Cranberry-Walnut Pumpkin Bread - Secret Recipe Club

After being out of town for several months - our trip to Colorado, followed by our trip to New York - it's time to be back participating in the Secret Recipe Club.

This month I was assigned Emily's blog Life on Food.  I had a great time going through her blog, checking out as many recipes as I could, but since I had just finished processing two pumpkins, I was drawn to her pumpkin bread. I had frozen 8 two-cup packages of fresh pureé, and was in the mood for baking.

Emily states in her recipe, "To mix things up a bit I like to add 1/2 cup of mini chocolate chips or dried cranberries to the batter before baking."  I figured "more is better," and added a cup EACH of chopped walnuts and dried cranberries. Oh my, was this bread yummy! Emily's recipe made two regular-sized loaves and two mini-loaves.

Cranberry-Walnut Pumpkin Bread
from Emily of Life on Food

• 4 eggs
• 2/3 cup water
• 1 cup vegetable oil
• 1 16oz canned pumpkin (I used two cups of pumpkin pureé)
• 3 1/3 cup flour
• 3 cups sugar
• 2 tsp baking soda
• 1 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp nutmeg
• pinch of cloves
• 1 cup dried cranberries
• 1 cup chopped walnuts

Instructions

1. Beat eggs. Add oil, water, and pumpkin and mix well.
2. Sift flour. Measure and sift together with the sugar, soda, salt, and spices. Make a well in the center of these ingredients and add the pumpkin mixture to this. Stir in the cranberries and walnuts.
3. Turn into 3 well-oiled loaf tins. Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour. Remove pans from oven. Set on rack to cool.

Secret Recipe Club - Rocks!

My assigned blog this month in the Secret Recipe Club was Kudos Kitchen by Renee. In addition to making tasty, healthy food, Renee has a special talent of painting. She does fabulous decorative tiles, bowls, and glassware.  You really should go check out her work - and maybe even visit her Etsy shop. There's a lot of eye candy there!

But on to the food.  I found all kinds of things I will be making on Renee's blog. But the recipe I made almost immediately was Rocks.  Yes, Rocks. Renee had been given a vintage cookbook from the 1930s, and found a handwritten recipe for these cookies inside. Don and I had been wanting some cookies, and these came together quickly.  The dough is similar to that for chocolate chip cookies, but with a little cinnamon thrown in.

My cookies came out looking different from Renee's - mine flattened out while hers retained some height to them. Maybe it's the altitude, or it might have been the fact that I used a silpat while Renee used parchment paper. No matter.  The taste was wonderful, and these are definitely on our "do again" list!

Rocks

1-1/2 cups brown sugar
1 cup butter (softened to room temperature)
3 well beaten eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 cup of raisins
1 cup of walnuts

Preheat oven to 350˚. Cream together butter and brown sugar. Add eggs and vanilla.  In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon. Add gradually to sugar/egg mixture.  Stir in raisins and walnuts. Drop by tablespoonfuls onto a baking sheet topped with parchment paper or a silpat.  Bake 9-12 minutes or until lightly browned. (Renee's recipe called for 15 minutes - but in my oven that was way too long.)  Makes 3 1/2 dozen.

Even the cookies that I thought were a bit overdone really weren't.  These stayed chewy even after they'd cooled completely. That's the way I LOVE my cookies.

Secret Recipe Club - Whole Grain Mixed Berry Muffins

It's reveal time again for the Secret Recipe Club!  That's the club where we're assigned another person's blog, we select a recipe to try, and then blog about it. The blog assigned to me this month was The Daily Dish Recipes.  Nicole is a wife and mom who loves to cook wholesome meals for her family (along with some not-so-wholesome goodies), and is a much better food photographer than I am. In perusing her blog for recipes to try, her Basic Sour Cream Muffins caught my eye. I've been making different kinds of whole grain muffins lately for Don and me to eat for breakfast in place of those white flour/sugar/fat-laden ones at Costco.  Nicole's recipe is intended for different kinds of toss-ins, from fruit to chocolate chips.

