Carrot Spice Muffins

While at my parents' house we made carrot muffins for breakfast one morning. The recipe is one that I have been working on for a while and finally gotten just right. The final touch was a bit of lemon juice, which complements the other flavors and helps the muffins to rise. These muffins take a bit more time for me to prepare than my other recipes because I have to grate the carrots by hand. However, if you're like my mom and have a food processor, the grating will take no time at all. My mom recommends using fat carrots, though, as the thin ones don't cooperate as well in the food processor.

Carrot Spice Muffins
makes 6 muffins

Ingredients:

• 1 large egg
• 2 Tbsp. canola oil
• 1/4 cup unsweetened applesauce
• 1/4 tsp. lemon juice
• 1 cup finely grated carrots, loosely packed into the measuring cup (about 3 or 4 medium-size carrots)
• 3/4 cup Bob's Red Mill gluten-free flour
• 2 Tbsp. granulated white sugar
• 1/8 tsp. sea salt
• 1/4 tsp. and 1/8 tsp. baking soda
• 1/4 tsp. cream of tartar
• 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Grease the muffin tin with Spectrum Organic shortening or canola oil. In a small bowl whisk together the egg, canola oil, applesauce, and lemon juice. Peel and finely grate the carrot; then add to the liquid ingredients. In a medium bowl stir together the flour, sugar, sea salt, baking soda, cream of tartar, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Make a hole in the middle of the dry ingredients and then pour the wet ingredients into the hole. Stir until you cannot see any more flour. Pour the batter into the muffin tin and bake for 15 minutes.

Charlottesville, VA

Last weekend Michael and I took a mini-vacation to the area around Charlottesville, VA to celebrate our ninth wedding anniversary while my parents watched the girls. This is the second year that we've gone to the Charlottesville region, and we feel like we've barely begun to explore all that there is to see and do, and especially all of the great places there are to go out to eat.

Each year for our anniversary we like to go out to one really fancy restaurant and have a wonderfully decadent meal including salad, main dish, wine, and dessert. Last year we enjoyed the food and atmosphere at L'etoile in downtown Charlottesville. This year we went to the Joshua Wilton House in Harrisonburg, Virginia. This restaurant is the best one we've gone to in quite some time. All of the food tasted great and the atmosphere of the restaurant was lovely. For Michael's main course he ordered his usual favorite, a filet mignon, which came with rosemary-garlic roasted potatoes, pan-roasted broccoli and a port wine reduction sauce. I was feeling adventurous and wanted to try something new, so I asked for the grilled duck breast with sweet potato puree, bacon-roasted asparagus, and a Pinot Noir fresh cherry glaze. Wow, was it good. We decided to complete the meal with a creme brulee for Michael and a mint chocolate pudding cake with raspberry sauce for me. The mint flavor was such a great addition that I want to try to replicate it at home by adding some mint extract to my current hot fudge pudding cake recipe.

Last year for our other dinner out Michael and I went to a Thai restaurant. There are several Thai restaurants in the Charlottesville area, so perhaps the next time we visit we'll try a different one. This year we went to an Indian restaurant, which was also quite good. And I just discovered another Indian restaurant in Charlottesville, so maybe we'll go there sometime, too.

The best surprise of the weekend was the Rise Pizza Works restaurant, which makes pizzas with gluten-free crusts, in addition to white and whole wheat crusts. Michael and I both liked our pizzas so much when we went there for lunch on Saturday that we went back on Sunday for more.

Rosemary Roasted Potatoes

We were at my parents' house last week enjoying their wonderful cooking. Sigh. Now that I'm back home and back to doing all of the cooking, I appreciate even more not having to cook as much last week. I took pictures of a couple of the dishes my parents made so that I could post the recipes here and make them again myself. The first one is a recipe for rosemary roasted potatoes. I was surprised at how simple the recipe is because the results are amazing. The other great thing about this recipe is that the ingredients are safe for everyone in our family.

Rosemary Roasted Potatoes
serves 4 adults

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 lb. small red or white potatoes, cut in half or quarters
  
• 2 Tbsp. olive oil
• 3/4 tsp. kosher salt
• 1/2 tsp. ground black pepper
• 2 or 3 cloves minced garlic
• 2 Tbsp. minced fresh rosemary (or 2 tsp. dried rosemary)

Instructions:

Follow the instructions on the link to the recipe. Toss the cut potatoes in the rest of the ingredients and then place them on a baking sheet. Roast the potatoes at 400 degrees for at least 1 hour, tossing 2 or 3 times.

