Eggless Apple Oatmeal Muffins and Eggless Chocolate Chip Muffins

Happy New Year Folks! I know I haven't blogged that much over the past few weeks but honestly, I didn't really do that much cooking (or least cook anything noteworthy or new.) Now that we're back in the swing of a normal schedule, I got the baking itch last night and attempted a few recipes for muffins. I'm on the hunt for a tasty and not-too-bad-for-you morning muffin. These two are a good start - Eggless Apple Oatmeal Muffins and Eggless Chocolate Chip Muffins.

The Apple muffins aren't the prettiest muffins in the world but they do do the trick and fill you up! Like my "Batter Finger" scraper in the background! Hee hee.

These recipes are eggless since I was bringing them to work and someone in my office doesn't eat eggs, BUT you can sub in eggs! I'll note in the ingredients where you can swap in an egg if you prefer.

Sweet muffin cups eh? Pirate Flags!

EGGLESS APPLE OATMEAL MUFFINS
Adapted from Kathy Can Cook's Chai-Spiced Muffins
Makes 20 - 24 muffins (you can half the recipe as well - I was bringing them to work so I made double)

Ingredients:
3 medium sized apples (I usually bake with Cortlands but I used Fuji in this and they tasted fine), skinned and chopped into 1/4 inch sized bites
2 cups flour - whole wheat is preferable
1 cup rolled oats (not the quick cooking kind)
2/3 cup oil - canola or vegetable
1 tsp corn starch mixed with 1/4 cup water (or 1 egg)
1 tablespoon sour cream
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp vanilla
1 tablespoon honey (add more if you like it sweeter)
1/4 sugar and a little on the side to sprinkle on the top
2 tsp baking soda
1/3 cup milk (add a little more if it's too dry)

Steps:
Preheat your oven to 350degrees
Prep your muffin tin with muffin cups - I used a medium sized tin which makes the allotted amount
Chop your apples!
In a bowl, mix together the wet ingredients (oil, milk, honey, vanilla, cornstarch mixture) and mix in the spices, baking soda, sugar, oats and flour. The consistency should be more thick than you normally make muffins with - these babies don't rise much.
Add in the apples. As the original recipe states - the dough should be mostly apples! - I had to use my hands to get an even mixture.
Plop the dough into the muffin cups - about 2/3rds of the way up in the cup. Sprinkle a little sugar on the top of each muffin for a little sweetness in the first bite :-)
Bake for around 20 minutes - check to see if they are done by using a toothpick down the middle of one of the muffins and if it comes out clean they are done!
Let them cool for about 5 minutes before serving. They are also very tasty cool - and in the morning.

Chocolate Chip Muffins

EGGLESS CHOCOLATE CHIP MUFFINS
Recipe adapted from Mark Bittman Muffins, Infinite Ways Recipe
Makes 12 medium sized muffins

Ingredients:
6 tablespoons butter - softened
2 cups flour - whole wheat
3/4 cup sugar
3 teaspoons baking powder
2 tsp cornstarch mixed with 1/2 cup water (or 2 eggs)
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup milk
Cooking spray for the muffin tin
1/3 of a 12oz bag of chocolate chips (I wouldn't over do it otherwise it will mess with the consistency of the muffin)

Steps:
Preheat oven to 400degrees
Prep your muffin tin - but putting in the muffin cups and I also sprayed them to ensure the muffin comes out of the cup. Nobody likes a sticky muffin :-)
Cream the sugar and butter together
Add in the vanilla and mix again
Add in the baking powder and salt
In a separate bowl, mix together the milk and cornstarch/water together. (If you're using eggs, feel free to add them directly into the bowl with the butter and sugar.) Mix into butter and sugar bowl. DO NOT OVER MIX! Once you add the cornstarch mixture, there will be a little foaming, mix this a bit but the foaming (I think) added to the fluffyness of the muffin so you don't want to loose that.
Add in the flour and mix maybe 12 times so it's incorporated but do not over mix.
Add in the chocolate chips so they are incorporated as well - maybe 4 mixes.
Fill the cups evenly and top with a little sprinkle of sugar to give a little extra sweetness!
Baked for 20-25 minutes - check around 20 minutes with a toothpick down the middle of one of the muffins, if it comes out clean they are done!
Let them cool for around 5 minutes before indulging.

YAY! Happy Eating!

