Eggs Benedict and Pumpkin Cream Cheese Pie

Sorry for not updating before now. Life is crazy with 3 kids. My oldest just got a tutor and apparently it takes more time than I thought to drive him around for appointments! Poor time management on my part! Oh well, on to the home made goodies!

Eggs Benedict

Eggs Benedict is a common dinner at our house. The kids don't care much for the hollandaise sauce, but they love everything else. They prefer theirs disassembled of course. It does take some time to make, the sauce has to be babysat, and the egg poaching takes longer than frying, but the meal is always worth the wait. My husband will even beg for this. There was one night he was so desperate I ended up running to the store at 10pm to get more english muffins. I don't remember where I found the original recipe for the sauce anymore. I eyeball it now, so these measurements are approximate.

Place a tablespoon or so of butter in a frying pan and fry thin slices of ham on both sides. Fry one muffin shape/sized piece of ham per muffin half. Meanwhile begin toasting your english muffin. To make the hollandaise sauce, in a double boiler roughly scramble 4 egg yolks. Add in about a tablespoon of water, and a tablespoon of lemon juice. Beat again to combine. Then put over simmering water. Add a 1/3 of a stick of unsalted butter, stirring constantly until combined. Then add the second third of the stick of butter doing the same thing, and finally the last third. Keep this sauce moving! Add in a dash of salt and 1/4 tsp white pepper. If it starts to separate, add in a bit more lemon juice (like a teaspoon) and a tablespoon of butter. Meanwhile (yeah as if that wasn't enough) in a frying pan 3/4 full of simmering water, poach 2 (or more depending on how many people you're serving) eggs. The easiest way to get a good looking egg for this is to crack your egg into a measuring cup and then slide the egg out of the cup partially submerged in the pan. You will end up with a more rounded egg vs. a more flattened one. A true poached egg has the whites entirely cooked, and the yolks still slightly runny. We usually cook our egg fully  however, and I check it's done-ness by poking a butter knife directly into the center of the yolk. You should get a tiny bit of 'discharge' from it. Pull it out then with a slotted spoon. It will continue to cook a little bit after you've removed it from the heat so this if you get it out right then, you avoid overcooking.  To assemble put the toasted muffin half on a plate, place the ham on top of the muffin, followed by the egg. Top with hollandaise sauce, using enough to let some of the sauce drip over the sides, but still leaving some of the egg exposed. I always plate this meal with a 1/2 teaspoon dab of hollandaise sauce on the side as you can see in the picture. My husband always eats two of these at a time, but honestly I can't eat more than one of these. Probably better for my thighs that way. 

The hollandaise sauce is both lemony and bitter, but also creamy and smooth which pairs well with the mellowness of the cooked egg. To make the muffin extra chewy my husband likes it if I butter the muffin halfway through the toasting process. I don't generally do this for myself because I really don't think anyone really needs that much butter, but he's a skinny guy so I suppose he can get away with it.

Pumpkin Cream Cheese Pie

You know those little cook book magazines they sell at grocery store check outs? I used to be totally addicted to them. I would get the new one as soon as I saw it come out and pour over it for a couple of days. And then I'd put them in the cupboard and  completely forget I ever purchased it. It was a year before I ever made a recipe out of one of them. It was great fun, and sure that one recipe was pretty good, but for the most part the recipes were just repeats, or very slightly altered versions of the same things, pretty much all of which I didn't really want to make in the first place. This recipe came from one of those magazines. Ironically the same one that I tried that first recipe out of. I was looking for a pumpkiny cheesecake that I didn't need to create my own recipe for, and thought this could be worth a spin. It definitely was no cheesecake, but altered a bit it has plenty of potential to become one.  I don't want to post the exact directions for this for two reasons. The first being I'm pretty sure anyone who reads this blog has a pumpkin pie recipe of their own, but also I don't want Betty Crocker to get on my case about posting it.  To make this in addition to your usual pumpkin pie ingredients you will need a package and a half of cream cheese (the 8oz packages) brought to room temperature. Beat together your sugar, cream cheese, and flour until combined, reserving about 3/4 cup of it. Put everything else except the milk in the cream cheese mixture and beat to combine. Pour into a lightly baked pie shell (9 inch). Mix one and a half tablespoons of milk with the cream cheese mixture that remains and then pour over top of the pumpkin mixture. I realize most pumpkin pie recipes call for cream and milk in large quantities, but this time you will use no cream, and very little milk. Once you have the layers set, run a butter knife around the pie a bit, careful to not break the crust to create a swirled pattern. Bake as you would normally. You may want to put some foil on the edges of the crust. I didn't, but I also didn't have large edges, I'll leave that up to your best judgement. Cool slightly and then refrigerate this for a few hours before serving.

