Campfire dough

One thing I love about camping is the cooking outside. We mostly cook our dinner on the campfire, but for breakfast we have a camping stove.
On our last trip, I prepared dough for campfire breadsticks. I accidentally made way too much so we had leftover dough in the morning - it worked out perfectly as a sort of camping pancake :D

1 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tbsp olive oil
1/3 cup water

Mix all the ingredients and store in a plastic bag until it's time to wrap it around a stick or to fry it as a pancake.

French Savory Pumpkin Tarte

I have made this pumpkin pie recipe a bunch of times over the years. It's my favorite pumpkin pie - why add sugar to a dish when you can add cheese instead, right!? :P

Ingredients

For the crust:
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 stick butter, cut into small pieces
4 tbsp (or more) cold water

For the filling:
400g of pumpkin, peeled and cut into small pieces
1 onion, diced
2 eggs
1 egg white
2 tbsp creme fraiche
1 tbsp parsley, chopped
50g parmesan,
50g gruyere,
25 g butter

Directions

Preheat the oven to 400 F.

Melt the butter in a pan and add onions and pumpkin. Cook until pumpkin is reduced to a puree. Let the mixture cool and add the eggs, cheese, creme fraiche, parsley, salt and pepper.

In a large bowl, add flower and salt. Use your hands to "massage" in the butter until the mixture has a slightly coarse consistency and when you pinch it, it sticks together in clumps. Add cold water and work into a dough. Make a thick disk, wrap in cling foil and chill for about 30 minutes.

Roll out the dough. It's easiest when you roll out the dough between two sheets of cling foil. Line a round baking pan with the crust, use a fork to make some small holes in the dough. Bake for about 10 minutes.

After the crust is pre-baked, brush it with the egg white. Add the pumpkin puree.

Turn the oven down to 360 F (360 °C. Bake for 30-40 minutes until done).

Pancakes

One Saturday I woke up realizing that I have never made pancakes from scratch. I quickly went about changing that.

Using this recipe I whipped together 

1 egg, beaten fluffy

3/4 cup of milk

2 tbs of butter, melted

1 cup of flour

1 tbs of sugar

1/4 tsp of baking powder and

1/2 tsp of salt.

Using 1/4 cup at a time I poured the batter on a hot pan and in zero-point-nothing (Null Komma Nix) I had 6 and 1 half pancakes for breakfast.

They weren't quite as fluffy as pancakes usually come (I believe it has something to do with either too much or too little liquid in the batter). But with berries, maple syrup and whipped cream they were quite enjoyable.

Autumn Mac and Cheese

This recipe is basically the same as the Mac and Cheese recipe that I posted a while ago. Only I've added roasted butternut squash and zucchini :)

Ingredients:
elbow macaroni
butternut squash, cut into 1 inch cubes
zucchini, cut into 1/2 inch slices
olive oil
1/4 cup of butter
1/8 cup of flour
1.5-2 cups of milk
0.5-1 cup of stock
0.7 lb of cheese (I used medium cheddar)
turmeric
white pepper

Preparation:
Preheat the oven to 425° F. Place butternut squash and zucchini in a bowl, drizzle with olive oil and stir until they are coated with oil. Place vegetables on a roasting pan and place it in the oven. Stir after 5-8 minutes and return to the oven for another couple of minutes until vegetables are almost done.

Cook the elbow macaroni in salty water until they are not quite done. Submerge in ice water to stop the cooking process. Drain. Combine with vegetables
Melt butter in a skillet, stir in the flour on low heat until the color becomes a light brown. Add the milk and keep stirring. Then add spices, stock and cheese. The cheese does not have to melt all they way.
Measure an equal amount of macaroni and vegetables and cheese sauce (e.g. 2 cups) and mix them together in an oven proof dish. Bake at 350 F for about 30 minutes.

Mac and Cheese

The other day I volunteered in a kitchen and made Mac and Cheese for the first time. I didn't get to try our creation as our volunteer shift ended before the meal was baked. So I tried it at home.

I thought it lacked a bit of salt, maybe I didn't put enough of it in the boiling water of the elbow macaroni, maybe I didn't use the right kind of cheese. I'll experiment some more with this recipe in the future!

