Never Bashful with Butter

So today was my husband’s birthday party. Tomorrow is his birthday, he’ll be 26! Everyone say happy birthday Aaron! *smile*

Anyways, so.. because I’m the wife, and everyone knows me for my food, I had to get on the ball this week and make a ton of it. This is why I’ve been slightly neglectful of my blogging duties, also, I pulled an all nighter last night, finally getting sleep between 6am and 10am. It was rough, but my husband REALLY wanted cupcakes to bring to work so he could celebrate his birthday at work,  and… I had to get his cake finished.

I’ve probably said it before, but I used to be a “professional” cake decorator. I worked in a bakery and I decorated cakes for 2.5 years. It was cool, but you know when you do something at work, its not something you want to do at home. This is probably why my beginning food blogging directly coincides with my quitting that job.

So all of my family and my husband’s family knows that, and because of it, I feel I have this standard to live up to with the appearance of my cakesneverbashfulwithbutter.comhttp://www.neverbashfulwithbutter.com that I make (which I only really make for birthdays and baby showers, I’d rather do cupcakes) and since I feel I have this standard to live up to, I end up doing stupid things like staying up until 6am working on a birthday cake.

But everything ended up just fine. The cake was nice, the theme went off without a hitch (the birthday theme was “white and nerdy” after the Weird Al Yankovic song of the same name.) We had a costume contest at which Aaron (or Darth Aaron as he told people to call him) was the judge, and of course, his mom won.  I made up word finder puzzles with math, computer and chess words on it, also we had a star trek trivia contest. It was tons of fun.

We also had a zillion people crammed in our tiny apartment. More people showed up than I was expecting, and most people that had planned to just drop by (which were about 6 of the people there) actually ended up staying quite a long time because they couldnt pry themselves away. If I’m good at anything, its keeping people busy, their tummies full, and their minds occupied during a party. When people DID leave, I had a box full of assorted little toys (like something you would have got from the dentist or doctors office as a kid, if any of you remember that) and everyone just loved picking out a little toy to take home with them. People like prizes, and I make sure to keep that in mind when I have a party.

Alright, back to the food.

We gave up on having nerd themed food. It was just too hard. I had to make enough food for roughly 25 people to eat during THE DINNER HOUR. Considering most of these people came here right after work, or after stopping home for a few minutes after work, I knew that people would be very hungry and probably not notice any of the work I’d put into special nerdy foods. So we went for the “fill ‘em up” approach.

These photos do not even begin to show how much food we had. For every tray, imagine a backup tray in the fridge waiting to take the place of the one you see. Also, there was an entire table in addition to this that was covered in food.

So to give you an idea of what we had… heres the “menu”

Rigatoni with marinara, ricotta and mozzarella bake
Baked white cheddar macaroni
Crab rolls
Crab puffs
Crab cakes
California rolls
Cabbage rolls
Black olive, pepperoni and cheese pizza
Ham and pineapple pizza
Sausage, mushroom, pepper, ham and pepperoni pizza
Bread sticks
Stuffed Italian nachos
Nachos
Japanese noodles with garlic, carrots and celery
Homemade bean dip
Homemade salsa (w/ tortilla chips)
Ham and cheddar “tea” sandwiches
Turkey and havarti “tea” sandwiches
Whole wheat cookies with lemon raspberry filling (The ones that I made the other day. THEY FREEZE WELL!)
Chocolate iced chocolate cupcakes with chocolate caramel filling (these were gone before I could take a photo of them. Seriously, one person found out what they were filled with and people DOVE on them.
Plain chocolate cupcakes w/ cream cheese icing
Vanilla cupcakes with lemon cream filling and lemon lime icing
Melon tray (we bought it. I was too lazy to cut fruit at this point)
Carrots, celery and broccoli

Then the cake itself was a banana pound cake with banana bavarian filling and cream cheese icing.

And here are the photos that really don’t do the food any justice. They’re not the best quality, but I had a room full of people waiting for me to move so they could finish eating! sorry guys!

Aaron loved his cake. When he blew out the candles, his brother even made the “1 up” sound from Mario brothers. It was great.

So what have I learned? Make food, and do as much of the preparation work ahead of time. The only part I really hated was wrapping all of the crab puffs and little wontons. seriously? I had to have folded upwards of 200 of those little suckers.

But the best part of having a nerd party is that you have an excuse to buy more stikfas. You can look forward to many more adventures of Rodney, as we’ve now got about 8 or 9 more stikfas to come and play with us! *smile*

have a great night everyone! I’m posting this really late, but I couldnt really do much about that. Tomorrow I may do a breakfast post, but that depends on what my husband wants, it is his birthday after all!

Things will be all back to the normal schedule (posting monday-friday and every other Saturday) after this weekend, at least until the next birthday!

-A.

Yeah.
I’ll admit it. I’m a self professed apple addict.

I routinely peruse the aisle at my local grocery store looking for shiny, unblemished uniformly coloured apples. I memorize the varieties available and hunt for new ones. I ask the produce guy if  I can try them. I have apple standards, and those apple standards are high.

I recently became obsessed with pink lady apples. They’re very simular to granny smith, only sweeter,  but they still have that wonderful crunch when you bite into them. I’m used to the tart apples I grew up with, stealing them off my neighbours apple trees. Those apples were much smaller than the ones you typically find in stores..

So you can imagine the glee I felt when I discovered that my local grocer has started carrying baby apples. Not only granny smiths, but PINK LADY!

So I bought a bunch of them. A couple bags, actually. Most of these have been peeled, cored, sliced and bagged in the freezer for use at a later date.  But I felt the need to use some of them now, and I didn’t want tneverbashfulwithbutter.comhttp://www.neverbashfulwithbutter.como make another apple pie.

Nope. I wanted to make muffins. And after staring and delicious food photos with my husband on the internet last night, I decided they needed to have caramel in them, some how, some way.

