Alton Brown's Over the Top Muffins

Taking a quick break from restaurant blogging.  And when I mean quick break, I mean after I'm done with this blog, I'm back to catching up on my restaurant posts.  I love Alton Brown's recipes.  When I'm cooking or baking, Alton Brown is one of my go to's.  The other being the Joy of Cooking.  These recipes never fail, they're perfect, unless you start making modifications which I do sometimes when I realize that I have run out of certain ingredients in midst of mixing ingredients together.  They still taste good, just that sometimes they may not rise as much....or it may be lacking a bit of flavour.  But it's my own fault.

I needed to test out my oven to make sure it's functional.  We tried to use the self clean function to clean the oven, and part way through the clean, it errored out.  So I was worried that the oven was dead.  Turns out, it works, just won't work long enough at a high enough temp to do self clean.  Just means that I have to use chemicals to do a deep clean in the future.

So when I said, don't mess with Alton Brown's recipe, I totally did again this time around.  I was craving chocolate chip muffins, so I subbed chocolate chips for the blueberries.  And I didn't have regular yogurt, so I used greek yogurt.  Which I'm guessing as to why the muffins turned out a bit dry.  There's less liquid in greek yogurt, because greek yogurt is essentially regular yogurt with the liquids strained out.  Other than that, these were the best muffins I have EVER made.  I have never had muffins with such ginormous muffin tops.  This is the only time when huge muffin tops are wanted. So moral of the story.  Don't mess with Alton Brown's recipes!!!!

Note:  To best follow or use Alton Brown's recipes, have a scale handy.

Chocolate Chip Muffins

Look at the Muffin Top!

Top Heavy Blueberry Muffins (Yields 13)

Ingredients

1. 22 ounces all-purpose flour

1. 4 teaspoons baking powder

1. 2 teaspoons baking soda

1. 1 teaspoon kosher salt

1. 8 ounces sugar

1. 1 cup vegetable oil

1. 2 large eggs

1. 2 large egg yolks

1. 16 ounces plain whole fat yogurt

1. 1 tablespoon orange zest

1. 12 ounces fresh blueberries

1. 2 tablespoons demerera sugar
2. 
   

Instructions

1. Heat the oven to 375 degrees F and coat a standard 12-cup muffin pan (and one small oven safe ramekin) with non-stick spray.
2. Whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a large mixing bowl. In second bowl whisk together the sugar, oil, eggs, yolks, yogurt and orange zest until smooth.
3. Make a crater in the middle of the dry ingredients and pour the wet ingredients into it. Stir with a rubber spatula until just barely combined. Resist the urge to over-mix – there should be a some lumps of flour in the batter
4. Fold in the blueberries, mixing just to combine.
5. Drop about a cup of batter in each of the muffin tin's wells. Whatever's left over can be dropped into the prepared ramekin. The cups should be quite full.
6. Sprinkle the muffins with the demerera sugar and bake for 25 to 30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the bottom of a muffin comes out clean.
7. Remove from oven and turn out, upside down, onto a clean tea towel to cool completely. This step is key in preventing mushy muffin bottoms, which nobody and I do mean nobody likes.
8. Serve immediately or store in an airtight container for up to a week (or until they taste gross, smell bad, or grow fur).

Traditional Challah Bread

This year, my unofficial resolution to myself is to prepare more homemade foods as possible.  No more buying off the shelf products if I could help it.  This is my effort to avoid putting so many preservatives and additives in my body.  So I have begun to bake my own bread when time allows.  The first loaf this year was Challah.  It ended up being a lot easier than I expected and quicker than I expected.  In total, I think it took about 3 hours from start to end.  Give this recipe a try, it's delicious!

Traditional Challah

Traditional Challah Recipe (from Canadian Living)
Ingredients
2 tsp (10 mL) granulated sugar 
1/2 cup (125 mL) warm water 
1 pkg active dry yeast (or 1 tbsp/15 mL) 
3-1/2 cups (875 mL) all-purpose flour (approx) 
1 tsp (5 mL) salt
1/4 cup (50 mL) liquid honey 
1/4 cup (50 mL) butter, melted (or vegetable oil) 
2 eggs, lightly beaten 
2 egg yolks 
3/4 cup (175 mL) golden raisins 
Topping: 
1 egg yolk, lightly beaten 
1 tbsp (15 mL) sesame seeds

Preparation
1. In large bowl, dissolve sugar in warm water. Sprinkle in yeast; let stand until frothy, about 10 minutes. Using wooden spoon, stir in 3 cups (750 mL) of the flour and salt. Add honey, butter, eggs and egg yolks; stir until dough forms.

2. Turn out dough onto lightly floured surface; knead until smooth and elastic, about 10 minutes, adding enough of the remaining flour as necessary to prevent sticking. Place in greased bowl, turning to grease all over. Cover with plastic wrap; let rise in warm draft-free place until doubled in bulk and indentation remains when dough is poked with 2 fingers, about 1 hour. Punch down dough; knead in raisins. Let rest for 5 minutes.

3. To make crown: Roll out dough into 30-inch (76 cm) long rope. Holding 1 end in place, wind remaining rope around end to form fairly tight spiral that is slightly higher in centre. Transfer to greased rimmed baking sheet.

4. To make braid: Divide dough into quarters; roll each into 18-inch (45 cm) long ropes. Place side by side on greased rimmed baking sheet; pinch together at 1 end. Starting at pinched end, move second rope from left over rope on its right. Move far right rope over 2 ropes on left. Move far left rope over 2 ropes on right. Repeat until braid is complete; tuck ends under braid.

5. Cover crown loaf or braid loaf with plastic wrap; let rise in warm draft-free place until doubled in bulk, about 1 hour.

