Guinness Onions - By Justin F. Brunelle

I've been trying to eat healthy since June stuffs me full of sweets. However, vegetables must be improved upon in any way possible. Over the weekend, we cooked some blackened tilapia on the grill and needed an accompaniment of the veggie kind. I decided on sauteed sweet onions. But, sweet onions alone are wimpy. I had to man-ify them.

I like cooking veggies in a cast-iron skillet on a charcoal grill. I also wanted a sweet flavor to my onions, with a semi-caramelized flavor. I also needed my onions to not stick to the skillet. Thus, my ingredient list was born. I added about 4-5 tablespoons of [fake] butter as my anti-stick agent, ~1 tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce to sweeten the onions a bit and complement the smokey flavor of the charcoal, and about 1 small clove of garlic (minced) to round out the traditional ingredients. The other two "secret" ingredients are what make the onions really stand out. I add about 2 tablespoons of Weber's Boston Bay Seasoning and about half a bottle (6 oz.) of Guinness Black Lager. The Boston Bay seasoning is a creamier version of Old Bay, so it adds some sweetness while still providing a bit of the peppery, salty flavor that I like in my onions and on my fish. 

The Guinness Black Lager is particularly interesting. It's a relatively cheap beer (~$7 per 6-pack), so you aren't poring out too much money, and it isn't a particularly "good" beer (although it is delightful), so you don't have to feel too guilty. (It only got a 70 on the Beer Advocate website, the cellar of the "Average" category.) The most relevant property of this beer is its sweetness and absence of any discernible hops; essentially, it's the more carbonated brother of Guinness Draught. The sweet, fresh, malty flavor of the beer really comes out in the onions after reducing the beer down. 

The first step is to get the grill up to medium-hot direct heat and toss the skillet on. The rest is super simple (hard to screw up if you have a tough time concentrating after disposing of the other half bottle of beer). Just dump all the ingredients in the pan. I like to allow the butter to melt and then add the beer. This, of course, makes it foam up and smell really nice, but doesn't offer any real benefit other than entertainment value. 

I cover the grill and open the vents to keep everything at the medium-hot level and stir the onions every few minutes. They will start to soften and turn the color of the Guinness.

After about 20-30 minutes, the onions will all be very soft and brown. There will be a Guinness reduction left in the bottom of the pan. This makes a great "sauce" that drips out of the back of fish tacos. You can strain this if you wish, but I don't see the benefit. As soon as I remove the pan from heat, I put the onions in another container so they don't get too crispy.

June didn't eat these in her tacos, she ate them as a side dish. They are awesome onions that take on a smokey, sweet, savory taste from the beer and smoke. The Boston Bay seasoning adds the extra peppery taste to them that makes them a great addition to an otherwise mellow dish. I highly recommend them.

-- Guest Blogger: Justin F. Brunelle

Fruit & Oatmeal Bars

My constant search for healthy snacks has led me to semi-experimenting in the kitchen. I wanted to make an oat-based cookie using apple sauce, but I have yet to find a recipe that meets all of my dietary wishes. I finally figured that I'd look for granola bar recipes to get some inspiration, and that led me to this recipe at QuakerOats.com. Of course I've adapted it some, but I followed the basic instructions.

What I used:

1 1/2 cups crispy rice cereal (I bought the store brand)

1 1/4 cups uncooked oats

1 1/2 cups dried fruit (I used dried cranberries, dried blueberries, and raisins)

1/4 cup coconut

2/3 cup honey

4 tbs buttery spread

3 tbs granulated sugar

1/2 tbs cinnamon

Ingredients--minus the apple sauce. How did that get in the picture?!

How I did it:

First I mixed the cereal, oats, fruit, and coconut together in the 8x8 pan. Simple.

Next, I heated the honey, butter, sugar, and cinnamon in a saucepan. The recipe said to put on med-low heat, stir it frequently but let it boil while stirring frequently? I was confused so I just heated it through so the sugar and honey were well-mixed. 

Before heating. 

Once the honey-buttery-sugar mixture was heated, I removed it from the heat and mixed my cereal-oatmeal-fruit mixture into the saucepan. I mixed the two mixtures together with a wooden spoon until the cereal-oatmeal-fruit mixture was well coated. I slid it all back into the 8x8 pan and pressed it with wax paper.

