Chocolate Peanut Butter Muffins

These are absolute gems, they taste almost like cupcakes but I've made them more healthy by using whole wheat flour and wheat bran.  I made mine into mini muffins because I didn't think there would be enough for 12 large muffins.

Ingredients

3/4 cup flour (I used whole wheat and added extra baking powder, about 1/2 tsp more)

1/4 cup quick-cooking rolled oats

1/4 cup wheat bran

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/8 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup brown sugar, packed

1/2 cup peanut butter (I used natural)

1 egg

1/2 cup milk

1/4 cup chocolate chips (try the Special Dark ones, they are great!)

Directions

1.  Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

2.  In a mixing bowl, stir together first 6 ingredients, mixing well while making a well in the center of the mixture.

3.  In another bowl, mix brown sugar and peanut butter with a mixer on medium speed setting until fluffy.

4.  Add egg and beat well.

5.  Now add the flour mixture to the beaten mixture; at the same time slowly add the milk and beat until well blended.

6.  Fold in the chocolate chips.

7.  Grease a muffin pan or line the pan cups with paper baking cups.

8.  Spoon batter into the cups, filling it about 3/4 of the way full.

9.   Bake for 15 to 20 minutes for regular sized muffins and 10 minutes for mini muffins or until golden.

Beer Bread mmmm

I love beer bread!  It's easy, it's quick and it's delicious.  I have used this recipe many times and in many different variations.  For example, I've made it cheese beer bread and today I made it garlic beer bread!  I can't wait to taste it this time, it never lasts long.

Ingredients

3 cups flour (sifted)

3 teaspoons baking powder (omit if using Self-Rising Flour)

1 teaspoon salt (omit if using Self-Rising Flour)

1/4 cup sugar

1 (12 ounce) can beer

1/4 cup butter
 

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

2. Mix dry ingredients and beer.

3. Pour into a greased loaf pan.

4. Pour melted butter over mixture.

5. Bake 45 minutes, remove from pan and cool for at least 15 minutes.

Good enough to eat? I think so!

Tonight I made turkey soup from homemade stock.  Last night I boiled down a turkey and chicken carcass with carrots, celery, onions, salt and pepper.  Today I finished off the soup by straining the stock and adding fresh carrots, celery, corn, broccoli, cauliflower, brown rice and the leftover chicken from the beer can chicken I made yesterday for supper.  We also had grilled cheese sandwiches on the cheddar beer bread I baked yesterday.

Pita Pizzas

This is not really a special recipe but just an idea to help save carbs when you make pizza at home.  We use whole wheat pitas to make individual pizzas and top them with our favourite toppings.  Today I used mushrooms, red and green peppers, tomatoes, onions, pepperoni and canadian bacon as well as mozzarella.  My favourite thing to do is to combine the regular pizza sauce with buffalo chicken wing sauce for more of a kick.

Rotisserie Chicken on the bbq

I was very excited to try this out and it turned out great.  I took a rather large chicken and did a dry rub of smoked salt, montreal chicken seasoning, granulated garlic and rosemary and then put it in a plastic bag for several hours (I recommend 3 or more).  Then I put a head of garlic and a lemon inside the cavity of the chicken to prepare it for the barbecue.  To cook the chicken, we preheated the grill to 225 C and then turned off two of the burners.  We put in a drip tray beneath the chicken and filled it with white wine and positioned the chicken on the non lit side of the bbq for indirect heating.  It took about 2 hours and came out just wonderful.  Here is the picture:

Oriental Mini Meatloves

If you're looking for a way to control your portion size, this recipe is great!  The flavour is wonderful and you can use the recipe to make meatballs if you prefer that.  I used a jumbo muffin tin for part of the meat mixture and a regular size muffin tin for the rest (perfect size for my 2 year old).  They didn't fill up the cups as nicely as I thought so they are a bit irregularly shaped but the taste is great.  They cooked for exactly 30 minutes and came out perfectly done.  The sauce is also great but a bit too sweet for me.  Perhaps less honey would be better next time.  I served them over instant rice and drizzled the sauce over the top.  As usual, I got this recipe from recipezaar.

Oriental Mini Meatloaves with Honey Garlic Sauce

Meatloaves


1 1/2 lbs ground turkey or ground chicken
1/3 cup water chestnut, chopped fine
3/4 cup fine breadcrumb
2/3 cup evaporated milk
1/4 cup soya sauce
1/4 cup green onion
1 egg
2 teaspoons oxo low-sodium instant chicken bouillon granules
1 garlic clove, minced

Sauce

1/3 cup ketchup
1/3 cup honey
2 tablespoons soya sauce
1/2 teaspoon garlic
 
Directions
 
1. Meatloaves-Combine all ingredients in a large bowl.
2. Mix lightly but throughly to blend.
3. Divide into 12 muffin cups.
4. Bake at 350 degrees for 30-35 minutes.
5. (You can freeze the loaves at this point. Place into a large ziploc bag, label and freeze. To serve: heat in oven or microwave until warm, serve with sauce.).
6. Or Remove from pan and serve with honey garlic sauce immediately.
7. Sauce-Combine ingredients in a sauce pan.
8. Cook and stir on low heat until hot and bubbly.
9. Serve with rice or Oriental noodles.

