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You really can’t go wrong with cheesecake. Even if you’re lactose intolerant, vegan or diabetic, you’re sure to find one or another that pleases your palate. You can have low-fat pies (even Paula Deen’s got one!) or total calorie bombs (mmm, Caramel Brownie!), crustless or on a bed of super-thick cookie dough.

Then comes the types of cheesecake you can have. The Italians have their ricotta and mascarpone blended into a smooth and creamy, somewhat crumbly batter. Go to France and you get the airy gelatine and Neufchatel baked into rather thin cakes. Japan has cottony, matcha-laced confections. Check out the US or Canada and you get all sorts of them – from the sour-cream capped to the notorious New York Style.

Two Tasty Treats

Muffins are far and away some of the easiest foods to whip up. Not only are they easy, but they’re infinitely variable, and one heck of a good way to use up all the “bits and pieces” lurking in your fridge and pantry. I can’t imagine any other type of food that can take vegetables, dregs of milk, the last of the honey and a handful of cooked or raw grains and combines it into a portable, tasty and (if you play your cards right) healthy meal on the go that even picky kids will like. They can be packed with oats, sunflower seeds and applesauce with hardly any sugar and nary a trace of fat, or you can channel Costco or the local bakery and plug in gads of butter and chocolate while the whole wheat flour hangs out in the back of the cupboard. Likewise, muffins can become breakfast, snacks or even dessert. It’s all in the presentation.

Usually when it comes to making muffins though, it’s because I’m bored and looking for a quick way to both avoid things that I “should” be doing (like homework, or cleaning my room, or writing blog posts... I can’t focus!) and make something fun and unique to take along to appointments or give to my classmates.  It’s always a bonus if I don’t have to run to the store, or if I’m already there finding a cheap goody to make a fairly “standard” batter unique.

That was how I came about making these rather random, somewhat Asian-y flavoured bites. Already in the Asian grocery store picking up some veggies and chicken for that purple soup I concocted (meat is so much cheaper there than at the “box box” guys, and amazing quality too!), I breezed by the “death bin” of produce and found some gems. Not only did I get some beautiful mushrooms and a giant parsnip for a steal (I don’t know why they were in there but they were!) but I also found a bag containing a couple limes and a slightly over-ripe mango. I had some tahini waiting patiently in the fridge for someone to use, and a partial can of coconut milk in the freezer, and I already had the purple rice out to be simmered away in the soup. It all seemed like a perfectly logical combination, especially when I remembered the beautiful bread that I baked in July with the cooked wild rice mixture. Once the rice was done and the coconut milk was thawed, it was a flash-in-the-pan (or rather “mix-in-the-bowl”) before I had these flavour bombs cooling on my counter.

Tasty Thai Muffins

Makes 16
1 ½ cups cooked purple rice (also called "forbidden rice") - about 2/3 cup dry
½ cup tahini (sesame seed butter)
1 egg
juice and zest of 1 lime
2 tsp grated fresh ginger
¼ cup honey
¼ cup corn syrup ¼ cup sugar
2/3 cup coconut milk
¼ cup shredded coconut
1 cup flour
¾ cup whole wheat flour
1 tbsp baking powder
¼ tsp salt
1 Ataufo (honey) mango, peeled and diced

1. Preheat oven to 400F, line 16 muffin cups with paper liners.
2. In a large bowl, combine rice, tahini, egg, honey and milk.
3. Stir in flours, baking powder and salt until just moistened.
4. Bake for 15 - 20 minutes.

Amount Per Serving
Calories: 199.7
Total Fat: 7.3 g
Cholesterol: 13.3 mg
Sodium: 21.2 mg
Total Carbs: 31.7 g
Dietary Fiber: 2.3 g
Protein: 4.6 g

Still on my muffin-making kick while my mom was away in Texas, and without any “good excuse” to hit the shops, I turned back to the random bits in my fridge for answers. If you remember the super-flavourful cranberry, honey and wine sauce I cooked down a little while back, I figured it, along with some cereal and dried cranberries, would make for some pretty healthy and delicious snacks for my dedicated “eaters”. Of course, that same sauce also had a shot of curry and thyme leaves too, but that fell by the wayside as I folded it into the grainy batter. If anything, it probably tempered the super-sweet factor of the honey and the pre-sweetened dried fruit, while adding a touch of “ooh la la” to the baked outcome. Of course, I’m sure this would have worked just as well with a can of the “whole-berry” stuff, but I’d take out the maple syrup in that case or you wind up with sticky-sweetness coating your mouth.

Completely Cran - Tastic Wholegrain Muffins
Makes 12
2 tbsp ground flax seed
1/3 cup warm water
1/2 cup quick-cooking oats
1/2 cup 100% Bran cereal (the twigs, not buds)
3/4 cup V8 V-Fusion® Pomegranate Blueberry juice blend (or 100% cranberry juice)
1/4 cup maple syrup
1 tbsp vanilla
1 tbsp fresh-grated ginger
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 cup (preferably homemade) whole-berry cranberry sauce
1/4 cup dried cranberries

1. Preheat oven to 350F, lightly spray a 12-cup muffin tin with nonstick coating.
2. In a small bowl, combine flaxseed and warm water. Set aside for 10 minutes.
3. In a large bowl, combine oats and bran cereal, the pour juice and syrup overtop and set aside 10 minutes.
4. Add vanilla, ginger and flax mixture to the soaked cereal and blend well.
5. Gently stir in flour, baking powder and baking soda.
6. Finally, gently fold in the cranberry sauce and dried cranberries.
7. Bake for 18-19 minutes. Cool 10 minutes in the pan before turning out.

