Lemon Whoopie Pies Two Ways

I’m part of an online baking community, and this month, the monthly challenge was to take a box mix and transform it. I’ve been watching a lot of Chopped lately, so I was definitely interested in seeing what I could do.

I got the idea to make Whoopie Pies, though not the traditional black and white kind. (Chocolate cake with vanilla icing is actually my least favorite.) I picked up a box of Organic Lemon Cake mix at Whole Foods early in the month, and it sat in the pantry for quite a while.

Today I finally got into gear. I used a recipe I found online to turn the cake mix into whoopie pie mix, but the batter really looked too runny to me. Hoping for some kind of miracle, I spooned some onto the parchment. They came out thin and flat, just as I’d expected. So, I altered the recipe with some baking powder and extra flour, and then they came out perfectly.

I went ahead and assembled my whoopie pies, and I let my partner and my little brother eat some of the failed flat ones. I still had four or five of them left, though, and I had some beautiful, ripe peaches from our farm share. I sliced a peach super thin, went to the garden and got some lemon basil, and made a second beautiful dessert.

If you want to make the Napolean variation, just omit the extra flour and baking powder. Use a cup or a cookie cutter to obtain uniform shapes, then layer the thin pastry with slivers of peaches and whipped cream or custard. Garnish with lemon basil to bring together these amazing flavors.

For the whoopie pies, I chose to make them a bit smaller than they traditionally are. I find the larger ones to be sugar-headache inducing! For the filling, I made one buttercream, then split it and flavored half with raspberry and half with lavender.

Ingredients
For the whoopie pies
1 box of lemon cake mix
3 eggs
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup oil
1/3 cup flour (or til the batter is thickened; for whoopie pies only)
1/2 teaspoon baking powder (for whoopie pies only)

For the filling
1 stick butter
2 1/2 cups confectioners sugar
1/4 teaspoon lavender extract
2 tablespoons seedless raspberry jam

Directions

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper.

In a mixer or a large bowl, combine the cake mix, eggs, water, oil, flour, and baking powder. Stir until smooth.

Drop the batter onto the parchment lined cookie sheet. I used about 1 tablespoon for each; you can make them bigger, but they may need an extra couple minutes to cook. Try to make them round!

Bake for 5-8 minutes. Carefully peel back the parchment and let the rounds cool on a rack.

Meanwhile, make the buttercream filling. In a mixer, combine the butter and sugar until a smooth frosting is formed. Add a few drops of water or milk if necessary. If making two flavors, divide the filling in half. In one bowl, add the lavender extract (to taste) and mix well. In another bowl, add the raspberry jam to taste and mix well.

Using a spoon or a piping bag (I used a star tip on the raspberry ones and an angled tip on the lavender ones, just for cuteness), fill in some frosting on the flat side of one of the whoopie pies. Add another one on top for the lid. Continue making the little sandwiches, using one flavor for some and the other for others. If you feel inspired, roll the edges in sprinkles for an extra sweet look.

Keep refrigerated. They also apparently freeze well!

Peach Crisp with Honey & Coconut

The weather has been unusually warm here lately, and the Jersey peaches have been available sweet and absolutely ridiculously delicious for weeks. I went to a farmers market one Tuesday almost a month ago and bought a small bucket of peaches that held perhaps five beautiful peaches. I only got to eat one of those incredible peaches, as my littlest brother, age 12, apparently ate the rest of them in immediate succession. The next week, I went back and bought two or three times as many, and I got to eat one in my morning oatmeal.

Charlie has a bit of an allergy to some hand fruits like apples and peaches, and I felt so bad that he couldn’t enjoy these awesome peaches with me. Since they don’t seem to bother him when they’re cooked, on my last trip to the farmers market, I bought enough to make a crisp or a cobbler with. (I never remember if there’s a difference between the two…)

I have a pretty big amount of honey left over from a wedding cake I did several months ago, and I’ve been thinking for a while about making a crisp/cobbler with honey as the sugar. I assumed it would be fine, but I did a bit of googling, and it seemed like people had been successful with it.

I also decided to go out on a limb and change out the fat that I used. I’ve been trying to be mindful of the food I’m putting in my body lately. (I recently got back from a roadtrip, and nearly every time I go on a roadtrip, I clean up my eating habits when I return because I feel crappy from eating so much crappy food on the road.) I decided to give coconut oil a try in this recipe since I’ve been wanting to experiment with cooking with it, and also because peach and coconut are great together.

The flavors in this were amazing. The peaches were perfect (no sweetener needed in the fruit portion). On the first day, the taste of honey shone through, but the next day, the coconut flavor showed itself a bit more. I would definitely make this again with these variations.

With a crisp, I usually just wing it, so unfortunately, these measurements are sort of approximations, but, in my experience, crisps are pretty darn forgiving, so it all works out. :)

*Note: My peaches were very juicy, and after the first day, things got a bit sloshy, so if yours are very juicy, too, I’d suggest mixing a tiny bit of cornstarch in with the fruit.

