Mini Quiches

Even though I've been making quiches for many more years than I technically could cook, I'd never made mini-quiches before tonight.  They looked good, but how would my favorite base recipe for quiche translate into these diminutive delights?  As I found out tonight, quite well!

I decided to attempt this culinary feat (okay, it really wasn't that big of deal, but let me bask in my glory anyway, if you would be so kind) for two reasons:  I needed a quick and easy breakfast to go in the morning, yet I love quiche leftovers for breakfast and the kids only like quiche half the time, but they can never resist the power of cuteness inherent in things baked in muffin tins.

Can you blame them?

Mini Quiches

pie crust for 9-inch pie (my favorite crust recipe can be found here, but you can use whatever you'd like)

filling for quiche, either spinach feta, broccoli cheddar, or quiche lorraine

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Roll out pie crust and cut into muffin tin sized circles (I used a large biscuit cutter, but you could also eyeball it).  Press pie crust circles into ungreased muffin tins.  Spoon filling into each mini-quiche, filling no more than 2/3 full since it will poof when baked.  Bake for 25-35 minutes or until set through and starting to brown on top.  Can be served warm or cold. 

This post can be found on Frugal Ways, Sustainable Ways #14

Acorn Griddle Cakes (with gluten-free alternative)

I started to get a urge to make these the other day when I was looking over ideas for a possible unit study on pre-European-influenced Native Americans in the area (because, really, there are/were so many nations of Native Americans, it is kind of silly to try to cover all of them in any sort of general unit study like they used to, and I'm guessing they still do, in schools) and I came across mentions of dishes involving acorn flour and maple syrup.  Since I have both of these items in my house (doesn't everyone?  No?) and I remembered I had this recipe in my stack of recipes to try, I figured now would be a good time to try them out.  Yum!

One note on this recipe, as opposed to some I've posted, it really does need to be acorn flour, not acorn meal, since the meal would be too gritty for an ideal griddle cake experience.  Remember, all you have to do to transform acorn meal into flour is just grind it more finely, so no biggie.  Just make sure to do it.  Also remember that acorn flour can be used as wheat flour substitute, so you can easily make these gluten-free by omitting the whole wheat flour and upping the acorn flour to 1 cup.

I made these "fun sized" for the kids and of course served them with real butter and real maple syrup.  It would almost be a crime to serve such great, wholesome natural food with the abominations that are trans-fat-laden margarine or maple-flavored corn syrup marketed as "pancake syrup" or "breakfast syrup" or whatever it is they call that garbage!

Acorn Griddle Cakes

2/3 cup acorn flour
1/3 cup whole wheat flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/3 tsp sea salt
1 tbsp honey
1 egg, beaten
3/4 cup milk
3 tbsp butter, melted

Combine flours, baking powder, and salt.   In a separate bowl, combine honey, egg, and milk.  Mix liquid mixture into dry mixture, creating a smooth batter.   Add butter.  Drop batter onto a hot, greased griddle or skillet, by the tablespoon for "fun sized" or 1/4 cup for regular sized.  Cook, turning each griddle cake over when it is lightly browned on the bottom and puffed and slightly set on top.

Acorn Pound Cake--acorns have never tasted better!

I'm so excited that I learned that sprouted acorns are still good to eat the other day, especially since all the acorns around the wonderful tree I found were sprouted.  From my quicky research, it looked like some experts actually prefer sprouted acorns since they are less likely to be buggy (one thing I saw said they flat out weren't buggy, but I found some that were, so that isn't necessarily true!), sweeter, and actually more nutritious once they are sprouted.  I discovered when shelling them that they are also a lot easier to get out of the shell when sprouted, since it is basically already started for you!

I made my first batch of acorn meal for the year last night.  I was quite pleased to discover that the acorns I collected were very low in tannic acid and it didn't take long at all to flush the tannic acid out and move on to other things.  (If you have no idea what I'm talking about, you'll want to read my earlier post on acorns.)

