Author Archives: Rachel

December 11, 2010

Chocolate Chip Muesli Cookies

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        I needed a treat yesterday. I needed something quick and sweet that also packed a powerful punch of nutrition. Bob’s Red Mill came to the rescue. I am completely in love with many of their products and frequently find excellent recipes on their bags. Bob’s Red Mill has never contacted me or anything and has nothing to do with this post.
        When I first bought supplies for the boat I accidentally ordered two cases of Bob’s Old Country Style Muesli. I meant to order one but must have added it to my Amazon list twice or something. Each case has 4 18oz bags. That’s a lot of cereal! It’s a good thing I like it! Really, using up all this muesli is no problem. My favorite cold breakfast mix is muesli soaked in plain yogurt and a little milk overnight, with banana and maybe some flaxseed meal and pumpkin added in the morning.
        Then of course there’s the cookies. The recipe on the back of this particular Bob’s Red Mill package is for Chocolate Chip Muesli Cookies. I made them once as soon as I discovered this and they were quite tasty. Without added butter or oil, they are definitely healthy treats. Of course, I moved on to other cookie recipes. I have kind of a short attention span when it comes to these things.
        A few weeks ago I snagged a bag of peanut flour at Trader Joe’s. I had read about peanut flour in various places and was anxious to give it a try. For some reason, my brain went back to the Chocolate Chip Muesli Cookies and presented them as ideal candidates for a peanut flour experiment. The recipe calls for very little flour so replacing all of it with peanut flour seemed like an excellent idea. I hoped to end up with a peanut buttery cookie with all kinds of muesli goodness. That’s almost exactly what I got and yesterday’s treat craving was totally satisfied.
        I say almost because I didn’t bake the cookies as cookies. For purely practical reasons, I spread the dough on my quarter baking sheet and made bars. That way I didn’t have to scoop and bake 3 or 4 mini-batches of cookies while the oven heated the boat to 90 million degrees. A silly measuring mistake also contributed to the less-than perfect cookie bars. I misread the recipe and added 3/4 cup of applesauce instead of 2/3. It was kind of a heaping 3/4 cup too, since I didn’t want to leave a spoonful of applesauce in the jar! The added liquid made a batter rather than a dough and turned out rather moist bars. They’re still totally edible and delicious. They just kind of fall apart in your hands.
        The peanut flour was perfect. Alongside the texture of the muesli, the peanut flour produces a rich cookie with plenty to chew on. I think these would be great as big breakfast cookies. I cut my sheet into12 bars but next time I think I’ll make 12 big cookies.

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Chocolate Chip Muesli Cookies
(From Bob’s Red Mill)

1 cup muesli
3/4 cup whole wheat flour (or try peanut flour!)
2/4 cup applesauce
3/4 cup brown sugar
6 oz package chocolate chips (I threw in a handful of carob chips instead)
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 egg

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
Sift together flour, baking soda, and salt.
In a separate bowl, blend applesauce, sugar, and vanilla. Beat in egg.
Add flour mixture to bowl.
Stir in muesli and chocolate chips.
Drop by tablespoonfuls (or more for larger cookies) onto a lightly greased cookie sheet.
Bake at 375 for 10-12 minutes.

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December 6, 2010

Buckwheat Coffeecake Muffins

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        First: as muffins go, these are way up there on my list of favorites. They’re easy to make, contain some unique ingredients, and are a healthier alternative to rich coffeecake. Before I get to the muffins, though, I’ll share a long overdue egg-related item.
        This town’s little bare-shelved market with brown lettuce and dusty cans was a sad stand-in for a grocery store. That’s where I scrounged minimal supplies for dinner yesterday: frozen spinach, a red pepper, bread, and eggs. With those ingredients, a new egg sandwich was born! It was way, way too dark for pictures so I have no evidence. There will be future incarnations of the baked egg sandwich, though. It was just what I’d been craving: heaps of sauteed greens topped with eggs and sandwiched between pieces of rye bread. The whole thing went in the oven in sandwich form and the eggs cooked under their bread tops.

        Now, on to the sweets. Before I started on dinner, I went to work on a recipe I’ve had in my ‘to make’ pile for a while. When I spotted this Buckwheat Coffeecake recipe on my bag of buckwheat flour it seemed too unusual and potentially scrumptious to ignore. Buckwheat is great in pancakes but coffeecake was a new one to me. I was also intrigued by the graham cracker crumb topping for this cake. Graham crackers, butter, and brown sugar are undeniably good. Crisped in the oven on top of a cake they’re dreamy.
        I turned the original Buckwheat Coffeecake recipe into muffins for two reasons: practicality and my obsession with muffins. Handing Lee a muffin when he’s at the helm of the boat on one of the recent 30 degree mornings is much easier than serving cake. I reduced the crumbly topping by a lot, making my version a bit healthier than the original. The graham cracker crumbs are still buttery, sweet, and messy.
        I realize that plain, brown muffins aren’t particularly Christmasy. They don’t sparkle, include candy canes or ginger, and there’s nothing red or green about these muffins. I did add a subtle Christmas hint with a sprinkle of nutmeg. In fact, buckwheat and nutmeg produce a deep, rich flavor that makes me think of warm fires and pine-scented living rooms. With cup of Trader Joe’s Vanilla & Cinnamon Black Tea (my current favorite), any frigid morning on the boat feels cozy.
        I am including the original recipe as well as my muffin version. This is one of those cases where I should have probably made the original first so I would know what I had changed. Maybe Christmas morning at my mom’s new house would be a good opportunity to try the unaltered coffeecake.

