Two Frog Home

I had the urge for some apple juice this morning.  Having no juice, but some apples, I pulled out the much neglected juicer and got to work.  Satisfied with just a small glass for both Jeff and I there was some juice left and of course, all the pulp.  I core the apples before putting them through the juicer so the pulp is usable.  We’re going to meet some friends later this morning and I figured I could do something with the pulp as a treat for them.  I pulled out my trusty Moosewood Restaurant Book of Desserts and modified their Apple Spice Cupcake recipe to fit what I had on hand.

Apple Spice Cupcakes

• 1 Cup of Apple Pulp (remove any big chunks of skin, etc.) or 1 Cup shredded apple
• 2 Cups flour
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
• 2/3 Cup butter (I used salted if you use unsalted you may want to add a little salt to the recipe)
• 1 Cup packed brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 3/4 apple juice

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Line muffin tin with papers or grease.  Sift dry ingredients together.  Cream butter and sugar until light.  Add eggs one at a time, add vanilla.  Alternate the flour and apple juice into the creamed mixture until well combined.  Fold in the apple pulp.

Pour batter into muffin tin.  Bake 25 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.  Let cool before frosting.

Frosting: The recipe in the book had an apple cream cheese frosting that used apple juice concentrate, which I never have on hand, so I just used a basic cream cheese frosting which worked wonderfully with a few ground walnuts sprinkled on top.  I was super generous with the frosting mainly because I made enough to frost about 11 cakes,  I always make too much frosting not sure why I do that.  However, I did use a light whipped cream cheese (because that’s what was in the fridge), so that makes it ok, right?

Notes: I ended up with 14 cupcakes, however 12 would have been just fine if I had filled the cups almost full before baking.  They didn’t rise as much as I had expected so be generous in those cups.  Next time, I might add a touch of maple syrup instead of the vanilla extract, I think that would add just a little more dimension, if you try that, let me know how it works, please.

Enjoy!

Our Favorite Nachos

(This is more of a method than an actual recipe.  Get Creative!)

Serves two as presented as a filling meal.

• 6 - 6″ Corn Tortillas, cut into quarters
• Chopped Onion
• Chopped Pepper (sweet and/or hot)
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1 clove of garlic, chopped
• 1 pint pinto beans, undrained
• Cheddar Cheese

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

Saute chopped onions, garlic, green peppers in a little olive oil until soft.  Add undrained pinto beans and ground cumin, bring to a boil.  Mash the beans to your likely with a potato masher and keep warm until ready.  If it gets too thick, thin it out with a little water.

Lay the quartered tortillas chips onto baking sheet, so they aren’t touching.  Spray lightly with olive oil.  Bake for 8 minutes or until crispy.

Lay out 12 chips onto each plate.  Top the chips with half of the bean mixture, top with cheddar cheese and various toppings.  Optional Toppings: Salsa, chopped olives, sour cream, chopped avocado, chopped cilantro.

Enjoy!

Today, I experimented with my sourdough a little bit more.  I made two more loaves of beautiful bread for everyday use and I made a loaf of sourdough banana nut bread.  We each had a slice after lunch and it is yummy.  This uses much less butter and sugar than my standard recipe and is a bit more flavorful, so I imagine this will become the new standard recipe.

I’ve been debating about making hot cross buns for Easter for several days now.  During my afternoon walk, I was thinking about it some more decided instead to make Easter egg bread.  I saw this recipe in an old bread cookbook I have, I modified it a bit and included the recipe for anyone else who might want something a little different for the holiday weekend.  Because we don’t have kids at home or even little ones close by these days, I haven’t colored eggs in a very long time.  It was very fun to do today, and I love how it all turned out.

Easter Egg Bread

First color 6 uncooked eggs and set aside to dry.

Ingredients:

• 1/4 C soy milk
• 1/4 C butter
• 1/4 C sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/8 tsp cloves
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1 Tablespoon yeast
• 1/4 C warm water
• 2 eggs, slightly beaten
• 2 to 3 Cups flour

Scald the milk, add the butter, salt, sugar, and spices.  Allow to cool to lukewarm.  Mix the water and yeast together.  Add the milk mixture and eggs.  Start adding the flour until it comes together, knead into a smooth ball.  Let rise until double.  Punch down dough and divide in half.  Roll each half into long ropes.  Twist the ropes loosely onto a greased baking sheet.  Put the colored eggs into holes in the dough rope.  Allow to rise until double.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Brush the risen dough with a beaten egg, if desired.  Bake for 20 to 25 minutes.

Note: The color will leach from the eggs a bit into your dough, just be sure to use natural food dyes to avoid allergies, etc.

I use Sundays as a day to prepare so the rest of the week isn’t so hectic.  This time of year, I make a big pot of soup and portion it out for the week’s lunches.  Both Jeff and I brown bag it and we don’t mind leftovers, so we generally have soup with a sandwich and some fruit for lunch the entire week.  Today I made Asian Turkey Noodle, I used up some turkey that was in the freezer, leftover from Thanksgiving, homemade chicken stock, green peppers that were in our freezer, and some carrots, noodles, onions, fresh ginger, and soy sauce from the store (all in my pantry).  Having the soups already portioned out makes more quick weekday morning packing.  I also generally portion out the fruit on Sunday’s as well and just make sandwiches in the morning before work.

