Tag Archives: recipes

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Vanilla rhubarb ice cream

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Yesterday Maui and I made ice cream together! I was so excited to make ice cream again. I found out she hadn’t seen Labyrinth (imagine) so we watched that while we waited for the ice cream to finish.

Before you get started: These instructions are written for using a Kitchen Aid ice cream maker. You need to freeze the bowl at least 24 hours in advance, and make the base of the ice cream the day before.

Yields: 16 servings of approx 120 mL (½ cup) per serving

Ingredients:

  • 590 mL Half and Half (2½ cups)
  • 8 egg yolks
  • 200 g granulated white sugar (1 cup)
  • 590 mL Heavy Cream 35% (2½ cups)
  • 1 vanilla bean, split and scrapped
  • 0.5 g salt (⅛ tsp)
  • 200 g chopped rhubarb (2 cups) + 25 g white sugar (2 tbsp)

Instructions:

1. In a sauce pan on Medium, heat the Half and Half until it’s steaming but not boiling. Stir often. Remove from heat and set aside.

2. In mixing bowl, whip the yolks and sugar until just combined.

3. Gradually add the heated mix to the sugar, (I used a strainer since a skim developed). Once all the hot mixture has been added and the mixture is combined, return it to the sauce pot.

4. Add the vanilla bean to the pot.

5. Cook on Medium until small bubbles form at the edge and mixture steams, don’t boil it.

6. Transfer to mixing bowl with a spout  (I strained it again), stir in whipping cream and salt. Using a bowl with a spout is the best thing you can do since you’ll be pouring this into a moving mixer later which you cannot stop as you pour.

7. Cover and chill overnight.

8. Half an hour before you’re ready to start the ice cream, turn the rhubarb into jam-like consistency. Put the chopped fruit and the sugar in a sauce pan, heat on Medium for a bit until it starts to break down, then keep on Low until it’s pulpy, stirring often. Once the fruit is broken down, set it aside.

9. Time to churn ice cream! Put the drive assembly in place and set the dasher into the frozen bowl. Turn mixer on to Speed 1 BEFORE you add the cooled mixture. Churn at least 20 minutes until the machine makes a clicking noise.

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Churn it up!

10. Spoon the rhubarb into the ice cream and stir a bit more.

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11. Store in air-tight container and freeze.

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Enjoy!

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Verdict:

Delicious!  I will add an extra cup of rhubarb next time, since I can’t see much pink in the ice cream. I can taste it but I was envisioning striations of fruit through the ice cream which didn’t really happen.

I will also churn the ice cream for longer, I found that the bottom of the bowl was still soupy and hadn’t firmed up.  That fixes itself once you freeze it, but to enjoy it right away I think you do need to churn it longer, or maybe risk stopping the bowl and using a spatula to scrape it up from the bottom?  I don’t know. Last time I stopped the bowl while ice cream making everything immediately froze to the side of the bowl.

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Raspberry cranberry muffins

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I am so glad my friend Mary turned me on to muffins for breakfast. SO DELICIOUS.

This recipe was adapted from Cat Can Cook’s amazing banana muffin recipe.

Time required: 30 min

Yields: 12

Cost per muffin: 45 cents

Total cost if you have none of the ingredients: $46

Ingredients:

  • 25 g Splenda
  • 2 eggs
  • 76 g unsalted butter, melted
  • 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
  • 4 oz water
  • 188 g flour
  • 5 g baking powder
  • 5 g baking soda
  • 0.5 g Half Salt or salt
  • 150 g frozen raspberries
  • 150 g frozen cranberries

Instructions:

  1. Pre-heat oven to 176°c / 350°f. Generously grease the muffin tin.
  2. In a mixer, combine all wet ingredients (except the fruit).
  3. In a new bowl, combine all dry ingredients.
  4. Gradually add dry to wet.
  5. Add the fruit. If you want blue muffins like me, beat the batter until it turns bright pink. Spoon into muffin tin.
  6. Bake 24 min and transfer to baking rack.

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Verdict:

I love this muffin recipe!! It’s so versatile, it makes fantastic banana muffins, blueberry muffins, and now these. I am in heaven.

 

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Blueberry muffins with carbalose flour

These were adapted from a Carbquik recipe by Chef Gregory Pryor. They taste a little like pancakes and that’s just awesome. Another Poon-friendly treat.

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Ingredients:

  • 250 g Carbuik
  • ⅔ cup almond milk, unsweetened
  • ½ cup to ¾ cup water, enough to make the batter goopy
  • 2 tbsp powdered Splenda
  • 1 egg
  • ¾ cup frozen blueberries

Directions:

  1. Pre-heat oven to 204°c / 400°f.
  2. Place muffin liners into muffin cups.
  3. Stir all ingredients together until combined, then add berries.
  4. Bake 16-20 min.

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Verdict:

I enjoyed these. The flavour reminds me of blueberry pancakes, win! Peeling the liners off was difficult, they were much easier to handle the next day. My next baking goal is to experiment with other types of sweeteners and see if they are better to work with compared to Splenda.

