Baked Sunday Mornings: Peaches and Dream Pie

This weekend's Baked Sunday Mornings selection was another great, summery pie: The Peaches and Dream Pie. Isn't that a fabulous title? Once again, the Baked guys have taken something that is traditional and garden-variety, such as a peach pie, and turned it on its head.

It all starts out with a generous pile of peaches (the recipe gives you the option to use either canned or fresh, but I went fresh because the peaches are peaking right now and they looked fabulous!), diced and spread out in a standard pie crust. Next, you mix up an interesting mix of eggs, honey, sour cream, salt, flour, and dark brown sugar, and pour it all over the peaches in the crust.

Finally, you make up a topping made only of flour, dark brown sugar, and cold butter that is worked into the other ingredients until you have, basically, sand. It is pretty much the same type of topping you would put on top of a crumb or coffee cake, and it is divine. That was the smell that pervaded my house while this pie was baking, and it really made me want to pick at the hard, yummy crust that formed on top of the pie when it came out of the oven. But I resisted, because I was serving this to my husband's family the next day and I didn't want to have to explain why there was a big hole on the top of the pie!

When everything was said and done, this pie baked up beautifully, was very easy to make, and received rave reviews by everybody who tried it. What more could you ask for? Please check out the results of the other members of Baked Sunday Mornings by clicking on the blogroll, here.

Grilled Baby Peppers (for Wine and Cheese Date Night)

Recently, my husband and I were afforded the blessed, rare opportunity to have a date night. With two little boys and no relatives living close by, we find that our alone time is pretty sparse these days. But the kids were off for a few days with their grandparents, so we decided to have a fun date night where we pretended we were sophisticated and know how to pair wines with cheeses. Silly us!



I went all out for this meal. I was inspired by some meals we have had at restaurants in the St. Louis area, where we always seem to order the assorted cheese plates. What can I say, we love our assorted cheese plates. They usually come with some type of dried fruit, some nuts, some olives, or some cured meats. Well, I figured I would just serve all of these!



We had golden raisins, green grapes, dried cranberries, and dried apricots. We had cashews and marcona almonds. We had a wide assortment of olives that I picked up from the olive bar at Whole Foods (which may be my new favorite section of the store!). We had pita bread, toasted wheat bread, and hummus. We had so much food I was a little overwhelmed by it all!

I went to a fancy cheese store that afternoon, and they were very helpful there. They let me sample pretty much any and every cheese I glanced at. I wanted a good variety, and there was so much to choose from. I settled on a Muenster, some Gouda, some Gruyere, a nice Manchego (which is a hard cheese, like Parmigiano), a bit of Camembert (that was my fave), and some super duper stinky blue cheese called Morbier. To go along with it, I picked up some spicy Spanish chorizo from the same store.

We lined up four different types of wine (two reds, two whites) and tried to pair up the various cheeses with the corresponding wines. In some cases, we were shocked at how beautifully it all worked. In other cases, though, it just didn't work out. We still had a blast trying to figure stuff out. It's not something we're likely to do every day, but it was great for a staying-in date! And I would imagine it was at least marginally less expensive than going out.

Now, because none of my blog entries seems complete without some kind of recipe, I will share with you the absurdly simply recipe for the baby bell peppers I served with this meal. I found it in Food Network Magazine, and it seemed like something that would go well with everything else we had that evening. It's a snap, and so very pretty!

Grilled Baby Peppers
adapted from Food Network Magazine
makes 4 servings

Ingredients
1 lb. baby bell peppers (or quartered full-size peppers)
1 Tbsp. olive oil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
Chopped fresh mint, to taste
1/2 lemon, juiced
1/4-1/2 cup feta, crumbled

Directions
1. Preheat a grill pan to high. Toss the peppers with the olive oil, salt, and pepper. Throw them on the grill pan and cook for about 10 minutes, turning frequently, until blistered on all sides.