As a kid we always had pumpkin pie at the winter and fall holiday family gatherings. I remember not ever really caring for it. I didn't know what it was that I didn't like, but since everyone else seemed to really love it, I kept my mouth shut. Like clock work someone would present me with a slice of pie covered entirely with cool whip. I discovered practically a decade later that I actually love pumpkin pie. What I don't like is whipped cream. Any whipped cream. Even the home made stuff I make for my family.  This pie tastes exactly like it has whipped cream on it. But oddly I still found this rather tasty. The whipped cream taste is delicate and gives the pie a sort of 'whipped' feeling on your tongue, like eating one of those Yoplait whipped yogurts. A really lovely light dessert that you can serve without garnishing. I really don't recommend serving this with whipped cream, or anything really. It seems to be perfect on its own.

I feel it's also important to note that quite often the inside of a pie isn't what matters, what matters most about whether or not the pie is good is the crust. I have two crusts I make, one that I roll which uses apple cider vinegar to help create flakyness, and one that is a pat in the pan which relies on oil and milk. For this pie I used the pat in the pan crust. It's more crumbly than the roll out and much more mellow. I think next time I'll roll a crust instead. Definitely worth the extra effort for this pie I think.

Food Dye and Roast

Food Dye

When our 4 and a 1/2 year old was 10 months old we went out to eat at a local restaurant that serves phosphates. My husband, being the giant child he is, decided immediately that he had to have a cherry flavored phosphate and since we pretty much never go out to eat, I told him he could have as many as he wanted. I dare anyone to have one of these sugared up, whipped cream covered babies on a table close to a child who can drink through a straw and keep it to themselves. Not gonna happen. We ended up with two cherry phosphates. My husband still drank almost all of it, but with generous help from our first born. I soon forgot about the treats as we went about our evening and I didn’t think about it again. For years actually. Then, that night our son could be found standing up in his crib screaming in joy until around 2 am. We couldn’t figure it out. He wasn’t always the best sleeper, and rarely really conformed to my bed times for him, but he’d never stayed up for hours on end like that, just standing there screeching. We remember it now with laughter of course, but at the time I was almost pulling my hair out. I remember him standing there laughing in his crib and I then laid him down for what was probably the 50^th time and said “bad baby!” Which just caused a new round of laughter. He bounced and giggled until we were pretty sure it would be a good idea to drop him off at one of our mother’s houses and run like crazy. He eventually went to sleep of course, and I didn’t take him to my mom’s to drop him off, nor did I sell him to the circus as the ‘Amazing Baby That Doesn’t Need Sleep’.  We’ll never forget that night because of the hilarity involved. But also now I am unable to forget it because I now know that this family outing and special treat was my son’s first exposure to red dye #40, and his reaction was both immediate, and severe. 

