Never Bashful with Butter

Originally, these cookies had a different purpose.

I had intended to make caramel and marshmallow sandwiches out of them, then fully dunk them in chocolate before photographing them, but…

It didn’t quite work out that way.. as you can see..

The problem with storing stuff in my house, is that sometimes… when I’m hiding in the other room or just not around to guard my food projects, the Cookie Monster otherwise known as my husband, raids the fridge and emerges with a mouth full of something delicious, yet meant for a different fate.

Like a handful of my brown sugar buttersnaps, marshmallow disks and caramel sauce.. Luckily, I was able to stop the massacre before all of the cookies were lost, but it was too late for the marshmallow disks and caramel sauce, and a handful of chocolate chips…

But at least my husband had a really tasty snacneverbashfulwithbutter.comhttp://www.neverbashfulwithbutter.comk that night. *giggle*

Anywho, given that I had stowed some of the cookies up in the freezer for safe keeping, and I always have an extra tub of dulce de leche laying around.. I still had enough of everything left to make cookie sandwiches, just without the marshmallow.

Its probably better that way anyways, as they ended up being MUCH more rich than I had intended, but they were really tasty!

Recipe for Brown sugar buttersnap cookies

1 Cup softened butter
1 Cup packed brown sugar
1 tsp butter flavor
1 large egg
3 Cup all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1./2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
pinch of nutmeg
In a large bowl, beat butter, sugar, vanilla and egg with a whisk. Stir in remaining ingredients.

Shape dough into 10″ X 3″ log on plastic wrap. Wrap and refrigerate about 2 hrs or until firm. The dough will keep in the fridge for about a week, but I’d recommend freezing it if you plan on using it more than 3 days later.

Heat oven to 375 degrees.

Cut dough into 1/8″ slices. On ungreased cookie sheet or parchment paper, place slices 2″ apart.

Bake 6-8 mins. or till light brown on bottoms. Cool before removing from cookie sheet to wire rack.
Fill with Dulce de leche or caramel and top with melted chocolate. Serve to your favourite Cookie Monster with ice cold milk*.

-A.

*It can be your choice of any variety of milk, just so long as its cold. Trust me, your cookie monster will need it.

I know, I know.. My version of “strange” is another person’s “DELICIOUSLY DELIGHTFUL”.

So bear with me on this one.

I’m not sure if I seek out the strange soda flavours, or if they just have a way of finding me. Sometimes its not so much strange, as utterly wrong and disgusting, like last winter’s Jones soda Holiday fun pack or The current weirdness that Jones soda has come out with-

The Seattle Seahawks Collector pack.

Yes, I happen to be in possession of the latter-

And at some point I’m sure I’ll queue up the guts to actually taste some of the flavours. I just don’t know if “sports cream” should be served cold, or at room temperature. heh.

Anywho..

Jones soda aside, there are some localneverbashfulwithbutter.comhttp://www.neverbashfulwithbutter.com and regional sodas that sound appealing to others, yet… don’t seem to have the same audience elsewhere. Case in point-

Dr. Brown’s Cel-Ray soda. Flavoured with celery seed and other natural flavours.
I’m not sure where on the planet Celery flavoured soda sounded like a marketable idea, but apparently this place does exist, because I purchased their soda.

But no, I haven’t the guts to try it yet. Truth is, I feel a bit like Steve, Don’t eat it! Only with beverages. Its a bit daunting.

So what types of strange soda have you tried? Bonus points if you can buy it online, as I’d love to order some and give it a go!

-A.

P.S. Don’t worry, the tasty treats will return shortly!

I am allergic to cinnamon.

…There, I said it. I do indeed have a food allergy.
I can claim my place amongst the estimated 12 million Americans that also have a food allergy.

Apparently, cinnamon allergy is not necessarily as rare as some people believe it to be. True, its not nearly as prevalent as nut, wheat, milk or shellfish allergy, but there are more than a couple people with cinnamon allergy.