6. Topping: Stir egg yolk with 1 tsp (5 mL) water; brush over loaf. Sprinkle with sesame seeds.

Bake in centre of 350°F (180°C) oven until golden brown and loaf sounds hollow when tapped on bottom, 35 to 45 minutes. Let cool on rack.

Cream Cheese Biscuits

I made this on a weeknight when we had a 'White Food' night.  The oven was on because we were heating up a pork shank for dinner, so I figured I might as well try this recipe out.  This recipe was great not only because it tasted good....but it was super quick to do!  The only downside......it's probably not the healthiest.  But what biscuits are?  I substituted all purpose flour with whole wheat flour.  Thats me trying to be slightly healthier.

Cream Cheese Biscuits

Ingredients:
8 oz cream cheese, softened
2/3 cup butter, softened
1 1/3 cup self rising flour
Butter, softened or melted for finishing

Pulse together the cream cheese, 2/3 cup butter and 1 cup of flour two or three times in a food processor fitted with the knife or dough blade until it comes together in a ball.  Turn the dough out onto waxed paper and divide into two rounds.  Flatten.  Wrap in waxed paper, plastic wrap, or resealable plastic bag, and refrigerate for at least 30 mins.

When ready to bake, preheat oven to 425 degrees.

Lightly sprinkle a board or other clean surface suing some of the 1/3 cup reserved flour.  Sprinkle the top lightly with flour.  With floured hands and a floured rolling pin, roll out one portion fo the dough at a time to about 1/4 inch thick.  Fold the dough over to make it 1/2inch thick.  For each biscuit, dip a 1 to 1 1/4 inch biscuit cutter into reserved flour and cut out the biscuits, starting at the outside edge and cutting very close together, being careful not to twist the cutter.  The scraps may be combined to make additional biscuits, altho these scraps make tougher biscuits.  Roll out the second portion when ready to bake.

Using a metal spatula if necessary, move the biscuits to an ungreased baking sheet, placing the biscuits 1 inch apart.  Refrigerate the biscuits for 10 to 20 mins until cold.  Bake the biscuits on the top rack of the oven for a total of 10-12 minutes until light golden brown.  After 6 minutes, rotate the pan in the oven so that the front of the pan is now turned to the back.  Continue baking for another 4 to 6 minutes.

Recipe taken from the below link:
http://sandynawrot.blogspot.ca/2012/03/southern-biscuits-nathalie-dupree-and.html

糖醋排骨 (Sweet Vinegar Spare Ribs)

My hubby loves this recipe.  He loves ribs in general.  But as for Chinese style cooked ribs, he says he likes 糖醋排骨 more than black bean steamed spare ribs.  So I tend to make 糖醋排骨 more.  I have tried various recipes that I found online, but none of them taste as good as my mom's!  So I had to ask my mom for the recipe.  And here is it to share with all of you!

Ingredients:
500g Spare Ribs
6 Slices Ginger
2 Green Onions
3 Cloves Garlic
2 Tbsp Soy Sauce
100ml Chi Kang Vinegar
1/2 cup Chicken Stock
1/4 cup Chinese Cooking Wine
30g Sugar

1. Pan fry the ribs until nicely browned and remove from heat.
2. Pan fry the garlic, ginger, onions until lightly browned and add soy sauce, vinegar, chicken stock and cooking wine and sugar.  Bring mixture to boil.
3. Return ribs to sauce and lower heat to a simmer.  Simmer for 1 hour.

I made some changes when I made the ribs.  Instead of pan frying the ribs, to stay a bit healthier I boiled the ribs in water instead.  This way can get out the excess fat.  Instead of Chinese cooking wine, I used a dry white wine because thats all I had in the house.  And instead of chicken stock, I used normal water.  I suspect I lost some flavor but seemed ok to me.

糖醋排骨

Dessert Yogurt

As i'm writing this entry, I have to admit I'm not fully paying attention.  I'm writing this with a gorgeous lake view in front of me.  But this weekend is a good time for me to catch up on all my posts.  There's not much to do here, so it's super relaxing!

Yogurt, ever since my detox diet, I have been consuming huge amounts of it.  I prefer Greek yogurt, but its so expensive.  So to cut down on the costs, I buy both Greek and normal yogurt, and do a half half mix.  I then top off the yogurt with some fresh fruit and quinoa granola (found the recipe in Jillian Michael's cookbook).  I'll post up the

But the point of my blog is actually to complain about the lack of dessert yogurt flavour available in Toronto.  When I made a trip down to Buffalo, I was able to find a variety of dessert yogurt flavours at the local Walmart.  I brought back lemon meringue pie and key lime pie flavours to try.  The lemon meringue pie flavour was so good!  Tasted exactly like lemon meringue pie filling.  Great for a real pie dessert substitute, much healthier.  The key lime pie flavour tasted like lime jello.  It didn't taste very good, very artificial tasting. 

While on my weekly grocery run, I noticed Yoplait carries a lemon parfait yogurt.  I thought, since the US flavors were by Yoplait, and this one was by Yoplait that it would be the same.  I was very wrong.  I don't even know how to describe it.  The flavours were so weird.  Now I don't know what to do with whats left of it.  I guess I could dilute it with some vanilla yogurt to make it taste better.  Guess I'll have to bring back yogurts whenever I cross the boarder.....

Yogurts

Jillian Michaels Quinoa Granola

1 cup quinoa (uncooked, rinsed and drained)

1/4 cup whole flaxseed

1 tbs honey

1 tbs olive oil

I added some cinnamon in for extra flavor as well.

Mix all the ingredients together, spread on a cookie sheet and bake in a 375 deg oven until slightly browned.

Enjoy!