playing breakfast catch-up

I'm trying to catch up on all of my recent recipes and figured a 2-recipe breakfast post would be a nice little bonus on this dreary day. Apparently Vancouver is in the midst of a wind and rain storm, charmingly called a "pineapple express". Such a sweet name for something so foul. There's nothing but grey clouds, darkness and enough rain to make me worry about our roof caving in. So what better way to spend the morning but baking muffins. I originally got this recipe off of Baking Sheet, but I made a few changes to the recipe. Although they do contain maple syrup as the sweetener, I didn't find them very maple-y tasting. They are still very delicious and very light in texture, even with the whole wheat flour.

whole wheat & yogurt cranberry muffins
1/3 c milk
2/3 c plain yogurt
1/3 c vanilla yogurt
1 large egg
1/2 c maple syrup
1 c whole wheat flour
1 c all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 t cinnamon
1/4 t nutmeg
1/4 t cardamom
2 T dried cranberries
2 T walnuts or sunflower seeds

1. Preheat the oven to 375F and lightly grease a 12-cup muffin tin. In a large bowl, whisk together milk, yogurt, egg and maple syrup.

2. In a medium bowl, stir together flours, baking soda, and spices. Pour the dry ingredients into wet ingredients and blend gently. Add in the cranberries and nuts/seeds.

3. Pour batter into muffin tins and bake for 15 - 18 minutes until muffins springs back lightly when touched. Carefully remove from tin and cool on a wire rack.



I'm not sure why it looks like this plate of crepes is sticking out its tongue at me but it got eaten up anyway! The next recipe I tried was again from my "hmmm, what am I going to make" blog favorite, Baking Sheet. During my last year of university, my roomate at the time used to make crepes as a weekend breakfast treat. She filled them with raspberry jam and cottage cheese, rolled them into cigar shapes, packed them into a baking pan and then covered the whole thing with coffee cream and baked them in the oven until they got all warm and creamy. It was a delicious breakfast treat that I made a few times but somehow I managed to forget all about them. Lately, tho, crepes seem to be popping up all over my radar. There are several crepe places downtown that serve up nutella filled crepes and other sweet concoctions. I've always been able to resist their lure because, hey, it's just a rolled up pancake...what's the big deal? But then the other week, I stumbled onto Thimble's post about her portabello & asparagus crepes and I had to do a double take. Although I still haven't gotten around to making a savory dinner crepe yet, this past weekend I did take the crepe plunge and came up with these beauties. They were "scrumptious" (Cornelius' word for them) and kinda fancy which elevated our Sunday breakfast to extraordinary without much of an effort.

crepes with fresh apple filling
200 ml. milk
100 ml. water
3/4 c plus 2 t all-purpose flour
2 eggs
1/4 t salt
1 t vegetable oil
1 t vanilla

apple filling:
2 granny smith apples, sliced relatively thinly into half moons
2 t butter
2 t rum
2 T sour cherry jam

1. Place flour in a large bowl, add milk and water gradually, whisking until the mixture is smooth. Beat in eggs, salt, vegetable oil and vanilla extract. Make sure batter is very smooth, then set aside to rest for at least 20 minutes.

2. In a small skillet, melt butter for the filling. Add apples and sautee for a couple of minutes over medium heat. Add rum and cherry jam and stir about until the sauce thickens somewhat. Turn off heat and set aside.

3. Heat a 10-inch skillet over medium-high heat. Lightly grease and pour batter onto the skillet, about 1/4 cup. Pick up the skillet and swirl the batter around until it even coats the entire bottom of the pan. Cook until the edges come away from the pan and the top of the crepe looks almost dry, about 3 minutes. Turn and cook the other side for about a minute.

4. Fill crepe with filling, roll or fold, and serve immediately. Makes about ten 10-inch crepes.

playing breakfast catch-up

I'm trying to catch up on all of my recent recipes and figured a 2-recipe breakfast post would be a nice little bonus on this dreary day. Apparently Vancouver is in the midst of a wind and rain storm, charmingly called a "pineapple express". Such a sweet name for something so foul. There's nothing but grey clouds, darkness and enough rain to make me worry about our roof caving in. So what better way to spend the morning but baking muffins. I originally got this recipe off of Baking Sheet, but I made a few changes to the recipe. Although they do contain maple syrup as the sweetener, I didn't find them very maple-y tasting. They are still very delicious and very light in texture, even with the whole wheat flour.

whole wheat & yogurt cranberry muffins
1/3 c milk
2/3 c plain yogurt
1/3 c vanilla yogurt
1 large egg
1/2 c maple syrup
1 c whole wheat flour
1 c all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 t cinnamon
1/4 t nutmeg
1/4 t cardamom
2 T dried cranberries
2 T walnuts or sunflower seeds

1. Preheat the oven to 375F and lightly grease a 12-cup muffin tin. In a large bowl, whisk together milk, yogurt, egg and maple syrup.

