Drying fruit at home: Deliciousity!

Yes, “deliciousity” is a word! At least, that’s what I keep telling myself. Now that I’ve been working in an office I wanted to make sure that I ate healthy right from the start. I’ve had a dehydrator in the basement for ages and just bought a bunch of bananas. So I put those two together and Bam! Dried banana chips! I also tried dried strawberries, which was equally as delicious!

Do I have to save them for the dehydrator? I'll eat them right now...

Even though a food dehydrator takes up a considerate amount of space in storage, I would say that this is one kitchen appliance you should keep. The amount of things that can be dried are astounding! Beef jerky, apple chips, granola bars, and even fruit leathers can be made with a food dehydrator!

sliced strawberries ready to be dried

I think my only complaint about dehydrators (other then how much space they take up) is how long it can take to fully dry food. I sliced the strawberries pretty thin and it took a full day before they were “chips”. The bananas were a little thicker and those took about 2 days before they were crunchy. I may experiment a bit more with slicing next time.

Sliced bananas ready to go

Waiting two days for the bananas was worth it, they lasted over a week with me munching on them everyday! Cutting them a little bit thicker to begin with made them thicker in the end result, which is preferred. Because I cut the strawberries really thin, they got even thinner as they dried, making them brittle and prone to breaking.

Taking pictures with poor lighting, using yellowish bananas on a yellow cutting board...yeah, wasn't thinking

Drying strawberries is pretty easy, however bananas are a little trickier. You’ll want to make sure that there aren’t any significant bruises on the slices. I just cut the bruises off, you can see a few pieces have flat edges. An important tip is to use a spray bottle (I always keep a spray bottle meant for food) filled with lemon juice and water. Then as you cut the bananas spray them with the mixture, flip and spray again. This prevents the bananas from turning brown as they sit for hours and hours drying.

Yum!!

One more great thing about dehydrators, you can stop the process at any time! You can adjust the time if you want slightly dried fruit for cereal/oatmeal, or almost dry fruit for granola bars/trail mix, or completely dry to eat the fruit as chips. Another great thing, this is a great way to use up fruit that may go bad soon. I know that as I get busy during the week I may not be able to bake that loaf of banana bread, so now I can just chop chop chop and leave the dehydrator to do its business!

I hope you enjoyed this post on drying fruit. I looked up recipes on how to dry fruit based on the brand of my dehydrator. I don’t know how brands differ, but since my dehydrator is older the temperatures vary from newer recipes. Simply google the brand name and each brand name will have its own website including recipe information! Either way, it’s extremely difficult to mess this up. Unless you forgot that it’s on, then you may have a problem!

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Turkish Delight – An Adventure of Failure and Success

The elusive art of candy making is, well, elusive for me! Of course I’m still a beginning baker, so it just requires practice as with anything else. Making Turkish Delight was definitely a learning experience, but not necessarily a bad one.

Look at the bright colors...it's just begging to be eaten!

My first attempt at making the jellied candy called Turkish Delight, or Llokum failed pretty miserably. I was pretty bummed that I had essentially wasted ingredients and time, but I was excited to get right back to it and try again! Now before I get into what went wrong to help all the other first-time candy makers I’ll just say that the site I got this recipe from is great! The Global Table Adventure deserves all the credit, in fact I’m not even going to post the recipe here. The Global Table Adventure is cooking her way around the world and she has some great insights, recipes, and tales to share with everyone. As of this post she had just “been” to the Caribbean.

You'll need 4 cups of sugar - yes, 4!!

Now onto the challenge! I started with some sugar, lemon juice, and water (again, recipe onGlobal Table Adventure) in a saucepan and set to medium heat to bring to a boil. Once it boiled I was to reduce the heat to low and let it simmer until it reached 240 degrees.

Dissolving the sugar over medium heat

Sugar mixture is boiling

Simmering until it reaches 240 degrees

It’s nearing 240 but it’s looking very dark…

Now it is definitely too dark – Here lies my problem!

These photos show how I massacred the sugar, even though I had set at low heat! Which is what the recipe calls for! There is just one component that a recipe cannot tell you – how your stove is differs in temperature from everyone else’s. “Low” for one person may be “low-medium” or it may be too low. That is what happened in my case. I literally cooked that sugar on “low” for about 3 hours until it slowly reached 240. I got anxious and turned the heat up to low-medium and ruined what I had going…although I really don’t think such a slow cooking time would have resulted in good candy either.

Cornstarch mixture

Problem number two lays in the cornstarch mixture that had been sitting on my stove for about an hour. See my sugar was getting close to 240 degrees and I figured I’ll go ahead and start the second step of the process. Little did I know that it would take another hour for the sugar to actually reach 240 degrees. The cornstarch had probably soaked up all the moisture it was going too in that hour. I stirred the way too hot sugar into the cornstarch anyways and ended up with this liquid mess…

Yuck....still tasted good though

Are we ready for some good Turkish Delight now?? To sum up all the photos and storytelling I basically cooked the sugar too low for too long and then turned up the heat, I also let the cornstarch sit around for an hour.

