Fun St Patrick's Day Treats

These are simple, cute, tasty, and go together very quickly…


Ingredients:
  Thin crispy cookies
  Hershey Kisses
  M&Ms or Reeses Pieces


Preheat oven to 200 F
Place cookie thins on parchment lined cookie sheet, place a Kiss in the center of each cookie.  Bake for 4 minutes, remove from oven and move to a rack to prevent kisses from over-melting. Place M&Ms or Reeses Pieces as shown (the stems are 1/2s), pressing them into the kisses.  Put in freezer to firm, once firm transfer to an airtight container for storage.

Sweet Potato Spice Cake

I mentioned a cake experiment I was trying a few days back, one that had my sweet-toothed sweet potato loving husband in mind.  


This is a bunt-style cake made with sweet potatoes, it is sweet & quite dense - and one of those cakes that gets better after sitting a couple days (re-warmed before eating).


Ingredients:
  1/4 cup crystallized ginger
  1 cup whole wheat flour
  1 cup uncooked quick oats
  1 Tbl baking powder
  2 tsp ground cinnamon (suggest Penzeys Vietnamese)
  1/2 tsp salt
  1/4 tsp ground cloves
  1 tsp ground ginger
  1/4 tsp freshly grated nutmeg

  1 1/2 cups cooked sweet potatoes (mashed up)

  1/2 cup Egg Beaters

  1/2 cup water

  1 cup sugar

  1 cup unsweetened applesauce

  1 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 325.  Prep a bunt pan (I use a springform bunt pan) with spray Crisco, finely chop the crystalized ginger and sprinkle it in the pan (it will end up on the top of the cake). Blend together dry ingredients in a large bowl, if sweet potatoes are hot mix eggs in with dry ingredients. Blend together wet ingredients in a medium bowl. Add wet ingredients into dry, mix well, carefully pour batter into bunt pan (try to keep that ginger in place). Bake until toothpick inserted in center of cake comes out clean, 60-70 minutes. Allow cake to cool in pan on rack for 15 minutes before turning out onto a plate.

Suggested toppings: Cool Whip Free (fat free), Betty CrockerWhipped Cream Cheese Frosting, Vanilla Ice Cream.

Experimenting again...

I decided to do an experiment this morning… I started with the Crumpet recipe from yesterday and made some significant modifications in order to come up with a Sourdough Pancake recipe (I know, I could have looked one up on the web, but what fun is that?)… the results were Stellar!!


I need to get the quantities adjusted for a typical (4 large, 12 small) recipe, and I need to get pictures (yep, they were that good)… so sometime in the next couple days I'll do these again & post the recipe…


Stay Tuned!!

Sourdough Crumpets

This is not my recipe… the recipe originated here (I believe)… but I want to share this because its a great way to use up (instead of throwing out) excess Sourdough Starter.  Enjoy!!


This makes 8, if you only have 4 crumpet rings I suggest only doing 1/2 the recipe at a time (for best bubbles).


Ingredients:
  1 cup Sourdough starter
  1 tsp Sugar
  1/2 tsp Sea Salt (if course grind it fine)
  1/2 tsp Baking Soda


Whisk together Sourdough starter, sugar, salt.


Wipe a griddle with a bit of oil, if using Crumpet rings wipe them with oil as well (as you can tell by my pic mine still stick a bit - I'm thinking I might wipe with Crisco next time).  Place the griddle (with rings if using) on the stove and set the heat to Medium (or Med-Lo if an extra large burner), allow griddle and rings to warm.  Add in Baking Soda and Whisk to incorporate, you should notice the batter start to rise - this is due to the reaction of the Baking Soda with the acid in the batter.  Evenly distribute the batter in the rings, allow crumpets to cook until tops (shown above) appear dry, flip and allow tops to brown just slightly for a few seconds (this is a good time to work crumpets loose from the rings if they're stuck).  Cool on a rack if not eating right away, toast and top as desired - I like good jam/preserves on mine.


Update 4/19/12:  I just had a 1/2 batch of these for breakfast, today I topped mine with a smear of Chèvre & a bit of Orange Marmalade… Wow!  What a winning combination!!

Sour Cream Pancakes plus...

Sour Cream Pancakes & more

I've been having lots of fun with Pancakes lately, here is a recipe which both is both low cal and quite yummy… unlike my Soda Pancakes these are not Vegan, but the plain Sour Cream ones taste more like traditional pancakes (yep, like Mom made) than my Soda Pancakes…

Sour Cream Pancakes
(makes 4 large or 12 small)


Ingredients:
  2 cups fat free sour cream
  1 cup Egg Beaters
  3/4 tsp salt
  1 tsp baking soda
  1 Tbl sugar
  1 cup all-purpose flour


Wisk all ingredients together in a bowl.  At this point the batter will be a bit thick, you can use the batter thick if you want to experiment with making Waffles; otherwise, thin the batter with a bit of water or soda-water until you have a pancake batter consistency.  Wipe/spray griddle/skillet with oil, put on Medium heat (large burner), wait until a drop of batter sizzles on the griddle. Pour by 1/4 cups for small pancakes, 3/4 cups for large.


Now for the fun part… Variations!!


Add flavorings like vanilla extract, almond extract, banana extract… or spices… add nuts… etc.


A variation I like is my Sour Cream Applesauce pancakes, which are identical to the recipe above except that the Sour Cream is reduced to 1 cup and 1 cup of Applesauce is added.


Top with fruit, jam, syrup, powdered sugar… whatever!


Enjoy!!