Amount Per Serving
Calories: 146.5
Total Fat: 1.0 g
Cholesterol: 0.0 mg
Sodium: 57.4 mg
Total Carbs: 33.3 g
Dietary Fiber: 4.0 g
Protein: 3.3 g

What I've Learned

Cooking for kids - any kids - is always a touch and go experience. Sometimes, they blow you out of the water by scarfing down the most unlikely things. I remember the first time I ate dinner at my friend Lyndsey's house - I had never had asparagus before in my life (it was a "grownup" food that people assumed my 9-year-old tastebuds wouldn't take to) and so "didn't like it", but lo and behold what appeared before me at the table was a plate filled with two of the three things I believed that I detested: steamed rice (I know, weird) and - gasp! - asparagus. But it wasn't just asparagus, it had "stuff" on it - which I later discovered was the delectable goody known as Hollandaise. Needless to say, after that first bite, I was hooked. I cleaned my plate that night, and discovered by the end of it that it didn't even need the sauce... the rice, on the other hand got a bit more than a drizzle! So you can imagine my mom's look of shock when I came home proudly declaring my newfound love for the vegetable... as a kid where basically broccoli with a whack of butter or cheese sauce and Caesar salad were the only greens on my plate, an unadorned veggie was as alien to her eyes as it was to my tastebuds. But it was delicious - and obviously as the years went on I discovered a love for almost every root, stalk, leaf and fruit out there.

But then you have those kids that, no matter what you try to give them, it's a no-go. My sister? It's like pulling teeth to get anything healthyish into her. Those boxes of Mac and Cheese that have pasta with cauliflower in them but "tastes like white pasta"? Forget it. Ditto on the whole wheat stuff - the glare she'd give you would send you running for the hills. The "smart pasta" and "white whole wheat" Wonder bread get similarly snubbed. She will eat peas, baby carrots, the occasional apple and tiny salad, but it's been my experience that it only ever happens when they have been prepared for her. You'd think that it would make just making everything from scratch the only way to have anything she likes on the menu... but again, not so much. Apart from occasional waffles, scrambled eggs, broiled plain chicken and maybe a morsel of steak, nothing "homemade" masses muster. Boxes, cans and the frozen aisle are the way to her heart. She even passed up my mom's homemade red velvet cake for her last birthday in favour of a boxed mix and can of frosting! And if a cake is being made - you can bet she won't let me do it. The ones I do from the mixes apparently "taste weird", regardless of how closely I follow the directions.

Lady Marmalade

Ever found yourself with an ingredient or a random food in your pantry that you neither remember buying nor have a clue what to do with? Yup, that's what happens to me - about... every day. And usually it's not something like the cranberries from yesterday that I can rid myself of in a one-shot deal, but it's the cans of tuna, the wasabi powder and the tiny jars of "gift basket" jams and jellies I find in the pantry, long abandoned by the rest of the household. Or the tins of evaporated milk, the used-Once can of Ovaltine powder and the packages of cook and serve pudding that I find wasting away in my baker's nook. Periodically I do try to clean out the works, tossing ancient foodstuffs or those that should be learning to talk rather than be cooked, but I hate to waste things that are still "good" - even if I have no idea what I'll do with them, they become my new project elements. Come Hell or high water, I will figure out how to incorporate that random ingredient into a recipe!

It was exactly that line of thinking that brought me to making these two sweet treats. Somewhere along the course of last year, one of us had been gifted with a jar of guava jelly. Now, I don't mind guava jam, but I'm not big on toast these days given the whole issue with my GI tract gluten seems to give me, and nobody else in my family was about to touch the stuff (sigh, they don't know what they're missing!). I really didn't want to throw it out, but at the same time there was no way I'd find a gaggle of willing eaters for a lavish jam-filled cake or even a crostata type of pastry. Seems like I've become so popular at my mom's office that my treats have been eaten with a bit more gusto than most of the ladies' jeans were willing to accept. So I've had to put a bit of a damper on my idea generator, or at least the manifestation of it!

Regardless of their diets though, I do know that everyone at the office is quite fond of muffins. Particularly, if I can bring them something that matches the quality and spectacle of their cafeteria or the meeting caterer's goodies, the fact that I almost always add something healthy pushes me up a bit above the rest. These babies were inspired by these ones that I found on Pioneer Woman's site. I won't say they were adapted, per se, because that would be a lie... it was basically just a jumping off point I used for the basic ratios of flours : leavening : jam. So I don't wanna hear anything like this about me, okay? 

Phew. Okay, sorry about that. I think I need a muffin.

A Gift, Some Booze, and a Bit of Honey

My friend Johana recently gifted me with a partial bag of frozen cranberries. Now, she is not familiar with a lot of more "native" North American foods, being from Columbia and living in a Columbian household after immigrating to Canada. While she wasn't up on what cornmeal was (let alone cornbread - in any sense of the word), she is a wealth of information and great ideas and recipes that she considers commonplace at home. She came over around the holidays to discover what the deal was with those shortbread cookies I had talked her ear off about, and to learn how to make apple pie - something she had asked me about before. I had to default to my mom on those fronts... I might be a baker, and I am proud of my pies, but Mom is still the quintessential "benchmark" of perfection in my pastry kitchen. In exchange for the "lessons" she's be learning by my mother's side, my mom asked for Johana to show her how to make one of the meals I had talked her ear off about! I never did get down the full recipe, but I know there was rice, shrimp, peas, tomatoes, onion, garlic and a red pepper in there. Looked and smelled divine though!