Yeah, low-medium heat is perfect

Just after boiling

Notice that it is actually simmering and not just sitting there?

Everything about this second batch looks better. It didn’t take 3 hours, the color of the sugar stayed a nice translucent amber, and it was on a low simmer the entire time. I realized that my stove just runs a little bit lower for candy making and it will just have to take some getting used too. My sugar reached a nice 240 degrees and I decided to test it to see if it was ready. I dropped some sugar into a bowl of cold water and was able to roll it into a soft ball with my fingers. This means that it’s ready!

This is called "softball" and is what we're looking for for this recipe

I followed the recipe and took the sugar off the heat once it reached 240 and THEN started my cornstarch mixture. You’ll know it’s ready when your spoon/whisk stands up straight. It’s like a soft glue-type consistency. This gives the sugar mixture a little bit to cool down before combining it with the cornstarch.

Cornstarch mixture looks ready!

Once the sugar is mixed in with the cornstarch it should still have a soft glue-like consistency. Not super thick, but definitely not liquid either.

Ready to mix in some food coloring and flavoring

Once you’ve followed the recipe on how to mix in food coloring and flavoring it’s time to let it set for a full day.

Looks great so far!

This is after it's been setting for a few hours. It still seems a bit soft but better than my first batch!

After 24 hours then it’s time to turn it out onto a clean cutting board to cut into pieces. You’ll probably notice some “sweat” coming off the candy and that’s normal. This is why we’ll literally bathe the candy in powdered sugar for another 2 days.

Chopping it up

Covering them up for a nice hibernation for a few days

Success!!!

I still have more work to do when it comes to perfecting this recipe. They were still a bit soft for my taste, but overall, they came out great! Very very sweet but also very good! I went ahead and sifted some powdered sugar on the bottom of where I will be storing these guys. I’ll also be sifting more sugar on top since the sugar didn’t really stick to the candy over the last few days.

I apologize for a lengthy post but I wanted to be able to share my failure and success for other people wanting to make Turkish Delight. Candy making can be difficult but once some technicalities are worked out (like stove temperature) it is quite fun!

I want to thank The Global Table for either creating for finding this great Turkish Delight recipe and for providing an excellent walk-through for me to follow. If it wasn’t for her blog I would have been too intimidated by candy-making! Thanks, Global Table Adventure!

Recipe found Here

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Orange Pumpkin Jello

Orange flavored Pumpkin Jello!

Jello. Something so simple and yet so delicious. All I can think about is how it’s more of a kids treat and I also can’t help but think about Bill Cosby. However, each time I make Jello (whether in a mold or if it’s the Rainbow Jello) I get rave reviews! I can’t help but chuckle when people tell me how great it is because I know it’s just Jello!

Mixing the Jello

There’s something about putting Jello in a fruit salad, in a mold, or in pies that makes it so much fun to eat. It reminds me a little bit of my childhood. It’s cool, light, flavorful, and refreshing, especially on a hot summers day. There’s nothing really childish about this dessert at all!

Starting the process...spoonful by spoonful

But enough about that, I bet everyone wants to know how I made this delicious and fun Orange Pumpkin Jello! It really wasn’t that difficult, but it was time consuming. I would set aside about 4-6 hours, which includes chilling before serving. I think chilling time would depend on what mold is used and how intricate it is. It would also depend on how many colors will be included in the mold. I used a total of 3 colors, yellow, green, and orange.

Finished trimming the green

First off, spray the pan with non-stick spray. Make sure it gets into all the nooks and crannies. Next, you’ll always want to start with 1 cup of boiling water when mixing the Jello. This ratio ensures that the Jello will be firm enough to keep its shape when it is un-molded. It’s also very important to let the mixture cool before it starts to harden before adding it to the mold. I started with yellow since that was the deepest section in the mold. I added a few spoonfuls into the “corn” portion and angled it in the freezer to let the Jello firm up at the right angle.

Once I was happy with the yellow portion I mixed some green Jello and that chill before adding it on top of the yellow. I had to do the green in 3-4 installments of adding and chilling before it had filled the leaves, vine, and stem. I added a few spoonfuls and set it at different angles in the freezer. It’s nearly impossible to get all the green in some of those small sections, so once I was happy with the green I took a paring knife and trimmed the excess off.

Messed up a little bit

It’s hard to see in this photo, but this is exactly why it’s important to chill the mixed Jello before adding on top of another layer. Part of the green jello “melted” when the too-warm orange got added to the pan. It wasn’t much, but it’s easy to see where the green got mixed in with the orange.

