I recently had the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to go on safari in southern Africa. A safari guide and tracker introduced me to a delicious drink called the mochachocarula: coffee, hot cocoa powder, and the South African cream liqueur Amarula. While getting out muffin ingredients today, I remembered the drink and used it as inspiration. Read more …
The last time I baked muffins was the last time I posted a new recipe on this blog, so I was overdue for a batch. I decided to stir up one of my old favorites, but with a different blend of flours and no added sugar. No stevia or other concentrated sweetener, either. If you consistently avoid added sugar or … Read more
We’ve been getting a lot of acorn squash in our farm box. I used to love plain mashed acorn squash, but now prefer it in baked goods for its sweet and delicate flavor. I roasted the acorn squash at 400°F in my halogen oven and scooped out the insides to use as puree in baking, and ended up with about 4 … Read more
Last week I wrote about making whole wheat pizza dough. Starting today, I’ll be giving you lots of ideas for topping the dough! I’ll be posting some different recipes over the next few weeks, starting with the classic: pizza marghuerita. This is an incredibly simple recipe that tastes incredibly good. (See all pizza-related recipes I’ve posted so far here.) Supplies pizza peel pizza … Read more
Making pizza dough from scratch sounds harder than it is. And this recipe makes it even easier by cutting down on the kneading. Kneading helps the gluten in the wheat form long strands that hold the dough together and give bread its customary chewiness. Gluten also develops and becomes stronger as dough rises. By increasing the rising time, you can … Read more
As long as zucchini keeps fruiting, I’ll keep making zucchini muffins. This week I decided to make a not-gluten-free version of chocolate zucchini muffins. It has whole wheat, plus a little almond flour for richness. Notes: If you love almonds, you can increase the almond flour to ½ cup if you like, in which case you should reduce the whole wheat flour or … Read more
Mindy Celeste made an awesome pesto pasta salad when I was visiting her in Oregon last month. I asked her for the recipe and planned to make it this week. But as often happens with me, I neglected to buy half the ingredients when I was at the grocery store. So I changed the recipe to suit what I had on … Read more
It’s that time of year when summer squashes become almost perverse in the profligacy of their fruit production. Those who are usually glad to benefit from summer’s bounty mysteriously disappear when they see a gardening neighbor come down the walk with a box full of zucchini. Farmers can barely give the things away – really. Each week when we go to pick up … Read more
This recipe includes several solanaceous vegetables that are just coming into season where I live: eggplant, sweet pepper, and tomatoes. My beloved fennel also plays a starring role, along with fresh basil and onions. And it took me under 30 minutes to prepare. There’s so many vegetables in this dish you could skip the salad. But if you have as many veggies as I do … Read more
Sometimes I get a little distracted while baking and forget to put an ingredient in. Baking soda, sugar, oil, salt — if you bake for long enough, you’ll forget one or all of these ingredients at one time or another. Usually, it spells disaster for the final product. But every once in a while you make a fortuitous omission, discovering … Read more