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I still haven’t figured out how to get my (hopefully temporary) camera to take pictures that aren’t blurry!

Buckwheat Coffeecake
From Bouchard Family Farm Buckwheat Flour package (a Maine product)

1/2 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
3 teaspoons baking powder
3 tablespoons oil
1/2 cup buckwheat flour
1/2 cup all purpose flour

Topping:
1 cup graham cracker crumbs
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup melted butter

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Beat eggs, sugar, and baking powder in a bowl.
Add oil and flours and mix till well blended.
Pour batter into greased 8x8x2 pan.
Mix ingredients for topping and sprinkled over batter.
Bake at 350 degrees for 45-50 minutes.

Buckwheat Coffeecake Muffins (makes 10 muffins)
Adapted from the recipe above

1/2 cup brown sugar
1 egg
3 teaspoons baking powder
1/3 cup unsweetened applesauce
1/2 cup buckwheat flour
1/2 cup white whole wheat flour
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

Topping:
3 graham cracker sheets (6 squares) made into crumbs
2 tablespoons melted butter
1 heaping tablespoon brown sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Beat egg, sugar, applesauce and baking powder in a bowl.
Combine flours and nutmeg in a small bowl.
Add flour mixture to wet ingredients and stir till just blended.
Pour batter into 10 muffin cups, lightly oiled or with silicone liners.
Mix ingredients for topping and sprinkled over muffins. There should be enough to cover the tops of all 10 muffins.
Bake at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes or until the topping is golden brown.

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December 1, 2010

Fresh cranberry bread

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        Yes, I am still here. Lots of activity, visiting friends, and miles of Intracoastal Waterway without internet got in the way of posting for the past week. Oh, and I dropped my camera in the water, so that kind of put a damper on blogging. I’ve been itching to bake and dying to catch up on everyone’s Thanksgiving weekend posts. Really though, I can’t complain. Lee and I spent a couple of days playing in North Carolina with some friends who live here. We ate delicious, local food in Carrboro and saw the inland sights before heading south on the ICW again.
        It has been a damp couple of days and, as of Monday, we are unable to charge the boat’s batteries due to another engine problem. That means absolute minimal power usage – no lights last night, no heater, and no computers. However, the propane switch that allows me to use the stove and oven is worth the power. Yesterday I succumbed to my hankering for festive baking. It’s officially time for winter/Christmas foods!

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This is what North Carolina looks like from a boat.

        Hours of brainstorming as we motored down the canal led to a fuzzy idea for bread using the raw cranberries I bought last week. When I searched my cookbooks for a quick bread recipe to start with I was amazed to find almost the exact bread I wanted to make. The Horn of The Moon Cookbook recipe for Cranberry Bread pairs raw berries with orange juice for a sweet-tart loaf. The recipe sounded fabulous but I wanted something a little different.
        A little less honey, different flours, orange zest, and applesauce instead of orange juice produced a cranberry bread different from anything I’ve had before. It is very dense but not in a bad way. The loaf is still moist and it’s chewy in a way that reminds me of mochi cakes. I’m guessing the spelt flour is the main culprit for my bread’s unusual texture. As far as taste, look no farther for a harmony of sweet honey and tart cranberries. I wasn’t sure what to expect from the fresh berries but they delivered such a perfect punch that I will add more next time I make this. There will surely be a next time!
        As far as the drowned camera goes, I am now in the market for a DSLR. Our replacement camera is a waterproof camcorder, which isn’t so great for close-up food shots. At least there will be videos in my future! For now, I literally ended up with one slightly less blurry picture out of many, many blurry ones.

Fresh Cranberry Bread
Adapted from Horn of the Moon Cookbook by Ginny Callan

1 1/2 cups white whole wheat flour (or all purpose. This is what I had)
1 1/2 cups spelt flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1/2 cup honey
3/4 cup applesauce
1/2 cup milk
zest from one medium-sized orange
1 1/4 cup chopped raw cranberries
optional: 3/4 cup chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Mix the flours, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl.
In a separate bowl, beat the eggs, then stir in the rest of the wet ingredients (honey through orange zest).
Add wet ingredients to flour mixture, stirring until just combined.
Fold in cranberries and nuts (if using).
Pour batter into lightly oiled 9X5 inch loaf pan or several smaller loaf pans (I used two mini-loaf pans, two mini-bundt pans, and a muffin cup for the extra batter).
Bake in a 350 degree oven for 45 minutes.
Cool for 10 minutes in pans, then remove to cool on a wire rack.