So I had to figure out a recipe for Caramel apple muffins. Not bad. This couldn’t be too hard, right?

Well, how about I make a vegan version instead?
Given recent developments, I figured it was only fair.

That’s right folks! ANOTHER vegan recipe!!

So last night, between the hours of 1am and 3am, I gathered all the recipes I would need to make such a recipe. Luckily, I had all the ingredients. YAY for grocery shopping! I’ve been stocking up on various “alternative” ingredients so I can try out some other vegan stuff, and try a few gluten free recipes, and even a more ambitious project of gluten, wheat, corn and egg free VEGAN cupcakes. But that’s a different blog. One that I assure you will come soon.

The hardest part was locating a recipe for vegan caramel. The one that I located called for a few more obscure ingredients to the non-vegan kitchen, so I guess I’m lucky that I have vegan friends that give me obscure ingredients that I normally wouldnt have in my kitchen. *smile*

All I gotta say is, if you want to make a gooey vegan goodie, keep plenty of maple syrup in your kitchen. It’s in everything. I’m sure you could use agave nectar in its stead, but heck. I just bought a giant bottle of pure maple syrup, so I was just fine. Also, that earth balance vegan margarine really is a godsend. It worked beautifully to create the “buttery” effect I was looking for.

So I smashed together a recipe for vegan caramel and a recipe for vegan apple pie filling,  and placed a spoonful in the center of  the vegan muffin batter *ahem* muffin batter= thickened cupcake batter in this instance *ahem*  filled muffin liner, and I realized I was basically making a vegan coffee cake, so I Figured I’d even crumble some streusel topping on top.

SO GOOD.

Sure, there were a few that didn’t turn out just right. And sure, they tasted way better warm than cold. But hey… for an experiment, they turned out quite nicely, and even the ones that didn’t look right tasted damn good.

So here are the photos-

Don’t you worry butter lovers! I’ve got the perfect non-vegan version too. I’ve made it as a cake before, so I can attest to how good it tastes and how well it would work in muffin form, even if I don’t have the photos to prove it!

So there you go.  They really are pretty good muffins. Sure, they’re more of an autumn recipe, but for an overcast day like today, my husband home sick from work (poor guy) They were the perfect morning treat for curling up with a blanket and watching the morning news.

Or a movie, but we like the news.
*smile*

Apparently I’m not only “Never bashful with butter” but I’m also “Never bashful with vegan muffins.” heck yeah kids. These muffins fooled my husband, who ate about 4 of them in one sitting this morning.

Never you fear Butter Lovers™ This time, instead of offering vegan options at the end of the recipe, I’m offering NON VEGAN options at the end of the recipe. They’re based off of delicious recipes that I’ve made in the past, and though I do not have the photos to prove it, they ended up just as beautiful and delicious as these did.

Alrighty..

So this recipe has three separate components that make up the whole delicious thing. They’re layered on top of each other before being baked.

The layers go like this-

Muffin- filling- topping.

It does NOT go like this-

Muffin-filling-muffin-topping.
You WANT the filling to peek out of the top. This insures that it will thicken instead of turn into a watery mess, or fully incorporate itself into the muffin as a whole.

Anyways, I’ll talk about that more as the recipe goes on-

First, you’ll want to prepare your filling. Here is the recipe I used-
(refer to the bottom of the page for the non-vegan caramel sauce recipe.)

1 cup soy milk (plain or vanilla)
3/4 cup brown rice syrup
1/3 cup maple syrup
1 cup diced apples
1 teaspoon cinnamon
3 tbsp. water
1-1/2 tbsp. cornstarch
1 tbsp. vegan margarine
2 tsp. vanilla extract

Combine first 3 ingredients in saucepan. Heat over medium heat until boiling, wisking well to prevent burning. Once it has come to a boil, add apples and cinnamon. Mixture will thicken as it boils, about 10 minutes. (Mixture will be extremely hot!)

Boil until mixture lightly coats the back of a spoon. Mix water and cornstarch in small container to make a slurry. Add to boiling mixture and cook for 2 minutes, stirring constantly.

Remove from heat and stir in vegan margarine and vanilla extract. Allow to cool before using.

Give the mixture about 15 minutes to cool before either packing it up for storage, or beginning to make your muffin batter. During this 15 minutes, you can make your streusel topping.

This part is easy.

1/2 cup organic brown sugar
1 tablespoon vegan margarine (non vegan substitution- butter)
1 tablespoon cinnamon

Mix all of those things together. If the mixture isnt crumbly, add more brown sugar and cinnamon. Set this off to the side.

At this point, turn the oven on to 375 degrees. I know its a little hotter than normal baked goods (which are baked between 325 and 350) but the higher temperature actually helps insure the muffin’s texture will be a good one.
Also, line a 12 count muffin tin with paper liners.

Now, you’ll need to make your muffin batter.
I’ll admit, I cheated. This isn’t a muffin recipe, so much as a thickened version of a vegan cake batter.

I tried really hard to find a true vegan muffin recipe, but I lack patience, and the only thing I was coming up with were muffins that had oats or oat bran in them. So, I worked on creating a vegan muffin recipe from something I already knew would work. Cupcakes.

So here it is-
(if you’re non-vegan, just use the non-vegan ingredients in the parenthesis’)

1/4 cup margarine (butter!)
1/2 cup plain applesauce
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon canola oil
1 cup organic sugar
2 cups unbleached all purpose flour
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup soy milk (buttermilk or regular milk)

With muffins, its important to stir as little as possible. So, what you do is sift all the dry ingredients (flour, cornstarch, baking powder) together, and in a separate bowl, cream together the margarine and sugar, then add the apple sauce, oil, vanilla and soy milk. Then pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and “FOLD” them together. Not stirring, not whisking. Folding. You want the dry ingredients to be moistened and you want the liquids to be absorbed by the dry ingredients, but you don’t want the lumps to go away. These lumps keep the filling from falling to the bottom of the muffin!

