Very Berry Spelt Multi-Grain Muffins

Well after that sugar rush of caramel corn last night (I had a handful then had enough), I am craving muffins today.  Multi-grain berry muffins.  I am not a muffin girl and when I do eat a muffin, it’s never the fruit kind but for some reason today, I want a wholesome soft, fluffy fruit muffin. I’m looking forward to having this in the morning, cracked open, drizzled with yogurt and sprinkled with nuts and chia seeds. Perfect breakfast? I think so!

I enjoy the flavour of spelt flour along with the hard wheat red bran in this recipe. In half the batch I threw in some cacao nibs just ‘cause.  This recipe will be sure to satisfy your whole grain and sweet tooth all at the same time!

Ingredients:

2 c           spelt flour

½ c          yellow corn meal

½ c          hard wheat red bran

1/3 c      lightly ground flax seeds

¼ c          chopped walnuts

2 tbsp    sesame seeds

1 ½ tsp  baking powder

1 tsp      baking soda

1 tsp      ground cinnamon

½ tsp     pink Himalayan sea salt

Small handful of chocolate chips (optional)

2              large eggs

1 c           orange juice

½ c          organic coconut oil

½-¾ c     agave

1 tsp      vanilla extract

1 ½ c      mixed frozen berries, thawed

1 tbsp    rolled oats

1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Line a medium-sized muffin tin with your favourite cupcake liners.

2. In a large bowl, combine the spelt flour, cornmeal, oat bran, flax seeds, chopped walnuts, sesame seeds, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt.

3. In a smaller bowl, whisk the eggs lightly. To the eggs, add the orange juice, coconut oil, agave and vanilla, whisking until they are well combined. Pour the wet into the dry and whisk just until blended. Mix in the berries (and the juice they produced when defrosting) and cacao nibs (if using).

4. Spoon the batter into the prepared muffin tins, filling the muffin cups almost to the top. Top each muffin with a sprinkling of the oats. How pretty!

5. Bake for 18 to 25 minutes, or until the muffins are deep golden brown and spring back lightly when pressed gently in the center and a toothpick comes out clean.

Enjoy my friends!

Salted Vanilla Bean Caramel Corn

I make popcorn on a regular basis, it’s one of my favourite snacks, but lately I want sweet caramel corn. Instead of the plain-Jane caramel corn I wanted to mix it up a bit, so I’ve opted to add salt, peanuts and vanilla bean. Sounds like heaven, right? It is.

Oh yeah, this is happening on a Monday night.

I didn’t want to use corn syrup for my sweet treat, so I knew I had to work with brown sugar and butter. Hey – that’s not a bad thing. I did some research and came up with the simplest way to make it. No corn syrup, no baking… just sauce and let cool caramel corn.

Here’s what you do my friends… make yourself some focaccia, then for dessert, make this. Park your ass on the couch and cuddle up. This makes for one helluva meal 🙂 (sorry for the awful pics, the lighting was terrible in my kitchen tonight!)

• 1 cup organic popcorn
• 4 Tbsp butter
• 1 1/2 c light or dark brown sugar
• 1/3 c water
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1 vanilla bean
• 2-4 tsp coarse sea salt

1. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.
2. Pop popcorn as per usual then spread it out on the lined baking sheet.

Melt butter in a pan.  Add brown sugar and stir until mixed, then add the water. 

Stir until boiling stage and cook for 5-10 minutes until mixture hits soft-ball stage (put a few drops in a glass of icy water until it can form a soft ball).

Remove from heat and add vanilla and soda, continue to stir while it goes puffy.
Add peanuts and mix well.

Drizzle over popcorn and lightly stir.
Salt with coarse sea salt.
Allow to cool (if you can).

Eat.

Sweet Potato Breakfast Pancakes (cooked in coconut oil)

I don’t eat enough sweet potatoes. Do you?

I love ’em, but I definitely don’t eat enough of them. I picked one up at the grocery store the other night with the idea of having half as a side to dinner. I didn’t feel like taking the time to bake it, so I threw it in the handy-dandy microwave (never used to use one, until we moved to the new house) and voila! It was done in like 6 minutes.

After dinner I was heating up a cup of lemon balm tea before bed (recipe here), I popped open the microwave (it’s becoming a regular kitchen appliance now) and there’s the sweet potato still on the plate, fully cooked and now cooled. Oops.

Huh. So now what to do with it. I’ve already eaten dinner. Well, I guess I’ll throw it in a container and figure it out in the AM.

The next morning I decided I was going to attempt to go for another run, later in the day (I have to pump myself up for running, it’s not an activity I particularly like). So I started to plan out my meals for the day so I would have adequate energy for the workout (I was planning on having KD for lunch, as awful as that is).

I’m not one for sweet breakfasts. You’ll usually find me having yogurt and organic seed granola, or eggs and cheese. Mmmm… cheese. But today I wanted to try something different, and I had that damn sweet potato to use.

