Archive for the 'snacks' Category
I woke up early this morning, and finding myself downstairs in the kitchen in the dark surrounded with half cleaned-out cupboards and drawers and a sink more than full with dirty dishes, I opted to make muffins. Breakfast is important, right?
Also, that half jar of mincemeat in the fridge was far more pressing than total kitchen reorganization. (I do this every holiday week – decide to overhaul the kitchen or bedroom or basement, or all three. Most often my gumption runs out after I’ve taken everything out, and before I put it all back away.)
Mincemeat is one of those things that -unlike chocolate and cheese and wine- does not translate well to any season beyond Christmas. Namely January. Eating mince tarts in the middle of January just does not taste the same as the middle of December. But what else do you do with all that mincemeat?
Bake muffins!
They won’t come out tasting of mince tarts, but of themselves – moist and fruity and wonderfully spiced. You can add chopped apple or pear and pecans or walnuts too, if you like. And if you have a little more than a cup of mincemeat, or a little less, don’t sweat it – they’ll still work.
And the house will smell wonderful when everyone gets up.
Mincemeat Muffins
Gourmet, December 1997
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/3 cup sugar
1 Tbsp. baking powder
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. salt
3/4 cup milk
1/3 cup canola or other mild vegetable oil
1 large egg
1 cup all-fruit mincemeat
1 small tart apple, cored and chopped
1/2 cup chopped pecans or walnuts (optional)
Preheat oven to 400°F and line twelve muffin cups with paper liners.
In a largish bowl, stir together the flour, sugar, baking powder, cinnamon and salt. In a smaller bowl (or Pyrex measuring cup) stir together the milk, oil and egg, and add it to the flour along with the mincemeat. Stir until the batter is almost combined, then add the apple and nuts and stir just until blended. Don’t worry about getting the lumps out.
Fill the muffin cups almost full and bake for 25 minutes, or until golden and springy to the touch. Serve warm.
Makes 1 dozen muffins.
December 29 2011 | bread and breakfast and snacks | 6 Comments »
Or as Mike called it, “The New Best Thing Ever”, “Heaven in a Bowl”, and “OMGooooooood!!”
I know, it doesn’t look like much. It wasn’t planned, and then when it turned out so well I had to grab a bunch out of Mike’s fist in order to document it. I’m not sure how to convey how much better this tastes than it looks. The spur-of-the-moment red tissue may have been a mistake. I’ll take more photos next time – and there will be a next time. We ate the entire batch tonight while decorating the tree.
I was just playing, distracted by thoughts of the sugary top of that Skibo Castle Ginger Crunch I told you about. I wanted to make it maple: ditch the ginger, swap the golden syrup for pure maple. Which made me want to add toasted walnuts. I put a slab of butter into a small pot to melt, intending to add another layer to an existing batch, just to try. I left the empty pot on the stove a few minutes too long as I went for the butter – distracted by something – and when I dropped it in the heat turned it golden instantly.
Browned butter! Of course! what better way to improve on an already awesome butter-sugar-golden syrup combo? I swirled the pot until it melted and turned a nutty brown, then stirred in the icing sugar, maple syrup this time and a bit of vanilla and dropped it in globs over just toasted walnut halves. Not pretty, but not ugly either, and ridiculously delicious.
It sounds insanely sweet, this butter-icing sugar stuff, like hard icing. But it’s not. A cup of powdered sugar is equivalent to half a cup of regular sugar – which isn’t to say this is low in sugar, just less sweet than it sounds. It balances the toasted walnuts perfectly. Make sure you have nice fresh walnuts, which is easy at this time of year with the turnover most stores see. They should be crunchy and nutty and slightly sweet – not at all bitter.
I’m not saying these are authentic pralines – in fact I’m sure they’re not – but I can’t think of what else to call them, other than sweet brown buttery, walnutty goodness.
Browned Butter Maple Walnut Praline
1 1/2 cups California walnut halves or pieces
1/3 cup butter
1-2 Tbsp. pure maple syrup or Lyle’s or Roger’s Golden Syrup
1 cup icing sugar
1/2 tsp. vanilla
Toast the walnuts by spreading them on a parchment-lined rimmed baking sheet and toasting in a 350F oven for 6-7 minutes, or until golden and fragrant. If you have a toaster oven, that works too.
Melt the butter in a small saucepan over medium-high heat and after it melts, continue cooking it, swirling the pan often, until it foams and turns a nutty brown. Whisk in the syrup, icing sugar and vanilla. Bring to a boil and simmer for 30 seconds.
