Quinoa Cocoa Puffs

When you want a little treat, but nothing too sweet, just pop 1 or 2 (or 5!) of these in your mouth.

1 cup puffed quinoa
1/2 cup peanut butter
2 tsps cocoa powder
1 tbsp chopped peanuts
1 tsp vanilla
2 tsp honey

1/4 cup semi sweet chocolate chips
1/4 tsp vegetable oil

Mix the dry ingredients together and set aside.

Cream together the peanut butter, vanilla and honey and add to the dry ingredients.

Roll up into teaspoon sized balls, scraping the mixture off your hands regularly to make the job easier. (Sorry, no pictures of the actual rolling....didn't want to get the camera all mucked up)

Set on a plate in the fridge to chill.

Meanwhile melt together the chocolate chips and vegetable oil.  Stir until smooth.

Dip each ball into the chocolate, either from a spoon like I did or directly into your cup or bowl.

Place in the fridge to set.

Creamy Mussels and Mushroom Linguini

I never saw this before.....frozen mussel meat. The package says keep frozen until ready to use, so here goes.

340 g  (3/4 lb) frozen mussel meat
1/4 tsp each salt and pepper
4 tbsps olive oil
1 tbsp butter
2 cups mushrooms, thick sliced
1/2 tsp dry thyme
6 cloves garlic, chopped
1 cup chicken broth
1/3 cup 10% cream (or whipping cream)
12 oz linguini
1/4 cup parmesan cheese
2 tsp flour
reserved pasta cooking water

Heat 2 tbsps olive oil and 1 tbsp butter in a skillet.  Add 1/2 the garlic and cook until very lightly browned.  Add frozen mussel meat and sprinkle with thyme.

Cook for about 5 minutes. Remove from pan, cover and keep warm.

Cook pasta according to package directions.  

Add the remaining 2 tbsps olive oil and garlic to the skillet with the mushrooms.  Sprinkle with salt and pepper and fry until golden.

Whisk together the broth, cream and flour and add to the pan.

Heat until slightly thickened.  If using whipping cream you may want to use only 1 tsp of flour (or maybe even none at all).  Add 1/4 cup parmesan cheese to the sauce.  If you find your sauce too thick add some of the pasta water, a little at a time, until desired thickness.  I made my sauce with 10% cream and only 1 tsp flour with about 1 ladle full of reserved pasta water making a thin sauce great for mopping up with a nice crusty bread.  Toss your sauce with the drained linguini.

Serve with more parmesan cheese and freshly ground black pepper.

Dry Soup Mix with Rice

This recipe makes 2 - 1 quart mason jars of dry soup mix. Make one for yourself and give the other as a gift!

1  1/3 cups dry vegetable flakes with parsley
1/2 cup dehydrated chicken bouillon powder
5 cups minute rice

Mix ingredients together and fill the jars.

Attach these directions:

Bring 4  1/2 cups of water and 2 tbsps of margarine to a boil. Stir in 1 cup of the mix and simmer 5 minutes.
(If you don't use minute rice just cook the soup according to how long your rice needs to cook)

You can add cooked meat or vegetables too.

Pictured here, 1 medium carrot shredded and added to the boiling water, as well as about 1/2 cup cooked chicken added at the end.

Gluten-Free Scottish Shortbread

Does using oat flour make this shortbread more Scottish?

Here are the ingredients:

1/2 cup semi-salted butter, at room temperature
1/3 cup sugar
1  cup oat flour
3/4 cup rice flour

Sift together the dry ingredients and set aside.
Cream the butter until fluffy, then slowly add the dry ingredients mixing well between additions. It will be crumbly. If you think it's too crumbly then add 1 tbsp more of butter, but no more than that.

Wrap in plastic wrap and chill 20-30 minutes.

Keep dough chilled and work with a little of it at a time to form your shortcake, either by forming into a circle, scoring and placing on a cookie sheet.  Or by using a shortcake mold.
See this recipe for how to use molds

http://hotandcoldrunningmom.blogspot.ca/2014/12/scottish-shortbread.html

Bake in a 300F oven for 34 minutes.  Cool about 10-15 minutes, then move to a rack to cool completely.

Scottish Shortbread

This is the first time I have made Scottish shortbread. Although I have always made shortbread cookies (see recipes below)

1 cup butter, unsalted or semi-salted, at room temperature
2 cups flour
3/4 cup icing sugar
1  1/4 tsp coarse salt

2 tsp loose Earl Grey tea (optional)

Cream the butter (never margarine for shortbread) and set aside.  Now sift together the flour, sugar and salt. (Don't skip the sifting)

Stir in the loose Earl Grey tea if using it.

