now, what the hell is Paska bread again?

Apparently, a light, sweet Ukrainian egg bread traditionally eaten at Easter – that my boyfriend has been requesting for weeks now. And that I’ve been putting off because I know I can’t bake it like his Baba did.

Baking my family’s traditional treats is one thing. And don’t get me wrong – I love experimenting with different ingredients and new recipes. But when you have a very specific memory of your grandma’s special bread – that I’ve never even heard of – well, I don’t want to set you up for disappointment, but…

Fortunately, thanks to Google search and a comment calling this the best quality of any Paska recipe, we have it. A recipe for Paska bread I can handle – using ingredients on hand. I cut the recipe in half because I don’t need three loaves of bread.

I’ve been wanting to bake more bread, and I don’t know what about those measly little packets of living yeast freaked me out. But I have no excuses anymore. Proofing yeast, it turns out, just means dissolving it in water. And you don’t need a special zesting tools, just a small cheese grater, to scratch the zingy top layer from a lemon. This is easy.

Paska Bread Recipe

1 (.25 oz) package active dry yeast
1/4 cup warm water (110 degrees – warm, not hot)
1/4 cup white sugar
1 1/2 cups warm milk
2 cups all-purpose flour

Dissolve the yeast in the warm water until it gets frothy. Meanwhile, dissolve the sugar in the warm milk. When the milk cools, add it to the yeast with the flour. Mix it up with a wooden spoon (remembering, from our AFB baking, that metal reacts with the yeast). Cover with plastic wrap or clean cloth, and let it rise in a dark, warm spot for a couple hours till it bubbles and doubles in size.

The whole idea of dough rising is like an exciting science experiment to me – but then again, I’m a big nerd. The yeast is feeding on the sugar and turning it to carbon dioxide and ethanol, so in essence, you’re fermenting alcohol before you bake. Which is exactly why I drink while I bake.

Use your 2 hours wisely. Then add:

3 eggs, beaten
1/4 cup white sugar
1/2 cup butter, softened
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon lemon zest

Mix well, then add 6 cups of flour, one cup at a time. Personally, I got in a little more than 5 before I started struggling, so I moved to my floured pastry sheet early and worked in more flour as I kneaded (for about 10 minutes).

Place the dough ball in a greased bowl and turn to coat. Cover it back up, and put it back to bed to rise for another couple hours.

Now, this is my favorite part – and it tells you what a violent soul I am. Punching down the dough. If the kneading wasn’t enough release for you, this nice calm pounding will get the aggression out. Back to rest, rising for another half hour.

Divide the dough in half, shape each into a rounded loaf and place on greased baking stones. Let rise another hour on the pan, rising till doubled. Beat an egg with a tablespoon of water to brush over the loaves before popping in a 350-degree oven.

The loaves will be gorgeous golden brown after, well, 20 minutes in my oven but 45-50 according to the recipe. Give or take.

By midnight, my day ended with 16 successfully dyed eggs, 12 plump cinnamon rolls ready to go for the morning, and 2 golden loaves of experimental Easter bread. Bring it on, Easter Bunny.

Filed Under: breakfast recipes, dinner recipes, Food Tagged With: ,