The Masterpiece??

This recipe is so easy, just time consuming! The great thing is that you can do anything you want with this Jello! Any mold, any color, any holiday!

I used 5 boxes of Orange coloring, 1 box of Yellow, and 1 box of Green. Again, plan on 4-6 hours, which includes chill time.

Don’t forget to spray the pan with non-stick spray. Also, be prepared to have a large plate/platter available for when it is time to un-mold the Jello, a regular dinner plate is too small.

Last, but not least, just have fun! Buy Limited Edition colors when you see them! Buy them on sale! And just say to yourself, Jello is fun!

This mold is the Harvest Classic Baking Mold from Nordic-Ware.

Yum!! But you can see the Green coloring that leaked into the middle

Chocolate/Cranberry Granola Bars

That’s right, another granola bar post! I guess I’m slightly picky when it comes to granola bars. My granola bar search was slightly frustrating because none of them seemed to have the flavor that this recipe has. I found this delicious recipe on someone else’s blog on wordpress.com, The Unchained Kitchen. Her recipe seemed to fit my taste buds with a few slight changes!

Mixing the cranberries, cereal, wheat germ etc

The Alton Brown recipe was very basic (you can find it here), and it did satisfy my hunger pangs during the day, I just wanted more FLAVOR! I probably won’t need any more granola bars once my park ranger season is over, which is coming up really fast! I’m noticing that the evenings are already getting cooler, it’s already dark by 8:30pm, and the afternoon/evening storms are frequent. It really seems like the summer just started. I think I end up saying this every year though!

Mixing in the honey and brown sugar

I am really looking forward to winter, which is weird for me! I’m looking forward to wearing sweaters, drinking hot tea, using my heated blanket, and working ONE job! I have grand plans to volunteer at my church, which I’m also excited about. I’m ready to make a difference rather than just “go to work”. My church has a cool program where you can go visit people in the hospital, bake meals, transportation….all things that people need if they don’t have money, family, or friends. I’m also going to offer to do yardwork, housecleaning, and even pet care if it’s needed.

Used a spatula to compress the granola....yeah, don't do this step with this recipe

I think I more just want to be able to serve, and what a better way to serve than through my church. I guess I could have chosen an organization, even an environmental organization would have suited my tastes. Who knows what I’ll do next summer, there are several options up in the air, but I do know that I’m looking forward to the winter!

Back to granola. The one mistake I think I made was compressing the granola. I did this step in Alton Brown’s recipe so that it held together. Since this recipe has puffed cereal I ended up crushing all that cereal! The purpose of the puffed cereal was to make the granola bar less dense and I totally ruined that effect!

Melting the chocolate using a double boiler

The recipe suggests melting the chocolate in the microwave, but I tried that when I first started learning how to bake and I burned the chocolate! Now I am scarred for life and I’ll always use the double boiler method, whether on the stove or the microwave.

mmmmmmmmmmmmm

I think I was supposed to drizzle the chocolate but it wouldn’t drizzle….so I coated!! I guess to review, this recipe will definitely be my staple when I make granola bars in the future. I did make a few changes to this recipe based on taste. I used orange extract instead of orange zest (personally I don’t like the feeling of orange peel in my teeth). I added sunflower seeds since I had some from the previous batch of granola bars. I did not use coconut and I used cranberries instead of cherries. That’s the great thing about granola bar recipes though, you can change almost anything you want too. If you feel like strawberries then use strawberries!

Perfect!

Next batch I will use more puffed cereal and less almonds. I also won’t crush the granola next time. I’ll use cranberries and orange extract again. I think I used about 1/2 tsp of orange extract, I may add more next time. Basically, this recipe is great and can be easily modified. Thank you, Unchained Kitchen for this great recipe! I’ll be using this as a base for all my granola bar recipes!

Granola Bars

2 cups old fashioned oats

1.5 cups sliced almonds

3/4 cup sweetened, flaked coconut

3 tablespoons unsalted butter

1/2 cup honey

1/4 cup light brown sugar

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1 teaspoon cinnamon

zest of half a large orange

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup wheat germ

1/2 cup puffed rice cereal (rice crispies)

5 oz dried cherries

1 cup semi-sweet or bittersweet chocolate chips

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F. On a large, rimmed baking sheet, mix together the oats, almonds, and coconut. Toast the mixture in the oven for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally to ensure even toasting. Your house will smell incredible during this process!

While the granola mix is toasting, combine the butter, honey and brown sugar in a small, heavy bottomed sauce pan and melt over medium high heat. Bring the mixture to a boil then turn off the heat. Stirr in the vanilla.