Ingredients:
elbow macaroni
1/4 cup of butter
1/8 cup of flour
1.5-2 cups of milk
0.5-1 cup of stock
0.7 lb of cheese (I used medium cheddar)
turmeric
white pepper

Cook the elbow macaroni in salty water until they are not quite done. Submerge in ice water to stop the cooking process. Drain.
Melt butter in a skillet, stir in the flour on low heat until the color becomes a light brown. Add the milk and keep stirring. Then add spices, stock and cheese. The cheese does not have to melt all they way.
Measure an equal amount of macaroni and cheese sauce (e.g. 2 cups) and mix them together in an oven proof dish. Bake at 350 F for about 30 minutes.

I also tried adding mushrooms and served the Mac and Cheese with broccoli.

Banana Chocolate Bread

I really enjoy reading the book BakeWise by Shirley O. Corriher and there are tons of recipes that I want to try out. Most of the ones that I have tried out so far have been incredible so I was exited to try the banana bread recipe. As always I used coconut sugar instead of white sugar and I added 1 cup of chocolate chips because. The original recipe uses baking powder as well as baking soda, so I substituted the baking powder with more baking soda (not one to one as baking soda is 4 times more powerful).

1 3/4 cups of flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups coconut sugar
1/2 cups canola oil
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs
1/2 cup buttermilk
4 mashed very ripe bananas (about 2 cups)
1 cup dark chocolate chips
1/2 cup whipping cream
Mix together flour, baking soda, salt and sugar.
In a second bowl, mix together canola oil, vanilla extract, eggs, buttermilk and bananas until well combined. Then add chocolate chips and roasted nuts.
Make a mold in the dry ingredients and add the banana mix.
In a third bowl whip the whipping cream until soft peaks form. Then fold the cream into the batter.
Bake in a 8 x 4.5 x 2.5 inch (20 x 11 x 6 cm) loaf pan at 375F / 190C for about 35 minutes until the center springs back when touched and a knife inserted in the center comes out clean.

As I didn't have a loaf pan I used an 8 x 8 inches square baking pan. The result was disastrous. After 35 minutes the batter was still very liquid and after another 30 hour the outside began to burn while a knife inserted in the center still came out smeared with uncooked batter.
So I took it out of the oven, cut it in half and tried saving it by frying it on the stove. The result looked very sad.
On the plus side it did taste quite good and was happily received as a sweet breakfast addition on our camping trip.

Next time I would still use my square baking pan but only make half of the batter. I don't know how all this batter can fit in a loaf pan and not overflow when it rises during baking!

Pelmeni

This Russian national dish is easy to make, albeit I suspect no one would call it quick, but everyone likes it.

For the dough I used this recipe from a German website. Then I made a beef filling and a vegetarian filling.

Dough
400 g flour
2 eggs
150 ml warm water
1/2 tsp salt
Add the salt to the flour then add warm water to the flour and begin mixing. Then add the eggs and knead until all ingredients are well combined. Cover with a wet cloth and let the dough sit for 20-30 min.

Beef filling
1 lb ground beef
1.5-2 onions, blended
2 tbsp soft butter
salt, pepper, paprika, cumin, parsley
Combine all ingredients. Done.

Potato filling
boiled potatoes
milk
butter
1/2 onion
salt, pepper
Cut the onion in little pieces and fry until golden/translucent. Mash potatoes with a bit of the water they were boiled in, add milk, butter, onion, salt and pepper.

To form the Pelmeni separate the dough in half and make about 1.5-2 inch thick rolls. Then cut 1.5-2 inch pieces off, roll them into balls, use flour to dust the table and roll the dough balls out into very flat circles.
Then place filling onto a circle, fold it in half making sure to pinch the outer line of the half circle together. Then fold the edges together. (See picture)
Cook for about 10 minutes. Serve with butter and or sour cream.

Cookie Butter Mug Cake

10 seconds after I saw this video I was already mixing together butter, cookie butter, sugar and so on. Every since I heard of microwave cakes I was intrigued! My first attempts to make brownies in the microwave were all quite disappointing as they were all quite spongy, even when the recipes claimed they wouldn't be.
This cake was a pleasant surprise and I call it a success! It still can't compete with a real cake, but for 3 minutes of work it is a worthy little snack.
I added chocolate chips :)

2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp cookie butter
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg
2 tbsp sugar
4 tbsp flour
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/3 cup dark chocolate chips
pinch of salt
In a 2 cup Pyrex dish, melt the butter in the microwave. Add the remaining ingredients and combine well.
"Bake" in the microwave for 90 seconds.
Serve hot with whipped cream on top.

