Category: Cooking and Baking

The first step to making a terrible muffin is to try an entirely unfamiliar recipe. The second is to not follow the recipe. Follow me for more tips on making “No-Rise Blueberry Muffins!”

In attempt to inspire my middle school-aged daughter to excel in her opening season track meet the following morning, we watched the movie, “Miracle.” The movie isn’t as good as the documentary, “Miracle on Ice.” The best part of the movie is that the Boston and Upper Midwest accents are actually good. After watching Julianne Moore’s cringy Boston accent in “30 Rock,” of was refreshing to hear something that sounds passable. I learned later that this was because most of the people in the movies were actual hockey players who were taught to act rather than the other way around. Drama in real life, if you will. Perhaps I had hockey on the brain when I made these delectable little treats. These “muffins” could not be bound by ordinary properties of physics, the parts could not have possible created a sum this dense.

Have you ever baked something and thought, “I should probably do this professionally, it would a shame to deprive the world of such skill and technique.” I have not.

Here is the recipe, for Lemon Blueberry Breakfast Muffins. It promises to be so delicious that, “even picky toddlers” will love these muffins. No mention about mouthy teenagers or husband’s with above average baking skills.

As previously posted, I have a track records of less than ideal baking outcomes. Who can forget the ultra low carb but super salty Almond Flour Coffee Cake? Feeling peckish, how about a go at my “Banana Bread Rinds?” My one consistent recipe is my Apple Chocolate Chip Cake.

The past few times I made anything with frozen blueberries, I had a few bites that were, “off.” Sour, tangy in an unpleasant way, I figured it was the berries but realized after opening a new bag that it was the baking soda/powder reacting with the berry acid (scientific name.) Refusing to break my hard-line rule about only using ONE bowl when baking, I diligently mixed up and sifted (by fluffing the flour in the air as I measured) my dry ingredients before adding my wet. I gently folded in my berries with all of their acids and then waited. Around the half-way point, I turned the muffin pan 180 degrees, I noted that they seemed a little flat but as this was a yogurt based muffin, I thought they just had to overcome a little more whole milk weight before rising. I was wrong. The timer dinged and when I opened the oven, they were still little muffin pucks. The good news is they did not have that unpleasant “zingy sour” taste of muffins past. The bad news is I had entirely omitted and baking powder and or soda from the mixture.

Rare photo of the pucks as they emerge from their holes.

Thankfully, I skipped the struesel topping. Who knows what horrors I would have inflicted upon the world. At least they could have supported the extra weight, birthing hips on these muffins.

My kids laughed at me. I ate them anyway. Food photography is not my thing and neither is baking. When life hands you blueberries, make hockey pucks but wait until the morning after the race. My daughter ran her little heart out, owing largely to the fact that she had not yet consumed any of the lead-based muffins. Perhaps if she had known what awaited her, she would have run even faster in the opposite direction.

It has been a busy week. Especially busy now that it is dark at 5 PM and I have my pajamas on by 6, so much to do in so little time.

I was having a streak, I even took some photos (terrible of course) of several from scratch pumpkin pies I made. Though I am not a good baker, I do make everything from scratch, no mixes here. I took these precious little pie pumpkins and transformed them into crust-less pies! Why crust-less? Because otherwise I will be listening to the rumblings of a certain someone in my family who avoids extraneous gluten. I don’t particularly care about crust and as I would be making it from scratch, thus increasing my chances of disaster, I am happy to skip it.

Riding high on the victory of my past pies, I flew too close to the sun and literally melted my pumpkin wings. Note to self, if your pie needs 5 or so minutes to be fully set in the middle it is not wise to step outside to do a little hedge clipping.