Reduce oven temperature to 300 degrees F. Pour the granola mix into a large bowl. Add the cinnamon, orange zest, salt, wheat germ, puffed rice, and dried cherries. Pour the honey mixture over all of this and mix together, preferably with your hands if cool enough to touch. Line an 11 x 7 baking dish with parchment paper and lightly spray the parchment paper and sides of the dish with cooking spray. Press the mixture into the baking dish until flat and uniform and bake for 25 minutes.

In a microwave safe bowl, melt the chocolate in short 20 second bursts, stirring between heating zaps until chocolate melted and runny. Do not try to take a short cut by heating chocolate on high for a minute or so as the chocolate can burn instead of melt. With a spoon, drizzle the chocolate in zig zag lines all over the granola bars. Cool until chocolate hardens, then cut into bars of whatever size you wish.

Yields 8-10 bars

Recipe found on The Unchained Kitchen: Homemade Granola Bars

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Alton Brown’s Granola Bars

Time for a recipe, hurray! I have been wanting to make my own granola bars since I go through them so fast. I typically go through at least one granola bar a day! Not only can I choose which flavors I want, but I can control the amounts of sugar, change ingredients, and add different fruits. You could also make the argument that it saves money, but almonds, dried fruit, and wheat germ are a little expensive. For the hassle of making your own vs. just buying them the costs probably even out.

I tried two recipes and I’ll be trying a few more until I can make granola bars to my liking. The first granola bar recipe was from Alton Brown.

Dehydrating strawberries

I started by dehydrating some strawberries to place within the granola bars and on top. If you’re going to dehydrate fruit make sure that the slices/pieces are around the same size so that they dehydrate evenly. I didn’t dehydrate mine all the way, just enough to dry them out a bit but so that they still had some nice juice/flavor in them.

Baking the almonds, wheat germ, and oats!

Next I put the almonds, wheat germ, and rolled oats on a baking pan to bake in the oven for 15 minutes. I honestly don’t really understand why this process needs to be done, I end up overcooking the almonds everytime. I may omit the almonds from the short baking process or just minimze the amount of baking time.

Mixing everything together!

When I was researching granola bar recipes I was shocked at how limited the recipes were. I found alot of recipes for just plain granola, but not granola bars! Thankfully there are a few really good recipes and it’s always better to have good quality recipes than a number of bad recipes, right?

Ready to bake!

Just a side note, with this particular recipe I needed to compress the granola after it was in the pan. I just took a spatula and sprayed baking spray on the bottom and pressed down on the granola to compress it. Other recipes may have puffed cereal and it’s probably wise not to compress that granola….yes, I speak from personal experience!

mmmmmmm looks great!

My only complaint with this recipe was that the dried fruit happened to be the only flavor. The other recipe I tried had orange extract and cranberries in it which provided plenty of flavor. The Alton Brown recipe was also very dense. I still ate them and they did save me some money! I read reviews on the Food Network’s website about this recipe and a few complained that the bars did not stay into bar shape after they tried to cut into them. I found that if I cut into them while they were still warm the granola fell apart. It’s really important to wait until they are fully cooled before cutting. Otherwise this was a great recipe and one that can be altered to suit any tastebud!

Recipe taken from the Food Networks website

Ingredients

 

• 8 ounces old-fashioned rolled oats, approximately 2 cups
• 1 1/2 ounces raw sunflower seeds, approximately 1/2 cup
• 3 ounces sliced almonds, approximately 1 cup
• 1 1/2 ounces wheat germ, approximately 1/2 cup
• 6 ounces honey, approximately 1/2 cup
• 1 3/4 ounces dark brown sugar, approximately 1/4 cup packed
• 1-ounce unsalted butter, plus extra for pan
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
• 6 1/2 ounces chopped dried fruit, any combination of apricots, cherries or blueberries

 

Directions

Butter a 9 by 9-inch glass baking dish and set aside. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Spread the oats, sunflower seeds, almonds, and wheat germ onto a half-sheet pan. Place in the oven and toast for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.

In the meantime, combine the honey, brown sugar, butter, extract and salt in a medium saucepan and place over medium heat. Cook until the brown sugar has completely dissolved.

Once the oat mixture is done, remove it from the oven and reduce the heat to 300 degrees F. Immediately add the oat mixture to the liquid mixture, add the dried fruit, and stir to combine. Turn mixture out into the prepared baking dish and press down, evenly distributing the mixture in the dish and place in the oven to bake for 25 minutes. Remove from the oven and allow to cool completely. Cut into squares and store in an airtight container for up to a week.

Recipe is from the Food Network’s website

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Honey-Roasted Peanuts

Should I write about flowers or honey-roasted peanuts? What a decision! As much as I love flowers, honey-roasted peanuts seemed like a  good choice Besides, I really haven’t had time to bake as much as I’d like and I was just so excited to finally make FOOD!

Can't.....stop...eating...

