Tag Archives: food

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recipe: eggnog cupcakes!

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being the fan i am of eggnog, i thought i’d try something new for santa beyond the typical cookie and glass of milk ( not that there’s anything wrong with that ). last year i ran across this recipe for eggnog cupcakes that looked mighty tasty but didn’t get around to making it before i ran out of eggnog. i picked up an extra quart of the good stuff this year to ensure i didn’t suffer the same fate!

the recipe is fairly straightforward. since i wanted odin to enjoy the cupcakes i didn’t add any of the rum in the original reciple and simply added a smidge of extra eggnog, vegetable oil and apple cider to adjust for the loss of an 1/8th of a cup of liquid.

it should go without saying that if you’re going to make eggnog cupcakes you should use the very best organic eggnog 🙂

eggnog cupcake ingredients:

* 1 1/8 cup organic valley eggnog ( plus a smidge )
* 1/4 cup vegetable oil ( plus a smidge )
* 1 tbsp apple cider vinegar ( plus a smidge )
* 1 tsp vanilla extract
* 1/4 tsp fresh ground nutmeg
* 1 cup sugar
* 1 1/3 cups all purpose flour
* 1/4 tsp baking soda
* 1/2 tsp baking powder
* 1/2 tsp salt

directions

preheat oven to 350F. optionally, fill a 12-cup muffin tin with liners.

in a small bowl, mix together the liquids: eggnog, vegetable oil, vinegar and vanilla.

in a large bowl, mix together the dry ingredients: nutmeg, flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder and salt.

pour the contents of the wet mixture into the dry and gently stir until just combined. divide into muffin tins and bake for 18-20 minutes, until a tester comes out clean and the cakes spring back when lightly pressed.

cool in the pan for 3-5 minutes, before putting on a wire rack to cool completely before frosting.

frosting

i made a simple whipped topping with organic valley heavy whipping cream, a teaspoon of sugar and a big of vanilla extract. combine all ingredients and whip until stiff peaks form. i always tend to overwhip the topping because i habitually leave the standing mixer during the whipping process. don’t do that if you’re picky about your whipped topping.

sprinkle with freshly ground nutmeg.



the result is a wonderful eggnoggy cupcakey bit of goodness that’s really quite tasty that’s just little bit crumbly so it might be a good idea to use muffin liners if you storing or transporting them.

and yes, it appears that santa enjoyed his cupcake 🙂



i had the intention of making a gluten free version of the recipe using pamela’s gluten freen baking mix which is usually headache-free flour replacement that typically requires few additional recipe adjustments.

apparently that’s not the case with cupcakes because my attempt with a simple substitution was a disaster, yielding the dreaded collapsing cupcake phenomenon presumably because cupcakes didn’t have enough enough of the structural support provided by gluten. i know there are muffin and cupcake recipes out there that use pamela’s mix but i guess i need to do some more tinkering to make it work with this recipe.

so, for this year at least, santa had to suck it and love the gluten.

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how to store fresh eggs.

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how to store fresh eggs.

now that we have plenty of Gifts from The Girls, the obvious question is how to best store the eggs?

farm fresh eggs come with a protein coating called the bloom which seals the egg and protects it from going bad from bacterial contamination. supermarket eggs are washed which removes the bloom and forces refrigeration. but just how long can unwashed eggs remain edible without refrigeration?

we’ve heard anectodes from folks with backyard hens who claim 3-4 months! i’m not sure who would ever have the tasty gifts sitting around that long, but a 1977 study from mother earth news, “How To Store Fresh Eggs” seems to corroborate the anectode. according to the article unrefrigerated, unwashed farm eggs were still edible after 12 weeks, although they note that, “If we’d had our druthers, understand, we’d have eaten something else … but, under survival conditions, we could have lived on the completely unprotected 90-day-old eggs if we’d have had to.”

according to the study, an unwashed clean egg placed under refrigeration shortly after being laid can stay fresh for up to six months or more!

so, as strange as it might sound to folks used to fretting about how long eggs have been out of the fridge, keeping clean fresh, unwashed eggs unrefrigerated for a few months seems entirely plausible.

we don’t keep them around that long, but we do tend to have them out of the fridge for a few days before sending our surplus to happy homes and consuming the rest within 7-10 days of being laid.

the inevitable egg with a bit of manure is a little more problematic. washing it will remove the protection of the bloom, so any soiled eggs are handled with care and common sense. don’t put heavily manured eggs in fridge with other food and, as this article states, “Do not immerse your eggs in a sink full of water. The bloom is removed leaving the eggs surrounded by water that contains manure. I think you can see the problem here.”