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November 22, 2010

Millet pudding in the pressure cooker

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Me, pondering half a milk crate on Assateague Island.

I really need one of these to carry groceries on my bike!

        I’d like to invent a new meal, like brunch, but not quite. If brunch is somewhere between breakfast and lunch, what would you call a breakfast-dessert combination? I realize that several other meals come between breakfast and dessert so they’re not adjacent time wise. Still, many of us like to start and end the day with something sweet. Among these sweet dishes, a few gems can show up on either the breakfast table or the dessert tray: coffee cakes, pastries, waffles…okay, so maybe there are a lot of really unhealthy breakfasts out there that are actually just dessert in disguise. There are also treats nutritious enough to be morning fuel and stand in as healthful, sweet-tooth satisfying desserts.

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        This pudding is one such treat. A creamy, whole-grain, slightly sweet bowl of mush may not sound like dessert but believe me, it’s heavenly. It’s not particularly photogenic, as you can see, but it tastes much better than it looks! Rice pudding lovers everywhere must give millet a try. With extra cooking and plenty of liquid, millet breaks down into a starchy soup that naturally congeals to make a perfect pudding. It’s nutty flavor pairs well with warm spices and milk – dairy and non-dairy alike. I’ve never made rice pudding but it’s been on my list for a while. Yesterday I was craving something different in the pudding category and remembered a millet congee I’d made last winter. While not a dessert, the congee had an amazing texture and could have gone in either a sweet or savory direction. Couldn’t millet make a nice a pudding, too? After a little research, I came up with a millet pudding recipe that uses a pressure cooker. With a little adaptation, I had a version that suited me and my ingredients.

        I am just beginning to explore the joys of my pressure cooker. It was a birthday present from Lee, who knows the benefits of quick, efficient cooking. I have successfully made a couple batches of brown rice that came out beautifully, required a fraction of the conventional cooking time, and freed up the stove top for me to prepare the rest of the meal. The amount of time it takes for the pressure to drop after cooking is just enough for a stir fry.

        The pressure cooker worked very well for this pudding. The rice pudding recipe in the booklet that came with the cooker does things a little differently. It calls for cooking the rice in one pressure session, then adding the milk, raisins, etc. and pressure cooking everything to make the pudding. That seemed like an overly involved process for a simple dessert and I’m getting stingy with the propane as our cylinder gets low. I went with a throw everything in the pot and cook it once technique. I’ll try making a non-pressure cooker version and post the conventional method when I do.

        I intended to add a cinnamon stick to the mixture before cooking but completely forgot until the pot was all sealed up. Instead, I stirred in a teaspoon of cinnamon after the pudding was cooked and it added a perfect hit of spice. Add a cinnamon stick as I originally intended or put the ground spice in at the beginning if you’d like. The pudding gets just a bit of sweetness from the dates. It was just about perfect for me but adding a few more dates would bump up the natural sweetness. Lee topped his pudding with agave nectar so we both got our dessert the way we liked it.

Millet Pudding for dessert or breakfast)
Adapted from
Makes 4 servings

2/3 cup millet
1 cup milk of choice
1/2 cup water
3 pitted dates, chopped (or more, for a sweeter result)
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Rinse millet and place it in a large metal bowl that will fit inside your pressure cooker.
Add milk, water, vanilla, and dates, stirring everything together.
Add 1 cup of water to the pressure cooker and place the rack in the bottom (my P.C. slightly elevated metal grate for elevating things off the bottom of the pot).
Cover the bowl securely with foil and place it on the rack in the pressure cooker.
Secure the lid on the cooker, put the pressure regulator on top, and place over a high heat burner.
When the pressure regulator begins to rock slightly, start a timer for 11 minutes. Adjust heat down or up to keep regulator rocking gently.
After 11 minutes, turn off the heat and remove the pressure cooker from the burner. Let it cool on it’s own (on mine, the release valve for the lid pops up when the cooker has cooled sufficiently).
Remove the pressure regulator, carefully open the lid and use tongs or hot pad holders to take out the inner bowl.
Stir in the cinnamon and mush up the pudding to help break up the millet and dates, distributing the fruit sweetness throughout and making the dish more pudding-like.
Spoon into individual bowls and top with something tasty (whipped cream, a sprinkle of cinnamon and/or nutmeg, chopped nuts, coconut butter, agave nectar, honey, maple syrup…the list of possible toppings goes on and on). Refrigerate individual servings to save them for later. I think I like mine cold!

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