Rating:

They look and smell really good, and they were pretty easy to prepare. The recipe says to let them "cool completely" in the refrigerator before cutting into bars and storing in an airtight container. Justin couldn't wait. He just helped himself to a little corner piece that turned out more like granola than a granola bar. I don't think they're completely cooled, but he gave the taste 2 thumbs up at least!

Hopefully they'll come out as beautiful bars when I go back in there in a little bit!

Morning update:

"They're delightful," says Justin. The taste is a winner, but I'm a little upset that they're not coming out as perfect bars. A few of them have cut really well, but some of them don't stay together when they get to the plate. These are not eat-on-the-go bars for sure! I think that the honey mixture didn't get sticky enough when I was heating it, so it didn't make the bars stick as well as I would have hoped.

Now that I have a basic recipe down, I can play with it some more and hopefully create different oatmeal bars/cookies! I got a recipe for a peanut butter & jelly oatmeal bar. Maybe that will be next!

Mounds Bars...or should I say coconut truffles

It's a beautiful day, so I'm sitting outside as I'm writing this entry. I took the day off for a dentist appointment and wound up with a gorgeous, 70 degree March day. My whiteness is scaring the neighbors as I lay in the backyard, but who cares about the drunk college kids anyway? It seems that they're just waking up...

So I haven't spent this entire day outside. No, of course I had to do a round of baking. This time I decided to try a recipe I saw on Handle the Heat for homemade Mounds Bars. The story goes like this: I posted this recipe to my mom's Facebook wall early last week, and a few of my mom's friends commented that they'd like to try some too. One of the posters is a close family friend who was recently diagnosed with breast cancer. Who am I to keep these delectable treasures from a woman who is in dire need of chocolate? I decided to make them this weekend and carry them over for a visit sometime this week. Oh, and I made some for my mom as well!

What I used:
1 can sweetened condensed milk
1 1/2 bags sweetened coconut
1 tsp sea salt
2 1/2 packages semi-sweet baking chocolate (yeah, a TON! I started off trying to use 10oz, but it wasn't enough)

What I did:
I combined the sweetened condensed milk, the coconut, and the sea salt in a large baking bowl. I mixed all of the ingredients together until they came to a thoroughly coated, sticky mixture. I spread the mixture into a 13x9 pan that was coated in tinfoil and cooking spray. That was my first mistake. The recipe I was using said to spread the mixture out in the pan with a spatula and press firmly into bars to freeze for 15 minutes and cut. I did all that. Either my mixture was too sticky or not frozen enough because my bars did not come out as bars...

When I took the pan out of the freezer and tried to cut the bars, I didn't like how they came out. I didn't think that these "candies" should look like brownies. I couldn't cut them as small as I wanted them because they weren't hard enough, so I just kind of sliced some rows to get the bars out. After I got some of the coconut mixture out of the pan, I tried to form it into Mounds-Bar-like heaps. I figured they looked pretty good, so I popped the chocolate in the microwave to melt. 

The Mounds Bar-ish form

When I tried to coat the little Mounds-Bar-like rolls in chocolate, I quickly saw that they were falling apart as soon as I dipped them. The coconut wasn't pressed hard enough, so the bars were just breaking with the weight and heat from the chocolate. I wanted the candies to come out like real Mounds bars, but mostly I just wanted them to come out.

I decided to try to hand-press the coconut mixture into balls. This worked for a few, but then I found that the coconut mixture was starting to soften, so I had to pop it back into the freezer.

Finally, after a few tries, I think I got it right. The coconut mixture had to be really tightly pressed and frozen--otherwise it'd just fall apart once it hit the chocolate. I spent a lot of time coating these candies. I've never used coconut as a main ingredient like this before, so this was all about trial-and-error. 

Just as a side note: as with any chocolate-coating recipe, I always line a baking sheet (or 2 in this case) with wax paper to place the candies on while they are hardening in the fridge. These sat in the fridge for about half an hour before I took them out to package them.

These are packaged in a little glass jar tied with a white ribbon.

A less fancy way that I package is by wrapping up in Saran wrap and creating a fountain effect. Then I tie a ribbon around the "fountain" and curl it. Simple, but it adds a nice touch.

Rating:

I would make these again now that I know how to do it best. From the tastes I had of the coconut mixture, I think they really do taste like Mounds Bars; they have that salty-sweet taste.

