Perfect Blueberry Muffins.....no, really!

I have found perfection, and it is tasty!! This muffin recipe, found here at Smitten Kitchen met with rave reviews at my house, and I didn't even modify it. Much. Plus, I've fallen in love with baking with yogurt. It gives everything such a nice, moist texture!


The Recipe: 
Perfect Blueberry Muffins

Adapted from Cook’s Illustrated

Muffins are really best on the first day (another argument for halved recipes) but I’ve never met one I couldn’t resuscitate split, toasted and patted with salted butter.

My major changes: As always, attempted to rewrite this into a one-bowl recipe (because muffins should just not require a lot of work), halved the recipe and added weights.

Makes 9 to 10 standard muffins

5 tablespoons (2 1/2 ounces or 71 grams) unsalted butter , softened
1/2 cup (3 1/2 ounces or 100 grams) sugar
1 large egg
3/4 cup sour cream or plain yogurt
1/2 teaspoon grated lemon zest
1 1/2 cups (6 3/4 ounces or 191 grams) all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoon (7 grams or 1/4 ounce) baking powder
1/4 teaspoon (1 gram) baking soda
1/4 teaspoon (2 grams) salt
3/4 cup (3 3/4 ounces or 105 grams) blueberries, fresh or frozen (if frozen, don’t bother defrosting)

Preheat oven to 375°F. Line a muffin tin with 10 paper liners or spray each cup with a nonstick spray. Beat butter and sugar with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Add egg and beat well, then yogurt and zest. Put flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt into a sifter and sift half of dry ingredients over batter. Mix until combined. Sift remaining dry ingredients into batter and mix just until the flour disappears. Gently fold in your blueberries. The dough will be quite thick (and even thicker, if you used a full-fat Greek-style yogurt), closer to a cookie dough, which is why an ice cream scoop is a great tool to fill your muffin cups. You’re looking for them to be about 3/4 full, nothing more, so you might only need 9 instead of 10 cups. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, until tops are golden and a tester inserted into the center of muffins comes out clean (you know, except for blueberry goo). Let cool on rack (ha), or you know, serve with a generous pat of butter.

Modifications:

*I did not have an lemon zest, so I just omitted it.

*I mixed with a whisk, not an electric mixer, since muffins that are over-mixed get really hard. 

*I do not own a sifter, so I whisked the dry ingredients before I added it into the batter bowl a little at a time. I'm glad I did-the dough was so thick, it NEVER would have integrated had I dumped it in all at once. 

*I used plain greek yogurt, no sour cream. 

*Before I put them in the oven, I sprinkled a little cinnamon/sugar mixture on top of the muffins. (I actually wanted a streudel topping, but was too lazy to make it.)

*Side note-her recommendation of an ice cream scoop was right on! It made 9 perfect muffins. 

The Verdict:

I had to fight to get two muffins for myself out of the batch. My three year old turned blue in the mouth and fingers, and he cried when I told him we didn't have any more. My husband said, "Those muffins are awesome! Can I take some to work for breakfast, please?" The best part is it only took about 10 min prep time and the ingredients were pretty basic. I love easy recipes!

I couldn't get a picture before someone took a bite out of it!

I've been at it again! Suped up Broccoli Cheddar Muffins

The title of this post says it all. I really have been at it again. I know I've been off for a while. The holidays happened. Then all of us were sick for what seemed like forever. Then, just when I thought we were all getting better, the baby had an allergic reaction that landed us in the ER and on steroids for 2 weeks. Anyway, we're here now and on the mend. It's good to be back!

The Recipe:
Broccoli Cheddar muffins.
The recipe I started with can be found on cheese.food.com.
As per my usual modus operandi, I did not specifically follow the recipe, but only the general idea.

