.:: Fire The Housewife ::.

Dear Internet,

It has recently come to my attention that everyone thinks I’m a giant fattie.  I’m pointing at you, Brian Massie.  Yes, that’s right, I like him so much that I used his real name.  No nickname starting with The.  Wow. That’s love!! Anyway,  B. Massie and another pal of The Boyfriend’s at work have scoffed at me and apparently think that my hiding out at home all the time means I’m fat. MY BRAND NEW ABILITY TO WEAR SIZE 4 JEANS SAYS OTHERWISE. I just don’t want to live in a world where size 4 is fat.  You know what Internet?  Sometimes I want to eat at Top Pot and that’s okay.  I work out twice a day, 5 days a week, and that means it’s okay to eat a freaking cupcake whenever I want to.  Let that be a lesson to you all, eat cupcakes, it’s okay.

Anyway, my ability to eat cupcakes is not the main staple of my diet, in fact when I’m not eating cupcakes I eat some pretty healthy stuff.  Recently I have decided that perhaps I have a little bit of intolerance to flour, white flour especially. I’ve cut everything out of my life basically.  Sad but true.  I eat whole grain everything and feast upon Mack’s Flax, a flour free bread I really love.  Basically in a day I eat a ton of food but consume well under 1000 calories.  To prove to you all that I can bake something that fits into my pretty tight little diet I’m going to share with you all my Whole Wheat Flax Seed Muffins.

So, they’re pretty easy to make and only very very slightly labor intensive.  If you’re not my kitchen (and even my kitchen had to pick up a few supplies) you’ll probably need to go pick up some whole wheat flour, flax seed meal, oat bran (I secretly just used some oatmeal and ground it up a little in my cuisinart).  Everything else you will probably have on hand or can pick up on your normal trip to the store.  Just to make you feel even worse for thinking I’m such an unhealthy slob, I buy all organic too.  In fact the carrots and apples were purchased at the Ballard Farmers Market, so not only were they organic, they were locally grown too.

ON TO THE RECIPE!

1 1/2 c. whole wheat flour

3/4 c. flax seed meal

3/4 c. ground oatmeal (or oat bran)

1 c. brown sugar

2 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp.  baking powder

1/2 tsp. salt

2 tsp. cinnamon

1 tsp. allspice

2 medium Fuji Apples (peeled and grated)

1 1/2 – 2 c. carrots (peeled and grated)

4 Tbsp. flax seeds

3/4 c. milk

2 eggs

1 Tbsp vanilla

optional: nuts, dried fruit, anything your little heart desires.  I used dried cranberries.

Go ahead and sift together the whole wheat flour and the flax seed meal.  There will be some residual hulls and whatnot in your sifter,  I just dumped those on in.  I like my hulls.  If that REALLY grosses you out I suppose you could trash them, but why would you want to do such a thing?

Now, I didn’t have any oat bran and I didn’t feel like making the boyfriend scoop anything more out of the giant bins at PCC so I used the oatmeal I had on hand and just ran it through the food processor until it was a little more fine, not so fine that it’s powdery though.  Go ahead and mix that on in with your flour and flax, also add in the other dry ingredients, all the way down to that allspice.  It’ll look a lot like this…

I like to live dangerously so I didn’t sift everything, this is not going to mess up your results this time, trust me.

Now, this is when things get tricky.  I definitely peeled and grated the carrots and apples all alone while The Boyfriend sat and watched.  Gosh I hope he doesn’t read that because then he’ll be sad I told the internet didn’t help when in reality he actually peeled the carrots and grated them for me with our extra grater.  He’s just that grate great!  So, once you’ve grated these things at lightening speed like I did:

My hands are moving so fast they can’t be photographed.

Once I got those apples all grated they started to turn a little brown, so I threw some lemon juice on them, violently.  This isn’t a totally necessary step, but something about browning apples on the counter really grosses me out, so I did it.  Don’t judge.

You’re going to mix these carrots and apples into your dry ingredients.  Now here’s the catch.  These are going to have a definite texture in the finished product.  If you have a picky child or The Boyfriend you’re going to want to do more than grate these.  Probably go ahead and run them through the food processor until it’s just mush, or use apple/carrot sauce.  It’s going to make a slight difference in your finished product texture, but there is a definitely a texture to these muffins and if you think you or your loved ones can’t handle that, you should probably go ahead and puree, puree to your heart’s content.

In a separate bowl mix the eggs, milk, and vanilla, then add it to your dry-ish mixture (it’s not so dry after you add the fruit.  On a side note, I did not use my mixer for these muffins because you only want to get the entire mixture wet, you don’t want to over mix it.   Once you have your wet and dry ingredients mixed together start adding in the other things you love.  I added 4 Tbsp of Flax Seed (because I love it) but you can leave that out if you want.  I also added some dried cranberries that I had left over in my cabinet.  But you can add any little thing you want.  I will add, the muffins would have been a little boring without the cranberries, so maybe think about adding something with a little extra flavor, you could even do chocolate chips!!

