Low fat, high fiber....chicken?

Oven-fried chicken - made January 7, 2011

This may be one of the healthier things you'll see on my blog...as long as you ignore the butter with mashed potatoes and cheddar muffin.  But the corn and the chicken leg are healthy!  Actually, I wasn't even following a recipe with this and did it on a whim as I pictured putting together something like a KFC meal I used to eat before I stopped going to fast food.

I was having one of those use-what-I-have-on-hand days and this fit the bill.  I had buttermilk I needed to use before it expired so I soaked a package of chicken legs in buttermilk overnight like my other recipe had me do.  Except, instead of frying it, I oven baked it and skipped all that oil.  For the coating, I crushed Fiber One cereal with a rolling pin and coated the chicken legs in the crumbs after letting the excess buttermilk drip off.  No egg, no flour, just Fiber One and some random spices I threw in.  The main motivation for using the Fiber One was I bought the cereal thinking it was healthy. And it is. One 1/2 cup serving only has 60 calories and a whopping 14 grams of fiber.  Which would've been great except I didn't like the taste.  I had tried a different Fiber One cereal and been fine with it but couldn't make myself like the original version.  After trying a serving, I can safely check "eat bark" off my bucket list.

But I didn't want the cereal to go to waste so I figured I would try it as chicken coating.  Cornflakes can do it, why not Fiber One?  It actually didn't turn out half bad.  The coating made it crispy and the cereal is already the color of golden brown chicken so all you really had to do was cook the inside.  Protein and fiber - what a deal.

Cheddar Muffins

Cheddar Muffins - made January 7, 2011 from How to Bake by Nick Malgieri (book #34)

I can also call these "the muffins that set off my smoke alarm".  In my defense I followed the recipe baking instructions exactly - oven at 450 degrees and bake for 20-25 minutes.  I checked them just before 20 minutes and the oven was smoky.  Not a good sign, especially when my smoke alarms are uber sensitive and it took several minutes of frantically fanning a dish towel at the smoky air and throwing open a window and 2 French doors to clear the smoke.  Fortunately I took them out when they were only starting to think about scorching and were merely on the slightly overdone side.  That's the cheddar cheese protesting the high temp.  I don't know whether my oven was exceptionally strong or 450 degrees is simply too hot when baking anything with cheese (I think it's the latter).

It's not uncommon for muffins to be baked at a high temperature since that's what gives them that initially "spring" and high muffin top to activate the leavening in the baking powder.  But when you have cheese in them, some of which is at or near the top of the muffin cavity, it might be inevitable that they'll burn if you don't take them out sooner rather than later.

I made half this recipe since I didn't need that many muffins.  The key to tender muffins is to handle them as little as possible so always mix muffin batter with a fork, mix your dry ingredients first then add the wet ingredients (already mixed together) all at once.  I had to add a little more milk than the recipe called for as the batter still had flour pockets and I didn't want to mix them in to the point that the batter became overmixed.

For the most part, I did like these muffins....once I took off the over-toasted bits.  The outside was crunchy and the inside had a nice soft but chewy texture you can get from a good cheese bread.  They're not as fragile or soft as the cheddar biscuits from Red Lobster or as buttery but they had a good flavor.  Next time I make them, I'm going to lower the oven temp to 400 degrees and check them early and often.  Properly made, I think they'd make a nice bread accompaniment to a meal.

2 ½ cups bleached all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 ½ teaspoons salt

8 tablespoons (1 stick) cold unsalted butter

1 cup coarsely grated sharp cheddar cheese (about 4 ounces)

2 large eggs

¾ cup milk

One 12-cavity muffin pan with paper liners

1.     Set a rack at the middle level of the oven and preheat to 450˚F. (You might want to play it safe and put it at 400 degrees instead.)

2.     Combine the dry ingredients in a mixing bowl.

3.     Cut the butter into 12 pieces, add to the dry ingredients, and rub in until the mixture resembles fine meal.  Stir in the cheese.

4.     Whisk the eggs into the milk and stir into the dry ingredients to form a very soft batter.  Do not overmix or the muffins will be tough.