I decided to add some fiber by replacing half of the all-purpose flour with whole wheat flour (I use white whole wheat flour from King Arthur) and by adding ground flax and wheat bran. I've been craving anything berry these days, so I added 3 cups of mixed berries (blackberries, raspberries, and blueberries). I buy those by the bag from Costco.

The result was a much lighter muffin than the ones I've made this month, even with the addition of the whole wheat flour and wheat bran.  It must be the sour cream.  These were delightful, and of course, they disappeared in a couple of days.  Again, I used my Wilton jumbo muffin tin and my brownie tin from Pampered Chef - the recipe filled up both. I ended up with 6 jumbo muffins and 12 square muffins that are about half the size of the jumbo ones.

Whole Grain Mixed Berry Muffins

1 stick of unsalted butter, softened
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
4 large eggs
1/4 cup ground flax seeds
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking soda
3/4 cup sour cream
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 cup white whole wheat flour
1/4 cup wheat bran
3 cups of mixed berries


Preheat oven to 400˚. Grease the muffin cups or line with paper liners.
In a large bowl, beat the butter and sugar with an electric mixer until light and creamy, about a minute. Next, beat in the vanilla, eggs, ground flax, salt and baking soda.
Next, fold in the sour cream.
Now fold in the flour and wheat bran and any of the add-ins that you have chosen.
Scoop batter into muffin cups. Place in oven and bake for 15-20 minutes or until a toothpick is inserted and comes out clean. (Note:  the Pampered Chef brownie pan only takes about 12 minutes, and the jumbo ones take about 20.)
Allow to cool for about 10 minutes in pan.
Remove from pan and allow to completely cool on wire rack. Makes 24 muffins.

Secret Recipe Club - Broccoli-Cheddar Soup

It's reveal day again for my group in the Secret Recipe Club!  I'd like to say that the Club has kept my interest in food blogging alive.  There have been times I haven't felt like writing about what I cook - mostly because I've been making the same things over and over.  But since I started the Secret Recipe Club, I've not only HAD to make new things, I've found all kinds of new blogs to read and new recipes to try.

This month, my assigned blog was The Double Dipped Life.  I spent several hours over a couple of days going through Krista's blog, and made a list of 5 different recipes I want to make.  The one I made for this post is Broccoli-Cheddar Soup.  I had just gone to the commissary the day before, and my refrigerator was full of fresh produce, including two crowns of broccoli.  I'd been thinking about just steaming them as a healthy side dish, but when I saw Krista's recipe for the soup, I knew that was the first recipe to try.  It was a winner!

Don loves soup - almost any kind of soup, so when I asked him if he wanted to give this a try, he was enthusiastic.  We had a loaf of multigrain bread in the freezer, so I thawed that to have with the soup.

This soup was not only easy to make, it came together fairly quickly.  It was nice to find out that it wasn't a cream-based soup as I'd expected, but broth-based, thickened with a little flour, and had only 1/2 cup of cream in it.  It tasted as if it had a quart. We ate nearly all of it for dinner last night, and today I finished it off for lunch - I subbed at Yucaipa High today and needed to take my lunch.

The ingredients I used are below.  For Krista's original version, which is only slightly different, go here.

Broccoli-Cheddar Soup
from Krista of The Double-Dipped Life

 3 T butter, plus 2 T cold butter, cut into pieces
1 cup yellow onion, chopped
1/4 t freshly ground black pepper
pinch nutmeg
1/2 t minced garlic
pinch dried thyme
3 T all-purpose flour
3 cups chicken broth
2 heads (approx. 1 pound) fresh broccoli
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 1/4 cups shredded cheddar cheese

In a medium pot, melt the 3 tablespoons butter over medium-high heat. Add the onions, pepper, and nutmeg and cook, stirring, until soft, 3 minutes. Add the garlic and thyme and cook, stirring, until fragrant, for 20 seconds. Add the flour and cook, stirring until the mixture is well blended, about 2 minutes. Slowly add the broth, whisking constantly, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer until thickened, about 5 minutes. Add the broccoli and cook, stirring, until tender, for 10-15 minutes.

Remove the pot from the heat and puree with a hand-held immersion blender. (Alternatively, in batches, puree in a blender or food processor and return to the pot.)