I had heard as a child at Girl Scout camp about some children having reactions to red food coloring, but didn’t really associate the rumor with my son’s stand up baby routine for quite some time. He was just a baby, how could you tell if your baby was just being silly, or if he is having some sort of problem. We often had candy and other treats in the house, my husband is a complete sugar freak and because of this we nearly always had bags of skittles, peppermints, candy corn, etc. around. We never let him gorge on it, but we never really restricted him either. We had/have two philosophies concerning kids and treats. The first we formed after some reading and watching of a Nova program about children who were restricted from treats that gorged themselves immediately on treats if a parent was out of the room, vs. children who were allowed to have treats within some sort of limitation for their health who often made better or at least alright choices about snacks when unsupervised. (This theory has proven to work for us by the way.) Our other philosophy was ‘eh, he’s gonna lose all those teeth anyway.’ Not the best theory, but we do brush his teeth, so in my mind it all evens out. At any rate for a large part of my son’s life food was unrestricted except that halfway through (so about 2 and a half years now) we decided to no longer have any partially hydrogenated oil of any kind which has stemmed into not eating hardly any preservatives at all. All through this time our son would have these wild periods. We couldn’t even talk to him; he didn’t make eye contact for more than a couple seconds at a time. We could say his name a dozen times in a row and never get his attention, he couldn’t play the way he ought to have been able to, and truly it was just making us depressed for him. I even took him to see his pediatrician to ask about possible autism (something she was unconcerned with).  I was at the end of the rope. It was awful watching him struggle. I knew somewhere in there, a good kid was waiting patiently. I just didn’t know how to get to him. I knew my son was in there somewhere because, albeit infrequently, he would have these brief periods where he was alright. He would engage in a long conversation, and learn in his workbooks, play like a normal kid, ask good questions, all those things which he couldn’t do on normal days. He was in there. I knew it.  After some thought I decided to get rid of red dye for him. That was what I had heard back at camp was a problem for kids with ADHD. And magically I saw some improvement. Some, but not much. Not enough I guess I should say. Some things were better. It would take 8 times saying his name to get him to look at us, but he still didn’t make eye contact very much, he still struggled with normal play, couldn’t control himself, and couldn’t stay on task.   But I was happy with the improvement. Early this year, he asked me for a candy. I don’t remember anymore what it was, but it was something loaded with red dye, and as a dutiful mommy I went online to try to find an alternative treat for him. Something similar he could have that I could order for him. And I came across some web pages talking about banning of food dyes in Europe, and then that lead to more pages talking about food dye eradication and children’s improved behaviors. I thought about it, and said to myself ‘well, he has dye sometimes, but not that often right?’ The more I read, the more I was beginning to wonder and by the end of the day I found myself in the kitchen staring down the cabinets. (I never did find that candy because I spent the entire time researching children’s reactions to dye, by the way.) Systematically I went through each cabinet looking at the ingredient labels and item after item, even things I generally thought of as a natural food product, or things that just don’t seem to have a color to them all had dye in them. Things that were white would have blue #5, corn products that ought to turn yellow on their own would have yellow in them, and sometimes red too. Half the cupboards were full of product with dye in them. So I decided to experiment.

Starting immediately that day, I didn’t give my son anything, and I mean anything, that I was not absolutely positive was completely free of dye. This included fruit since some companies dye their fruit skins to make them look more appetizing, and meat from the store as some is dyed red in store. Pretty much if I didn’t make it or hadn’t researched the product online fully to be sure of it’s origins, it didn’t go in his mouth. I also gave him a new natural toothpaste, and dye free soap for the bath tub. Nothing with dye other than his clothes touched his body. And 3 days later when everything was out of his system, I met my son. It’s strange to think I hadn’t met him before, but I didn’t. I had no idea who he was. Some things are the same, like he still loves trains, and more than anything wants to build things with tools in the garage, but instead of getting frustrated seconds after starting projects, he finishes things now. He listens. He can play with other children without crying, and most importantly, he’s happy. That morning I asked him as I always do how he felt, and his response was “I feel better”. And he was looking right at me. Like right at me. Like he hadn’t ever done before. I said “better? Did you feel sick?” He said “no. I just didn’t feel good before. I feel good.” For the rest of the day, he played without needing constant help, he asked me questions, not just “why?” or “what’s this for?” but good questions. Questions I didn’t know he thought about like; how do they get tar for roads? And what makes the wheels turn in the car other than the steering wheel? And even more astoundingly, he remembered the answers. Go ahead; ask him how the car turns. I bet he has a good answer. Ask him what a fractal is, and who created them. He knows, he can’t pronounce it terribly well, but c’mon the kid is almost 5 and knows what a fractal is, give him a break Benoit Mandelbrot is hard to say for a lot of adults. He asks questions, deep questions about how the universe works now too. 

I’ll go ahead and admit it, I cried. I cried a lot. My son was finally able to think clearly. He enjoyed his life that day. I don’t know that he had before that. Sure he had fun, but ask him about things before we took away dye, and he doesn’t know, can’t remember any of it, but if you ask him about anything after that, trips he took, things he learned at school, he remembers it. From talking it over with him, he’s basically described his dye loaded days as his head always feeling cloudy, or fuzzy. I know when I have a headache, sometimes I can’t think clearly, and that’s sort of how I think he felt. That day I went through all the cabinets again. I got rid of everything that even mentioned food color with the exception of caramel color, as he doesn’t seem to have problems with this, but we still avoid it rather heavily. I do still have dye in the house in things like Mountain Dew (because seriously, I NEED the Mountain Dew sometimes) but it’s only in products he never had in the first place. Things loaded with caffeine, weight lifting supplements, and an ever present box of honey combs that my husband scarfs unapologetically in the middle of the night while the kids are sleeping. 