2. Remove the peppers from the grill pan and place on a serving dish. Sprinkle the mint over the peppers, along with the juice of the 1/2 a lemon and the feta. Toss lightly, and serve.

Baked Sunday Mornings: Blackberry Pie

For this installment of Baked Sunday Mornings, we had the pleasure of baking a Blackberry Pie. I'm not too familiar with baking pies that have a fruit or berry filling; this was my very first berry pie, actually! I've made apple pies before, and I've made key lime, but otherwise I prefer to make non-fruit pies, such as pecan. That said, I was really looking forward to switching things up a little!



The filling is a very simple mixture of fresh blackberries, butter, granulated and dark brown sugar, lemon juice and zest, flour, and salt. It smelled amazing before it even went into the oven. Plus, it only took about 10 minutes to assemble (not including the pie dough, of course).



Speaking of the pie dough, I do find this one pretty easy to work with. Granted, I don't have a ton of experience with dough (mostly because I haven't entirely overcome my fear of working with it!), but I have never had a problem with the Baked version. It baked up flaky and tender, just as it always does.

The finished product was aromatic, perfectly brown and bubbly, and tasted wonderful. I confess; I made this a while back, for Easter dinner. I saw that it was coming up in our recipe rotation for July, and I decided it would be a good thing to bring. I think this would be just the thing for a Fourth of July barbecue or party, though. It's a very summery pie, and I think it could only be enhanced by some vanilla ice cream on top!



Please do check out the other Baked Sunday Mornings blog posts this week; the blogroll can be located here.

Baked Sunday Mornings: Rosemary Apricot Squares

This week's Baked Sunday Mornings project was to make these Rosemary Apricot Squares, a pleasant surprise if ever there was one. Why? Well, I guess I just didn't think I'd like these bars very much; they don't sound quite as exciting as most of the other Baked recipes do. I'll be honest with you; I don't eat apricots. I don't buy fresh apricots, and I don't buy dried apricots. I've also never turned a dried fruit into a jam filling, so this recipe marked a couple firsts for me. I'm glad I took the plunge, because these bars were simply delightful.

You start out with a pretty simple shortbread crust. The addition of fresh, minced rosemary lends specks of color to this otherwise blond layer, and gives it a nice, floral dimension that I really liked.

The next layer is a fruit filling layer, and it actually couldn't have been much easier to make. I cooked a bunch of dried apricots down in a mixture of water, honey, brandy, sugar, and a pinch of salt. They did take forever to get to what I considered the "ready" stage, but it was all worth the time spent on the stove. The mixture is transferred to a food processor and pureed until smooth. I tasted it, and I was surprised at how good it was. Maybe apricots deserve another try, I thought.

This fruit filling is then spread over the cooled shortbread crust and evened out. A final layer of delicious topping is sprinkled over the top of the fruit. It's just flour, dark brown sugar, flour, a bit of salt, some butter, and chopped pecans. It tastes like crumb cake topping, but mine was a lot sandier and less chunky than crumb cake topping. Plus, I patted mine down so that the top layer looks more smooth and uniform, with just the lumps of pecan visible.

The squares were so fragrant while they were in the oven; my curiosity was officially piqued. Before making these, I didn't even know if I was going to try them. I figured the whole batch would be sent off to work with Andy, never to be seen again. But now I wanted to eat one!

When it came time to cut these into squares, I trimmed the edges from the outer sides of the block. The apricot had seeped out a bit and burned on the sides, and it just wasn't as attractive as the rest of the bars were. So I snacked. I tried those edges, and I loved them. The shortbread is tender (maybe a bit too tender and crumbly, but still delicious!), the apricot layer is sweet and smooth and wonderful, and the topping is the perfect nutty, salty foil to the rest of the bar. This cookbook has done it again; it's taken flavors that are an odd pairing, and transformed them into an amazing, cohesive dessert that seems to work on every level. I am very impressed with the Rosemary Apricot Squares. Now I think I better make sure the rest of them do make it to work with Andy, because they are dangerous to keep around!

