Easter Carrot Cupcakes

I made these cutie and super tasty carrot cupcakes to share with co-workers to celebrate the coming Easter weekend. I used this Martha Stewart Carrot Cupcake recipe. This is my favorite carrot cake recipe. It is so good you could skip the frosting and just make them as a tasty muffin - maybe with chopped nuts on top. Oooh, yum!

I made a few easy revisions to the recipe:

1. For the flour, I used half whole wheat instead of all white flour.

2. I also made double the cream cheese frosting amount so I could decorate easily and have some for the grass nests. The double batch was perfect for the dozen cupcakes.

I hope you make these and love them as much as I do. Enjoy!

Whole Wheat Zucchini Bread

We had lots of zucchini from the farmer's market and I decided it was time for some zucchini bread. I tend to do banana bread more often for some reason, not sure why because I really like a lot of different sweet quick breads. Zucchini bread being one of them. I wanted something that wasn't over 200 calories a serving - not the easiest to find! But this recipe has serving size at 199 calories. Perfect and delicious.

Whole Wheat Zucchini Bread

One 9 x 5" loaf, 16 servings

Baking Temp: 350 degrees

Baking Time: 1 to 1.25 hours

2 cups whole wheat flour

1 cup unbleached bread flour

3/4 cup sugar

1 tablespoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

2 large eggs

3/4 cup milk (I used soy milk)

1/4 cup vegetable oil

1 1/2 c shredded zucchini

1/2 cup raisins

1/2 cup chopped walnuts

1 tablespoon grated lemon zest (I didn't have a fresh lemon so I put in a splash of lemon juice)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease the pan.

Whisk together the flours, sugar, baking powder, salt and nutmeg in a large bowl. Whisk the eggs, milk and oil in small bowl or large mixing cup. Stir into the dry ingredients until everything is evenly moistened; stir in the zucchini, raisins, walnuts and lemon zest.

Pour the batter into pan. Bake for 1 hour. Check the top; if it's wet looking and wobbles when you touch it, tent the bread loosely with foil and bake until a cake tester inserted in the center comes to clean. 10 to 15 minutes more.

Remove the bread from the oven and cool in the pan for 15 minutes for taking it out of the pan and putting it on a rack to finish cooling completely.

1 Slice, 95g: 15g whole grains, 199 cal, 7g fat, 5g protein, 3 g fiber

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I recommend this fantastic recipe from the King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking: Delicious Recipes Using Nutritious Whole Grains. This baking book never lets me down. If you don't have it definitely get yourself a copy. You can also find lots of recipes on their King Arthur Flour website.

Dark & Dangerous Cinnamon Buns

Yum!

I highly recommend this book - King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking. We have made many recipes from it now and I feel confident that you will get many healthy and yummy uses from it.

And now for this delicious recipe:

For the dough

3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons lukewarm water
1/4 cup fresh squeezed orange juice
5 tablespoons honey
1 large egg, yolk and white separated
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into chunks
3 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1/2 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup dry potato flakes or 3 tablespoons potato flour
1/4 cup nonfat dry milk
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons instant yeast

For the filling

1 cup packed dark brown sugar
1 large egg white
2 tablespoons cinnamon
pinch of salt

For the icing

2 cups confectioners' sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
pinch of salt
2-3 tablespoons milk

To make the dough

Combine all the doug ingredients, using the egg yolk and setting the white aside to use in the filling. Mix and knead–by hand, mixer or bread machine– until you have a medium -soft, smooth doug. Cover and allow the dough to rise until it's quite puffy, though probably not doubled in bulk, 1 to 2 hours. While the dough is rising, make the filling.

To make the filling

In a medium bowl, stir together brown sugar, egg white, cinnamon and salt until completely combined.

To assemble the rolls

Gently punch down the dough and place it on a lightly greased surface. Roll the dough out until it is a 12 x 16" rectangle. Scoop the filling onto the dough and use an off-set spatula or wet fingers to spread it evenly over the dough, leaving a 1" margin along one of the long edges. Roll the dough into a log (not too tight to allow for rising), starting with the long end that has the filling all the way to the edge, turning it so the seam will be flat against the surface. Use a serrated knife and cut the dough into 16 1" pieces.

Preheat the oven to 350.

