Tag

tea time treats

Carrot Cake Cream Cheese Mini Muffins

written by Ali

These carrot cake cream cheese mini muffins are an homage to the fall like weather we’ve had the past few days. Cinnamon, carrots, cream cheese – all of these scream fall to me. Plus, I’ve been on a carrot mission this weekend – carrots have been accumulating in the fridge veggie drawer over the past two CSAs. I opted to go the carrot cake route to take care of a couple of them, creating these carrot cake cream cheese mini muffins.

I’m a fan of mini-muffins, as you may have noticed. These are the perfect size for a quick treat to go with my coffee first thing in the morning. They also freeze beautifully, which means I can pack two of them in my lunch, keep it in the fridge overnight, and be ready to enjoy a cozy muffin first thing in the morning. The size also keeps the portion to a reasonable calorie intake. I also love the idea of cream cheese on the inside of the muffin rather than as frosting. It’s such a perfectly tangy little surprise in these mini muffins.

This week’s CSA share made me glad, yet again, that I live here on the Southern Oregon coast. We’re getting an abundance of fava beans – which just happen to be my favorite snack. They are so easy to roast and can be eaten pretty much in their entirety this way. In addition to favas, we got lettuce, tomatoes, an onion, carrots, broccoli, and zucchini. We picked up berries, jalapenos, Anaheim peppers, corn, and more tomatoes from the farmer’s market. The haul this week resulted in a salad (no surprise there), grilled corn, tomato/pepper/onion Pico de Gallo, more zucchini pancakes, broccoli cheddar pot pies (recipe will be on the blog later this week), and these carrot cake cream cheese mini muffins.

I love that the carrots we’ve been getting just taste intensely carroty. Talk about the terroir of the land – all of the produce we’ve gotten has reflected where we live. And despite the fact that sometimes I look in the fridge and scream Eek! at the thought of all the cooking I need to do, I’m really enjoying this season.

I sized down this recipe to make a reasonable number of mini-muffins (a total of 16). You could definitely size up easily and make several batches worth. I resisted, as I’m pretty sure I’ll be getting more carrots next week and am trying to avoid stacks and stacks of freezer food I’ll never make it through.

Yum

Carrot Cake Cream Cheese Mini Muffins

Ingredients

For the muffins

¾ cup flour
¼ cup sugar
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon cinnamon
¼ teaspoon salt
1/3 cup oil
1 egg
½ teaspoon vanilla
1 cup grated carrots

For the cream cheese filling

¼ package cream cheese (2 ounces)
½ teaspoon sugar
½ teaspoon vanilla

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees
Combine the dry ingredients, from flour through salt. Create a well in the dry ingredients and add in all ingredients from the oil through the vanilla. Stir in the grated carrots.
Make the cream cheese filling by combining the cream cheese with the sugar and vanilla.
Grease or use mini muffin cupcake papers on at least 16 mini muffin cups. Place 1 teaspoon of the muffin mix in each cup. Place ½ teaspoon of cream cheese in the middle of each muffin cup. Place a final 1 teaspoon of the muffin mix over the cream cheese.
Bake for fifteen minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle of the muffin comes out clean.
Makes 16. Enjoy!

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August 7, 2017 2 comments

Baked Goods Breakfast Dessert

Rainbow Marmalade Pop Tarts

written by Ali

Fandom Foodies #Nyanuary is the inspiration for my rainbow marmalade pop tarts.

via GIPHY

Ok – so not the original Nyan cat, but who doesn’t love Pusheen? The whole Nyan cat thing got me down the road of homemade pop tarts, and I happened to have blood orange marmalade on hand, so decided to make rainbow marmalade pop tarts. I couldn’t resist a cat-inspired challenge, since our much loved cats both inspire me daily (inspire me to take more naps, relax more, and enjoy my food with great relish).

I couldn’t resist – they are so adorable!

