Addicted to food blogs & blogging, that’s what I am! Try it & I’m sure you’ll have one happy family, happy in the foodie way anyway. They might whinge at the amount of time you spend on the net, but ‘up’ always comes with ‘down’, somewhat like yin-yang! I often strive to balance it, & bring in some sort of harmony! Foodie blogs are a-bursting with good food & good ideas. Never at a loss of ideas as to what to make, there are temptations that are doable some of the time; at other times, there’s plenty of eye candy. The good thing behind all this is the personal touch; the feeling that you know the person behind the blog, & can touch base at the drop of a line! YAY for BLOGGING!!One such stopover at Peabody’sCulinary Concoctions had me hook, line & sinker. She made the most delicious looking Coffee Cake Cupcakes , frosted beautifully, & I dreamt of them all night. The idea was brilliant!The first thing the next morning, waved goodbye to the kids, & headed off to chop walnuts! Many happy moments later, these muffins were born! Made them from this Streusel Coffee Cake I had posted AGES ago, adapted from the ‘Joy of Baking‘. The only thing I left out was the orange rind, because I didn’t have an orange on hand. Frosted them with a Caramelized Brown Butter Frosting, recipe from an earlier DB challenge … a recipe I have come to love & use more often than I really should. The ease of this frosting, & the speed at which it gets whipped up continues to win me over! The original recipe was a Shuna Fish Lydon @ Eggbeaters, one which was part of a DB challenge for her signature Caramel Cake some time ago! The original frosting was a tad TOO sweet, & I’ve learnt to play around with the ingredients on this one. The sea salt tends to cut the sweetness.It has a great flavour, unique in it’s own delicious way, & I am always happy to use some caramel which is still stored in my fridge. Very handy indeed (the recipe can be found in this post here). I eyeball the amounts for the frosting, generally throwing in a bit of each & tasting it as I go along.
I got 12 regular sized coffee cake muffins & 2 mini bundt cakes out of this batter Ingredients: 1 ¾ cups Flour 1 tsp Baking powder
½ tsp Baking soda 3/4 cup Butter 2/3 cup Sugar (theoriginal recipe has 3/4 cup) 2 Eggs ; large 1 tsp Vanilla Extract
4 tbsp Yogurt; thick
2 tbsp Cream (25% fat) Juice of ½ lime Streusel: 1 tbsp Flour
¼ cup Brown sugar
½ cup Toasted walnuts
½ cup Chocolate chips Method:
Line the muffin tray. (Grease & flour the tray if you are not using muffin liners) . Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C.
Prepare the streusel by mixing the 1 tbsp of flour + brown sugar + toasted walnuts + chocolate chips in a bowl. Divide into 2 bowls & set aside.
Stir together the flour + baking powder + baking soda in a bowl. Mix the yogurt + cream + lime juice in a small bowl. (You can use sour cream instead)
Beat the butter + sugar until light, followed by the eggs, beaten in 1 by 1, & then the extract.
Beat in the 1/3 of the flour mixture; then 1/3 of the yogurt/cream mixture. Repeat twice & beat until just mixed in properly.
Fill a 1/4 of the muffin cup, sprinkle with 1 tbsp of streusel mix, top with more batter & sprinkle streusel mix over the top again.
Bake for approximately 20 minutes / till done.
Serve warm as they are because they taste wonderful…OR top with this delectable brown butter caramel frosting once cooled, & enjoy!
Did I tell you this frosting was positivelyA D D I C T I V E? Try it at your own risk!! BROWN BUTTER CARAMEL FROSTING Adapted from the Daring Bakers challenge here Ingredients: 1/2 cup browned butter (I use clarified butter or ghee) ; at room temperature/soft 1/4 cup cream (25% fat) 1/2 cup – 3/4 cup powdered sugar 2 Tbsp caramel syrup Pinch of sea salt Method:
Beat them all together until thick. Adjust for sweetness. Pipe onto muffins!
“Think what a better world it would be if we all, the whole world, had cookies and milk about three o’clock every afternoon and then lay down on our blankets for a nap.”
