Strawberry - Blueberry Muffins | Recipe

 

The other day Fluxxdog and I got to talking about muffins and how, early in our relationship, I used to make peach muffins for him to take to work to eat for lunch. I had found a recipe for blueberry-peach muffins and asked him if he'd like to give it a try. Well, unfortunately, this is not the season for peaches. Luckily Veonoss found strawberries for us to try. Originally I was tempted to use the blueberry-peach muffin recipe and just replace "peaches" with "strawberries". Then I found a recipe specifically for blueberry-strawberry muffins and decided to give it a shot.

Unlike a lot of recipes I'm used to, this one calls for veggie oil instead of butter. It also uses a significant amount flour. After I had mixed in most of the dry ingredients, I started to worry about this recipe as the "batter" was looking more like "dough" and had a stickier consistency than I like.

Even after adding the fruit, I wasn't getting the consistency that I thought I would need for muffins. I started looking at the comments of the recipe and saw that a lot of people needed to do variations on the recipe to get it how they wanted. One person added an extra egg, another replaced the sugar with brown sugar, etc. However, there were enough people saying the recipe was fine on its own that I decided to keep going. 

After I added the strawberry jam and kept mixing it for several more minutes, the batter started to look and feel more like actual batter.

I was still very nervous about how the muffins would turn out. I was tempted to look up a cinnamon roll icing recipe to add if they weren't tasty or sweet enough. Fortunately, though, the recipe held up. Fluxxdog, Veonoss and I were able to make a good breakfast out of these. They tasted even better with coffee. So, I think I'll go ahead and add this recipe to the list of keepers. Next time I'll see about replacing the strawberry jam with blueberry and see what happens.

Christmas Cookies | Recipe

Yeah, I know. We're well past Christmas at this point. But I didn't get to celebrate Christmas with my Mom until after New Year's. I ended up making 45 Christmas cookies (would have been 48 but I lost two to the floor and one to taste testing). I made so many because I thought my nephew and both my brothers were coming as well, but my nephew ended up sick so he and his dad had to stay home. I'm still working on getting rid of all of these!

Christmas cookies were always a big deal in Mom's family. My great-grandmother would make up at least one hundred every year and we'd get all the cousins together to decorate them. Grandma B was the kind of person who would spend 15-20 minutes decorating one cookie, just to get all the sprinkles in their proper places. I kinda take after her with the decorating, but I also respect my mom's approach of spending as much time decorating a cookie as it takes to eat the cookie. So I opted to give myself some practice frosting with decorating bags. It was quite the learning experience.

Naturally, the first step was mixing up the batter for the cookies. Grandma B always made sugar cookies, but I decided to make up vanilla cookies as I had all the ingredients. 

Then comes the rolling out of the dough. I remembered (from painful experience) that I needed to flour the rolling mat before I put the dough down. I didn't put all the dough down at once and went through it in batches instead.

I've been asked before how I know what the proper thickness is for the cookie dough. The answer is, I don't. It's something that depends on the recipe, the desired crispiness of the cookies, etc. I tested some different sized layers before settling on one.

Before next Christmas, I will need to get some more cookie cutters. These were the only ones I could find that produced the cookie sizes I wanted.

The cookies do look a little flat going in, but after 8 minutes in the oven they come out looking pretty good.

At this point I was still debating whether or not to frost the cookies so I had Fluxxdog taste test one and he said that it was just okay and could use a little something more.

Again, I deviate from Grandma B's tradition. She always made cream cheese frosting for the cookies, but I didn't have enough cream cheese, nor does the frosting lend itself to decorating bags. So, instead, I made up a double batch of icing, split it in two, and added food coloring. Next year I may try for more colors, but for now I like the red and green.

In order to make sure I had enough icing for all of the cookies, and to try to minimize the mess, I went over the cookies once with the red icing. Then I went over them again with the green. I had initially skipped a few cookies, thinking some of them would be all red or all green, but I ended up with enough extra icing that I was able to go over the cookies again and get a good mix of both colors.