It sounds kind of depressing to a lot of people when I tell them we’re a virtually dye free home (considering the few exceptions mentioned above.) And really, think about it. Things you did yourself as a kid, are things he can’t do, things he can’t have. Trick or treating is pretty much completely not fun. Nothing, with the exception of plain Hershey’s bars could he eat without consequence. Birthday parties with cake and ice cream, a treat from the bakery, going out for ice cream, popsicles, holiday parties at school, a sucker at the bank. Yeah, the list continues. But I’ll tell you what, he’s happy about it. He certainly misses things, but for most of his favorite treats like suckers at the bank, I’ve found alternatives that I can buy in bulk, and give out when the time is appropriate. The worst so far was trying to find marshmallows. He’s very good about all of this. Before he asks for things at the store, or when someone offers him something, he’ll ask me if it has ‘yucky dyes’ in it. We always check. Even if it’s something I already know has dye in it. And we do it together. Sometimes he’s disappointed, and will even ask “why did they put the dyes in there!?” But he’s happy to not have the foods that are harmful to him, because even he understands now that the dye makes him feel bad. We’ve found some natural dyes from the website mentioned in a previous post and he’s very happy to have it to decorate homemade treats with. Anything we can’t find an alternative for, we find a recipe for, and when we can’t find them, we make them. 

We’ve really changed how our family views food. There is a wise saying that I think applies to this area in our lives, “Pay for it now, or pay for it later.” Do we have a huge food budget? Oh yes. It’s crazy expensive in our area to buy the natural unaltered meats, organic fruits and veggies, and all the other things we use like juices, crackers etc. that are free of preservatives and dyes. But the benefits of doing so are absolutely worth the extra expense. On the off times we end up doing something silly like going to McDonalds while traveling, we always feel the difference in our bodies. It’s absolutely worth the expense to prepare all of our food the way that we do. I highly recommend it. In fact I challenge you to do this for a week. Or even just 4 days. For the next 4 days, don’t eat anything you haven’t prepared yourself, that you know is free from dye (which is made with petrol chemicals) and free of preservatives. Eat no fast foods, and just to be sure, read every label, even when it seems stupidly obvious what must be in the product, because you’re going to be surprised. And see how you feel. I bet you’ll be pleased with yourself! 

There are absolutely times when we have a ‘containment’ issue. The major Star Trek geek that I am calls this a ‘breech of containment.’ Times when he accidentally gets dye into his system. It’s always from innocent seeming things. As an example his grandparents took him to lunch at steak and shake, they carefully asked questions about the foods he was given, but no one noticed that his milkshake had a candied cherry on it. He loves these and happily eats them without second thought, but they are basically red dye in a jar. One day his grandparents took him to church and the Sunday school teacher gave him a cupcake with pink frosting. I’m still a little upset about that one. I’ve accidentally given him dye myself, but I know that he asked the teacher if it had “yucky dye in it” and I’m sure they told him to just eat his cupcake, so he did. Sure it seems like you should just give it to him so he doesn’t feel left out, but in the end he has to pay for it by being uncontrollable for the next 3 days and he can’t understand why. All in all this breech of containment is pretty rare thank goodness. We’ll see what happens after Halloween, I’m sure we’ll pay for that one too.

Roast

Since I’ve been loading you all up with stories about sweets, I thought I’d break from the pace and tell you about a savory meal this time. I made a roast a couple nights ago. Usually I’m all for tossing meat and veggies in a crock pot with a bouillon cube and a cup of water and hoping for the best, but this time I decided to use different spices and use the stove top. (I used a red wine for this recipe, I don't think wine generally has food dye, but to avoid any confusion after my last post, the child I'm talking about refuses to eat roast, so I wasn't worried about label checking for this recipe since he wasn't going to even try a bite anyway. Don't you just love picky eaters? It means cooking two meals a night instead of one sometimes!)

Taking a 4 pound roast, I seared it in olive oil on both large sides, and then added ¾ of a bottle of a soft red wine, 1 cup of water, 1 ½ tablespoons Worcestershire sauce, one beef bouillon cube, a palm full of ground cloves, 3 bay leaves, a half bag of baby carrots, and a few peeled cubed russet potatoes. I brought the pan to a boil and then reduced the heat to let it all simmer covered for a few hours until fork tender. I served it with some poppy seed muffins I made just before the roast was done. If I had it to do all over again (and I do) I would have left the potatoes out and roasted them in the oven, skins on. There wasn’t anything wrong with having them in the pan. They just didn’t take on the flavor of the wine in a way I like as they do in the crock pot when I add wine to the roast, and the soft potatoes but crispy skins would have been just perfect instead. As for the roast and carrots, the wine and cloves made a truly delectable meal of it. The savory nature of the cloves pared with the slight fruitiness of the wine was a real treat. I may always cook my carrots this way. This meal was truly scrumptious. Quite possibly the best roast I've ever made.