The real taste test will happen when I give these to our friend. Hope she likes them!

Oreo Truffles

I'm back! I spent the entire evening tonight making Oreo truffles, and man, I am beat. I almost forgot what it's like to work in the kitchen for hours on end. I think I need one of those floor mats that reduces the strain on your spine...


So, as stated in my last post, I gave up chocolate for Lent (gasp). Making Oreo truffles was extremely difficult, and I have to admit that I accidentally licked my fingers once or twice--followed immediately by spitting and reciting a few Our Fathers and Hail Mary's. I think God will forgive me for my sympathy baking tonight.


These Oreo truffles are going to a co-worker whose daughter recently passed away. My co-worker loves chocolate and really enjoyed these truffles when I made them for Christmas. In lieu of flowers, I send chocolates.


Down to business.


What I used:
1 package Oreos
1 (8oz) package Philadelphia Cream Cheese -- No substituting for the cheap stuff!
2 packages semi-sweet baking chocolate


1 package Golden Oreos
1 (8oz) package Philadelphia Cream Cheese -- again, no substituting!
1 package white baking chocolate


*I made 2 batches (as you can tell by the two different types of Oreos and baking chocolates). 


How I did it:
First I set out the cream cheese so it could soften to room temperature. I decided to make the white chocolate truffles first so that the chocolate from the regular Oreos wouldn't discolor the lighter ones. I used a food processor to crumble the Oreos. My food processor is little, so I had to do about 1/2 row of Oreos at a time. After all of the Oreos were crumbled (and I enjoyed a few chocolate-free Golden Oreos), I mixed in the softened cream cheese. Trying to run a spatula through the mixture is almost impossible, so I just used my hands to knead the "dough." You really have to mix the cookie crumbs and cream cheese really well so that it forms a truffle-consistency. Otherwise it'll just be like eating crumbled cookies.

My little baby food processor

Crumbled Oreos

After mixing the dough completely, I used a cookie scoop to help form the dough into balls. After I scoop each ball with the cookie scoop, I roll it in my hands to form a nice ball. I did that one-by-one and placed all of the formed balls onto a baking sheet lined with wax paper. It's really tedious and my hands are covered in oil from the dough-mixture, but hand rolling is really the best way to form the truffles.

After I form all of the truffles, I pop the chocolates in the microwave to melt (as directed on the package). Once the chocolate is melted, I take each truffle and roll it in the chocolate. I use two spoons to spin the excess chocolate off and place the truffle back onto the wax paper. One-by-one. It really takes forever, but these truffles are worth it!

Finally, after all of the truffles are covered in chocolate, I spin a few designs using the excess chocolate. Sometimes I've used sprinkles, but I love the way the chocolate looks.

The truffles have to sit in the fridge for about 20-30 minutes for the chocolate to harden completely, but then they're ready to eat!

Chocolate and white chocolate truffles

The original chocolate truffle

Out of focus, but nicely packaged for gift.

Rating:

These don't really even need a rating because I make them all of the time. They're a hit with everyone who has tried them. It's true that they're really sweet, but what's not to love about that? A lot of people ask if they're store-bought or if they come from a bakery which is definitely a compliment. They're great!

The long lost confectioner

I'm alive! My mom has been hinting that I need to update my blog, and although I don't have any new failures and miraculous recoveries from the kitchen to post, I figure that I'll write a little summary of the past few weeks.

Let's see: Superbowl weekend (yes, that long ago), I made chocolate covered pretzels and pizza muffins to take to some friends' party. The chocolate covered pretzels aren't exciting for me anymore because I've done them so many times, so blogging much about them would be a bore. I just use pretzel rods that come in a plastic container because they're easy to transport for parties. I lay out the pretzels onto wax paper while the semi-sweet chocolate is heating up. I dip and coat the pretzels in the chocolate and them roll them in sprinkles. They sit in the fridge for about 20 minutes to harden. Really good. Really easy. Wish I had pictures.

On the non-confection side, the pizza muffins were a recipe I got from Pinterest. I adapted them to include turkey pepperoni and baked them in a mini-muffin tin. The recipe called for mozzarella, parmesan, flour, italian spices, milk, egg, and baking powder. I also placed whole turkey pepperonis at the bottom of each muffin for an extra crisp of turkey. They're ready to eat as soon as they're out of the oven; just dip them in the warmed pizza (spaghetti) sauce!