Now, I decided to make my own muffin papers out of some parchment paper, but regular muffin papers are fine too.  These muffins don’t rise much so you can definitely fill them pretty full.  Bake them at 350 for what will feel like forever.  I’m sorry I didn’t time it for you, just bake them until a knife comes out clean.

They will definitely make your whole house smell like a delicious factory. Trust me.

As a final thumbs down to those of you who think I’m a secret internet fatty, here’s the nutritional facts before you add any of the extras (mine includes the flax seeds, so feel free to add those and you’ll fit within my nutritional fact parameters.) by the way, the serving size is 1 muffin.

I know you’ve all been waiting for this.  For the stories of how I burned down my kitchen with my new set of kitchen torches.  How the boyfriend’s beard is gone because I singed it off waving my hands around wildly while holding a lit torch. All so I could make desserts like this…

Well, you know what, YOU’RE WRONG.  No major fires, no accidents, no nothing!  And they turned out so pretty and so delicious.  The only thing I’d do differently is use a milk chocolate ganache instead of a bittersweet chocolate ganache.  Don’t hold that against me though.  You can do it better at your house. WITH YOUR TORCH. OH YOU DON’T HAVE ONE?! YOU DIDN’T GET TWO OF THEM FOR CHRISTMAS? OH TOO BAD!

So, I wanted to get the s’moriest of effects so, I tried hard to think of a way to do a graham cracker flavored cupcake.  I settled upon a gingerbread cupcake, which I decided was too spicy, but I did it anyway.  Next time I think I’ll substitute the molasses with something a little less…demanding.  I got 99 problems, and molasses is seriously one of them. SERIOUSLY.

Gingerbread Cupcakes

2/3 cup molasses         1 tsp. baking soda

½ c. sugar                     2 ½ c. flour

½ c. butter                    1 c. sour milk

2 tsp. ginger                   2 eggs beaten

1 tsp. cinnamon

Heat molasses, sugar, shortening, ginger, and cinnamon to boiling, stirring constantly.  Cool about 30 minutes.  Sift together soda and flour.  Add to cooked mixture alternatively with milk and eggs.  Bake at 350° until toothpick comes out clean.

The frosting is wonderfully easy and seriously tastes exactly like a marshmallow that has been melted.  I was amazed. So was The Boyfriend, and after I made him eat that egg puff full of pumpkin he was a little weary of me screaming “OMG COME TRY THIS! RIGHT NOW!”

So, I actually used some powdered egg whites because I’m not really that awesome about using up the yolks after I separate them, and yes I should probably bake a pound cake or whatever other dessert uses a ton of yolks (creme brulee??) but I just don’t do it. Okay? I Don’t.  ANYWAY.  I used the Wilton powdered egg white, it’s just 2 tsp of powder plus 2 Tbsp of water.  Just do the math, not that hard if you decide to go that route.

Faux Marshmallow Frosting

1 ¼ c. granulated sugar      4 egg whites
1 Tbsp vanilla

If using egg whites (not replacement) first combine whites and sugar on double boiler until mixture reaches 160°.  Move to mixer bowl with whisk attachment and beat until room temperature or stiff peaks.

After you’ve done all this, thrown a layer of ganache (I just melt a cup of chocolate chips with 1Tbsp of butter and maybe 2 Tbsp of milk.) in between the cake and the frosting you get this…

You can go ahead and oooh and ahhh at this point.  I’ll allow it.  I know, they’re gorgeous.  These are the babycakes, because we all know how much I love babycakes (they’re just so cute!)

Then you get to pull out the torch.  Seriously, it’s so fun. Get one. Get a fire extinguisher. Get some butane. Start lighting fires.

Admit it, you think it looks like fun.  You can be jealous.

These were definitely a first try and could use some tweaking, but really, cmon, these are like the cutest things you’ve ever seen, just go ahead and admit it.

So it has recently been brought to my attention that the only way to get The Boyfriend to eat healthy foods is to lie to him.  I had exhausted my repertoire of “if you eat all your carrots you won’t have to wear your glasses anymore!” and “SUPER MAN LOVES HIS PEAS” and skipped right on to just crying whenever he turned down the vegetables I cooked.