Luckily, as with most people who are allergic to cinnamon, the symptoms are fairly mild. Speaking for myself, whatever part of my body comes in contact with the spice is what shows the effects. If I eat the spice, my lips, cheeks and tongue neverbashfulwithbutter.comhttp://www.neverbashfulwithbutter.comswell up. My throat gets tingly. If I get cinnamon or cinnamon oil on my skin, then I break out in a rash. Its very mild.

I found out I was allergic to cinnamon over time, through a combination of events that were memorable enough to look back and think “hmm.. I might want to see someone about this.”

…Like the day I went to work and brought a giant box of Mike and Ike candy to share with my co-workers. There are two different shades of red candy in the Mike and Ike box, neither of which is cinnamon. I never was a big fan of cinnamon growing up, so I usually avoided red candies, but since I knew Mike and Ikes were only fruit flavours, they were safe to me. Then another co-worker comes in, sees the giant box of Mike and Ikes, goes to the vending machine and buys a box of Hot Tamales, and pours them into the pre existing box of Mike and Ikes (they’re made by the same company and the candy is identical) without telling anyone.

I put my hand in the box a little later, fished out a red candy and assuming it was cherry, gobbled it down. Much to my chagrin, I discovered that it wasn’t in fact cherry, but a very spicey, hot, cinnamon. I spat it out.

Not more than 2 minutes goes by and my coworkers start noticing that my lips were bright red. One of them asks me if I decided to be girly and wear lipstick that day, and I started to say “no, why would I dress up to work here?” Sarcastically. But what came out was closer to “snow, why woo I stress ups dwork here?” My tongue had swollen to the point where speaking wasn’t exactly a good idea. It was then that I wrote on a slip of paper “ WHO PUT THE CINNAMON CANDIES IN MY MIKE AND IKES?” Someone fessed up, but really.. what can ya do?

Anyways, After this, I took a job in a bakery. One of my primary jobs was making the cinnamon rolls. Large quantities of cinnamon and bare forearms (I wore gloves and my sleeves went to my elbows) left me with a bit of a skin rash that I only broke out in after the cinnamon roll assembling part of my shift.

Finally I went and had an allergy test at the doctor, and found out that I have a very mild allergy to cinnamon and cassia, which is a spice so similar to cinnamon that in many cases, it is used in place of cinnamon, because its cheaper.

However, after all of this talk of allergies, mouth swelling and arm rashes.. I am not able to shake my love of cinnamon, and so I often find myself weighing the consequences against the flavour, and the flavour almost always wins.

And so when I made these dark chocolate cupcakes, as I held the measure of cinnamon above the batter, I said to myself, “I’ll only eat one, it’ll be alright” and added it. The smell was heavenly, and I did not regret my decision.

Recipe for Dark Chocolate Cinnamon Cupcakes-

Makes 12 cupcakes

8 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped
½ cup Dutch-processed cocoa
2 tablespoons cinnamon
3/4 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon baking soda
¾ teaspoon baking powder
2 large eggs
¾ cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
½ teaspoon table salt
½ cup sour cream

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Line standard-sized muffin pan with baking-cup liners.

Combine butter, chocolate, and cocoa in medium heatproof bowl. Set bowl over saucepan containing barely simmering water; heat mixture until butter and chocolate are melted and whisk until smooth and combined. Set aside to cool until just warm to the touch.

Whisk flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and baking powder in small bowl to combine.

Whisk eggs in second medium bowl to combine; add sugar, vanilla, and salt and whisk until fully incorporated. Add cooled chocolate mixture and whisk until combined. Sift about one-third of flour mixture over chocolate mixture and whisk until combined; whisk in sour cream until combined, then sift remaining flour mixture over and whisk until batter is thick.

Divide batter evenly among muffin pan cups. Bake until skewer inserted into center of cupcakes comes out clean, 18 to 20 minutes.