I really liked bringing these along with my lunches while “rangering”. They’re healthier than chips but tastier than granola (in my opinion). Besides, I’ve noticed that my appetite changes from day-to-day. Some days I can eat a ton and not be affected, other days I try to eat a normal sized lunch but I can’t! I have a hunch that a lot of it has to do with how hard I’m working that day and how hot it is.

Boiling the honey, oil, and water

I’ve also been keenly aware of my craving for soda during the week, how sad is that! I didn’t think I consumed that much soda, but when I go cold turkey during the work week I just can’t stop thinking about how GOOD a nice cold Coke would be! Honestly though, before this summer job I would have one of those half-size sodas a day. I didn’t think that was that much, until now!

Stirring the peanuts into the boiled mixture

Now I’m no health nut, but I am health conscious. I try to stay away from loads of preservatives, high fructose corn syrup, and of course shortening. If it doesn’t melt in the sun or freeze in the freezer, it doesn’t belong in my body! I do enjoy some guilty pleasures (ICE CREAM). Moderation is key, however.

Stir until the peanuts soak up all that sweet goodness

All that to say that these honey-roasted peanuts probably aren’t much healthier than what you buy in the store calorie-wise. The added bonus with making your own is that you can control how much you make and you know exactly what’s in them and they are cost-effective. I know that honey can be pricey, but I just go straight to the bulk section of the grocery store and pour my own bottle of Colorado honey.

Tossing with sugar and salt

As for my review on this recipe, I’ll definitely make it again but I’ll probably mess around with how much honey and oil I use. I may try to add more honey and use less oil or something to that effect. This recipe was so easy to make and took very little time. It is good to go slow on this recipe though, make sure those peanuts soak up every last drop of that honey and oil. Rushing will do no good!

I got this recipe from a blog and she got it from another blog and so on and so forth. I’m just going to include where I got it from. Enjoy!

Honey-Roasted Peanuts

From: The Novice Chef Blog

Ingredients:

You will need:

2 cups raw peanuts

2 tbs honey
2 tbs water
2 tbs canola oil (you can also substitute Peanut Oil)
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 tsp salt

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Place the peanuts on a baking sheet and in a preheated oven for 10 minutes. (If the peanuts are already roasted, skip this step) Set the peanuts aside and let cool. In a medium sized sauce pan add the honey, water and oil. Bring to a boil and add the peanuts. Stir around for a few minutes, until all of the liquid has been absorbed by the nuts. Transfer into a medium bowl and toss with the sugar and salt. Spread back on the baking sheet with wax paper, let cool.

Tip: Go slow. Stir slow when it’s soaking up the honey. Add the sugar slow (in stages) and stir each time after that. Let cool for just a few minutes before adding the sugar.

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Strawberry mousse in white chocolate cups

Strawberry mousse in white chocolate cups

I should be studying, but writing about delicious treats seem much more appealing right now! My wilderness first responder final is tomorrow night. Am I worried? Nah. Should I be studying? Yeppers. Part of me thinks that if I don’t know it by now, then cramming the night before will not ensure that I will pass the test. Not only that, but if I haven’t learned anything, then perhaps I don’t deserve to be a wilderness first responder (WFR). How competent would I be on trail if I still don’t know how to treat for shock?!?

Anyways, this post isn’t about this silly class. It’s about delicious strawberry mousse in white chocolate cups! It sounds pretty fancy, but it was very easy to make. It did take me a while to do because of chill time, but other than that it was easy breezy. I’ll do an actual walkthrough of the recipe in this post rather than just talk about it because I cannot find the recipe online anywhere anymore!

The first thing you’ll want to do is line 6 muffin cups with paper baking cups. Make sure they are the cups that can be torn easily (probably not the double/thick type cups) or ones that you don’t care about. I used some from halloween because, well, it’s April. Then you’ll want to melt the vanilla chips and the oil in a saucepan on low heat. I went ahead and used a double broiler because I’m always afraid of my chocolate burning or becoming too hard after melting.

Using a double broiler to melt the vanilla chips

Once the chocolate is melted pour mixture evenly into the paper cups. With the back of a spoon you’ll want to spread the mixture in THIN EVEN layers up the sides of the cup. I emphasized “thin” and “even” because I had a thick bottom on my cups and it was near impossible to bite into. You probably won’t have alot of the mixture on the bottom to be honest, which is just fine. You could chill the chocolate after pouring it into the cups for a bit and then spread it along the cups to make sure it sticks if you want, I haven’t tried that yet though. Then refrigerate for 15 minutes.

The chocolate mixture is spread evenly (more or less) into the cups

While you’re waiting for the chocolate to chill, go ahead and start chopping your strawberries. Make sure to save about 3 of them as garnishes. I didn’t really chop mine into bite size pieces, which was kind of inconvenient. I’ll definitely remember to chop into squares next time. Then crush enough strawberries to make about 1/2 cup. I used a blender to crush mine.