Ingredients

5-7 large peaches, pitted and cut into slices or large chunks (I left the skins on)
2 plums (optional, these were just very ripe and needed to be used)
1/3-1/2 cup honey
1/4 cup coconut oil
1 2/3 cup old-fashioned oats
3/4 cup white whole wheat flour
1/2 cup walnuts
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
1 teaspoon cinnamon
3 tablespoons pepitas (optional)
1/3 cup coconut flakes (optional)

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Spread the fruit in the bottom of a pan (I used a corningware one about 12x12x2).

In a mixer or large bowl, combine the honey and coconut oil. Mix until blended. Add the dry ingredients (oats, flour, salt, ginger, cinnamon) and mix until large crumbs are form. Add a bit more flour or oats if necessary. Stir in the walnuts. Spread evenly over the top of the fruit. Sprinkle the pepitas and coconut on top.

Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for about 30 minutes or until the crisp is brown and the fruit is bubbling. Enjoy warm!

Cocoa Cranberry Oatmeal Muffins

Oatmeal in the morning on a cool day is an awesome thing, right? But sometimes you don’t make enough, and other times (especially when you set it up in your slow cooker and then people rush out the door without breakfast anyway) there is tooooo much oatmeal. You don’t want to throw it out, but if you save it, do people really eat the leftovers? They will if you turn them into muffins! Say, Cocoa Cranberry Oatmeal Muffins?

I’m not sure that I got a photo of these muffins, but they were really tasty and they’re pretty healthy – I substituted nonfat yogurt for some of the butter and reduced the sugar, used whole wheat flour, and of course, they’ve got the healthy power of oatmeal in there, too! I was surprised at how light and fluffy these came out. I’ll definitely make them again when we have oatmeal leftovers, and if you don’t have cranberries, throw in raisins or chocolate chips or nuts or anything else you can think of!

The basis of this recipe originates here, which was a great help since I wasn’t quite sure how my oatmeal leftovers were going to factor in.

Ingedients

1 3/4 cups whole wheat flour
1/2 cup cocoa
1 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 tablespoon baking soda
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
1/2 cup butter
1/4 cup nonfat greek yogurt
4 medium eggs (or 3 large)
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 cups leftover cooked oatmeal (our leftovers were steel cut oats)
1 cup cranberries, sliced

Directions

In a large bowl, combine flour, cocoa, cinnamon, ginger, brown sugar, baking powder and baking soda.

In another bowl, mix together melted butter, eggs, oatmeal, yogurt, cranberries, and vanilla. Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients and stir just until moistened. The batter will seem thick, but don’t worry. Adding more liquid may make the muffins too crumbly.

Spoon batter into 24 greased muffin cups.

Bake at 350 degrees for 18 minutes, or until the muffin centers are slightly firm.

Red (Purple!) Sweet Potato Pies

Charlie and I went shopping at the Ramsey Farmers Market the Sunday before Thanksgiving. We were looking for veggies and picking up our eggs from Farmer Matt. We got our eggs and wandered around tasting yummy things, and then we buckled down and bought some veggies and fruit.

The sweet potato bin at one of the veggie stands was getting very empty, but the bin next to it was labeled “Red Sweet Potatoes” and it had some of the largest sweet potatoes I’d ever seen in my life in it. “What’s the difference?” I asked the farmer. He told me that the red ones weren’t really orange on the inside – that they had a deeper color – but that they were good. I decided we’d try them out.

I googled them when we got home, and I kept finding results that looked very purple. I was very delighted when we peeled the sweet potatoes and found that they were bright purple!

Photo is of a large sweet potato with a bit of skin peeled away, revealing the purple flesh.

Photo is of the peeled and cut purple sweet potatoes.

We cooked and mashed them, following the recipe for Mom’s Sweet Potato Pie. We couldn’t wait to see what they’d look like, cute and tiny and purple!

Bo began to decorate the mounds of sweet potato with nuts and marshmallows.

Photo is of one of the mini red sweet potato pies.

Isn’t it amazing?

Photo is of Bo holding a tray of mini sweet potato pies.

And here they are, fresh out of the oven. They were delicious! I’d definitely get these red/purple beauties again. Yay for trying something new!

Sage & Butternut Squash Lasagna

This recipe was born for two reasons, the first one being that I love butternut squash (any squash, really!). The other is that one person in my family isn’t supposed to eat a lot of tomatoes, so I was trying to make a delicious lasagna dish that was tomato-less. This dish is great for the holidays, and although it’s got some rich ingredients, it’s also got a healthy balance with whole wheat pasta and some veggies (which you can always add more of).

Make sure you use fresh sage in this one – it’s such an important ingredient that it really needs to shine.

Ingredients

1 box of whole wheat lasagna noodles, prepared according to package directions
1/2 large butternut squash, peeled and sliced into circles (use the top part only and save the bottom part where the seeds are for another recipe)
2-3 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
2-3 cups of fresh spinach
1 .75oz package of sage, divided (if you’ve grown your own, grab a big handful)
1 32oz tub of ricotta (I used part skim)
up to 3/4 teaspoon of nutmeg, depending on your taste

For the white sauce:
1 1/2 cups of milk
2 tablespoons flour (I used whole wheat)
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons of your sage, chopped
a few cloves of garlic, minced (optional)
1/3 cup parmesan cheese
salt and pepper to taste

Directions

Begin by making the white sauce. In a small saucepan on medium heat, melt the butter. If you are using garlic, cook it briefly in the butter (2-3 minutes). Next, add the flour to the butter and whisk it together until smooth. Cook for about 3 minutes, stirring regularly. Gradually add the milk, stirring constantly, making sure that the flour/butter mixture incorporates with the milk. Bring to a boil, then turn the heat down to low and simmer for 5 minutes or until the sauce is thick and creamy. Don’t forget to stir frequently. Add the sage and the parmesan cheese about 1-2 minutes before removing the sauce from the heat. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Mix the nutmeg into the ricotta cheese.