I love pancakes, but NEVER order them when I go out for breakfast, it’s only something I’ll have at home. So off I hopped to the kitchen to figure it out.

An hour later, and I was making breakfast. (Coffee went cold TWICE during that hour, another great use for the micro-ondes, reheating that cuppa!).

Here’s what you’ll need for these tasty, filling and nutritional pancakes.

• 3/4 pound sweet potatoes
• 1 1/2 cups whole-wheat flour
• 3 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon (Add more to taste, I love cinnamon and the health benefits!)
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 1 1/2 cups milk
• 1/4 cup butter, melted

Since I had the cooked and cooled sweet potato, the skin came right off. I didn’t have a hard time peeling it at all. I grabbed the hand blender and whipped it up. I didn’t want any chunks of potato in my pancakes.

‘Mashed’ with a hand blender to make it ultra smooth.

In a medium bowl, I sifted together flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg. I did not add ANY sugar to this recipe. It definitely doesn’t need more sugar. You could use all -purpose flour or peanut flour for this recipe too.

Next, in a separate medium bowl, I mixed mashed sweet potatoes, eggs, milk and butter.

Blend sweet potato mixture into the flour mixture to form a batter. The mixture took a bit to combine and I used a whisk to bring it all together. Careful of splashing that milk around! I got it all over the counter.

Next, preheat a lightly greased griddle over medium-high heat. I used organic coconut oil. Man, that was the best decision of the day. The light coconut oil flavoured the pancakes beautifully and they were not greasy at all. Perfect combination! There are not many things I like to cook in coconut oil, but this one is being added to the list. Score.

Coconut oil for greasing

Melted coconut oil

Pancake batter

The batter was a BIT thick the first time I tried to pour the pancake. I added a bit of extra milk after to thin it out. You basically just have to move the batter around in the pan with a spoon for spatula to get it to shape. Otherwise you’ll end up with a big blob.

In the pan!

Alrighty! We are making progress. My pancakes didn’t stick AT ALL. They moved around quite quickly in the pan. I waited until I saw the edges bubble then flipped. Just check the bottom of it to your desired doneness, and flip!

Flip!

Now let’s see how they turned out! I put a small dab of butter and a bit of syrup. I loooove butter. The pancakes were crispy on the edges and cooked perfectly inside. They are definitely more dense than your regular box-pancake but I’m okay with that. I think the whole-wheat flour attributed to that.

The finished product

I ate two for breakfast and cooked the rest of the batter. I stored them in a container, and popped them in the fridge. This morning (day after) I took one out, and put it in the toaster. It was perfectly warmed while still being crispy on the outside. I can’t wait to have another for lunch 🙂 Great on-the-go breakfast too!

As for my run later.. I had a really big salad for lunch with my fresh fenugreek sprouts (see post here). Ahh so tasty. I had a small sandwich later in the afternoon because I got hungry. Ended up going for a 3k run at 7pm. My shins were still really sore from my run two days ago, but I made it. I didn’t like it, but I made it. I felt I had enough energy, but probably should have eaten more during the day. Today is a rest day since I have softball tonight, that will warm my legs up! Hoping to hit the road again tomorrow, maybe I’ll try a lunch run. –

Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoy the pancake recipe. Do you have any fun sweet potato recipes you’d like to share? Post a comment!

Enjoy!

Recipe: Rhubarb Syrup

Remember I hit up the farm and picked fresh rhubarb the other week? Well, I still had some of it leftover. Since there wasn’t enough left to make a pie, I thought I’d make some syrup to add to drinks over the weekend.

When it comes to drinks, if I’m not having wine, I’m usually having vodka and soda.  I have it with lime, but this weekend I wanted something sweet. Enter rhubarb syrup.  I added it to alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks (soda water) this weekend for friends. Everyone loved it.  Squeeze some fresh lime into it and it’s a perfect summer drink.

I scored some more rhubarb from a friends garden over the weekend and used that to make more syrup. I also added chopped strawberries to make it a classic syrup.  I think making a punch out of it would be great, it could even be drizzled on fish or on a salad as a dressing if you added a little vinegar and oil to it. Very versatile and very yummy.

Here’s the recipe.

• 2-3 cups of chopped rhubarb
• 1/2 to 1 cup of white sugar
• 1 cup of water

1. Add all ingredients to a saucepan and bring to a slow boil. Cook until reduced by half.
2. Strain using a mesh sieve. You’ll be left with the cooked, mushy rhubarb. Don’t throw it out! You can store it in the fridge and spread it on toast 🙂
3. Let it cool in a bowl before using. Store syrup in a glass jar in the fridge.

Moans for scones.

Yesterday B and I went out for Dim Sum with some friends. While nom-noming on delicious little items tucked neatly into steamers, my friend mentions that when we are all settled in our new homes (we’re moving a week apart from each other, in the same city) that I’ll have to show her how I made my baguettes. She promised to teach me how to make Filipino food, which I absolutely adore. There are so many dishes I haven’t even tried to recreate from my time in Manila, so I’m stoked to have a cooking lesson from her. I squealed at the thought of us cooking and baking together. Right then, then she whips her head around and says to me;

You’ll have to make SCONES!