Ingredients:
4 large eggs
1/2 cup melted butter
1 1/2 cups shredded cheddar cheese
1 (8 ounce) package corn muffin mix
1 (10 ounce) package frozen chopped broccoli, cooked and drained
1/2 cup chopped scallion (optional) *I omitted


Directions:
In a large bowl, beat eggs with an electric mixer until light colored.
Add butter and cheese and mix on low.
Add muffin mix, broccoli and scallions and mix at low speed for another minute.
Coat a 12 cup muffin pan with cooking spray; divide batter among muffin cups.
Bake at 375 degrees for 15 minutes until light golden brown.
Cool on a rack before turning muffins out of pan.
serves 12
Modifications: 
*1/2 cup butter substituted with non-fat plain greek yogurt (1:1)
*8 oz corn muffin mix subbed with 6 oz mix and about 2 TBS whole wheat flour
*10 oz pkg frozen broccoli subbed with who knows how much? I had a 16 oz pkg on hand and didn't use all of it. I think it was close to 10 oz, maybe more. probably more.
*I also added about a cup of ham.
*I chopped up the ham and broccoli super fine so the baby would be able to eat these without too much help.
*I baked them for a little over 20 min on 375, till they were golden brown on top.

The verdict:
The texture was moist, but not gooey, and they were more filling than I expected. The kids tolerated them. It *is* broccoli, after all. I will definitely add these to my repertoire.

Bonus: They are pretty darn healthy (compared to the original) so I didn't feel guilty eating 3 in one sitting. :)
They look pretty yummy, no?

Ahh, a cleaning project completed feels so good!

Today, I would like to pass on a little tidbit I found that actually worked better than expected. I have lived in the same house for almost 10 years. I have never cleaned the vent hood cover effectively. I am a clean freak, and this is completely out of character for me. However, it was not for lack of trying. I simply had not found anything that worked. It was so dirty, it was dripping grease down onto the stove. ICK! Over the years, I have tried soaking it in dish soap, running it in the dishwasher and other methods that have resulted in dirtying the appliances, rags and tools - sometimes beyond saving, but not making much difference in the caked-on grease on the filter. I came across a blog post on Pinterest from One Good Thing by Jillee in which she cleans her vent hood filter with boiling water and baking soda. She had amazing results, so I thought it was worth a try. I really had nothing to lose at this point.

I heated my 22 quart stock pot-overkill, I know but it was seriously DIRTY- to a boil. I only filled it about half full, but it seemed to take forever to heat that lake's worth of water! Then I added about 3/4 cup of baking soda. It does fizz, as the blogger mentioned, so be sure to leave enough room at the top of your pot to accommodate this. I put the filter in and boiled it for about 15 minutes, and the filter turned out like-new-clean. I retrieved the filter from the pot with a pair of tongs and rinsed it in tap water so I could touch it more quickly. Then I let it dry on a paper towel overnight. I should mention, it didn't fizz after that first burst when I added the baking soda, but after about 15 minutes of boiling, it started to fizz on its own like pasta beginning to boil over, so be sure to watch your pot, just in case.

Honestly, I didn't expect this method to work, so I didn't take "before" pictures. Turns out, I really should have since it worked beautifully. Here's the "after" picture. Nice and shiny!

Below is the pot after I boiled the filter. YUCK!

Even my husband was impressed! It feels so good to complete a cleaning project successfully, especially with so many unsuccessful attempts under my belt. 

Happy Cleaning!

Thanksgiving dinner on a budget

So the holidays and a couple of viruses got the better of us (Colton first,then me) so that I didn't get to post these past weeks. However, I'm back and ready to share!

For Thanksgiving, we decided to host the meal to save us the trouble of packing and driving across Texas with two very small children. We made the traditional feast of stuffing, turkey, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, rolls and of course, gravy. However, the prep was anything but traditional. Have you ever heard of working smarter, not harder? Well, that's me to a "T". For the stuffing, I didn't feel like cutting all the vegetables, so I got a "stuffing starter" from HEB (cut up veggies and spices) and then tweaked it to my liking. It turned out perfectly! Another cheat-I bought a pre-cooked turkey and warmed it in a roaster with chicken broth. Then, the night before and morning of the big day, I came down with a violent stomach virus. My mom and mother in law, and my Dad and step-dad and hubby stepped in and saved the day. Everything tasted great! (a day later when I could finally eat again, that is.)

