After 10 hours of cooking....

Ridiculously buttery and melt-in-your mouth blackberry muffins....



Fresh paneer....



A spiced applesauce cake....



And a whole mess of peppers, onions, and garlic.

My friends are coming to visit today. We're going to play League of Legends, board games, and feast until we're too full to move. In the interests of that last goal, I've made them a feast. The menu includes:

Homemade chips and hummus

Minced lamb and peas

Palak paneer (although my paneer didn't turn out. So I picked up some peynir instead.)

Homemade naan

Blackberry muffins (if I'm nice enough to share!)

Spiced applesauce cake with cinnamon frosting

Yeah, I know you wish you were my friend. Birds do like cooking.

Muffin Round-Up

Looking back at all the drafts I've written to be published, it occurs to me that I have far too many muffins.

Well, that's a lie. Far too many muffins that I haven't shared. Even after the insane amount of baking I did for Christmas, I don't think there's such a thing as too many muffins.

Instead of writing full entries for each of them, I'm just gonna share a few quick pictures and my thoughts on them. Maybe that'll motivate me to finally get the rest of my old entries up so I can start sharing new stuff again. Like the buffalo chicken calzones I made recently. Oh god, why did I wait so long to make those?

First up: Coconut Jam Muffins, from Los Angeles Times. They're definitely dessert muffins, since they're pretty darn sweet. Surprisingly, even my friends who didn't like coconut liked these. I think it's probably because they have oatmeal too, because oatmeal does magic things to muffins.


Whole Grain Pumpkin muffins from Other Side of Fifty, which I sadly didn't take a picture of. They didn't look too pretty. I also doubled the batch to use all the pumpkin I had left, and ate these for almost a month and a half. As someone who's always disliked pumpkin pie, I thought that was a pretty big feat.

Morning Glory Muffins from Joy of Baking. I didn't get a picture of these either, but with a much more reasonable excuse. I made these the morning of Run For Your Lives, which is a zombie-themed 5k. We got up super early to drive to the race, and I decided that really nutricious muffins would be great, and someone suggested carrot. So I went all out and made Morning Glory muffins. There are no pictures of these because they were all completely demolished the night I made them, including the extra ones I left at my house. I'd highly recommend trying them.

Raspberry Lemon muffins from Coco Bean. Despite my making these more than six months ago, I remember them extremely well. I really liked the flavor, but I didn't do a great job with the zest, so there were long strands of lemon throughout the muffins that weren't really enjoyable to chew on. If it hadn't been for that, I think they would have been perfect.


Honey Cornbread muffins from A Farmgirl's Dabbles. I made these to pair with jambalaya, so I could watch the Princess and the Frog and have fitting food (never mind that they actually eat jumbo in that movie.), and they were great. Not overly sweet, but sweet enough that I think with a little jam they'd be a perfect dessert. Thinking about them makes me sad I gave the rest away...

Chocolate Cherry muffins from Stolen Moments. I don't think I even need to say much about these. Just look at the name and ingredient list. Chocolate muffins are great, and then add cherries? They were amazing.

Apple Cinnamon muffins from Southern, eh? I have a thing for apple and cinnamon. I love them. Next time I make these I'm going to put a bit more cinnamon in them, but otherwise they were great. They're also surprisingly low calorie.

And now for the Christmas muffins.

White and Purple Amaretto muffins, modified from I Love Muffins. Instead of having any chocolate I just made extra batter and died some of it purple. I wasn't a big fan of these, but I think the texture difference the chocolate would have provided would probably have alleviated most of my complains about them. I also just didn't find them terribly flavorful, since I didn't add anything to compensate.


Strawberry Cinnamon Sugar muffins from Eggs on Sunday. I added some food coloring to make the batter pink, and also put pink sugar sparkles on top, just in case it wasn't sweet enough before. They were quite good, although I wish strawberry flavoring would come through more in baking. Maybe if a large number of strawberries were pureed....


I would actually call these cupcakes, honestly.... and we didn't take a picture of any of them, but they're rainbow muffins! I had a lot of help with these, and they did a bunch better job at making them even than I probably would have.... making the rainbow cake was frustrating enough for me.


Here's a picture of all the muffins (well... half of the muffins. There were five tins in the end):


There are four muffins in there I didn't take pictures of individually: blueberry from Obsessed with Baking (which I've made before and are always a huge hit), another version of Cinnamon Sugar muffins, banana muffins from Melbourne Food Files, and my personal favorite, apple butterscotch from Annie's Eats. I could have easily eaten all of the butterscotch ones on my own, and probably would have if there hadn't been people in the kitchen with me.

Okay, there's one more muffin I didn't share with you guys, because they were special. I also liked the pictures I took of them enough that I think they deserve their own post. So while the world may be almost caught up on my muffin adventures, bear in mind that I just ate the last of the banana muffins, so the time for more is rapidly approaching....

Christmas Baking

Four dozen cookies, two pounds of candied almonds, and about ten dozen muffins, all baked in two days. The complete list:

Candied Almonds

Green Tea Cookies

Modified these into Chocolate Blackberry Cookies

Russian Tea Cookies

Carrot Cake Cookies

Blueberry Muffins

Strawberry Cinnamon Sugar Muffins

White Amaretto Muffins

Rainbow Cupcakes

Apple Cinnamon Oatmeal Butterscotch Muffins (which are possibly my favorite)

Cinnamon Sugar Muffins

It took hours and would not have been possible without a lot of help, but they all came together, and I think everyone liked everything.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Christmas...