A nice photo opportunity

Then in a 1 1/2-quart saucepan, combine crushed strawberries with marshmallows over medium heat. Stir constantly until the marshmallows are melted and then stir in lemon juice. Chill for 30 minutes.

Showing a picture of already melted marshmallows with the crushed strawberries

In a medium bowl, beat cream with an electric mixer on high-speed until stiff peaks form. Set aside two tablespoons in a small bowl/cup and cover with seran wrap. Refrigerate along with the 3 reserved strawberries. Fold marshmallow mixture into the remaining whipped cream and then fold in remaining strawberries into the mixture. Spoon into the white chocolate cups and refrigerate at least 4 hours or until serving time.

Spooned the mixture into the white chocolate cups

After they are properly chilled you can peel off the paper cups. I should have taken a picture of me doing this, but I didn’t think about it, so oh well! What really helped for me was to first tear a little bit at the top and tear a vertical strip in the paper cup. Then it was easy to peel off without getting chocolate stuck into it. The only thing that broke the white chocolate cups was my fingers holding onto them too hard. Garnish each cup with 1 tsp of whipped cream and half a strawberry.

I want to eat it right now!!

My review? This recipe was excellent, easy, and quite tasty! I didn’t chop the strawberries that went into the mousse small enough, and so I’ll probably change that next time. I also decided to freeze them just to see how easy it would be to eat them once they were frozen. They were extremely hard, and the white chocolate that was thick on the bottom was near impossible to eat! My recommendation…don’t freeze them! If you’re planning on making these for a party, try to make them the night before and garnish right before serving. Other than that I had no problems and I will enjoy making these in the summer

Recipe found in the Pillsbury “Spring Brunch” magazine from April 2010.

Strawberry Mousse in White Chocolate Cups

Prep time: 30 minutes

Start to Finish: 5 hours

Servings: 6

Ingredients:

White Chocolate Cups:

6 paper baking cups

1/2 cup white vanilla chips

2 tsp oil (I used vegetable)

Mousse:

2 cups fresh strawberries

15 regular marshmallows

1 tsp lemon juice

1/2 cup whipping cream

Directions:

Line 6 muffin cups with paper baking cups. In a small saucepan, combine vanilla chips and oil; heat over low heat, stirring until chips are melted and smooth. Pour mixture evenly into paper-lined cups. With back of spoon, spread mixture in thin even layers up the sides of each cup. Don’t worry if the mixture doesn’t completely cover the bottom - that is actually better). Refrigerate 15 minutes.

Reserve 3 small strawberries for garnish. Chop remaining berries.

Meanwhile, crush just enough strawberries to make 1/2 cup. In 1 1/2-quart saucepan, combine crushed berries with marshmallows. Heat over medium heat, stirring constantly until marshmallows are melted. Stir in lemon juice. Cool 30 minutes.

In medium bowl, beat cream with electric mixer on high speed until stiff peaks form. Set aside 2 tablespoons whipped cream for garnish; cover and refrigerate. Fold marshmallow mixture into remaining whipped cream. Fold in remaining chopped strawberries. Spoon into white chocolate cups. Refrigerate at least 4 hours or until serving time.

Make a tear in top of each paper baking cup; carefully peel paper from filled cups. Garnish each serving with 1 teaspoon reserved whipped cream and a berry half.

Nutrition information per serving:

1 serving: Calories 240; Total Fat 14g (Saturated Fat 8g); Sodium 30mg; Total Carbohydrate 27g (Dietary Fiber 1g); Protein 2g

Recipe from Pillsbury “Spring Brunch” Magazine from April 2010. Page 76.

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Cool whip rainbow jello – take 2!

Well I mentioned in my last post that I was going to experiment a little bit with cool whip and jello to see if I could get pastel colors to go along with Easter! I didn’t really do a full experiment, but I did change the amounts of cool whip in two different colors to see what would happen. If it were up to me I would have liked to use five different amounts of cool whip and maybe four different colors, but I’ll take what I can get! You’ll have to pardon some of the photos as I took some at night and the lighting wasn’t that great.

1/2 cup cool whip on left and 1/4 cup cool whip on right

I started with a full cup of hot water to dissolve the jello to begin with, that way I could get more of a finger food. Then I poured half of the jello into one measuring cup and the rest into another cup. Then I mixed in 1/2 cup of cool whip into one and 1/4 cup of jello into another. After the cool whip properly dissolved I stuck them into the freezer for about 15 minutes. I noticed that the cool whip and jello settled a bit after it had chilled. The 1/2 cup cool whip had more cool whip so it wasn’t as noticeable when it settled.