The scorched earth pie began simply. Microwaving chunks of pumpkin until soft. Easy, right? All went well until I decided to use my food processor not just to puree the pumpkin but to blend my entire batter. It was at this point that I realized that I do not have one of those food processors in which one can blend soups and liquids. It leaks out of the bottom. After I cleaned this mess up and poured the remains into my pie pan, I popped this beauty into the oven. After about 40 minutes, I decided it needed about 5 more minutes to fully set. So I left it in for another hour while I pruned hedges on a glorious fall day.

“Oh my god, the pie!”

Apparently, virtual school makes it impossible to smell burning pumpkin pie. My children were oblivious to the disaster as I walked into the kitchen, realizing that I had left the pie in the oven.

I didn’t realize how blurry this was until now. Probably from the steam.

The saving grace of this pie, baked for well over 2 hours, was that it was crust-less. If there had been a gluten engorged crust to this particular pie, it would have turned to ash. Instead, the custard caramelized. My son actually said he preferred my burned pie to the others. That’s not really saying much. There’s a sound bite for you, “this burned pie tastes better tha n my other pumpkin pie, follow me for more recipes!”

Breaking News, middle aged woman runs faster than she did before.

Two earth shattering things in my running world. I am wearing new shoes and I ran a 24:44 5k on Saturday, a sub 8 min pace!

The Hokas helped me recover from a foot injury, specifically a plantar plate tear. The rocker bottom allowed me to run without pressure on this healing area. On the other hand, I felt that the cushion contributed to some hip flexor/psoas pain. I have been using some Pilate and yoga strength training to work my glutes and to stretch my psoas. The Hokas helped me recover from a foot injury, specifically a plantar plate tear. The rocker bottom allowed me to run without pressure on this healing area. On the other hand, I felt that the cushion contributed to some hip flexor/psoas pain. I have been using some Pilate and yoga strength training to work my glutes and to stretch my psoas. Doesn’t that make me sound like a gym rat?

Interestingly, foot pain has been my Achilles heel. I have bunions and high arches and I have been using an arch support in my running shoes. After listening to this podcast with guest, Irene Davis, PhD and with my reading on trigger points and muscle attachments, I decided to increase my foot flexibility and strengthen my arches. After several weeks of these exercises, I took out my arch supports. The first few runs I felt like I was getting blisters below my bunion. After that, I could feel my ankles getting stronger and much more range of motion in my toes.

I ran in minimalist shoes before, the Merrell Arc 4. I was running in these when I had the plantar plate injury. Though I was running in Hokas, I believed in the mechanics of the minimal shoe. I have started running in the Altra Escalante and have been pleased with results. By focusing on proper form, especially a midfoot/forefoot strike pattern my feet feel strong. Picturing my daughter’s beautiful running form, particularly the leg extension. There is a more natural rhythm that I am falling into when I am focusing on my foot strike and leg extension which leads me to a faster pace!

This weekend, I was shocked when my phone clocked my first mile at a 7:50! I kept each mile pretty consistent and finished with a 7:53 average pace, something I did not think would ever be possible. I did this with new shoes, no arch supports and a kick ass playlist.

There is a metaphor in here somewhere. Sometimes the things you think are helping you are actually holding you back. Had I not decided to begin this foot exercise regimen and to cast aside the shoes I had been running in somewhat successfully, I would never know the glory of running like a slow motion Olympian. Sometimes you have to break it all down to rebuild it better. We are never too old to learn some new tricks.

Some blogs post beautiful photographs of carefully staged food, if you have read anything on this blog, you know this is not one of them.

My sister sent me a text message asking for the recipe of a childhood favorite, Apple Chocolate Chip Cake. It doesn’t sound like much, the name, though descriptive, doesn’t sounds appealing. It is delicious and simple, two of my favorite things.

I sent her a quick photo of the recipe. A recipe scrawled on a post-it-note and stuck inside the cover of a “vintage” The New York Time International Cookbook. I have never actually cooked one of these international dishes but I have moved this book to at least 14 different residences over the past 20-ish years so I feel like this book is essential to my household.