Assembly!

Now you should be ready to assemble. Spread a layer of white sauce or ricotta in the bottom of your lasagna pan. Drop the circles of butternut squash down in the pan side by side – you should be able to get at least nine in there depending on the size of your squash and the size of your pan. Layer the noodles, spinach, mozzarella cheese, remaining sage, butternut squash, white sauce, and ricotta until you run out or fill the pan. Be sure to save some mozzarella cheese for the very top to lock in some of the moisture.

Bake in a 400˚ oven for 40-60 minutes or until the slices of squash are soft. You may want to cover the pan with aluminum foil until the last 10-15 minutes to prevent it from over browning.

Annnd lasagna is not the prettiest thing to photograph, especially during dinner rush with the family, but here’s a picture of the finished product.

Epic Midnight Snack (Grilled Cheese with Red Onion and Avocado)

Sorry for the crappy picture, folks, it was, indeed, midnight, and I got a new device that I’m not used to yet!

Today was our annual pie eating contest, and we had a long, busy day, especially since a huge storm knocked out our power last night and cut out quite a bit of our prep time. By the end of the night, we just wanted to relax. Our September issue of Real Simple magazine magazine came in the mail today, and I paged through it. It had a delicious looking page of recipes about how to jazz up grilled cheese sandwiches in three different ways.

One suggestion was to add currant or fig jam, bacon (I’d use tempeh bacon!), and a thinly sliced pear to the basic cheddar on white bread sandwich. Those flavors sound amazing together – I’ve eaten baked brie with pears on Christmas with my family, and cheddar and chutney sandwiches when I lived in the UK. Another suggestion was hugely appealing to Charlie, who loves pesto on just about anything – add pesto and thinly sliced tomatoes to the sandwich.

But the sandwich that I had for a midnight snack tonight was to take thin slivers of a red onion from our farm share, pair it with slices of avocado, and get that sucker grillin’. It was super delicious, and I definitely want to eat this again. You’d think that I’d have eaten enough during the pie eating contest, but since I don’t compete, and I was hosting, I spent about half the day making pies, then half the day making sure people had enough food, and by that time, I barely ate anything myself! I definitely tasted a bunch of the pies, but I need to pay more attention to feeding myself on days like this… or making really delicious midnight snacks like this. Yum!

Garlic Rosemary Croutons

I’ve always thought that homemade croutons sounded so elegant and delicious, but I never attempted to make them. There must be some secret to making them so delicious and impressive, right?

No! They are SO easy!

Since we’re getting into the time of year where we’ll be eating a lot of fresh salads, since our Community Supported Agriculture share usually gives us a ton of leafy greens during June, (now that I know the secret that making croutons is super simple), I’ll be making a bunch of variations on these. I’ve finally been cajoled into tweeting, so if you want to follow me at @measuringspoons you’ll be able to keep up with what I’m up to, including quick little tips and variations on a crouton recipe. :)

What prompted me to finally try making croutons was having a ton of extra bread lying around. Charlie had to organize a BBQ for his job a week or so ago, and we ended up with a whole lot of extra hamburger and hot dog buns. I have some in the freezer, but one bag had been left out in anticipation of grilling, but then we’d had lots and lots of rain. Instead, a crockpot full of soup with some croutons was in order, so I served these over my Crockpot Creamy Corn Potato Soup. I have some left over for some giant salads this week, too.

Ingredients

4 hamburger buns (or other bread)
1 tablespoon dried rosemary, finely ground with a mortar and pestle
olive oil (use the spray if you’ve got it)
garlic powder
coarse salt
fresh ground pepper

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350*F. Using a bread knife, cut the hamburger buns (or bread) into small chunks. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Arrange the bread chunks in a single layer on the baking sheet. Spray them lightly with olive oil. Use a spatula to flip the bread chunks over and spray the other side of them with oil, then sprinkle garlic powder (a little if you like a little, a lot if you like things really garlicky) and the rosemary evenly over the bread chunks. Season with salt and pepper.

Alternatively, if you don’t have the spray oil, you can just toss the bread chunks in a bowl with oil, then lay them on the sheet and apply the spices as directed.

Bake for about 12-17 minutes at 350*F. Because oven times vary, yours may need a little more or less time. The croutons are done when they are crispy and browned. Be sure to store in an airtight container.

Filipino Garlic Fried Rice

Fried rice is a great dish when you’re running low on food, you want to clean out the vegetable drawer, you’re broke, or you don’t want to do a lot of dishes. It’s not complicated and has pretty basic ingredients, but it’s really delicious. Tonight we had a little bit of the first and the last happening. We didn’t want to make anything super laborious, but we wanted a homecooked meal since we’ve been getting a lot of takeout due to Charlie’s hectic work schedule. I even got those green onions that I showed you that are growing in the garden.