5.     Spoon the batter evenly into the lined pan.

6.     Bake the muffins for 20 to 25 minutes, until they are golden and firm.  Do not overbake or they will be dry.

Buttermilk Cake with Butter Sauce

Buttermilk Cake with Butter Sauce - made January 6, 2011 from Cakes to Die For by Bev Shaffer

Earlier this week I discovered my local library which was just a little less than 3 miles from me and therefore was a nice walk (about 5.5 miles roundtrip).  Although I'm quite the book lover, I haven't frequented the library as much as I should, preferring to buy books from amazon or get them from paperbackswap.com.  However, as I enter into a state of preferring to minimize my "stuff", especially the books that threaten to overwhelm me because I've accumulated so many of them, borrowing from the library seemed like the way to go.  I was wandering through the stacks looking for books on my wish list when this one caught my eye, prominently displayed as it was in the New Books section.  I had Brownies to Die For by the same author and I couldn't resist thumbing through the pages for any cake recipes I wanted to try.  Needless to say, this one came home with me for the next couple of weeks.  Technically, since I don't own it, I can't count it in my baking challenge so we'll just consider this a brief detour.

I've hardly ever borrowed cookbooks from the library before and now I'm asking myself why I didn't think to do so before.  Maybe because my acquisitive nature wanted to own the book instead of only borrowing it for brief periods of time.  I should've learned better in kindergarten.  I have so many cookbooks that I'm hardly likely to ever bake through them all.  Yet I still cling to them and sometimes acquire even more.  I need to get over that because in some cases, borrowing makes more sense.  Not only does it minimize the "too much stuff" issue but it's a good way to test drive a cookbook to see if you really like it before you make the commitment of purchasing it.  And if you don't, you still can try it by borrowing it.  Food for thought.

This is the first recipe I've tried from this book and I must say, I really liked it.  If you like pound cakes and butter, this is a good cake.  What sets it apart from the usual pound cake is the butter "sauce" which actually hardens into a glaze, like the sugar glaze on a cake doughnut.  I love the texture contrast of that when you're biting into a slice of moist, soft cake.  My Bundt pan has seen better days and despite my greasing it well, the cake didn't come out of the pan intact.  I still covered it with the butter sauce and let the moistness and sweetness set in.  Yum.

ETA - just had to add, this tasted even better the next day.  Just sayin'....

3 cups unbleached all purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

2 cups granulated sugar

1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature, cut into pieces
4 large eggs

1 cup buttermilk

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Butter sauce

¾ cup granulated sugar

1/3 cup unsalted butter, cut into pieces

3 tablespoons water

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1.     Heat the oven to 325⁰F.  Grease and flour a 10” tube pan or 12-cup Bundt pan, tapping out excess flour.

2.     In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, salt, baking powder, and baking soda.

3.     In a large bowl of an electric mixer, beat the sugar and butter until light and fluffy.  With mixer on low, blend in the buttermilk and vanilla.  Scrape bowl.

4.     Alternately beat in the eggs, one at a time, with the flour mixture until blended.

5.     Spread batter into prepared pan.  Bake for 52 to 74 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

6.     For the butter sauce: in a small saucepan, combine the sugar, butter and water.  Whisk over medium heat until butter melts; do not boil mixture.  Remove from heat and stir in vanilla. 

7.     Prick warm cake in pan 12 times with a long-tined fork (a skewer would also work).  Slowly pour butter sauce over the cake.  Cool pan completely on a wire rack.

8.     When ready to serve, run a knife around the inside edge of pan and remove the cake.  Serves 10-12.

Potato Onion Frittata

Potato Onion (and Ham) Frittata - made January 5, 2011, adapted from Mary Engelbreit's Queen of the Kitchen (book #33)

I've never made a frittata before but once I looked through a few recipes, it looked pretty simple to make and seemed just like a more uppity version of scrambled eggs.  Which I love so I thought I'd try my hand at it, especially since I'm cutting back on the baking temporarily but still have to eat so I might as well cook.

I got the original recipe from the Mary Engelbreit book but I took so many liberties with it that I figure I might as well write up what I did.  It was actually quite liberating not to follow a recipe so closely and just make it up as I go, especially as I was trying to use the ingredients I had on hand.  Now I have a better understanding of cooks on the "hot side" who can make it up as they go and come up with their own creations.  Although I think I will still always prefer baking and the more exact nature of it.

But I did like how this turned out.  The eggs were fluffy and the potatoes were just the right, soft texture.  The original recipe called for parsley but I'm glad I substituted basil for it since I prefer the taste of basil to parsley.  I wasn't as wild about the onions but mainly because I don't care for onions unless I can't taste them.  Next time I might cut back on them and add more ham.  I couldn't really taste the cheese but assume they added to the creamy texture of the frittata.  Check this when it's in the oven as you only want to bake it until the eggs in the middle are just set.  Otherwise the edges will be overdone.

