Recipe : Whole Wheat Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins

I know I'm posting two recipes in a row (with lots of days in between), but I need to write down our version of pumpkin muffins. I started with this recipe (which is great on it's own.) I don't even remember how I found it. I think I was googling whole wheat pumpkin muffins and needed one without white sugar. Then I kept tweaking it until it was perfect for us. It's now at a point where it pleases everyone including my non-whole-wheat-eating hubby. I wanted it to have a little more umph so I substitute almond meal for part of the flour. I use my own pureed pumpkin that I freeze in 2 cup portions so I switched out that and reduced the other liquid. I use milk instead of buttermilk since that's what I usually have on hand. (Yes, I know I can make buttermilk easily. I'm just super lazy in the morning.) I generally use high quality butter or coconut oil for fat so I replaced that (either will work in this recipe.) My kids love chocolate chips in their muffins so out with the cranberries. Also I doubled the recipe. I make 24 and freeze half for another morning. Here's the final version:

Whole Wheat Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins
adapted from Eating Clean Recipes

makes 24 standard size muffins


2 cups White Whole Wheat Flour
1 cup Almond Meal
2 teaspoons Baking Powder
1 teaspoon Baking Soda
5 teaspoons Pumpkin Pie Spice (Here's the recipe I use to make up my own)
1 teaspoon Salt
2 Eggs beaten
2 cups Pureed Pumpkin
1 cup Turbinado Raw Sugar
1 cup Milk
6 Tablespoons Coconut Oil (make sure it's liquefied)
2 teaspoons Vanilla
1 1/2 cups Chocolate Chips (I use the Ghirardelli Double Chocolate Bittersweet chips)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Grease muffin tins.

Whisk together flour, almond meal, baking powder, baking soda, pumpkin pie spice and salt.

In a separate bowl whisk together eggs, pumpkin sugar, milk, coconut oil and vanilla. Add wet mixture to the dry and stir to combine. Fold in chocolate chips. Divide batter into muffin cups. I use an ice cream scoop to make it easier.

Bake for 20 minutes or until toothpick inserted in muffin comes out clean (well except for melted chocolate.) Cool in pans for a few minutes before removing to wire rack to finish cooling.

Enjoy!

Recipe : PB & J Waffles

We have a little bit of an obsession with waffles in our house. I have one kid who is very particular about what he eats. Breakfast can be tough since he doesn't like eggs, oatmeal or most cold cereal. But, he loves waffles. So, we tend to have waffles at least once or twice a week. I could never eat just waffles or pancakes and syrup for breakfast without feeling kind of crummy for the rest of the day. It was always too much sugar first thing in the morning. When my kids were little, I started putting peanut butter on their waffles (then it was frozen waffles) to give them a little boost of protein.

A little while ago, I came across a recipe in Martha Stewart's Everyday Food magazine for peanut butter waffles. I thought that was brilliant! I'd never thought about mixing the peanut butter into the waffle batter. We tried that recipe first and it was delicious but not quite peanut-buttery enough for us. I started to tweak our standard waffle recipe with added peanut butter. It was super yummy. One day we were out of maple syrup, so the kids used strawberry jam and PB & J waffles were born.

PB & J Waffles

2 cups Whole Wheat Pastry Flour

1 Tablespoon Baking Powder

2 Tablespoons Sugar 

1/2 teaspoon Salt

2 cups Milk

1/4 cup Oil
2 large Eggs

1/2 cup Peanut Butter

1 teaspoon Vanilla

Directions:

Whisk together Flour, Baking Powder, Sugar and Salt. 

In a separate bowl, whisk together Milk, Oil, Eggs, Peanut Butter and Vanilla. This will take a couple of minutes to get the peanut butter completely incorporated. It will still be in tiny clumps. That's ok. Just make sure it's mixed evenly throughout.

Pour the liquid mixture into the dry ingredients. Mix until combined. Spoon into a heated and lightly greased waffle maker. My waffle maker uses about 1/3 cup of batter per waffle and I ended up with 12 waffles with this recipe.

Jam Syrup

3/4 cup Strawberry Jam

1-2 Tablespoons Water

Mix together Jam and Water. Heat either on the stove or in microwave for 1 minute. Stir and serve.

These waffles also taste great with maple syrup or bananas and a drizzle of honey!

ONE : Sea Creatures Birthday Party

 I'm ONE!

Our littlest one turned ONE! So hard to believe that a year has passed since her birth. I have been looking forward to this birthday all year! I knew that when it came, we would hopefully be past the hardest struggles of having a preemie. And we are! She is still slightly delayed in her gross motor development, but has come such a long way! She is crawling and pulling up now and all the weight issues of her first several months are a thing of the past. She's still a petite little thing, but not far off from where her sister was at the same age.

To celebrate her birthday, we had a joint celebration with a very good friend of mine whose son also turned one in July. The first pictures of them together are so funny. I think we took them at around 6 weeks old and Baby V looks like his doll. Now she's still smaller, but the difference isn't quite so dramatic.