Robert Fulghum
And here’s yet another Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe to add to the millions doing the rounds in blogosphere. I guess you can’t have enough of CCCs, & this recipe was born in an attempt to make a bookmarked recipe off Helene’s blog @ La cuisine d’Hélène – Recettes. She had posted these delicious CCC from Doubletree Hotel, & I set off to make them, only to find 3 cups of chocolate chips in the list of ingredients. So what’s the big deal, you might think. But here in India, where I guard my chocolate chips more fiercely than many other things in my larder, 3 cups was far too large a quantity to use. My chocolate chips come in from the US or Dubai whenever some good soul comes by, but only in the winter months. I once even got unevenblobs ofchocolate chips one summer, after they had been baked on the tarmac in the aircraft in the hot Indian summer, so that was my last summer consignment. The chips we get here are micro-minuscule, little milk chocolate chips, that are nowhere in comparison to dark chips that Nestle, Hershey’s, or my fave, Ghirardeli make. So you guys, who can buy bags from Sam’s Club, & even melt them in baggies to drizzle & frost, you don’t know how LUCKY you are…& you’ll never believe how envious I always am!Anyway, I had a bag that my niece had got from Dubai, & used some in these cookies that I made with a cue about ‘grinding the oats’ Helene’s post. I used part oat flour, part wholewheat flour & the rest was all purpose in these CCC. I also snipped in some dried cherries that my friend from the UK had brought in for me….& they were delicious. Was a comforting feeling to know that I had used a portion of ‘healthy flour’, dried cherries & walnuts too.
CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES…with oats, dried cherries & walnuts My recipe
Ingredients: 1 cup flour 1/2 cup rolled oats; ground in coffee grinder 1/2 cup whole wheat flour A pinch of salt 1tsp baking soda 1 cup butter; softened 2/3 cup brown sugar 2/3 cup granulated sugar 2 eggs (medium) 1 tsp vanilla essence 1 cup chocolate chips 1/4 cup dried cherries; chopped roughly (do it with an oiled knife 1/2 cup walnuts; chopped
Method:
Sift both the flour + wholewheat flour + oat flour with the baking soda & salt. Mix in the chocolate chips, dried cherries & walnuts. Keep aside.
Beat the butter + eggs + sugars + vanilla extract in a deep bowl till well blended (about 1 minute).
Add the flour mix & stir well with spatula/wooden spoon till mixed uniformly.
Drop tsps measures on a non-stick cookie sheet, & bake for 12-15 minutes till golden brown. Remove from oven & cool on racks.
Note: The recipe yields approximately 4 dozen crisp chocolate chip cookies.This recipe is being sent to Original Recipes @ Culinarty for Lore’s ongoing event.
“Some people like to paint pictures, or do gardening, or build a boat in the basement. Other people get a tremendous pleasure out of the kitchen, because cooking is just as creative and imaginative an activity as drawing, or wood carving, or music.”
Julia Child
My canvas on chocolate…Julia Child’s words ring so true!
Why would I post this cake again? All thanks to an idea from Holly…a mom to 2 sweet boys obsessed with all things cooking & baking. Passionate like me & a buncha foodies on the net!!
Holly’s had an idea:“We all want our creations to look as wonderful as they taste and there are tons of absolutely gorgeous examples out there of the amazing creations that all you beautiful bloggers create. Why not hold an event that shares the decorating and presentation tips as well as the food? After all, if someone is going to try to recreate your masterpiece, shouldn’t it look spectacular too?”YES!!
My mantra…’Do It From Scratch’! It must taste as good as it looks, and be healthy too!
Quoting from her blog…”Roget’s New Millennium™ Thesaurus defines artistry as a noun that means “creativity“. Each month we will hold an event that will focus on a different kind of decorating theme, medium, idea, holiday, etc. That way we can all go for variations on a similar theme for that month and end up with lots of ideas to choose from! It should be fun to see all the variations we come up with.“
Great idea…I think food as an art rocks! A platform for creativity & just my kind of therapeutic pleasure!
Have posted the recipe & making of my ‘Chocolate Strawberry Cake’ a few weeks ago. You can find the complete procedure HERE. Pictures of the process follow. This cake has been tried by 2 people I know. Purnima even sent me pictures & she did a SPLENDID job! It was just amazing & I was so glad I shared it!
Chocolate Strawberry Cake…Quite the Ultimate Combination
Since Valentine’s Day is almost here – and because it is what it is – Holly chose CHOCOLATE to kick this off with. This means chocolate in any type, but not cocoa. She wants to see what you can do with the stuff you melt, or chop, or curl, or mould, or whatever.
There you go Holly…this is what I did!
Once the honours were done…peep inside the cake!
The final one…a slice of cake!
I really & truly enjoyed making this cake. It wasn’t a lot of hard work, as I did it in bits & bobs, but the end result was very satisfying. You can do the sponge a day in advance to reduce doing everything altogether. A rested mind gives a fresh perspective & makes a world of a difference!! Thanks to ‘Art You Eat’, this cake is seeing light of day again!!