When the cupcakes have cooled, mix together a half teaspoon of cinnamon with 3 tablespoons powdered sugar. Sift a light coating of the mixture on top of the cupcakes. No frosting necessary.

Also, just a little extra tidbit here, You might have heard about the “Cinnamon challenge” on the internet.

While I guess I can see how someone who has knocked back a few cold ones might find it to be a good idea to then try and ingest a spoon full of cinnamon, it’s much wiser to stay away from this “challenge” Cinnamon is a dessecant, which basically means that it sucks the moisture out of things. Like your mouth. If you do try to eat a spoon full of cinnamon, you WILL choke. And then you will breathe in cinnamon powder, causing you to cough. And it will be painful.

I know everyone likes a food challenge, so why not do something less dangerous, like chugging maple syrup.*smile*

-A.

Boobie Bake off!
Click here for more info!

So, just in case any of you have missed the mountains of pink everywhere this month, I might as well alert you that this month is Breast Cancer Awareness month here in the states, coinciding with similar breast cancer awareness events in many other countries.

If you would like more information, click here to be whisked away to the Susan G. Komen foundation’s website.

I don’t have a Breast Cancer story to tell. Luckily, Breast Cancer has stayed fairly far away from my family and friends. This is one of the only situations that I find myself lacking a story to relate, and I am so thankful for that.

Cancer is no stranger to my family, however. Two grandparents, 4 great aunts, 2 great uncles, An Aunt, all have battled with cancer. Some won, some lost.

My dad’s mother and my grandmother, died of Brain Cancer in October of 1977.

Though I never met my grandma, I know she was beautiful.

In every picture I’ve seen of her, her thick, dark hair is perfectly coiffed, her makeup applied with precision, her smile like a starlet. When I was growing up, I’d look at my dad’s family photos, and I always thought that she looked like Judy Garland.

My dad says she wore high heels from the moment she woke up until the moment she laid down to go to sleep. Not because it was the style, or she wanted to be like June Cleaver, but because she wasn’t quite 5ft tall, and her husband was much taller than her. Also, she thought she had short legs, and she explained that the cut of the shoe elongated the look of her leg, making them seem longer and narrower. Just knowing that someone so beautiful could be so achingly neurotic… I imagine her like a cross between Sleeping Beauty and Snow White, and though I don’t even know if she liked to dance, when I think about her, I see her dancing and twirling about in my mind.

I hate to pick favourites, but if I had to pick my favourite relatives from both sides of my family, the majority of them would be from my dad’s side. Whatever his parents did to raise such kind, wonderful people, is beyond me.

I wish I knew more about her.
I’ve asked little questions here and there, but my dad was very close to his mom, and its hard for him to talk about her. I can’t blame him for that. Everything I have learned about her, I learned from various other family members, and stories that my Great Aunt Poppy used to tell me when I was younger, about my grandma when she first married my grandpa (My great Aunt Poppy was my grandpa’s sister).

Of course, I try to celebrate the life that my grandma must have lead, and I don’t dwell on her being gone.

So to celebrate her this month, I’ve made her some pink heart butter cookies. My dad says that during the whole month of February, she would decorate and celebrate Valentines day, because Her birthday was on Valentines day. She loved pink and red hearts. I also know that she was a very accomplished baker and cook. My aunts have all told me how amazing her cookies and cakes tasted. She’s part of the reason I took up baking as a hobby.

…And while I know my grandma dying of brain cancer isn’t the same as telling a story about breast cancer, I feel better knowing that I’m able to share the little bit about her that I know.

Brain cancer isn’t something you can really check for on your own. Breast cancer is something you can catch early through regular self examinations and screening methods. Take care of yourself.
Well, now that thats’ all shared and done… On with the recipe, right?!