Charlie tells me that his mom always used to make this when there was leftover rice in the fridge. It was often a meal made for breakfast, but sometimes for dinner. Tita* often made it after making something like pork chops, where there were lots of drippings left in the pan. This version is vegan, but if you feel like it, you can fry an overeasy egg and throw it on top, letting the yolk get all gooey in the dish. It can stand alone as a meal, as we had it tonight, or be served as a side dish.

This dish is a little healthier than your standard fried rice because we used brown rice and a TON of vegetables. When we make fried rice or stir fry, the vegetables to protein & starch ratio is pretty ridiculous. We probably had about 6-7 cups of veggies, a scant 3 cups of rice, and I don’t know what you’d call a package of tofu, 2 cups? Anyway, the important thing to note about this is that fried rice is like stir fry and stone soup. Almost any vegetable you have will do. I’ve written down what we used in what quantities so that you have an idea, but certainly, if you have 4 cups of broccoli and 2 cups of snow peas and no carrot and you have no idea what a kohlrabi is, just go with it. My advice on this matter is to try to cut everything to roughly the same size, unless you know that it cooks drastically differently, and to separate your vegetables into two bowls: Stuff That Cooks Slowly, and Stuff that Cooks Really Fast. It will be awesome, I promise.

*That’s what I call Charlie’s mom – it’s the Tagalog word for “aunt,” but it’s used as an affectionate term for female family friends or other ladies who are around your parents’ age.

Ingredients

5 (or more) garlic cloves, minced
1 small onion, chopped

Veggie Prep Bowl 1:
2-2 1/2 cups of broccoli, finely chopped (about 1 large floret)
1 1/2 cups of carrots finely chopped
1 medium kohlrabi, peeled and finely chopped

Veggie Prep Bowl 2:
1 cup of snow peas, cut in half
1/2 cup yellow squash or zucchini, chopped a little bigger than the other stuff since it’s softer (you could do more, but Charlie likes it less than I do)

Total Vegetables: about 6-7 cups, chopped into small pieces

2-4 cups cooled white or brown rice (day old rice is perfect for this)
1 block of extra firm tofu, drained, pressed, and cubed
a generous handful of green onions, snippped into pieces with scissors
soy sauce
salt & pepper to taste
garlic powder (optional)

Directions

Heat a large pan (nonstick is best) for a few minutes until it is hot, then add a few tablespoons of vegetable oil. Place the tofu cubes into the pan. Flip and stir frequently. Cook until the outside texture is crispy and brown. Remove the tofu from the pan and drain on a paper towel.

Drain some of the oil from the pan, leaving just a coating. Saute the garlic and the onion for 2-3 minutes or until the onion is soft. Add the broccoli, carrots, and kohlrabi. Do not add the squash and snow peas yet or they will get soggy. Cook for about 5 minutes or until tender, depending on the size of your pieces, stirring occasionally. Add the squash and snow peas, cooking for 2 minutes or until the snow peas are bright green and the squash is soft. Add the rice and cook for 2 minutes or until it is heated through. Add pepper and soy sauce to taste. If necessary, add salt and garlic powder to taste.

Garnish with the green onions.

Winter BBQ for the win!

So, if I haven’t made it obvious by now, my partner Charlie loves grilling. And when he got a fancy grill for his birthday last May, there was joking talk of shoveling the snow off the deck in the dead of winter and grilling even then.

Well, I didn’t underestimate that sentiment, but I don’t think anyone expected that it would be this much snow, since we’ve had a metric ton. But, he had a hankering for grilled food, and he had the day off for the Lunar New Year, so today, I was treated to a winter BBQ!

Here’s Charlie out on the deck.

(“Smile for the camera, Charlie!” gets us a thumbs up with an oven mitt in lieu of gloves.)

And just to give you an idea of how much snow is on the deck, this is the vantage point of the photographer (me!) from the sliding glass door, trying to keep the cat inside (who for some reason thinks he wants to go out – he doesn’t).

(Charlie ultimately decided to just wade through the snow in his boots instead of shoveling off the deck. It was that kind of day. If we have company for the next winter BBQ, we’ll probably clear it off.)

Anyway, while Charlie was outside in thirty degree weather, I was inside marinating tempeh. Because of some fun (and thankfully temporary) medication switches, I’m really trying to watch my sodium this week, so I decided to step in and make my own marinade. Charlie does an amazing job at this and is usually in charge, but is occasionally a bit more heavy handed with the soy sauce than I’d choose to be.

I pulled out my balsamic vinegar for most of the flavor, then brought in just a bit of soy sauce for balance. And, I was sure to measure so that I knew what I was getting in to (whereas our normal marinade making experiments are usually… “a little of this and a little of that”).