1 large Russet potato, peeled and sliced into rounds
2 tablespoons butter
1/2 large yellow onion (you can use all of the onion if you love onion), chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
8 slices ham, cut into 1/2" squares
3 tablespoons chopped fresh basil
salt and freshly ground pepper
8 large eggs
1/4 cup half and half
1/4 cup grated cheese (your choice - I used a 6-cheese blend)

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
2. In a large saucepan, cover the potato with salted water and bring to a boil over high heat.  Cook for 10 minutes or until tender.  Drain and set aside.
3. In a 10-inch ovenproof skillet, melt the butter over medium heat.  Add the onion and garlic and cook, stirring occasionally, for 10 minutes or until softened.  Add the potato, ham, basil, salt and pepper and cook, stirring, until most of the liquid has evaporated.
4. In a medium bowl, beat together the eggs, half and half and the cheese.  Pour into the skillet and stir until mixed.  Cook over medium heat, about 3 minutes, until the eggs just begin to set.  Place the skillet in the oven and cook for about 10 minutes or until the eggs are set.  Let stand at room temperature, loosely covered, for 5 minutes.
5. To serve, with a spatula loosen the frittata from the skillet, invert onto a platter, and cut into 6 wedges.

New Year's Day 2011

This is traditionally the time of year when the world goes on a diet and makes the famous resolutions to eat better and lose weight.  I applaud any and all efforts along those lines.  Unfortunately this isn't the type of blog to help with that unless you're okay consuming only virtual calories.  You'll notice there's nothing low-fat, low-cal on here and I don't bake with unnatural sweeteners: no splenda or stevia, just good ol' sugar.  And full fat butter and wheat flour with gluten.  The funny part is, the question I'm asked most often is not how to bake a particular item but "how come you don't weigh 300 pounds?"

I usually cut back on baking in January out of respect for people "dieting" as I didn't want to sabotage anyone's healthy eating efforts.  I myself used to be one of those people who would be fired up at the new year to drop the last 10 lbs, eat more veggies (or any), and cut back on rich, fattening foods.  Which always seemed easier to do after holiday feasts.  Then it got less easy as the month of January wore on and the dim memory of Christmas eating got more and more dim. By February I was back to my old ways.

In recent years, I've gotten honest enough with myself to finally break that cycle.  Successful weight loss and maintenance isn't about getting fired up for a short time, dropping a few pounds then going back to old habits that made you gain the weight in the first place.  It's about establishing new habits over the long term.  The only way you can do that is to make small changes, stick to them, make further small changes, keep sticking to them and over the long-term, those small changes actually become big changes that are now second nature.

Case in point - if you're not currently very active, joining a gym and making a resolution to workout 7 days a week is a pretty drastic change from your normal lifestyle.  You might be able to keep it up for a few weeks or longer but the first day you're too tired to exercise or run out of time, are you going to throw the towel in because you missed a day or keep pressing on?  The easier thing to do is focus on being more active all day.  Definitely get a workout in (that'll never hurt) but also go for a walk as often as possible, move around and do activities instead of sitting in front of the TV or a computer.  Move.  One of the things I like about where I live is I can always go for a walk and I can walk some of my errands, primarily to the grocery store, the post office, and, if I have enough time, even the library.  I consciously try not to take my car out at least 1 day a week and just walk instead.  I take the stairs everywhere, I park farther away than necessary, and I look for ways to stay active throughout the day.  Not to say that I'm not a couch potato sometimes but it's not all the time and it's not day after day.

Portion control is another key element.  I've long ago given up the "Snackwell syndrome" - you know, where you eat a lot of low-calorie, low-fat food because you think they're healthier or lower calorie.  Perhaps they are but not if you eat a lot of it.  Even low-calorie foods add up in calories. Personally, I'd rather eat 300 calories of a small portion of something rich and satisfying than 600 calories of something larger but sub-optimal in taste that leaves me unsatisfied and wishing I'd eaten something else.  If I'm going to have empty calories, they're going to be the best empty calories I can have.  I just don't have a lot of it and I don't have it all the time.  Food is meant to be enjoyed and savored, not give you a sick, full feeling or looked at as something that has the power to make you unhappy because it causes your clothes to become tighter.  It doesn't jump into your mouth on its own.  Make a conscious choice about what you're going to enjoy and how much.  Then stop and savor for another day.

Happy New Year!