Cherry almond butter cookies with cherry cream cheese icing-

1 cup butter
2 1/2 cups flour
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon cherry extract
1 tablespoon almond extract
3 tablespoons almond paste or finely ground almonds
2 egg yolks

Cream together the butter, almond paste and the sugars. When fluffy, add the egg yolks and whisk throughly. Whisk in the flavouring extracts. Add the flour a half cup at a time, stirring until fully mixed. refrigerate at least one hour.

Remove the dough from the fridge and roll out to about 1/2 inch thickness. Cut out shapes and lay an inch apart on a nonstick cookie sheet. Bake at 350 for 10-12 minutes, or until the tops just start to brown a bit.

For the icing-

1 cup cream cheese, softened
2 cups powdered sugar
1 tablespoon cherry extract
a few drops of milk, as needed for thinning
food colouring.

Mix all ingredients together, saving the milk for last, only adding to thin the frosting to the right consistency. Use a piping bag to apply to cooled butter cookies. Sprinkle with decorative sugar and eat!

I honour your memory, Grandma.

-A.

Otherwise known as my new favourite chocolate chip cookie recipe.



I’ve never really been a big fan of chocolate chip cookies, at least not the kind that I bake myself. I’m not quite sure why, but I’ve always had a hard time getting them to cook through, or not stick to the pan, or not spread out and be super thin, or brown too much on the top, or be too crunchy, or be too soft, or just not taste right.

My bad luck with chocolate chip cookies started early enough, one of my first Christmas cookie baneverbashfulwithbutter.comhttp://www.neverbashfulwithbutter.comking experiences when I was around 9 years old. Up until then, I was a designated cookie cutter or decorator, but never the one to mix the ingredients together. Go figure.

Well, given my relative naivety in the kitchen, I totally forgot to add the salt. I assumed that he salt was an important ingredient, so after I’d mixed everything together, I throw the teaspoon of salt in there and sort of stir the cookie dough around the bowl a bit until I couldn’t see the salt anymore. Then I put it in tin foil and stuck it in the fridge for a little while. After I came back and spooned out a few mounds of cookie dough on the baking sheet, I got distracted and my mom eventually finished baking the cookies off. As soon as the last batch was out of the oven, I reached onto the tray and grabbed a warm cookie. I poured myself a glass of milk and settled in front of the television with my dad, who gave me “the look” until I got up and got him a cookie too, and since I figured I was up anyways, I grabbed a few other cookie varieties from the plate on the kitchen table, so I could sample them all.

So we’re sitting there, watching some sentimental made for TV Christmas movie, and my dad starts to gag. I was in the middle of a bite of snickerdoodle, so I didn’t say anything as I turned to see what was the matter. Lo and behold, he was gagging on a bite of that chocolate chip cookie I brought him. He got up and spat out the cookie in the trash bin, and proceeded to ask my mom what she put in the cookies that made them so salty.

Of course, my mom hadn’t made the cookies, so she just looked at him like he was insane and told him that “you better ask your daughter, because she’s the one that made them.” As that look of “oh noes, I poisoned my dad” crept across my face, I glanced down at my plate of cookies, my untouched chocolate chip cookie staring right back at me.

I took a bite…

BLEH! I felt like I was a horse licking a salt lick, only it was vaguely chocolate flavoured. I looked at the cookie where I had taken the bite, and there it was.. A nice big white salt streak running through the center of my cookie. I assumed that this was the case with my dad’s cookie as well.

My dad turned the corner from the kitchen into the living room just in time to see me with a mouth full of salty cookie, and seeing the look on my face… He stifled his laughter and asked if I needed some more milk. I disposed of the cookie and my dad poured me a new glass of milk. We sat at the kitchen table, sort of laughing about the whole thing as I drank my milk and he drank his coffee. My mom was a little frustrated about my wasting the whole batch, but agreed that the cookies needed to be thrown out. We said a few words and sent them to the great trash can in the sky.

Ever since then, I’ve always had bad luck with Chocolate chip cookies. Not even just making them, but just having them in my possession.