Ok – back to the food. I’ve thought about making pop tarts for quite some time – they are pretty easy to make, since they are basically pie dough, filling, and frosting. They make a great coffee treat first thing in the morning, as well as go well with afternoon tea. I had so much fun playing around with these – who doesn’t enjoy decorating with rainbow sprinkles, after all? Creating a good Nyan cat out of pop tarts, frosting, and sprinkles turned out to be more of a challenge than I expected. Clay came in at one point and told me my creation was #nailedit. Ok – that might be a fair assessment of the final product. Still. I did all my photos and then realized I needed at least one photo with my maneki-neko cats and a rainbow marmalade pop tart.

Here’s the Nyan cat attempt:

And here are some better photos of the actual pop tarts – both frosted and un-frosted:

Put it all together, and you definitely have #Nyanuary

Hope you enjoy making these rainbow marmalade pop tarts as much as I did!

Yum

Rainbow Marmalade Pop Tarts

Ingredients

For the dough

1 1/4 cup flour
1/2 cup butter
4 - 6 tablespoons cold water (or as needed)
1 teaspoon vanilla

For the filling

1/2 jar of marmalade

For the frosting

1 cup powdered sugar
1 tablespoon milk (or as needed)
Rainbow sprinkles to decorate

Instructions

Combine the flour, butter, and vanilla in a small bowl. Use a pastry cutter or knife to cut the butter into small pieces and incorporate into the flour until the butter/flour/vanilla mixture is the consistency of small peas. Add the water, one tablespoon at a time until the dough starts to hold together. Knead a couple of times and then refrigerate for an hour.
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Roll the chilled dough out on a floured surface to 1/4 inch in thickness. Cut the dough into rectangles that are 2 inches x 3 inches. I was able to get 16 rectangles out of the dough for a total of 8 pop tarts.
Place half of the rectangles single layer on a parchment lined baking sheet. Put 1 tablespoon of marmalade in the middle of each rectangle. Cover with the remaining dough and crimp the edges using a fork. Using the fork, poke three rows of holes on the top to reduce the amount of marmalade that spills out. Bake for 15 minutes or until light brown. Cool completely.
To make the frosting, combine the powdered sugar and milk and stir. Add more powdered sugar or more milk to get to the desired consistency. Frost and sprinkle with rainbow sprinkles. Enjoy!
Makes 8 pop tarts

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This recipe is linked up to Fandom Foodies #Nyanuary, hosted this month by Pretty Cake Machine

January 25, 2017 4 comments

Baked Goods Breads Breakfast Farmer's Market

Pumpkin Date Bread

written by Ali

The October/November pick for the Cook the Books Club was Jessica Soffer’s Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots.

I had very mixed feelings about this book. It was well written enough for me to stay engaged and read it to the end, largely because I connected to the main character, Lorca, though throughout the book, I really, really found myself disliking her mother and her absolutely blase disregard for her daughter’s desperate need for her love. Full disclosure here – in another not too long ago life, I worked very closely with populations of both adults and young adults who were highly at-risk and often engaged in very risky behaviors, of which self-mutilation was often the least of it. I think that’s why I struggled with this book so much – I know that it takes a lot of perseverance for someone to save themselves and few get so lucky to find a Victoria, the other main character and a former restaurant owner, to help them.

Ok – now that that’s out there…the book was a feast of good food. After all, the entire focus is on how food can bring those who are desperately lonely together, and that particular theme resonates for me. I left the book with the feeling that food could transform Lorca’s life and make her into a resilient adult and that made me happy. It also made me happy to go flipping back through the book when I was done and think about what inspired me. I finally landed on a variation of date bread, because of this line of Victoria’s: “‘Date bread,’ I said. ‘From my country.’ Oldest trick in the book: bake something to make guests feel at home.” It is November, after all, and I’ve been in a baking mood. My pumpkin date bread relies on the flavors of the season with a good dose of pumpkin pie spice and pumpkin puree. The dates give it an extra punch of sweetness. It’s dense and chewy and goes really well with a cup of coffee in the afternoon.

This is also pretty easy to put together and makes a generous two loafs – perfect for having a loaf to eat now and one to freeze for later. Last, but not least, this is a low-fat pumpkin date bread, which gets much of its moist texture from unsweetened apple sauce and Greek yogurt.

