Thursday, December 6, 2012

Sweetened Ginger

Sweetened Ginger
Ingredients:
1/2 lb. fresh ginger root
1 cup sugar
Enough water to cover ginger 

Instructions:
  • Peel and slice ginger into even small strips by knife or mandolin
  • Put ginger in sauce pan and enough water to just cover ginger
  • Bring to a boil and reduce to medium and simmer for 45 minutes
  • After water reduces, add sugar, bring to a boil again, reduce to medium, and simmer for 20 minutes stirring occasionally
  • At this point the ginger should be covered and sticky
  • Dump ginger onto cooling rack with something under the rack to catch the sugar drippings
  • Let cool, bag or bottle, lasts for several weeks in air tight container 


Simple Chocolate Banana Bread

Simple Chocolate Banana Bread

Ingredients:
  • 3 ripe Bananas (smashed) (I used 4 because I omit butter)
  • 1/3 cup melted butter (I omitted butter and used minced apple)
  • 1 cup white sugar (I used 1/2 cup white sugar)
  • 1 egg (beaten) (I used a brown cage free egg)
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour (or all-purpose white flour)
  • 1/4 cup unsweetened (or sweetened) cocoa powder
Instructions:

  • Preheat oven to 350 degrees
  • Mix butter (or apple) into mashed bananas
  • Add in sugar, egg, vanilla
  • Add in baking soda and salt
  • Add in flour and cocoa powder
  • Pour into buttered 4X8 pan
  • Bake for 1 hour
  • Cool for 1 hour
Calories: 
For my recipe (omitting butter), the entire loaf is 1517 calories. (300 for 4 bananas, 387 for 1/2 cup white sugar, 70 for brown egg, 600 for whole wheat flour, and 160 for cocoa powder).

Friday, November 23, 2012

Homemade Pumpkin Pie

Crust and Pumpkin Pie Filling Recipe
Crust Recipe:
  • 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 teaspoon sugar
  • 1 stick unsalted butter, very-cold, cut into 1/2 inch cubes
  • 3 to 4 Tbsp ice water, very cold
Crust Instructions:
  • Mix all the dry ingredients in your food processor
  • Add butter to processor and mix until tiny butter chunks still exist
  • Add a little water at a time to processor until you can squish the mixture between your fingers and it sticks
  • Pour flour on a clean lightly flourered surface and roll mixture into a ball using your palms and then plastic wrap.
  • Place ball into refrigerator for at least 1 hour
  • Roll out ball on a clean flat surface, using a little flour so it will not stick
  • When the crust is about 1/4-1/2 mm thick, place on and flatten into your 9 inch glass pie dish


Pie Filling Recipe:
  • 2 cups of homemade (or canned) pumpkin purée*
  • 1 cup evaporated light vanilla silk soy milk (or milk, coconut milk, or condensced milk)**
  • 1/2 cup packed dark brown sugar
  • 1/3 cup white sugar
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 2 eggs plus the yolk of a third egg
  • 2 teaspoons of cinnamon
  • 1 teaspoon ground ginger
  • 3/4 teaspoon garam masala (I used this to replace 1/4 nutmeg, 1/4 cloves, and 1/4 cardamom)
 *I made my pumpkin purée from a small sugar pumpkin bought at a regular grocery store.  As the pictures show you below, I cut the pumpkin in half and scrapped the seeds and strings out.  I cooked my pumpkin halves with my pressure cooked.  This only takes 5 minutes.  Place a few inches of water in the bottom of the pressure cooker, put in pumpkin, cover pressure cooker, heat until you hear the whistle, reduce heat to medium, go for 5 minutes, turn off pressure cooker and let cool.  Remove pumpkin and scrape the purée.

**Because I only had light vanilla silk soy milk on hand, I made my own evaporated milk.  I took 3 cups of soy milk and brought to a boil in saucer; I reduced the heat to medium and then let the soy milk reduce half way.  Turn off heat and add as much sugar as you like, sweeten to taste (approximately 1/2 cup to 1 cup white sugar).  It is probably easier to just buy a can of evaporated milk (99 cents at regular grocery store).

Pie Instructions:
  • Preheat oven to 425 degrees
  • Mix sugars, salt, spices, beaten eggs, pumpkin purée, evaporated soy milk in a big bowl. Whisk all nicely together.
  • Fill your pie crust
  • Bake pie at 425 degree for 15 minutes
  • Reduce temperature to 350 degrees and bake for 60-65 minutes (or until a knife in the middle comes out clean)
  • Cool for at least 2 hours; the filling will proceed to harden as it cools
Pictures for Above Process

Crust Mixture
Crust wrapped in plastic

Sugar pumpkin before pressure cooker
Sugar pumpkin after pressure cooker ready to scrape
Two cups pumpkin purée
Perfect evaporated soy consistency with white sugar
Reducing the soy milk
Dry Ingredients mixed together
Dry ingredients with wet ingredients

Ready to roll out my crust (btw, I used the snoopy H2O bottle below to roll my crust...trick of the trade)
Pie pre-bake 
Pie post-bake
~Final words of advice: dollop with cool whip and serve! :)  Best pumpkin pie I have ever had!