On my 20th birthday, my mom made me a GIANT chocolate chip cookie and wrote “Happy Birthday” on it and brought it to me at work. She also brought along a whole tray of regular sized chocolate chip cookies that she had made, so I let my co-workers eat those cookies, while I packed up my jumbo sized cookie after work, sat it on the passenger seat of my car and plodded along on the drive home.

I think I made it 10 feet out of the parking lot before I got hit by another car. The Cookie was not salvageable. It was a sad day. I had “yadhtriB yppaH”, the mirror image of Happy birthday, stained into the light beige colour of my faux leather dashboard from the red icing on my cookie for a few years afterwards, as a reminder of this.

Otherwise, all my baking experiences with chocolate chip cookies have come up flat, soggy and burnt.

But not these cookies. These cookies were easy to make and tasty. They didn’t spread out too much, they aren’t too puffy, they aren’t soggy at all, nor are they too crunchy (though they do have that pleasant “mmm… brown sugar and butter” crunch at the bottom). They’re perfect.

So here’s the recipe-

Cakey, soft but flaky, Peanut butter and Chocolate- chocolate chip cookies.

1Cup ’slightly colder than room temperature’ butter
1/2 cup peanut butter
1 scant cup granulated sugar
1 lightly packed cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon chocolate extract
2 eggs
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
4 cups flour
2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
2 cups chocolate chips (1 bag)

Cream together the butter, peanut butter, sugars, vanilla and chocolate extract. Add the eggs and beat until fluffy. Sift together the flour, salt, baking soda and cocoa powder. Combine both mixtures, stirring or kneading until fully integrated. Fold in the chocolate chips. The dough should be stiff.

Refrigerate the dough for at least an hour. Once removed from the refrigerator, place cookie dough by the spoon full, scoop full or slice about an inch apart on an ungreased cookie sheet. Do not press cookies down on the cookie sheet. If you want to flatten the dough into disks, lift off cookie sheet and press between your fingers and then place it back on the cookie sheet.

Bake for 8-12 minutes at 350F.

This recipe will make about 4 dozen 2″ cookies, but really, it depends on how thick you make them. I personally made about 3 dozen 2″ cookies that were about half an inch thick, as well as one larger cookie of the same thickness, only about 8″ in diameter, and a few mini cookie bites.

It is a lot of cookie dough, though, so if you only want a dozen or so, consider halving the recipe.

Once they’re baked, allow them to cool a few minutes on the cookie sheet before removing them and placing them on a cooling rack or serving platter. OR, you could just eat them right there over the stove.

But at least get a glass of milk to wash them down. *smile*

Eat and enjoy!

-A.

It would seem as though Good ol’ Longfellow was keeping a trained on on foodblogs as of late, Considering some of the strange (but delightful) things we’ve all seen come from them. New uses for old ingredients, gadgets and tools putting savoury ingredients in sweet things- bacon cupcakes, bacon candy, garlic ice cream.. just to name a very slim few.

Heck, I think its true myself. Everything needs to change into something new and strange, or else it just gets boring. No one likes boring, right?

So the other day when I made ravioli for my husband and I, I decided to go about my preparation and presentation a tad bit differently. Rather than fry up the pasta for neverbashfulwithbutter.comhttp://www.neverbashfulwithbutter.comdipping, appetizer style, or boil up the pasta to be served with a thin red sauce, traditional style- I decided to give steaming a try, and serve the pasta “Asian style” with chopsticks and a thick red sauce for dipping.

Incase this sounds strange, I decided to take the following instructional photographs to explain the proceedure.

Fig 1.1: Grasp ravioli firmly with chopsticks and lift out of bowl.

Figure 1.2: Drop ravioli into pasta sauce. You can either dunk or swirl your ravioli, depending on how much sauce you’d like to collect.

Figure 1.3: Remove Ravioli from sauce bowl with chopsticks. Place in mouth, Chew, swallow. Enjoy.

