Busy Busy!!

I have been busy baking and have a Banana Carmel Cake that I made and I will be sharing soon as well as some oh, so yummy cupcakes that I made this weekend. But I wanted to talk today about some experiments that I have been running.


My daughter will eat very little in the way of variety...she asks me every night "what's for dinner?"...she's 20 and I find this question very annoying at this stage of her life. Considering that I spend the better part of the last 20 years working hard to make sure that "Miss Picky" would eat...I have had a somewhat restricted diet too. I also work five days a week and cooking during the week becomes a chore. I love to cook and refuse to have it become a chore. So, we eat a lot of sandwiches on Fiber One bread (something that I plan to do myself one day too) and fix big pots of stuff over the weekend and eat that until it is gone.


My step-son's birthday was Friday and he came down to visit with us for his birthday last night. I made the oven stew (I have made some adjustments to that too that I will share...my goal was to keep the wonderful flavor and cut the sodium) yesterday so that dinner would just be ready when he got here and made vanilla bean white velvet cupcakes with the icing that he requested. We went to the meat market down the road for the roast yesterday and they had chicken tenders really reasonably priced so I picked up two pounds with the intention of making baked chicken strips and freezing them so that Hannah can quit asking me "what's for dinner" and I know she will be eating good for her food.


I had bought some orange cauliflower last week and I decided to surprise her with low fat mac n' cheese and baked chicken strips. I have seen lots of recipes for both and I have tried a low fat mac n'cheese recipe and thought that it was decent but that I had some different thoughts about how I wanted to do it.


So here are my recipes (I as usual, did not take pics of the process but the finished products will go on here).

Baked Chicken Strip

Baked Chicken Strips


2 lbs chicken tenders
3 cups bread crumbs (I used the heels from my Fiber One bread and tossed in the last two pieces of garlic bread for additional flavor)
1/4 cup parmesan cheese
2 cups butter milk
2 Tbs hot sauce
4-6 egg whites
1 clove garlic minced


I mixed the buttermilk, garlic, and hot sauce in a bowl and put my chicken tenders in to soak for 1 hour (I would have left them longer if I had thought to do it earlier). I took the heels of my bread and garlic bread and put them in the food processor and then added the parmesan cheese to the mixture and pulsed it until mixed well and all very fine (I then took out about 1/3 of a cup for the mac n' cheese). The soaked chicken tenders are then dredged through the bread crumbs, dipped in the egg white, and dredged through the bread crumbs again. I had sprayed my cake cooling rack with non-stick spray, heavily, and put this on top of a cookie sheet to catch any droppings.


Bake at 350 until cooked through.

Low Fat Mac n' Cheese

Low-Fat Mac N' Cheese


2 cups boiled elbow pasta (al dente)
2.5 cups shredded cheese (I used every package of left over shredded cheese in my fridge so it was a big mix)
1 head of yellow cauliflower (maintains the color of the sauce)    steamed until very soft
1 Tbs of butter
1/3 cup of skim milk
1 egg
2 Tbs hot sauce (just to kick it up a bit)
1/2 tsp salt




I put the shredded cheese, steamed cauliflower, milk, egg, hot sauce, and salt into my food processor and processed until I had a very creamy cheese sauce. Mixed with the al dente pasta and put it in a casserole pan sprayed well with non stick spray.  Top with bread crumb mixture.


Bake at 350 until hot, bubbly, and bread crumbs are nicely browned.


Both turned out lovely! They were very yummy and both kids and adults had seconds! I took some spicy mustard and added honey at the last minute to dip the tenders in...wonderful!!

High Fiber Low Fat Baked Chicken Tender

Low Fat Mac n' Cheese

Strawberry Cake

My paternal family is somewhat of a mess. There were 4 boys and a girl in the family and not many of my cousins or myself were raised by our parents on that side of the family be they our father or mother. We had wonderful great-grandparents that worked really hard at creating a family environment for us but they were both gone by the time I was 19 and many of my cousins were very young or not even born before then. 

I have been thinking about my great-grandmother a lot lately and missing her...her name was Zola and she would be very sad about the state of this family. I have kicked up my efforts to try to re-connect with my cousins and create a family for our children in the past months. Many of my cousins are interested in this for themselves and/or their children.

One of my cousin's children was turing 13 on the 13th of this month and it seemed like an ideal opportunity to get together. I am hoping these get togethers grow in number of family members that come! 

I, of course, wanted to do an awesome cake. I wish I had been doing this when Hannah turned 13 or even MacKenzie. I started all these "roses" cakes because I have been planning this cake for months! I needed to see if I could do it at all...these roses are seriously easy!

I have to confess, I did even a worse job of picture taking (none during the process) because my 19 month old nephew was keeping me company and I was a bit nervous about this icing...I was distracted!