Crock Pot Roast Beef and Homemade Bread

Ah Sunday, what a fantastic day to spend in the kitchen. Probably one of my most favorite things to do is hop into the kitchen, crank up the Patriot's game, throw-on my Pancake! apron and cook up a storm! This past Sunday was even better though... we are a two football team household, Matt is a die-hard Brown's fan and I, as previously mentioned love the Patriots. The Brown's weren't playing Sunday which free's Matt up! Yay! Which also means he decided to take on the crock pot. Oh and I'm so glad he did! The man know's how to cook-up a mean piece of beef.  It's a very easy recipe that you could do with any piece of beef. We happened to snag a nice looking piece about 2-3lbs at the food store that morning. Fantastic. Unfortunately, we where too hungry before I snagged a photo of the final meat but I'm sure you can imagine how tasty it looked.

Easy Crock Pot Roast Beef
2-3lbs would feed about 4 ppl, it does shrink a bit while it cooks

Ingredients
Big hunk of meat - we used a 2lb piece of roast beef
1 cup (or at least 1/2 inch covering the bottom of pot) of soy sauce. (I have a large crock pot so we added a bit more sauce to ensure the bottom was covered.)
1 tsp salt and pepper covering both sides of meat
1 tsp of garlic salt
1 tsp of grilling spices
1 tablespoon flour (For gravy)

Steps

1. Turn your crock pot on high
2. Salt and pepper each side of the meat
3. Plop the meat into the crock pot
4. Add in the soy sauce - ensure that it covers the bottom of the pot, and about 1/2 inch up the side of the meat
5. Sprinkle in the garlic salt and grilling spices on top of the meat
6. Cover and DON'T TOUCH IT for at least 4 hours
7. Feel free to open and check starting at around 4.5 hours and cook until done. It should turn gray. 
8. After it's done, pull the meat out and set it aside to rest. If you cut into it right away, you'll let all the juices out. Letting it rest lets the juices soak into the meat.
9. Add the flour to the juices left in the crock pot. Mix to make a nice rich gravy. Add more or less flour depending on how thick you want your gravy.

While he tackled the beef, I decided that it was finally time to take on some homemade bread. I haven't perfected my recipe yet - but I'll share a few photos with you of my first pass. If you have an easy to make bread recipe, I'd love to check it out!

Mexican Crock Pot Chicken

I'm a novice crock-potter. I've had more failures than successes with this sucker but I'm determined to figure out how to make it work for me. I am a expert at making chicken soup so I thought, how different can that be from using a crock pot. GENIUS MOMENT! We've come to find in our house that we both really love pulled chicken... pulled chicken, crock pot, soup BINGO. This recipe is inspired by recipe I found in my new favorite cookbook, The Southern Living Cook Book. No, I'm not making any money off of promoting this sucker, I just have found it to be a great resource for inspirations for new recipes and easy recipes. Check it out and I'd love to know what you think.

Also, I'll make one last request of you fine reader - with my novice status of crock potting, I'd love to see your recipes and test them out! Please comment on this post and share a recipe or link to your blog with a recipe. Thank you!

ANYWAYS... on to the recipe for my Mexican Crock Pot Chicken

Mexican Crock Pot Chicken
(this is about 4 servings worth, add more chicken and the servings increased, there is certianly room for it in the broth.)

Ingredients
(This recipe is for 4 servings approx, adjust meat and liquid for more servings)

• 2 chicken breasts
• 1 tsp oregano
• 1 tsp cumin
• 1 can petite cut tomatoes - drain the juice
• 1-2 tsp of sea salt (to taste)
• 1 tsp chili powder
• 1 can pinto beans - with juice
• 20 oz of chicken stock (if you add more chicken breast, add more stock - just make sure the chicken is covered)
• 4 garlic cloves, chopped
• 4 chicken sausage - spicey
• 1 cup frozen corn
• 1 cup frozen peppers

Steps

1. Plug in your crock pot and turn it on to High. I have a 6 quart cooker as an FYI for the amount of liquid. The amounts listed above are suggestive - just make sure you have enough liquid to cover the chicken breasts and the sausage. 
2. Add your beans to the bottom of the pot and then add the garlic. 
3. Plop the chicken on top and mix in the remaining ingredients, except for the peppers and corn. 
4. Cover the pot and let it cook for 4 hours. 
5. Add the veggies and cook for an hour.
6. Pull out the chicken and pull it apart with a fork so it's shredded. I added it back into the pot and turned it down to warm.
7. You're ready to eat! Serve on top of some rice and maybe top with a little cheese.