What else have I been making? Lots of vegetable dishes. Nothing really exciting! We get tons of vegetables from our CSA, and I have to find some way to cook them all before they go bad. I made a cabbage casserole with a recipe from Allrecipes that turned out really good. It was cheesy and made the cabbage taste more like spinach. We've been eating a lot of potatoes and squash--you know, the boring winter vegetables...

Justin and I gave up chocolate for Lent this year (go ahead and gasp). It's been extremely difficult, and that's probably why I haven't had anything to write about. It's been 2 weeks since my last taste, and I'm fiending! I do plan on making some homemade Mounds bars this weekend for a friend, so I'll be sure to document and blog about that. I'm also planning on making some chocolate truffles (an art I've refined over the past few months), so that'll be another good blog.

So my point is that there is more to come! Stay tuned...

:)

I just thought of another thing I've tried recently! I bought a popsicle mold and started making smoothie pops. They're a nice sweet treat, and they're good for you. I blended yogurt, raspberries, blueberries, strawberries, and a banana in a food processor and then spooned the smoothie-liquid into the popsicle mold and popped it into the freezer. A few hours later we had delicious smoothie pops. I just continue doing them with whatever fresh fruit I pick up at the store.

Okay, that's it! Now you can stay tuned...

Pineapple skinny girl cupcakes

Cupcakes are my favorite; they're mini-cakes that can be decorated, devoured, and destroyed individually. If I mess something up on one, I can just eat it and pretend it never happened. Hide the evidence!

I was browsing Pinterest this week (my newest obsession), and I came across a recipe for "Pineapple Bliss Cupcakes." They looked tasty, so I clicked to view the recipe. It took me to a website called skinnytaste.com. The nutrition facts boasted only 140 calories per cupcake WITH icing! And a mere 93 without icing! Not that I'm too interested in calories or counting them, but knowing that a sweet treat is low in calories makes me a little giddy. I decided that these were going to be my experiment this weekend.

What I used:
1 box yellow cake mix (again, I bought whatever was on sale)
20 oz crushed pineapple in juice


For the topping:
3/4 cup marshmallow fluff
8oz reduced fat cream cheese
20 oz crushed pineapple (drained)
a few handfuls of mini-marshmallows

How I did it:
First I preheated the oven to 350 degrees. I lined the cupcake pans with cupcake liners. I decided to do some regular-sized cupcakes and also some mini-cupcakes. Smaller cupcake, fewer calories. A lot of times I'm just looking for a small treat to fulfill my sweet-tooth, and these little poppers are just right!

As the oven was preheating, I mixed the yellow cake mix and the crushed pineapple with a hand mixer. It took about 2 minutes to get the pineapple fully mixed in with the cake mix so that there weren't any big pineapple pieces. The recipe doesn't call for eggs or oil (to keep it low in fat), so I was a little worried about how these cupcakes would rise. 

After the mix was well-blended, I filled the lined cupcake pans with the mixture. I put 2-3 scoops into the larger cupcake liners, and I put 1 scoop into the smaller cupcake liners. I ran out of small cupcake liners, so I just sprayed non-stick cooking spray onto the last few cupcake spots.

I placed both cupcake pans in the 350 degree oven. The mini-cupcake pan baked for 15 minutes. The larger cupcake pan baked for 20 minutes. As always, I insert a toothpick into the center of a cake to see if they're done.


This is where the problems started.

My concerns about how the cupcakes would rise were valid. A lot of them fluffed up while they were in the oven, but they fell like spoiled souffle shortly after I took them out. They didn't turn into a sticky mess, but I was still a little disappointed. The cupcakes turned out more spongey than I had hoped. They still taste good though (see how many are missing from the mini-pan?).


Here come more problems.


I let the cupcakes cool completely, and then I started making the whipped topping (icing). I drained the crushed pineapple--or at least I thought I did--so that it wouldn't water down the mixture. I combined the pineapple, marshmallow fluff, and cream cheese with a hand mixer. The mixture looked a little thin, so I added about 1/4 cup more marshmallow fluff. It still looked thin. I added a few handfuls of mini-marshmallows. It looked thicker, so I tried it on a small cupcake. Too runny. I was hesitant to keep adding fluff and extra ingredients because I wanted it stay in the under 150 calorie range, so I hoped that maybe if I let the mixture sit in the fridge for a few minutes, it'd thicken up. It did.


