Orange Almond Whole Grain Muffins

Happy Monday! While my little Jack bear is napping, I've got a chance to share a recipe for some very tasty muffins I made recently. This recipe if a slight adaptation from one in the April 2014 issue of Better Homes and Gardens magazine. I made these for Joe to take to work when it was his turn to bring snacks to his team's weekly meeting. I was a little worried that they would be super dense with the quinoa and whole wheat flour, and that the guys on his team would be put off by the appearance since I used red quinoa. But I shouldn't have been! The muffins were nice and fluffy and Joe says that everyone really enjoyed them. Now as I said, these are slightly changed from the original recipe. They used walnuts instead of almonds and did  not use any vanilla or almond extracts. Here's how I made them:

Orange-Almond Whole Grain Muffins
Makes 12 muffins

1 cup regular rolled oats
1 cup cooked quinoa, cooled (I cooked the quinoa and used it while it was still very hot, and it worked fine)
1/3 cup slivered almonds, chopped
1 T olive oil
1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 t. baking powder
1/2 t. baking soda
1/2 t. salt
1 orange
1/2 cup buttermilk (or 1/2 cup milk with 2 teaspoons of vinegar mixed in)
1/2 cup sour cream
2 eggs
3 T. butter, melted
1 t. vanilla extract
1/4 t. almond extract

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Place oats, quinoa, and almonds on a baking sheet lined with parchment or a non-stick mat. Toss with the olive oil to coat. Spread in an even layer and bake for 10-12 minutes. Remove and cool.

2. Grease or line 12 muffin cups with paper liners. In a large bowl, stir together all but 1/4 cup of the quinoa mixture, the flours, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Set aside

3. Finely shred 2 t. of peel from the orange. Then juice the orange to get about 3 T. of juice. In a medium bowl or large measuring cup, whisk together the buttermilk, sour cream, eggs, butter, orange juice, orange zest, vanilla and almond extracts. Add to the flour mixture and stir until just combined. The mixture will still be lumpy.

4. Divide between the prepared muffin cups and sprinkle with remaining quinoa mixture. Bake for 15 minutes or until golden brown.

According to the original recipe, each muffin has 238 calories, 10 g fat, 43 mg cholesterol, 267 mg sodium, 31 g carbs, 3 g fiber, and 7 g protein. That's a good amount of protein for a muffin!

These are great to have on hand for a quick breakfast of you're rushing to get out the door.

I think that's it for today! I'll be back later this week for a 2 month post on Mr. Jack. He's been doing great and is growing like crazy!

Crockpot Chicken and Sausage Creole

Hello! I'll just go ahead and put this out there for those who haven't heard yet. Joe and I found out today that our baby on the way is a BOY!!! :) We're pretty excited and happy to stop calling him "it" haha. Once I finish a few current projects I'll be able to start on the baby's room. Hopefully I'll remember to keep you guys updated on that.

For tonight I just have a recipe to share. But it's a good one! I found this recipe earlier this summer and have probably made it 3-4 times since. As the weather gets colder in a couple of months, I imagine that we'll be having it for dinner even more often. The other nice thing about it is that it makes enough for 3 meals for us. I just freeze two containers and it reheats great. This recipe is from a blog I've referenced before called Pinch of Yum and as with every other recipe from that site, this one is fairly simple and always turns out great! If you want to see her exact recipe as well as some beautiful food photography then definitely click on the link and check out her post.  

I made very minor tweaks to this recipe based on things we had available at home. Also, if you're not lucky enough to live down south where you can get some real andouille sausage, then I recommend the Johnsonville version that you should be able to find at your regular grocery store. They make a couple of versions and they're both very tasty! Here is how I make it:

Crockpot Chicken and Sausage Creole

2 green peppers, diced
1 large white or yellow onion, diced
2-3 cloves of garlic, minced
1 lb Andouille or smoked sausage, sliced
1 lb boneless skinless chicken breast, whole, frozen
8 oz. can tomato sauce
15 oz can diced tomatoes (I use fire roasted tomatoes from Aldi and they give a really nice flavor)
3 T tomato paste
2 cups chicken stock
1 can black beans, drained and rinsed
Cajun Seasoning to taste (probably start with a couple teaspoons)
Rice for serving (I was thinking today that this would also be AMAZING served over cheese grits. Just sayin')

I usually start this dish the night before we're planning on having it for dinner so that there is less prep work in the morning. All I do the night before is chop the onions, peppers, garlic and sausage and put it all in a large container so it will be ready to dump in the crockpot in the morning.

