Blog-a-palooza to come...

escher rocks. picked this image
cuz this entry is like everywhere
and nowhere at the same time.
seemed kinda apropros

I plan to make red/green cupcakes for the choir...cookie Christmas trees for some people (who? tbd. would be great to make them for the kids' teachers, but...well... not sure when I'd find the time to do that between now and their last day of school.)... deviled eggs for Christmas dinner (can't WAIT! getting a zig zag cutter and going to use my pastry bag to fill them...once i experiment w/ ingredients (during which I'll inevitably pretend I'm working on my audition video for Next Food Network Star - don't judge me)... is that it? well there is the apple/cr cheese/praline bunt cake I want to make - YUM (i hope, lol) but that has nada to do w/ Christmas, so i digress... anyway, if I'm a good little wannabe blogger I'll take lots of pics and blog as I go... mind you i already have two or three (or more?) recent endeavors that I have yet to blog... so much to blog... so little time...  random: so in Pinterest, I have a board for things I've pinned to other boards and then purchased/made/etc. I typically just repin the original pin...BUT what i SHOULD do is pin a pick of  my actual whatever w/ a link to my blog! Man i'm a genius! (ok i think i had that thought before just never followed thru... still genius tho, lol) ok stream of consciousness complete. hopefully i'll catch up on my blogging soon...

uh...creativity what...?

ok so somehow i gotta make this blog tru to the blurb... it seems to have become almost all about food... what's that about? is that the only realm of life in which i engage in creative escapades? if not, i need to do better at recognizing and recording them... of so - i need to fix that... hmmm...

Banana Cake w/ Banana Cream Cheese Frosting

The recipe my mom always used for banana cake has gone a-missing... Ok it vanished long ago and since I've tried various recipes. I wasn't looking for THE recipe per se, just one that I liked. And while I haven't hated the others that I've found, I'm pretty sure I'm done looking. Barefoot Contessa's Old-Fashioned Banana Cake - uh YUM!

There were some tweaks, oooofff course, due to time, availability and preference. Imagine how much stuff I wouldn't make if I let li'l old things like that stop me...

CAKE INGREDIENTS  
(*indicates a deviation from the recipe above)

3 very ripe bananas, mashed
3/4 cup granulated sugar
*1/2 cup brown sugar, lightly packed (didn't have light brown)
1/2 cup vegetable oil
*2 large eggs (didn't have xtra large)
1/2 cup sour cream
*1 teaspoon imitation vanilla extract (didn't have pure)
*Grated zest of 1 orange (in the interest of time, skipped it. willing to try add it next time. I did have the orange.)
2 cups (*unbleached. not sure it maters but figured I'd note it. it's what i had.) all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
*1/2 teaspoon salt (didn't have kosher)
1/2 cup coarsely chopped walnuts (optional) - opted out
Walnut halves, for decorating (optional) - opted out
  
 CAKE BAKEWARE
It called for a cake pan that was 9 inches round, 2 inches deep. That I do not possess. Silly me, not really thinking it thru, foolishly decided to use two 8 inch rounds... seems EVER so foolish now... But i was in a rush, lol. Why I went with smaller in both dimensions I can't say at this time... suffice it to say - nxt time (and there WILL be a next time) 2 9in. 

As a result, they were uber high in the middle and not easily stackable. On another day, I'd have leveled them and repurposed the cake I had to slice off the tops. But that night I opted just to ice, stack, & hope for the best... With the too soft icing (which follows) it was...um... fun. yeah, that's it...

FROSTING
(*indicates a deviation from the recipe above...ok so basically it's one great big deviation...but I did kinda base it off her recipe...)

As much as I love the stuff, I didn't just want cr ch frosting. Partly, because I like banana frosting on banana cake, partly because this was all done b/c I had a few bananas I need to do something with... Yeah, blame the poor, defenseless ripe bananas... lol. Anyway, I also had some leftover icing from the cupcakes I'd made a couple weeks ago for my daughter's birthday and wanted to use it up.

*8 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature, (eh, it was an 8oz package, but rec only req'd 6)
*4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature (to uh balance out the 2 extra ounces of cream cheese)
*1 'heaping" teaspoon vanilla extract (cuz I'm generally obsessed w/ vanilla)
*3 cups sifted confectioners' sugar (to compensate for the extra liquidiness from the banana)
*1 ripe banana
* 1 cup or so leftover uber basic icing (recipe off domino's conf sug box)

Sooo, I'm still working on getting cr ch frosting to be stiffer... in this case, it was totally the banana's fault. When planning to make the cake, I totally intended to nix the butter altogether... Clearly I forgot. I could have added more powdered sugar but it was already at an extra 1/2 cup, I didn't want to over do it... It taste's delish, we just have to keep the cake in the fridge. I can live with that.