This is using 1/2 cup of cool whip

This is using 1/4 cup of cool whip

As you can see, the batch with 1/2 cup of cool whip still settled yet it was very fluffy for the most part. The taste was also a little different, you can actually taste the cool whip in that batch. The batch with 1/4 cup of cool whip was less fluffy than the other batch, but it tasted more like jello than of cool whip.

I decided to go with using 1/4 cup of cool whip for my next batch of rainbow jello since I don’t have a huge sweet tooth and neither do the “grown ups”. I also didn’t feel like eating sugar and cool whip straight up

Mixing 1/4 cup of cool whip for my next batch for Easter dinner!

I loved how the colors looked even though they wern’t the lighter colors that I was going for. I was dissapointed that they all settled the way they did. I think overall I may experiment a little bit more to see if I can get the colors I want…I heard that you can also use yogurt to mix into the jello, so perhaps I’ll try that someday

I love the colors!

I still loved the colors that came out, they were less vibrant than the “real” rainbow jello, but still beautiful and eye catching. I also noticed that when the cool whip settles in the jello, it actually reduces a step compared to the rainbow jello. In the rainbow jello recipe I had to save a 1/4 cup of jello to mix in the cool whip to create the “light” layer…which also had to chill separately. In this recipe I can just let the cool whip settle and create its own layer while chilling…thus reducing time and effort!

"Taste the rainbow"!

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Rainbow Jello

Just look at all those vibrant colors!

So far, this has been the most exciting recipe I have ever made! It’s actually easier than you may think (though time consuming), it’s versatile, and quite delicious! Rainbow jello was so much fun to make that I decided to experiment and make a pastel colored “rainbow” jello for Easter! Since I essentially made two dishes, I’m going to post the pastel jello as a separate entry. I also experimented with different amounts of cool whip and how it affected the color and texture. Don’t worry, it’s really quite interesting and it won’t put you to sleep

I found several recipes on how to make rainbow jello while I was searching online, however there were two blogs that really stood out to me. They provided plenty of pictures and a nice walkthrough to guide me through this recipe. There are basically two types of rainbow jello (at least from what I found). One type has a white-ish layer that separates all the other colors. A great example of this is the recipe I will include in this entry. The other type is where you focus more on the color spectrum and add certain colors to make other colors appear in the rainbow (ex: adding red on top of a blue layer to get a purple layer). There are no white separators.

“Color spectrum” rainbow jello:

Photo courtesy of dobetter.wordpress.com

Rainbow jello with “white separators”:

Photo courtesy of adventuresofafoodslut.blogspot.com

Now onto the good stuff…just how do we make this eye-pleasing finger food?! It’s really important not to overthink how to make this. The main thing you’ll want to remember is to properly cool each layer. I got a very nice walkthrough from a blog (http://adventuresofafoodslut.blogspot.com/2008/04/rainbow-jello.html) in which she outlined each step. I’m going to try and explain it in my own words because it’s what I’ll remember when I want to come back and make this again!

It REALLY and truly does not matter what colors you use (unless you want to the color spectrum thing). You can do school colors, harvest colors, spring colors, or just have fun! You can also use as many layers as you want, it just depends on how thick you want it.

You’ll want to make sure to grease (just the baking spray works fine) the pan and stick it in the fridge until it is chilled. I used an 8×8 pan so that I could get thicker layers. Don’t hesitate to experiment using cups, custard cups, a larger pan, or even a mold. A bundt cake mold might work (I’ve heard it works but I haven’t tried it).

It was helpful to have a pot of boiling water the entire time

I found that it was very helpful to have a pot of boiling water the entire time I was making this dish, even during the times when the layers were chilling. It was also helpful to have a bowl of very hot water in the sink to rinse off spoons and measuring cups. This prevented me from using about 30 spoons If you have three measuring cups, by all means, use them! I needed all three of mine and I still had to wash them off in my bowl of hot water. By the time the water was boiling my pan was ready for the first layer.

Lemon flavor - yum!

You always want to start with 1 cup of jello/boiling water mixture. Using more water to mix the jello will make it less of a finger food and will not hold itself up as well. Once you add the packet of jello to the cup of boiling water, stir it well for about 2-3 minutes. Just at least until it is completely dissolved. Then pour 2/3 of the jello (or until the 1/3 mark on a measuring cup) into the pan. Place the pan on a level surface in the fridgerator until it has completely set, which should take about 15 minutes. While the first layer is chilling you can mix cool whip into the remaining jello. You can also use sour cream or yogurt to do this, but I used cool whip. Add enough cool whip to make 2/3 cup. Once the first layer is cool then pour the cool whip/jello mixture over it and set that in the fridge. While that layer is cooling you can go ahead and start making the next layer and repeat the process!

The layers are starting to come together!

