Wordless Wednesday: Tess (Yoga Mat)

Tess under the yoga mat.

Cinnamon Pancakes

The best recipes for breakfasty type foods are the recipes that are simple to make. This makes the recipe awesome and usable because breakfast is typically made shortly after waking. Or, if you are like me, breakfast is made at 1:30am when you can't sleep. In both situations, the person making the breakfast is half awake. And half awake people should not be trusted with following complex recipes. Neither should absent minded people. If you happen to be both of those things, just stay out of the kitchen. It is for your own safety.

I recently assembled a cinnamon pancake recipe from various recipes I found online. It is very easy to make. So easy that it hardly requires any instructions. Here is the handwritten recipe as proof:

Printer-friendly PDF Version

Everything should be written in purple pen. It just makes whatever is written look more friendly and inviting.

Anyhow, the recipe is basically: mix the dry ingredients, mix the wet ingredients (in a separate bowl), stir the wet and dry things together. I find it convenient to mix the ingredients for pancakes in measuring cups.

 After that, you just make the pancakes as normal. If you don't know how to cook pancakes, then you probably shouldn't be making it as a breakfast. Try it for lunch or dinner, when you are fully awake, so you don't catch anything on fire.

My serving suggestion is to lightly butter the pancakes and put chocolate chips on top of each pancake.

This recipe will make 4 large pancakes. For a stronger cinnamon flavor, add more than 1/2 T of cinnamon.

Wordless Wednesday: Tiny Frog

The Evilness of Mini Muffins

I'm not sure if you know this, but mini muffins are evil incarnate. That is a pure and simple fact. If you deny this, you are probably just under their influence. It is not too late to come to your senses, but it is most likely something you will not be willing to do. It is much easier (and perhaps more enjoyable) to just live in corrupted bliss, unaware that the tiny, adorable muffins are dense with mischief. Perhaps it is time for an intervention of sorts...

We will start with an analysis of the evil in question: the mini muffin. This will allow you to see the muffins for what they truly are. To properly do this, we will need to see and experience how it is created. Perhaps we can pinpoint the wickedness that seems to be inherent in the muffin itself. My only hope is, that during this investigation, we don't fall prey to the mini muffin's demonic spell.

First, gather the ingredients necessary to create mini muffins. You may vary from this recipe slightly, but only in regards to flavoring. The base needs to remain the same if we are to investigate in a scientific manner. All ingredients should be in their pure, unadulterated form.

Mini Muffins (Printer-friendly PDF Version)
2 1/2 C self-raising flour
3/4 C brown sugar
1 C milk
1 egg
2 T butter (or margarine), softened or chopped into small pieces
1 t vanilla
2 ripe bananas, mashed (or whatever you want to flavor the muffins with)

I chose to split the batter into two equal parts and flavor one part banana and the other part chocolate chip. If you follow my example, you will need 1 mashed banana and a variable amount of chocolate chips. The amount of chocolate chips you include depends on how you feel about chocolate. If your muffin batter ends up being more chocolate chips than batter, then I think we may need a different topic for our intervention...

To create the base for the muffin batter, place the milk, egg, vanilla, and butter in a medium mixing bowl. Beat on medium speed until it seems well mixed. If you start with cold butter, the batter will be lumpy at this point. Add the flour and brown sugar. Mix in well, at medium speed, until the batter is smooth and creamy.

So far nothing stands out as "evil". It seems to be a normal batter for muffins. 

Place half of the batter into a separate mixing bowl. Add the chocolate chips and mix in. I noticed the batter was thick, so I added 2 tablespoons of milk to the chocolate chip muffin batter. Everything is still normal with the batter.

Place the mashed banana in the other half of the muffin batter and mix it in well. (You will notice at this point why I added the milk to the other batter.) You may, optionally, take a picture of the two flavors of batter at this point to enhance your notes (you are taking notes, right?). 

Grease a mini muffin pan with vegetable shortening. Alternatively, you may use mini muffin liners. The liners make it more difficult to eat the muffins, so greasing the muffin pan adds to laziness. Perhaps this is the beginning of the evil!