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Chocolate protein one-bite brownies

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Experiment # 2 was a success. I took a recipe posted to the Dr. Poon page called Phase 1 “Poonified” protein chocolate cupcakes by Cintia P. and made a few tweaks.

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Before you get started: I’m working with carbalose flour to reduce the net carbs in my baked goods. I used vanilla protein powder because I’ve got a 2 lb jar of the stuff and I don’t like it, and baking with it seemed like a good way to use it up.

Yields: 20

Cost per brownie: 13 cents

Total cost if you have none of the ingredients: $71.22

Ingredients:

Instructions:

  1. Pre-heat oven to 175°c / 350°f and put paper liners into mini muffin tin.
  2. Beat egg, vanilla, and half of the water. Reserve remaining water.
  3. Combine dry ingredients. Pour into wet, half at time.20160604_100319
  4. Mix in remaining water and stir until combined.
  5. Pour into muffin tin, filling about three quarters. 20160604_101021
  6. Bake 12 min then cool on rack. 20160604_102941

Verdict: These were very easy to make and I’m pleased with the flavour and consistency. The outer layer of the brownie stuck to the liner.

I think they’d be much better with chocolate protein powder, but I like drinking the chocolate so I’m stuck using the vanilla to get rid of it.  I might add double the amount of cocoa power perhaps.

So far baking with Carbquik seems easy and it’s a nice challenge to find recipes and adapt things to the Dr. Poon lifestyle.

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The pie that dared not speak its name

So after today, we’re never talking about this again. I made a pie crust with spelt flour, which has provided good results for my muffins, and terrible results in my cookies. Add pastry dough to the list of items I will never make with spelt again.

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The dough was very thick, and tore terribly while I was rolling it. I had planned to make two pies but gave up after rolling out the first. It was just way too difficult to work with.

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This pie was doomed from the start, Boyfriend Unit had a tough time coring the apples, they were very hard. The taste of the pastry wasn’t to my liking.

It’s not bad, I mean it’s apple pie so GET IN MY MOUTH, it’s just not what I’m accustomed to producing.  Back to the drawing board.

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Patty’s vegan muffins 2.0

This is the same recipe as the first vegan muffins with two minor additions. They turned out great for a healthy and delicious breakfast.

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I used the organic lemon extract I purchased at The Spice Trader, and added ground cinnamon. These were so good fresh out of the oven, Boyfriend Unit just woke up as they finished and we ate them for breakfast. The smelled so amazing.

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Vegan banana muffins, experiment # 2

I didn’t set out to make a vegan muffin. It just happened during the course of testing out ingredient substitutions.  This muffin had some improvements over the previous effort, the inside was a lot closer to a regular muffin than the 1st healthy banana muffin experiment.  But I’ve discovered something disheartening during these substitution tests.

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An ingredient that reduces calories will up the sodium or the fat, or an ingredient to replace dairy will raise the values I’m trying to lower.  It seems you can have one or the other, but not both.  (Not that I’ve tried everything, but based on my experiments so far, when something goes down, something else goes up.)  It’s rather annoying.

These new muffins weight in at:

nutrition

This is still much better than a muffin from a fast food restaurant, but it has more calories, fat, carbs, sodium, and sugar than it’s non-vegan predecessor.  Wuah!

Before you get started: There’s a thorough explanation on substituting flaxseeds for egg whites on this great resource Vegan Baking.

Time required: 30 min

Yields: 12

Total cost if you have none of the ingredients:  $45-ish

Cost per muffin: 52 cents

Ingredients:

  • 4 large bananas
  • 188 grams organic sprouted spelt flour
  • 25 grams granulated Splenda
  • 60 grams red palm oil + 4 oz water
  • 5 grams baking powder
  • 4 grams pure vanilla extract
  • 10 g ground flax seed + 1.5 oz warm water

Instructions:

  1. Pre-heat oven to 176°c or 350°f.  Grease the muffin tin well.

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2. Whisk warm water into the flaxseed and let stand 10 min.  It will turn into sludge. Yummy!

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3. Meanwhile mash the bananas, then beat in the Splenda, red palm oil, water, and vanilla.  Once the flaxseed sludge is ready, add it to the wet mixture and beat until combined.

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Wowzers this looks vile.

4. In a seperate bowl, stir the baking powder into the spelt flour, then add gradually to wet mixture.

5. Bake 24-26 minutes. Tah-dah!

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Verdict:

Loved these.  The consistency isn’t overly chewy like last time.  There’s a very slight graininess to them, which I suspect is the flaxseed.  The muffins rose quite high in the oven and collapsed to hockey puck height when they came out.

I let them sit out overnight and in the morning, the outside was firm but not hard, the inside was still moist.  This was definitely a muffin that impressed more when it was oven-fresh, but still good the next day.

I don’t foresee making them this way again due to the calorie and fat content. They were really good though!

Do you know of any ingredient substitutes that improve the nutritional values?