Find out if everybody else in the group was impressed with these bars, too. The blogroll can be found right here.

A Week of Muffins: Cherry Craisin-Wheat Germ Muffins

I'm closing out this week of muffins with what turned out to be my favorite of the bunch: Cherry Craisin-Wheat Germ Muffins. It's surprising, really. I definitely did not expect the muffin that sounded the healthiest, and let's fact it, the blah-est of the five, to be the one I favored. That's exactly what ended up happening, though! I absolutely loved these muffins; the best was saved for last.

These are extremely simple; none of the ingredients are wild or bizarre. The dried cherries were the only component I altered in the slightest; I opted to use cherry-flavored dried cranberries instead, because I just really like dried cranberries. There's a good amount of wheat germ in the batter, but you really don't taste it at all. It makes the muffins bulkier, and more filling, but it doesn't make them taste like health muffins or anything. There's also a small amount of allspice in there, which I believe gives the muffins a little special something else.

Thanks for bearing with me during my vacation week; next week I'm actually going to be gone, too. But at least this way I was able to still put some new material up on the blog for part of the time. Be sure to check back with me the first weekend in June, though! I'll be back with a bunch of stuff I had made prior to vacation, just waiting to be shared with you!

Cherry Craisin Wheat-Germ Muffins
adapted from Cooking Light
makes 12 muffins

Ingredients
6.75 oz. (about 1 1/2 cups) all-purpose flour
3/4 cup cherry-flavored Craisins
1/2 cup toasted wheat germ
1/2 cup packed dark brown sugar
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. kosher salt
1/4 tsp. ground allspice
1 cup low-fat buttermilk
1/4 cup canola oil
1 large egg, lightly beaten
Nonstick cooking spray

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Weigh or lightly spoon flour into dry measuring cups; level with a knife. Combine flour and the next 7 ingredients (through allspice) in a large bowl, stirring with a whisk. Make a well in the center of the mixture.

2. Combine buttermilk, oil, and egg in a separate small bowl, stirring well with a whisk. Add buttermilk mixture to flour mixture, stirring just until moist.

3. Place 12 muffin-cup liners in muffin cups, and coat liners with cooking spray (I simply sprayed my muffin tins, with no muffin-cup liners, and it worked fine). Divide batter evenly among prepared muffin cups. Bake for 15 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of a muffin comes out clean.

4. Cool for 5 minutes in the pan before turning out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

CEIMB: Lemon-Ginger Iced Tea with Berry Cubes

This week's Craving Ellie in My Belly recipe was supposed to be the Peach Pie Smoothies. However, once again, I found myself not really wanting to make this one since it contains my nemesis, yogurt. I feel bad that I haven't been participating with the correct recipes for two weeks now, especially because next week and the week after I will be on vacation, and therefore unable to participate!

So, I decided to go ahead and make next week's recipe a bit early and post about it today. Next week's recipe is the Lemon-Ginger Iced Tea with Berry Cubes, chosen by Mary of Popsicles and Sandy Feet. This one was such a great, refreshing beverage to make for springtime! And we enjoy both iced tea and lemonade around these parts, so I figured this one would go over pretty well.

As usual with Ellie's recipes, this one is easy to make. You allow a saucepan of water, honey, and chopped ginger to boil, and them simmer briefly. Once that is finished, you add in 6 tea bags and steep it for a while. Strain out the solids, and then add a bunch more water, along with 1/2 cup fresh lemon juice. Then you chill it out in the fridge for a few hours. To accompany the iced tea, Ellie instructs you to plop some fresh raspberries in an ice cube tray, fill the tray with water, and freeze it until you have these adorable little berry cubes. Since my kids and my husband just did some strawberry picking over the weekend, I decided to slice those and use them in my cubes.