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recipe: eggnog pots-de-creme!

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it’s eggnog season, which means i’m on the lookout to find new things to do with our super tasty organic valley eggnog. of course, anything that helps us with our egg surplus is an added bonus. so i was mighty pleased to see a recipe for eggnog pots de creme from sofya hundt ( you can also find her twittering away at @gunsnbutterblog ).

how could i not try her twist on the traditional pots de creme by using eggnog ( and organic valley eggnog to boot! )?



i doubled sofya’s recipe, so i started by adding a couple of tablespoons of sugar to 3 cups of eggnog. mix the sugar in and then heat on medium until bubbles start forming.



whisk six egg yolks until smooth. i’m pretty sure the incredibly orange yolks from eggs laid by The Girls just this morning isn’t going to translate well on the web. take my word for it, they are orangetastic!

drizzle the hot eggnog mix slowly in with the eggs, whisking like mad as you go.



then pour the mixture into individual ramekins through a fine-mesh sieve. sofya says the sieve step is really important to ensure a smooth custard. put the ramekins in a baking dish filled with warm water to about half the ramekin height and bake in a 325 degree oven for 25 minutes until the custards are set.

after i took this photo i realized i forgot to sprinkle some nutmeg on top of the custards – don’t forget the nutmeg!



for whatever reason, i found i had to bake them for 40 minutes. maybe i overfilled the ramekins? in any case, after awhile pull the custardy eggnogy goodness from the oven, remove from the water bath and let cool to room temperature. then chill in fridge for a couple hours to allow the custards to firm up.

which is where the custards now reside. firming in the fridge. we’ll have them for dessert tomorrow – if i can wait that long! they look so tasty i almost can’t stand it.



after letting the custards set in the fridge covered overnight was finally time to dig in! i made some whipped topping by mixing a tablespoon or so of sugar and a smidge of vanilla in a pint of organic valley heavy whipping cream and whisked in a bowl until firm peaks started to form.

finally, i plopped a generous helping of the whipped goodness on top of the custards and sprinkled a bit of nutmeg on top.

i must say the final creation looked almost too good to eat!



true to the traditional pots de creme form, the final result is looser than your typical custards and has a texture more like a thick pudding.

and the taste? oh. mah. gawd. sofya wasn’t kidding around when she wrote, “You won’t believe how good it is!



after being forced to way a whole twenty four hours, odin was, of course, mighty keen to partake in a taste test and render his verdict.

after a long, savory pause, “oooooooooooooohhhhhhh mmmmmmyyyyyyyyyyy this is sssssssooooooooo goooooooooood i can almost not speak!”

nearly rendering odin speachless is as good a review as i could ever ask for.

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on the mechanically separated chicken meme.

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jason kottke and snopes both attempt to correct some of the inaccuracies in the mechanically separated chicken linkage that’s been making the rounds which i lazily tweeted without attempting to correct myself. while they do a good job of correcting aspects of the meme, i’m still waiting for someone to really scrape the bottom of the mechanically separated meat barrel ( to mix a metaphor, badly ). questions still not resolved related to jason’s enumerated points:

1. as jason points out the stuff in the picture is probably not chicken. but is it mechanically separated something – perhaps ham as one redditor claims? the stuff certainly looks like the usda description of mechanically separated meat and poultry which is a “paste-like and batter-like” product.