So, now you’re going to assemble the muffins.

Fill each muffin cup about 2/3 of the way full. Now add a heaping tablespoon of filling on top of the muffin. On top of that, you’ll want to sprinkle about a tablespoon of the streusel topping. Immediately place in the oven and bake for about 10-15 minutes, depending on how hot your oven runs.

And voila! You’ve got yourself some tasty muffins!

-A.

P.S.
here is the non-vegan butter caramel sauce recipe-

3/4 cup sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup organic corn syrup
1 cup diced apples
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 cup butter
1 cup heavy cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Combine first 3 ingredients in saucepan. Heat over medium heat until boiling, wisking well to prevent burning. Once it has come to a boil, add apples and cinnamon. Mixture will thicken as it boils, about 10 minutes. (Mixture will be extremely hot!)

Boil until mixture lightly coats the back of a spoon. Add the heavy cream (slowly so it doesnt splash back, or boil over) to boiling mixture and cook for 2 minutes, stirring constantly.

Remove from heat and stir in butter and vanilla extract. Allow to cool before using. Srsly, this is so good on ice cream! (then again, you could just buy the storebought stuff and put it on top of the muffin, but hey! you like making things from scratch, remember! *smile*

Happy cooking!

Preach not to others what they should eat, but eat as becomes you, and be silent.   -Epictetus

There is no love sincerer than the love of food. -George Bernard Shaw

Take some time today for yourself. Indulge in that bar of chocolate, drink that frappuchino, eat an extra muffin, and smile.

I’ll be back tomorrow.
-A.

  I’m like a lot of people who bake for fun. I pick a flour, and stick with it. White flour has always been where its at for me. I use cake flour for cakes, and unbleached all purpose flour for everything else.

A few weeks ago, I caught a wild hair, and in addition to my regular order of unbleached all purpose flour and cake flour, I grabbed a medium sized bag of stone ground wheat flour. I thought, what the heck. I’ll give it a try.

I’ve never been a fan of wheat bread. I’ve never liked wheat crackers. Every time I’ve had anything with wheat, its either tasted bitter, or I got instant heartburn. Not fun.  The only way I could make myself ingest wheat bread was to slather on the butter and just pretend that it was just toasted, and that was why it was slightly brown.

My mom used to take me and my older sister to the Orowheat bread store when we were kids. I remember my mom buying bags and bags of honey wheat berry bread rolls, and how much I loathed them. My mom and sister seemed to live off of theseneverbashfulwithbutter.comhttp://www.neverbashfulwithbutter.com things, but their texture made me gag. I hated them. I went on strike, and my bread consumption was limited to white only. My mom wasn’t very happy about this, but I think she got tired of trying. I was pretty stubborn.

So for me, using whole wheat flour is a bit of a stretch. However, since I’ve decided to embark upon a journey to bring delicious treats that sometimes have a hidden (healthy) agenda, I held back my fear, and brought out the bag of wheat flour.

I stared at that bag this morning, looking deep into the cartoon eyes of Bob, the man who’s “red mill” produced this flour. He wouldn’t disappoint me.. would he?

Now, to come up with a recipe.

I wanted something good. Honest though? I wanted something that my husband could take to work with him tomorrow. His co-workers were kind of upset with him on Friday that he’d forgotten the cupcakes that I made for them, so he asked if I could make something for him to bring to work with him. I was on the case. But something that would make a room full of computer nerds happy might not make people looking for a healthy snack, happy. I guess I’d have to try anyways..

I thought back to my personal favourite cookies. Butter cookies. Shortbread. Cookies with lots of butter, lots of sugar, and just enough flour to hold it all together. Maybe I could work with this.

It seemed rather pointless to make a high fat content whole wheat cookie though, so I’d have to do something about the amount of butter. And really, people who are watching what they eat.. they don’t want to ingest a ton of sugar either.

So I knew the cookie itself would have to be more cracker-like, and there would have to be some sort of sweet filling to make up for the lack of sweetness in the cookies.

This was what I came up with- Stone ground wheat cookies with Raspberry lemon cream filling.

From the top view, there looks like there isnt much filling inside…

But from the side, you can really see just how thin the cookies are, and how a little filling goes a long way on these little puppies!

besides being good for you and made of all natural ingredients, They’re salt free! They have less fat in them than standard butter or shortbread cookies, they’re higher in fiber, have an extremely low amount of sugar  and the filling is made with whole fruit!

Mmm.. the filling has a lot of flavour, so a small amount (about a 1/4 teaspoon) goes a LONG way!

Just look at the flaky texture…

Ok, so I fudged. I totally ate one of these cookies. I don’t regret it though, because it was really good. They’re not bitter, they’re not greasy, they’re delicate, but not so fragile that they break on a whim. The filling is full of flavour, and a little tart. The lemon and the raspberry really stand up to the cookie, and the natural sweetness of the berry really enhances the experience. I’ll definitely make these again!

Don’t worry people. I know a lot of you can’t have wheat at all. I’m going to try out other healthy, whole food recipes later in the week. I don’t know how well this recipe would work with substitutions. I’m sure if you wanted to make it vegan, you’d just have to swap out shortening for the butter in the cookie, and change a few ingredients in the filling. You could definately put a different filling in these cookies as well, as they are essentially sweet wheat crackers.  I imagine cream cheese and jam would be delicious on these, as would any savory topping you might want to add. They’re also good alone, but make sure you’ve got a glass of your favourite thirst quenching beverage nearby because just like chocolate chip cookies, they taste better with milk! (or soy milk, if you’re into that sort of thing.)