Figure 1.4: Repeat.

See, its not so strange, just a little different.

This is my very favourite stuffed pasta recipe, and although you still have to do the prep work by hand, it actually uses a secret cheat. Wanna know what the secret is?

Ok, come really close to the screen and I’ll whisper it to you…
Closer…
Closer…

I use wonton wrappers for the pasta!

Yep. And they taste just like regular pasta, they’re the perfect size for filling and folding, and they’re perfect.

The really great thing about the recipe I’m gonna give you, is that these are very versatile. They can either be fried, boiled or steamed. I make these for every party that I throw, only I made a triple batch and fry them up so they’re more like finger food. They are a HUGE hit. You can boil them and serve them as regular filled pasta with whatever sauce you like, and you can switch up the ingredients. They freeze really well and store really well while frozen.

So here you go. My recipe for Ravioli-

For 1 batch (which makes about 50 ravioli, and feeds about 4 people as an entree)

2 cups mozzarella cheese, grated (whole milk is best, but part skim works just fine)
1 cup smoked mozzarella cheese, grated
1 cup white cheddar cheese, grated
4 tablespoons garlic powder (you can use minced garlic if you like)
1 tablespoon Italian seasoning (dry mix of oregano, rosemary, sage, thyme and parsley. Think Scarborough Fair, plus a few other seasonings)
1/4 cup+ 2 tablespoons powdered parmesan OR
1/4 cup finely grated aged parmesan
10-20 black olives, sliced or chopped
1/4 cup sour cream
1 1/2 cups whole milk ricotta cheese

1 package wonton wrappers, small square or small round size. (they’re about 2.5 inches square)

1 egg, beaten
3 tablespoons water

In a small bowl (cereal sized or smaller) beat together the egg and water until the colour is uniform. This is your egg wash for sealing the wonton around the filling. Set aside.

In a larger bowl, mix together the mozzarella, smoked mozzarella, cheddar, parmesan, garlic and Italian seasonings. Toss the cheese around in the bowl so the spices and garlic can adhere to it. Next, add the remaining ingredients and mix well with a rigid spoon. Refrigerate for about an hour to allow the filling to really develop the flavours.

While the filling is in the fridge, allow the wonton wrappers to sit on the counter, still sealed, so they will come to room temperature by the time you’re gonna fill them. This way they’ll fold easier and with less rips or tears.

When the hour or so has passed (you can leave the cheese mixture in the fridge for up to overnight, if you wish, but I’d only set out the wrappers for about an hour or two) remove the cheese from the fridge and prepare your filling station.

The easiest way to do this, is clear off an entire counter, clean it throughly, dry it and lay down a layer of paper towels. I put my bowl of filling on my left, and my small bowl with egg wash on my right. I use a pastry brush to apply the egg wash (you can use your index finger though) and I use a 1 teaspoon measuring spoon to dispense the filling. You can use a different type of spoon, but really you only want to put about a teaspoon of filling in each ravioli. Anyways… I put my stack of wonton wrappers between the filling bowl and the space I plan to use to lay down my wonton wrapper and make the magical transformation from flat sheet of pasta to delicious bundle of cheesy goodness. That space should be about 5″ square, so you have enough room to move the sheet around when filling and folding and whatnot.

Really, you don’t have to have a “station” so much as its just a lot more organized and clean to do it this way. Whatever you do, WASH YOUR HANDS THROUGHLY before setting up your station, and again after you’ve set up your station, right before you start the filling process. It requires hands on contact with the food, so.. yeah. No one wants to eat what you last touched. Whatever it was.

Lay down one sheet of wonton in the designated place. Scoop a lightly generous teaspoonful of cheese filling and place it directly in the center of the wonton wrapper. Use your pastry brush or finger to wet two conjoined sides of the pasta sheet with the egg wash, and fold the other corner overtop the filling and seal the pasta, pressing the sides together. Lift up the sheet and press as much of the air out of the little packet as possible. Air is what causes the pasta to explode during the cooking process, and every last bit of cheese is sacred. Just seal the pasta as well as possible, being gentle as to not tear the pasta itself.