 All in all? Delish!!! And I think this may be the first recipe to actually remind me of the one my mom made... Which is cool. *smile*

Egg Muffins: Take 3 - Operation Bacon

Bacon, Egg & Cheese

Yum again, my friends. Yum again!

Inside
I fried up a pack of bacon. Cut it up (uh, what I didn't eat...only a slice...or..two...I think...) and added it to the tins (sprayed w/ cooking spray), shredded cheddar cheese on top.

Egg
8 eggs right off the bat. And it was enough - YAY! I do need to get better at even distribution... But that'll come in time. I am sure I'll be getting a lot of practice at these, lol. Eggs, Milk, Pepper, shredded Italian mix (packaged that way) cheese. Even tho I added the cheese to the batter, it ultimately ended up on top which made it uber pretty when it first came out of the oven and they were still a li'l puffy.

RESULT - YUM! I clearly still need work on even distribution, but also clearly getting better. :) What next... What next...

Egg Muffins: Take 2 - Pretty & Yummy!

Egg Muffins w/ Chorizo, Onions & Cheese

Aren't they beautiful?!?! I made some greens that required chorizo (YUM!) but not all of the chorizo that came in the package. What better to use in my second attempt at egg muffins?

Inside
about 2/5 lb of chorizo (or as much as you want, lol)
about...1 medium onion (probably)
shredded cheddar cheese

I cooked up the chorizo first then threw in the diced onions for a few minutes before putting them in the muffin tin (sprayed w/ cooking spray). Topped it with cheese.

Egg mixture
I tried to start with 6 eggs again and failed - again. I was going to add just one egg...but in a moment of paranoia went ahead and did 2 more. I also didn't fill them all the way to the top. I think I did about 3/4 or so. It would likely also be fine with 7. I can't say what the correlation is, but I think it does depend at least in part on how much other stuff you have going in.

Into the oven: 375 for 20min.

RESULT - OMG SO GOOD!!! And sooo purdy, what w/ the reddyness of the chorizo mixing w/ the yellowiness of the egg & cheese... mmmm sooo good!!!

Egg Muffins: Take 1 - Tasty...Try Again

Egg Muffins. Muffin Tin Omlettes. Mini Frittatas. There may well be other names, but those are the ones I've come across. Apparently I was aware of such almost a year ago and did nothing about it. Shame on me! They're uber easy to make and convenient to bring to work.

I picked a recipe online to use as an initial guide for #of eggs and oven time & temp, decided what I wanted in them and went from there.

(no pics, sorry charlie)
First, I diced up the add ins: onion, green pepper, tomatoes and evenly distributed them among 9 of the 12 cups of the muffin tin (sprayed w/ cooking spray). At the last minute I realized I was being selfish and in case other people in the house didn't want veggie omlettes, I should have some plain ones.
1 green pepper
1 medium onion
2 (maybe 3?) plum tomatoes

Then I made the egg batter:
6 eggs
milk (some, lol)
salt, pepper

The recipe I had said to add the egg to the tins all the way to the top. Ummm yeah, when I did this I didn't have enough for all 12 cups... Sooo, I did 3 more eggs to finish up.

Cheese - so I knew I'd use cheese but thought hey I'll add it (shredded cheddar) to the top after I add the egg. Seemed like a good idea at the time... and it might not have been a BAD idea per se... but considering that ultimately all the tins ended up with too much egg, it just wasn't the best idea then. I realized after the fact that I should have just added the cheese pre egg.

Into the oven at 375 for 20 minutes. 

RESULT - Tasty? Yes. But there were issues...
 - Not pretty. (Hey, presentation counts.) They puffed up a LOT, and when they deflated - not so pretty. I must have just used less veggies than the recipe writer did so filling the cups to the brim actually put more egg in mine than theirs. Next time less egg.
-  Watery. Not runny egg by any means, watery. When heated up, wither in the microwave or toaster oven, they leaked. Not fun. I blame the tomatoes. Next time: lose the seeds first.

Sw Potato Muffins w/ Cream Cheese Swirl

yeah ummm i forgot to take a pic before i ate one...
don't judge me...

A friend of mine sent me this recipe: Pumpkin Muffins w/ Eggnog Cream Cheese Swirl. I don't do eggnog, but I'm ALL about cream cheese. And while I could do pumpkin, I don't so much. And I had some leftover sweet potatoes... And thus this variation was born.

For the Eggnog Cream Cheese Swirl I used vanilla instead of rum for a total of 1tbsp + 1tsp of vanilla. And I didn't actually measure the nutmeg and cinnamon cuz I didn't feel like digging out the 1/8 tsp. 3/8 is roughly a half so I used the 1/2 and didn't quite fill it all the way. And 1/8 is a 'dash' or a 'pinch' or something right? So two shakes of cinnamon.