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Healthier banana muffins, experiment # 1

I went back to the drawing to work on the treasured banana muffins.  I opted to cut the Splenda by 50%, eliminate salt, use red palm oil in lieu of butter, use egg whites, and spelt flour again.

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Unlike blueberry trial # 4 which had a very thick batter with spelt flour, this batter was quite runny.  They took an extra 2 minutes to cook through, and they do feel very moist, with a chewy consistency.  These muffins did not rise very high.

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Boyfriend Unit noted that this time, he can’t detect the Splenda aftertaste that was present in the 2nd blueberry trial. Perfect!  These muffins clock in at:

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I am quite pleased with these muffins, but not ready to post a recipe.  I’m still looking into cutting the sodium so stay tuned.

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Success! Healthy muffins experiment # 4

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Very pleased to report the 4th experiment was a huge success!  I came up with a healthier alternative to a traditional blueberry muffin, and it tastes like a blueberry muffin.  It’s really good!  At this point I don’t even notice the odd colour.  I see one and think “delicious muffin get in my mouth”.

Thanks to Calorie Count I have the nutritional data again, and I notice the sodium is still fairly high, based purely on using baking soda.  No other ingredient has salt.  I want research further into leavening agents to see if anything can be done about that.

Just how healthy awesome is this muffin?

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The flavour not was sacrificed in the name of nutrition, to make this just required opening my mind to some new ingredients and getting more creative.  I compared my muffin to what you can buy at two popular fast food chains:

mcdonalds muffin

McDonald’s blueberry muffin

That is a lot of calories!  The salt in the next one is even more insane!

tim hortons muffin

Tim Horton’s blueberry muffin

After reading those charts, I’m even more excited about my muffins!  I learned a lot by experimenting to make a healthier muffin.  If you try this recipe, I suggest adding a little more water, my batter was very thick.

The spelt flour came from the Bulk Barn, and they have two types of spelt, the stone-ground spelt has way more calories (ha ha, get it?) than the sprouted spelt.  I used sprouted spelt.  I’m going to check what other brands are available locally though since there seems to be a big difference in the numbers of the flour.

Time required: 30 min

Yields: 12

Total cost if you have none of the ingredients: $45 ish

Cost per muffin: 52 cents

Ingredients:

  • 230 g frozen blueberries
  • 188 g organic sprouted spelt flour
  • 63 g egg whites
  • 60 g organic, unrefined red palm oil
  • 50 g Splenda granulated sucralose
  • 5 g baking soda
  • 4 oz water
  • 4 g pure vanilla extract, Lorann Madagascar Bourbon

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Instructions:

1.Grease the muffin tin.  (Grease it really well because mine stuck badly.)

2.Combine all of the wet ingredients (except the berries) with the Splenda.

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Something really awesome about baking by weight is that I used way less dishes!  All I needed to do was sit the mixing bowl on my scale, and add each ingredient one at a time until the desired weight. So easy!

3.Measure out the dry ingredients and add them to wet, gradually.

4.Stir in fruit and spoon into tray. They are an… alarming colour I’ve begun to refer to as “blinding chartreuse”.

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The batter was very thick.

5.Bake 20 min.

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6.Remove from tray immediately.

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So happy!

Verdict:

They tasted great!  We tried them with breakfast when they were fresh from the oven, and they were amazing.  However the real test of a muffin is once it’s cooled down.  I’ve yet to eat a baked good straight out of the oven that tasted bad.  These muffins were still very tasty once they cooled completely.

Boyfriend Unit says, “They’re delicious. Better eaten warm.  But still delicious.”

Once the muffins cooled the texture got crumbly. I believe this is caused by the spelt flour.  Future baking plans include looking into correcting the crumbliness, lowering the sodium content in the leavener, and find a flour with less calories.

Playlist: Walk the Moon – Shut up and dance

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Healthier muffins experiment # 3

Well this looks… appetizing.  But looks can be deceiving.

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Research into a healthier muffin continues, and now only one more ingredient needs to be replaced.  These muffins were made without butter.  The fat is provided by unrefined red palm oil, sold by Nutiva.  Before you rush out and buy some, something to consider.

PSA:

Not all red palm oil is created equal.  The production of red palm oil is responsible for rain forest destruction and destroying the habitats of orangutans in Southeast Asia.

Nutiva’s oil is grown and produced in Ecuador on small family farms.  They partner with Natural Habitats to ensure the growth and production of their product does not contribute to deforestation or habitat destruction.  Before you buy please look into where and how the oil is produced.

I searched around to find the substitution ratio, and found two different options:

  • 1:1, for 100 grams of butter use 100 grams of oil
  • use an 80% and 20% split to mimic the water content of dairy butter

I went with the 80/20 split, and it turned out great.

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The baking time was the same.  The texture was light, and soft.  There was no weird flavour.  They were an unpleasant shade of greenish-yellow, but check out that nutrition content!

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Boyfriend Unit also enjoyed these!  I asked him if this tastes like a weird health food, he said no, it’s a bit different from the muffins I’m used to, but it’s really good.

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This is starting to get fun.  I like figuring out how low can I get those numbers while still making it taste good.