 

I would love to recommend products to you for this recipe, as I feel like I’m not doing you justice by posting something simple without any added flair, but for this one recipe I just don’t see how I can cloves are pretty much cloves. As long as you’re not using a discounted expired bottle of spice, you can’t really go wrong here. The bay leaves I generally use are dried for long term storage, and I’m sure if you want to use fresh instead, you’ll be even more pleased with your dinner. My veggies were organic for my kids, but that shouldn’t change anything really. And as for the wine, well I just can’t really help you there either sadly. We don’t drink. Not, we don’t drink often enough to call it usual or know much about brands, but we just, don’t. My knowledge on alcohol is limited to knowing a few brands and types and how drunk to expect someone after they’ve consumed x bottles of said beverage, and what is the best beer to use when making fish and chips. When I buy a bottle of wine to cook with, I usually just pick one up at the grocery store while wearing a vacant expression and wondering what on earth makes this red wine different from that one. I will say though that I used a wine called Oliver which is made in Indiana. It tasted great in the recipe. But if you have a favorite one that you already know you enjoy, you ought to go ahead and use it. Or hey, if you know of one I ought to be using you could totally tell me about it, and I'll try it out on my next roasting adventure.

Blondies and Little Johns

 Blondies

So my 4 1/2 year old and I were going about our day yesterday and we decided that I should make some new treats for the house (and blog!) It took him all day to decide what he wanted, which he expressed by simply saying "Chocolate!" So, to limit the chocolate intake, but still give him what he asked for I made the blondies you see above. Admittedly this image is a bit of an extreme close up, but that's just because it was that awesome. 

Blondies are a brownie like cookie which were originally created when someone decided to use brown sugar instead of regular granulated sugar in their recipe. The bars taste something like a butterscotch brownie with tiny morsels of chocolate every now and then. They are buttery and chewy and I bet if you put one in a bowl with a smattering of milk it would be simply divine. I remember my mother doing this with day old cake in the morning. I never tried this as a kid that I remember, and I always teased her about it, but I absolutely did this very thing this morning with my blondie. And it was oh so worth it.

My 4 1/2 year old requires much more convincing when it comes to homemade foods other than my pastries. I always have to jump through a hoop or two to get him to eat anything. Some day I'll tell you about feeding him waffles. It requires a precision that only a mom could have the patience for. At any rate in order to get him to agree to taste the blondies I had to hide it.

 

Under ice cream. Sad but true. I hid a generous portion under a big scoop full of Breyer's Vanilla. He initially questioned my motives. Giving me that "Mom's giving me ice cream without me asking? There must be medicine in it..." look.  I assured him that this is just how you eat a blondie. And to try it. So he ate the ice cream. I practically had to beg him to eat the blondie. He finally caved and tried a tiny bite. We'll call it a morsel. He promptly put down his fork and claimed it was 'yucky'. Figures. He usually tells us everything I make is yucky, and that he'd rather have chicken nuggets. So I wasn't surprised. I left it alone and began clean up. When I came back all the chocolate chips had been picked out. To each their own I guess! 

The good news is that the rest of the family really enjoyed these and half the pan is gone already. I had planned not to try these since my recipe refers to the 'brownie-like qualities' more than once in the description. I have a real problem with brownies. Not a "ew I don't care for these" more of a I can't stop stuffing my face problem. I could easily make an entire pan of brownies disappear before sunset. Nuts, no nuts, doesn't matter. I always glom off of Ben Franklin and say "Brownies are proof God loves me and wants me to be happy." It's true. That's why there are brownies. God loves me. He made them for me. At an rate, I did end up trying a bite of these blondies yesterday. Which prompted me to have a much bigger piece for breakfast. I had to snarf this down in the kitchen where the kids couldn't see, but I feel it was worth it. These are appropriately chewy and moist. Very brownie-like indeed.

Little-Johns

 I came across an Amish recipe for long johns awhile back. I never got around to making them because generally if someone asks me for a doughnut they are asking me for a yeast doughnut shaped in a ring and fried lightly. Sometimes I cover them with powdered sugar, or a drizzled icing. Mostly I leave them plain. I decided to go ahead and try these today mainly because I was bored but also because I thought my father in law might like a couple. He's usually the one that requests the yeast doughnuts anyway. In making the dough I found that the recipe was very similar to what I usually make, except the flour to liquid ratio was a bit different, and there was nutmeg involved. Nutmeg makes everything better. I toss some freshly grated nutmeg into just about everything anymore. If I were to say anything negative about this recipe at all, or plan for anything to change, it would be that next time I will grate at least twice as much nutmeg. I put in only half of a nut this time. I did change some things about this recipe as I went along, but had kept the nutmeg suggestion as it was. From now on I'll trust my heavy hand with the nutmegs!

