Day 1 of Self Imposed Blogging Challenge

Today's post was made instantly easier when Garrett surprised me with a beautiful, black KitchenAid mixer!

I was so stoked to clean off part of the counter to find it's new home, which I'm not totally sold on yet... right above is where I keep all my spices, baking goodies, canned goods etc and I see some sort of terrible, terrible accident happening.

I can't believe I actually have one of these.

I tried her out today, making these cookies again. The first time I did them in that post, I mixed the dough by hand. The second time, I mixed them using my Cuisinart hand mixer which I've decided is a little bit too powerful, because for this recipe, it almost whipped the dough and made the consistency too smooth. The cookie bites were good but not chunky like I prefer. When I made them tonight in the mixer with the flat paddle on 2 it was just perfect. And for such a sticky, tough dough, it was much easier than mixing by hand, and it kept the chunky texture that I love.

Tomorrow, I make bread.

Ale'd Ginger

I think the reason I wanted to make my own ginger ale is because I spoiled myself with 'real' ginger ale from Planet Organic, Blue Sky Jamaican Ginger Ale.....



...not just Canada Dry, and I couldn't deal with buying the fancy stuff anymore. Plus I got an adorable bottle from IKEA and had to use it on something equally adorable.

Now, traditional ginger ale is typically made with yeast to create the bubbles. I opted to use club soda since I simply couldn't wait for multiple days to drink it, and the idea kind of scared me.

Homemade Ginger Ale

Ingredients:
1 cup diced ginger (tip: peel the ginger using a spoon (thanks Annand!) and then chop)
1 cup brown sugar (you can use white, but brown will give the ale a nicer color)
club soda
lime (zest and juice)

1. Bring 2 cups of water to a boil in a small saucepan. Add ginger and zest of one lime. Reduce heat to medium low and let ginger sit in the simmering water for 5-10 minutes. Remove from heat and let sit for 20 minutes minimum, or overnight for a spicier ginger flavor. Once the ginger has steeped for your desired amount of time, strain liquid through a fine mesh strainer.

(Normally you would discard the ginger pieces here; last time I saved the ginger and froze it, hoping I can do something with it eventually. It may just end up being used to enhance the next batch.)

2. In a separate saucepan, make a simple Syrup by dissolving 1 cup sugar into 1 cup of boiling water. Set aside to cool.

3. Combine all simple syrup, all ginger water, juice of one lime and club soda to taste in a bottle that will keep the fizz, or drink immediately. Serve with a wedge of lime.

I'm going to try to blog, in some way, for every day of October. It would have been wise to save this post until Saturday, but I received a request from one of my favorite food bloggers, former Edmontonian and current Texan, to post this recipe! Since I receive so few requests, I just had to do it. Take a look at Marynika's blog; the pictures are stunning and as a very lucky tester of some of the baking, the recipes were fabulous.

Enjoy, and look forward to more posts! I can't promise that they'll all be recipes but I'll do my best to make sure it's food related.

Stuffed Pasta Shells

I came to stuffed pasta shells for the first time when I worked in Yellowknife and I built these awesome lasagna rolls. My second fam, the Lindstroms, are big on stuffed pasta shells. Like, really big. Like, I'll be helping them make hundreds of these bad boys next summer for the Wedding of the Century (aka Peeps wedding, which I can't possibly be more excited for). This is one of those recipes that I created myself after quickly perusing multiple stuffed shells recipes on the interwebz.

I didn't think to take photos until they were basically done. But don't worry, you didn't miss much.

Let's stuff!

Stuffed Pasta Shells
A-La-Michetti

Simple Tomato Sauce (quick version of my own recipe)
1 tsbp olive oil
half yellow onion finely chopped
1 clove garlic
dash of red pepper flakes
3-5 basil leaves, chopped
1 can diced tomatoes, drained
A few squirts of tomato paste (which I found in a tube, thanks to Mrs. Peeps, at the Italian Market...great for when you just need a bit!)
Salt & Pepper to taste

Saute onion in oil; once softened, add garlic and red pepper flakes. Add diced tomatoes and tomato paste and S&P to taste. Let simmer for as long s you can. I would normally add some marsala or red wine, but I was out and short on time. I would also typically puree this mixture but I thought why not leave it chunky?

Everything else...
1 350g package jumbo pasta shells (Italian Centre Shop has a huge variety on the cheap!)
1 pound Italian sausage meet
1 large egg
16-ounces ricotta cheese
10-ounces chopped frozen spinach, thawed, squeezed dry (or 10 ounces chopped fresh spinach)
3/4 cup Panko bread crumbs (or your own!)
1 cup grated Parmesan cheese

2 baking dishes (this made me enough for one full 9X13 dish and a square 8X8 that I could freeze for another night!