I'm going to plug HEB here, but I bought almost all of our Thanksgiving supplies for <$50. My mom made the cornbread for the stuffing and the pumpkin pies, but I bought the turkey (~11lbs), canned goods, and stuffing starter, broth, potatoes, etc. The store does these deals where you buy the main thing and get so many items for free. This time, I bought a turkey, and for free, I got salad, ranch dressing, cookies, aluminum disposable roaster, and something else I can't remember now. At the end of the receipt, it said I had saved more than $26 over the course of all the BOGO deals, brand savings and the meal deal. I love my grocery store!

In summary, my family and I were able to pull off a fabulous Thanksgiving dinner while having a stomach virus, and all for around $50!

Time to step out of my comfort zone

I have felt trapped recently with my standard meals, most of which I have cooked since I was in middle school. To get out of my 'recipe rut', I have started to look for new recipes. Pinterest is my best friend for this task. This brings me to my next improvisation.

I tried this recipe tonight, a crawfish rice dressing:
http://www.deepsouthdish.com/2010/12/crawfish-rice-dressing-recipe.html

True to form, I have modified the recipe significantly. First, I used grocery store brand long grain white rice, not the specified brand. Then, I could not find cream of onion soup at the store. I may be blind, or it could just be that it was Sunday afternoon and I could only see about a foot of the humongous soup display at a time because it was so crowded. For the onion soup, I substituted dry onion soup mix combined with milk in the can from the cream of mushroom soup I used. As usual, then it snowballed. Because this substitution was so much less solid than what was originally called for, I was afraid the rice would be too mushy or the liquid would not absorb into the rice fully. SO- I cut the amount of chicken broth called for down to 1 cup from 1.5 cups. Additionally, the season is wrong for crawfish, so I used 1 pound of cooked, frozen salad shrimp, and more than doubled the amount of hot sauce called for. I also chose to omit the crab meat entirely. Once it was assembled, I finally put it in the oven. At the 1 hour mark, the pan was still very moist with liquid pools across the length of the dish. I chose to let it cook for another 15 minutes, checking after 5 minutes. I still had to remove the foil the last 10 minutes of cooking for all the liquid to be fully absorbed into the rice. The rice was a little mushy, but not inedible. After all that-it was super simple to assemble, and I think it has potential to be one of our family favorites. I will definitely be adding it to my repertoire on a regular basis. I will make a few further modifications, though. It needed more cajun seasoning and more bell pepper. However, instead of bell pepper, I think a poblano would add a better flavor. It could probably use a little more hot sauce too. It sounds like I like hot stuff, but that's not necessarily true. This dish had no heat whatsoever-If I thought he would eat it, I would feed it to my 3 year old. I am not sure, but I think the rice or the shrimp might have absorbed some of the heat. or something.

Bonus: It made enough for 2 meals for us!

----------
Additionally, for breakfast, I made this baked oatmeal today: http://www.sohowsittaste.com/2012/06/blueberry-raspberry-baked-oatmeal.html

I made it almost according to the recipe, closer anyway than the crawfish thing. I subbed honey for maple syrup and peaches for bananas and omitted the walnuts and raspberries. I think the walnuts would taste wonderful; I just didn't have any. If I'd had more time, I would've chopped some almonds and subbed those instead. As it was, the children were in the process of destroying my house and maiming each other, and I figured I should cut my losses and move on. All told, it also turned out awesome. I will definitely make this again as well.

So, today was exceptional in that I tried two new recipes and modified both on the first pass. I must be getting more adventurous or a better cook. or lazier. or maybe, just maybe, all 3.

Happy improvising, y'all!

Costume Procrastination

I hope you all had a lovely Halloween. I know we did!