Here is my personal recipe for these delicious cookies. I made a GIANT batch of them, but you could easily half the recipe to make it more manageable. I was making them for my husband’s co-workers, so… I had to make a bunch!

for roughly 80 cookies or 40 sandwiched 2″ round cookies, you’ll need-

4 cups stone ground whole wheat flour
1/2 cup unbleached all purpose flour
3/4 cup sugar
1 cup cold unsalted butter
1/3 cup cold water, added in tablespoons

Thats right. These cookies? They’re basically sweet whole wheat shortcrust pastry. You’re going to prepare them just like you would a pie crust as well. If you need to read the pie crust primer, you’re going to want to click here. That link will lead you to a past entry where I described in painstaking (and probably pain-reading) detail, how to make the perfect pie crust. You’re going to want to do that now.

Only you’ll want to roll the dough out a tad bit thinner, think.. saltine cracker thickness. Pretty dang thing. They’ll puff up a bit in the oven. Don’t worry.

I used a 2″ round cookie cutter. You can use any size cookie cutter you want. Just make sure when you’ve got them all laid out on the cookie sheet, that you prick some holes along the dough to make sure that it doesn’t bubble up. You can’t stacked bubbled up cookies! And they’re much too fragile that way.

Bake at 350 for about 4 minutes. You’ll want them to be lightly golden brown.

So you make a bunch of these cookies. You’ll actually need to make about 80 of them to make 4o finished cookies, because they’re sandwich cookies.

The filling is something a bit more difficult.

In one bowl you’ll need-

1/4 cup low fat cream cheese, softened
mixed with
1/4 cup powdered sugar

In a small sauce pan over low heat, mix-

1 Tablespoon granulated sugar
1/2 cup smashed fresh raspberries and sliced RIPE strawberries
1/4 fresh squeezed lemon juice (feel free to grate the rind in there too)
a tiny amount (1/8 teaspoon) of powdered agar agar (or gelatin, or fruit pectin)

when the mixture starts mixing together well (meaning the lemon juice starts to turn pink with the juice from the berries) Bring the mixture to a boil for about 10 minutes, then turn the temperature down to medium high for another 5. The mixture should thicken slightly. Allow to cool.

Once the fruit mixture has cooled to roughly room temperature, add it to the softened cream cheese and powdered sugar mixture. use a spatula or a hand mixer to be sure that the two mixes integrate completely and that there are no lumps of cream cheese.

Alrighty..

Now you take one cookie, spread some (about a 1/8 teaspoon) of the raspberry lemon cream mixture onto it, and top with another cookie!

I know what you’re thinking though.. It’s got a cup of butter in it. It’s got sugar, and cream cheese in it..

Just for comparison sakes, a batch of sugar cookies which makes half as many cookies has half as much WHITE flour, the same amount of butter, and another 3/4 cup of sugar. Half as many cookies.

Most frostings have WAY more sugar and cream cheese in them, and they require more icing applied for less flavour.

So you’ve got yourself a no sodium, high fiber, lower fat, FAUX TRANS FAT FREE, all natural whole fruit, egg free, corn free recipe where the ingredients are easily swapped out for equivalent items.

AND IT TASTES GOOD!

 Starfruit-

Strawberries-

Horned melon-

Cabbage rolls-

MORE cabbage rolls-

California rolls w/ crab-

California rolls with avocado-

There were other foods there, like dinner rolls and ham and mashed potatoes and corn, but those are pretty normal foods. These ones were so bright and colourful and full of all sorts of interesting texture, I couldn’t help but post them!

My mom made all of these glorious goodies (and in the case of the fruit, slneverbashfulwithbutter.comhttp://www.neverbashfulwithbutter.comiced and plated them) so she can take all of the credit for that. However, I did manage to snag the recipe for the cabbage rolls from her.

This is something my mom came up with. I personally didn’t have any, but it looked pretty tasty, and all the vegans in the room seemed to go crazy over it, so I figured heck.. I’ll share the love!

The recipe isn’t exact. It’s basically a list of ingredients and how they’re prepared and you can decide for yourself if you want to put more or less of it in the roll. I personally would have omitted a few items and put a few others in there instead.. but hey, it’s all up to you!

For the wrappers-

Whole leaves of crinkle cabbage (a japanese variant that I can’t remember the name of right now)

So here’s what’s inside THESE particular rolls-

Washed and dried green leaf lettuce. Whole leaves.
Julliane cucumbers
Julliane carrots
Sliced avocado
Shredded cabbage
and spicy thai chili sauce

So, you’ll want to take all of that inside stuff and lay it inside the cabbage leaves. You can roll them up burrito style and lay them fold side down, or you can use a toothpick or long carrot stick to hold the wrap closed.

So there you go! Happy eating!

-A.

My parents really went all out on the holidays back when I was little. I distinctly remember more than a few Christmas’ where my older sister and I awoke to mid morning to the sound of “hooves” on the roof and saw a faintly glimmering red “nose” outside our bedroom window.

Easter was the best though. I mean, every holiday had its place in our house, but Easter.. That was our holiday. We got to dress up like little princesses, and sure.. we had to go to church.. But we knew the real reason for the holiday.

Easter egg hunts.

I don’t know exactly where my mom got the costume, and I don’t even know how many years she did this, but one of the best memories I have of easter are of chasing down the Easter bunny in our front yard, and just before we reached him/her, The bunny would jump out of reach and sight, not to be seen again until the film developed.

In the meantime of course, we’d pick up a few candy filled eggs here and there.. some hard boiled ones too. My dad would be out in his pajamas and we’d be out in ours, mneverbashfulwithbutter.comhttp://www.neverbashfulwithbutter.comy dad taking photos of us running around through the front yard and we’d catch a glimpse of the bunny.  All egg hunting came to a halt. WE MUST CATCH THIS BUNNY. I guess it was for the same reason that little kids stay up and try to “Catch” Santa Claus. We figure if we see him, he’ll HAVE to give up all the presents he has with him. I figured if I caught the bunny… He’d have to give me all his eggs.

There was always something to distract us. A cat, my dad shouting something about pretty eggs and “Andrea, Steph is going to get all the eggs if you don’t get over here!” or vice versa.