I wanted to make this strawberry cake so bad and had been planning it...the recipe calls for strawberry puree and I have strawberries that I put in the freezer at the end of the summer, this is the perfect use for them!

I realized when I pulled up the recipe on my ZipList and had been debating what icing to use. I am chomping at the bit to do a chocolate cake with chocolate icing so I wondered about chocolate icing on this but was afraid that it would overpower the strawberry in the cake. So I decided on a strawberry swiss meringue buttercream recipe that I had found.

Strawberry Birthday Cake with Strawberry Swiss Meringue Butter Cream Icing

This cake was AMAZING! I also forgot to take a picture of the inside. I used 8 inch pans and made it three layer. I used my icing bag to pipe the icing between layers. I used white chocolate melting candy to make the "M."

What I will do differently next time: The icing was wonderful but a bit too buttery for me (no wonder with the amount of butter in it) I think that I will do half light cream cheese and half butter and see how that goes. 

It turned out beautiful! I think this was my best cake yet!

Cherry Rose Cake

I am so into baking right now. I just love every bit of it...the measuring, mixing, trying new things and having this beautiful creation at the end that everyone enjoys.

At work there is a group of us that goes out to lunch to celebrate birthdays. My boss had her birthday last week and was on vacation so the plan was that we would go out to lunch this past Monday. This is the first birthday lunch that we have had since my new obsession has really taken root. 

I called my friend from work and asked what she thought about me baking a cake to bring to lunch. She thought it was a good idea and that our boss would like it. I was SOO excited!

I spent last Thursday evening looking through the recipes that I have been collecting for cakes...looking for one that I couldn't wait to try and then I found Buttermilk Cupcakes with Cherry Icing...DING DING DING! Winner!!


This recipe is wonderful. The cake gets it's cherry flavor from chopped frozen cherries and it has a nice pinkish color (I am still not great at taking pictures of the whole process...I will get better). I made the cake as directed with no changes.

The icing was another story. It gets it's cherry flavor from cherry brandy (yum!). However, this is a work lunch and it feels wrong to pour liquor into this icing. I spent a long time thinking over what to use to replace it and decided on really good cherry preserves 4 TBS (I put them in the food processor and blended them well).

Remnant Cherry Preserves

So now I have this really beautiful pink icing. With little flecks of cherries in it.

Beautiful Pink Icing with Cherry Flakes!

I have a problem though...it tastes like cherry powdered sugar. I don't like too much of a powdered sugar taste to the icing. So I decide to throw in a bar of cream cheese and 2 tsp almond extract. Oh my, this is delicious. Next time I will split the butter in half and do half cream cheese and I will double the almond extract to bring out more of a cherry almond flavor (OH! and I will DEFINITELY be adding the cherry brandy with the cherry preserves).

What to do with the rest of the cherry preserves? I decided to put some in between the layers of cake...BUT it started running off the cake! I though I had really made a mistake I slapped on some icing and started trying to mix it up (next time I will mix it with icing first and then put it on). I had to put the other layer on it and it and use my icing bag to "caulk" it up!

I was really scared about this time.

I then decided to make the top look like one big rose!

A Single Rose

I really need a spinning cake decorating stand!

I HATE writing on cakes...I never get it right and so, I decided to play around with something else. I used white chocolate candy melts and used a squeeze bottle to make letters until they came out decently. I then just pressed them into the icing and I love the look that I got with this cake!

I really like the way it turned out!

It was a HUGE hit at work...everyone loved it!

I think that next time the bottom of the letters will get chocolate "stands."

This recipe is a KEEPER!!!

Homemade Granola

I have a friend who owns a bakery in Indianapolis at the City Market...Circle City Sweets and she makes, hands down, the BEST granola ever! Her name is Cindy Hawkins and she is the most AMAZING baker ever! She also makes lots of other goodies that are so worth stopping by the City Market and picking up! Circle City Sweets can also be found at many summer markets and they are open at the Indy Winter Farmer's Market, which is now located at the city market.

I crave her granola all the time. This blog is new but I hope it is becoming clear that I like to make things for myself. I like to try things and I like to control what is in what I eat...failing that, I support local businesses like Cindy's and I love to go the local markets and support local farmers.

So, I have been wanting to try making granola for myself as I wanted to maximize the amount of fiber and reduce the amount of sugar in it and still have it taste wonderful. I also want to save money and eat well. I found a recipe for granola and I have doctored it to have the most fiber that I can get and guess what? It's WONDERFUL!!

I left the liquids the way the were listed in the recipe:

• 1/3 cup of honey (I used Sourwood...my favorite!)
• 1/3 cup of maple syrup (I want to buy local and have on hand next time)
• 1 tsp good vanilla extract (think next time I will add the insides from a vanilla bean as well)
• 1/4 tsp real almond extract
• 1/3 cup of oil (I used Smart Balance...good fats!)