It was fun throwing a birthday party with a friend. It meant that I didn't have to do all the work. LOL She handled all the food and I did the cakes and favors. We chose the theme "sea creatures." I thought it would be a fun summertime theme and perfect for a birthday party celebrating both a little girl's and boy's first birthday. My friend made yummy cream cheese and turkey or ham on tortilla sandwiches cut in the shape of fish. My husband has asked me to make these at home (minus the fish cookie cutter.) ;) Of course, we had to have goldfish crackers too. Along with that some fruit, chips for the grown ups and flavored lemonade. We had the party at a park so we tried to keep everything finger foods.

I made the cakes and cupcakes. I used this tutorial on Hungry Happenings to make marshmallow sea creatures from the sand toys I bought to give as favors. These went onto two different 6 inch round cakes frosted blue like the sea. I made vanilla wafer crumbs to resemble sand and sprinkled it around the base of the cakes. My dear friend Tina, card-maker extraordinaire, made two mini pennants with each baby's name for the top of the cakes. I think they came out pretty cute if I do say so myself.

I didn't get a good picture of the cupcakes I made for everyone else. I used these instructions on Family Fun's website. Super easy and cute! I made not only orange but also blue, yellow and green fishies.

We kept the party really low-key. We had sand pails and sand toys for the kids. I also set up a baby pool with sea creature squirters in it. Overall, it was a fun party to put together. We kept the guest list small which made it manageable, but I wished that I could have invited all the families who have been such a help to us this past year!

Yum!

Happy 4th!!

Here's the yummy dessert that I made this evening. I used this strawberry shortcake recipe. It came out delicious! But I tend to like anything with strawberries. 

Yum yum!

We will be celebrating Independence Day by not lighting our own fireworks. The kids are a little bummed, but the state of New Mexico is having serious wildfires so we decided not to purchase any fireworks this year. Instead, we're going to find a fun place to park the car and watch the city fireworks. Hope you are all enjoying the holiday!

Happy Father's Day!

We've had a low-key day today. The kids and I made cake pops for Brad (or maybe mostly for us???) to celebrate Father's Day. They weren't as pretty as the ones by Bakerella in her cool Cake Pop cookbook I checked out from the library, but they sure tasted yummy! We told him the orange was for the Harley's he loves. He didn't get the carefree day I think he was hoping for, but I hope he knows how much we appreciate him. He's an amazing daddy and husband, the rock of our family. Love you sweetie!

Pac-Man Cake

A couple of weeks ago, we celebrated Roni's 8th birthday. He loves homemade cakes. Well, home-decorated cakes...I still usually end up using a cake mix. I am by no means "good" at cake decorating. My mom is amazing. She hasn't done much recently, but when I was a kid she made amazing cakes. I should make her dig up a few pictures for me...hey, mom?! Anyway, my cake decorating is purely for fun and not professional at all. In the past he has had a dinosaur cake, space shuttle, a horse and a cute little teddy bear for his first birthday. This year he wanted Pac-Man which totally cracked me up because it seems so eighties. Because of our crazy year, I wasn't sure I could get it done. But, somehow we managed. It was the first time I've ever used fondant. I used this marshmallow fondant recipe. It actually didn't even taste too bad. I just made two round cakes and didn't trim the top but left the top kind of rounded. I cut out the mouth and covered it in the yellow fondant. Then I used a cup to cut two dots from the cake I had cut from Pac-Man's mouth. I covered those with white fondant. Hopefully, I can try using marshmallow fondant again. I can see where I could have cleaned it up a bit, but overall I was really pleased with the results. And my-now-8-year-old was pleased too which is what's important!

Daily Bread

I'm so excited about this recipe!!! I saw a discussion on one of the message boards I frequent about a Mother Earth News article. The authors of the book Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day shared their basic recipe in this magazine article. The women discussing the recipe were having a lot of success so I thought I'd try it. I've been wanting to try a no-knead bread recipe but just had never gotten around to it. This is so great because it took only a few minutes to mix the dough together and then after the initial rise, you just stick it in your fridge. When you want a fresh loaf of bread, all you do is pull out a pound of dough, let it rest for 40 minutes and bake it. I tried it yesterday in honor of my husband's birthday and everyone loved it. A 1 lb. loaf is really small, but it was the perfect amount for dinner. I have another loaf cooling now, maybe I'll save it for breakfast tomorrow, and I still have enough dough for two more loaves in the fridge. I don't have a baking stone so I used my pizza pan. It seemed to work fine. I can't wait to try the whole wheat recipe, but I have to wait until I use up this dough so I can get my big bowl back.

After checking out the authors website, I think I'm going to try some of the suggestions for high altitude baking next time I try the recipe. I'm on the holds list for the cookbook at our library. New cookbooks aren't really an approved expenditure at the moment. ;) But, if I like it, I'm definitely going to put it on my wish list. I just love the idea of fresh baked bread whenever we want it!

Pumpkin

I made pumpkin puree from scratch on Thanksgiving! I'm so excited! Here's the pictures to prove it. (Michelle - This is one from the pumpkin stand. :) In case you're missing them.)


Here it goes into the food processor. I had no idea how much puree one pumpkin would make. It's a ton. This is only half.

The first finished product - Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies. I know they aren't the prettiest cookies, but they taste so good!