And then the bunny would be gone.

A few weeks later we’d get the film back and there would be a few convenient shots of the bunny. I can only liken the style of photography to that of the  “Sasquatch” videos of the mid 1980’s. Sort of blurry, very much as if my dad was chasing down the bunny and the bunny was JUST out of focus.

..but it was enough to keep us excited.

We theorized as to the whereabouts of the Bunny during the rest of the year. There were always questions, and very few answers. Where did the bunny get the eggs? Were the eggs magical? How did the bunny keep the hard boiled eggs cold? But the most important question lingered..

When the bunny ran away… where did it go?

Formal searches of the property were conducted. A “Man” hunt concluded that the only possible exit off the property and into some magical land where bunnies had full access to refrigeration, coloured eggs and candy filled eggs- was through a portal under the back porch, or through a little “cave” that my sister and I had discovered on the back half of the property across the small stream that lay between our back porch and a very steep hill that could be seen directly through the bathroom window.. if you stood on the seat, that is. I never said we were very tall kids. *smile*

The theories and searches continued.
During the summer months we concluded that the portal access via under the porch wasn’t very feasible. We decided this after one of our cats had their kittens under there, and since none of them ended up disappearing, then obviously the bunny wouldn’t have gone anywhere either.

So it must be the cave.

At some point during all of this we decided that this is also where the leprechauns, Santa Claus, and the tooth fairy lived, or at least transported through. I don’t think we ever got up the courage to try and make it up to the cave to check it out, or maybe we just lost interest. We were just kids after all.

The thing I remember most about every holiday, were the goodies that we either received, or made and brought to school for the little parties we had. Cupcakes were always big for those parties, even though I think my mom made full sized cakes for our easter dinner. I don’t really remember too much though, I was too preoccupied with the basket full of candy, and formulating the Easter bunny’s escape route.

This year, since we had to split our time between my husband’s family and my family’s Easter celebrations, we made mini cupcakes to bring to my parents house. Of course, we promptly forgot them at home.. so I guess I’ll just have to send them with Aaron to work tomorrow.

Anyways, here they are.. covered in Easter inspired sprinkles!

Anyways.. I know I’m posting this late, but HAPPY EASTER EVERYONE!

-A.

It’s springtime.
Springtime in my neck of the woods usually means rain. Infact, up until a few days ago, it was doing just that. Raining. Never being one to believe the weathermen (they’re really not very reliable up here) I let myself believe that, as usual, this weekend would be rainy. Or at least overcast.

So last night I set to making a special project. One that combined a well loved easter treat, and one of my FAVOURITE things about springtime- Cleaning.

Yep. this is the time of year that I start using up all of the odds and ends. I replenish my stock over the summer. Why? Because lately, summer means SWELTERING HEAT, and most home bakers realize, that means shorter shelf lives for their baking staples. Everything goes bad sometime, right?

So I was all set up. I got out the ingredients, most of which were items that I really needed to lessen my supply of. I got to work. Making marshmallows.

But not just any marshmallows.. banana marshmallows..
But not just any banana marshmallows.. banana marshmallow PEEPS.
everbashfulwithbutter.comhttp://www.neverbashfulwithbutter.comn
Right around now is when you, the reader, realize that peeps have nothing to do with the subject of this post. And for the few of you who do what I do when confronted with a large block of text and some photos, look before you read- You’re wondering what the heck I’m talking about.

But back to the weather.

When it gets hot around here, it doesn’t just get hot. It gets BRIGHT and it gets steamy. Humid. That means if your house, or in my case, apartment, faces the sun rising, you’re going to wake up to a hot house… a hot house with melted banana marshmallow peeps.

You see, I made them last night. I was so excited. The only problem with homemade marshmallows is you have to leave them out overnight to let them sort of seal themselves off. Otherwise they don’t set up quite right, and I’d never be able to package them up for easter and give them to my relatives. So I did what I’ve always done when I’ve made marshmallows. I waived goodnight, turned off the light, and went to bed expecting to wake up and take some photos of my delicious homemade peeps.

But my kitchen faces the sunrise. My bedroom is on the other side of the apartment. By the time the heat made its way to my bedroom to sweat me out of bed, the peeps had already said their last goodbye. They were a puddle of sugary marshmallowy goop, unfit for even photo taking, because they’d melted off of the waxed paper and down the counter. It was gross. Sticky and gross. My kitchen smelled nice though. I love the smell of bananas.

After I’d recovered from the peep massacre, and cleaned my kitchen, I sat down to regroup. I needed to do something.

I couldn’t shake the banana smell. It wafted through the air and into my nose, tickling my tastebuds and making me hunger for something sweet. Something tasty. Something with bananas in it.

Then I remembered a few things which factored into my next move:

1.) I have a surplus of REAL bananas that will surely go bad within the next day in this weather.
2.) I had been planning on dunking the bottoms of the peeps in chocolate, so now I’ve got all this chocolate that, while delicious plain, would make a great ingredient in SOMETHING.
3.) I have too much sweetened condensed milk
4.) requests for recipes involving sweetened condensed milk
5.) I cleaned out the freezer last night and made little puff pastry disks from the frozen puff pastry that was on the verge of going bad. I figured I would use it for something if I baked it..
6.) I bet all of that stuff put together would be delicious.

So I put on my thinking cap. I know that banoffee pie tastes pretty damn good, and all it is, is basically bananas, sweetened condensed milk, pie crust and a bunch of whipped cream.  I’ve seen it made with chocolate as well, and I could only imagine that would totally enhance the flavours.

But I didn’t have whipped cream or whipping cream. I don’t really like putting whipped cream on things that I’m taking photos of, especially on a hot day, because it doesn’t really stand up too well. So.. Scratch that.

I wasn’t about to make a pie. It’s HOT OUTSIDE!

So… I came up with this-

“but where’s the dulce de leche?”…

Look under the cut, I bet there are more photos under there!