I have made this recipe so many times I don’t read it except to verify the age old question, “am I using baking powder or baking soda?” My sister, “lol”ed at my directions. And the patina of my cover.

Follow me for more delicious recipes!

The big joke here is that I am what you might call a “one bowl baker,” which is code for a lazy and terrible baker. My love of minimalism and efficiency is greater than my need to be a perfect baker so I mix my “wet” ingredients and then add scoops of my dry ingredients, in the same bowl! With the exception of a meringue or a souffle, which I clearly have no business making, I stick to my one-bowl rule.

The writing on the upper right is my mother’s, though I have no recollection of her adding her helpful hints. I never dust pans and certainly wouldn’t dust them with breadcrumbs. My life is too short for dry-cleaning, owning shirts that aren’t wrinkle free and dusting cake pans.

I get angry when I am scrolling through War and Peace to find the directions to a recipe, clearly a simple, “add” and “mix” is sufficient to make a cake.

As a minimalist, I try not to attach too much sentiment to material things. I take a lot of photographs, try to create as many fun memories as I can but I don’t have a lot of “mementos.” My kids won’t inherit much from me other than my love of karaoke and combination oily/dry skin.

This is my heirloom, I rewrote this recipe at one point from an even older post-it note than had lost its stick and been taped several times. Behold my children, someday, this will be yours.

Growing up, I called this recipe, Auntie Hazel’s Apple Cake. Hazel was a classic Yankee farmer who owned a large apple orchard in Rhode Island. I never had a relationship with any relatives outside of my parents so this was as close as I get to family recipes.

Since the recipe involved apples, it all made sense to my young mind. I proudly told everyone who came into contact with this delicious recipe that it was “Auntie Hazel’s Apple Chocolate Chip Cake.” Only it wasn’t her recipe. My mother casually mentioned it came from a magazine and had nothing to do with the apple orchard of my youth.

This will have to suffice as an heirloom recipe for my children.

On the other side of their family, my husband has this book, filled with classic Italian cookie recipes from his mother. Did I mention his family had been bakers in Italy?

Someday, my children will fight over one of these books.

Though I am not a good baker, I substitute ingredients early and often, I know how to pick and stick with a winner. Much like marriage, you may have to modify a bit but ultimately, there is no substitute for comfort.

I have made this recipe more times than I can count, I am posting the “classic” version as well as my “modified” version.

Classic Apple Chocolate Chip Cake

  1. Cream 1 cup of sugar, 3/4 cup oil in a bowl. Add 2 eggs and beat until fluffy. Add 2 tsp of vanilla extract and mix.
  2. In a separate large bowl, sift together (ha ha) 2 cups flour, dash salt and 1 tsp of baking soda.
  3. With the precision of the bomb squad, carefully add the wet ingredients to the dry (or the other way around I can’t remember) Mix until blended
  4. Add 3-4 apples, peeled and slices and 1 cup of chocolate chips, mix.
  5. Grease a bundt pan, pour in batter, scoop it, etc.
  6. Bake at 350 for almost an hour. It will get fairly dark, you don’t want it undercooked.

Modified Apple Chocolate Chip Cake

  1. Get your favorite bowl, cream 1/2 cup sugar with olive oil and whole plain yogurt, I add equal amounts to create 3/4 cup total
  2. Add 2 eggs, mix until fluffy, add 1tsp vanilla extract and a whisp of cinnamon
  3. throw in your dash of salt, add 1 tsp of baking soda, mix a tad
  4. Add 1 cup almond flour, mix a bit
  5. Add 1 cup of gluten-laden white flour, mix until blended
  6. Mix in the apples (3-4 sliced and peeled) and 1 cup chocolate chip
  7. Grease your bundt pan, add batter, bake at 350 for around an hour
  8. Do not underbake, the apples release moisture.
Food photography is not my strong point, let’s call it rustic and agree that my granite is ugly.

No Pinterest Pics Here!