So, Tuesday came and went and I still didn't have a costume for myself or the baby, and Colton's was only about 90% complete. Therefore, Wednesday was my complete Halloween Improvisation Day! I have to say, I am impressed with myself, both for my procrastination skills, as well as my pull-it-together-at-the-last-minute skills. Here's the play-by-play:

Last week, I found a Cowboy costume set at Wal Mart for $5, including a hat, Sherriff's badge and bandanna. Colton agreed to be a Cowboy and so that's where we started. He has several pearl-snap western shirts and jeans. All I needed was boots to complete the costume. After noon on Wednesday, I dragged both kids out to Payless to buy the cowboy some boots, and to Wal-Mart for last minute grocery shopping (can't afford to run out of baby prunes in my house!). Luckily, the first Payless closest to the house had the boots I wanted in stock in the right size.  However, I had not even thought of a costume for the baby, so I perused the picked-over options at Wal-Mart during the grocery trip. I found a onesie that had a sherrif's theme that would've matched Colton's cowboy costume, but there were none in the baby's size. Boo. So, I settled for a clinical green onesie that had a surgical mask and stethoscope printed on it with a screen-print picture of a pocket with bandage scissors and syringe in it. The best part is it was only $3.25. See? Procrastination can pay off, sometimes.

We arrived home around 3pm and I nursed the baby and put the older one down for a nap. During naptime, I prepped dinner (he needs SOME real food before the candy glut). By the time they got up, I was ready for them, and we had no trouble getting out the door. We visited a local Table Trick Or Treat, sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce where businesses set up tables on Main to hand out candy to the kids and business cards to parents, and it's closed to vehicular traffic. After that, we visited some friends' houses and hooked up with one to go random house-to-house trick or treating. This especially fascinated Colton because that's the kind of trick or treating he sees on tv. Afterward, at home, Colton got his two treats, and then the hubby and I divided up the rest between us and what Colton could have on subsequent days and went to bed. Two days later, Colton is still wearing his costume pieces and pretending to trick or treat. I'd venture to say he had a good time!

I didn't get a pic of the baby in his costume because the bib and the stroller rendered a costume unnecessary anyway. (Hey, I tried!) Here's a reasonable facsimile of what he wore though. It wouldn't let me copy the pic, but here's the link.
http://www.walmart.com/ip/Rubies-My-First-Halloween-Doctor-Onesie-Costume/21867034


Here's my cowboy. (Sorry the pic is blurry. It's like taking pictures of an earthquake to get him to stand still long enough. You can't tell it, but my husband has a death-grip on his head to keep him as still as possible and to keep the hat on-he didn't want to wear it at first.)

Excuses, Excuses

I mentioned I intended to post every week, but here it is Friday again, and I have nothing to post. My excuse-The baby has been sick all week, so I am pretty much fried with no sleep and trying not to get sick myself. So far, so good, but you never can tell, right?

Since the baby's been sick, I haven't tried anything new. I've been surviving on routine, hoping for the best. The most interesting thing I can offer you this week is the tale of my Thursday evening after bedtime, when I half-heartedly attempted to prepare for a playdate at my house on Friday. I wanted to make the spider out of an egg carton craft, but when I tried to paint the egg carton, I failed to realize the petroleum in the styrofoam and the thinner in the spray paint would react together to dissolve the styrofoam. Fail. My poor husband sat there and watched me dissolve my project materials, after warning me, and didn't say anything nasty or condescending. Props to him!. :) Not to mention, the instructions for the craft DID say to use cardboard carton, not styrofoam. (Nowhere did it mention melting!) Besides, who reads instructions anyway?? So, we painted pumpkins instead. And had a BLAST, I might add.

Since I have nothing new to add and no new misadventures to speak of, besides Thursday's failed painting attempt, I will leave you with a bit of wisdom about parenting I found absolutely hilarious. Happy Reading! http://mommasaid.net/2011/10/10/parenting-proverbs/

See what I did there? I IMPROVISED a post. <cheshire cat grin>

I hope you have a great weekend! See you next week!