Anyway, as I've been promising, here is the first of the acorn recipes I have available to share (which I'll be sharing as I make them).  It is a long time favorite, as I can remember helping my mom gather acorns as a kid so she could make a version of this (I added whole wheat flour and changed the seasoning) and I'd take small loaves of it to school for my teachers, who had strangely never eaten acorns in any form before.  The two loaves pictured above is actually a double batch.  The recipe makes one loaf.

Acorn Pound Cake

1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup acorn meal
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/8 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cream of tartar
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 cup milk
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350.  Grease a loaf pan and flour the bottom of it; set aside. Mix together oil, sugar, eggs, and acorn meal in a large bowl.  In a separate bowl, combine flours, salt, cream of tartar, and baking soda.  Slowly mix the flour mixture into the acorn mixture, alternating with the milk.  Add vanilla and cinnamon and beat well.  Pour into the prepared loaf pan.  Bake for 1 hour.  Let cool before removing from pan.

Whole Wheat Coffee Cake

Yesterday's breakfast: ww coffee cake, cheese omelet, & grapes

It was always a special morning growing up when my mom would make coffee cake.  Unfortunately, I'm so not a morning person, it happens even less frequently in my house as an adult, usually only for special occasions.  Sometimes I just want something though, and yesterday was one of those mornings.  This isn't the same exact recipe as my mom uses (I'm pretty sure anyway), but I like that most of the flour is whole wheat, since I try to sneak in whole grains instead of the more processed refined products whenever I can (in case you haven't noticed that from my recipes!).

Whole Wheat Coffee Cake

1/3 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
3 tbsp butter, firm
----
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup sugar
1 tbsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/3 cup butter, softened
1 cup milk
1 egg

Preheat oven to 350.  Grease a 9x9x2 baking pan.  Combine brown sugar, 1/4 cup ww flour, and cinnamon in a small bowl.  Cut in 3 tbsp butter until mixture resembles fine crumbs.  In a separate bowl, combine remaining ingredients.  Beat on medium speed for 2 minutes, scraping the side of the bowl frequently.  Pour half of batter into the baking pan.  Sprinkle half of the brown sugar mixture into the pan.  Spread remaining batter in the pan and top with remaining brown sugar mixture.  Bake for 45 minutes or until a wooden toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Homemade Pop Tarts

I decided to try some of these last night when I had a bit of leftover pie crust dough from the chicken pot pie.  I used ground cherry jam, since that's what was in the fridge--plus my 6 year old had been refusing to try the ground cherry jam, but I figured he wouldn't be able to resist pop-tarts!  Turns out I was right and he loved it.  Plus, we all loved the pop tarts.

Since I knew that these wouldn't last long enough to attempt to stick in a toaster (I wouldn't put them in a toaster anyway, since I'd be too paranoid that the jam would drip out and start a fire, but that's just me.  Seems like if they are pop tarts you should be able to toast them), I just made them round, since that was the most convenient cutter shape for me to grab and I didn't want to freestyle cut rectangles with a knife, knowing full well that I would never manage to make them the same size and shape that way!

This time, we didn't let them cool long enough to frost, but it would be easy to make a quick glaze of powdered sugar with just enough milk to make it spreadable to frost them in the future.

Pop-tarts

pie crust
jam
powdered sugar (optional)
milk (optional)

Preheat oven to 450.  Roll out pie crust and cut into desired shapes.  Dollop about a teaspoon of jam on half of the shapes.  Cover jam with the shapes that are left and press edges together to seal.  Place on baking sheet and bake for 10-15 minutes or until light golden brown.  Cool completely before frosting.  To frost, put some powdered sugar in a small bowl and add just enough milk to make spreadable.  Let frosting set before serving.

Triple Chocolate Zucchini Muffins

After all the zucchini recipes I've made this year, I've finally found one that my picky eater can't get enough of!  He had no clue that these had zucchini in them until after his third or fourth muffin.  By that time, he'd decided it didn't matter that they had zucchini in them because he couldn't taste it.  Yay!  This recipe should work for frozen zucchini in the winter months as well. 