Other options for flavour are lemon zest, chai tea or mini chocolate chips. Plain shortbread is perfectly fine too if you are going for traditional.

Add the dry ingredients by small additions to the butter.  It will look a little coarse and crumbly.

Mix very well, then knead together.  Wrap in plastic wrap and chill slightly.

If you are using a shortbread mold you should make this little powder puff.  Take a piece of cheesecloth, put some icing sugar in the middle and gather up.  Secure with an elastic band.  Tap to dust your mold. If you are not using a mold simply form the dough into a disk, score partway through and poke with a fork all over.

Take some of the dough out of the fridge, leave the rest to chill.  Form dough into a circle and lift into mold.

Press and slice off excess. 

Turn over onto parchment, tap and you might have to stick the point of a knife into the edge to help it come away from the mold.  Here it is........my very first attempt at a molded Scottish shortbread!

I actually had a couple of others crack.  I just laid them on the cookie sheet and pressed gently together. That worked out fine.  Remember to keep the bowl of dough in the fridge. If the dough warms you will lose some of the detail after baking. As you pop them out of the mold and onto the baking sheet keep them in the fridge as well, again to preserve the details of the mold.

Bake at 300F for 20 minutes.
Makes 7 - 4" cookies

Other shortbread cookies you might like:

http://hotandcoldrunningmom.blogspot.ca/2013/12/christmas-shortbread-cookies.html

http://hotandcoldrunningmom.blogspot.ca/2014/08/earl-grey-and-orange-shortbread.html

The Best and Easiest Pound Cake

This recipe makes 2 cherry pound cakes.

It may have originally come from Kraft, but I'm not sure. This is my original copy.

We always have this at Christmas time.You can leave out the cherries and have 2 beautiful plain pound cakes.  Or see my variation at the end of this recipe.

8 oz pkg cream cheese (250 g)
1  1/2 cups sugar
1 cup butter
1 tsp almond flavouring
4 eggs
2  1/4 cups flour
1  1/2 tsp baking powder
2 cups maraschino cherries, drained and roughly chopped
    This turned out to be 1 - 375 ml jar of cherries.
    (don't use glazed cherries, I tried it once....yuck!)
1/2 cup ground almonds

In a mixer blend cream cheese, sugar, butter and almond flavouring.  Add eggs one at a time and beat.  Gradually add 2 cups of the flour and baking powder to the batter.

Mix remaining flour with chopped cherries and ground almonds.

Fold fruit mixture into batter.
Divide into two greased  9 X 5 loaf pans.
Bake in preheated 325F oven for 1 - 1  1/2 hours (closer to the 1  1/2 hrs) until toothpick comes out clean.

Variation:

This time I decided to make 1 cherry and 1 chocolate chip streusel pound cake.

Follow the above recipe until you have added the 2 cups flour and baking powder. Next, mix in the ground almonds.
Divide the batter in half. Take 2  1/2 cups for each loaf.

For 1 cherry loaf:


Use 1 cup of cherries when making one loaf and toss together with 2 tbsps of flour.

Fold this into the 2  1/2 cups of batter. Pour into a greased loaf pan. Set aside.

For chocolate chip streusel loaf:

Mix together -

1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup white sugar
3/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 cup melted butter
1 cup dark chocolate chips

and set aside.

Take another 1/2 cup of chocolate chips and toss with 2 tbsps of flour.  Fold this into the other 2  1/2 cups of batter.

Spread half the batter in a greased loaf pan.  Layer the streusel mix over the batter and press lightly.  Top with remaining batter. It's a little tricky to spread the batter over the streusel, work slowly.

Bake these two loaves as per directions above. (The chocolate one will need the full 1 1/2 hours for sure)

Cool at least 15 minutes before removing from pans to cool completely on rack before slicing.

The original cherry loaf is supposed to have 200 calories for a 1  1/2 inch slice.

The chocolate one must be higher.

I usually cut the loaves in half and freeze, defrosting only what you need to serve.  One year I even sliced it then froze it.  That was a pretty good idea if I do say so myself!

Sweet Potato Muffins

I tried this sweet potato recipe the other day,

http://www.cookforyourlife.org/recipes/sweet-potato-muffins

substituting 1  1/4 cups whole wheat flour and 1  1/4 cups all-purpose flour for the 2  1/2 cups whole wheat pastry flour that was originally called for.

2 raw sweet potatoes makes this a dense muffin.

But surprisingly not heavy.

I made 22 medium sized muffins that can be frozen and taken out of the freezer when you need a little something packed with a lot of something.