2. In a medium bowl, stir together flours, baking soda, and spices. Pour the dry ingredients into wet ingredients and blend gently. Add in the cranberries and nuts/seeds.

3. Pour batter into muffin tins and bake for 15 - 18 minutes until muffins springs back lightly when touched. Carefully remove from tin and cool on a wire rack.



I'm not sure why it looks like this plate of crepes is sticking out its tongue at me but it got eaten up anyway! The next recipe I tried was again from my "hmmm, what am I going to make" blog favorite, Baking Sheet. During my last year of university, my roomate at the time used to make crepes as a weekend breakfast treat. She filled them with raspberry jam and cottage cheese, rolled them into cigar shapes, packed them into a baking pan and then covered the whole thing with coffee cream and baked them in the oven until they got all warm and creamy. It was a delicious breakfast treat that I made a few times but somehow I managed to forget all about them. Lately, tho, crepes seem to be popping up all over my radar. There are several crepe places downtown that serve up nutella filled crepes and other sweet concoctions. I've always been able to resist their lure because, hey, it's just a rolled up pancake...what's the big deal? But then the other week, I stumbled onto Thimble's post about her portabello & asparagus crepes and I had to do a double take. Although I still haven't gotten around to making a savory dinner crepe yet, this past weekend I did take the crepe plunge and came up with these beauties. They were "scrumptious" (Cornelius' word for them) and kinda fancy which elevated our Sunday breakfast to extraordinary without much of an effort.

crepes with fresh apple filling
200 ml. milk
100 ml. water
3/4 c plus 2 t all-purpose flour
2 eggs
1/4 t salt
1 t vegetable oil
1 t vanilla

apple filling:
2 granny smith apples, sliced relatively thinly into half moons
2 t butter
2 t rum
2 T sour cherry jam

1. Place flour in a large bowl, add milk and water gradually, whisking until the mixture is smooth. Beat in eggs, salt, vegetable oil and vanilla extract. Make sure batter is very smooth, then set aside to rest for at least 20 minutes.

2. In a small skillet, melt butter for the filling. Add apples and sautee for a couple of minutes over medium heat. Add rum and cherry jam and stir about until the sauce thickens somewhat. Turn off heat and set aside.

3. Heat a 10-inch skillet over medium-high heat. Lightly grease and pour batter onto the skillet, about 1/4 cup. Pick up the skillet and swirl the batter around until it even coats the entire bottom of the pan. Cook until the edges come away from the pan and the top of the crepe looks almost dry, about 3 minutes. Turn and cook the other side for about a minute.

4. Fill crepe with filling, roll or fold, and serve immediately. Makes about ten 10-inch crepes.

sicko

There was a time when I got sick constantly. It probably didn't help matters that I lived with a roommate who had a disease that left her immune system weak and was always having colds & sniffles or that we lived in a damp basement suite or even that I was living a rock n' roll lifestyle. No really! I was working days at a record store and I played bass in a power-pop-punk band at night. Being sick was just something I dealt with every few months. But when I moved out on my own and got a career and finally started living my life with just a sprinkling how adults are supposed to live, then the sickness stopped. Now, I can proudly boast that I get sick once every two years which I think is a pretty nice record.

Unfortunately, that 2 year window closed on me a couple of days ago. On Monday I went to bed with a sore throat and a bit of random coughing. The next 2 days were worse with aches and pains that left me with just enough stamina to hit the forward button whenever the theme song or credits would play on Season Four of the Gilmore Girls DVD. I was hurtin'. Needless to say there was not much cooking being done in this household. The only real treat I could muster up was my morning breakfast smoothie. Really, there are no hard to find ingredients or complex instructions in this one. Which surprises me as to why there are smoothie blends found in grocery store freezer sections. Are people really struggling with the concept of a smoothie? Fruit + Yogurt + Juice + Spinning Blades = Smoothie. It's not a complex equation. Here's my top secret "recipe":

pretty in pink smoothie
frozen strawberries*
orange juice
vanilla yogurt

1. Take a handful of frozen strawberries and put them into a blender. If you are lucky, you will have a beautiful actual vintage model beehive style Osterizer found at Value Village for $4.

