Thursday, June 30, 2011

Cupcake Decorating 101



So I've been fascinated with cupcakes and cupcake decoration. I've been studying different cupcake recipes, printing out ones I want. I even made Irish Stout Chocolate cupcakes for Father's Day.

I went to Hobby Lobby last night and got some cupcake decorating tools. I practiced tonight (using boxed cake mix and a container of frosting). For a first attempt it went quite well. It just amazed me how much more frosting is used compared to spreading it on with a knife.

I am hosting a bridal shower in August and I plan on making a varietyof cupcakes (all from scratch) and decorating them in the bride's colors.






Saturday, June 25, 2011

Wow. Almost 6,000 calories

Passed down from generation to generation family recipes are not healthy for you!!!! Jeremy had a food day at work this week and it was a picnic-themed food day so I told I would make macaroni salad for him. I found the recipe in the Manning quasicentennial cookbook and there it was. So we went to the store for ingredients.

I am usually a pretty healthy shopper, and I always buy the low-calorie/low-fat/free-free when available… But I know these lower versions can skew a recipe and since I had never done substitutions before I went with real mayo (Jeremy was almost out of his). I had never looked at the back of the jar of real mayo before (I always ALWAYS buy light). 100 calories for 1 TBSP. The recipe called for two cups!!!! According to the Internet the sweetened condensed milk (14 oz can) contains 1300 calories.

One bite of this macaroni salad is probably my daily calorie limit for the meal. BUT it is soo worth it J Next time though, when it is just for family, I plan on using the lower fat/calorie ingredients to see if it changes the taste. Because if it doesn’t, I will at least try to make it a bit healthier!

A great tool to figure out calories is http://caloriecount.about.com/cc/recipe_analysis.php. You enter in all the ingredients and figure out the nutrition content. This recipe feeds a lot…as it should since it is almost 6,000 calories. Anyways, for those who are interested, here is the recipe:

1 cup sugar
1 cup vinegar
2 cups mayo
1 lb cooked macaroni noodles
1 can (14oz) sweetened condensed milk
1 cup shredded carrots
1 cup diced celery
½ cup diced onion
½ cup diced peppers

Cook macaroni according to package (make sure to not overcook). Once it is finished cooking, remove from heat and drain with cold water. Combine sugar, mayo, vinegar, sweetened condensed milk in a separate bowl. Whisk. Put veggies into pasta. Once pasta is cool to touch, mix in sugar/mayo/vinegar/sweetened condensed milk mixture and stir. Add salt and pepper to taste. Refrigerate overnight. (It does not taste good until the next day!)

Friday, June 24, 2011

Canning Bing Cherries

(my little kitchen helper... canning at six years old already)

As a child one of my favorite canned items were my grandma's bing cherries. I still envision their sweetness so I decided to try my hand at canning them. I was a little worried after the plums didn't go quite as well as I hoped.

I bought approximately 10 pounds of bing cherries from Fareway and I pitted them all by hand.






Since my grandma is no longer here, I was not able to ask her what she did as I wanted my canned bing cherries to taste just like hers. I decided on raw packing it, which means I put the cherries in the jar and poured the syrup on and canned them in a water bath.


I went with this method since cooking the fruit prior would probably just turn it to mush (like with the plums). So I made a light syrup and packed the cherries into pint jars. I made 12 pint jars and it took 2 batches and made the kitchen steamier than normal all morning.


The jars have sat for over a week now so my goal is to open one of them at our BBQ tonight to try the sweet deliciousness! I'll post next week on how that went.













Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Picking Strawberries

This was not the year for strawberries. Last week Maddie, Abby and I headed out to Adel to Berry Fresh Farms to pick fresh strawberries. We had fun and the girls got to eat lots of fresh strawberries while we were out there. I bought about 9 pounds of fruit. My goal was to make fresh strawberry pie and freeze some for pies later.


We picked on Wednesday and by the weekend most of the strawberries were starting to go bad...growing mold or getting squishy. I think it was just a bad year for strawberries unfortunately. Too much rain!!!! I was able to make some fresh syrup to pour over lemon cake and Irish stout chocolate cupcakes for father's day. And I froze some too but I don't think the berries will be the quality I need for pies.


Berry Fresh Farms was amazing and I would highly recommend them. The ladies that helped us were super nice and helpful. Their Web site is http://www.berryfreshfarms.com/. They also have raspberries, which will be ready sometime in July. I am hoping we can make a trip back to pick some fresh raspberries. (and I hope the rain doesn't hinder this fruit crop this year!)

















Monday, June 20, 2011

Irish Stout Cupcakes



In honor of Father's Day I made Irish Stout cupcakes with the Irish stout beer my boyfriend had made a few months back. I googled a recipe (he had gotten the idea from a local cupcake shop) and found one that looked delicious. They turned out delicious even though I forgot the sour cream. (oops). I'm not a big chocolate fan but any beer fan likes the idea of eating beer in their dessert.


