Chocolate Peanut Butter Oatmeal

Well, it’s official.  We are moving to Scotland in August.  The philosopher got a job at University of St Andrews in St Andrews, Scotland.  And while I hate to leave California, I’m excited for the great adventures we will get to have in Scotland.  Not to mention how close we will be to other awesome places in Europe.

Then when I thought about how far away we will be from family and friends, I though that might be a good real to start back up the blog.  I don’t know how much time I’ll have to post until August, since I’ll still have the 3-4 hour daily commute, but I’m anticipating a much shorter commute once we get to Scotland.  Maybe less than 1 hour total!  That means I’ll have 2-3 more hours each day to fill!  Oh the possibilities.

This recipe isn’t very fancy, but it’s a yummy, filling, and healthy way to start the day, and should be good for those chilly Scottish mornings.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Oatmeal

2 cups water
1 cup old fashioned oatmeal
2 tablespoons peanut butter
1 tablespoon cocoa powder

Bring water to a boil in a small sauce pan.  Add oatmeal and cook over medium heat until most of the water has been absorbed.  Stir in peanut butter and cook until the rest of the water is gone.  Remove from heat, stir in cocoa powder, and divide between two bowls.  Top with fruit of your choice, and a little honey or sugar if you prefer your oatmeal a little on the sweeter side.

 

The Great Wedding Cake Adventure

Back in the dark days of unemployment I can across Smitten Kitchen’s series of blogs about her first adventure in wedding cake baking.  I was intrigued and excited, so when my best friend got engaged I asked if I could make the cake.  I didn’t really believe that she would let me, but she agreed.

Flash forward about a year later, and I was fully employed.  I still wanted to make the cake though, and tried out a few different cake and flavor combinations.  I thought we had decided on this one but then my friend called a week before we were going to fly back for the wedding and told me that her wedding had a much more Fall theme, and asked if I would mind making just plain yellow cake with vanilla frosting.  I did mind.   Not about the late change so much, but yellow cake with vanilla frosting just sounded so boring to me.  So I told her I would test it out and see what I came up with.

So I did some googling, and some consulting with some food blogs.  My friend was also having caramel apples and cinnamon roll cupcakes at the wedding.  I combined those flavors in my searching and came up with the idea to add a filling of apple cinnamon compote between the layers of the cake.  I was very pleased with myself for coming up with the idea to tie the cake to everything else, and still keep it simple but interesting.

I didn’t really alter any recipes, just pulled from different food blogs.  I borrowed Smitten Kitchen’s recipe for the yellow cake (here) and the recipe for swiss buttercream frosting she used for her wedding cake (found here).  The apple filling I found on this blog, and altered just slightly.  For the full wedding cake I multiplied it by 5.

Below is the recipe for the apple filling, as well as some pictures of the swiss buttercream preparation and cake assembly.  These are from the test cake, which was a two layer 8 inch round cake.  For the wedding cake I did two 12 inch layers on the bottom and two 8 inch layers on the top.  I ended up making 2 1/2 recipes of the cake batter, and using 12 egg whites in the frosting.  I had great intentions of taking lots of pictures of the actual process of making the wedding cake, but it turns out that it demands my full focus to make a wedding cake.  Who would have thought?!  I did have fun though, even though I was exhausted by the end.  I do think I could be persuaded to make a wedding cake again in the future.

Apple Cinnamon Filling

2 large granny smith apples

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 cup sugar

2 teaspoon lemon juice

1 tablespoon butter

Peel the apples and grate with a box grater. Combine all the ingredients in a saucepan and cook until the apples are tender and there is little liquid left. Cool completely.

 

Whole Wheat Banana Nut Muffins

1 3/4 cups whole wheat flour
1/3 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 egg, lightly beaten
1/2 cup milk
3/4 cup mashed banana (about 2 bananas)
1/4 cup canola oil
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Preheat the oven to 400.

Combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt.  Mix well and create a well in the center.  Set aside.

In a separate bowl, mash the bananas with a fork, and combine with the milk, oil, and egg.  Mix well. Pour the wet ingredients and the nuts into the well in the center of the dry ingredients.  Mix until just moistened all the way through.

 

Measure out into a muffin tin, prepared with either paper muffin cups or non-stick cooking spray.  Bake for 15 minutes if you are using a mini muffin tin, and 18-20 if you are making regular sized muffins.

 

Chocolate Chip Pound Cake

This is one of the best cakes, dense but moist, not too sweet, perfect for dessert, afternoon snack, and often even breakfast.  It is what I usually picked as my birthday cake request growing up, and part of the reason my in-laws like me so much.

The recipe itself is not difficult, but you make it in a bundt pan, so it can take a little practice to get out nicely.  But, the good news is that you cover the top with melted chocolate in the end.  So if your cake doesn’t come out as nicely as you would like, just piece it back together and cover all the flaws in chocolate!

Chocolate Chip Pound Cake

3 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups sugar
2 sticks unsalted butter, softened
3 teaspoons vanilla
4 eggs
3/4 cup milk
1 bag mini chocolate chips
chocolate for melting

Pre-heat the oven to 325.  Heavily grease and flour your bundt pan, and set aside.

Combine the flour, baking powder, and salt.  Set aside.

In a mixer, combine the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.  Mix in the vanilla, and begin adding the eggs one at a time.  Fully incorporate each egg before adding the next.  Then, beginning and ending with the flour mixture, alternate between adding flour and milk, mixing well after each addition.  I usually do 4 additions of flour and 3 of milk.