You should have a little cheese filled triangle.
The cheese should be at the bottom center of the triangle, as compacted as possible, not spread throughout the center of the triangle. If you want, you can leave the pasta alone at this point. For a more decorative touch, you can fold it. take the two bottom points of the triangle and fold them downward. Wet one side of one point and press the other point ontop of it, sealing it.

Figure 2.1: Kinda like this.

Really though, you don’t have to fold your pasta like this. If you want a detailed description of other ways to fold pasta or wonton, just google “How to fold wonton” or “how to fold tortellini”. You’ll end up with a whole ton of how to’s and step by step photo sets.

Once you’ve made your little cheese parcels, You can either lay them out on a cookie sheet covered in waxed paper, spaced apart, and then freeze them for a few hours before collecting them up and placing them in a dated plastic bag or container for future use, OR, you can refrigerate them for a day or so, OR you could just make them right then.

To boil them, just dump a handful of them in a pot of boiling water until they float to the top, skim them off and place them in a serving bowl. Keep in mind, they’ll stick together, so its best to place them directly in the bowls you plan on serving them in.

If you plan on frying them, get out the deepfryer or 6 quart dutch oven filled with a 1/2 gallon of vegetable oil, heat the oil to about 360 degrees and dunk the ravioli into the hot oil until they are golden brown. When frying them, make sure not to crowd them, and only do about 4 or 5 at a time. It should take about two minutes to fry ‘em up, but it might take less. Keep a constant eye on them, and remove them when they turn a nice crunchy looking golden brown. Drain them on a wire mesh cooling rack overtop newsapaper. Serve hot or lukewarm. Heck, they’re even good cold.

If you plan on steaming them, bring 1/4 to 1/2-inch of water to a simmer over medium heat. Spray your steamer’s surface lightly with the non-stick vegetable spray to prevent sticking. Place as many dumplings as will fit into a steamer, without touching each other. Cover and steam for 5 to 10 minutes over medium heat. Remove the pasta from the steamer to a heatproof platter and place in oven to keep warm. Repeat until all dumplings are cooked.

Personally, I prefer them boiled or fried, but steaming works fine too.

Serve with warmed sauce of your choice. I used a premade this time *gasp* because after all that cheese grating and mixing and folding and steaming, I really didn’t feel like making a sauce, too. heh.

Really, these are wonderfully delicious little packets of cheesy goodness. You can fill them with whatever you like, of course, as I’ve made them with shredded cooked chicken mixed with the cheese, or with cooked shredded spinach mixed with the cheese, or without olives.

They’re also a great way to use up the bits and ends of the cheese you have in your fridge. Mix Ricotta and cheddar, or ricotta, parmesan and mozzarella, or ricotta, mozzarella and provolone. If you beat cottage cheese until its smooth, you can use that in place of ricotta. I try to have at least one type of strong flavoured cheese (parmesan, provolone), one type of melty stretchy cheese (Mozzarella), and type of tubbed cheese (Ricotta, cottage or cream).

Also, the filling here works as a great stuffed shells or manicotti filling, or as a flavour filled alternative to plain cottage cheese or ricotta in lasagna.

However you do make ‘em, be sure to enjoy them!

-A.

When I was a little girl, my favourite colour was pink. Evidence of this can be found in the photo directly below. Please ignore the bad 80’s girl-mullet, however. *wince*

Note the overabundance of cabbage patch kids, the entirely pink outfit, pink curtains, pink miscellaneous, and just know that my bedding was a very pretty light pink as well. I loved pink.

