Pumpkin Millet Muffins

November 4, 2013 by Mackenzie

Halloween may be over, but cooking with pumpkin is most definitely not! I couldn’t possibly wait a whole year to post these because they are mouth-wateringly delicious!

I love these muffins for two reasons. 1) they are exceptionally moist, which is a characteristic I value highly in my muffins! And 2) the addition of the millet gives these muffins a unique texture that I love. In case you’ve never had millet, it is a grain that has a slight crunch to it, even when fully cooked. I’ve never had it in baked goods so was very curious to try it here and I loved the complexity it added! I’ll definitely be trying out millet in some of my other baked goods recipes.

And no, these do not ascribe to my clean eating/real foods lifestyle that I try to live by. But I am completely okay with an occasional treat 🙂 And luckily, I live in a building full of college students who love to eat the fruits of my baking endeavors!

Pumpkin Millet Muffins
Recipe from Whole Foods Market
Makes 14 muffins

Ingredients:
1/2 cup millet
1 egg
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 cup whole milk
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1 cup canned pumpkin puree
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Place paper liners in a muffin pan.

2. Heat a large skillet over medium high heat. Add millet and toast until golden brown, stirring occasionally. You’ll hear the millet begin to pop after 3-4 minutes and that’s when it’s toasted. Remove from heat and set aside.

3. In a large bowl, whisk together egg, sour cream, milk, melted butter, pumpkin, sugar and brown sugar. In a separate bowl, add all the dry ingredients, (flours, baking powder, baking soda, sea salt, spices and cooled millet) and stir to combine. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients, mixing until just combined.

4. Spoon batter into muffin tins, filling cups almost to the top. Bake for 25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into middle of a muffin comes out clean. Let cool for 5 minutes, then transfer to a cooling rack. They are delicious warm!!!

Lemon Crinkle Cookies

September 27, 2013 by Mackenzie

I made these cookies a couple of weeks ago and LOVED them! I’ve been on a lemon kick lately, and when I was asked to bring cookies for a meeting – I knew I wanted to try something with lemons. These are super easy to throw together and melt-in-you-mouth delicious!
They definitely don’t qualify as part of my effort for “clean eating” but they are a really good treat when you do want to break away 😉

Lemon Crinkle Cookies
Recipe from LDSLiving
Makes 2 dozen cookies

Ingredients:
1/2 cups butter, softened
1 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 egg
1 teaspoon lemon zest
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup powdered sugar

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly spray a cookie sheet or use a silicone mat.

2. In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Add in the vanilla, egg, lemon zest, and lemon juice and mix well. Add the salt, baking powder, baking soda and flour and mix together until just combined.

3. Put the powdered sugar in a small bowl. Using a spoon or ice cream scoop, gather a spoonful of dough (just a bit smaller than a golf ball size), roll it into a ball and then roll it in the powdered sugar. Place on baking sheet and continue until all the dough is used. Press the cookies down just a bit so that they will flatten nicely and bake for 9-11 minutes or until the bottoms just begin to brown and the cookies look matte (not shiny on top). Let cool for 3 minutes before transferring to a wire rack.

Salted Rice Krispy Treats

June 19, 2013 by Mackenzie

As its my last week of work here in Indonesia, I decided to share some of my favorite American desserts with my colleagues. I brought in a massive Deep Dish Apple Pie on Monday, my family’s favorite dessert, Pretzel Jello Salad, on Tuesday, and these Rice Krispy Treats today! They loved all of them and I had a blast making and sharing these desserts with them.

The pretzel jello salad will come in a future post, but these Rice Krispy treats need to go up now! They were easy to make, delicious to eat and unique with the addition of the sea salt. I highly encourage you to make these asap – they are fantastic!

Salted Rice Krispy Treats
Recipe adapted from The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook
Makes 16, 2-inch bars

Ingredients:
8 tablespoons unsalted butter
Heaping 1/4 teaspoon sea salt
1 10 oz bag large or mini marshmallows
6 cups rice krispy (puffed rice) cereal
1 bar dark chocolate

Directions:

1. Butter an 8-inch square pan. In a large pot, melt butter over medium low heat. Let it melt, foam then turn clear golden and then slightly brown. This gives it a really good nutty taste but if you are impatient, just melt the butter 😉

2. When the butter is melted (and browned if you want), turn the heat off, sprinkle in the sea salt, and stir in the marshmallows. Stir until the marshmallows are smooth – you may need to turn the heat back on to low to get them to melt, but don’t let the marshmallows actually cook.