Pound Cake

After the muffins from BakeWise turned out so incredibly well, I wanted to try more recipes. One of the first recipes in the book is the Great American Pound Cake. This cake gets so much attention that there are 4 different recipes. The one that caught my attention was the recipe that called for whipped cream to be mixed gently into the dough just before baking. Clearly any cake that gets whipped cream is going to be a good one! One of the important things for this recipe is the bundt cake as the cake will not rise properly in a normal cake pan (or fall back in after baking and look sad). So I got a beautiful bundt cake pan and tried the recipe to bring to game night.

2 cups butter
2 3/4 cups coconut sugar
1 tbsp vanilla extract
6 eggs
2 3/4 cups flour
1/2 cup whipping cream
butter for the bundt pan
Combine butter and coconut sugar until fluffy. Add the vanilla extract and one egg at a time. Add flour bit by bit.
In a separate bowl, whip the whipping cream until soft peaks form. Gently fold the whipped cream into the dough. Pour the batter into a buttered bundt cake pan and bake for 40 min at 350F / 180C.

I was shocked to find that 2 cups of butter are 1 pound of butter and 2 3/4 cups of coconut sugar are 1 pound of coconut sugar! A scary suspicion about the name of the cake crept up on me..
When I took the cake out of the oven and out of the bundt pan, it seemed quite dark and I was afraid it was burned (it turned out not to be the case), so I quickly made a batch of the delicious and quick Apple-Cinnamon-Muffins to bring to game night as well. To my utter surprise the muffins paled next to the pound cake! Everyone loved moist and sweet pound cake and we got the take most of the muffins back home.

It surely wasn't the last time I made this cake but it won't become a regular one for me, the pound of butter and pound of sugar scare me a little bit.

Apple Cinnamon Muffin

Until I found this recipe I have mostly used my muffin pan to bake mini quiches, mini corn bread and other mini things that were not muffins.
Then I stumbled upon the following recipe in the book "BakeWise" by Shirley O. Corriher. It promised that the muffins would be deliciously moist and flavorful and I decided to finally make muffins with my muffin pan!
I mostly stuck to the recipe, although I used baking soda instead of baking powder and dried coconut instead of frozen coconut. And as always, I used coconut sugar instead of white sugar.

1 cup pecans
1 tbsp butter
salt
2 cups flour
1/2 tsp baking soda or 2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp cinnamon
1 cup coconut sugar
3 eggs
1 cup canola oil
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 cored and peeled apple, cut into chunks
2 carrots, peeled and shredded
1/2 cup golden raisins
1/2 cup coconut shreds
Roast pecans in the oven, add some butter and salt.
Mix flour and baking soda (make sure that the baking soda is well distributed), add cinnamon and coconut sugar.
In a second bowl mis eggs, canola oil and vanilla extract. Slowly pour the egg mixture into the flour mixture and combine well.
Add apples, carrots, raisins and coconut shreds.
Bake for 18 min at 400F / 200C, then cool an a cooling rack.

The muffins were indeed deliciously moist and very yummy! I made them a couple of times since the first try. Once, I ran out of coconut and made the muffins without it. Surprisingly that had a huge influence on the taste, they are much better with the coconut shreds!

Salmon Quiche

I tried this recipe once in a big pie form and then again in my muffin form.
It features cheese and almond meal in the pie crust and refreshingly little instructions. I changed it a little bit, adding more cheese and baking the crust at a lower temperature. Despite the crust being so brittle before baking it comes out great and is quite easy to get out of the pan.

Crust:
1 cup flour
1 cup cheddar, grated
1/4 cup almond meal
1/4 tsp paprika
6 tbsp oil
1/2 tsp salt
Combine all ingredients and set aside 1/2 cup. Press the rest of crust into bottom and sides of 9 inch pan, bake 10 minutes at 350 degrees.