Leave out 1-2 tablespoons of the flour mixture.  Empty the entire bag of mini chocolate chips into the bowl with the remaining flour, and toss the mix.  Coating the chips with flour is supposed to help them stay suspended in the cake batter better.  Dump the chips and remaining flour into the batter, and fold in so that the chips are spread throughout the batter evenly.  Pour the batter into the prepared bundt pan, and bake for 75 minutes.

Remove the cake from the oven and let it cool for 15-20 minutes.  Run a knife along the inner and outer edge of the pan, and then flip the cake out onto a plate.  This is where things can get tricky.  Hopefully you have greased and floured the pan well enough and the cake just slides right out.  If this happens, take a moment to congratulate yourself.  If not, loosen the edges of the cake some more, and try again.  If part of your cake gets stuck in the pan, just gently pull it out and smoosh it back onto the rest of the cake.

After the cake has cooled, melt together some chocolate with a little bit of water to make the topping.  I usually eyeball this, but you probably want to start with about a cup and a half of chocolate chips and 2 tablespoons of water.  Heat this over low heat until the chocolate melts.  You may need to add more water or chocolate chips. You want a thick chocolate sauce that you can pour over top with a spoon.  So it should be pourable, but you want it to seep down the sides of the cake like a slow chocolate mud slide, so it should still be thick.

 

Sister’s Corn Salsa

I’ve been a bad blogger, I know.  It’s been a little busy around here, between the working, and the driving, and a  couple rounds of visitors, and planting my Spring garden.  I’ll try to do better, and I have a thing or two saved up that I can post, but I make now promises.

My sister sent me this recipe, and I made it several weeks ago.  That was approximately two weeks before I went to the Farmer’s Market and saw this -

I will definitely have to make this again now that there is fresh corn, perhaps even grill the corn first.  But when I made this the first time I just used frozen corn and it was easy and still nothing to scoff at in the deliciousness arena.

Corn Salsa
 4 ears of corn, or about half a bag of frozen corn
1 red onion
2-3 cloves garlic
1-2 Jalapeno peppers
4 Roma tomatos
1 Lime
about 1/4 cup Cilantro, really however much you like
2 tablespoons Vinegar ( I used white wine vinegar because that is what I had)
1 avocado
Salt and Pepper to taste

Slice the kernels off the corn into your pan with a little olive oil, and heat until the kernels soften and get a little translucent (or grill the corn and then cook for a shorter time). Dice the onion and pepper and throw it in with the corn. If you like a little more heat you can leave these raw. Dice the tomatoes and avocado, and mince the garlic and cilantro.  Throw it all in the bowl, mix in the corn and onions, and then squeeze the lime over it all. Finish with the vinegar, and then add salt and pepper to taste.

We used this to liven up a fast black bean and rice burrito, and boy was it good.  And its so healthy, just lots of veggies, so you can really pile it high and not even feel bad!  This will definitely be making several more appearances this summer.

 

Chocolate Oatmeal No Bake Cookies

I find myself baking cookies more often than anything else now because they are so quick.  They are also much easier to give away, which is good because we don’t really need to eat an entire recipe of cookies between two people!  These are some of my favorite cookies.  They come together quickly, don’t require any baking, and can really feed a crowd.  I made a double batch (60+ cookies) and took some to work, sent some to the philosophers, and still had a nice pile at home to eat.

Chocolate Oatmeal No Bake Cookies
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1 stick butter
1/2 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 cups oatmeal
1/2 cup peanut butter

Combine the sugar, butter, cocoa, and milk in a large pan over medium heat.  Stir until everything is combined and melted.  Bring to a boil for one minute.  Remove from the heat and add the oats, peanut butter, and vanilla. Mix until everything is well combined.

After you mix everything together, you might need to let the mixture sit for a minute or so.  You want it to still be very pliable, but not so much that your cookies are going to run.  While the cookies sit, lay out a long sheet of wax paper on a flat surface.  Using a tablespoon, scoop mounds of the cookie mixture onto the wax paper.  The cookies should set up pretty quickly, but if it’s particularly hot or humid they might need to be helped along a bit by the fridge.

 

Lemony Risotto

A few weeks back I read a recipe for Meyer Lemon risotto over at the Simply Recipes blog and was intrigued, so I grabbed a couple of lemons off of my Grandpa’s tree last weekend when we went over to visit. I didn’t look back at the original recipe, just sort of proceeded with my own basic risotto recipe, but I’m sure they are quite similar. I love risotto. It’s very warm and satisfying – creamy but still rice like. The lemon keeps this recipe very light. It goes really nicely with some sautéed veggies or some baked salmon.

Lemony Risotto
1 tablespoon butter
1 large shallot (or small yellow onion), diced
1 cup arborio rice
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 cups warm liquid (water, veggie broth, or chicken stock)
Zest from one large lemon
Juice from one large lemon
1/2 shredded Parmesan cheese
Pepper to taste

Melt the butter in a pot over medium heat. Add the shallots and cook until soft. Add the rice and give it a cook stir. Once the rice has absorbed all of the butter, start adding the water, 1/2 cup at a time. Give the risotto a good stir after each addition of liquid. The stirring helps it develop the creamy texture. Add more liquid once the rice grains have absorbed all that is in the pot. Add the salt after the first cup of liquid has been absorbed. Mix well. If you are using a stock with some sodium already in it, you might not need the additional salt.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once all the liquid has been absorbed and the grains are soft, remove the risotto from the heat and mix in the lemon zest, lemon juice, parm, and pepper. Let it rest for a minute or two and then serve.