Ingredients

1 brick o’ tempeh (ok, an 8oz package), sliced into 4 “cutlets”
3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1 teaspoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon extra virgin olive oil
a squeeze of fresh lemon – perhaps a teaspoon
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
2 sprigs fresh rosemary

Directions

Mix the vinegar, soy sauce, oil, lemon, and garlic powder thoroughly in a shallow dish wide enough for all of the tempeh to lie flat in. Let the rosemary, however sad and leggy it may be from lack of adequate sunshine at this point, sit in the bowl for a few minutes to release some flavor. Get the tempeh good and soggy in the marinade, let sit in the fridge for five or ten minutes (or longer, but that’s all I had since the grill was already going) and then flip over, ensuring an even coating. Refrigerate for a few more minutes, then grill until warm through and the edges begin to blacken.

Black Bean Bonanza

In this recipe, you’ll get a night of black bean tacos, plus a night of delicious black bean burgers, all out of the same pot of beans!

Charlie and I have been trying to live more frugally and more healthily, and one of the things that means for us is trying to use less processed fake meats.

Why less processed fake meats?

• They’re more expensive than some proteins. Even at the most expensive store I can think of in the area, organic black beans are $1.99 for a pound, and there are places that you can get them for half of that, at least. The Gardein Crispy Tender Strips that I love so much are $3.99 for 9oz (and are much less filling).

• Fake meats are less sustainable than legumes since they’re more processed, so more fuel, electricity, etc, has to be used to produce them.

• Dried beans & legumes can often be purchased in bulk, which eliminates the need for wasteful packaging. If you’re cool like me & Charlie, you might even bring your own bulk and produce bags made out of old teeshirts.

• Fake meats may be healthier than real meats, but they’re definitely not whole foods, and we want to eat as healthy foods as we can.

Now, one of the problems that I face in terms of using dried beans is that a lot of them have to be soaked overnight, especially my favorite, black beans. (Soak overnight if you’re planning to slow cook in the morning. Soak all day if you’re planning to cook on the stove at night.) Between typical human forgetfulness and fibro fog+lyme brain, I almost never remember to do this. On Sunday, I even woke up early and said to Charlie, “Hey, I’m going to go soak the beans! I’ll cook them on the stovetop instead of the slow cooker, and we can eat them for dinner tonight!” I then promptly forgot for at least three hours.

After that fail and some googling, I learned that if you find yourself in this situation, you can boil the black beans for two minutes, then let them soak in the hot water for two hours instead of all day. I’d say that the cook time was a bit longer than usual, but it definitely worked out well.

Anyway, my plan for our Sunday night dinner was black bean tacos. We eat tacos fairly often, but usually with refried beans from a can. We made a big pot of black beans and used about a third of it for tacos. The next night, I made black bean burgers, which were pretty incredible. We still have four patties left to freeze. Charlie, though he is a tofu-loving meat eater, is not a big veggie burger fan, but he ate the whole thing. He said that it wasn’t quite a burger, but it was definitely a good sandwich.

I served the burgers with cheese and avocado on top, and with carrot sticks, orange slices, and kale chips. It was an easy meal that was really healthy. If you want to make things really easy on yourself, keep a few burger buns in the freezer along with your burgers so you’ll be ready to go.

Ingredients – Black Bean Mixture Base

2 cups dried black beans
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 large roma tomato, chopped
4 oz mushrooms, finely chopped
1/2 packet natural taco seasoning
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon cumin

Directions

In a medium to large pot of water, bring the black beans to a boil for two minutes, then let them soak for a minimum of two hours. (If you have the time, soak in cold water overnight as this retains more nutrients.)

At the end of the soaking time, drain off the water and replace with about 4 cups of water. Simmer on medium-low heat for about an hour, then add the onion, tomato, and mushrooms. Simmer for another 30 minutes or until the beans are soft enough to eat and the water has reduced. If you prefer your burgers to have a plainer taste or a different spice, you can remove a portion of black beans (probably 1/3) for tacos and leave the rest for burgers, but keep in mind that the seasoning amounts here are for the entire batch.

Use what you will for tacos. Store the extra black beans in a container in the fridge until the next night, when you’ll make the black bean burgers (unless you’re feeling super ambitious and want to do it immediately). When transferring the bean mixture to a container, use a slotted spoon so that any excess liquid does not transfer to the container.

Yield: Enough for tacos for two hungry people who really like tacos, and six large black bean burgers.

Ingredients – Homemade Black Bean Burgers

3 cups seasoned black bean mixture
1 large egg
3/4 cup breadcrumbs
1 teaspoon dried cilantro (use 1 tablespoon fresh if possible)
1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley
3/4 cup fresh or frozen corn

Directions

Preheat the oven to 375*F. Using a potato masher or a pastry blender, smash the black bean mixture in a medium bowl until it is the desired consistency (I prefer to leave some beans whole). Add the egg and mix well. Add breadcrumbs, cilantro, and parsley and stir, ensuring the they are evenly distributed. Finally, add the corn. Shape the mixture into patties (we got six large patties out of it) with your hands.

Bake at 375 degrees for 10 minutes. Fry briefly in a pan with olive oil until browned on both sides if desired.

To store in the freezer, place a sheet of wax paper in between the burgers so that they don’t stick together. To reheat from frozen, let sit on the counter for about 5 minutes (ok, this just happened because I was prepping other things last night). Bake at 375*F for 10 minutes on each side, then fry in a pan with a bit of olive oil until browned on both sides.