Funny enough, I didn't even save the recipe to make again.


Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Canning Plums



I canned plums tonight and it was a learning experience (to say the least). I had never canned plums before nor do I remember mom or grandma canning them. So I did my research and used one of the canning books I have.



What did I learn? You should peel plums before canning them. I also learned that you should only can very firm plums as a little mushiness turns into a lot mushiness when you boil them.

I was a little disappointed that I only ended up with 3 pints.... I didn't want to do a huge batch as I wasn't sure how it would work. But I was hoping for 5 or 6 jars. Not sure if I'll make more but I did learn a few things for the future.






Friday, June 10, 2011

Hail Damage


Well, as crazy Iowa weather goes, we had hail the last few days. I was worried about my car and didn't even give thought to what it did to my garden. So last night Abby and I went to check on it. I stood there stunned...I think I muttered a few 'oh no's' etc. It hadn't even crossed my mind that there might be hail damage to the garden. Abby just looked at me and gave me a great big hug around the waist and said, "It'll be OK Jenny."

And I beleive her, except for maybe my one cucumber plant and a few beans...I think everything else will spring back eventually. Luckily enough, we did not get the hail that others got last night (this hail was from Thursday morning).

I've included a picture of the hail from my front door and a picture of my flattened carrotts. Hopefully it dries up soon enough so that I can get back into the garden to really assess the damage.










Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Fresh Rhubarb




My mom has the most amazing rhubarb patch. It's been in her garden ever since I was a small child...and it was probably there long before me! This year was a good year for rhubarb (it got hailed on last year so the crop was small). I've been blessed with stock after stock of rhubarb. This year I am freezing most of it. It freezes well so that this winter, especially for the holidays, I can make pies with the rhubarb.


My coworker gave me a great rhubarb bread recipe. I can seriously eat a loaf in a whole sitting, it is that yummy. The recipe is below. I also found a recip online for strawberry rhubarb muffins. They turned out disappointing. I would like to find a recipe for muffins yet. If I had some free time (which I don't right now) I would expirement with recipes but for now, for the lack of hours in the day, I'll stick with the tried and true ones! Or the new ones I get to try first, before I bake them.

Rhubarb Bread
1.5 cups brown sugar
1 tsp soda
1 egg
2/3 cup oil
2 cup raw rhubarb
½ cup nuts
1 tsp vanilla
½ cup sugar
1 cup buttermilk
2.5 cup flour
1 T soft butter
1 tsp salt
½ tsp cinnamon

Mix together brown sugar, egg, oil, buttermilk and vanilla. Sift together and add flour, salt and soda. Fold in rhubarb and nuts. Pour into 2 greased loaf pans. Top with mixture of sugar, soft butter and cinnamon. Bake 350 for 60 minutes.


Thursday, June 2, 2011

Scrambled Egg Muffins





I love breakfast for dinner so that is what I had last night. I tried a new recipe last night: scrambled egg muffins. I had been wanting to try to make this for a while now as I had seen pictures posted online somewhere. I didn't follow a recipe but made it up as I went, using what I had in the hosue.

Scrambled Egg Muffins
3 eggs
3 egg whites
1/4 cup water (I was out of milk)
1/4 cup cheese, divided
1/2 can (small one) mushrooms
3 T salsa
1/8 cup chopped onion
1/8 cup chopped green peppers
1/4 cup ham

Preheat oven to 300. Sautee the onion, peppers and mushrooms. In a mixing bowl add eggs and water. Mix. Add salsa, onion, peppers, mushroom, ham and half the cheese. Mix.

My muffin pan held eight though I feel the mixture would have worked to make six. I lined it with cupcake paper. I poured the mixture evenly between. The mixture doesn't rise so you can fill it to the top.

Bake for about 15 minutes. When the muffins are no longer soggy, sprinkle the remaining cheese evenly on top. Bake for about another 5-7 minutes or until the muffins are firm.

I did notice that as the cupcake paper cooled, it bcame soggy so once they were cooled, I removed the paper, put them in a baggy and popped them in the freezer for future use. Next time I will use aluminum cupcake liners. And I can't wait to try other meats (bacon, sausage) and veggies.

Best part is, each muffin is only 62 calories!




Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Brand New Blog

I've blogged in the past and enjoyed it. I read other people's blogs, and I miss having my own. So I've decided to start a blog again and this time my blog has a theme....cooking.


I am into eating healthly which includes a diet of fresh food. We started a garden this year to raise our own produce, and I've taken up canning, and plan to preserve much of the food we grow this summer.


So my blog is going to be about that journey.


I hope you enjoy ~
Jenny




Our garden before planting!