{Warning} There are no pretty photos on this blog. I can link you to my Etsy shop for that.

I am not afraid to substitute, my family is afraid when I substitute, with good reason. I have had some less than successful baking results, but they were “healthier” so there’s that. Except the time when I added salt instead of sugar, I am pretty sure that was at LD50.

In my defense, my sugar and salt decorative jars are very similar. It was inedible. Spit it out inedible. I blamed the salted butter, which I accidentaly bought during the Corona panic buying. It was not the butter, I added a cup of salt. But they were almond flour, so healthy?

This morning, I needed a pick-me-up, I didn’t sleep well. I am trying to reinvent my life post-COVID19. This is a story for another time. We are not a “paleo” family, no verified allergies, just the vain wheat belly reasons. I randomly subsitute almond flour into traditional recipes, it doesn’t always work out. I also don’t believe in using more than one bowl when baking, sort of a “one pot cooking” but for baking, it also doesn’t always work out. I know there is a science, nay, a chemistry behind the two or sometimes 3 bowls used in baking recipes, liquid/solids, acids/bases, oxidation/reduction, etc. I just don’t think it’s efficient and as I have learned more about myself, my goal is to optimize, sometimes the baking doesn’t look so pretty.

Exhibit A. #blueberry (I don’t know how to use a hashtag either)
Kids, come take a scoop of blueberry mess!

Back to this morning, today was a good day. The recipe, once I scrolled past all of the manicured pictures and found the buried recipe treasure, was pretty simple. I decided on a few substitutions. I didn’t have much coconut oil, I generally use olive oil for everything (I know, most of the best pastries are made with olive oil, ha-ha) I buy it in bulk (optimizing) and it usually works ok in most things. I find that olive oil and almond flour prove to be a little leaden when they combine forces so I use whole plain yougurt. This seems to add the fat but allows for a lighter texture. More edible, less building material.

Not all substitutions are successful, i.e. salt for sugar, vinegar and milk for buttermilk. Pretty sure the indigenous people built dwellings from this maize creation. You could really taste the vinegar, which was not at all tasty.

I beat the eggs, yogurt and honey with a hand mixer. I felt like it needed some vanilla extract so I added a capful or so. I then mixed in my salt, baking soda and almond flour, being oh-so-careful not to overmix. Acid/base blah blah blah.

For the topping I used brown sugar, I don’t know what coconut sugar is, cinammon and all spice. Also, I learned that allspice is not a mixture of all of the common baking spices as I thought for most of my life, according to my Google overlords, it is “Jamaica pepper, myrtle pepper, pimenta, or pimento, is the dried unripe berry of Pimenta dioica.” I think I will say I added Jamaica pepper next time, sounds more beachy. I drizzled a little oilive oil on top. I did not add slivered almonds as I felt the 3.5 cups of ground almonds was probably enough nuts for my GI system to process this morning.

I popped it in the oven and then the questions began. “Another coffee cake, are you putting blueberries in this one too?” “Is that almond flour, why can’t you use regular flour?” “How old is this coffee?” It baked in less than 30 minutes and was quite attractive for one of my baking experiments.

The entire cake was consumed in a few minutes, there were no stray blueberries squished onto the floor. A success! Additionally, I had but one bowl to wash. It was relatively light, delicious and practically a vegetable. I went on a run later and did not feel like I swallowed any lead weights.

No, I am not a professional photographer, but I can see why you might be wondering.

“Smoke quickly filled the room” is a dramatic yet accurate way to begin this story. I was wandering through our yard, checking for groundhog damage and picking the last of my grapes. This sounds much more interesting than it really was, I have but one concord grape vine and this year at the summer solstice, the animals surrounding my house gathered round and feasted upon everything I had planted this spring. When the feasting was done, I was left with a few grapes and strawberry stumps, my lilies, tomatoes, beans and roses were trashed. I threw some netting over the grape vine to keep the deer from getting all of the grapes and forgot about them. Last weekend I realized there were quite a few grapes and called the children round to harvest, my teenage boy had no interest so my daughter and I set forth to fill our ziploc bag.