Fill the mini muffin cups approximately 3/4 full. Bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool for a few minutes before removing from the pan. The tops of the muffins won't brown, but the sides touching the pan will.

Place the mini muffins in a large bowl to cool. Once cooled, you may place them into bags that zip closed or food storage containers.

The creation process of the mini muffins didn't show any extreme signs of evil, nor does it show how the evil enters the muffin. Perhaps your research showed something different. If so, please share your findings.

After the research on the baking process concluded, I was determined to find more evidence that the muffins are, in fact, evil incarnate. Some number crunching helped me determine that 13.875 batches of muffin batter will produce 666 muffins. I also used a fancy and extremely expensive photo-filter to analyze the pictures that I took of the muffin making process. Nothing surprising showed up in the analysis until the final photo. Here are the images side by side, one before the filter was used and one after.

By now you should see the pure diabolical evil that mini muffins are. They pose as cute and adorable food, but this is a facade. Underneath their soft and moist exterior lies a source of evil that can only lead to gluttony. During the typing of this post, I was willed into eating no less than 8 mini muffins. The ease of eating the muffins paired with the delicious taste make them so tempting... so wrong.

Just remember that people care for you. They care if you gain 20 pounds by eating nothing but mini muffins for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. There are people who want to help you. They are not just trying to steal the delectable muffins that you are hoarding on your desk, by your computer. They want you to know that there is more to life than mini muffins. Please let them help you.

Wordless Wednesday

Blueberry Facial Update

Putting food on my face has become something I enjoy doing twice a week. My extremely sensitive skin has reacted amazingly to the change in routine. I've had no breakouts, no redness, and no random bumps on my face since I started using oatmeal facials six weeks ago. I've figured out a better way to make them and learned that they don't have to dry on your face for 20 minutes.

For the past six weeks, I have only used a variation of the blueberry facial that I describe in this post. Since blueberries aren't in season year round, I've started testing different combinations to use instead of the blueberry. The most recent facial I made was with banana. This facial is more moisturizing than the blueberry version.

Banana Facial Mask
1 T oatmeal
1 t Extra Virgin Olive Oil
a small chunk of banana

Place the oatmeal in a small container. Rub the oatmeal between your fingers to grind it up. This will take a few minutes, but it makes a better facial this way. Once the oatmeal is ground up, add the olive oil and mix. Add the chunk of banana and mash it into the oatmeal. Mix until creamy.

Massage the banana mixture all over your face, avoiding the eye area. Once your face is entirely covered with food, let it dry for at least 5 minutes. The mask can be left on for up to 20 minutes. Rinse thoroughly with warm water and pat dry. Apply moisturizer to your face if needed.

Any left over banana facial mask can be refrigerated and should be used within a few days.

This mask works well for dry skin. If you have oily skin, it might not give you the results you desire. It might even make your face break out due to the extra oil and moisture. Some alternatives to the banana and olive oil are:

Dry skin: whole milk, peaches, apricot, avocado.

Oily skin: egg white, tomato, honey, strawberry.

If you don't have sensitive skin and want to add some extra exfoliation to the facial, add granulated sugar to the mixture until it is gritty.

Frosted Fruit Salad

Note: Pineapple isn't a fruit I eat very often; I don't really like the taste. Keep this in mind while reading the post because I'm pretty sure that skewed my opinion on this recipe.

I remember my grandma making something similar to this, but I can't remember her ever making this exact recipe. The reason I'm making it is that in the mess of recipes I have, there are about 6 copies of this exact recipe. If she bothered to write it down so many times, she probably made it quite often at one point. It is very understandable (IMO, at least) if she stopped making this recipe. To me, it is just very sweet pineapple goo covered by a pineapple flavored whipped topping. Oh, and there is some fruit mixed into the goo.

I find the name of this recipe to be deceiving. It isn't exactly a fruit salad; there is hardly any fruit in it! It is more like a pineapple jello with a whipped topping. If you like pineapple and sugary sweet desserts, give this recipe a try. Otherwise, I wouldn't recommend it. This is definitely one recipe that I will never make again!