It didn’t occur to me at the time, but I bet adding some nutritional yeast (perhaps 2 tablespoons) would be a great addition when the breadcrumbs go in. Next batch, I’ll experiment!

Traditional Pumpkin Pie

I should have posted this around Thanksgiving, but of course, it was a busy time. I know that some folks like to have pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving, too, so hopefully this will be a handy recipe to have around. It is super easy and really delicious. Not too sweet, as usual, great texture, and lots of flavor. This one is based off the King Arthur Flour Guaranteed Pumpkin Pie recipe with a handful of changes.

Ingredients

1 graham cracker crust (I used the store bought kind)
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
3 large eggs, beaten
2 cups (or one 15-ounce can) pumpkin purée.
1 can evaporated milk

Instructions

In a large bowl, combine the brown sugar, flour, salt, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves. Whisk them together.

In a separate bowl, beat together the eggs, pumpkin purée, and evaporated milk.

Slowly add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients, mixing thoroughly. (King Arthur actually suggests covering this mixture and refrigerating overnight for better flavor, but I didn’t have time for that.)

Preheat the oven to 400*F.

Pour the mixture into your graham cracker crust.

Bake for 40-50 minutes. Most recipes call for you to take the pie out a bit wobbly in the center, but that has never worked for me. This time, we left it in until it wasn’t wobbly, and it was perfect.

Winter CSA Day Vegetable Tart

As you all know, I’m extremely dedicated to the idea of Community Supported Agriculture, or CSAs, a way of supporting local farms and getting local, (usually) organic food that’s in season. When our farm share is delivering from June until the end of October, we eat healthier meals with more vegetables, and we cook more instead of going out to eat or getting takeout, since our fridge is already stocked with great veggies to eat.

Our second year with our summer/fall CSA was coming to a close, and we were getting pretty sad about having the other half of the year without our farm-fresh food. I decided to research winter CSAs, and I managed to find one in the city with once-a-month pickups that was reasonably priced and would deliver December through May, meaning we would have nearly year-round CSAs. Although our new pickup for the winter share isn’t quite as convenient, since it’s only once a month, it’s still pretty great.

Our winter farm is Norwich Meadows Farm, and our winter share varies a bit from our summer share. Our summer share includes fresh vegetables, fruit, garlic, and herbs. Obviously, we don’t live in a climate that’s great for growing veggies all year round, so the vegetables we’ll be getting will be greens that are hearty to the cold at the beginning and the end deliveries, as well as storage vegetables like winter squash, onions, and potatoes. This week we also got brussels sprouts, sunchokes, carrots, leeks, and shallots in addition to the aforementioned storage veggies. And perhaps the neatest thing about this farm is that it offers lots of extras like yogurt and canned goods like pickles and heirloom tomato sauce and dilly beans (all made on their farm), and eggs and, if you choose, meat.

We decided to get a meat share since Charlie is omni. The meat raised on the farm is eco-halal. After spending the last 16 or so years of my life primarily as a lacto-ovo vegetarian [originally for animal reasons, now for broader reasons including sustainability], the meat will be just for him, but I’m glad that if he is eating meat, it was slaughtered in a dignified way, and that it was raised in a more sustainable way. There’s a little bit on the farm’s practices here if you’re interested in reading more. I’m also really glad to be getting eggs from a pasture-raised source, since I’ve been really unhappy with the ethics of many eggs that claim to be “cage free.” I’ve pretty much decided that the only real way to know if I’m getting eggs that are ethical is to develop a relationship with the farmer, and I have done that (if you’re in the Bergen County, NJ area, I know a great place to pick up from for a reasonable price!). Meanwhile, I’ve drastically cut down my egg consumption, but when our eggs arrived in our first winter delivery, I decided that a quiche was in order.

When I was in college, quiche was something that my mom always sent with me to keep in the freezer, along with little containers of soup. I ate soup and quiche for lunch many, many times a week, from freezer to microwave. Quiche freezes so well and is filling and delicious, so I like to keep some in the freezer for when I’m not feeling well and Charlie is too tired to cook. To make things a little larger, I made this in my tart pan, so technically, I suppose it’s a tart… but it’s really just a quiche recipe.

The thing I love about quiche is that you can put pretty much anything into it. I like to put potatoes in so that it’s a little more filling, and something green so it’s a bit more healthy. Other than that… whatever happens to be in the fridge goes in there!

Ingredients

1 1/2 broccoli florets, chopped
1 small zucchini, chopped
1 big handful of spinach
1 small sunchoke, peeled and chopped
2 green onions, chopped
4 oz edam cheese, shredded or cut into strips
4 oz shredded jack/cheddar mix
3 eggs
1 cup whole milk
salt
pepper
herbs (I tossed in some fresh parsley from our now-indoor herb garden)
pie crust (I cheated and used a store bought one since I was doing a lot that day)

Directions

Preheat oven to 350*F.

Press the pie crust into the tart pan.

Arrange the vegetables, herbs, and edam cheese in the crust. Try to make sure that they are evenly distributed.

In a medium bowl, beat the eggs and milk together. Add salt and pepper.

Pour the egg mixture into the crust over the vegetables. Top with the remaining shredded cheese.