I was about to update my readers (though Google analytics tells me that I have no readers) about a decent cake I made. A few posts back, I discussed my ineptitude for baking but I am capable of occasionally making a cake that doesn’t look like it fell from a great height onto the pavement. Occasionally.

Every year, I ask my beloved children what cake they would like for their birthdays. No matter how ridiculous, I find a way to make this cake. As they have matured, I thankfully no longer have to figure out how to make a race car or a bunny shaped cake.

Bunny is a little scary, car doesn’t look like it would pass inspection….

This year, my daughter’s request was to have a chocolate cake with coconut-vanilla frosting. I used my trusted Ina Garten recipe for Beatty’s cake. I am not sure if this is pronounced Betty as in Crocker or Beady as in Richard Gere’s eyes or Beatty as in Shirley Maclaine’s brother. This recipe borders on too many ingredients and steps, hence the mind wandering about the pronunciation.

Beady, Betty, Beatty?

Anyway, I made jam, which as I have learned is the lazy person’s jelly. I only had enough precious grapes for serving size of jam. I found a recipe that involved as few ingredients and steps as possible since my attention span is inversely proportional to both ingredients and steps.

It tasted delicious, my husband claimed it gave him a stomach ache but the rest of us enjoyed jam with dinner and breakfast the next morning. I look forward to making enough jam for 6 people next year, provided I can stop the wild rumpus from eating all of my bounty on the solstice.

Back to the room filling with smoke. I intended to “brown” some ground beef. I find that I usually don’t pre-heat my pan enough and end up boiling my meat. Mmm, boiled meat. Eat up kids! My pan was hot. Too hot. I knew as soon as I added my meat that it was not only “browning” but burning. I turned down the heat and opened a door to allow the cool, 90 degree breeze to carry away the smoke before the alarms went off. In my haste to move around the “browning” meat, I sent a few raw pieces airborne and onto the backsplash. Not quite a fail but ironic as I was about to write about my cake and jam conquest. Hubris.

Banana bread is my nemesis

This brings me to my next baking fail, the pile of banana bread. I had to use spell check to figure out how to spell banana, I still think it should have 3 n’s but google tells me it does not. Banana bread should be vaguely bread-like, maybe not sandwich bread-like but some sort of slice-able bread. As mentioned in other posts , https://learningnewtricks.com/index.php/2019/05/20/i-am-not-a-baker/

directions are usually not my thing.

I was making a banana bread and tried to make it “healthier” by omitting a bit of sugar and substituting roughly half of the “evil gluten flour” with “lamb of god almond flour.” Some say it was too humid that day, some say I was in a rush to pick up one or the other kid and took the sad banana pile out of the oven too early, others say my kitchen is haunted.

I present to you, my banana pile! Eat up kids! Sometimes I can say it still tasted good but in this case, it tasted like baking soda.

Don’t mind if I do!
The rinds are the best part.

My garden is now facing the first frost, even though my veggies were a huge failure this year and my one serving of jam was a feeble showing, my flowers were beautiful!

Swallowtail and Miss Huff Lantana

My kids like to torture me with a woman named Dr. Jean. Have you heard of her? If you have, I am sorry. Bleeding eardrums. One of her hot songs has a line called, “my mother is a baker a baker a baker.”

I am not a baker. Ironically, when I was searching for this video clip, my mother is a serial killer was google’s helpful suggestion. If I had to listen to Dr. Jean, this would be true for my children.

The unfortunate voice of a generation.

At one point I was trapped in a cabin with my children as they played me all of these Dr. Jean songs, the worst of which was about peeling a banana.