I'm actually somewhat energized by this experience and I'm looking forward to getting in more practice with the decorating bags and seeing if I can make frosting flowers and whatnot. If you'd like to see these attempts/experiments, please let me know. 

What Should A Clever Moose Eat? | John Pastor

*Image and ebook provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Summary:

Prof. John Pastor has studies the ecology of the North Woods for many years. In What Should a Clever Moose Eat? he presents a collection of essays that address the ecology of the North Words from the creation of its landscape by glaciers in the Ice Age to the current relations between species of plants and animals. There is also a section at the end dedicated to how fragile everything is and how we cannot fully know how Climate Change is going to affect everything. 

Review:

At the very beginning of this book, Pastor says that he has attempted to write this book so that it is approachable and understandable to a wide audience of people, not just those who have degrees in natural sciences. As a humanities major, I greatly appreciated this and kept it in mind when I was reading. There were still a few essays where I did more skimming than reading, but overall, I do believe that Pastor achieved his goal of making this book a good read for even the uninitiated. Just as Pastor says about nature, "Nature is always more interesting than the hypotheses we first propose", so to is this book more interesting than a non-scientist would think.

The book is still pretty academic, but if you've spent any time in a forest, a lot of the essays are feel less so. Pastor talks a lot about little things that we've always noticed and maybe never thought much about (i.e. why some trees form smooth leaves and others jagged). Most importantly, Pastor talks about how everything in the North Woods is connected, though this may be more a consequence of nature being a web of connections than a purposeful way of writing. 

In all, not all of the essays were able to keep my interest and there were times that the book felt like a chore to read, but I know I will not be able to look at trees the same way again. I will be filled with even more of a sense of wonder about them. Goodness knows, while reading this book, I started looking at the weeping willows on my way to work and wondering about how their long scraggly leaves had evolved. I also thought that I'd like to use this book for parents to help answer a lot of natural sciences questions their children may ask. 

I happily give this book 4 hoots because it has changed the way I look at the world, in a good way. 

                 Hoot!Hoot!

                 Hoot!Hoot!

Oreo Cupcakes

It's been a long while since I've done a recipe review so I decided to record my baking for Easter Sunday. I ended up making Oreo Cupcakes, chocolate cupcakes with an Oreo at the bottom and crushed Oreos in the frosting. I used a generic chocolate cupcake recipe for the cupcakes and my usual recipe for the butter-cream frosting.

Ingredients:

For the generic chocolate cupcakes:

                          3 Cups Flour                         2 Eggs                         1 tsp Vanilla

                          2 Cups Sugar                         1 Cup Milk

                          1/3 Cup Cocoa Powder         1 Cup Water

                          2 tsp Baking Soda                 1 Cup Vegetable Oil

For the butter-cream frosting:

8 oz Cream Cheese       1/2 Cup Butter            ~1 lb. Powdered Sugar

Instructions:

The overall recipe is pretty simple. Mix the ingredients together and pour into the cupcake tins. However, because these are Oreo Cupcakes, we start out with cookies in the bottom of each cupcake.

THEN we fill them up to the brim.

The frosting is just as simple, though I'm adding in crushed Oreos that are getting further crushed by the hand mixer.

Then it's just a matter of combining the cupcakes and the frosting and the product is finished!

Review:

Between me, Fluxxdog and Veonoss, we can all agree that these do taste pretty good. Unfortunately there is room for improvement. The chocolate cupcake DEFINITELY tasted generic. Next time, I'll replace the water with either coffee or Bailey's Irish Cream. 

Still, it tastes pretty good and I will be baking it again. 4 Hoots!

        

                Hoot!Hoot!

                Hoot!Hoot!

Also, if you'd prefer to see the video, you can watch it here or go to my YouTube channel!*

*Thanks again, so much, Fluxxdog for editing.