Now here's the fun part. The recipe calls for 1 1/3 cup pumpkin puree. I'd made mashed sw potatoes last week and there were still some left, so that's what I used. And since I didn't really use a recipe for that, this will never be 100% replicable, but that's ok. Replication is for wimps. Ok not at ALL, lol. ;)

But this is roughly how the sw potato dish went down:
3 sw potatoes (two were ginormous) diced (it was enough to all but fill my 4qt (I think) crock pot)
1 stick of butter
1/3(ish) cup of brown sugar
1-2 tsp cinnamon (honestly it was more like 'a few shakes' but I'm trying, lol)

Add all to crock, put on low for some hours... maybe...4? 5? After a few hours I went in w/ the paddle thing from my rice cooker and stirred, they started to break down but not all the way. Some time later I did it again... Eventually I turned it off then a while later it was time for dinner... Yes, as much as I love America's Test Kitchen, Alton Brown and the whole notion behind the science of why food works. I'm still all about proving it doesn't have to be an exact science... Don't judge me.

Ok, so in spite of how yummy they were, there were other meals between then and now and they weren't all gone. So into the muffins they go.

Sw Pot Puree
~1 1/3 cup leftover sw potatoes
~1/4 cup oj
needed to add some liquid for the blender. not a lot of milk left. wasn't sure yogurt would be thin enough. certainly didn't want to use something as utterly flavorless and blah as water. so oj won the prize. and you know i didn't measure it at all... it was just enough to make sure the blender could get going. and my blender's on crack.

Other than those li'l tweaks, the rest of the recipe & process are the same. And they are uber yummerlicious!! I think I might make a few more than 12 nxt time, just so they don't spill over as much... the slight variation in amt of batter could be due to any of the variations above, which may or may not happen the exact same way again, but still... and I'd try to do a better job 'filling' them. It says use a spoon to make a deep hole and fill it w/ filling. easier said than done... But again - tasty!!

self sorting laundry chute

random thought... a laundry shoot would be great, sure. just open the door, toss in some clothes and they end up down in the laundry room. but wouldn't it be even better if they ended up in the laundry room sorted? at least by color, if not by fabric. yes, yes it would indeed be even better... now how...? an electronic device of some sort of course. one designed to detect color and whatever other element someone may want to sort by. if color only then i suppose it'd be a matter of light reflection detection... with perhaps a feature that can detect weight/material properties - denim, sweater, towel, etc. ahhh wouldn't that be lovely... maybe i should sell that to some electrical engineering seniors next year so they can use it for their senior design project... OR maybe to an Integrated Product Design master's student as a thesis idea... OR i should patent the concept now just to be on the safe side, then when someone else decides they want to do it, and find that there's a patent on it, I can make a fortune... OR i can go on that show Shark Tank and pitch it and get THEM to pay thru the nose for it... tho i suppose i'd have to do some research first to make sure i can convince them that it'd be worth it... hmmm... i should get on that... i could use a few extra bucks...

kitchen must haves

soo, 'lynne's lessons' right? who says it has to be just lessons i've learned from myself? no one! in the spirit of such, this was posted on facebook by someone I went to college with, but i wanted to remember it and hey, she said herself that it should be shared so here goes:

"I have become a decent cook over the years and wanted to share with you my thoughts on the essentials. With the following ingredients in your kitchen, you can guarantee a multitude of meals: shallots, garlic, onions, basil, cilantro, thyme, oregano, ginger, coconut milk, olive oil, chili peppers, marinara sauce, chicken breasts, pork loin, (green & red peppers), ground turkey, chili pepper, cheyenne, cumin, cream, pasta, rice, mushrooms. You can make Italian dishes, Mexican fare, American, Indian dishes & Thai with these ingredients. The more we endeavor to cook our own meals, the healthier we will be!!! Please share this with those who are not as adept in the kitchen : )"

slow and steady wins the race...right?

progress report on the blanket i started shamefully long ago for my daughter... it's been far too long since i worked on it consistently, but now i'm back. inspired the recent knitting exploits of a pal-o-mine. it's about 33 inches long so far. i forget how wide it is (doesn't matter much given that ain't gonna change, lol). i just did some research and i might as well fess up - i started this thing sometime in 2010... while im not super fast (or even kinda fast, lol) by any means, the delay has really been due to long stretches of not working on it at all. not cool. so i need to commit to working on it consistently. i did some math and in theory i could have it done in about 3 months if i average an hour a day. i could be a punk and just make the goal Christmas, but i don't think i will. what's today's date? 10  august 2012. the goal is 10 november 2012. i will finish this blanket on or before the 10th of november. this is possible. this can be done. it must be done. it wiiiiilll be done.