What's New?

I am so excited about what I have in the works for February (and the following months, too!). Let's get to all the good stuff...

For the first time since starting my blog, I am going to participate in NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month). The requirements of this is to post something on the blog every day for the entire month. This isn't the first time I have posted every day, but it is the first time that I will "officially" do it and I am ready to get started!

To help get me back into the groove of posting I have a few new features that I want to tell you about. I will be posting more about each one as the month goes on but I wanted to give you an idea of what to expect.

1. COOKING WITH ANYA: Anya, as most of you know, is my 4 1/2 year old daughter. She absolutely loves being in the kitchen with me. The other day I was making something and she asked me if I was going to put it on my blog. I have never really talked to her about my blog and was so shocked to realize she not only knew the word "blog" but that I had one. She asked if she could put stuff on my blog, too. At least twice a month, I will put up a post from Anya (she will dictate; I will type!).

2. GUEST BLOGGING: A few of my friends have graciously agreed to take part in my blog. I am lucky to be surrounded (in cyberspace, anyway... I miss my friends!) by people who not only enjoy cooking, but are GREAT at it. They will make a recipe, take pictures, write up a post, and I will post it here. I hope to be able to feature my friends at least twice a month, but that will be dependant on how many emails I get. :)

3. FOREIGN FOOD FOCUS: My wonderful husband, Nathan, came up with the great idea of having posts specifically dedicated to foods from other countries. My goal is to feature one meal once a month - more if I get carried away!

4. CIA-Homeschool: This one is more for me but I am hoping it will be entertaining for you! Nathan bought me one of the books that is used by the Culinary Institute of America. The book is "Baking and Pastry: Mastering the Art and Craft". It will be a few years from now until I am able to go to culinary school (I want to be home with my kiddos right now!), so I figured I would "homeschool" myself by baking from this book. It is 880 pages, so I narrowed it down to a few recipes from each section. I will be making a total of 92 recipes (not including the mini-recipes inside of each one). While I am big on sharing recipes, I will not type them up in my CIA posts. The reason for this is because I am going to be making a LARGE number of the recipes from this book and I wouldn't feel right posting so much of the cookbook. I look forward to sharing my progress with you all and will have the list of the 92 recipes in my first CIA post. Because there are so many recipes and I don't want this to take 10 years, I will be making at least 2 a month, but I really hope to do more.

And, yes, I will still be maintaining my TWD, SMS, and Daring Baker committments. I know that I am crazy, but I hope you will be here to watch all the craziness unfold!

Happy February!

Lemon Muffins with Poppy Seed Streusel

I had some lemon zest that needed to be used up and thought a lemon muffin would be the perfect way to use it. These muffins are fantastic. Light and fluffy with just the right amount of lemony goodness.

I am a huge fan of lemon poppy seed muffins but I love how these muffins have the poppy seed streusel on top as opposed to the poppy seeds being mixed in.

A delicious way to start the day!

Lemon Muffins with Poppy Seed Streusel

Struesel:

3 TBSP sugar

2 TBSP flour

1 TBSP butter

1 tsp poppy seeds

Muffins:

2 cups flour

1/4 cup sugar

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

3/4 cup cream

1/4 cup butter, melted

2 TBSP lemon zest

1 tsp vanilla

1 egg

1 cup sour cream

Preheat oven to 375.

Combine streusel ingredients in small bowl; set aside.

For muffins, combine flour through salt in large bowl. Make a well in the center. Combine cream through sour cream in another bowl and pour into flour mixture. Stir just until combined.

Spoon batter into muffin tins and bake for 15-18 minutes or until done.

Daring Bakers: Nanaimo Bars

Nanaimo (Nah-nye-moh) Bars are a 3 layer dessert created in Nanaimo, Canada. The base layer consists of cocoa, graham crackers, coconut, and almonds. The middle is a custard layer and the whole thing is topped off with a layer of chocolate.

You may be thinking that this doesn't seem like it would a Daring Baker challenge by itself so that is why the hosts have challenged us to make our own graham crackers for the base layer.

It was a fun task to make graham crackers. I never would have thought to make my own but these were simple and delicious! They spread a lot in the oven so they weren't perfect looking, but they tasted great!

The Nanaimo Bars were easy to put together. The only difficult part was all the dishes from the 3 different layers! :)


Overall, the Nanaimo Bars were good, but too rich for me. Nathan and the kids loved them and didn't think they were too rich, so I guess it just depends on your tastes.


The January 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Lauren of Celiac Teen. Lauren chose Gluten-Free Graham Wafers and Nanaimo Bars as the challenge for the month. The sources she based her recipe on are 101 Cookbooks and www.nanaimo.ca.


Nanaimo Bars
Ingredients:

For Nanaimo Bars — Bottom Layer
1/2 cup (115 g) (4 ounces) Unsalted Butter
1/4 cup (50 g) (1.8 ounces) Granulated Sugar
5 tablespoons (75 mL) Unsweetened Cocoa
1 Large Egg, Beaten
1 1/4 cups (300 mL) (160 g) (5.6 ounces) Gluten Free Graham Wafer Crumbs (See previous recipe)
1/2 cup (55 g) (1.9 ounces) Almonds (Any type, Finely chopped)
1 cup (130 g) (4.5 ounces) Coconut (Shredded, sweetened or unsweetened)

For Nanaimo Bars — Middle Layer
1/2 cup (115 g) (4 ounces) Unsalted Butter
2 tablespoons and 2 teaspoons (40 mL) Heavy Cream
2 tablespoons (30 mL) Vanilla Custard Powder (Such as Bird’s. Vanilla pudding mix may be substituted.)
2 cups (254 g) (8.9 ounces) Icing Sugar

For Nanaimo Bars — Top Layer
4 ounces (115 g) Semi-sweet chocolate
2 tablespoons (28 g) (1 ounce) Unsalted Butter

Directions:
1. For bottom Layer: Melt unsalted butter, sugar and cocoa in top of a double boiler. Add egg and stir to cook and thicken. Remove from heat. Stir in crumbs, nuts and coconut. Press firmly into an ungreased 8 by 8 inch pan.
2. For Middle Layer: Cream butter, cream, custard powder, and icing sugar together well. Beat until light in colour. Spread over bottom layer.
3. For Top Layer: Melt chocolate and unsalted butter over low heat. Cool. Once cool, pour over middle layer and chill.

TWD: Cocoa-Nana Bread

I have been debating what to say about this bread. It is a chocolate banana bread, or at least that is what the name is telling me. If I didn't know anything about this bread or what it was "supposed" to be, I think things would be different. It is very tasty and I do like it. I thought it was delicious. The problem comes from my brain.

See, for me, if you tell me there are bananas in someting, I want to taste the bananas. I want them to be a lead ingredient. The banana was more of an afterthought. This was more a chocolate bread with some bananas thrown in to make us all feel better about eating it! Which, make no mistake, this bread (cake... who are we kidding?) WILL get eaten!

I probably won't make this again in the future, though. Not because it isn't good, because like I said, it was quite tasty. The reason is because if I want banana bread, I will probably just make banana bread, and if I want chocolate, I would prefer a fudgy brownie!

Thanks to Steph of Obsessed with Baking for hosting this week. The recipe can be found at her blog.

SMS: Black Bottom Brownies

Mmmmmm.... Black Bottom Brownies. Fudgy, chocolatey brownie on bottom. Yummy, creamy cheesecake on top. Does life get better than this?

Thanks to Cynthia of Bakingtherapist for hosting this week. The recipe can be found at her blog.