I encourage you to browse the body of her work. If you like to inflict pain upon yourself. I was fortunate enough to have been born in the 1970’s and though the clothing choices were pretty much corduroy or corduroy, we never had to listen to such hits as “Tooty Ta, Going on a Bear Hunt, the Rules of the Classroom, Today is Sunday.” I consider her the musical equivalent of looking at Caillou. Or listening to Caillou. When I type Caillou, my Google overlords tell me it is not spelled correctly, suggesting callous instead. You would have to be callous to insert an audio clip of Caillou so I won’t inflict it upon you. His voice sends shivers down my spine.

Funny story, when my son was 2 we moved from New England to Virginia, at the time he loved this bald headed annoying moppet. When we moved I told him we were now too far from Canada to get Caillou on the television. This was a lie of course and one I am not ashamed of. I did feel a little bad when my son found Caillou many years later on Netflix and said something about how amazing technology was to allow us to view Canadian television in Virginia.

Image result for caillou

Back to my point, I am not a baker. I enjoy cooking sometimes, I get creative when I need to. I like to think of my life as one big mystery basket from Chopped, give me the ingredients, and I will whip something up. I like to be creative, baking is not very forgiving to us creative types. I recklessly substitute ingredients, adjust oven temperatures to better suit my moods. Recipes are mere jumping off points for me. Jumping headlong into the fire is more accurate. I hate to use more than one bowl for anything. Yet all of these recipes ask for wet ingredients in one bowl, dry ingredients in another, semi-gloss and matte over here etc. I don’t have that kind of patience. I understand that there is a chemical reaction that I am prolonging or truncating, but I don’t care. I am focused on efficiency and all of those bowls hurt me at my core.

Behold the simple cornbread. Or is it? One of my many baking shortcomings is that I don’t actually print or keep recipes, I always think I will remember which one of the 20,000 online recipes I used. I don’t and there are definite winners and losers out there. Especially when you don’t actually have the ingredients on hand.

My son, who is my technical support since I did not know until today that I two finger tap to spell check or select an image (Learning New Tricks!) said to me, “this recipe looks really easy, how could you mess this up? ” He then added, with the knowledge of hindsight, “I don’t see vinegar listed as an ingredient here.” Which is true and pretty much the beginning and end of my problem.

I know people say you can substitute buttermilk for whole milk curdled by the addition of white vinegar. I have done so somewhat successfully in the past. As I measured out my 1 cup of milk, carefully reading the bottom of the meniscus, I was about 1/4 to 1/5 a cup shy of 1 cup, no problem, I will make up the volume with my added vinegar! Quelle Brilliance! I was too lazy to open the unopened gallon in the fridge leading me later to repeat the “Old Greek Saying” that “he who does not have brains must have legs.”

Upon removing the very dense bread from the oven, straining a bicep. I was overpowered by the smell of vinegar. I tasted a tiny corner and headed straight to the trash to spit it out. My husband, who is kind and will eat anything, said it wasn’t bad once it cooled. I didn’t bother tasting it again, calling it dense would be an insult to lead.

No, it’s not a peanut butter bar of some sort.

Later that week, I made breaded chicken tenders. I have cooked these many times and usually use a think layer of olive oil in the pan. Trying to be thrifty, I had reserved the oil from making Loukomades (Greek Doughboys) for our non-traditional Greek Easter celebration. I am not sure on the exact chemistry here but there must have been sugar residue in the oil…Overly blackened chicken anyone?

Finger breaking good.

Which bring me to the pièce de résistance! My meringues! I had leftover egg whites and not nearly enough time to actually dry them appropriately but gobs of ambition. Everything was great until I decided that 2 hours in the oven was plenty and took them out. Never trust a baker who learns everything she knows from the interwebs, she probably diagnosis her own foot conditions too. They were sticky but still tasty and the kids and I enjoyed them. There were a few left over so I stuck them in a ziploc baggie. The next morning, this is what I saw

Would it help if I said it tasted like a Charleston Chew?

My poor, deflated Meringues, you deserved so much more.

I think the oven and I need to see other people.