bakebakebake, posts by tag: dried fruit - LiveJournal

I love this time of year and Thanksgiving is the quintessential day for fall and winter flavors. It's cozy and warm and lovely. This dish is a great example of this!



For the recipe visit me at The Realistic Housewife

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What do you make when you're craving something that tastes seasonal but you want to stay away from apple and pumpkin flavors?

White chocolate cranberry cookies, of course!

The sweetness of the white chocolate provides the perfect balance to the tartness of the cranberries. With a tall, cold glass of milk, these are the perfect fall treat.



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To see a couple more photos and find out why I was so desperate to avoid pumpkin and apple flavors, head over to Elfie's Edibles!

The first thing that springs to mind when baking something with buttermilk, is soda bread. I've only recently discovered sodabread, but I've been a fan since the first taste. It's a great way to make fresh bread, that's finished and ready to eat within an hour!

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Hi Everyone! I made something a little special and different this time: a Far Breton. Far is French and it refers to custardy-like pudding cake. Breton means it comes from the region of Britanny (the land of butter and salted caramel!), and in this case, it means the cake is studded with prunes. Sounds a little strange... but it is so delicious. The cake is similar to that of a cherry clafouti in that its batter is very wet, and when baked around the tart fruit, it gets like a solid custard. Definitely something to give a try if you like experimenting with classic French desserts. :)

If you'd like to see more pictures of the Far (and the recipe), please visit my post at my blog, The Moveable Feasts.

You can also click on the lj link to find the recipe,( Collapse )

I made these with extra pastry from yesterday's Cinder Banoffee Pie. It only had a little bit of sugar in it so I figured it would be fine for something savoury, and I thought the mixed spice would go well with something Middle Eastern. I've also just discovered harissa paste and smoked paprika, both of which are ambrosically delicious, and would never turn down an opportunity to use both of once; so, I decided to adapt this Daily Telegraph* recipe for chermoula squash as a pie filling. No pictures, because I didn't have the skill inclination to fold them into nice neat pie shapes, so they just looked like brown blobs. There was, however, much more to them than met the eye; inside they were sweet, spicy, golden and delicious.

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*Please don't think I'm a Conservative! I'm a card-carrying Guardian-reading leftie, but I use a lot of Telegraph recipes. This is because I believe it's a good idea to challenge my political beliefs by reading right- as well as left-wing news sources, but in practice I find all the right-wing news and comment articles too soul-destroying to read much of, so I mostly just read the food section. But it still counts.

Pumpkin Spice Breakfast Cookies - Start your day off right with these healthy, gluten free cookies. One bowl, easy to make Fall yummy goodness. The great thing about these is you can make a batch and freeze each cookie individually to take out each day as you need them. Bake once, and enjoy a healthy breakfast for days!

Much more over at The Alchemist.

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Trail Mix Cookies!

These hearty, chewy, crunchy cookies are wonderful for a mid-day snack or a picnic lunch in the middle of a hike--just like traditional GORP or trail mix, there's lots of fiber to keep you feeling full, plus healthy fats and protein from the seeds and nuts...and of course, delicious, delicious carbs for energy. 

They may not look like much (especially through my cell's camera, sorry) but these were the most popular cookie we made at the pastry school I went to--topping even the Ginger Valrhona cookies, which is a difficult feat!

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Hello! Hello! First, I'd like to say thanks to everyone who responded to my last post. I'm going to be baking the figgy tart this weekend, so thanks for all the help! Anyway, on to the matter at hand:



 So this post has been inspired by the most amazing store on Earth: IKEA!

I was there last Thursday, buying some new furniture, and I also had to get a jar of Lingonberry preserves and some Lingonberry Juice. They have an awesome Swedish food market with a ton of other items (I wish I could afford it all! But I just stuck with my favorites). I then had the dilemma of deciding what to do with the preserves. I wasn't sure if I should use it as an ingredient, or a topping, or make a sandwich, etc. Ultimately I decided to simply put it on top of something, but what? Luckily, Chef Alton Brown came to my rescue with his super simple, amazingly delicious scone recipe! It's basically the same recipe he used to make biscuits in S1 E7 of Good Eats, "The Dough Also Rises", but with a few adaptations. Even though he doesn't actually make the scones, I found watching what he did in the episode very helpful.


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I also posted the recipe here at my blog!

If anyone wants to check it out, I also made another post where I used Alton Brown's recipe for Crêpes and put these preserves on them. (It's not quite baking so I won't link or post here)

I don't know about you guys but I used haaate cottage cheese. On it's own, its absolutely vile stuff, but, my parents would trick me into eating it by hiding it in lasagna and such. When I began body building, I realized I would have to learn to love cottage cheese---and quick if I wanted to see any results from all of my hard work.

Baked goods made with cottage cheese are legendary in the bodybuilding world because it contains casein, a protein that is considered to have the easiest absorption, and as such is best way to repair muscles after tearing the crap out of them. I have all sorts of cottage cheese recipes and even won a friendly Iron Chef competition (secret ingredient: cheese) with my own invention of rosemary and lemon rind cottage cheese canapes....

If there is a way to make muffins lower carb and higher in protein, you're damn right I'll figure out a way to do it. And you're damn right it will probably include cottage cheese somewhere in the recipe. I first discovered a variation on this recipe when I was doing the bodybuilding thing and when I made them, I was horrified by how ugly they were: much like most fitness-food, they bore little resemblance to the fluffy muffins we all love. They were flat. They tasted ...well, like fitness-food. They were a TRAVESTY, I tell you. A mockery of all that is good and wonderous about the glorious morsel that is a muffin. They were an embarrassment to the entire world of baked goods.

So, the first thing I did was develop my own flavours and improve upon the fluff. Because the base recipe is so versatile, EVERYTHING goes: over time, I've made peanut butter banana muffins (excellent source of good fats for a build), blueberry-lemon-zest, cranberry-orange... but my absolute favourite flavour, hands-down is chocolate cherry. Every time I eat one of these, I marvel at how something that tastes so good could actually BE good for me. Since I don't sweeten my batter, I recommend using dried fruit if you add fruit as fresh fruit doesn't make the muffins sweet enough (for my liking, anyway). Dried cherries can be a bit 'spensive, but they are oh-so-worth it.



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It's oatmeal raisin cookies in muffin form! 

These muffins are delicious, and a fast favourite around here. I love the sweet maple taste, and while I cut down the amount of syrup used in the original recipe, it could definitely be cut down some more. Especially if you're looking to save costs and don't horde butter and syrup to the shock and horror of Costco patrons like I do.

Recipe is under the cut, but you can find more muffin shenanigans and read about how I'm coping cooking for an extra adult at my blog, Leanne Bakes.
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