Frosted Fruit Salad (Printer-friendly PDF Version)
2 packages lemon jello (3 oz each)
2 cups boiling water
2 cups ginger ale
1 large can crushed pineapple (drained)
2 large sliced bananas

Topping
1/2 C sugar
2 T flour
1 C pineapple juice (add water to drained juice to make it a cup)
1 egg, beaten
2 T butter
Small tub of cool whip (thawed)

First, boil the water and add it to the jello powder in a mixing bowl. Mix until completely dissolved. Add the ginger ale and mix. Place in the refrigerator until need later.

Drain the pineapple (save the juice!) and slice the bananas. Set aside.

Place the sugar, flour, pineapple juice, egg, and butter in a small sauce pan. Heat over medium heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture thickens. The mixture, when cooked, reminded me of a pineapple flavored custard. Chill the mixture completely.

After making the custard-ish mixture, remove the jello from the refrigerator. Pour the slightly cooled (and maybe thickened) jello into a 13 x 9 pan. Mix in the pineapple and bananas. Place the pan in the refrigerator to cool.

Once the custard-ish mixture is completely chilled, fold the Cool Whip into it.

 If the jello is gelled at this point, frost the top of the jello with the topping. If not, return the topping to the refrigerator until the jello is set.

Note: When heating the custard mixture, the egg didn't blend in nicely. I was left with a nice creamy mixture that had random chunks of cooked egg white in it. To fix this problem, I pressed the custard-ish stuff through a wire mesh strainer.

Decorator's Frosting

The most important thing involved in cake decorating is the frosting (or icing, I suppose... depending on where you live). If you are thinking, "Shouldn't the cake be the most important part?" then you have clearly never decorated a cake. The cake part of the cake decorating process is 100% optional. You can frost a styrofoam cube or even an empty box and make it look like a cake. People even have a habit of saying silly things such as, "Ooh! It looks too pretty to eat!" They are lying when they say this, however, and will go on to talk to you about the shows Ace of Cakes and Cake Boss while happily eating the beautifully frosted cake.

There is an uncountable number of decorator's frosting recipes on the internet (well, that's not true: it is clearly a countable number). I only use three different frosting recipes when decorating cakes. One is the Wilton Decorator's Frosting, another is the old version of that same recipe, and the final one is a whipped cream frosting that I'll present at a later date. I learned the Wilton recipe when I took the Wilton Cake Decorating courses. The old version is the frosting my grandma always made and learned when she took the Wilton Cake Decorating courses!

Both versions of the Wilton recipe are suitable for simple frosting and making frosting flowers. The frostings are creamy and form kind of a stiff shell when they dry.Each recipe will create a stiff frosting which is optimal for making frosting roses. To cover the cake with frosting, you will need to thin the frosting. To do this, add a tablespoon of water to the frosting and mix it in. Repeat this until you get a consistency that spreads easily.

New Wilton Decorator's Frosting (Printer-friendly PDF Version)
1 C shortening
3 T water
1 t vanilla (or any combination of flavors you want)
1 lb Confectioners Sugar
1 T meringue powder

Beat together the shortening, water, and vanilla. It won't become a creamy mixture, but you want to break up the shortening. Add the sugar and meringue powder. Mix at a low speed for 30 seconds. Scrape the sides of the mixing bowl. Mix together at low speed for 2 minutes.

Old Wilton Decorator's Frosting (Printer-friendly PDF Version)
3/4 C shortening
2 egg whites
1 t vanilla
1/2 t cream of tartar powder
1 lb confectioners sugar

Mix together the shortening, egg whites, and vanilla for about 15 seconds. It will make a chunky looking gross mixture. Add the sugar and tartar. Mix on a medium speed for 2 minutes or until fluffy.

One of the main "rules" when making frosting to decorate cakes is to not "over beat" the icing. This will produce air bubbles in the frosting and that is not a good thing if you are making flowers. Since I don't like to make flowers very often, I extremely "over beat" the frosting every time I make it. In my opinion, this gives it a better texture.

Note: When adding flavors to the frosting, be sure to use clear flavors. For instance, if you use the brown vanilla extract your icing will end up a cream color instead of white.

2nd Note: I lied earlier when I said I only use 3 frosting recipes. I use 2 chocolate frosting recipes, but chocolate frosting isn't very standard in cake decorating.