Add the cream and bring to light simmer to heat through. Add the cheese and cook over low heat, stirring, until melted. Add the remaining 2 tablespoons cold butter, stirring to blend.

Remove from the heat and ladle the soup into bowls.  Makes 4 servings.


This is now going to be part of my "routine" recipes. I really, really like this soup!

Secret Recipe Club - Flapjacks the British way

Here in the USA, flapjacks are pancakes. I was looking through my assigned blog (The more than occasional baker) for this month's Secret Recipe Club, hoping to find some good recipes for breakfast.  Among the categories listed on the side was the heading "flapjacks."  "Oh, goody!" I thought, "pancakes."  I clicked on it, and was taken to two recipes for some bars made of oats with some added sweeteners. "Huh?"  To Google I went, where I learned that in the United Kingdom, "a flapjack is a sweet tray-baked oat bar made from rolled oats, butter, brown sugar and golden syrup."

Okay. That part's easy.  Now, what's golden syrup?  Back to Google. Golden syrup is a light form of treacle, which is a by-product of refining sugar.  It's similar to molasses - and as a matter of fact, several different sites told me I could combine molasses and corn syrup to make a fairly decent substitute for golden syrup.  So that's what I did!

I decided to follow Ros's idea of adding chocolate chips. Ros says it's important to make sure the oat mixture is cooled before adding them so that they hold their shape while cooking. Otherwise they'll just melt into the mixture.

The verdict:  These remind me of chewy granola bars - but better. Don and I really like these - and since they're so simple to make, we'll be trying a couple of variations - peanut butter chips or  raisins and cinnamon are two combinations that come to mind.

Go here for Ros's original recipe. 

Chocolate Chip Flapjacks

2 sticks butter (1 cup)
1 tablespoon molasses
2 tablespoons Karo corn syrup
1 cup brown sugar
2 cups rolled oats (not steel-cut)
1 cup chocolate chips (I used semi-sweet)

Preheat oven to 350˚. Grease a 13 x 9" baking pan. In a small saucepan, melt the butter with the molasses, corn syrup, and brown sugar. Put the oats in a large bowl and add the butter mixture. Stir to combine, and let cool. Add the chocolate chips and press the mixture into the baking pan. Bake about 30 minutes or until golden brown. Let cool in pan, and cut into squares.

3-2-1 Mug Cake

In my previous post, I extolled the virtues of homemade brownie mix. I have jars of it waiting to be cooked, in between the other various desserts that are my downfall.

But there IS a good use for packaged mixes!  This one's going around the internet - I've seen it on at least 5 blogs the past week - so I just had to try it.

Take one box, any flavor, of cake mix, and put it in a gallon-sized zip storage bag. Add one box angel food cake mix (the size that makes a tube/bundt cake, not the small one that makes only a loaf pan). Seal the bag and shake to combine.

Put 3 tablespoons of the mix in a microwave-safe mug. Add 2 tablespoons of water and stir to combine. Cook on HIGH in the microwave 1 minute. Eat.

I made my first mix using German chocolate, and opened up the can of coconut-pecan frosting I've had in the pantry for months and put a spoonful on top. You could also try Hershey's syrup, or whipped cream, or ice cream.  If you use other flavors of cake mix, you could try berries, or caramel sauce, or lemon curd - the possibilities are endless.

What do I like best about this?

Portion control.  It's "just right."

A Big Batch of Brownie Mixes - Secret Recipe Club

I was assigned Kelli's blog Ambition's Kitchen for this month's Secret Recipe Club assignment. I've spent many hours going through nearly all of her recipes, and found several different ones I want to try.  But the one that grabbed my attention was one of her Frugal Friday posts.  Every Friday, Kelli gives a recipe for something that is usually store-bought, but is cheaper and usually better for you when it's homemade.  She's given us pudding pops, Larabars, aluminum-free baking powder, maple pancake syrup, and more. The one I chose to make was the homemade brownie mix.  I had plenty of flour and sugar, and last month I bought a bag of Ghirardelli dark cocoa.  I wanted to make multiple batches, so I got out some large mason jars I'd bought for baking small loaves of bread.  As I began to dish out the ingredients, I realized that the jars were too small - I needed quart-sized, not pint-sized.  My husband came up with the solution - just put half the ingredients in one jar, and use two jars for a batch of brownies.