Triple Chocolate Zucchini Muffins

3 cups shredded zucchini
1 cup sugar
3 eggs
1 cup vegetable oil
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 cup chocolate chips
1 cup white chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350.  Grease 24 muffin cups.  Mix together zucchini, sugar, eggs, vegetable oil, and vanilla.  In a separate bowl, combine remaining ingredients.  Stir flour mixture into zucchini mixture until just moistened.  Spoon batter into muffin cups.  Bake for 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in a muffin comes out clean.

Blueberry Muffins

I'm pretty sure the only reason people buy muffin mixes is that they have no idea how easy it is to make them from scratch!  After all, look at the ingredient list from an inexpensive name brand of blueberry muffins that probably should remain nameless because they should totally be embarassed by this:

INGREDIENTS: WHEAT FLOUR, SUGAR, ANIMAL SHORTENING (CONTAINS ONE OR MORE OF THE FOLLOWING: LARD, HYDROGENATED LARD, PARTIALLY HYDROGENATED LARD), DEXTROSE, LEAVENING (SODIUM ALUMINUM PHOSPHATE, BAKING SODA, MONOCALCIUM PHOSPHATE), contains less than 2% of each of the following: PARTIALLY HYDROGENATED SOYBEAN & COTTONSEED OILS, YELLOW CORN FLOUR, SALT, CITRIC ACID, ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR, MALTODEXTRIN, RED 40, BLUE 2, BLUE 1, NIACIN, REDUCED IRON, THIAMINE MONONITRATE, RIBOFLAVIN, FOLIC ACID.

 

Seriously, ewwwww!  I can't even find blueberries on that list, can you?  Now compare that to the ingredient list of the recipe below in ingredient label format: 

INGREDIENTS: WHOLE WHEAT FLOUR, BLUEBERRIES, MILK, VEGETABLE OIL, SUGAR, EGG, BAKING POWDER (SODIUM ACID PYROPHOSPATE, SODIUM BICARBONATE, CORN STARTCH AND MONOCALCIUM PHOSPHATE), SALT

Which would you rather eat?  (Note:  Because of a history of Alzheimer's in my family, I buy the aluminum free baking powder.  Your ingredients may vary on that one.  I'm thinking about not buying baking powder anymore after looking at that ingredient list and making my own though.)

And it isn't that it is harder to make the scratch muffins than the mix.  Here are the mix instructions:

 Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Grease muffin pans or use paper baking cups.  Blend mix, egg, and milk. Batter will be slightly lumpy. Fill muffin cups 1/2 full.  Bake 13-15 minutes or until golden brown.

Except for a couple minor details, exactly the same as the recipe below, yet the homemade ones are healthier and cheaper!  Oh, yeah, and the homemade ones taste better too.

 Blueberry Muffins

1 egg

3/4 cup milk

1 cup blueberries, fresh or frozen

1/2 cup vegetable oil

2 cups whole wheat flour

1/3 cup sugar

3 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

 Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Grease bottom only of muffin cups.  Beat egg; mix in milk, blueberries, and vegetable oil. Add remaining ingredients all at once and mix until flour is just moistened.  Batter will be slightly lumpy. Fill muffin cups 3/4 full.  Bake 20 minutes or until golden brown.

Rhubarb Galore!

We are getting into rhubarb season here in Michigan and I love it!  I don't have my own rhubarb plants right now, because I've heard it doesn't really like containers and I don't know how long we'll be living here, so I don't want to invest in plants that I may be leaving behind before I ever even get to harvest.  But I do know other people with rhubarb...and they are the nice kind of people that share.  Yay!  So last weekend, I ended up with a fair amount of rhubarb to play with.  It seems to have mysteriously disappeared though.

Okay, it didn't mysteriously disappear.  I ate it.  Well, I ate most of it.  I did share some.  They made me.

The first bit of rhubarb I ate was on a whim.  I had some leftover crust dough the other day from making pasties for dinner, so I cut up about a cup of rhubarb, added about 1/4 cup of sugar, and a sprinkling of cinnamon to the rhubarb and made little tarts to use the crust up.

Those I didn't share.  My son thought they were just more pasties and I didn't correct him.  Some days, I'm a bad mommy.  It was past his bedtime anyway.