Hamburgers

Hamburgers feel to me like one of those quintessential summer foods. I know that a recipe for hamburgers seems pretty basic, but I am very excited to find the following recipe in the Cook's Illustrated Summer Grilling 2010 special issue. It has solved a dilemma: how do you cook a hamburger enough to kill all of the bacteria without turning it into a dry hockey puck? If you add the following ingredients to your ground beef before forming it into hamburger patties, the hamburgers stay amazingly moist and flavorful, even when they are cooked until well done. The other thing that makes a big difference is using ground beef that is 80 percent beef and 20 percent fat. For hamburgers, I think the extra bit of fat is really worth it. I've adapted the recipe as follows:

Hamburgers
serves 4 adults

Ingredients:

• 1 slice of Ener-G tapioca bread
• 1 Tbsp. Lactaid milk
• 1/2 tsp. sea salt
• 1/2 tsp. ground black pepper
• 1/2 tsp. minced garlic
• 1/2 tsp. onion powder
• 1 lb. (or the odd 1 .2 lb. that my supermarket puts in the package) 80% ground beef

Instructions:

Cut the slice of bread into 1/4-inch cubes. Put the bread in a medium-size bowl and mix with the milk until it forms a paste. Add the salt, pepper, minced garlic, and onion powder, and combine using a spoon. Break the ground beef into small pieces and add to the mixture. Combine gently with your hands until thoroughly mixed together. Shape into hamburger patties, making an indentation in the center of each so that the hamburgers do not puff up in the middle when cooked. Cook on a grill, or on a George Foreman grill if it's raining (like it was for us yesterday).

Austrian Potato Salad

For small group this past Wednesday Tiffany made Austrian potato salad. I liked it so much that I asked her for the recipe. She found it on America's Test Kitchen, and here is the link to the original recipe. To make the salad for us, follow my modified ingredient list below. Download the recipe now while you have the chance because the website posts only this season's recipes for free.

Austrian Potato Salad
serves 4 to 6 adults

Ingredients:

• 2 lb. Yukon Gold potatoes
• 1 cup Imagine Organic Free Range chicken broth
• 1 cup water
• 1/2 tsp. sea salt
• 1 Tbsp. granulated white sugar
• 2 Tbsp. white wine vinegar
• 1 Tbsp. Dijon mustard
• 1/4 cup canola oil
• 1 small red onion
• 6 cornichons (about 2 Tbsp.) or 1 or 2 small kosher dill pickles
  
• 2 Tbsp. minced fresh chives (or 2 tsp. dried chives)
  
• ground black pepper

Instructions:

Follow the detailed instructions on the website. The short version of the recipe is that you peel the potatoes and slice them 1/2 inch thick. Put them in a 12-inch skillet with the chicken broth, water, 1 Tbsp. vinegar, salt, and sugar. Bring the liquid to a boil, cover, and simmer over medium-low heat until the potatoes are tender and give no resistance when poked with a knife. This took about 30 minutes for me. Then turn up the heat to high and boil off some of the liquid for 2 minutes. Take the potatoes out of the liquid and put them in a large bowl.

Reserve 1/2 cup of the liquid for the dressing. Pour the liquid into a small bowl and whisk into it the other tablespoon of vinegar, the Dijon mustard, and the canola oil. Measure 1/2 cup of the cooked potatoes, mash them with a potato masher, and stir them into the dressing. Finely chop the onion, pickles, and chives, and add them to the bowl with the potatoes. Pour the dressing over the potatoes and other ingredients, and gently toss so that the dressing covers them evenly. Sprinkle with additional salt and pepper if desired.

For the best texture, keep the potatoes at room temperature and serve them within 4 hours. However, I refridgerated our leftovers and thought they still tasted great the next day.

Strawberry Rhubarb Crisp

I love rhubarb. It's too bad that rhubarb doesn't have a longer season because I could eat it for months. There is something about its tartness that just hits the spot and provides such a nice contrast to the sweetness of the brown sugar crisp topping. Last week I made a strawberry rhubarb crisp, and I liked it so much that I had to make another one this week. I based this crisp off of a rhubarb crisp recipe in the New York Times, but I changed a few things to make it work for my family. I've been mulling over the fact that I like rhubarb crisp so much better than apple crisp, I think because even Granny Smith apples aren't quite tart enough for my palate. However, I just remembered that some recipes suggest adding cranberries to the apple crisp, and now I can't wait until fall comes around and I can try it out.