Quiche:
1/2 lb frozen salmon
3 beaten eggs (I used 1 egg and 1/2 cup of egg whites to get rid of some of the egg whites that had piled up in our fridge after all the Tiramisu we enjoyed)
1/4 tsp dill weed and/or other herbs
1 cup sour cream
1/2 cup cheddar, grated
1/2 chopped onion
chives
paprika, salt and pepper
Thaw, fry and flake the salmon. Add all other ingredients. Put in baked shell. Sprinkle reserved 1/2 cup crust over top. Bake at 325 F for 45 minutes (or less when using the muffin form) until the tops are golden.

Cakes in Jars - or in a Muffin Pan

After seeing this video of how to bake cakes in jars I thought, I could do the same in my beloved muffin pan. I am also a big fan of recipes with few ingredients and this recipe has only five: berries, flour, sugar, butter and a pinch of salt.

So I distributed 2 1/2 cups frozen (instead of fresh) berries among the 12 muffin molds, mixed 1/2 cup of flour with 1/2 cup of coconut sugar and some salt and poured it on the fruit. At the end I added about 1/8 stick of butter (1/2 oz or 15 g) to each mold.

It tasted chewy and very good especially topped with ice cream!

But the mini cakes did not hold their form and it was only possible to eat it out of the muffin pan or spooned into another dish (hence the jars would be much more convenient) and for my taste it was too much butter. I thought that the butter would not seep through all the flour sugar mixture resulting in pockets of dry flour. But that was not the case at all.

I next time I want to try using half the amount of butter.

Chicken Pie

I tried baking mini Chicken Pot Pies in my muffin pan. I didn't actually look up a recipe and the only Chicken Pot Pie that I ever had was the microwave Chicken Pot Pie the day before which led to me thinking "Hm, I bet I can make this myself!"
Apparently I couldn't and the result didn't taste like Chicken Pot Pie usually tastes. So I am calling it a Chicken Pie

For the Crust:
1 cup of flour
1/2 stick of butter
2 eggs
salt, pepper
Mix together, roll out between two sheets of cling foil. Lift the upper foil and use a big cup to cut out circles to press in the muffin pan molds. Safe some dough for sealing the pies. Blind bake at 300 F for about 10 min.

For the filling:
onion, chopped
broccoli, cut into small pieces
peas
carrots, pealed and cut into small pieces
chicken breast
Fry the onion in some oil and add the vegetables. Fry for a couple of minutes, then add the chicken and fry until chicken and veggies are done. Cut chicken into small pieces.

For the sauce:
Turkey stock
corn starch or flour
butter
cream
paprika, salt, pepper
lemon juice
Melt butter in a hot pan, add corn starch or flour and spices. While stirring fast add the turkey stock and cream until the sauce has the desired consistency. Add more salt, spices and lemon juice if needed.

Mix the sauce with the veggies and chicken and fill the muffin pan. Add dough lids and bake until lids are golden for about 20-30 minutes.


I need to learn how to use my seasoning and spices. The pies had too much pepper and not enough salt. But otherwise they were quite tasty.

Savory Madeleines II (filled with cheddar)

So this is the second time I made Madeleines and then liked them so much that I made a second batch on the same day. They are just so easy and fast to make and only bake 10 minutes!

On the same day after I added a blended mix of parsley, nuts, nutritional yeast and cheddar to this recipe of Parmesan-Herb Madeleines, I wanted to make them again. But instead of blending the ingredients, I mixed the chopped parsley and pine nuts into the dough. Then I filled the Madeleine pan with half the dough, added the grated cheddar and spread the rest of the dough on top.

It tasted so much better than when I blended the ingredients! The taste of the pine nuts and cheddar was much richer. We ate them all before I could take a picture..

Savory Madeleines I

For Christmas I got a Madeleine baking pan. I have yet to try a sweet recipe, but so far I've tried out this savory recipe of Parmesan-Herb Madeleines.

The first time I tried it I thought it would be a good idea to add some veggies (and/or bacon for the meat eaters) and the result was quite good. For some reason they turned out to be very salty, though. The recipe only calls for 1/4 tsp of salt and I didn't put in any other salty ingredients. That made them wonderful snacks to have with some beer!

Today I tried the recipe again and only put in a pinch of salt. Instead of veggies, I blended the following ingredients together to add to the dough:
1/2 bunch of parsley
1/4 cup of pine nuts
1 tbsp nutritional yeast
about 50g cheddar

The result tasted very good. The madeleines didn't rise much, but I don't know which ingredients could have interfered with the baking powder. The result was still very tasty and I am sure I will make it again.