2. Add a few generous spoonfulls of yogurt overtop the strawberries. I use a delicious organic vanilla yogurt from Vancouver Island that is so tasty that it actually converted me to liking yogurt in the first place.

3. Then, pour some orange juice over everything and hit blend. You may need to add more orange juice if everything churns to a crawl.

Pour into a fun glass and drink with a straw (or not).

* If I make this for Cornelius, I add a frozen banana too. I hate bananas, so I don't add it in mine.

Gâteau au Yogourt à la Bluets

It's going to be a much more productive week on the homefront, I can feel it. I've got a cake in the oven made with things I had already in the pantry and fridge. All morning, I had planned to bake a gingerbread cake since I had some leftover coffee from breakfast, but then came across Clotide's recipe for Gâteau au Yaourt à la Myrtille (but since I've never called a blueberry a myrtille, I went with the good ol' fashioned Quebecois word "bluets" and the French Canadian spelling of yogurt. I hope Clotide won't mind). I had summer blueberries in the freezer and my favorite vanilla yogurt in the fridge and the recipe seemed like a snap. It was. I reduced the amount of sugar in the recipe from 1 cup to just under a 3/4 cup, since I was using a sweetened yogurt. It's in the oven now, it smells heavenly and I can't wait to bite in. It will be a nice treat for both Cornelius and I as we work through the afternoon on our freelance projects. Time to throw on the tea kettle and take a break!

Gâteau au Yogourt à la Bluets
2 eggs
1 c of vanilla yogurt
scant 3/4 c sugar
1/2 c vegetable oil
2 c flour
1 T baking powder
1 t vanilla extract
1 T light rum
1 c frozen blueberries

1. Preheat the oven to 350° F. Butter and flour a 10 inch cake pan or a bundt pan.

2. In a large mixing-bowl, gently combine the yogurt, eggs, sugar, vanilla, oil and rum. In another bowl, sift together the flour and baking powder. Add the flour mixture into the yogurt mixture, and blend together -- don't overwork the dough. Once batter is combined, add the blueberries and gently stir til combined.

3. Pour the batter into the prepared cake pan, and bake for 30 to 35 minutes, until the top is golden brown and a cake tester comes out clean. Let stand for ten minutes, and transfer onto a rack to cool.

---

EDIT: The cake came out lovely and perfect! Not too sweet...in fact, I dusted the cake with icing sugar just to pump up the sweet factor. Cornelius and I ate up our very generous slices and I can't wait until dessert to have another piece!

easy peasy snacks

Last night we had some friends over. They brought over the 1958 Newport Beach Jazz Festival dvd and the Monterrey Pop Festival dvd. We promised them snacks. Because it's been so hot, I didn't really want to do any serious cooking or baking, so I came up with 2 tasty and super-easy snacks.

Snack no.1: Popsicles
Start this one early in the day, so you can eat them by nightfall. In a blender, put in the following: a handful of frozen strawberries, homemade lemonade to cover berries and then some, and 2-3 tablespoons of vanilla yoghurt. Blend at high speed until mixed. You may have to add some more lemonade if it's too thick. Pour into popsicle molds and freeze. Ultra delicious.


*note: You can substitute any kind of berry or juice to this "recipe". I've made it with orange juice, cranberry juice, pineapple juice, etc. and have used blueberries, black berries, bananas (for cornelius only, cuz i hate them!), or peaches.

Snack no. 2: Lemony-Garlicy Green Beans
1 lb of fresh green beans, trimmed
2 cloves of garlic, minced (1 clove if you aren't among friends)
2 lemons, juiced
2-3 T of olive oil
rock salt

Steam the green beans until bright green and crisp. You don't want to over cook these. Crisp = delicous! Drain and rinse in cold-cold water. At this point, I put the beans in the freezer just to get extra cold while I mixed the dressing. For the dressing, mix the garlic, lemon juice and olive oil together. Transfer beans into a nice serving dish and pour dressing over top. I tossed the beans and the dressing together with my hands. Sprinkle generously with rock salt and serve. It's better than chips. Seriously.


* these are the left over beans from last night. the lemon juice "cooked" them so they aren't so crisp or green, but they still are tasty! also, you may find them too lemoney, and if so, cut down on the lemon juice.