3. Take the pot off the stove and stir in the cereal. Fold it in gently, until it is all combined, then transfer to the prepared pan. Press it down with your hands to get it smooth and even.

4. Melt chocolate in a saucepan over low heat, then drizzle over rice krispies. Place in the fridge so the chocolate hardens but take it out an hour before you serve them so they return to room temperature. They are also pretty darn good after just a could minutes of cooling!

Red Wine Velvet Cake

June 18, 2013 by Mackenzie

To complete Indonesia Cooking Marathon #2, we made this Red Wine Velvet Cake from the Smitten Kitchen Cookbook. In Tom’s words, it was “Super Fantastic!” But really, it was divine.

Instead of using food coloring to get the deep red color, this recipe calls for red wine. Although the alcohol cooks out, the flavor of the wine is still strong in the cake – giving this red velvet cake a delicious, unique flavor! A perfect “adult” cake 😉

I made a simple cream cheese frosting to go with it, but boy, it really finished it off well! Top it off with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and I think you’ll really enjoy this recipe!

Red Wine Velvet Cake
Recipe adapted from The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook
Makes one 2-layer, 8-inch round cake

Ingredients:

Cake:
8 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
1/3 cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs, at room temperature
1 cup red wine
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2/3 cup Dutch cocoa powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon table salt

Cream Cheese Frosting:
Ingredients:
8 oz cream cheese
1 1/6 cup powdered sugar
Pinch of salt
1/2 to 1 teaspoon vanilla
2-4 tablespoons milk

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Line the bottom of two 8-inch, round cake pans with parchment paper and lightly coat with butter (sides too). In a large bowl, cream the butter until smooth with an electric mixer. Add the sugars and beat until fluffy, about three minutes. Add the eggs and beat well, then beat in the red wine and vanilla.

2. Add the rest of the cake ingredients to the wet mixture, piling it all on top before mixing it all together with a rubber spatula. Divide batter between prepared pans and bake for 25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool in pan on rack for ten minutes, then flip out and cool completely on a wire rack.

3. In a medium bowl, beat the cream cheese with the powdered sugar, salt and vanilla with an electric mixture, until light and fluffy (1-2 minutes). Add milk to reach desired consistency.

4. Place the first cake layer on the serving platter and spread 1/2 the frosting over it (I just did the tops and not the sides). Place the second layer on top and spread the rest of the frosting over it. I sprinkled some dark chocolate shards over the top, add if you want! Chill in the fridge until ready to serve.

Deep Dish Apple Pie

May 26, 2013 by Mackenzie

Sunday was quite the day in the kitchen! Not only did we make this gnocchi in tomato vegetable sauce, this roasted beets and root vegetable salad with quinoa, homemade granola, and focaccia bread – but we also made this deep dish apple pie! And my oh my, what a pie!

I’ve made quite a few apple pies in my time. Apple pie is a staple at our Thanksgiving and it’s probably one of my favorite desserts – so I’ve made a fair amount of apple pies! However, I believe this pie has easily defeated any of its other competitors – in sheer size and of course, deliciousness.

This pie is made in a springform pan instead of a regular pie dish, which allows this pie to be deep and the filling to be almost double a normal-sized pie. Because it is such a large pie, it takes quite a while to bake – about an hour and a half – but the wait is more than worth it!

Although it is quite the pie, it isn’t too heavy since the top is just a streusel crumble rather than a second layer of pie crust. I added rolled oats to the streusel because one, I love oats, and two, it gave it an apple crisp twist – which is another apple dessert that I love.

Deep Dish Apple Pie
Serves 12-16
Recipe from The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook

Pie dough:

Ingredients:
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon table salt
16 tablespoons unsalted butter, cold and diced
1/2 cup ice cold water

Directions:

1. In the bowl of a food processor, add the flour, sugar and salt and pulse to combine. Add the diced butter and pulse just until you have pea-sized pieces of dough. Transfer to a large bowl.

2. Drizzle the water over the dry mixture and work it together with your hands. Knead briefly then form into a large disk, wrap in plastic wrap and chill for two hours.