The other thing was the recipe calls for these to be HUGE. 7 or more inches long, big and puffy. I know most people love a good doughnut, but I just don't think something that big slathered with icing is going to taste good. I wound up shrinking these to only 4 inches long and started calling them 'little johns' instead. 

 

Another thing that is different than what the recipe called for was that it says to heat the oil until it is quit hot, and then begin frying. I heated it to 365º (fahrenheit)  which was far too hot for the cooking time suggested. The recipe called for 2 minutes on each side. These were done before the first two minutes were up. Done all the way inside and out, just done much sooner. I turned the heat down to stretch the time a bit. I think I preferred the quicker cooking and darker browning though

 

I drained these standing on end in a big bowl with some paper towels.  I quickly ran out of room though and had to lay some on towels on the counter. Apparently I can't count. Not surprising. In the fifth grade, and particularly when it came to math class, I was an outstanding student. Course I was out standing in the hall, but it still sounds good, eh? At any rate, I have to say that if you decide to fry your own doughnuts you should definitely drain them on end. These were much tastier than the ones which were laid flat. I've always laid things flat when draining off excess grease and with the exception of a unique batch of egg rolls, I've never felt like you could taste the oil/grease. I attribute that mostly to always using fresh flavorless oils for frying (like canola or safflower) I tried a small piece of the ones which were laid flat and thought "ooh these are good! Then when I tried a piece of the standing doughnuts I discovered how wrong I had been. True you can't taste the oil/grease really in the flat drainers, but the standers just plain tasted better. Their draining process was the only thing which was different about these two batches. The standers tasted much lighter and didn't feel heavy in my stomach at all. This probably explains why I ate two of them. Whoops.

My 4 1/2 year old said we absolutely had to frost these. I agreed to do it, and said we'd put it on in thin layers. He was pretty sure this was a crime, and therefore said that the frosting had to be pink. Normally I'd of had to say no to this. We discovered over the summer that he's allergic to food dye. Not just red dye #40, but all artificial dyes. This changed his diet quite a bit as American food makers have apparently decided that all food will be made better by flavorless artificial dyes. However we recently bought a natural dye set made by Chocolate Craft. We found it online at the Natural Candy Store (The link will take you directly to the color we used). It was pretty pricey at $5.99 for a half ounce bottle, and the color can easily be described as 'washed out' in frosting, but there were some perks in buying it. First it's a vegan product, which is awesome. We're not vegan, we're not even vegetarians, but we do pay attention to this sort of thing, but even more important is, it would make my kids happy. When using this we discovered that to even get a very light color, you need to use quite a bit of the dye. But it doesn't have that bizarre taste that so many artificially colored foods have. Plus, as I had expected, it made my son terribly excited. He didn't even care that the color was so faint. I would have gone ahead and used more to get a much pinker color for him, but didn't want to have to order more of this before I have to make his birthday cake.

We made a basic frosting with organic vegetable shortening, a splash of milk, some Mexican vanilla, the holiday red food coloring, and powdered sugar. I put it on in a thin coat over each doughnut and that was more than enough of a sweet kick to make these little johns a new favorite. Will I change anything about this recipe next time I make it? I think so. To make it a bit more healthy I think I'll add in some pureed pumpkin (Hey, I said a bit...) or maybe some mashed potatoes (not healthy, but who cares) Should I change anything, I'll be sure to post about it. For now, I'm just going to have another cup of coffee and another little john.


Next time I'll talk more about what food dye eradication has done for my family, and what all that entails. I'll be including a meal as well.


Be sure to cast your vote for either the recipe for baklava, german chocolate cake, or granola!  

German Chocolate Cake

Did I grab your attention? 

How about now? Made these treats just for this blog. From the left we have baklava, german choclate cake, and granola.  I will post one of these recipes (as I make them) depending on comments/requests. Post in the comments section to vote for your favorite.