I'm doing a lot of baking for Christmas. A lot. As in I'm planning on doing absolutely nothing but going to work, the grocery store, and to my kitchen on Thursday night so I can be ready for the EPH exchange on Friday night.

I'm trying a lot of recipes I've never made before, so I'm definitely nervous things won't turn out. I can't share the full list of what I'll be making, but here's a tease as to some of the ingredients that will be featuring:

bananas

almonds

butterscotch

blackberries

powdered sugar

green tea

Hopefully I won't be too tired to share everything about the hours this will take.

"You're making old person muffins?"

In case you couldn't tell, I'm making a bit of an effort to start updating sort of regularly again. I'm not going to promise any sort of schedule, because this blog is supposed to be for fun, and schedules stress me out. I'll be sharing a lot of older stuff for a while- stuff I made and didn't share because I was too lazy to type.

These may be the first muffins I've made that I didn't like.

I made these thinking that I wouldn't really like them. Hoping, but thinking 'wow, these certainly sound... interesting, I hope they're good...' Mama Bird looked at the recipe and assured me that if I didn't like them, she'd eat them. So I decided to be brave and to try it. I like new food, right?



They don't even really look good.

I tried to like them, and I did eat two before I gave up and declared that they were all for Mama Bird. She did eat them all, to her credit, but I don't know how she did it. I'll be sticking to sweeter muffins from now on.

Recipe from Teaspot NYC.

2 cups applesauce

2 ounces dates

1 cup wheat bran

1/2 cup buttermilk

1 large egg

2 tablespoons honey

3/4 teaspoon ginger

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

5/8 cups all-purpose flour

2 tablespoons ground flaxseed

1.25 teaspoons baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon allspice

1/4 cup old-fashioned oats

1. Preheat oven to 375.
   
2. Heat applesauce and dates over medium heat, stirring frequently, until mixture is reduced to about 1.25 cups, or 15-20 minutes.
   
3. Remove from heat and let cool completely.
   
4. Transfer applesauce to bowl, and mix in bran, buttermilk, egg, honey, ginger, and vanilla.
   
5. In separate bowl, mix flour, flaxseed, baking soda, salt, allspice, and 1/4 cup oats.
   
6. After letting stand for 10 minutes, mix ingredients together.
   
7. Transfer batter into muffin tins.
   
8. Bake 20-23 minutes.
   

Makes 12 muffins, with 90 calories and $0.43 per serving.

Smoky hummus!

This is a ridiculously easy hummus recipe. Although honestly, all hummus is easy once you've made it. I posted about it a while ago, but didn't have any sort of recipe to share, so I decided it was time to experiment again until I could come up with this.

Sister Bird loved this hummus. As in she would go out and buy me the ingredients for it so I would make it for her. Now that she's back at school, I guess I won't be making it as often, but that's only because I know I'll be the only one who ends up eating it, since Papa Bird hates anything that has curry powder in it, and Mama Bird claims it's too spicy.

They're both wrong, it's delicious.

Smokey Hummus
(Makes 5 servings, with 178 calories and $0.60 per serving)

5 cloves garlic

15.5 oz chickpeas, half drained

3 tablespoons tahini

2 tablespoons lemon juice

1/2 teaspoon curry powder

1/2 teaspoon cumin

1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes

1 teaspoon Frank's red hot

1 teaspoon sriracha

1. Mince garlic.
   
2. Combine everything in food processor.
   
3. Blend until smooth, adding additional liquid from chickpeas if hummus is not smooth enough.
   

Butternut Squash Soup

Mama Bird has been pretty amazing recently.  Not only did she magically produce a brand new immersion blender from our basement when I mentioned I was thinking of buying one, she signed us up for a Community Supported Agriculture.  If you don't know what that is, it means that every Wednesday for the next two months we get a box of locally grown vegetables.  I was quite excited about it when she brought the idea up to me, because I knew that it meant I'd be getting vegetables to play with that I had never cooked.  Sure enough, last week we had a butternut squash and some leeks.  I haven't messed with the leeks, although Mama Bird stole the potatoes that were meant to become the chips for the fish and chips I'll be making sometime this week.  Hopefully Thursday or Friday, if Skyrim doesn't steal my entire life.

I wasn't sure I'd like this soup, because I've never been a huge squash fan, and I don't tend to enjoy sweetness.  But I liked this.  I dipped some bread in it at first, but I don't think it needs that.  It tastes thick, like it has cream, but it's all healthy.  I'm hoping to eat it for lunch this week to make up for the amount of naughtiness I've been eating- remember that coconut ice?  It's all gone now.  I throw out the remaining third after I gained enough strength to resist it.  Sadly, I didn't ever take a picture of it...   nor do I have a picture of this soup.  It just doesn't look great, sadly.

But it tastes good.  If you want a light healthy soup, give it a shot.

Recipe from A Year of Slow Cooking.

1 butternut squash

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 onions

4 cups vegetable broth

2 apples

1.5 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon black pepper

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

1/4 teaspoon cloves

1/4 teaspoon coriander

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

1. Cut squash in half longways, microwaving if the skin is too tough.
   
2. Scoop out seeds.
   
3. Coat in olive oil and roast at 400 for 15 minutes.
   
4. In slow cooker, combine cubed and peeled apples, onion, broth, and spices.
   
5. Cover and cook on high while waiting for squash.
   
6. Peel squash, and cut into cubes.
   
7. Cook on low for 8 hours.
   
8. Blend.