The tea turned out delicious! Not too sweet, just the right amount of lemon, and the berry cubes were definitely the highlight. I didn't have time to run out and get fresh mint and extra lemon for garnish, but I feel like the cubes do the job of a garnish nicely, so we didn't really miss the other stuff too much. Thanks to Mary for the pick, and my apologies to Chaya of Comfy Cook's Kosher Kitchen for skipping out on the Peach Pie Smoothie! Do head over to her blog to see how it turned out.

Sangria

Next up in our week full of Cinco de Mayo recipes: Sangria! I haven't had that much Sangria in my life; in fact, I only just tried it recently for the very first time. However, I loved it at first sip. It's a red wine that has been steeping pretty much all day in fruit juices and sugar and, I am sure, a variety of other things depending on how it is made. Certainly, there are endless possibilities with Sangria.

I found a pretty basic, standard (I think!) recipe that I wanted to try out. I did not let it sit for 24 hours before serving, as the instructions indicated. I gave it over 8 hours, though, and there is still some left in the fridge, so we'll have to see if the extra day really makes a difference!

For our purposes, my husband and I bought both ginger ale and club soda as the carbonated portion of the beverage. I prefer to drink diet sodas normally, but I don't think that would have been very good in there. So, it was ginger ale for hubby, and club soda for me. I have to tell you, I really did not miss the sweetened ginger ale at all. The club soda worked out very well; it gave it fizz, and I thought the Sangria was just sweet enough. One final note, though; I do very much apologize for my lackluster photos! I really need to practice my beverage picture-taking; I just can't seem to figure out the best camera angles when it comes to drinks. Oh, well. Here's the recipe!

Sangria
adapted from about.com
makes about 12 or so cups (not including ice)

Ingredients
1 bottle red wine (any will work but I used a Garnacha)
1 lemon, cut into wedges
1 lime, cut into wedges
1 grapefruit, cut into wedges
2 Tbsp. sugar
Splash of lemonade (I used a mango lemonade, about 2 oz.)
2 shots of gin or triple sec (I used gin)
1 cup strawberries, sliced (thawed or frozen works; mine were fresh)
1 small can diced pineapples with juice
4 cups ginger ale or club soda

Directions
1. Pour the wine into a large pitcher and squeeze the juices of the lemon, lime, and grapefruit into the wine. Toss in the fruit wedges, leaving out the seeds if possible.

2. Add the pineapple, the sugar, lemonade, and gin. At this point, I also added my strawberries, then read that you're supposed to add them in at the end. I think my way was fine, but do whatever works!

3. Chill up to 8 hours or overnight (the longer this sits, the better it gets). Just before serving, add in ice and either ginger ale or club soda. We served ours with both (I used the club soda, and my husband used the ginger ale). So, I filled up each glass halfway with the sangria (I strained it first, since it does get gritty), then threw in the soda and the ice, and stirred well before serving.

CEIMB: Vanilla Spice Oatmeal

Okay, I'm not proud to admit it, but I almost did not participate in Craving Ellie in My Belly this week, and it was all because we were supposed to be making oatmeal. Ellie's Vanilla Spice Oatmeal, chosen by Mary of Popsicles and Sandy Feet, was not something I ever even considered making when I first purchased her So Easy cookbook. You see, here's another little-known bit of trivia about me: I can't stand oatmeal.

Yep, it's true. Or at least, I was pretty sure it was true up until this past weekend. I know I have been offered oatmeal in the past. I've turned it down every time. If I had to pinpoint my utter disgust concerning the mere presence of oatmeal, I'd say it's because of the texture. I'm just a big weirdo when it comes to food textures, and in particular I'm completely not a fan of mushy textures. Mashed potatoes are not my friend, and neither are grits, polenta, or even cream-based soups. So oatmeal certainly falls into that category for me.



When I first learned what we were to make this week, I told my husband, and then said that I would be choosing an Ellie rewind recipe from before I joined the group. I figured I would just make something else in place of the oatmeal. But then he asked me, "Why not just make it?" And you know what, I realized he was right. Why not? Neither of my children had ever eaten oatmeal (because I would never make them eat it, nor did I want to buy it and prepare it for them!), and it has been years since I last tried it. The truth is, my horizons have broadened so much in the last few years. I'm trying (and liking!) so many things now that I never dreamed I would. I've been pleasantly surprised so many times by foods that my former self could not palate.