Pretty sure I've got your attention. The only thing about this german chocolate cake that ought to differ from the ones you've probably had at parties is this one contains no nuts in the frosting. I know right? I'm nuts! (Pardon my pun.) I made it this way  on purpose, and sort of sadly. I love pecans. I'd put them in practically everything if I could. But my husband is completely against nuts in his desserts with the exception of baklava. Same goes for dried fruit. He just can't have anything of the sort in his treats. I think he usually sucks on his desserts before swallowing them, and I can see why a big pecan half might cause this tactic to be ruined. But I still think it's pretty silly. Imagine all the desserts he's missed out on because he didn't want to have an almond slice or two? It's a complete crime!

What was I talking about? Ooh the chocolate cake! So fun fact time: German chocolate cake actually used to be German's chocolate cake. It's not some sort of national cake in Germany, the word German in this refers to the type of chocolate used to create the flavor in this cake. Samuel German developed this chocolate back in the 1800s as a way to shorten cook times for bakers. It's creation involved adding a few things to the chocolate, the only of which I recall is this chocolate is basically the chocolate with all the sugar already added in.

If you head yourself over to the baking aisle at your local supermarket you'll probably find a brand called Baker's Chocolate (at least in America you will.) Now this isn't the 'best' chocolate out there if you check with places like America's test kitchen, but I certainly think it's handy. It has a good flavor, comes for a decent price, and comes in convenient stack-able packages. If you were to buy a block of each type you should find that the unsweetened tastes...well it's unsweetened ha! The semi-sweet tastes how you would expect a chocolate bar with a bit too much sugar to taste, and the german chocolate tastes even sweeter than that. I won't mention the white chocolate here, because that isn't really chocolate, and I'll probably get into that later when I start making truffles during the winter.

Technically this is called Joannie's Breakfast Granola, but this is another culprit of me fiddling with the original recipe. I've switched a couple of things, but I assure you it's not much different than the original. I found the original recipe in a book called The Pastry Queen. It is by far one of the best, if not in fact THE best cook book I have ever had the complete pleasure of purchasing. I bought it on a whim one day through a catalog. I thought it funny as someone had just the week before begun to call me a "Pastry Queen" so when I saw the book I snatched it up. I was immediately flattened by reading this book because clearly in the shadow of Rebecca Rather (the author chef for this book) I wasn't even a pastry princess yet. I've slaved over this book scrutinizing details about ingredients and learning her techniques from afar. It's absolutely worth every penny you must spend on it. And if you don't have it, I encourage you to get it. You won't regret it! At any rate, this granola is featured towards the beginning of The Pastry Queen, and includes a short story (as all the recipes in this book do) about how she came about the recipe, and how much people love it. I made this originally ages ago as a challenge. I love granola, and have purchased it frequently throughout the years. I was convinced that this granola would be no better than the pumpkin spice granola I buy at the natural foods store in town, so I took the challenge to make it and see if I was right. I couldn't have been more wrong. There is nothing that isn't perfect about this recipe. And really who was I kidding after looking at the ingredients list? Coconut, honey, sunflower seed? What did I honestly think could go wrong? I get very frequent requests for this. My Nana might not let me in her house anymore if I didn't bring a batch of this along during visits, and I'm fairly certain that the children at my son's preschool would be horribly disappointed if they didn't get a little baggie of it with some yogurt on his day to be in charge of snacks. Rebecca makes hers with almonds, dried cherries and apricots. I make mine with pecans, dried cranberries, and dates. I think it gives it more of a 'wintery' taste vs. a more 'spring-like' taste.  During the very cold months I'll add in some cinnamon or cloves and allspice. After the base ingredients so graciously originated by Ms. Rather, you can alter this how you feel to create the perfect granola for you. I like mine best right out of the oven after it's finished. I throw a handful of dried fruit on it and enjoy it immediately. If it's not warm anymore I eat it like cereal with milk, or with vanilla greek yogurt. Simply THE best.

 

Baklava is a pastry like snack created in Asia. The version I make is a sort of combination between a Balkan and a Turkish baklava. It is made with a pound of phyllo dough, walnuts, cinnamon, sugar and honey. I generally cut it into triangles but felt like squares this time. The triangle servings are basically half of the squares you see above.I had an old recipe clipped out of a magazine for this, and I say had like I've gotten rid of it or something, I'm pretty positive that it's still in my cabinet somewhere. At any rate, I've made this enough times now that I just sort of 'wing it' anymore. As I was lathering the phyllo with butter this time two things occurred to me. The first is I wondered why I had never gone the extra step in making the phyllo dough. That was promptly answered by recalling an image of culinary students making strudel and the labor of stretching the dough without causing cracks. In other words, even I'm not that crazy. The second was to wonder how different my baklava is now vs. what I used to make when I first started with the recipe. In the end I realized it didn't really matter. Both are good. 