Spread the toasted walnuts out on the lined baking sheet and pour the butter mixture overtop, trying to cover as much of the nuts as possible. Stir a bit on the sheet with a spoon so that it clumps up and coats (or at least touches) as many of the walnuts as possible. Let cool, then break into chunks. Try to share. Makes about 8 servings.
December 04 2011 | snacks and sweet stuff | 16 Comments »
How’s this for a fancy way to serve your fruit?? The watermelon was an after school project that is now destined to be tomorrow’s grade 1 snack. Think the class will be surprised when W shows up with a basketload of watermelon, carved into a Fabergé egg?
Perhaps because we were going to see OVO tonight we had eggs on the brain. But the boys wanted to carve a watermelon (remember the T-rex? and the shark?) and when my mom popped by for dinner, she started drawing whimsical designs on the outside of the watermelon with a washable marker, and then we all sat working at it with small paring knives, as if it were a communal pumpkin or a puzzle.
The cool thing about carving a watermelon like this is that you can add any design you want – swirls and stripes and checkerboards and diamonds – and some can go through to the white part of the rind, other parts can go right through to the pink. No watermelon is wasted, and it looks far fancier – dressed up, even – for a party. I’m thinking when Easter comes around again a watermelon will make a pretty cool giant Easter egg.
Dinner last night was smoked ribs from Jojo’s BBQ – her truck has been broken down and is now getting an extreme makeover, including a new smoker, so she’s been out of the food truck loop half the summer. The half during which Calgarians have been losing their minds over meals on wheels. And so this week she tweeted out that she’d be making home deliveries each dinnertime. (This week only! Although I’m hoping she’ll change her mind.) She brought ribs, and BEANS, and pink pickled onions, and barbecue sauce.
I wanted to make another batch of this Honey Sage Cornbread, but we were out of cornmeal.
Other people who live around us got some barbecue too, and we all saddled up to the table with about a half dozen salads and hummus and my sister’s leftover lasagna from across the street. (A. brought potato salad, made with potatoes dug up from her own back yard. The ones the voles left for her, anyway. Dolled up with fresh mint and olives and topped with crunchy fried yellow lentils. Super yum.)
September 07 2011 | snacks | 24 Comments »
Eons ago I read in Gourmet magazine about a swanky chocolatier in New York City who made, among other things (like tall, smooth-sided peanut butter cups the size and shape of a shot glass), chocolate covered Corn Flakes. The image of them stuck. And so one night when we were up late playing Blokus and needing something nibbly/crunchy/chocolatey to set out on the table, I melted a (big) handful of chopped chocolate, poured it over a bowl of Corn Flakes and tossed it like a salad. Then spread the mixture out on a parchment-lined sheet and let it cool.
You can try to shape it into clumps, or let it lie as it will and serve it like a bowl of crisp, flaky caramel corn, without the caramel. Turns out, there’s no need to turn on the oven to feed a chocolate craving.
August 03 2011 | snacks | 16 Comments »
We’re off to the west coast this morning, to Vancouver Island – Victoria first, for the Victoria Taste Wine & Food Festival, and then across to Tofino. Being a planner ahead when it comes to road trips – particularly in the arena of food – I made up a batch of chewy granola bars to pack along. This will almost certainly cut down on the number of buttered bagels I pick up at drive-thrus on the way.
Tony & Penny at Highwood Crossing have a great recipe – I hadn’t made granola bars with sweetened condensed milk before – and of course you can add anything, nuts, seeds and dried fruit-wise – even chocolate chips. (Which no, doesn’t count as a fruit.)
Sweet and Salty Granola Bars
adapted from Tony & Penny at Highwood Crossing
3 cups Highwood Crossing rolled oats
1 cup sliced almonds, chopped walnuts or pecans, or a combination, toasted
1 cup sunflower or pumpkin seeds (or combo!)
1 cup raisins, dried cranberries. chopped dried apricots or a combination of dried fruit
1 300 mL can sweetened condensed milk
1/4 cup butter, softened
1/4 cup Highwood Crossing canola oil
1/2 tsp. salt
Preheat oven to 350°F. Line a 9″x13″ pan with foil or parchment paper, overlapping the sides for easy removal of bars.
Combine all the ingredients in a large bowl and mix well. Press evenly into the prepared pan. Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until golden. Cool slightly, then flip out onto a cutting board and cut into bars.
July 19 2011 | breakfast and snacks | 15 Comments »
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