What to do:

1 Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Cook the pasta shells until al dente. Drain, rinse in cold water, and set aside.

2 Saute meat until brown, drain extra oil.

3 Beat the egg lightly in a large bowl. Mix in the ricotta, chopped spinach, 1/2 cup of the Parmesan cheese, panko, salt, pepper, and sausage mixture. Fill each cooked pasta shell with some of the ricotta, spinach, sausage mixture.

4 Spread half the simple tomato sauce on the bottom of pan(s). Arrange the stuffed pasta shells in the dishes. Spread the remaining tomato sauce over the top of the pasta shells.

At this point you can make ahead, to freeze (up to four months) or refrigerate before cooking. (If freezing, cover with foil, then wrap with plastic wrap.)

5 Heat oven to 375°F. Cover the pans with foil and bake for 30 minutes, until hot and bubbling. Remove foil and sprinkle with remaining Parmesan cheese, bake uncovered for 10 more minutes.

These ended up freezing really really well, both uncooked and once I cooked a tray and froze it into portions. YUM! Wedding '12, here we come!

Paired with homemade Caesar salad dressing. DANG!

On a (slightly more) personal note, we lost our floor troll/poor man's Roomba/loving cat Solo last week. We already miss him a lot, and he was around to help me make this dish, as he often did in the kitchen.

Solo Snowballs Green

(Ro)Coco for Cocoa

Ever since Peeps and I made these brownies a few weeks ago, I've been craving chocolate. It's like something in my lady brain was triggered and reminded about my love of chocolate. And thus, the next two brownie based recipes.

Triple Chocolate Brownie Cookies
(Taken from the Edmonton Sun)


I really have Garrett to thank for these. If he hadn't gotten locked out of the house and had to kill time before I got home from the U2 concert and found himself at Original Joe's reading every newspaper he could, he would have never found this recipe for me. I wish I could credit this recipe to someone because it's daaaamn good. They are bordering on healthy, being made with heart-healthy canola, no butter, minimal sugar and natural ingredients.

I found my cocoa nibs at Planet Organic, for about $14.99 for this large bag. Cocoa nibs are roasted cocoa beans, seperated from their husks and broken into small bits. They are quite bitter and crunchy and don't have the added sugar that chocolate chips have, being that they are just the beans. Most cocoa nibs are ground into a paste and become a liquor that go into 'chocolate' by adding cocoa butter, sugar and vanilla. Apparently the nibs are very high in antioxidants, with more than red wine and green tea! They also have beneficial effect on the heart and circulatory system.

Triple Chocolate Brownie Cookies
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
6 tbsp canola oil
2 tbsp honey
1 omega 3 egg
2 tsp pure vanilla extract
1/2 cup natural cocoa powder
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 cup cocoa nibs
1/4 chocolate chips/chocolate chunks of at least 60% cocoa mass
2 tbsp bran
1/4 tsp baking soda

Preheat oven to 375. Line a baking sheet with parchement paper.

Beat together brown sugar, oil, honey, egg and vanilla in a medium bowl using an electric mixer until batter is creamy, about 3 minutes.

Beat in the cocoa powder gently (or else it will fly everywhere!) on low speed until incorporate, then beat for about a minute.

Stir together flour, cocoa nibs, chocolate chips, bran and baking soda. Add flour mixture to cocoa until well mixed. Batter will be VERY sticky; I ended up adding about a 1/4 cup of warm water to the batter to make it manageable. I also found that, when I did my second tray and the batter had some time to sit, that it was easier to deal with. So let batter sit until the oven is preheated.

Drop batter by teaspoonfuls onto the baking sheet about an inch apart. Bake until outside of cookie looks crunchy and they have puffed up, about 8-10 minutes. I found I only needed 7mins in my super powered oven.

Just like brownies, don't overbake!!

Let cookies cool on sheet before transferring to wire rack. Store cookies in an airtight container or freeze.

Makes 36 (tiny) cookies.

These cookies were perfect fresh-out-of-the-oven cookies. Very moist and soft, very chocolatey!

1 WW point each.




Black Bean Brownies
(Modified from The No-Meat Athlete)


When my new office mate Becca told me she had a recipe for brownies that contained black beans, I was very skeptical (Beans in brownies? Come on McFarlane!); until I tried one. I then needed the recipe immediately so I could re-create them and trick people into eating the healthiest, moistest brownie I've ever had.

1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1 3/4 cups raw sugar
1 1/4 cup cocoa
3/4 cups chopped and roasted almonds
1 15 oz can black beans, rinsed and filled with new water
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup water

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Mix dry ingredients (flour, salt, sugar, cocoa, almonds) together, set aside.