All the "pre-chop" ingredients

When you're ready to get the crockpot going, add the pre-chopped veggies and sausage, tomato sauce, diced tomatoes (including juice), tomato paste, chicken stock, cajun seasoning and black beans and stir to combine. Then add the frozen chicken breasts and kind of nestle them down in the liquid.

Everything else (minus the chicken broth and Cajun seasoning)

Pre-cooking

Put the lid on the crockpot and set on low for 8-10 hours. After the 8-10 hours of cooking, use a couple of forks to shred the chicken breasts right in the crockpot. Then you can either turn the crockpot off or set it on warm while you make some rice. Serve over rice and enjoy!

Post-cooking, but before shredding the chicken

All done!

Like I said, we really love this dish and I plan on making a few batches to add to my freezer "stash" before our little man arrives. If you wanted to stretch it a little farther you could add more liquid, another can of black beans, or more veggies. It's a pretty versatile recipe.

In other news, I got a wild hair this weekend and decided that the shower in our master bath needed to have the tile grout resealed and all the caulk removed and redone. (Is this what people mean when they talk about "nesting"? haha) So I sat and scrubbed on Sunday and started trying to cut out the old caulk tonight. After about 2 minutes of trying to remove the caulk, I started to second guess myself. Maybe this wasn't the best idea, but I'm too far in now and it has to be finished! I just hope that in the end I have a shower that looks nicer and stays clean a little longer. There will be no before and after on this project because well, it's just a shower. But if I'm away from the blog for a bit, you can at least guess why. I think that's it for tonight, thanks for reading!

Homemade Chicken Stock - a.k.a Liquid Gold

Disclaimer: The pictures in this posts aren't exactly pretty, but they do show the steps to make some delicious chicken stock :)

I used to buy boxed chicken broth whenever I needed some for a recipe but it didn't have a whole lot of flavor and I always wondered how many questionable ingredients were in it. I knew that chicken broth could be made at home but I figured it would be some kind of laborious undertaking requiring me to stand over the stove for hours stirring a pot. That changed when I stumbled across a blog post one day that talked about making chicken stock in a crockpot. It looked super simple but it required having some pre-cooked chicken bones to use as the base of the stock. Since we always buy boneless/skinless chicken breasts, I had no bones available. However, after roasting a couple of whole chickens and saving all the bones from each one, I finally had enough to make a batch of chicken stock.

I first made this last summer and have made it a couple times since. In the last year we haven't had to buy boxed chicken broth at all! Quick side note: I just looked up the difference between stock and broth and apparently stock is typically made with bones and cooked a long time to get some of the gelatin out of the bone, giving it a thicker consistency. Broth is made with chicken meat and not cooked as long. Anyway, back to the recipe. Once you've got the chicken bones saved up, it really couldn't be easier to make a whole bunch of broth. It's kind of a "set it and forget it" recipe.

Homemade Chicken Stock
makes about 4 quarts

Tools needed:
- Large crockpot )I think mine is 6 quarts)
- Slotted spoon
- Mesh strainer
- Cheese cloth
- Containers for freezing chicken stock.

Ingredients:
- Bones from about 2 whole fryer chickens (probably about a pound of bones). The ones I use typically still have bits of cooked meat and skin on them, but that's fine. Just gives it more flavor!
- 1 carrot
- Small onion, or 1/2 an onion
- 2 cloves of garlic
- 1 tsp. whole peppercorns
- 1 bay leaf
- small sprig of rosemary (optional, we just happened to have some)
- water

You'll notice I don't add any salt. I figured there was some on the chicken from when I seasoned and cooked it originally. Plus not adding salt will keep the sodium of the finished stock lower so that you can just add salt to the dish you're using it in instead.

To start, dump your chicken bones into the crockpot. I freeze the bones until I'm ready to make stock and then just use them right out of the freezer without thawing them. Next, pour approximately 5 quarts of water into the crockpot. You probably want to keep the water level to within an inch or 1/2 inch from the top. I like to use hot water so that the frozen bones will break apart from the big clump they're in.

Then give your vegetables a rough chop. No need to peel the carrot or anything. For the garlic just smash it with the side of the knife.

Add caption

Add the vegetables, peppercorns, rosemary, and bay leaf into the crockpot. Give everything a little stir then put the lid on, plug the crockpot in and set it on low.

