Carroty Carrot Muffins

One of these days I'll figure out wake up early enough in the morning that I can actually sit down and eat a piece of toast for breakfast. I've never been much of a breakfast person though. This is not to say tht I don't like breakfast foods, or don't eat breakfast. It's just that I need to be up and about for a while before I eat something.

Sleep is a precious commodity in my world. I will take sleep over most other early morning activities. That's why I've got my morning routine down to a 17 minute science. Really sucks on days when the the overnight low was below -20 (i.e. every night from now until April) because I have to get up four minutes earlier to run out in my pajamas to start the car before I start getting ready. And there are still mornings when I'm ready to go before the car is. 2 more years of school. 2 more years. 2 more. 2 ...

Carroty Carrot Muffins

What You Need:

• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 1/2 cup ground flax seed

• OR 2 cups flour

• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tbsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg
• 1/8 tsp allspice
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 c carrot juice (or orange juice or milk)
• 1/2 c vegetable oil (I used peanut)
• 1/2 c unsweetened applesauce
• 1/2 c honey
• 1 1/2 c grated carrots (at least)

Nope, no sugar at all. And no dairy. These will never be entirley vegan though (even if you did use some kind of egg substitute) because of the honey. Poor little worker bees, working so hard.

What You Gotta Do:

Preheat the oven to 350. (and yes, I really did remember)

In a small bowl, combine the flour, flax seed, baking soda, baking powder, and the salt.

A whisk works well for this.

In a large bowl, dump in everything else except the carrots.

Whisk this all together. The spices really contribute to the colour.

Tip the floury stuff from the small bowl into the wet eggy stuff in the large bowl. Mix this with a whisk. Yes, I know I'm making muffins which only need to be just-mixed. It is possible to merely stir things with a whisk.

What you can't do with a whisk really, though I suppose if you really wanted to you could probably pull it off, is fold. Fold the grated carrots into your just-mixed batter.

The balance of my bag of baby carrots only made for about 2 cups of grated carrots. This recipe can definitely take more than that.

You should end up with enough batter to generously fill 12 muffin cups. (I think I may try this as a snack cake next time. The texture is soft and cake like.)

Bake them for about 20 minutes at 350. Then let them cool a bit before you try taking them out of the pan. If you use the paper cups, you can get them out right away, but I prefer my muffins without cups.

These are fabulous with a bit of cream cheese on them.

This recipe is decidedly not sweet, but it's also not savoury. You could add chocolate chips, dried fruit (I'm thinking chopped apricots would be very tasty in them), or even nuts (weirdo).

You could probably even top them with cream cheese icing and pass them off as a carrot cake. Sneaky.

How do you hide vgetables?

Pudding Made From Chinese Leftovers?

Ever wonder what to do with that extra carton of rice you always get from the Chinese takeout place?  You hate just throwing in the trash, so you decide you’ll use it for dinner sometime this week.  Ten days later you realize it’s still in the fridge and end up throwing it in the garbage anyway.  Well, no more.  This rice pudding is so easy and so delicious, you’ll be thrilled to have leftover rice anytime. 

Here’s what you’ll need:

2 cups cooked rice
2 ½ cups vanilla coconut milk
¼ cup sugar
½ teaspoon cinnamon
Pinch of nutmeg
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 Tablespoon cornstarch
1 egg
2 Tablespoons butter

Ok, so mostly just ignore my ingredients picture.  I missed a few things… egg, cinnamon, etc.  I’m sure you know what those look like, though.  Recently, I discovered So Delicious coconut milk.  Well, coconut milk beverage it says on the carton.  I don’t know what the difference is from the stuff in the can, exactly, but I like the So Delicious vanilla flavor to put on my oatmeal in the mornings.  It’s seriously yum, so I thought, why not use it for my pudding.  Now, if you don’t want to go out and buy some, go ahead and substitute regular milk and add an extra 2 Tablespoons of sugar.  And speaking of sugar… you can see that I am also using coconut palm sugar.  Don’t worry about that.  I just bought it recently and wanted to try it out, regular granulated sugar or even brown sugar will be totally fine. 

So now that that’s out of the way, let’s get started.  In a medium saucepan, pour 2 cups of the milk and stir in the cooked rice, sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg. 

In a separate dish, whisk together 1 Tablespoon of cornstarch and ¼ cup of the remaining cold milk. 

Bring the rice mixture to a low boil and cook, stirring constantly for 5 – 7 minutes.  Much of the liquid will have cooked off and the mixture will look something like this.

 

Stir in the cornstarch slurry. 

Once the pudding reaches a boil again, it will be nice and thick and creamy. 

Go ahead and turn the heat to low.  In another dish whisk together 1 egg, the remaining ¼ cup milk, and 2 teaspoons vanilla. 

When adding eggs to something hot, you need to bring them up to temperature slowly.  This process is called tempering.  To do that, simply add a bit of the hot pudding to the egg mixture and whisk it in.  I added a total of about a cup of the pudding, in three additions. 

Pour the now hot egg mixture into the pudding and stir everything together.  The residual heat from your pudding will cook the egg, so go ahead and turn off the heat. 

Now for the final touch.  Stir in 2 Tablespoons of butter. 

You have just reached rice pudding heaven.  If you like your rice pudding cold, like I do, make sure you press a piece of plastic wrap directly on top of it so that it doesn’t form a skin, and then go ahead and refrigerate it. 

I think most people tend to like rice pudding warm, though, so just garnish it with a few nuts and/or raisins.  Personally I think raisins are the devil.

What’s your favorite kind of pudding?