Then, a couple days later, I couldn't decide what to have for breakfast, since we were out of bread so I couldn't have the eggs and toast I wanted, and decided that rhubarb crumble wouldn't be a bad breakfast, since anything that has rhubarb, whole wheat, and oats, can't be that bad. 

I know I've posted a recipe for rhubarb crisp before, but this is different enough that I thought I should post it too, especially since, unlike my rhubarb crisp recipe (which contains eggs), this can be made vegan by using a non-hydrogenized vegan margarine (the hygrogenized oils don't make it non-vegan, but it does make it laden with trans fats, despite tricky packaging that may claim there is "no trans fat per serving" and having serious heart problems isn't thrifty!) instead of the butter.

Rhubarb Crumble

 4 cups sliced rhubarb

1/2 cup white sugar

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

4 tbsp cold butter

2/3 cup packed brown sugar

2/3 cup quick oats

Preheat oven to 350.  Place rhubarb in a greased casserole dish.  Sprinkle white sugar and cinnamon over the top.  Set aside.

In a bowl, combine flour, baking powder, and salt.  Cut in the butter until it resembles coarse crumbs.  Stir in brown sugar and oats.  Sprinkle over the rhubarb.  Bake for 40-50 minutes.  Serve warm or cold.

A FREE Mother's Day Gift Idea (Moms: print this one out for your family!)

I figured a lot of husbands and kid would be freaking out right about now, trying to figure out what to get Mom for Mother's Day, so I thought now would be a good time to post this.

If you watch television at all, which I try not to do too much, the advertisers on there would have you believe that you have to spend a fortune on a mom to make her happy for Mother's Day.  Advertisements for diamonds and cars and who knows what else abound.  Expensive flower arrangements that will die in a few days are marketed as being the ticket for that special mom's happiness.

What. A. Load. Of. Crap!

Motherhood is the most overworked and underpaid (financially, not in rewards) position in the universe!  Jobs outside the home, at the end of your shift, you get to punch out and go home.  Motherhood never stops!  There are no sick days--even if Mom is the sickest one in the house, she still has to take care of everyone else.  There are no vacation days--even if the family goes on vacation, Mom's still on duty taking care of the family. 

So you know what I bet every single mom in the world would like more than anything else?  A day off!!!  I'm not saying that moms don't want to spend Mother's Day with their family, although I'm sure some wouldn't mind a day out with girlfriends or something rather than spending it at home or doing something with the family, but I am quite sure that moms would like to not spend that day doing any cooking, cleaning, or anything else remotely caretaker like!

A nice start might be to make the special mom a nice breakfast in bed.  Pancakes or even French toast aren't really that hard to make, but it would make that mom feel very loved that you went through that effort.  After breakfast, or even while she's still eating, maybe do whatever she would normally do for household tasks.  Around my house, dishes and laundry are daily things, so someone else doing them for once would be amazing.  Having the kids pick up their things and maybe someone running the vacuum would probably be downright elating for mom as well!  Then, after all that is done, maybe doing something fun together would put a topper on the day and make it the best day of her life.

And you know what?  The whole thing was free.

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Since I said pancakes and French toast are easy, probably should give you the recipes, huh?  These are both adapted from Betty Crocker's classic cookbook.

Pancakes

butter
1 egg, beaten until fluffy
1 cup flour (all-purpose, whole wheat, or a blend)
3/4 cup milk
1 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp vegetable oil
3 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt

Grease the skillet with butter.  Heat a griddle or skillet over medium heat (to 375 degrees).  Beat together all ingredients except for butter.  For each pancake, pour a small amount, 1/4 or less, onto the hot griddle.  Cook pancakes until dry around the edges then flip over and cook the other side until they are golden brown.

French Toast

butter
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup milk
1 1/2 tsp sugar
1/4 tsp vanilla
1/8 tsp salt
3 eggs
about 9 pieces of bread

Grease griddle or skillet with butter and heat over medium heat or to 375 degrees.  Beat together remaining ingredients except bread.  Dip bread in the egg mixture until both sides are completely coated.  Cook about 4 minutes on each side or until golden brown.