THERE IT IS!

So here is how you eat it…

Take one of the little puff pastry chocolate banana bundles…

Put a nice big dollop of your home made dulce de leche on top…

Admire it for a moment…

And TAKE A BITE!

Oh, it was good. Very rich though. I had one, which you can sort of gauge the size, because those are just  thick slices of a regular sized banana on there, I wanted more, but I’m honestly trying to *gasp* DIET!  *runs around like a crazy person*

Don’t worry. The fact that I’ve decided to diet only means that you’ll have much more variety. I’ll keep on making cupcakes and muffins and goodies, because I’ve got my husband’s co-workers asking him to bring them more (after those peanut butter cookies they started seriously asking if this was going to be a regular occurance. He said probably yes, and one of the guys actually did the ‘YESSSS’ thing, you know, when you ball up your fist and bend your arm at your elbow and pull it back while simultaneously saying “yessss” and then jumping around all excitedly. Yeah. Apparently computer nerds love goodies. who’da thunk it?)

But what this does mean is that those of you who are reading this and are also on diets (real diets, not crash diets or anything similar to that) will soon be seeing more treats that are good for you AND taste good AND look good. I’ve got plenty of ideas, and my mom’s library is the mecca of all diet cookbooks.

If you’re wondering how to make dulce de leche, I’ll be posting a few different methods on my recipe blog this weekend. It’s SO EASY and so good. I hope it stores well. *will have to look into that*

So there you go. One more delicious treat. There will be more. Never fear.

These are probably the easiest little treats I’ve made in a long time. There is very little work involved in making them. Other than the actual dulce de leche, the rest is just assembling things.

You’ll need-

1 sheet frozen puff pastry dough, thawed <- This is what I used.

or 1 sheet of pie dough rolled out flat

or 1 sheet cookie dough rolled out flat

1 cup milk chocolate, melted in a ziploc bag or spooned into a piping bag.

2 ripe bananas
1 can of sweetened condensed milk.

The first thing you’ll want to do is make the base. The puff pastry (or pie dough or cookie dough) You’ll make this first, because it needs to bake and cool before you can add anything else to it. So take your sheet of puff pastry (or pie dough or cookie dough) and use a small round cookie cutter to cut out about 15 pastry rounds.

Place them on a greased cookie sheet about an inch apart and bake according to the package directions. Set them in a separate area to cool.

Now you’ve got to make the dulce de leche. Sure, you could buy it, but where’s the fun in that? There are a couple ways of going about turning that can of sweetened condensed milk into a beautiful caramel. One of my Livejournal friends used this method-

“I just made some recently for banoffee pie. I took 2 cans of condensed milk and poured them into a casserole dish, tightly covered the dish with foil, and then stuck it into a large roasting pan, filling the pan up with hot water - enough to come halfway up the sides of the dish.

Bake at 425 degrees F (218 C) for roughly 90 minutes, until the condensed milk is thick and brown. I also filled up the roasting pan with more water as needed. ”

I made mine in a double boiler. I just poured the can of sweetened condensed milk into the top part and made sure the bottom half was filled with enough water. Boiled the water and kept it full. You’ll be boiling the water for about an hour, so you’ll want to check on the water level every 10 minutes or so.

You don’t have to worry about stirring too often, I usually just used a spatula to turn the mixture over each time I checked the water level.

And in about an hour, you’ll have a beautiful caramel- Dulce de leche.

OF course there are other methods.

You could do the boil in can method, which.. well.. I wouldn’t recommend. I hear it’s the traditional way of making it, but it’s really not a good idea as one of the possible problems includes the can exploding.

But, if you simply must try it-

3 cans of sweetened condensed milk, remove the labels and DO NOT poke any holes in them. Place them in a large pot full of water. You’ll want the water to be about an inch over the top of the can. Turn the heat knob to simmer, or low, and leave on the stovetop for about 3 hours, frequently checking the water level to make sure the cans are always completely submersed. Also, make sure you let the can cool before attempting to open them.

Then of course, you could try the entirely home made approach. Usually I would go with this method, but I wanted to keep things traditional.

you’ll need-

4 cups milk
2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
Vanilla extract

Scald milk in heavy bottom sauce pan. Add all other ingredients, cook on medium low until it turns into caramel, about 1 hour.

Alright.. now that you’ve got yourself some dulce de leche.. You’ll want to assemble the rest of the treat.

Pay close attention, or you might miss it-

Take one of the puff pastry circles, place about a teaspoon of melted milk chocolate on top. slice a thick slice of banana and place that on top of the melted chocolate. You can either put a little more chocolate on top, or leave it alone, but next… Place a big spoonful of the dulce de leche on top of the banana.

Then eat it!

Oh, you will not regret it. It is SO GOOD. I loved these things. They’re very rich though, so I’d recommend serving these at a party or get together of some sort, or you may feel compelled to eat them all yourself.

-A.

 Cranberry orange cupcakes with cream cheese icing and Candied fennel seed.

Yep, thats what I made today.

I bought the candied fennel seed, I didn’t make it. Sure, I may like making foods, but you have to draw the line somewhere.

This is what my  candied fennel seed looks like. You can find it in rainbow colours and in just white.

Sometimes candied fennel seed is called finocchietti. You gotta be careful, because finocchietti is also an Italian cookie made for the day of the dead. Both have fennel in them, but they’re definately not the same.

I found my  candied fennel seed at an Indian food shop. Brightly coloured with a sweet black licorice flavour, I knew they would make perfect sprinkles for future cupcakes.  I had already neverbashfulwithbutter.comhttp://www.neverbashfulwithbutter.commade lavender cupcakes, fennel couldn’t be too far behind..

Especially in it’s candied form.