He's so smart.

In less than 10 minutes I'd measured out 5 batches - four into the jars and one into a bowl.   Then to the bowl, I added the wet ingredients; then put the batter into a 9" stoneware pan. 20 minutes later, they came out of the oven -- dark, rich, decadent brownies.  I chose not to do any mix-ins, and these are so good they don't need frosting.  (Though I love a good frosting!) They hold together when cut, and are perfectly fudgy; just the way I like them.

Brownie Mix

1 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar
1 cup flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
3 tablespoons buttermilk powder or nonfat milk powder
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup mini semisweet chocolate chips (optional)
1/4 cup add-ins, such as chopped nuts or dried fruit (optional)

In a medium bowl (or deli container), combine the sugar, flour, cocoa, buttermilk powder, baking powder, salt, and whisk (or shake) to blend. Stir in the chocolate chips and add-ins (if using). Store airtight.

To make fudgy brownies

Brownie Mix (above)
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/3 cup water
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 large egg

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease an 8- or 9-inch square baking pan.
2. Dump the Brownie Mix into a bowl. Add the oil, water, vanilla, and egg, and stir just to blend.
3. Scrape the batter into the pan and spread evenly. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out with moist crumbs clinging to it.
Makes 16 brownies

Just for comparison, here's the ingredient list on a box of Betty Crocker Original Supreme brownies:

Sugar
Enriched Bleached Flour (wheat flour, niacin, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid)
Chocolate Flavored Syrup (high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, sugar, water, cocoa, salt, mono and diglycerides, polysorbate 60, xanthan gum and vanillin)
Cocoa Processed with Alkali
Partially Hydrogenated Soybean and/or Cottonseed Oil
Contains 2% or less of: Corn Starch, Salt, Corn Syrup, Artificial Flavor

I like the homemade mix better, anyway!

Follow the links below for more great recipes from the Secret Recipe Club!

Secret Recipe Club - Reveal Day!

When I was assigned Dorothy's blog Shockingly Delicious for this month's Secret Recipe Club, I thought, as most of us do when assigned a blog, that it belonged to a stranger. But I already "knew" Dorothy! (She just didn't know it.)


My local newspaper is the San Bernardino Sun. Back in December of 2007, Dorothy was an editor for one of the papers in the Sun's group of papers, the San Gabriel Valley Group. She had a recipe for Baked P'Sketti Squares printed in the paper, and I made it and blogged about it back in January of 2008. You can see that post here. I also submitted it to Ruth's Presto Pasta Night roundup. Dorothy's recipe was a delicious and healthy take on baked pasta that incorporated shredded zucchini.

In The Secret Recipe Club, we are assigned another member's blog. We peruse the blog for something we'd like to make, and make it.  We then blog about it, and we all post on the same day. We don't know who has our blog until after the "reveal."  As I was going through Dorothy's blog, I kept in mind the ingredients I knew I already had on hand. When I saw her recipe for Quick Fresh Berry Streusel, I knew that was the one.  I had to make a couple of changes, though. I like to keep lots of frozen berries on hand, and in my freezer was a giant bag from Costco.  So frozen berries it was. Dorothy also used ground flax in hers - I omitted that, and added some oats to give the streusel a little heft.  It came out a little like a berry crisp.

My daughter was visiting for the day, and since she has decided she needs to cook for herself more, offered to help make this dish. Here she's adding the streusel to the pan full of berries. When we were mixing up the streusel and got to the step where you add the almond extract, she nearly swooned over the the scent.  (Yes, it smells like Jergen's lotion).  We decided that it really made a wonderful addition to a streusel topping.

Right out of the oven, this looked soooooooo yummy!

We topped ours with vanilla ice cream.

Theresa wanted to pass on to everyone that she really liked this.  We all did.  This is now my go-to recipe for berries of any kind.  Thanks, Dorothy, for another hit!


Check out the links below for more Secret Recipe Club posts!