I’ve been looking at this Deceptively Delicious cookbook since, oh, about our 2nd date (which was actually just a couple weeks ago.) but while we were in Kansas I found it on clearance at Hasting for like 5 dollars.  It’s normally like 20.  MAJOR BARGAIN. I BASICALLY JUST PUT IT INTO MY PURSE AND WALKED ON OUT OF THAT STORE. THAT’S WHAT I’M SAYING TO YOU RIGHT NOW.  I also found out that it was written by this lady named Jessica Seinfeld. As in Jerry Seinfeld’s wife. Which was just one more reason for The Boyfriend to enjoy the foods “Look, The Boyfriend, Jerry Seinfeld likes it! Maybe Kramer and Elaine too!”  We won’t talk about George, because I mean, duh.

So one morning for breakfast I made these:

That’s right, Baked Egg Puffs with Yellow Squash or Butternut Squash organic pumpkin puree.

These are soooo easy, trust me, so easy.

All you’re going to need is:

Cooking Spray

2 large eggs

4 large egg whites

1/2 cup organic pumpkin puree

2 Tbsp Cheddar Cheese

2 Tbsp flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.  Coat 4 ramekins with cooking spray and set onto a baking sheet.

In a large bowl, whisk the eggs, egg whites, squash puree, cheese, flour, baking powder, and salt until combined. Pour the mixture into the cups and bake until they’re puffy and not runny when you poke it with a knife.

We definitely added more salt to ours because it needed some kick, I think it’s be really good to pop it out of the ramekin (which was surprisingly easy) and eat it with some salsa.  You can taste the pumpkin, but it’s so very slight that even people who aren’t squash friendly can be friends with this.

Yay Jessica Seinfeld!

Here’s the Amazon link.

So, I suck at blogging.  I’m no good at updating when I bake things.  Who knew it was so difficult to actually go through the trouble of getting recipes together.

So we’re going to backpeddle a little and I’ll share with you all the things I’ve been making lately with the grand finale showing up, oh, whenever I get to it, of ME USING MY KITCHEN TORCH!

But for now…here’s a few things I’ve worked on lately… Starting with Christmas Candies

This was quite a process, I decided to make Fudge, Toffee, Peanut Butter Fudge, Divinity, Oreo Truffles, and Chocolate Truffles.

I’ve made most of these things before, but I think they turned out pretty good, minus the divinity which was experimented with quite a bit.  I’ll be trying it another day.

Have you ever sat down and thought about the ridiculous amount of butter that goes into making candies?  Or the supplies in general.  It’s disgusting. Trust me.

There are THREE POUNDS OF BUTTER OVER THERE.  That is enough to give you a pretty sweet heart attack, no questions asked.  Let’s not even talk about the amount of sugar, chocolate, marshmallow fluff, and cream cheese that is over there.  It was disgusting, trust me.  I couldn’t even eat these treats for a couple days and even then I took a large amount of the leftover back to Kansas for my family to eat.

So first, I’ve made this Peanut Butter Fudge before, you can look into that here. I did it a little differently and made it look a little more fancy.  By fancy I mean, I made a double batch.  MORE FAT = FANCY, YA’LL.

Now, onto the single item I made that caused The Boyfriend to drool all over everywhere even though it was by far the simplest thing ever.

Ready for this?

Seriously.

THE OREO TRUFFLE.

Before I even show you what this thing looks like, I’m going to tell you how to make it.  Get your pens and papers ready because it’s a real toughy.  You will need

1 pkg. Oreo Cookies

1 8 oz pkg. cream cheese (softened)

In your food processor crush the Oreos into a pretty fine powder, then mix together with the softened cream cheese.  Refrigerate for about 2 hours, roll into balls, dip in white chocolate.  Later you can make some fancy green drizzles on top like I did.

The Boyfriend has repeatedly requested these since Christmas and may or may not be getting a box of the for Valentines Day, I just love him that much I suppose.  They will, however, be drizzled in red and pink and maybe a few dipped in regular chocolate.  Like I said, don’t ruin that surprise for me BECAUSE HE NEVER READS THIS BLOG OR ANYTHING.

The other items are made from some tried and true recipes, such as the fudge recipe off the back of the marshmallow fluff jar (The Boyfriend has seriously bragged to people about this recipe, even after I told him it’s not some ancient recipe, it’s off the jar of Kraft Marshmallow Fluff)  Though, in a taste test performed in the IT room apparently my fudge wins out over the gourmet fudge that some Alaskans sent to them.  I’m just that good.

The chocolate truffles are courtesy of none other than the Pioneer Woman.

And the divinity, well, the divinity is from a cookbook The Grandma used to use, and while every other time she or I made divinity it has turned out wonderfully, this time it didn’t turn out.  It was dry and just not right.  I did experiment with adding some other flavors to it though which was interesting and definitely something I may try again in hopes of the divinity turning out a little better.

Successful post 1 or 20000 things I’ve made and never blogged about.