When I got older and we moved houses and I got my own bedroom (the photo above shows me on my bed, which was the top bunk. My sister had the bottoneverbashfulwithbutter.comhttp://www.neverbashfulwithbutter.comm bunk.) When I had my own bedroom, I told my parents I wanted pink walls and pink bedding and pink carpet and blah blah blah- pink. My proposal was immediately shut down. My parents were strictly white wall people, and the notion of the walls being any other colour than white, or possibly “eggshell” was unheard of. They also denied the remainder of my requests, siting my reaction as I grew older, saying that when I was 16, I’d not want a pink bedroom anymore.

I kept on, and despite a brief stopover in panda addiction, I remained a lover of all things pink. Finally my parents sent me off to church camp, and upon my return, they’d painted an “accent wall” bright pink, and given me pink area rugs for my bedroom. I was totally stoked.

Even when pink was no longer cool amongst girls my age, I loved pink.

Sure, I might have told everyone that my favourite colour was green, or blue, or black (Yeah, I went through that phase, too) It was always pink, and I loved the colour of my bedroom. I requested pink parties, pink clothes, pink everything. I even chose my favourite brand of shampoo and conditioner based on their pink colour, totally ignoring that they were watermelon scented, and I hated watermelon.

One of my favourite sweets, growing up, were snowballs. You know.. Hostess snack cakes. An inverted chocolate cupcake filled with cream, covered in a layer of marshmallow and then rolled in pink dyed dessicated coconut. My only problem was that I didn’t much like the chocolate cake, but I loved the idea of coconut on a cake. My mom started adding coconut to the birthday cakes that she made me, and one year she covered my entire birthday cake in a thick layer of pink dyed dessicated coconut, so that it looked like a giant snowball. I loved it. Had I made my own birthday cake this year, that is exactly what I would have done.

But instead I’ve decided to make pink hazelnut cupcakes, dip them in string icing and then roll the tops in pink dyed dessicated coconut. They’re amazingly delicious, too.

I felt like maybe I should have added something extra to the presentation of these cupcakes, but simplicity is best, I think. The cool thing is that the coconut ended up the exact same colour as the cupcakes themselves. The perfect shade of pink.

And now for the recipe!

Pink hazelnut and coconut cupcakes

1 cup white sugar
1/2 cup butter
2 eggs
2 teaspoons Hazelnut extract
1/2 cup fine ground hazelnuts
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 3/4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 cup + 2 Tablespoons milk
2-3 drops pink food colouring

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). line a muffin pan with paper liners.
In a medium bowl, cream together the sugar and butter. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, then stir in the flavouring and pink food colouring. Combine flour and baking powder, add to the creamed mixture and mix well. Stir in the milk until batter is smooth, then fold in the ground hazelnuts. Pour or spoon batter into the prepared muffin cups.
For cupcakes, bake 20 to 25 minutes. Cake is done when it springs back to the touch.

After you’ve allowed the cupcakes to cool, whip up a quick batch of string icing, which is just 3 tablespoons milk mixed with about a cup of powdered sugar. Make sure there are no lumps. Dip the tops of the cupcakes into the icing, allowing any icing drips to fall back into the bowl. Once iced, dip into a flat tin with a wide opening full of the prepared coloured coconut.

To tint your coconut, you’ll need dessicated coconut (available in most grocery store bulk sections) and a couple drops of food colouring. Put about a cup of coconut into a ziplock bag, and then add a drop of food colouring. Close the bag and smush it around until the colouring is fully dispersed. Add more food colouring as needed.

-A.

So, I turned 26 the other day, and my husband bought me the tastiest cake ever.

It was vanilla cake with lemon curd and whipped cream filling, as well as top iced with whipped cream. I couldn’t help but take a few photos of the last piece, which we shared as an after dinner treat tonight.

It seemed sort of ridiculous to make cupcakes today, considering we still had cake left in the fridge. However, it wont stop me from making cupcakes tomorrow, since… you know… We’re all out of cake.

*smineverbashfulwithbutter.comhttp://www.neverbashfulwithbutter.comle*

-A.