Post-Thanksgiving and Spinach Balls

Matt's Green Bean Casserole & my Spinach Balls, ready & waiting for Thanksgiving

Delicious. That's about all I have to say about my Thanksgiving. I've been doing a TON of baking recently but nothing that is my own original recipe - you could call me the cookie queen right now. Oatmeal chocolate chip (they where ok), chocolate mint and a new chocolate chip cookie recipe. Once I perfect them, I'll share those recipes. I'm telling ya - the chocolate mint one (it's from King Arthur Flour) is freaking fantastic. We froze them as well and it's like having a thin mint you made yourself. Glorious.

Let's talk Thanksgiving for a moment. I"ll put it out there - I didn't do the cooking. I was charged with bringing a tasty appetizer. Matt was charged with his killer green bean casserole (pictured in the photo at the beginning of this blog post.) In my appetizer research, I wanted to come up with something that was easy to eat, not too terrible for you and did I say easy?

Enter Spinach Balls. Tiny balls of green leaves, made with stuffing. They where also a huge hit and very easy to make. Best part? You can make them AHEAD OF TIME, freeze them and bake them the day of your fiesta.

SPINACH BALLS APPETIZER
Makes a little over 2 dozen - 1 inch balls, smaller the ball, more the recipe will make.

Ingredients
1 package frozen, chopped spinach (around 10oz), thawed and drained
2 cups dry stuffing mix - I used StoveTop b/c the bread-bits are small
3 eggs, beaten
1/4 cup grated Parmesan
1/4 cup shredded Mozzarella cheese
1/2 onion, chopped finely
2 tablespoons melted butter

Steps
Prep the spinach, making sure it's drained and thawed and chopped up
Mix all the ingredients together well in a bowl and pop it into the fridge for about 30 minutes to let it set
Pre-heat oven at 350degrees F, if you're baking today
Prep a baking sheet or two with either cooking spray or parchment paper. Create balls, approx 1 inch or smaller in size

To Freeze for Later:
Pop the tray into the freezer (if you're going to freeze the balls for later) for at least an hour to let them freeze
After an hour, you can put them into a more space-friendly container and keep in freezer till ready to bake
To bake them - let them thaw for about 20-30 minutes prior to putting them in the oven

To Bake for Today:
Pop the trays into the oven and bake for about 20-25 minutes until they start to get a little brown

Lizzie Borden House Stove

On a totally side note, we went a few weeks ago to visit the Lizzie Borden House in Fall River, MA. Yeah, it's haunted and there are all kinds of ghost, I'll spare you the creepy details but the best part of the trip? The fantastic stove that I had to snap a photo of to share... Who doesn't want one of these for their house? It's been converted to gas also. LOVE IT!

My Grandma's Chicken Soup

It's getting colder outside and that means it's almost cold season. What cure's any common cold? Homemade Chicken soup. It's true. Well, it always has for me. Especially when cooking my grandma's recipe which I will share with you. This recipe not only makes you FEEL better but the smell of the soup cooking in the house is absolutely amazing. If one of those scented candle companies could bottle up this scent and make a candle, I would buy all of them. No joke. Anyways...

In my house, when my mom would make the soup, she always made a ton so we could eat some of it that day and then freeze the rest for consumption sometime during the winter. We always had a special process for eating it that day - make the stock and separate some out to freeze, remove the chicken and veggies, set aside, make some egg noodles, pour some soup into a bowl, add the veggies and chicken you want and microwave that sucker for 2-3 minutes, add your noodles and eat it!