Banana Bread

Sometimes I buy extra bananas... about 3 more than I could eat before they go bad. By "bad" I mean overly ripe and kind of mushy. Why do I do this? Because icky bananas are perfect for banana bread. The more brown spots the banana has, the better tasting the banana bread will be. Some people might argue that point with me, but it is purely opinion. This is also my blog, so I would win that argument. Keep in mind, I don't mean the banana has to be ripe to the point it is attracting flies.

Banana bread is very easy to make. As it seems to be with most things I make, the hardest part is waiting for it to cool before eating. This is one of the baked goods that taste better when it isn't extremely hot right from the oven. I tend to try eating something right out of the oven and then complain that it doesn't taste good. Once the food cools down and my taste buds recover, I realize the food is fine.

So go buy too many bananas, make some banana bread in about a week, and practice your patience and self control.

Banana Bread (Printer-friendly PDF Version)
3 ripe bananas
1/2 C shortening (or butter)
1 C sugar
2 eggs
2 C flour
1/2 t baking soda
nuts (very optional)

Note: I haven't tried the recipe with butter, so I'm not sure how that turns out.

The first thing you need to do is peel the bananas, break them into pieces and mash them. After they are a gooey blob, set them aside.

In a mixing bowl, mix the sugar and the shortening (or butter). It will be mixed enough when it has a soft, crumbly consistency. Add the mashed up bananas and mix them in well.

Next, add the two eggs and beat them into the mixture until well mixed. Finally, add the flour and baking soda. Mix that until it forms a sticky dough. Scrape the sides to ensure all the flour is mixed in.

Split the dough between two bread pans (or one if you want really thick bread). You can, and I don't recommend it, add some sort of nut on top of the dough. This will most likely ruin the dough and leave it inedible (unless you like that sort of thing... not that I'm judging you...)

Bake the banana bread in a preheated oven set at 275 degrees for 60 minutes. Remove the bread pans from the oven after 60 minutes (or maybe longer if you insist on making just one loaf) and let cool for 10 to 15 minutes. Use a butter knife to loosen the loafs from the pan and flip them out onto a cooling rack. Let cool nearly completely before consuming!

Apple Pie

One of the main cultural icons of America is apple pie. This hasn't always made sense to me; I tend to relate apple pie to the Dutch. My historian friend tells me it has something to do with the fact apples have been a main export for a long time and that it is the state fruit for a various states. I read online that the phrase originated during the WWII era and has to do with the phrase "easy as pie". I'll let someone else figure out how apple pie is American and I'll just bake the pies and write about my grandma's recipes.

My grandma always made pies. I don't think she ever needed a reason to make a pie. Family dinner? Pie. Holiday? Pie. Pot luck at church? Pie. Someone's birthday? Pie. If you were craving a pie, she'd make it for you. Apple pie was the most common pie that she made, so that is where I'm starting with the pie recipes.

I started making pies a few years ago, but never got the hang of it and ventured off into cake decorating. I have made a peach pie annually and the occasional chocolate pie, but nothing else. Now that I'm just left with a stack of recipes and no one to make pie for me, I've restarted my quest to make a perfect pie (or at least one amazingly edible!).

Apple pie can be time consuming to prepare, so I doubled the recipe and made two pies at once (the images will reflect this). The extra pie can be wrapped in freezer paper and frozen. Just remember to add 10 or so minutes to the bake time when baking the frozen pie!

Apple Pie (Printer-friendly PDF Version)
6 C thinly sliced baking apples (approximately 2 pounds)
1/3 C brown sugar (packed)
1/3 C granulated sugar
1/4 C flour
3/4 t cinnamon
dash of salt
2 T butter
2 crust pastry for a 9" pie

If you are using a pie crust recipe that needs to chill, make the pastry dough first. (I will have a post in the future on different types of pie crust.)

Wash, peel, and slice the apples. Place the apple slices in a large mixing bowl.

In a separate bowl, combine the sugars, flour, and cinnamon (and salt). Add this sugar mixture to the apples and stir well. If the sugar mixture doesn't seem to combine with the apples, let it sit for 5 minutes and mix it again. The sugar will bring out the juices in the apples and make combining easier.