Scones? Really? Hmm.

I don’t really recall meddling in the scone-zone. The only thing close I could recall were some cheddar jalapeno biscuits I tried out years ago, but that was when I first started exploring the kitchen and I just used Bisquick mix. Hardly a revolutionary recipe.

So this morning I woke up and I was on a mission. Scones day. Lots and lots of scones. Thing is, because we are moving we packed the kitchen yesterday and pretty much everything I’d need to use to bake them. Time to go digging.

I found a round cake pan, and decided that would work. I don’t own a scone pan. I didn’t even know they existed until today, thanks to the internet :).  I found my measuring cups and pulled out the flour. I had some dried cranberries in the pantry and figured I would make something with those, even though I’m not a fan of dried fruit in stuff. I really, don’t like dried fruit in anything.  Wait, I made white chocolate chip macadamia nut cookies with dried cranberries this past Christmas, but I only liked them because of the nuts and chocolates. Okay, the cranberries were pretty, but that’s about it.

So I did some searching and found the recipe I wanted to try. I landed on this really great blog called CravingThis. Here is the recipe.

I did make one alteration which was to use light cream instead of buttermilk. They turned out great with that change and were soft, light and fluffy. I actually like the cranberries in it because there isn’t too much of them and they are not overly sweet either which is what I was aiming for. The crust is nice and flaky and the lemon zest and juice add a really nice flavour to this scone. It’s kind of cake-like, which is fine by me. Definitely brush the top with an egg wash and sprinkle sugar on top before baking. You won’t be able to wait until they are cooled.

You thought that was it, right? Ha! Read on my friends 🙂  I used the lemon cranberry scone as a stepping stone to the next level and had my mind blown. (Yes I made that up).

I don’t like dried fruit, but I absolutely LOVE cheese. Next: Savory scones? Challenge accepted!

Knowing the measurements I used earlier, I decided to kind of wing it and create my own. What I came out of the oven was a delicious, peppery, cheesy scone. I had some left over blue cheese in the fridge so I decided to throw that in. Happy I did, it gave the scones a nice little bite, that pairs nicely with the mustard and pepper. I also heavily peppered the bacon before cooking it on a cookie sheet in the oven. The carrots are just to increase the number of health stars 😛

I made the scones both ways, in the pan and free-style. They’re both great, guess it just comes down to what you want them to look like.

  

Cheesy Bacon Onion Scones

Ingredients

• 2 cups All-Purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 6 tablespoons butter, cut into cubes, frozen for at least 30 mins
• 1 cup grated or chopped sharp cheddar cheese
• 1/4 cup (loosely packed) of crumbled blue cheese
• 1 cup (tighly packed) of grated carrots
• 6 strips of cooked, crispy bacon, chopped up
• 3 scallions, cleaned, trimmed, and chopped (both white and green parts)
• 2 large eggs
• 1/3 cup milk, cream, sour cream, or ricotta cheese (I used light cream)
• 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard, optional, for flavor
• 1 teaspoon hot sauce or a pinch or three of cayenne, optional, for zing!

1. Cut the butter into cubes and freeze it for 30 min before using, and make sure the oven is readily preheated on 450ºF/230ºC BEFORE starting the dough.
2. Crumble the blue cheese, grate the carrots and dice the chives.  Place in a big bowl and set aside.  
3. Combine flour, baking powder, salt and nutmeg in the food processor bowl.  Add the frozen butter and pulse until the butter is cut into small bits the size of barley.  You can also do this with a pastry cutter by hand.  
4. Combine the flour mixture with the blue cheese and carrots.  
5. Whisk the egg and heavy cream together, and add to the flour mixture.  Use a spatula to fold it together until JUST combined.  Some lumps are fine. If the mixture is too dry, feel free to add a little more cream. You want it sticky but manageable.

Option 1:

1. Dust your hands and the dough with flour, and shape the dough into 8 round balls, it will be very sticky. Just keep dusting it with more flour and it will be fine.  Place them on the baking sheet lined with parchment paper with at least 2″ (5cm) of space in between.  Brush the top with egg wash and sprinkle with black pepper.
2. Bake in the oven until puffed and golden brown, approx 15 ~ 20 min.

Option 2:

1. Prepare an 8-inch non-stick round cake pan. I cut parchment paper out to fit the bottom of the pan to prevent burning and sticking.
2. Turn the wet mixture out into the cake pan and lightly move it around so it’s level all around and pressed to the edges. Don’t push it down too hard. Brush with egg wash and sprinkle with black pepper.
3. Bake in the oven until puffed and golden, about 15 ~ 20 min.
4. Remove from oven, and cut it into slices, as you would a cake. I removed the slices and put them on a baking sheet and let them crisp up a bit for 4 minutes to finish them off.

Enjoy, let me know if you make these and how they turned out.