I’ve taken to sprinkling it on my cupcakes, because I actually appreciate the flavour. However, I don’t know anyone else that does, so when I made orange cranberry cupcakes today, I only sprinkled the candied fennel seed on two of the cupcakes. The rest of them I iced with various easter-ish colours (I’m actually testing pastels for a baby shower cake I’m making tomorrow) and sprinkled various sprinkles on top. It was fun.  Also, my husband’s co-workers will love me even more now, because all of these babies are going to work with him tomorrow.

-A.

No story or anecdotes today. I gotta get working on that baby shower cake/ cupcakes ASAP.

My question for you guys is this-
What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever eaten on a cupcake?

I love peanut butter. I have since childhood. A little known fact about me- I went an entire school year as a child eating nothing but Fluffernutter sandwiches for lunch EVERY DAY. Sure, I had other things with it. And yeah, there were slight variations in the way the sandwich was prepared and presented.  But every day. I never got sick of it.

For those of you who don’t know, a fluffernutter is a type of sandwich made using two slices of bread (preferably wonderbread white) one slice with peanut butter spread on top, and the other with marshmallow fluff spread on top. Then the two halves were joined making The one sandwich to rule them all..

The only reason I had to stop eating the fluffernutter was because school was out and when school was out, I had to eat whatever my mom made for me, and since  I was home, I could be made to eat all sorts of foods that previously had been unfit for lunches due to their not  being suitable for transport in a lunch box or bag.

Also, my sister and I pretty much spent the summers “anywhere but home” often spending weeks with random relatives, or friends of the family, only to return home for a day or two before going to another person’s house.  Other people did not like that all I wanted to eat were carrot sticks and fluffernutter sandwiches. Sure, I’d settle for just plain peanut butter! Heck, I’d even take jelly on it if you want! Nope. These people wanted me to eat things that I just did not enjoy… foods I can’t even remember, because I probably blocked them out.

I guess it’s reasons like this that make me equate peanut butter cookies and the wonderful feeling of being home.
…Its probably also why whenever I pack a lunch for myself, I wish I had a jar of marshmallow fluff… for obvious reasons…

Everyone knows and loves the basic peanut butter cookie. Its soft, its chewy, its got cute little criss cross marks on top… Its a great cookie standby, and it’s delicious.

But what if you changed a few things…

And updated it’s flavour a little..

And GOD FORBID! What if you added chocolate?

Wanna know what’s inside this cookie?

What’s that you see? Yep! A layer of peanut butter AND jelly under a thick coating of chocolate.

And this one?

The chocolate coating hides a jeweled surprise.
A heaping spoonful of Grape jelly. mmm..
(this one was my FAVOURITE!)

And for you non-chocolate lovers-
A spoonful of jelly is mighty delicious on a peanut butter cookie!

Oh, you know you want it!

Homemade nutterbutters!
Peanut butter cookies with a layer of peanut butter frosting inside!

Peanut butter oaties, all dressed up with a dollop of chocolate on top!

Mmmm… chocolate, peanut butter and oats…

Hey, these ones don’t have their clothes on! *smile*

And last, but certainly not least..
Giant peanut butter cookies, dipped in chocolate.

Um… I think I need a glass of milk to go with these puppies.

Therere are so many ways of making peanut butter cookies. So many ways that it’s impossible for me to detail them all. I will however, give you a few ideas and the recipes needed to create those ideas.

But first, let me start you off with my peanut butter cookie recipe-

IT’S PEANUT BUTTER COOKIE TIME!

1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup butter, room temperature
1/2 cup peanut butter(I usually make this measurement “heaping”, and it’s more realistically about 3/4 cup peanut butter.)
1 egg
1 1/4 cup flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt

Cream the butter for a few minutes. Add the sugars, cream for a few more minutes. Mix in the peanut butter and egg. In a separate bowl, mix together the dry ingredients - flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Stir the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients. Form into a log.

Wrap dough in plastic and refrigerate about an hour.

Preheat the oven to 350, and remove the dough from the fridge.

For old fashioned cookies (like the ones pictured) roll dough into 1″ balls and set about an inch apart on a lightly greased cookie sheet. Using the flat bottom of a drinking glass, press the dough balls until they are slightly flattened. use a fork to impress the tine pattern in one direction, and then again, at a 90 degree angle. Bake for 5-9 minutes, or until golden brown. The tops will be smushy, and they’ll harden as they cool.

if you want to make jam thumb print cookies, instead of using a fork after you’ve slightly flattened the dough ball with the bottom of a glass, use either your thumb, or a dome-backed spoon to press a rounded indent into the cookie top. Spoon in a 1/2 teaspoon of your favourite jam or jelly. I use Grape!

If you want Peanut butter oaties, increase the peanut butter to a full cup and add a cup of rolled oats and a 1/4 cup melted butter at the very end. Cookies will be crumbly, so use a flat bottomed drinking glass to flatten out 1″-1 1/2″ balls on a cookie sheet. Bake the same as regular peanut butter cookies.

other variations include dipping them in chocolate, spooning chocolate over top of them (for jam thumbprints add an extra spoonful of jam or jelly to the center first, then pour the chocolate overtop so the jelly wont fall off) You can make peanut butter cookie sandwiches with plain peanut butter, or making a peanut butter icing-

1/2 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1-2 teaspoons melted butter

Mix well until you’ve got a paste. if its too thin, add more peanut butter.
Spoon between two already baked peanut butter cookies.

You can do just about anything with peanut butter cookies.

Just make sure when you’re done, someone eats them!

-A.

P.s. Peanut butter cookies soften up if you add jam to the top, or if you dip them in chocolate or add icing to them. Also, if you bake a batch and they AREN’T softening to your liking, put them in a ziploc bag with a piece of white bread. It’ll soften ‘em right up!

 I woke up this morning with a migraine. No big deal, I’m kind of used to them. I took some excedrine and waited for them to kick in.. it was around 8am and I had stuff to get done.