Roll out the pastry dough and line the pie plate with a layer of crust. Fill the pie plate with the sliced and sugared apples.

Slice up the butter and dot the top of the apples with the butter slices. Roll out another layer of pastry dough and place it on top, press the edges of the two dough layers together. Use a fork to poke holes in the top layer of dough.

Bake the assembled pie at 425 degrees for 30 minutes. The pie is done when the edge of the crust is brown and the apples are bubbling (if you can see them). Let the pie cool for 15 minutes before serving.

Note: You can also bake the pie at 425 for 15 minutes and then lower the temperature to 350 and bake for another 30 to 40 minutes. Both ways will result in a nicely baked pie. If you are worried about the pie bubbling over in some way, place it on a cookie sheet lined with foil.

2nd Note: Remember to put the butter on top of the apples before sealing the pastry dough and placing it in the oven. If you realize that you forgot to add the butter when the pie has been in the oven for 8 minutes, the pastry will be warm and sticky making it difficult to add the butter to the apples. It will also make your pie look not as pretty. Yes, this is from personal experience...

4th of July Cupcakes

I usually don't spend a lot of time making cupcakes look pretty. Cupcakes seem to have a special standing in the world of desserts; no matter how they look, people will eat them without hesitation. They are essentially just a lazy way to eat cake (no cutting, forks, or plates involved!). However, there are certain times when a cupcake just looks boring without decoration. The 4th of July is one of those times. Most desserts served on that day, at BBQs or family get-togethers, tend to have a red, white, and blue theme.

I've wanted to make more layered cupcakes like the ones I made for my sister-in-law's baby shower, but I haven't had a reason to. For anything related to cake decorating, I need motivation to stay focused on the task. With the 4th of July coming up, red, white, and blue layered cupcakes are perfect.

What you need:
Prepared white cake mix
Red and blue food coloring and toothpicks
Small mixing bowls
Spoons
Cupcake pan & liners
Batch of frosting
(Optional) Frosting bag and size 20 star tip

I found these amazingly cute cupcake liners at the grocery store. Reynolds now makes "party" cupcake liners that come in a variety of colors and patterns. I couldn't pass up buying these plaid ones. They cost the same as the standard colors, so I recommend using a fun design!

After admiring the awesome cupcake liners, place one into each spot in the cupcake pan.

After preparing your cake mix, evenly divide it into three mixing bowls. Using the food coloring, tint one bowl of batter red and another bowl of batter blue. The other bowl of batter will remain white, but stir the batter for 30 seconds with a spoon to give it the same consistency as the tinted batter.

Using spoons (I used soup spoons), layer the batter into the cupcake liners. The bottom layer will be red, the middle will be white, and the top layer will be blue. Each layer only requires a spoonful of batter which you will need to gently spread out. The cupcake liners will probably be filled more than the recommended amount, but they won't overflow while baking. This results in few cupcakes being made from one box mix (I ended up with 20 cupcakes).

Bake the cupcakes according to the box directions. With white cake, I use the lower number in the time range recommended. This prevents the white cake from drying out. Place the baked cupcakes on a cooling rack to cool.

While the cupcakes are cooling, make a batch of your favorite frosting. If using white frosting, it can be tinted red, white, and blue to match the cupcakes. To do this, evenly divide the frosting up into three small mixing bowls. Tint one bowl of frosting red and another bowl blue.

One method of frosting with tri-colored frosting is to use a decorating bag and a star tip. I used a 10 inch featherweight reusable bag and a size 20 star tip. Filling the bag is tricky and messy. There may be a better way to go about doing this, but I haven't figure one out yet.

Hold the bag open with one hand and use a frosting spatula or knife to scoop frosting into the bag one color at a time. Don't worry about the colors mixing while filling the bag; the colors will mix while coming out anyway.

Once the bag is filled, twist the top closed and frost your cupcakes. It is easiest to start at the outer edge and circle around to the middle.

When all the cupcakes are frosted, it is recommended that you cut a cupcake in half. This is mainly so you can see the layers more clearly and have an excuse to eat a cupcake before anyone else.