Bake on a baking sheet in case of any drips or leaks! Bake at 350 for 40 minutes or until it is no longer wobbly in the center.

Mom’s Sweet Potato Pie

It’s December! And what does that mean? I have absolutely no excuse to avoid posting on my cooking blog. (Ok, so I have a few excuses – I’m still about 10-15k from finishing my novel for NaNoWriMo, even though I technically “won,” and I’ve been having a particularly nasty flare of my rheumatoid arthritis lately, leaving me pretty wiped out.) Excuses aside, there is definitely some exciting stuff brewing around here, like the arrival of my stuff from CSNStores.com!

The first thing I want to share with you is my awesome sweet potato pie recipe, as well as reveal one of the things I chose to review that we talked about in this post.

The first thing that arrived was perfect for use in this recipe. It was a potato masher from OXO!

I absolutely love OXO products, and I’m so glad that CSN Stores carry them. OXO was actually started by a guy whose wife had arthritis in her hands, and the kitchen tools they make are designed so you can grip them easier. This masher has a really comfy handle, and it is super sturdy. I have no doubt that I’ll have this in my kitchen for a long time. The handle might be a tiny bit short if you’ve got a really steamy pot, but all in all, I am super pleased. Shopping with CSN was easy (except for deciding what to get…) and two out of the three items I ordered arrived with lightning speed.

Hmmm…. now aren’t you curious to know what the other two items were? More recipes will be coming soon with the reveal. For now, check out this awesome masher action:

Disclosure: I was given this product by CSN Stores in exchange for writing this review, though this is my otherwise unpaid, unbiased opinion.

Ok, back to your regularly scheduled programming. As a kid, I was never into sweet potato pie, but every year at Thanksgiving and sometimes at Christmas, my mom makes a sweet potato pie. She mashes up sweet potatoes with some brown sugar and butter, dumps it all into a graham cracker pie crust, and tops it with pecans. In the past couple of years, I’ve started to get more into various types of veggies like beautiful acorn squash and gorgeous yams, and the sweet potato pie really started to grow on me! At Thanksgiving this year, my immune system was particularly crummy from having just taken my RA medicine two days before, so I really wasn’t up for seeing the entire extended family (and all of the germs they might have), so we kept it low-key. I did have a serious hankering for my mom’s sweet potato pie, though, so we whipped up a slightly dressier version of our own.

Since I wasn’t sure exactly how many of the four of us at dinner would be interested in the sweet potato pie, I opted to make adorable little mini pies! This allowed me to customize them, too, since I actually prefer walnuts over pecans, and since one of the diners is diabetic and had to avoid the sweetness of the marshmallow topping. And if you’ve got vegan dinner guests, this recipe is easy to adapt. Many graham cracker crusts are actually vegan – or you can easily make one yourself. Natural foods stores also carry vegan marshmallows, which can be snipped apart with kitchen scissors to trim them down to the appropriate size for these tiny treats.

As for my thought that we might have too much… I think these were gone by the end of the night. I had to have my brother bring reinforcements of my mom’s leftover sweet potato pie when he came to visit the next day.

Ingredients

3 large yams/sweet potatoes
6 mini graham cracker crusts
3 tablespoons brown sugar
2 tablespoons Earth Balance (or butter)
pinch of salt (more if you used unsalted butter)
pecans or walnuts for topping
mini marshmallows for topping (optional)

Directions

Wash your sweet potatoes. Bring a large pot of water to boil. Boil the sweet potatoes (skins on!) until soft (probably about 30-40 minutes, depending on their size – test with a fork).

Remove the sweet potatoes from the water and put them on a cutting board to cool. Carefully remove the skins with a paring knife, or just grab them with a potholder and the skin should slide right off.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Mash the Earth Balance or butter, brown sugar, salt, and sweet potatoes with your awesome potato masher. (Oh, you don’t have an awesome potato masher? You can get one here.)

Divide the sweet potatoes between the mini graham cracker crusts. You’ll want to heap the sweet potatoes up and out of the crusts. Decorate with nuts and marshmallows to your liking. Place on a baking sheet and bake for 10 minutes, or until your nuts and marshmallows are nice and toasted.

Sugar Cookie Ice Cream

(There are no cookies in the ice cream… it tastes like a cookie!)

I bought some cream quite a while ago with the intentions of making ice cream.

I never quite got around to it, and today was the last day that the heavy cream was good. (Insert lecture here about using only the freshest ingredients, followed by a caveat about not wasting things whenever possible.)

So tonight, despite a long and tiring day of playing our new Rock Band 3 system, Charlie and I decided to make ice cream. Grocery day is tomorrow, so there’s not a ton in the house to work with in terms of ingredients. We squabbled back and forth about making something fancy (like lavender or somehow incorporating rosemary) or making something simple, like chocolate or vanilla or coffee, which we haven’t… actually tried yet with our ice cream maker, since we jumped straight to advanced flavors like Chai Ice Cream with Shortbread Cookies. We settled on making a really awesome vanilla, but since I can’t ever be simple, I played with the flavors a bit.

And what came out of it was so magical and amazing, Charlie and I both nearly had our tongues’ stuck to the freezer bowl like Flick’s to the telephone pole in A Christmas Story.