Cut to around 2:15pm. My migraine FINALLY subsided. FINALLY. I had spent the past 6 hours going from mildly irritated to extremely aggrivated. From feeling a slight pain to pouring a cup of ice water on my head because I felt like my brains were trying to squish through my eye sockets. I was finally free.

Forget the fact that when I’m having a migraine, I’m completely useless. I learned long ago that if I try to do anything other than repetitive simple jobs when I’m having one, I’ll just mess it up even farther, not to mention have a sort of panic attack when I realize that I’m completely useless. So I basically spent the entire morning curled up in a ball under a pillow in my bed with the fan pointed at me with all the lights off.

So, I didn’t have much time today to spend making a fancy dessert like I had planned. I didn’t have muneverbashfulwithbutter.comhttp://www.neverbashfulwithbutter.comch time at all to do much of anything, and really, there was a lot to get done today. Typically I take Sundays off to get the majority of the housework done for the week, but since yesterday was April fools day, I couldn’t pass up the chance to make at least SOMETHING for the blog. It’s so much fun for me anyways, I guess I look for excuses to post as often as I do.

Which brings me to today’s creation.

Fresh strawberry, lemon curd, vanilla cake and pudding parfait.

It was quick, because I used lemon curd that I had made a while ago and have kept stored in the fridge, and pudding that I made for yesterday’s “not pie” and the cake came from cupcakes that I made last week and kept frozen for just such an occasion. The strawberries were fresh, but it only takes a few minutes to wash them and slice them, and it only takes a minute or two after sprinkling a little sugar on them for the juices to come out.

But I had ulterior motives.

Despite the fact that this parfait had full fat pudding and full fat cake, and yeah, there’s a lot of sugar in lemon curd- The entire parfait was made from natural home made ingredients. No pre-packaged pudding. Not even pudding from a box. The cake was made from scratch, and the lemon curd is just lemon, sugar, butter and eggs. No more, no less. Add to that some fresh strawberries, and you’ve got yourself some real tasty REAL food.

Also, think about the health aspects of the fruit involved. Strawberries are full of free radical fighting antioxidants. There is a lot of evidence out there that these antioxidants fight cancer, and are beneficial for those looking to fight the look of aging. Not to mention they’re full of fiber, folic acid, and that one cup of strawberries has more vitamin C than the a cup of Oranges!

And while the lemon curd itself may not retain much in the way of the nutritional properties of the raw lemon, the natural lemon maintains its ability to fight headache and joint pain.

The scent of vanilla is proven to promote relaxation, aid with digestion and to calm a queasy stomach. And it promotes weight loss.

And just like the lemon and strawberry, it just tastes good. And it all tastes good together!

So there you go…  I assure you, it was delicious.

I know, I know, there I go with the strawberries again. Come on people! I LOVE STRAWBERRIES! Just expect there to be a lot of berry filled desserts from this point through the summer. Berries are the BEST part of this season!

It’s also fast, filling, and FANTASTIC!

I quantified my description of parfait with “American” because according to Wikipedia, that is what this is. Apparently, a French parfait does NOT have anything to do with layering, and since the word “parfait” is in fact French, I must explain a few things.

Parfait means “perfect”. A French parfait is a cream custard with a fruit puree. This dessert, while it is “perfect” It doesn’t necessarily have custard in it, nor does it need to have a fruit puree.

I made mine with fresh strawberries, homemade vanilla pudding, some leftover vanilla cupcakes (that I made from scratch and stowed away in the freezer for such an occasion) and a tiny bit of home made lemon curd.

You can make yours from just about anything. Let me give you some recommendations though, and a few items from my personal “DO NOT WANT” list.

An American parfait is a layered dessert.

In order to make a layered dessert, you need items with which to make up the layers.

I recommend beginning with three items.
You’ll want a solid: something substantial like cake or some type of pastry or sweet bread…
You’ll want a semi solid: something less substantial, but still flavourful and with some unique texture. Try a fruit, fruit gelatin or something simular.
For your third layer, you’ll want a liquid: Something to hold the two other layers together. Something like pudding or whipped cream or pastry cream.

So here are a few ideas for each layer.

Solid-
Pound cake cut into small cubes, flavoured cake cut into small cubes, Puff pastry broken up or cut into small pieces, choux pastry, premade snack cakes like twinkies or tiger tails (THE DEVIL!), cookies broken up into small pieces, granola, Croissant pieces, cubed brioche.

Semi solid-
Sliced strawberries, mashed or sliced bananas, diced apples, fruit flavoured gelatin, fruit preserves, other suitable sliced fruit.

Liquid-
yogurt, pudding, flavoured syrups, ice cream, whipped cream, pie filling.

There are so many other ideas, its impossible for me to list them all.

However, there are a few things you will want to stay away from.

Citrus fruits in their sliced form do not transfer well to parfaits. You can use citrus curd, citrus sorbet or sherbet, citrus syrups.. just don’t set a chunk of lemon in a parfait and expect it to be edible.

Same goes for grapes. Also, if it doesnt sound like a good combination outside of a parfait, its not going to taste good inside the parfait. Would you want sliced apples and chocolate pudding? I wouldn’t. If you do, more power to you. Just don’t make it for me!

You can make an all fruit parfait, or a parfait with more than one solid or more than one liquid. A parfait is all in the presentation.

Carefully place all of your items in a glass one small layer at a time. Use a handled spoon or fork. Place them in a tall, clear glass so you can see all of the layers.

Be repetitive. Sure, you can make a three layered parfait, but it’s much more attractive to have smaller layers and repeat them.

Layer the ingredients, starting with a liquid, then a solid, then a semi solid. That way you don’t end up trying to dig a compressed piece of cake out of the bottom of the glass. It’s much easier to end with pudding or whipped cream.

Another thing, if you’re using a solid, prepare the desserts a few hours ahead of time and keep them in the fridge until you plan on serving them. This way the cake can soak up some of the liquid and be extra tasty!

Be creative! Parfaits are supposed to be fun!

-A.