This is a pretty calorie laden treat, but I have to say it is absolutely perfect with a cup of black coffee. Even if you usually put sugar or cream etc in your coffee, you would appreciate this with just plain coffee. it's incredibly sweet but in a natural sort of way. Definitely satisfies every sweet tooth I've come across thus far. The absolute beauty of this snack is It makes a 9x13 sheet so you can either make this, and share with a tea party/luncheon, or just plain gift the extras to friends. Alternatively you can do what we usually do and freeze the excess (this should be done carefully, freezing these spaced on waxed paper then wrapping them individually and then in a sturdy container for long term freezing to prevent squishing from that bag of frozen peas about to fall on it.) to enjoy whenever you have a craving. The flavor is completely unaltered in this even if you're freezing for as long as 3 months. I wouldn't know about longer, I've never had anyone that froze this have any past that point! 

So now you've heard a bit about the three tasties I've posted today; german chocolate cake, baklava, and granola.  As promised I will post one recipe for the most requested dessert in my next blog post. Cast your vote for which one by either posting in the comments below, or by tweet to me on twitter @MissJoey812.

*I wanted to put in a disclaimer that the information I post about recipe origins, unless otherwise noted, will always come from my memory and therefore I have no sources to post for you regarding more information. If there is something I am posting that I just honestly didn't know about, but wanted to educate myself as well as you, I'll post the links from where I gathered the information. I have a pretty good memory, but obviously with 3 kids I have been known to come down with a case of mommy brain, so any misinformation is entirely not intentional and I would appreciate being corrected if need be.

Ramblings never sounded so good

As a way to inaugurate this first blog posting I'm going to go ahead and admit it right now, this blog will most likely be a whole bunch of ramblings. Ramblings about children, ramblings about grocery shopping, ramblings about... well you get the idea.

I'd like to begin my introducing myself to you, as I feel it may be important somewhere down the line. I'm 25, have been married for 7 years (well in a few days it will be 7 years), I have a son who will be 5 in December, a son who will be 2 in January, and a newborn daughter born in September. Together my husband and I co-run a tree service, and I am in the beginning stages of opening a wood milling business. I'm also an art student (though am on leave right now for above stated newborn). I have to pause now and admit I have no idea why I'm going to art school. It was something I so badly wanted. I did. I wanted, no I needed to be an art teacher. With a sub-specialty in stop motion animation, and a degree from a fancy sounding, i.e. expensive, place like the Academy of Art University where could I go wrong?! How about having a business that can't run without me (tree service) and one I'm starting that needs babying in order to function, oh yeah, and living in the Midwest which really, I couldn't even tell you where the nearest studio for stop-motion is. So yeah, dumb idea. I should have gone to culinary school. There I could learn how to create more/better recipes. I love baking. I've been known to bake up a storm. As a matter of fact I actually have 3 ovens, which I do in fact on occasion get running simultaneously for the sole purpose of covering my kitchen in baked goods and making my house smell like a slice of lemon meringue pie. 

I am fortunate enough to get the opportunity to sell my precious baked yummies on occasion too. This is something I wish would happen far more often. I bet if I made a little menu of items, it would. Right now I have two orders on hold. One is someone has commissioned a cake for an auction, so once the auction is won, I will converse with them and make the cake/deliver it. And the other is someone has on order a batch of my danishes.

Yes, I mean real danishes. I mean, takes 2 days to create the perfect airy, buttery dough, followed by creating my own pastry cream, assembling everything gingerly and bake to perfection pastries.  Are they worth it? I think the jury is still out on this one. I certainly love making them, people certainly love eating them. I've even heard compliments such as "I don't think I've ever had a pastry that good before," but at the end of the day, each batch of dough weighs 10 lbs, and does seriously take 2 days to make. I love doing this, my only problem is that 'orders' come in singles, so when I make all 10 lbs, I've got 8lbs left over just sitting there. Then I feel compelled to bake the rest of it, and end up with a few thousand calories to run off on my elliptical thanks to cherry-cheese baskets (picture to come). Oh who am I kidding, it's so totally worth it!

So back to where I was headed with this, I should have gone to culinary school. I'm sure if I did I would have been done long ago because I would have actually been motivated to finish, and could have started my own bakery instead. Course I'd probably weigh an extra 30 lbs if I did that. 

Yeah, that would have been worth it too.