Let the stock cook on low for a full 24 hours. Just a word of warning, this WILL make your entire house smell like roasted chicken. So if that doesn't sound like something you want, maybe consider setting the crockpot in the garage or something. Although if you're making this on a cold winter day, it might be kind of comforting to have something so tasty smelling cooking all day :) After cooking for 24 hours, turn the crockpot off and either let it sit for a little bit to cool, or you can go ahead and start straining it out.

To get the stock ready for storing, start by using a slotted spoon or "spider" to scoop out all the bones and large chunks of vegetables.

Then set a mesh strainer over a large bowl, or in my case an 8 cup glass measuring cup, and line the strainer with some cheese cloth that has been doubled up a couple times.

Using a ladle, begin scooping the stock from the crockpot and into the strainer. If you see any chunks or things getting through the strainer, you may want to add another layer of cheese cloth. In the end you should have a strainer full of nasty bits, and two big bowls of liquid gold :)

I like to divide the stock up in a few different ways. With this batch I ended up with 3 pint containers, 1 quart container and 24 "pucks". To make the little pucks of broth I use flexible silicon cupcake holders that we found at Walmart. They work amazingly well for this! Once the stock is frozen you just peel each flexible mold off and place the puck into a Ziploc bag. I like having these if I just want to add some stock to a sauce but don't need very much.

This homemade stock is also really nice to drink when you have a cold. I've taken out a couple of the pucks before and heated them in the microwave just to drink. It may sound a little strange but it tastes great and some people swear by the healing properties of this "bone broth". It's worth a shot, right?!

Well, like I said, not the most appetizing pictures today but maybe it got you thinking about making something at home that you'd usually buy at the store. Also, if you're thinking you'd like to roast a couple chickens at home in order to get the bones for the stock, there are tons of good tips and recipes online. Just do a quick Google search. In the next couple days I'll share a recipe that I've been making a lot recently and that will use some of this stock. Thanks for reading and have a great night!

Mardi Gras King Cake

This may be the BEST king cake I've ever had, but I didn't want to put that in the post title since those are pretty strong words. Especially to anyone who has tried some of the excellent king cakes you can get in south Louisiana. But really, this cake was awesome! Part of what made it so delicious was that I filled it both cream cheese and pecan praline fillings. But even the dough was excellent and I'm sure would be delicious with a typical cinnamon sugar filling. I made this cake for the Super Bowl party that Joe and I went to and everyone seemed to enjoy it. I did have to explain to several people what exactly a king cake was and why there was a baby hidden inside though. I will definitely be making an other one or two to bring to my office on Mardi Gras.

I know I say this all the time, but this king cake was not difficult to make. The dough and icing recipes come from New Orleans chef John Besh. He has a show on PBS and he's always cooking up something tasty looking. I found the recipe from John Besh on a blog called Fleur Delicious which is probably the 2nd best blog name after Lombardo Lagniappe :) That is also where I found the recipe for the pecan praline filling. The cream cheese filling is simply some cream cheese, sugar, lemon zest and vanilla. Here's the full recipe:

King Cake with Cream Cheese and Pecan Praline Filling

For the cake:
1 cup whole milk, warmed to 110-120 degrees
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 envelopes active dry yeast
3 3/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, melted and cooled slightly
5 large egg yolks, beaten
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp grated lemon zest
2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg

For the pecan praline filling:
1 cup brown sugar
3/4 tsp cinnamon
3/4 to 1 cup pecan pieces, toasted and finely chopped (I didn't toast mine and it turned out fine)
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup (1 stick) melted butter

For the cream cheese filling:
10 oz. cream cheese, softened
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 t. lemon zest
1 tsp, lemon

For the icing:
2 cups powdered sugar
1/4 to 1/2 cup sweetened condensed milk
1 tsp fresh lemon juice

1. For the cake, mix together the warm milk, yeast, sugar and 1 tablespoon of the flour together in a large bowl. Let stand for about 8 minutes until the yeast begins to foam and gets frothy.

I just wanted to give a visual of what the yeast should look like. Below is how it looked after several minutes. 

2. Add the butter, eggs, vanilla, and lemon zest and whisk to combine.
3. Add the rest of the flour, cinnamon, and nutmeg and stir with a wooden spoon to combine. At this point, the dough will look really wet and not much like a bread dough.