Pumpkin Date Bread
Makes 2 loaves

3 1/2 cups unbleached flour
2 tablespoons pumpkin pie spice
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/2 cup brown sugar, lightly packed
1/2 cup white sugar
2 cups pumpkin puree (or 1 15 ounce can)
1 cup unsweetened apple sauce
1/2 cup plain Greek yogurt
1 teaspoon vanilla
4 eggs
1 cup chopped dates

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Combine the dry ingredients, from the flour through the white sugar in a large bowl and mix. Combine the wet ingredients, from the pumpkin puree through the eggs in a small bowl and mix to incorporate all the ingredients. Add the wet ingredients to the dry, mixing just enough to incorporate all the dry ingredients. Add the dates.

Divide the batter between two bread pans that have either been buttered or that are lined with parchment paper.

Bake for 45 minutes or until a knife or skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean.

Enjoy!

Many thanks to Cook the Books Club – I’ve had so much fun developing recipes based on the last two challenges. I’m looking forward to more reading and cooking in the future!

I’ve also linked up with this month’s tea time treat challenge, which is all about comfort food (and what’s more comforting that fresh bread?). Check out the wonderful hosts of Tea Time Treats: Lavender and Lovage, Travels for Taste and Jo’s Kitchen. Lavender and Lovage is hosting this month, so be sure to check out all the recipes for Tea Time Treats here.

November 7, 2016 10 comments

Baked Goods Breakfast

Nectarine Coffee Cake Muffins

written by Ali

These Nectarine Coffee Cake Muffins feel a little like I’m starting to grasp at the very last of summer. We’ve had such a very mild summer here in the PNW – yesterday, when I made these muffins, my cat temperature barometer, our thirteen-year-old calico, was on the couch, thoroughly covered with my shawl. In fact, all of the kitties this weekend were saying that winter is coming – there was a lot of cat piling together on the couch with tails wrapped over noses. Even the dog spent some time on the couch with me first thing in the morning, snuggled up under a blanket.

If winter is right around the corner, I’m highly motivated to take advantage of the bounty of the summer season and do a lot of cooking with the likes of peaches and nectarines. Nectarines are one of my favorite fruits – I like the fact they have smooth skins (I’m not a huge fan of peach fuzzies). Nectarines also bring back happy memories of doing u-pick in my last town in the PNW: the farm where I would do the majority of my u-pick had the most luscious nectarines and while I often went to pick canning quantities, the nectarines were the fruit that were least likely to make it into a jar.

These muffins are fairly quick and easy to make. The nectarine slice on the top gives them a hint of cobbler taste, with plenty of coffee cake crunch from the crumb topping. These are ideal for enjoying a morning’s sunshine on the patio with a cup of coffee.

Nectarine Coffee Cake Muffins
Makes 12

Coffee Cake Muffins Crumb Topping
¼ cup butter, melted
¾ cup flour
½ cup packed brown sugar
½ teaspoon vanilla
½ teaspoon cinnamon

Coffee Cake Muffins
¾ cup butter
½ cup sugar
2 eggs
¾ cup sour cream
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 ½ cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
1 large nectarine, sliced into twelve thin pieces

Coffee Cake Muffins Crumb Topping

Add all ingredients in a small bowl and mix thoroughly. The flour should be completed blended. Set aside.

Coffee Cake Muffins

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees

Cream the butter and the sugar until it is fluffy. Add the eggs and mix. Add the sour cream and vanilla and mix again.

Sift together the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Add the dry ingredient mixture to the wet, about ¼ cup at a time until all is incorporated.

Line 12 muffin cups with muffin cup liners. Spoon about a quarter cup of the muffin mixture into each cup. Spoon the coffee cake muffin crumb mixture over the top of each muffin and place a nectarine slice on top of each.

Bake for 30 minutes or until a knife inserted in the middle of the coffee cake muffins comes out clean.