Pecan Shortbread Cookies

Pecan Shortbread Cookies - made December 25, 2010 from the Sweet Melissa Baking Book by Melissa Murphy (already counted as book #4)

I had liked almost every recipe from this book so the results from this one was a trifle disappointing.  It's your basic Mexican Wedding Cake-type of cookie so it was easy to make and I thought it would turn out okay.  Couple of things that went wrong for me: 1) it called for too many nuts with too little dough.  By the time I had rolled the dough into cookie balls, I still had a small handful of nut bits left but no dough to hold them together.  Not a show stopper but still....

Issue #2) While the taste was pretty good, they came out too fragile to roll well in powdered sugar and even to eat.  They crumbled instead even after they had cooled and you picked them up.  That could partly be my fault since I didn't bake them as long as the recipe said to.  Baking them for that long seemed like they'd be more of a sandy texture than the melt-in-your-mouth texture so I took them out early, when the bottoms were barely golden.  That didn't work out as I had hoped. You can see I couldn't roll them in the powdered sugar like with a more firm cookie by how clumpy the powdered sugar looks over it.  I sprinkled the sugar over the cookies instead of rolling the cookies in the sugar and it still didn't look right. One of my nieces was taking a bite out of one and it literally crumbled through her fingers and dropped to the ground.  While it made for a good laugh, that's not normally how I want my cookies to behave! I guess that'll teach me about risk taking.  I should've stuck to my old recipe for Buttery Tea Balls.

I haven't baked anything new since Christmas Day (just the tried and true stuff) so I close 2010 with my final failure of this holiday baking season.  Live and learn.  Time to explore more new territory (and 170+ more cookbooks) in 2011.

10 tablespoons cold, unsalted butter, cut into pieces

¼ cup sugar

¼ teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 ¼ cups shelled pecan pieces, finely chopped

2 cups confectioners’ sugar, for coating

1.     Position a rack in the center of your oven.  Preheat the oven to 325˚F.  Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper or aluminum foil.

2.     In the bowl of a food processor fitted with the metal blade, pulse the butter, sugar and salt to combine.  Add the vanilla, and pulse to combine.  Add the flour and pecans, and pulse to combine.  Remove the dough from the mixer.

3.     Using a small cookie scoop or a tablespoon, form balls and place 1 ½ inches apart onto the prepared cookie sheets.  Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, or until the bottoms of the cookies are lightly golden.  Remove to a wire rack to cool.

4.     Put the confectioners’ sugar in a medium bowl.  When the cookies are almost cool, roll them in sugar.

Peanut Butter Brownies

Peanut Butter Brownies - made December 21, 2010 from The Little Red Barn Baking Book (book #32)

I underbaked these so they almost tasted like peanut butter fudge.  Or I have fudge on the brain since I still haven't made one successfully in my mind.  But these were pretty good and I like the two-layer combination look.  I didn't go exactly halfsies on the batter and made the peanut butter layer a little more than the chocolate layer.  No deliberate reason other than I wasn't that precise is halving the batter.  The chocolate layer looked a little nubbly, maybe because there wasn't enough base batter to go with the melted chocolate.  Still, both layers tasted good.  The only change I would recommend though is to bake in an 8-inch pan instead of a 9-inch one.  The 9-inch pan made the brownies a little thin and, as mentioned, I'm prejudiced against thin brownies.  Making this in a smaller pan would've enhanced the layered look a bit better.  Just remember to adjust for baking time and possibly bake them a little longer.  But not too long as the moist, fudgy texture makes these good. 

4 ounces semisweet chocolate

½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter

2/3 cup all-purpose flour

½ teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

¾ cup granulated sugar

½ cup light brown sugar, tightly packed

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

½ cup crunchy peanut butter

1/2 cup mini chocolate chips (add to the peanut butter layer if you wish) 

1.     Preheat the oven to 350⁰F.  Butter and flour a 9-inch square pan. (I recommended using an 8-inch pan.)

2.     Melt the chocolate with half the butter in a double boiler set over hot water.  Stir to combine, then let cool for a few minutes. 

3.     Sift the flour, baking powder, and salt into a large bowl.

4.     In a separate bowl, beat the remaining butter with the granulated and brown sugars until pale and fluffy.  Add the eggs, one by one, beating after each addition.  Add the vanilla.  Gently fold in the flour.

5.     Spoon half of the batter into another bowl.  To one half, had the peanut butter and to the other half, add the melted chocolate.  Spread the peanut butter batter in the prepared pan to form an even layer.  Spread the chocolate batter evenly over the top.  Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until set in the middle.  A toothpick inserted in the center should come out with a few moist crumbs on it.

Makes 16-20 brownies