Evenly space the buns into a 9 x 13" baking dish lightly coated with nonstick spray. They won't touch one another. Cover and let rise for 1 to 1 1/4 hours - they will not double in size, but should rise by about half as large as they started out.

Place in the oven and bake until they are a deep golden brown on top, about 24-28 minutes. Remove the pan and set on a wire rack for about 3 minutes. Carefully turn the rolls out onto a wire rack and then flip them back again (so the tops are up) onto another wire cooling rack.

To make the icing

In a large mixing bowl, mix together confectioners' sugar, vanilla, butter, salt and 2 tablespoons milk. Add in additional milk, if necessary, to achieve a creamy spreadable icing. Spread the icing over the baked rolls.

Makes 16 buns.

White Chocolate Cookies

I had a bag of white chocolate chips that I wanted to use up so I went searching for a new recipe to try and struck white gold! These were really tasty cookies. Definitely worth a try. My last batch got slightly over baked but I have to say they were really good that way. They sort of reminded me of Pecan Sandies when I was a kid. Yum!

Here is the recipe from All Recipes.

Peelin'

Hello and Happy New Year!

Looks like I need to dust this blog off a little bit. I am taking a break from both of my blogs (man, we have really neglected this poor food blog). I have still been researching and I came across this post about peeling a wide range of veggies/fruits.

It is always nice to find out tricks to save time and make the process all the more fun. I remember how much I used to hate chopping garlic years ago. Before I learned to give the garlic a good thump with the side of a knife and my palm, I would cut the top of the garlic and then peel the papery coat off, all the while my fingers getting sticker with garlic juice and my patience running thin. I even bought a jar of the minced garlic in a jar, but I didn't get through it fast enough and it just wasn't like fresh garlic. So needless to say I was so happy to learn the EASY way.

And this method of doing ginger was a new one for me.

I hope you find some of the tips helpful.

Peanut Butter Surprise!

We had peanut butter cups leftover (aww shucks!) from the lack of trick-or-treaters this year. So I decided to make these delicious cookies. These cookies carry a serious punch and require a milk chaser :)

Ingredients
Makes 36

• 1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
• 4 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1 cup packed light-brown sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (spooned and leveled)
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/3 cup granulated sugar, for rolling dough
• 36 mini peanut butter cups, chilled and unwrapped

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Using an electric mixer, cream peanut butter and butter in a mixing bowl until smooth. Add brown sugar; beat until combined, scraping down bowl as needed. Add eggs and vanilla, and beat until incorporated.
2. In a small bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt. With mixer on low speed, gradually beat in flour mixture in two batches.
3. Scoop off dough by the tablespoon; roll into balls. Place granulated sugar on a plate; roll balls in sugar, coating completely. Place 2 inches apart on a nonstick insulated baking sheet.
4. Bake until cookies begin to puff up slightly, about 7 minutes. Remove from oven. Press one peanut butter cup in center of each cookie. Return to oven; continue baking until cookies are golden brown and chocolate has begun to melt, about 6 minutes more. Let cool at least 10 minutes on baking sheet before transferring cookies to rack to cool completely.

Nutty for Oats Cookies

These are sooooo delicious! I am definitely nutty about oatmeal, peanut butter, and chocolate together. I have always altered recipes to get these three ingredients together. When I worked in a bakery I even had my own cookie recipe that sold well - people love this combination. So when I saw this recipe in one of my favorite baking books - King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking- I jumped to try it.

Nutty for Oats Cookies
2/3 cup smooth peanut butter (I used Adam's Chunky peanut butter)
4 Tablespoons unsalted butter (1/2 stick, 2oz.)
3/4 cup packed light or dark brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
2 large eggs
1 cup old-fashioned rolled oats, ground for 30 seconds in a food processor
1 1/2 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
2 cups (12 oz.) chocolate chips (I used semi-sweet chips, but milk chocolate would be tasty too)


Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease 2 baking sheets.

Cream the peanut butter, butter, sugar, vanilla, salt and baking soda in a medium bowl. Beat in eggs, scraping the bowl once they're incorporated, then add the ground oats, old-fashioned rolled oats and chocolate chips. Drop the dough with small ice cream scoop (I prefer the ice cream scoops) or a tablespoon on to the prepared baking sheets.

Bake the cookies 11-13 minutes, rotate pans midway through. Remove the cookies from the oven and let them cool completely on the pans.

Pour a glass of milk and enjoy!