Apple pie:

Ingredients:

1 recipe of above pie crust

Filing:
4 lbs apples, 1/2 green apples and 1/2 Fuji apples
1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon table salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

Streusel topping:
3/4 cups sugar
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon table salt
1 cup all purpose flour
3/4 cups rolled oats
1 teaspoon baking powder
6 tablespoon butter, melted

Vanilla ice cream

Directions:

1. Prepare crust: coat a 9-inch springform pan with oil. On a floured surface, roll out chilled pie crust into a 16-inch round – 1/4 inch think. My trick to getting a rolled out pie crust into the pan is to roll it back over the rolling pin and then slide your arm under it and then you should be able to lift the whole thing up and transfer it to the springform pan! Trim the overhang to one inch, crimp edges and then place the dish into the fridge while you prepare the apples.

2. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Peel, core and chop apples into bite-sized pieces. Place them all into a large bowl and drizzle with the lemon juice. In a separate small bowl, whisk the sugar, flour, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg and then mix into apples.

3. Spoon apples into prepared crust and spread them as flat and evenly as possible. Bake pie for 30 minutes (if the tips of the apples begin to brown and burn, cover the top with foil).

4. While pie is baking, make the streusel topping. In a medium bowl, stir together sugar, cinnamon, salt, flour, oats and baking powder. Pour in the melted butter and mix to combine. Stick in freezer until pie has baked for 30 minutes.

5. After 30 minutes, remove the pie from the oven, decrease the oven temperature to 325 and then spoon the streusel onto the top of the pie – pressing gently into apples. Return to the oven and bake for an additional hour. Cover with foil if the streusel begins to brown too quickly.

6. When the pie has finished baking, remove it from the oven and let cool to lukewarm. Run a knife around the crust to loosen the edges from the pan. Carefully loosen the clamp on the springform and slide it over the top and off the pie. The pie slices best when chilled in the fridge, but warm pie and ice cream just can’t be beat. Take your pick and enjoy this tall and proud creation!

Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

May 2, 2013 by Mackenzie

My college church group had a pie bake-off last week at our end-of-semester party. I made this strawberry rhubarb pie and took 2nd place (to a delicious blackberry pie!)!

There were two strawberry rhubarb pies at our party, mine more on the sweet side and the other on the tart side. The other recipe was from Smitten Kitchen if you’re looking for a tart pie but I loved the sweet taste of this one! It still had a tart flavor from the rhubarb but was less significant – it was a perfect combination!

I also got a lot of compliments on the crust! I used a recipe from a New York Times bake-off and adapted it slightly. It was perfectly flakey and buttery and delicious!

Strawberry Rhubarb Pie
Makes one pie
Crust adapted from The New York Times and pie recipe from Food Network

Ingredients:
Crust:
1 3/4 cups plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
3/8 teaspoon table salt
15 tablespoons unsalted butter, chilled and cut into pieces

Pie:
2 1/2 cups chopped fresh red rhubarb
2 1/2 cups washed, de-stemmed and halved strawberries (big strawberries can be in thirds)
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 tablespoons minute tapioca
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon lemon zest
1/2 teaspoon lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 tablespoons butter, cubed small
1 egg white, beaten with 1 teaspoon water
Turbinado sugar

Directions:
1. Prepare crust: In a food processor, pulse together the flour and salt. Add butter and pulse until pea-sized bits form. Add 3-6 tablespoons ice water, 1 tablespoon at a time and pulse until dough begins to come together in a ball. Separate the dough into two balls, one with 2/3 of the dough and the other with 1/3 of the dough. Wrap disks in plastic wrap and chill for at least one hour or up to three days.

2. Roll out large disk for the bottom crust. Transfer to pie plate. Chill in refrigerator while you prepare the filling.

3. Filling: In a large bowl, mix the rhubarb, strawberries, sugar, tapioca (dry), flour, zest, juice, cinnamon and vanilla. Pour into chilled crust. Dot the cubes of butter on top of the filling. Roll out top layer and place over filling. Crimp to seal edges. (Or make a lattice or use biscuit cutters to make a circle design). Brush with egg wash and sprinkle with turbinado sugar. Make a foil collar so prevent the edges from burning. Bake at 425 degrees for 15 minutes then decrease temperature to 375 degrees and bake for an additional 45-50 minutes. Let cool before serving.

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