And so, I decided right then and there, that I would make the oatmeal after all! At best, I would discover that I really did like it. At worst, I would just try it again and see that my suspicions were justified. Either way, no harm done.



In the end, I have to be honest. Me and oatmeal will probably never be bosom buddies. I loved the ease of making oatmeal from scratch (because I honestly had no idea it was so simple and fast!) and I did love Ellie's add-ins. She incorporates vanilla, cinnamon, brown sugar, and pecans for crunch. She added raisins to hers; I added dried cranberries. However, that darn texture is just not something I crave, or particularly enjoy consuming. I thought it tasted very good, but the mushiness is tough to deal with. Turns out, my husband is not a huge oatmeal fan either! I thought that was ironic and hilarious, considering he is the one who convinced me to make it! So he liked it okay, but wasn't in love. My five year-old son really did not care for it, but I had a feeling he wouldn't, so there were no shockers there.

I'm glad I revisited oatmeal, just so I could know for sure that it's just not our thing. Sorry I could not report some big culinary epiphany, though! I wanted it to work out better. Thank you to Mary for pushing me past my comfort levels! For the full recipe, you can go here, to Food Network's website. For the full CEIMB blogroll, click here.

MSC: Black Forest Cupcakes

It feels so good to be participating in the Martha Stewart Cupcakes Club again this month! I've been MIA for the last two assignments, for various reasons, but this time I'm back and ready to bake! This time around, we were to make Martha's Black Forest Cupcakes, chosen by Janine of Janine's Crazy World. I almost did not participate this time, either, because I'm not really a fan of cherries. However, I decided to go for it and to take on the challenge of adapting this to better fit my personal taste.



The cupcake part was made exactly as the recipe was written. Well, I did cut the recipe in half, and I used low-fat sour cream, but other than that it was very faithful to Martha's original take. I didn't want to mess with the cupcake; it sounded so good just the way it was! But then I got to the filling part, and I just had to start tampering with it.

You see, even though I am not a fan of eating whole cherries, I could totally see myself eating some yummy frosting that tasted like cherries. So I decided I would slice my cupcakes in half, through the middle like Martha indicates. However, instead of filling them with pastry cream and cherries, I thought I would make a cherry buttercream filling for this. Then, instead of brushing the cut cupcake sides with the cherry liquor/syrup, I just brushed some cherry preserves on each side. The buttercream was a delicious combination of butter, confectioners' sugar, and cherry preserves. The preserves contained pieces of cherry, but once they joined the butter and sugar in my stand mixer they got all chopped up. They were able to leave the frosting mostly smooth, with streaky bits of cherry throughout.

Finally, I topped the cupcakes with the indicated chocolate ganache glaze. Yum! That is all I have to say about the topping. I sent these to work with my husband and he returned home with just one left (which was for him since he did not get a chance to eat one at the office), so I am assuming that these were well-received by everybody! I thought they were delicious, and I really enjoyed my variation. It made the cherry flavor way more palatable for me, and I loved the way they looked. They almost reminded me of a chocolate parfait or something; lovely layers of goodness!

I'm glad these were chosen for this month because if I hadn't been assigned to make these, I probably never would have. Now I've discovered a new flavor combo that I previously would have been skeptical to try. Thanks, Janine, for the great choice! The full recipe (Martha's way) can be found on Martha's website, here. And to see how the other bakers in the group did, check out the Martha Stewart's Cupcakes Club blogroll, here.

