Googleberry Pie!

Well, not really googleberry pie. Really blueberry lime pie. But I kept hearing that googleberry pie song in my head as I was making it.

Inspired by a recipe for Key Lime pie on the Naysoya Silken Creation box, I added lime juice (2 extra large limes, around 6 Tbl.) and some extra cornstarch (2 Tbl.) to Nasoya Silken Creations vanilla and heated it up in a pot until it was really thick. Then the filling went into a graham cracker crust. After scraping out all the lime pudding filling from the pot into the pie shell, I put 2 pints of blueberries and four spoonfuls of blueberry jam into the still warm pot and mixed them up to make the topping.

Result: the pie was bit sweet because there was a bit too much sugar in the premade filling and premade crust. This would be better with from scratch pudding and a homemade crust. But my husband loved it.

The blueberry topping was just right. The blueberries cooked only slightly and tested fresh and the blueberry jam pulled the berries together and made them taste pie-fillnig-ish.

Not to digress, but I really liked the Silken Creations chocolate flavor better than the vanilla. Vanilla is much harder to pull off in a non-dairy format.

BBA Challenge: Anadama Bread

I made the Anadama bread, the first bread for the BBA Challenge.

I was not so thrilled. Perhaps I should not have swapped out half the bread flour with King Arthur’s White Whole Wheat flour. The crumb was denser and crumblier than I would have liked. The molasses flavor was ok, but I was not in love with this bread.

BBA Challenge: Poor Man’s Brioche

I made the poor man’s brioche from The Bread Baker’s Apprentice (BBA Challenge). I served it on Shabbos as challah along with the BBA challah. The side by side taste comparison was interesting.

BBA Challenge: Challah

Inspired by the BBA Challenge, I have made three bread from Peter Reinhart’s The Bread Baker’s Apprentice: Challah, Poor Man’s Brioche, and the Anadama Bread.

Ree’s Heuvos

Pioneer Woman made some tasty looking eggs the other day. She calls them Huevos Ree-os because they are not authentic Mexican fare at all. But, man, are they good!

All you do is fry up some eggs, pour over some spicy tomato stuff (she used picante sauce) and then let cheese melt on top.  I made my eggs with some shredded cheddar/mozzarella mix and diced tomatoes. Instead of chopped cilantro, I went with chopped scallion.

After the cheese melts, the whole thing get put with a tortilla. I served my huevos with a low-carb whole wheat tortilla.

So easy, so delicious.

Palachinka, hostess for FBI (food blog investigation), is investigating Pioneer Woman this month.

Best Chocolate Cupcakes Ever?

In an ongoing quest for the best chocolate cake, I made Dan Lepard’s recipe for chocolate custard muffins. Lepard promises they are the “best chocolate muffin you’ll ever eat.”

Hmmmm. That’s pretty hard to resist. Plus the prep method is intruiging. Basically, you made chocolate pudding and then add eggs and flour.

Quesadilla Pie

I had been thinking about making something with beans and the tortillas in my fridge. Then I saw Elise’s post about Quesadilla Pie.  Yum! Healthy, quick,  and so easy that you don’t even need a real recipe.

Elise just gives general directions and ingredient suggestions. The basic idea is that you line a buttered pie plate with a flour tortilla, then add a layer of filling, then a tortilla, then filling, another tortilla, more filling, and then a final tortilla. Brush with more butter and then bake.

I actually didn’t have a pie plate handy, so I ended up making quesadilla stacks. I made one stack with whole wheat flour tortillas and another stack with corn tortillas. Inside I layered shredded cheese, black olives, corn, red beans, refried black beans, just a little bit of cream cheese, and diced tomatoes. 

So good. . . .

Easy Dairy-Free Vanilla-Chocolate Swirl Cupcakes

My son wanted to make cake that was vanilla and chocolate. Since we had just made vanilla yogurt cake, and since I had just seen David Leibovitz’s chocolate cupcake version of yogurt cake on Steamy Kitchen, I thought: Why not make vanilla batter and chocolate batter and marbelize them? Why not vanilla-chocolate swirl cupcakes?

I asked my husband for his vote and he wanted dairy-free, so I substituted soy milk for the yogurt.

Amazing Mocha Frosting

Thanks to Zoe (and Carole Bloom), I made an amazing mocha frosting.  I used it to frost Zoe’s Devil’s Food Cake.

Because I only had 6 ounces of trans-fat free margarine, I made 1/2 of the recipe. It was enough to frost a single 8″ round cake, cut in three layers (baked in a 3″ deep pan, with a half recipe of Zoe’s Devil’s Food Cake batter, using 2 eggs instead of 1 1/2 eggs).

Even though I was short a couple of ounces of margarine for the half recipe (and even though I was using margarine instead of butter), the recipe came out great. I added the margarine very very slowly, in little dabs, and the frosting never broke. It never looked “soupy or curdled.” I was smooth from beginning to end. I used a large egg and a large yolk and it was completely fine.