The wonderful vanilla, the rich creaminess, the hint of cinnamon, and the undertone of almond all came together… and reminded us of cookies. And thus the ice cream was named.

My only hope is that there’s some left to serve with pie later this week.

This would be incredible with pie.

Ingredients

1/2 pint heavy cream
1 pint light cream
1 cup whole milk
3/4 cup natural sugar
1/4 teaspoon pure almond extract
1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon rum

Directions

In a small mixing bowl, mix the salt, sugar, cinnamon, and milk together. (They won’t fully blend together — it’s fine.)

Dump the mixture and the remaining ingredients (heavy cream, light cream, almond extract, vanilla bean paste, and rum) into your 2-quart ice cream maker. [The rum is less for flavor than for function - it will keep the ice cream from getting totally frozen and will give it a softer consistency in the freezer.]

Make according to manufacturer’s instructions.

Earl(y) Grey Oatmeal (Slow Cooker)

Look, it’s oatmeal, it’s the first thing I ate today, and I didn’t do a glamour shot. Sorrrrrry! (I’m even in my pajamas, see!)

Since I wrote just over 3,000 words today for NaNoWriMo (you’re supposed to average 1,667 per day), I think it’s ok for me to take a short break to share something delicious that I’m making.

I love oatmeal.

Not the packaged, instant crap with too much sugar and not enough texture.

The real, homemade kind, with cinnamon, and maybe some cut up chunks of fruit or nuts, like this.

I’ve recently gotten into steel cut oats, and I have one of those lovely little metal cans of McCann’s Irish Oatmeal sitting proudly on our kitchen counter. It’s kind of a hassle to cook it for such a long time, but it’s worth the wait when you can spare the time.

Or… from what I’ve heard… you can cook it in your slow cooker.

So that, my friends, is what I’m attempting to do. Tonight I’m preparing my oatmeal, and tomorrow morning I’ll be gleefully eating it without having done any work in the morning.

I bet you’re like, “Meh, big deal, everyone has a slow cooker oatmeal recipe on the internet.”

This may be true.

But I wanted to share with you the brilliance of one particular Bonzai Aphrodite’s oatmeal brilliance.

She puts tea in her oatmeal.

What?

Let’s go back and review that again.

She prepares her oatmeal with Earl Grey.

I love tea and drink it fanatically. I love the tea drinking experience, but I also love the flavors, and Earl Grey happens to be one of Charlie’s favorites. We have an awesome Earl Grey No. 69 from TeaGschwender that’s heady with bergamot that I love to use for cooking, and I prepared a strong cup to experiment with in this oatmeal. I went easy with the tea flavor this time, but I’ll probably increase it the next time I try it out.

As for the slow cooker recipe, well, I did what I usually do. I looked at a half dozen recipes, closed all the tabs, closed my eyes, and started mixing stuff up. I hope what I get tomorrow turns out delicious. I’ll update this post before I go live with it! [Go to the bottom of the recipe for the results!]

*Someone on a tea community pointed out to me that they don’t really like Earl Grey, and wondered if this would work with another type of tea. I haven’t tried it yet, but I’m thinking YES! I fully intend to try this with my favorite Black Currant Tea, a fragrant Jasmine I enjoy, a calming Lavender Green Tea, and I have a tea I got in a bulk bin that’s bursting with lemongrass that I bet would be brilliant in the morning, too. So yeah! Try it out with any kind of tea you like. Let me know how it is.

Ingredients

equipment: slow cooker (I used a 4-Qt Oval from Hamilton Beach, so if you have the same one, your settings will probably match!)

1 cup steel cut oats, uncooked
1 cup whole milk
3 cups boiling water, let cool until the bubbles stop bubbling like crazy
~6 grams loose leaf Earl Grey tea (or about two tea bags) – use more for a more intense flavor
cooking spray
delicious toppings like raisins or walnuts or pears for the morning

Directions

Spray the inside of the slow cooker with the cooking spray. If you’re not into cooking spray, give it a thin coat of butter or oil.

Steep the tea in your preferred tea filter for about 6-7 minutes.

Add the tea, milk, and oats to the slow cooker. Stir.

(Since we weren’t quite ready for bed yet, I let this soak this way for an hour or two before I turned the slow cooker on.)

Cook on low for ~8 hours, depending on your slow cooker. Since Charlie gets up earlier than I do, he’ll switch it to warm for me when he gets up, and I’ll it out a bit later. He’s got a busy morning, so he probably won’t take a picture first unearths it, but the taste is what really matters, right?

Update: The oatmeal formed a bit of a crust on top when I took it off, but I got up more like three hours after Charlie instead of one, since I stayed up late writing last night. I just scooped under the crust, and what I found underneath was delicious. The Earl Grey flavor was definitely present, and the oatmeal was creamy without getting that starchy texture that happens when you cook it too long on the stove. I’ll definitely be making this again! (Our real time cooking: 7hrs on low, 3 hours on warm – since I like my oats to be a little more defined, I may experiment with this a bit… i.e., not stay up writing all night and see if that makes a difference to the texture, put them in right before bed so they don’t soak at all and see if that makes a difference, but all in all, they were awesome.)