CEIMB: Walnut and Dried Cherry Bars

Ahhh, it's so good to finally be back in the swing of things! It seems like it has been forever since I've posted a Craving Ellie in My Belly recipe on time! But this week I was all set and ready to roll. Out assignment this time was to make Ellie's Walnut and Dried Cherry Bars, chosen by Heide of Chez Zero. As I've said before, I am a big fan of nutritious, flavor-packed bars. Granola bars, energy bars, or whatever you want to call them, I am always eager and willing to try a new and different variation on the healthy bar. I've been looking forward to trying this one for a while.



Since this recipe was supposed to be made in an 8x8 inch square baking pan and then cut into 12 equal pieces, I decided to break my brownie pan out of hibernation and put it to good use! You know the brownie pan I'm talking about, right? It's the one from all the infomercials. It has a metal, grid-like insert which you place on top of whatever batter you have spread into the pan. When the bars have fully baked, they are already cut for you! Well, as you can probably see from the above picture, I messed up a little. When I first put the insert into the bars, it was facing the wrong way, so I had to remove it and switch it around. When these came out of the oven, they still had little cuts where the grid had first sliced into them. Other than that little bit of silliness, I am happy to say that these came out wonderfully!

Of course, I had to go off-script just a tad. It's what I do! First, I threw all the dry ingredients into my food processor. I did this because ever since our group made Ellie's Energy Bars a few months back, I've been making all my granola-ish bars that way. It just makes things soooo quick and easy! Simply toss in the dry stuff, whirl it around until there are no longer large bits of anything, and then add the wet ingredients. Once things have just come together, you're ready to spread the concoction into your baking pan and put it into the oven!

I added 1/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips to my batch, because I just feel like all my healthy bars need a small dose of decadence. It's just the way I am. Also, I had cherry preserves on hand to make another recipe later in the week, so I used those to spread on top of the baked bars rather than apricot preserves. I figured since dried cherries were being used inside the bars, this would work out quite nicely. I have to say, it really did! I loved the interplay of flavor and texture here. I was skeptical about the addition of the preserves at first, but I'm now sold. It almost seemed like there was icing on top, and it tasted great with the bars. I expected more of a crunchy bar here, but these were pleasantly cakey. They resembled a low-fat brownie in texture, and they weren't too sweet. The food processor chopped the walnuts very finely, so there was a lot of nice nutty crunch dispersed throughout the bars. Overall, I would definitely make these again, and I will have fun using different flavor combinations.



Thanks to Heide for the excellent pick! If you'd like the full recipe, it is posted at Food Network, here. And the CEIMB blogroll can be found here.

Black Forest Cookies

I made a lot of holiday cookies this year. I mean, a lot. I started baking the weekend right after Thanksgiving, and I baked like crazy just about every single day after that until I had reached my limit. I'm just a tad cookied out right now. Give me until about Valentine's Day to start thinking about baking more cookies!

Anyhow, the whole point of me telling you about my holiday bake-a-thon was to try to make you understand that these Black Forest Cookies are a big deal. These cookies were the hands-down most talked about, raved about, and requested recipe out of everything I prepared. I even got a phone call from my husband while he was at the office one day, because he had taken in a tray of cookies and everybody wanted to know what this cookie was!

These little beauties, like so many other things that pop up on this blog, were taken from one of the Baked cookbooks. In an attempt to redefine the traditional, but outdated, Black Forest Cake, the Baked boys created this complex cookie. It's dense and fudgy, like a brownie. It's sweet and tart, thanks to the two kinds of chocolate chips and the generous amount of dried fruit mixed in. The recipe calls for dried cherries only, but since I had a bag of dried mixed berries on hand, that is what I used. If you don't know the dried fruits are there, they're a nice, fun little surprise when you bite into a cookie. These were one of the newest additions to the cookie tray this year, and they will definitely be making another appearance next year. When the public opinion is this overwhelming, I have to listen!