Today, we’ve also done laundry, various cleaning projects and just general puttering around.  I updated my etsy shop, too, based on some recent interest in my lunch tote bag / flatware roll sets.  These sets are in a little less flashy colors and hopefully more appealing to more folks.

Generally on Sundays,  I also bake some bread.  I’ve been wanting to experiment with rye and pumpernickel breads and today chose to play with pumpernickel.  I looked at various sources and books for recipes and basically came up with my own that was a combination of many recipes. 

Kathie’s Pumpernickel

In a blender combine:

• 1/2 C Carob Powder
• 1/4 C Instant Coffee
• 1/4 C honey
• 1 TBSP salt
• 3 TBSP butter
• 1 C Boiling Water

Blend until smooth, pour into a bowl and stir in 1 teaspoon caraway seeds and 1 heaping cup raisins.  Allow to cool to room temperature.

Create a sponge with 2 Cups water, 1 Tablespoon yeast, 1 Tablespoon honey, and 1 1/2 Cups flour.  Allow to rise about 30 minutes.

Stir the carob mixture into the sponge.  Add 3 cups of rye flour and enough all-purpose flour to form a dough (about 3 cups for me).  Knead until smooth ball.  Allow to rise 1 hour.  Punch down, shape into oval loaves and let rise on a baking sheet for about 30 minutes.  Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Brush the loaves with an egg wash and sprinkle on sesame seeds.  Slash the loaves with a razor and bake for about 40 minutes (until hollow sounding when tapped).  Allow to cool on wire racks.

Note: If you are a big fan of caraway you might want to add more, for me 1 teaspoon is plenty.

Here’s my turkey pot pie recipe. 

• Double Pie Crust for 9 inch pie 
• 4 TBSP Butter
• 1 onion, chopped
• 1 stalk celery, chopped
• 2 large carrots, chopped
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• salt & pepper to taste
• 2 Cups turkey stock - (chicken stock/broth will work)
• 3 small potatoes, peeled and cubed
• 1 1/2 Cups peas
• 1/2  Cups sliced mushrooms 
• 2 Cups cooked turkey cubed
• 3 TBSP flour
• 1/2 C milk

Preheat oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit. Roll bottom pie crust and place in the bottom of a 10 inch pie pan.

Melt 2 Tablesppons butter in a large skillet with onion, celery, carrots, oregano, salt and pepper. Satue until onions are transparent. Add the stock and bring to a boil. Add the potatoes and cook until they are soft, if using fresh mushrooms add those now. After the potatoes are soft add peas and canned mushrooms if using those.

In a medium saucepan, melt remaining butter. Stir in turkey and flour. Add the milk and heat through. Add this mixture to the veggies in the skillet and mix well. Cook until thickened.

Pour the mixture in the pie crust. Top with pie crust and slit the top 4 times, to let out steam

Bake in preheated oven for 15 minutes. Then reduce heat to 350 degrees and bake for an additional 20 minutes or until crust is golden brown. Allow to cool 10 minutes before cutting into.

Note: To make individual pies like I did in yesterday’s post, I simply cooked at 350 degrees for about 45 minutes - you may need to adjust the time based on the depth of your containers.

Chocolate Pumpkin Marble Cake

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. 

In a small bowl combine:

• 1 3/4 C flour

• 1 tsp baking powder

• 1/2 tsp cinnamon

• 1/2 tsp nutmeg

• 1/2 tsp cloves

In a different bowl combine:

• 1 C flour

• 1 tsp baking powder

• 3/4 C Cocoa

In a large bowl cream together 1 1/2 C butter & 3 C sugar.  Add 6 eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.  Divide this mixture into half and pour each half into a medium mixing bowl.

To one bowl mix in 1 1/4 C pureed pumpkin and the bowl of spiced flour.  Set aside.

Have ready 2/3 C buttermilk.  Add the cocoa flour mixture alternately with the buttermilk to the other half of the butter mixture.

Into the bottom of a greased bundt pan, pour half of the pumpkin mixture.  Drop spoonfuls of the chocolate mixture on top of the pumpkin mixture, not quite covering the entire pumpkin mixture.  Repeat with the remaining pumpkin mixture then chocolate mixture.  Run a knife throug the batter in several directions.

Bake for 1 hour or until a toothpick comes out mostly clean (very moist a few crumbs will stick).  Allow to cool 10 minutes in the pan before inverting onto a rack to cool completely.

Glaze:

Combine in top of double boiler:

• 4 ounces chopped semi-sweet chocolate

• 1/2 C whipping cream

• 1 TBSP butter

• 1 tsp light corn syrup

Melt everything together.  Pour over cake and allow to stand.

Notes: I used salted butter, therefore I didn’t add any additional salt to the cake - if you use unsalted butter you may want to add a bit.  The glaze I felt made too much for the cake - but since I made the cake the night before Jeff and I ate the remaining warm glaze on some ice cream, that’s a hint for your own use.