I topped all of the cupcakes with the mixture and placed them in an airtight container in the fridge...after I snapped a few pictures and had a taste test!

Rating:

These cupcakes taste really good, but they're very spongey. Although they are cupcakes--implying that they should be able to be unwrapped and eaten on the go--they require a plate and a fork.

Justin likes them alright. His exact words: "They're okay...they're gooey...not that it's a bad thing."


Will I try this recipe again? Probably not as cupcakes. Maybe as a trifle or a pudding-type dessert. I'd also eliminate the pineapple from the whipped topping and probably stick to just cream cheese and marshmallow fluff.


Recipe adapted from http://www.skinnytaste.com/2011/04/pineapple-bliss-cupcakes.html

Ice Cream Sandwiches

Justin's dad's birthday was this week, so we went over to his parents' house last night to celebrate and have dinner. Justin got his dad some manly grill gifts, but I wanted to give him something special from me. Knowing that Justin's dad likes ice cream sandwiches, I decided to make homemade (or semi-homemade) ice cream sandwiches. I've made ice cream sandwiches before using chocolate chip cookies, but the cookies don't stay soft when they're stored in the freezer. I decided that this time I was going to try to use cake as the "sandwich" part. Luckily Justin gave me a whoopie pie pan for Christmas this year:

I figured that this pan would be great to use for ice cream sandwiches; all of the mini-cakes would come out the same size.


What I used for this recipe:
1 box chocolate cake mix (yes, I consider this cheating)
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 1/4 cups water
3 eggs (I actually forgot to add the eggs; oops!)


1 1/2 quarts vanilla ice cream (I just bought whatever was on sale)


How I did it:
The cake mix box instructed to preheat the oven to 350 degrees. I mixed the cake mix with the additional ingredients listed on the box (except for the eggs because I forgot!). Fill the whoopie pie pan (that is greased with non-stick cooking spray) with the mixture; I put approximately 3 spoonfuls into each mini-cake. Next time I think I'd only put 2 spoonfuls in each because each sandwich side blossomed into a muffin-top kind of pastry which turned into a problem later... 


I had a little bit of the mixture left over, so instead of waiting for the first pan to cook, I just dropped rounded spoonfuls (again, 3) onto a greased cookie sheet. I put both pans in the preheated oven for about 18 minutes. I checked them with a toothpick every 5 minutes because I wasn't sure exactly how long they would take to bake.


After the toothpick came out clean, I took both pans out of the oven. I let everything sit for 10 minutes and then moved the cookie-sheet sandwich sides to a piece of tinfoil (I was out of wax paper). I tried to remove a few of the whoopie pie-pan sandwich sides, but a few started to crumble. I decided to let those cool completely before I tried to move them out of the pan again. 


An hour later (after going out to run a few errands and pick up the ice cream), I moved the rest of the whoopie pie-pan sandwich sides to another piece of tinfoil. I had let the ice cream sit out for 20 minutes to soften, so now it was time to make some sandwiches!

Right when I started assembling, I realized that the muffin-top sandwich sides would not work for ice cream sandwiches--see the problem noted above. I cut the muffin-top sandwich sides (the ones that were in the whoopie pie pan) in half with a serrated knife. The bottom side was a bit smaller than the top side, so I just had to be careful not to over-fill with ice cream.


I smeared about 2 1/2 spoonfuls of ice cream onto the smaller of two sandwich sides and topped it off with a larger sandwich side. After assembling each ice cream sandwich, I wrapped it with saran wrap and tied it off with a curled ribbon.

I made 11 good ice cream sandwiches. I tried to make an even dozen, but my last one fell apart. I saved all of the crumbled cake to make ice cream sundaes though; we do not waste food in this house!

I'm not sure how long the sandwiches will keep in the freezer, but I don't expect that they'll sit too long out there.


Rating:
I didn't try more than a bite of a sandwich that Justin ate, but I thought they turned out pretty good (even with me forgetting the eggs in the cake batter!). 


Justin's only criticism was that he prefers a crispy outer sandwich on his ice cream sandwiches. Next time I'll bake the cakes a bit longer.


Justin's dad had no criticism; he's a good man!


Will I try this recipe again? Definitely. I'd like to do yellow cake with strawberry ice cream.