I’m delighted to share this recipe as an Afternoon Tea Time Treats. Please check out the hosts of Tea Time Treats: Jo’s Kitchen, Travels for Taste, and Lavender and Lovage. These are three of my absolute favorite blogs – so do go look.

August 9, 2016 0 comment

Baked Goods Breakfast Farmer's Market

Roasted Strawberry and Rhubarb Coffee Cake

written by Ali

I love coffee cake. It’s a guilty pleasure – a little slice of foodie heaven next to a cup of coffee first thing in the morning. I am so decidedly not a morning person. It takes a strong Americano in the morning and at least a half hour or so of reading email updates and listserv posts before I’m able to really and truly be functional. All of this can be made so much better if the coffee is accompanied by breakfast food. Two weeks ago, I decided I was tired of the temptation to wander down to the nearby coffee shop and buy something (a bagel, a croissant, and so on), and the strawberries and rhubarb were looking so good at the farmer’s market, and I’m a recipe creator now, after all – a food blog writer, I should be able to design my own coffee cake.

Please take note that that was two weeks ago and this recipe is just showing up now. That’s because I learned a little secret about being a recipe writer: sometimes, you are bound to have an epic fail. The first coffee cake I made that incorporated strawberries and rhubarb developed a buttery life of its own in the oven. It gurgled, it oozed and eventually, after much whining on my part, it ended up in the trash, as it was totally and completely inedible. There was much too much moisture in the fruit. I’d tried to treat the butter in the crumb like you would in a pie dough (not melted, just made into butter pellets that then melted with great drama in the oven).

That’s the great thing about being a home cook. If at first you don’t succeed, go back to the drawing board and try again. This week, I managed to make this picture perfect beauty. I started by doing some research about the coffee cake crumb – that delectable, sugary, buttery, crunchy topping. No matter what anyone tells you, be sure to melt your butter first and use an adequate amount of flour in the crumb. This will actually create a crumb, rather than a butter lake in your oven. Second, I decided it was time to get on the roasted fruit train and decided to roast my strawberries and rhubarb to reduce the moisture content a little. Yes – I can now see why roasted strawberries are a thing. They are soft and melty and lovely. The rhubarb also takes on a buttery softness and, as I didn’t use much sugar, stays a little tart. My advice is to either make more of the roasted strawberries and rhubarb than my recipe here calls for or save just a few tablespoons from what you make here and use it in the roasted strawberry rhubarb martini that will be showing up on the blog tomorrow.

Until then, happy mornings.

Roasted Strawberry Rhubarb Coffee Cake
Serves 8-10

Roasted Strawberries and Rhubarb
6 strawberries, hulled and cut in half
1 stalk rhubarb, sliced into ½ inch pieces
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla

Coffee Cake Crumb
¼ cup butter, melted
¾ cup flour
½ cup packed brown sugar
½ teaspoon vanilla
½ teaspoon cinnamon

Coffee Cake
¾ cup butter
½ cup sugar
2 eggs
¾ cup sour cream
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 ½ cups flour
½ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt

Roasted Strawberries and Rhubarb
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and place the cut strawberries and rhubarb in a single layer. Sprinkle with sugar and vanilla. Roast for 30 minutes, scoop the fruit into a bowl and then set aside to cool. Once cool, mash gently.

Coffee Cake Crumb

Add all ingredients in a small bowl and mix thoroughly. The flour should be completed blended. Set aside.

Coffee Cake

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees

Cream the butter and the sugar until it is fluffy. Add the eggs and mix. Add the sour cream and vanilla and mix again.

Sift together the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Add the dry ingredient mixture to the wet, about ¼ cup at a time until all is incorporated.

Butter a 9 inch cake pan. Spoon the coffee cake mixture into the pan. Spoon the roasted strawberry and rhubarb mix over the top. Spoon the coffee cake crumb mixture over the fruit.

Bake for 40 minutes or until a knife inserted in the middle of the coffee cake comes out clean.

I’m happy to have linked this recipe with Lavender and Lovage and The Hedge Combers for June’s Tea Time Treats challenge.

June 2, 2016 2 comments