First, Saturday morning breakfast: fairly healthy mini-muffins (or "cupcakes," as K called them, which is fine with me if it gets him excited). This was my first foray into using my food processor attachments, even though I've had the food processor for about eight years now. The verdict: quick, but messy. For the small volume of stuff I had to grate, it probably would have been easier to do it by hand. I've never been a measurer, but when I ended up with a giant pile of carrot and apple lightly coated with flour, I ended up throwing in another half-recipe of the batter at the last minute. I was convinced it would be a disaster, but these turned out very light and were a big hit with the family.
The recipe, adapted from a bunch of similar recipes found on the web and then modified on the fly:
1. Combine dry ingredients:
1.5 cups white whole wheat flour
1.5 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp spices (mainly cinnamon, but I can never resist tossing in some pumpkin pie spice. A friend recently gifted me with some Penzey's baking stuff, including cinnamon. It looked so good that I opened it up despite having an open jar of cinnamon and another sealed one from Trader Joe's. I couldn't believe what a difference it made. I don't think I can go back to supermarket spices.)
2. Add 2.5 cups of grated carrot and Granny Smith apple to flour mixture. Use the food processor if you're brave and don't mind doing dishes, otherwise do it by hand.
3. Combine wet ingredients:
1/3 cup oil (I used grapeseed oil; subbing apple butter or something similar for about half of it might work)
1/2 cup buttermilk
3 eggs
1/2 cup sugar (I bet brown sugar would be better, but I didn't feel like getting it out)
4. Pour wet into dry ingredients and mix.
5. Bake at 350 degrees for about 18 minutes for mini-muffins, about 28 minutes for a mini-loaf (I'm guessing more like 24 minutes for muffins and 40 minutes for a regular-size loaf). If you have a probe thermometer, an internal temperature of about 208 degrees.
I made 24 mini-muffins and a mini-loaf from this recipe (in the disposable mini-loaf pan left over from K's train cake -- they're so useful that I think I'm going to get some real ones. A mini-loaf is the perfect size to give away).
Dinner tonight was a quiche-like leek tart, based on this Epicurious leek and swiss chard tart recipe. Since I'm incapable of following a recipe, I used spinach instead of the swiss chard, pie crust instead of puff pastry, whole milk instead of cream, and added Parmesan cheese into the mixture and pine nuts on top. I tried to par-bake the crust and it immediately shrank -- not only did the sides collapse, but the base even shrank to a smaller size than the tart pan. (Don't even suggest pie weights or rice or beans or something like that. If I'm too lazy to get the brown sugar out of the high cupboard, do you really think I'm going to weight my pie crust?) At that point, saving the crust didn't seem like an alternative, so I baked it until the top was golden, about 8 minutes at 425 degrees, grated some Parmesan on top to seal it, and dumped the mixture on top. It was still delicious, with a creamy but not too rich or eggy custard and lots of veggies, and even looked nice enough to serve for company despite the crust debacle. I could tell it would be great with the more bitter taste of chard, but spinach worked too. Artichokes seem like they be a good addition.
I told JW we should have a dinner party with a spinach pie bake-off -- my other go-to spinach pie, which I haven't made in a while, involves equal amounts of chopped fresh spinach and basil, minced onions, roasted red peppers, parmesan, and ricotta, and also has pine nuts on top. The leek tart is easier and less messy, and just as good, I think. But maybe one day we'll let guests decide.
0 comments:
Post a Comment