Strawberry Rhubarb Crisp
makes an 8"x8" pan of crisp

Ingredients:

• 1/2 to 3/4 lb. rhubarb (about 3 or 4 long stalks)
• 1 lb. strawberries, stems and leaves cut off
  
• 1/4 cup granulated white sugar
• 1 tsp. fresh lemon juice
• 1 tsp. lemon zest
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup Bob's Red Mill Gluten-free flour
• 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
• 1/8 tsp. sea salt
• 1/2 cup Bob's Red Mill Gluten-free rolled oats
• 1/2 cup chopped pecans. Make sure the pecans are not coated in corn oil. Don't use pecans if making the crisp for Naomi since she may react to them.
• 1/3 cup Spectrum Organic shortening. (We use this shortening, which is dairy-free and soy-free, since Naomi still reacts to soy.)

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Grease an 8"x8" pan with canola oil. Rinse the rhubarb and strawberries. Cut the rhubarb into 1/4-inch wide pieces and the strawberries into 1-inch wide pieces. Place in a large bowl and sprinkle with the white sugar, lemon juice, and lemon zest. Stir to combine and then pour into the baking pan.

In a medium-size bowl combine the brown sugar, flour, cinnamon, salt, oats, and pecans (if using them). Then add the shortening and cut it in with a couple of knives. Use your fingers to break the shortening up further and to combine it thoroughly with the other ingredients. Then sprinkle the topping over the strawberry and rhubarb mixture.

Place the pan in the oven and bake uncovered for 15 to 20 minutes. When the topping has turned golden and is beginning to brown, cover the pan with aluminum foil and then bake for another 10 to 15 minutes, until the fruit mixture is bubbling and has softened.

Chocolate Zucchini Muffins

I have been making chocolate zucchini muffins for a couple of weeks now and have finally gotten the recipe just right and ready to post on this blog. It took quite a bit of tweaking since I wanted to keep the muffins low in fat and sugar but still tasting good. The batch I made this morning exceeded my expectations: the girls ate their muffins in silence for several minutes, not even taking a break to talk. What could be better first thing in the morning?

Chocolate Zucchini Muffins
makes 6 muffins

Ingredients:

• 2/3 cup Bob's Red Mill gluten-free flour
• 1/4 tsp. and 1/8 tsp. baking soda
• 1/4 tsp. cream of tartar
• 1/8 tsp. sea salt
• 3 Tbsp. unsweetened cocoa powder. I use Ghirardelli brand.
• 1/4 cup granulated white sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1 tsp. vanilla. Use Trader Joe's alcohol-free vanilla extract or another vanilla extract that does not have corn syrup and is preferably alcohol-free, since the alcohol could be derived from corn.
• 2 Tbsp. canola oil
• 1/4 cup almond milk (or Lactaid milk if making the muffins for Michael as well)
• 1/2 cup packed grated zucchini (about 1 small to medium-size zucchini)
  
• chocolate chips. Use Ghirardelli semi-sweet chocolate chips or Enjoy Life semi-sweet chocolate chips. These two brands of chocolate chips are dairy-free and are also smaller in size than the Trader Joe's chocolate chips, so they work better in the muffins.
  

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Grease 6 cups in a regular-size muffin tin using canola oil or Spectrum Organic shortening (which is soy-free). In a medium-size bowl mix together all of the dry ingredients: the flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, salt, cocoa, and sugar. In a small bowl whisk together the egg, vanilla, canola oil, and milk.

Peel the zucchini and grate it onto a plate using the large holes of a grater. Measure 1/2 cup of zucchini, pressing the zucchini into the measuring cup, and then add the zucchini to the liquid in the small bowl. Stir to combine. Make a hole in the middle of the dry ingredients and then pour the wet ingredients into the hole. Stir the ingredients together until you don't see any more flour.

Pour the batter evenly into the 6 muffin tin cups. Drop 7 to 10 chocolate chips on top of the batter in each cup. Put the muffin tin in the oven and bake for 17 minutes (or a couple of minutes more or less depending on your oven). When you remove the muffins from the oven and test them with a tooth pick, a few crumbs should still stick to the tooth pick. As soon as you take the muffin tin out of the oven, remove the muffins from the muffin tin and let them cool for a few minutes before serving.