Since my fridge is older, I had to stick the pan in the freezer. My jello/cool whip mixture also had time to cool a bit while it waited on the counter. This worked just fine for me, pouring  hot liquid over cool jello isn’t the best. I also discovered that it was really important to let the cool whip/jello layer to cool properly, otherwise you’ll get this…

A hole in my jello!

It’s not catastrophic, but the layers won’t come out clean when everything chills. I know that this entry was a bit wordy, but I wanted to throw out some hints and tricks to doing this fun finger food. I sure hope that I included everything I could!

As far as my review, I will definately be making this dish again! Especially now that I know that I can be creative and experiment quite a bit with it. You can use different colors, use cool whip or not, you can even add alcohol! I was worried about the actual flavor of this jello as I had five different flavors thrown in there, however all the flavors came together nicely. I think it was because they were all “fruity” flavors. The one thing I would complain about this dish is that it is WAY too sugary for my taste I can only have one piece at a time. Otherwise it was fun, easy, and I had fun watching the layers “grow”!

I couldn't wait to cut into it to see all the layers!

COOL!

Walkthroughs, tips, hints, and suggestions came from two main blogs. They were:

http://adventuresofafoodslut.blogspot.com/2008/04/rainbow-jello.html

http://craftsandcreationswithkathy.blogspot.com/2009/03/rainbow-jelly-jigglers-work-in-progress.html

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Real…Authentic…Traditional…Irish Soda Bread

Irish Soda Bread

In light of St. Patricks day, which happens to fall the day after my mother’s birthday (hehe), I decided to make some nice Irish Soda Bread for her. I needed to do some research so that I could find the best Irish soda bread for my mom and not just any old recipe. I thought that maybe if I typed “authentic Irish soda bread” in my search engine, I would find something that was close to what the Irish really made.

A greased and floured cake pan - I love the Wilton brand!

I came upon a website which was actually second in my search results, but it had an accurate explanation on the tradition of Irish soda bread and how to make it. I learned that this website is “dedicated to promoting traditional Irish soda bread as baked by our great-great-grandparents in Ireland.” That’s pretty serious stuff!

http://www.sodabread.info/

Sifting all the dry ingredients

I suppose that after reading this website we simply cannot replicate “real”, “traditional” Irish soda bread! We can get close, however. I found it hilarious when the website said, “One on-line recipe claiming to be “traditional” included “orange zest” as an ingredient.  As if our poverty-stricken ancestors even knew what orange zest was.” They only got an orange at Christmas, there’s no possible way they could have had regular access to oranges!

Using dough hooks to mix the dough

I feel like it’s important to at least recognize what our ancestors had to live with back then. Even this recipe is moist and delicious and probably not very close to the “real” and “traditional” Irish soda bread. However, I like to think that this is as close as we’re gonna get, and it’s still delicious!

Slicing an "X" before baking

This bread is so easy to make and takes very little time. Compared to working with yeast, this is a piece of cake (or bread)! I’m not really sure why you cut an “X” onto the top of the soda bread. One website said that it was to allow gas to escape while baking, but I’m not really sure about that. All I know is that it’s tradition, and that’s what I’ll stick with!

Baking!

The one unusual thing about baking this soda bread was that I needed to place a cake pan on top of bread for about 30 minutes. I learned that this simulates a “bastible pot” and I also noticed that the top cooked alot faster than the rest of the bread. Covering it allowed it to bake thoroughly before burning.

In the end, I loved this recipe, hubby loved the recipe, and most of all, my mom loved this recipe! It was a hit, and I didn’t think that it even needed butter or honey to add flavor. It was perfect just the way it was!

Perfect!

I typically write a review on the recipe that I made, and I really don’t have much to add to this one! It’s moist, although dense, in the middle with a nice crust on the outside. I’m sure that if I had used cake flour, or the authentic Irish flour that www.sodabread.info recommended, it would have changed the texture a little bit. We were all very happy with this recipe and I thank the Society for the Preservation of Traditional Irish Soda Bread from www.sodabread.info for the information and help!

White Soda Bread

4 cups (16 oz) of all purpose flour.
1 Teaspoon baking soda
1 Teaspoon salt
14 oz of buttermilk

Method:

Preheat the oven to 425 F. degrees.  Lightly crease and flour a cake pan.

In a large bowl sieve and combine all the dry ingredients.

Add the buttermilk to form a sticky dough.  Place on floured surface and lightly knead (too much allows the gas to escape)

Shape into a round flat shape in a round cake pan and cut a cross in the top of the dough.

Cover the pan with another pan and bake for 30 minutes (this simulates the bastible pot).  Remove cover and bake for an additional 15 minutes.

The bottom of the bread will have a hollow sound when tapped so show it is done.

Cover the bread in a tea towel and lightly sprinkle water on the cloth to keep the bread moist.

Recipe from www.sodabread.info

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