White Chocolate Raspberry Cheesecake bars

This weekend we got some hard news, my Baba had passed away after 88 years of wonderful life.  She was an excellent cook and always had the yummiest treats for us when we visited.  I decided to make these bars as a pick me up and a tribute to her, she would have liked to add them to her repertoire.  Some notes for next time I make it, definitely make sure your oven rack is not set to the lowest, it took about 35 minutes to cook when it should have taken only 25 and use a smooth raspberry jam, not a jelly.  I damaged the top of the cheesecake a bit trying to smooth the jelly over the top.

Ingredients

12 OREO Cookies, finely crushed

2 Tbsp. butter, melted

3 squares BAKER'S White Chocolate, divided

2 pkg. (8 oz. each) PHILADELPHIA Cream Cheese, softened

1/2 cup sugar

1 tsp. vanilla 2 eggs

1/4 cup red raspberry preserves

HEAT oven to 350ºF. Mix cookie crumbs and butter; press onto bottom of 8- or 9-inch square pan. Melt 2 chocolate squares as directed on package.

BEAT cream cheese, sugar and vanilla with mixer until blended. Add melted chocolate; mix well. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing on low speed after each just until blended. Pour over crust.

BAKE 25 to 28 min. or until center is almost set. Cool 5 min.; spread with preserves. Melt remaining chocolate square; drizzle over cheesecake. Cool cheesecake completely. Refrigerate 4 hours

Blueberry Bran Muffins

I've had low iron which means iron supplements which means problems with constipation so I've been trying to add more fiber into my diet.  After eating all the storebought muffins we purchased I decided to make my own bran muffins and hopefully make them a bit healthier.  I found this recipe on recipezaar and made them pretty much as written.  I think they took about 25 minutes to cook and I used blueberry yogurt.  I would advise people to use the half applesauce, half oil combination but I didn't because I couldn't find my applesauce.  It would make the recipe that much healthier.  Hope you enjoy!

Yogurt Blueberry Bran Muffins
12 muffins

Ingredients
400 g any flavour yogurt (about 1-2/3 cups)
2 teaspoons baking soda
3/4 cup brown sugar (increase to 1 cup if you prefer sweeter muffins)
2 large eggs
1 cup oil (or 1/2 cup oil and 1/2 cup apple sauce)
2 cups natural bran (not cereal, the real wheat bran)
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 cups flour (can be white or whole wheat)
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 cup blueberries (I always use about 2 cups, I like lots of blueberries in my muffins)

Directions

1.  Preheat oven 350°.
2.  Line 12 muffin cups with paper liners or spray with Pam.
3.  Measure yogurt into medium bowl and mix in baking soda, it will foam and it is supposed too; set aside.
4.  In a large bowl beat together sugar, eggs and oil.
5.  Add bran and vanilla.
6.  In a separate bowl mix together flour and baking powder.
7.  Gradually add the flour and yogurt mixtures alternately to the sugar mixture.
8.  Fold in blueberries.
9.  Bake 20-35 minutes.
10. Makes 12 very large muffins or 18 large muffins.

Glazed ham with sauce and Ultimate Greek salad

Baked Glazed Ham

For a long time I've thought about doing a food blog, even before the popular movie Julie and Julia came out.  Enough people ask where I get my recipes that I thought I would share them here, along with some pictures of how the food turned out.  I know that I like to pick recipes based on how they look so this is a way to help other people pick what they would like to make too and provide them with a recipe complete with the tweaks I might make to it.  My biggest source of recipes is Recipezaar and that's where I'll be posting links from most of the time.

     For our church's 6th anniversary celebration, I made a baked glazed ham with a sauce derived from the actual glaze and a greek salad (called ultimate by whoever posted it on Recipezaar).  For the salad, I pretty much left the recipe exactly as is and you can find it here.  The ham was a new variation that I decided to try out because I didn't have all the ingredients for my usual recipe.  This is the recipe but I did change it a bit to suit my diet and tastes.  I used a table top roaster to do the ham as I find it easier to reach the ham and baste it and it also stays very moist.  Firstly I used only 1 cup of brown sugar in the glaze for the actual ham, I didn't think it needed 3 cups and the ham was far too small for that amount anyway.  I kept the rest of the measurements pretty much the same.  I scored the ham as advised but didn't use the whole cloves because I don't actually have any.  I brushed the glaze on the ham with a pastry brush and instead of water, I used orange juice in the bottom of my roaster.  I baked the ham at 325 for the first 2 hours but found it was going too slowly so I increased the temperature to 350 and basted it about every half an hour with the bulb baster.  I added about a cup of water after the first 2 hours as the orange juice had mostly evaporated.

     For the sauce, I took the leftover glaze from when I first painted it on and added the same amounts again of the glaze (keeping the brown sugar to one cup) except for the flour which I mixed with a tablespoon of water and added them into a medium saucepan.  I increased the heat and let it boil down for about 5 minutes.  I then added the flour/water mixture to further thicken the sauce and turned it off the heat almost immediately.  I then allowed it to cool and put it in a tupperware to be heated up right before the ham was served.  It needed a few minutes in the microwave and then was served alongside the ham at the dinner.  I'm told it was a success, I didn't eat any myself because I have gestational diabetes and have to avoid sugar which was in pretty high amounts in the sauce. 

     So there you have it, my first blogged meal.  I have a few others to share from the past, if I can find the pictures that is and plenty more to come in the future.  I hope to include some pictures of my daughter and me cooking together as she gets older.  She is starting to help me in the kitchen as she enjoys being helpful.  Hope you enjoy!  Oh and the future meals will likely be much healthier, I don't cook like this every day haha.