Liquids

Here is the Granola recipe that I based my granola on. I changed out the dried fruit that it called for for figs and prunes...both of which I love and contain lots of fiber!

• highest fiber oatmeal that I could find 
• flax seeds instead of ground flax and upped it to more like 8-10 tablespoons
• 1/4 cup of whole wheat flour
• 3/4 cup of almonds
• 1/2 cup chopped pecans
• figs (I used a whole package)
• prunes (I used a whole package)

Other ingredients.

I mixed the two together...I was concerned that if I dumped the liquids in that I would have difficulty getting them mixed well...don't worry, it mixes easily.

Mixing the two, it smells heavenly.

I put the granola in the oven at 300 degrees but split into two batches and baked for 45 minutes and took it out every 15 minutes to stir it well until it was done.

Sorry, it's a bit blurry.

The recipe said until dry and I was a bit worried that it was still not completely dry. I let it cool on the cookie sheet and continued mixing it and it dried out nicely while cooling.

I wound up with a gallon size baggie about 3/4 full...that's a LOT of granola. I estimate that I spent about $15 making it. I am sold on making my own granola to go with my homemade yogurt. I am really excited to eat things I made myself all weekend.

Don't get me wrong...I will still need to have Cindy's granola once in awhile!!

Homemade Yogurt

I LOVE homemade yogurt. Several years ago we bought a yogurt machine that has little jars and while I love it, my yogurt always was runny.

After some investigation a few months ago, I found out that I needed to drain the whey off if I wanted Greek style yogurt. I do and I did. This made my seven jars of yogurt reduce to two and a half or three jars.

Now, don't get me wrong this Greek style yogurt is AMAZING and so worth it but resulted in the need to make several batches a week and drain them all. The mess and the work became more than someone who works five days a week could handle.

So while surfing around on Pinterest the other day I ran into some articles about crock pot yogurt and thought that this might be the cure for my homemade yogurt desires. The couple of articles lead me to read several more. No one's way of doing it quite fit what I thought that I wanted to do. So I took some ideas from here and there and decided how I would try this.

My needs:

• I need to have enough yogurt that I can eat it everyday (maybe twice a day since others in my home may want to eat some too)
• I only have to go through the process once
• I also decided that I wanted to take a portion of the yogurt and make yogurt cheese to replace my cream cheese

I stopped by the store to pick up a few things and bought a gallon of skim milk ($2.99 on sale), two cartons of Okios Greek yogurt to use as starters ($2.00). 

What I did:

• Poured the whole gallon of milk in the crock pot. I have an AMAZING crock pot that was worth every dime I paid for it...it's very large, the lid locks down, and it has a temperature probe

My Amazing Crock Pot

• I sliced a vanilla bean in half (we bought a package of 50 really good vanilla beans off the net for $25...so this was only about 50 cents) and tossed it into the pot
• Secured the lid down inserted the probe and set the pot to heat to 185
• The timer went off about 3 hours in and I removed the probe, turned off the pot and let it sit...checking every hour or so until the temperature dropped to 120
• At this point I put the two containers of Okios into the pot and mixed it up well 
• I put a thick towel under the pot and covered it with two thick towels and went to bed
• In the morning I had a pot of yummy yogurt...there was a LOT of whey in the pot
• I took a strainer basket, put a clean cloth in it, sat it over a very large glass measuring cup,  and ladled a couple of ladles full into that for my yogurt cheese...this may need to set for much longer than the yogurt

Yogurt Cheese Draining

• I took a much larger strainer and lined it with a clean cloth, put this over a large pan, and ladled the rest of the yogurt into this basket

Yogurt Draining

• I let both set for about 3 and a half hours at room temperature to drain over their containers to drain

Finished Yogurt Cheese...this firmed into cream cheese consistency.

Lessons that I have learned with Greek yogurt making...always save your whey until you have whisked the yogurt and refrigerated it for awhile. You will need to get it back out and whisk it again. Often you will feel that the yogurt is not thick enough  and find that after the temperature changes it is actually too thick. If you find that, you can then add some whey back a couple of tablespoons full at a time until it reaches the thickness that you prefer. They you can place it in your reusable single serving containers for work, school, whatever and the remaining can be eaten at home or used however you like!

Yogurt before whisking...you can't see in the pic but there are little vanilla bean specks all through it! I added five little packets of Splenda to the whole batch to take the tartness off...it's not too sweet and not too tart!

Yogurt packaged for my lunches this week. I didn't have as much left over still as I would like!

My left over whey...I put it in the fridge. I have been looking for ideas and am leaning toward making ricotta for the lasagna that I am making for an upcoming party!

What to do with the left over whey? I don't want to dump it so here is where I am looking for ideas!

Left Over Whey Ideas 1