My Grandma's Chicken Soup Recipe
Ingredients:

• Chicken - there are a few ways to add chicken, I hate touching chicken bones so I usually use 4 chicken breasts but it takes a bit longer for the stock to cook this way. The traditional recipe calls for 1 large chicken or 3-4 large chicken breasts with bone-in.
• Water - amount TBD
• 2 onions
• 3 celery stalks with tops on
• 2-3 large carrots
• 2 parsnips (optional)
• 1 bullion cube - make sure it's the Kosher kind, less salt and taste better
• sea or kosher salt
• egg noodles if you're eating it that day

Steps:

1. In a big pot, add in the chicken. Cover the chicken in water and then pour in any additional water for the amount of soup you'd like to make. Remember, the soup will reduce down by at least 1/4 during the cooking process. It's not an exact science. Cover the pot.
2. Bring the water up to a boil (takes approx 20 minutes). During this boiling process, you're going to need to keep an eye on it and skim off any of the foamy stuff that is created.
3. After the skimming is completed, cut the onions and celery in half and add them to the pot, add in the bullion cube and a pinch of salt (1/2 teaspoon)
4. Bring the mixture up to a boil again and then turn the heat down so its simmering. Let it simmer for 45 min. I alternate cover on, cover off at this point, checking in on the soup every 15 min or so, stirring occasionally as well.
5. Add in the carrots and parsnips and simmer again for another 40 minutes. Taste it as well to see if you need a bit more salt. 
6. At this point, snag one of the chickens and see if its cooked. You don't want to overcook the chicken and dry it out. If the chicken is done, grab them and save them for eating later. It's my favorite kind of chicken to use in a pot pie.
7. You can cook the soup for a few more minutes to reduce it down and bring out more of the chicken flavor if you want. 
8. Once it's done, let it cool and skim off the fat before serving or freezing.
9. Yum!

Meat Logs

Have you ever tried to eat a meatball sub and lost a ball? Or had a meatball sub and had the meatballs all sliced up so they aren't even close to being ball-shaped anymore? I have. It stinks. At this point, I had a great idea - meat logs! How come no one ever tried it before? I have no idea but I think it's pretty genius. Just shape the meat into a log that fits into the bun for your sandwich and you'll never lose a ball again!

HA! Way too many dirty jokes I could include in there but I'll steer clear... with that said, meat logs!

Meat Logs

Recipe makes 4 logs - serves 2 very hungry people

INGREDIENTS

• 1 package of ground meat (we used beef)
• 1 tsp oregano
• 1 tsp basil
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 1/3 cup italian flavored breadcrumbs
• 1 good squirt of ketchup
• 1 good squirt of mustard (we used the grainy kind)
• Tomato sauce - about a cup or two depending on how much you like on your sandwich
• Franks Red Hot Sauce
• Bun - that can handle the meat log!
• Cheese (optional)
• 1 tablespoon oil for the pan to cook the logs

STEPS

Mix the spices, ketchup, mustard, bread crumbs and meat together in a bowl till well combined

Prep the buns - make sure they are sliced, and I add a little cheese to the bottom of the bun also

Form the meat into logs that will fit into your bun, we ended up doing two logs per bun since the longer logs wouldn't fit into the pan that we cooked them in

Add the oil into the pan and turn it on to medium

Add the logs one by one into the pan

Brown the outside of the logs by rolling them around in the pan

Add a few drops of Franks to each log at this point, this will sear the Franks to the outside of the log.

Cook the logs till they are cooked through

Cover with tomato sauce and let cook for about 1 minute to heat up the sauce

Plop the meat logs into the bun and top with a bit more cheese

Enjoy! Yum.

Roasted Butternut Squash

Image Credit: Whole Foods Market

Very very delicious and very very simple - Roasted Butter Nut Squash. I love squash, pumpkin and other gourd-like veggies. Matt does not. So I had a simple solution - I bought a pacakge of already cut-up squash and roasted that sucker so I could eat it at my leisure and he won't have to tolerate it as part of a meal. Very simple and easy recipe...

Roasted Butternut Squash

Ingredients

• 1 package of butter nut squash or one squash cut up into 2-bite size pieces
• Olive oil
• Sea salt
• Fresh cracked pepper
• Tin foil

Steps

1. Pre-heat oven to 375-400degrees F
2. Put the tinfoil down on a cookie sheet to cover the surface, this makes it much much easier to clean later. I promise.
3. Coat the squash in the olive oil. The amount of oil depends on the amount of squash - I use enough that all sides are coated but not dripping. Like a light salad dressing amount. 
4. Lay the squash on the cookie sheet and drizzle the salt and pepper lightly over top and toss again so it's coated. 
5. Pop the tray into the oven for 45 minutes. The oil will bubble but if you touch the squash, it should be close to done - taste test it. I usually end up popping it back in the oven for another 15 minutes. I like my squash almost mashable - it gets nice and caramelized.
6. Yum!