Black Forest Cookies
adapted from Baked: New Frontiers in Baking
makes about 4-5 dozen cookies

Ingredients
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
16 oz. dark chocolate (60 to 72% cacao), coarsely chopped
10 Tbsp. unsalted butter, cut into 1-inch pieces
6 large eggs
1 1/4 cups granulated sugar
1 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
1 Tbsp. pure vanilla extract
1 cup (6 oz.) semisweet chocolate chips
1 cup (6 oz.) white chocolate chips
1 cup (6 oz.) dried cherries (or other fruit)

Directions
1. Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt in a medium-sized bowl and set aside. In a large nonreactive metal bowl, combine the dark chocolate and butter. Set the bowl over a saucepan of simmering water and cook, stirring with a rubber spatula, until the chocolate and butter are completely melted and the mixture is smooth. Set aside to cool.

2. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, beat the eggs and sugars on high speed until the mixture is pale and thick, about 5 minutes. Add the cooled chocolate mixture and the vanilla and beat until just combined. Scrape down the bowl and beat again for 10 seconds.

3. Add the flour mixture and mix on low until just combined, about 10 seconds. Do not overmix. Using a spatula or wooden spoon, fold in the chocolate chips, white chocolate chips, and dried fruit. The dough will look very loose, but it will harden in the refrigerator. Refrigerate for 6 hours or overnight.

4. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Line baking sheets with parchment paper. Drop the dough by rounded tablespoons on prepared baking sheets, about 1 inch apart. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes, rotating the pans halfway through the baking time, until the tops of the cookies are set and begin to show a few cracks. Remove from the oven and let cool slightly before removing from the sheets onto a cooling rack.

CEIMB: Energy Bars

This week's Craving Ellie in My Belly recipe was very exciting for me; I'd been wanting to try these bars for a long time. These Energy Bars, selected by Liz of My Table, Their Table from Ellie's The Food You Crave book, are a tasty, healthy way to get a granola bar fix.

I am definitely no stranger to the fun of making homemade granola bars. I do it quite often; in fact, I always have a bag of them individually wrapped in my freezer, ready to be taken out in the morning whenever I need one. And it just so happened that I was beginning to run low when this fabulous Ellie recipe came up in the rotation! So, I eagerly embarked on the preparation for these bars.

I never knew you could prep all the ingredients by simply throwing them all in the food processor! Seriously, I thought this was genius. It could not possibly have been easier! No chopping of nuts and dried fruits, and no big chunks of anything in the finished bars. Everything is tiny and uniform in these bars, and the flavors all come together and meld wonderfully.

Now, normally I am the only one in my household who takes advantage of the full stock of granola bars I keep in the freezer. However, that all changed with these bars. My 22 month-old son is addicted to these things! He scarfs down half of a bar, then shoves the other half into his mouth all at once, so eager is he to get to all of that goodness. I'm so happy to be able to share my granola bar love with him. My husband thinks they're awesome, too, so I have to make sure I keep my eye on the rest of this batch!

I do have a confession to make, though. I didn't stick exactly to Ellie's recipe. Based on my own preferences and what I had on hand when I made them, the add-ins changed a bit. I used golden raisins, dried cranberries in place of dried apricots, pumpin seeds in place of sunflower seeds, and then I threw in a bit of dark chocolate and a touch of butterscotch chips. I know, I know, that made them slightly less healthy than they were intended to be, but my, were they scrumptious!

If I had any complaints about this recipe at all, it would be that the bars are way too small to be satisfying. That was our opinion, anyway. I cut 18 bars instead of the 24 Ellie called for, and I still found them to be super tiny. Still, if that's the worst thing I can say about this recipe, then I'd say this was a great success!

Many thanks to Liz for the superb pick this week. If you'd like to view the original recipe, it's here. And if you'd like to check the CEIMB blogroll, it's here.

CEIMB: Individual Mixed Berry Cobblers

This week's Craving Ellie in My Belly recipe was a little something different for us. Typically this summer, the recipes we've been making for the group have been savory meals. We've had some truly fantastic dishes, as a result. But now it was time for a fantastic dessert!