4. Next, either use the dough hook on a stand mixer, or turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead until the dough becomes smooth and pliable. If using the stand mixer, the dough should pull away from the sides.

5. Let rise until doubled in size. 1 to 1 1/2 hours.

6. While the dough is rising, make the filling. For the pecan praline filling, stir together the flour, brown sugar, cinnamon and pecans. Then stir the melted butter in. Set that aside. For the cream cheese filling, mix all ingredients together with a mixer.
7. Once the dough is risen, preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Punch down the risen dough, and let it rest for a few minutes. Then roll it out on a floured surface into a long rectangle about 10"-12" wide but a couple feet long.
8. Spread the cream cheese filling on the dough, then "sprinkle" chunks of the praline filling over that.

9. Roll up tightly and form into a ring on a baking sheet. Try and pinch the two ends together.

10. Bake for about 30 minutes until the cake is golden brown.

11. Let cool on a wire rack until completely cooled. Before icing the cake, hide the baby inside!
12. Then mix together all your icing ingredients and pour over the cake. While the icing is still wet, sprinkle on the colored sugar.

Enjoy!

I know that's a lot of ingredients and steps, but I promise it's worth it! I'm not sure I can wait till Mardi Gras to make another one. If I were down in Louisiana I could get my king cake fix by just picking one up at the grocery store. Though they do sell king cakes at a few grocery stores in Kansas City, I can tell you they are not very good. I think they bake one batch a year and sell them for a few weeks. They're just dry and gross. Let me know if you decide to try making your own king cake this year, and if you come up with any good filling flavors!

I think that's it for tonight. Thanks for reading and if I don't get back on here before Friday, have a happy Valentine's day with the ones you love!

Valentine's Tea Cakes

Hello from our snow cave. I stayed home from work today since the forecast called for 8-10" of snow today and I'd say that's about what we got. Unfortunately it fell on top of an existing layer of ice we have on our driveway. Hopefully the icemelt that Joe put down today will help out. I did actually get some work done since I brought my work laptop home, so that was nice. It would have been a good day to bake something, but then I would have just eaten all of it, so I though it would be best not to.

However,a couple of weekends ago I did give in to my baking impulse and made these little tea cakes. I think the main reason this recipe won was that I had a few vanilla beans on my hands. Also, I had these little tart pans that Mom gave me that had never been used. Those two reasons were good enough for me! :)

This recipe is from a cook book called Sprinkle Bakes which is written by a lady who has a blog by the same name. If you're ever looking for a super delicious and creative dessert, be sure to check out her blog! Now I realize that most of you probably don't have these little tart pans and have no need for "tea cakes" but Joe and I also don't drink much tea and we still managed to eat all of these in 2 days. Also, if you do want to make them, you can always use a mini muffin pan. These little cakes aren't overly sweet and they're great for snacking :) Here's the recipe!

Heart Tea Cakes
From: Sprinkle Bakes

1/4 cup almond flour or finely ground almonds
1 stick butter
1/4 cup all purpose flour
3/4 cup powdered sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
3 egg whites; lightly whisked
Seeds of 1 vanilla bean
1/4 cup seedless jelly; a dark color such as raspberry or blackberry works best

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees
2. Place the almond flour spread out in an even layer on a parchment lined baking sheet and toast in the oven for 6-8 minutes, or until lightly browned and fragrant. Remove from the oven and let cool.
3. Increase the oven temperature to 400 degrees. Place 12 mini tart molds on a baking sheet or line a mini muffin tin with paper liners.
4. In a small saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat. Line a mesh sieve with cheese cloth or a coffee filter, and place over a small bowl. Once the butter has melted, allow it to come to a boil. Swirl the pan occasionally; do not stir. As the butter boils, you will notice foam on the butter's surface.
5. Continue to cook until the butter becomes clear and the milk solids have dropped to the bottom of the pan; cook until the butter solids turn light golden brown and the butter is nutty and fragrant.
6. Remove from the heat and immediately pour through the mesh sieve into the bowl.
7. Let cool to room temperature. Measure 1/3 cup of the browned butter and reserve. Use the remaining butter to grease the mini tart molds, using a pastry brush.

8. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, almond flour, powdered sugar and salt.
9. Make a small well in the center of the flour mixture, and fold in the egg whites, seeds from the vanilla bean, and reserved 1/3 cup of browned butter. I actually whisked the mixture since I could see that the egg whites weren't mixed in. That's why I added in the ingredient list that you should whisk the egg whites up a little before hand.
10. Fill each mold. I did this by pouring the batter into a ziploc bag and snipping the corner off. It made it really simple.