2. no, the entire chicken is not ground-up during processing, but according to the usda, the “product [is] produced by forcing bones, with attached edible tissue, through a sieve or similar device under high pressure to separate bone from the edible tissue.” jason simplifies this to “the bones and such are removed”. while i suppose that’s true, it sounds as if the bones specifically aren’t removed prior to being forced through the sieve ( some certainly get through ). and what constitutes “edible tissue”? i’m guessing there’s a conceptual gap between what the average consumer and the usda considers to be edible tissue.

3. no, ammonia is not an approved “food additive” and mechanically separated poultry is likely not “soaked in ammonia” as the meme claims ( or, rather, snopes says “poultry processors do not routinely soak MSP in ammonia” which sounds a bit cagey ). but this conflates an additive with a processing aid. lots of things can be approved as processing aids that are not approved as additives per se. while the product is probably not processed with ammonia, it almost certainly is “cleansed” with chlorine bleach ( or perhaps lauric acid and potassium hydroxide ) at some point.

while i applaud efforts to correct innacuracies in memes floating around the intertubes, i’m still left with basic questions about what mechanically separated poultry looks like, what’s in it and what processing agents are used in its production.

what say you armchair, intertube muckrakers?

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wow. alden’s has totally reformulated their organic chocolate ice cream.

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since taking over the ice cream case at our local food coop, alden’s organic has been our go-to ice cream. while we’d love to support local ice cream makers, it consistantly scores “above average” on snowdeal family taste tests, is easy to get since it’s stocked at the coop and is relatively affordable.

i don’t have a particularly strong “sweet tooth” but i’ve grown fond of their chocolate ice cream with it’s deep chocolate color and rich taste. so i was quite surprised to open a new carton to see what appears to be a dramatic reformulation.

gone are the rich, dark color tones and if i’m not mistaken the new product has a softer feel out of freezer that i’m guessing means they are whipping more air into it.

i’m no ice cream supertaster so i have to admit that the two products taste similar, but jeez – visually – they sure look different.

i’m sure alden’s product managers are happy with the improved margins on the new product 🙂

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garlic scape asparagus cream soup

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garlic scape asparagus cream soup!

i’ve received lots of requests for the garlic scape asparagus cream soup i mentioned in the social intertubes the other day.

well, here’s the almost embarrassingly simple, yet supremely delicious recipe.

wash a half dozen or asparagus stalks and throw them in a boiling pot of water. toss in some of the usual herb suspects, sage, rosemary, thyme, etc and some salt and pepper. maybe a bay leaf or two. add a tablespoon or so of garlic pesto. boil until the asparagus is tender – perhaps 6-10 minutes. blend well with one of those hand blender thingies. a regular blender would, of course, work just fine.

add corn starch to thicken the soup, about 1 tablespoon per cup of liquid soup. pre-dissolve the corn starch in half a cup of water and add to soup which has been brought back to a boil. keep boiling for a few minutes, then turn to low heat.

and now, for the most important step: stir in an indulgent amount of organic valley heavy whipping cream.

listen to me, this is no time to get all “all things in moderation” on yourself. experiment a little. i think i added something like 8 oz of heavy whipping cream for 6 cups of soup. but who knows what i really added, i was getting a little delirious at the smells coming from the soup pot.

seriously, if you make garlic scape asparagus cream soup without organic valley heavy whip? you’re doing it wrong.

add asparagus tips for a little texture.

enjoy!

( and bring on the asparagus urine in 3..2..1.. )

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garlic scapes, how do i love thee? let me count two ways.

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garlic scapes, how do i love thee? let me count two ways. I.

let’s say you have garlic scapes from 250 head of garlic sitting in your fridge. what, pray tell, do you do with all those scapes? first, find yourself a good scape pesto recipe, and then experiment with putting the pesto in anything and everything to give it a wonderful garlicky flavor.

for breakfast, we forked about a teaspoon in 6 fresh-from-the-farm eggs for garlic scape scrampled eggs. perfect!

garlic scapes, how do i love thee? let me count two ways. II.

and for dinner, we added some scape pesto to mayonnaise which added just the right zing to organic, grassfed burgers and fries.

next up, garlic scape cream cheese something something?