This week it was Pamela of Cookies with Boys' turn to choose, and she decided to go for Mixed Berry Cobbler, from Ellie's So Easy book. Since I knew that the original recipe was going to make much more cobbler than we could handle, I decided it would be fun to use my adorable little ramekins again and make mini, individual mixed berry cobblers. Plus, I had just enough of an open, frozen bag of mixed berries hanging around to make two ramekins' worth. Score!

However, since I was cutting the recipe down to a third the amount, I had to do some fancy estimating to cut all the ingredients back. It was proving difficult, for example, to cut 1/4 cup flour down to a third of that amount. I tried my best to be accurate, but I had my doubts as to whether or not the biscuit topping would work out well.

I'll be curious to see how the other CEIMBers' biscuit topping looked, since mine appeared a bit too thin before I baked it. I was still worried while it was in the oven and I kept checking on it, assuming (correctly) that my little single servings would not take nearly as long to bake as Ellie's 8x8 baking dish would. I took them out after about 22 minutes, and they looked great! The fruit mixture was thick and bubbly, and the biscuit had browned very nicely and definitely had not melted or disintegrated into the fruit, as I had feared it would. In place of regular granulated sugar, I had sprinkled some turbinado sugar (sugar in the raw) on mine, and it gave the tops of the cobblers a nice, golden shimmer.

This cobbler was a dream to make, in terms of difficulty level. For a seemingly complex dessert, it took nearly no time at all to put together. The hardest part, for me, was just cutting everything down to one-third. If I'd made the 8x8 dish, this would have been even more painless!

Since the hubs loves desserts that include fruit, I had a feeling he'd love this, and he did. I'm much less of a fruit-in-my-dessert fan, but I'm super happy with the way these turned out. Ellie's done it again!

Thanks, Pamela! It was nice to make an after-dinner treat for a change. To see how the other members of the group fared, you can check out the blogroll, here. Ellie's Mixed Berry Cobbler can be found on Food Network's website, here.

MSC: Triple Citrus Cupcakes

Wow, two cupcake posts in one week! The other day I shared my Scooby-Doo Yellow Buttermilk Cupcakes, and today I give you these Triple Citrus Cupcakes. They sounded like they would be light, summery, and refreshing! They were chosen by Marthe of Culinairy Delights for the Martha Stewart Cupcakes Club, and I was really looking forward to trying them.



Well, unfortunately, these fell a little bit short of my expectations for them. I know that sometimes Martha's cupcake recipes have a reputation for being a bit dry, or dense, or too muffin-like, and I felt like that was the case with these particular cupcakes. They almost reminded me of cornbread in texture, and although cornbread can be delicious, it doesn't necessarily scream light and fluffy.



They're pretty easy to make, though! That fun picture of my stand mixer you saw earlier was all the beautiful, colorful citrus zest that went in with the butter and sugar. It smelled absolutely amazing! I did think 4 sticks of butter in one cupcake recipe was a tad ridiculous, but I went with it.

After the zest mixes in with the butter/sugar mixture, you add vanilla, then 9 (yes, 9!) eggs. Then the flour and salt goes in, and that's it for the batter. While I was making these, I found it odd that there was no baking soda or baking powder in the recipe. Again, I went with it. I figured Martha knew what she was doing.



The cupcakes were heavy, indeed, but the flavor was very nice. I loved the delicate citrus flavor throughout, and I could envision these being eaten without glaze for breakfast. With the glaze, though, they did become much more dessert-y. It's just a simple powdered sugar/citrus juice glaze, with a bit of zest sprinkled in. My cupcakes seemed to absorb some of the glaze; it didn't sit all nice and thick on top of the cupcake like the one in the picture in the cookbook did.

I have to say, though, that my review of these cupcakes was just my opinion. Andy took these in to work, and they were very well-received there. People really loved them; I even heard they were hiding them from other people in the building! So it just goes to show you, it's all a matter of taste. Do check out what the other Martha bloggers thought of these, over at the MSCC blogroll! You can also find the full recipe here, on Martha's website.