11. In a small bowl, heat the jelly in the microwave at full power for 30 seconds. Heat just enough to loosen it, but not so it becomes completely liquid.
12. Place the melted jelly in a ziploc bag and snip a tiny corner off. Pipe a dime size dot of jelly on top of each unbaked tea cake.

13. Gently pull a skewer or toothpick through the batter and down the center of the jelly dot, creating a heart shape in the batter.

14. Bake for 12 minutes, or until the cakes have become light brown on top and are springy to the touch.

15. Remove from the oven and let cool completely on a wire rack before un-molding.

I know that's a lot of steps, but I made these start to finish in probably 30 minutes. They were easy, I promise!

Hopefully tomorrow I'll return to work. Not that I really want to, but you know, it's probably for the best. Soon I'll share a recipe for what is quite possibly the most delicious king cake I've ever had. Until then I'll just be trying to stay warm. Have a good night!

Brandied Cranberry Sauce

Hey there. It's been a while, huh? I guess we've just been busy over here. I suppose I could recount what all we've been up to since I last posted at the beginning of October, but 1. it probably isn't terribly interesting and 2. I don't want to think back and try and remember what all we've been doing haha. I suppose I could give you a brief summary though. I've made a few cakes (which I'll show you eventually), we cat sat for a weekend, baby sat for a weekend, and have just been busy working and doing things around the house. Here for your viewing pleasure are a couple of cute cats :) The orange one is Chase who you've seen before here on the blog. We were watching him for the weekend. The black cat is Jet and he belongs to our neighbor but he wants to belong to us haha. He always comes and meows at our door. We love him.

I wanted to do a post about the cakes I've made recently but thought that instead I would show you a recipe that might actually be useful for Thanksgiving this coming week. If you've ever had Thanksgiving dinner with my family then you've probably tried or at least seen these cranberries. My Mom has been making them for almost as long as I can remember and they are one of my absolute favorite parts of Thanksgiving dinner! Last year I even discovered a way to use the leftover cranberry sauce for day after Thanksgiving breakfast. Hopefully I will show you that recipe later this week. Of course if you're stuck with leftover cranberry sauce, it excellent on turkey sandwiches and by the spoonful :) , which is one of my favorite ways to eat it. The other great thing about these cranberries is that the last FOREVER in the fridge. It's probably because of the copious amounts of sugar and also the brandy haha.

Now for the recipe (it's so easy it is hardly a recipe!)

Brandied Cranberries
(From my Mom, not sure where she got it from)

1 pound fresh cranberries (NOT dried cranberries)
2 cups of sugar
1/4 cup of peach brandy

(Note: in these pictures I was making a quadruple batch of these cranberries. I wouldn't recommend doing that haha. I over-estimated my cranberry sauce needs I guess.)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Start by rinsing, sorting and weighing out your cranberries. When sorting them you just want to pick out any really mushy ones or ones that are obviously bad.

Place the cranberries onto a jelly roll pan (or any large, rimmed baking sheet) and spread into a single layer.

Then sprinkle the sugar evenly over the cranberries. I will look like A LOT of sugar, but the cranberries need that since they are very sour on their own.

Cover the pan tightly with foil and place in the oven for 1 hour.

When removing the pan from the oven be very careful since the pan is now filled with the soft cranberries and a delicious cranberry syrup. Once the pan has cooled for a few minutes, remove the foil.

Finally, stir in the brandy. If your pans aren't too full, you can just pour the peach brandy right over your cranberries. I put my cooked cranberries into a bowl first since I had so much.

Then they're done!  Enjoy! I hope you do decide to try these this Thanksgiving. I'll be bringing some to our potluck at work this Tuesday, some to Ohio for Thanksgiving dinner, then I should have plenty leftover for me :)

In other news, I can hardly believe that it's almost December which means almost Christmas! I have a couple more cakes to do in December, then we'll be doing some whirlwind traveling around Christmas time. Between now and then though, I will try my best to soak in all the holiday cheer and to spread a little too. This has always been my favorite time of year but it seems the older I get the faster it goes by. Maybe I'll just leave my Christmas decorations up extra long this year!

I guess that's it for tonight. I'll try to not wait so long before posting again, but won't make any promises. If I don't get back on here before Thursday, have a Happy Thanksgiving!