Drain a can of black beans and rinse thoroughly until the water runs clear. Return the black beans back to the can and fill with water. Puree the beans (with water) and vanilla. Add bean puree to the dry ingredients and extra cup of water. Stir to combine.

Pour the batter into a greased 9×13 pan. Bake for 25-30 minutes, rotating the pan around halfway through. When the brownies are finished they should be firm in the center and the edges will be slightly puffy and starting to pull away from the sides. My batch was finished at 25 minutes. Again, don't overbake!

Let brownies cool then cut into 24 squares.

I was SO happy with how these turned out! Very moist, no taste of the beans but still very much a brownie despite being super healthy. The original recipe called for hazelnuts (and for double the amount) but I decreased it by half and did almonds since it's what I had on hand. It would be easy to experiment with different nuts or not include them at all.

I made these last Sunday and froze about half of them. They stayed fresh for days and the frozen ones froze really well.

Enjoooooy!

3 WW points each

Rhubarb Pound Cake

2 plus months sans post. I really do intend to get better at this! In interest of actually posting this the night that I made it, I'm nixing the photos for this post!

It's the time of year for rhubarb...lots of rhubarb. My lovely mother brings me mass quantities of this bizarre plant that she gets from a family friend. Until now I've almost exclusively paired it with other fruit to make a fruit crisp. This time, I tried something different; cake!

Rhubarb Pound Cake
(recipe modified from April 2002 issue of Harrowsmith County Life)

2 cups fresh rhubarb, cut into 1/4 inch pieces (mine was previously frozen)
1/2 cup sugar
2 cups flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup butter, room temperature
1/4 cup apple sauce (original recipe called for 3/4 cup butter but I reduced and subbed applesauce)
1/2 cup sugar (again, recipe called for 1 cup)
3 large eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract

1. Preheat oven to 350F. Line loaf pan with parchment paper.

2. Place rhubarb in saucepan and add 1/2 cup sugar. Stir to coat and cook over medium heat for 5 minutes or until rhubarb begins to soften but retains shape. Remove from heat and drain through a fine mesh sieve. Let cool.

3, Sift flour, salt and baking powder together in a bowl and set aside.

4. Using electric mixer (like me NEW green Cuisinart) beat butter until very soft. Add 1/2 cup sugar and beat until light and fluffy; add applesauce.

5. Using a fork, beat eggs in small bowl. Add vanilla and mix well. Slowly blend egg mixture into the butter mixture. Gradually add flour mixture and continue to blend until well combined. Lightly fold in the cooled rhubarb.

6. Pour batter into pan, smooth top. Bake for 1 hour or until knife comes out of the centre clean. Remove from oven and let sit 5 minutes. Cool.

This recipe equals a total of 62 WW points, so depending on how you slice it up the points value will vary.

On a side note, I picked up Blood, Bones and Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton from the library today. I'm only a few chapters in, but so far it's a beautifully written memoir filled with delicious memories of food, both happy and sad. Pick it up!


Enjoy!

New Year, New Foods

Alright. Obviously, in the fall, I was very gung-ho about keeping this updated. After spending all day at work on a computer, the last thing I want to do when I get home is do anything on the computer that doesn't involve celebrity gossip and/or cute kitten videos.

To ease back into this, here's a quick one, sans pictures.

Low-Fat, Low Sugar Basic Muffins
or, Muffins to Avoid Muffin-Top

Combine:
1 1/3 cup cottage cheese
1 cup flour
1 egg
2 egg whites
2 tbsp vegetable oil
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup sugar

Make 1 dozen

Bake for 20-25 mins at 350.

The first time I made these I put in strawberries that I had frozen...they were quite wet and I should have added an extra 1/4 cup of flour. This was also the first time I experimented with the egg whites that you buy in a carton. While I'm fundamentally opposed to using those egg whites for an omelet or quiche, I feel alright using them for baking.

These would be quite bland without adding other spices or fruit. The second time I made these I was inspired by the Funky Monkey Booster Juice that unsuccessfully attempted to cure me of a hangover a couple weeks ago. I added:

2 mashed bananas
1/3 cup cocoa

...and they turned out great! Not quite the same as a big ol' Morning Glory from BeeBell, but in the interest of eating better, these are a great alternative. The cottage cheese adds moisture that compensates for the complete lack of butter and there are many different ways to change the flavor. I'm looking forward to trying chocolate orange, blueberry lemon or apple cinnamon.




This year, Peeps and I are dedicated to mastering pastries of all shapes and sizes. We've already had one baking day with another coming soon; stayed tuned for updates on that.