Zucchini Muffins with Streusel Topping

 

 Got Zucchini???? I do!

 

It's that time of year when zucchini plants are in full production force, and our plants are no exception! We've loved going out to the garden and each time it seems discovering more full sized zucchinis. And I have been busy trying out all kinds of different recipes to use them! 

I know a recipe must be good when I've made it twice, and both times the food gets gobbled up by the family.

 

One of those recipes has been one I found for some zucchini muffins. I love that these muffins include oats, and as a bonus they have a yummy streusel topping! The original recipe (here) uses some whole wheat flour too, which would make them healthier, but I opted to just use all white, since that is what I had on hand. 

They were easy to whip up, especially since one of my sons LOVES grating zucchini (good thing, because it's not my favorite past time!), and they tasted great! 

So, grab your zucchini (if you don't have any your neighbor probably does) and try these muffins yourself. I don't think you'll be disappointed! 

This recipe makes about 24 muffins...

What You'll Need: 

FOR THE MUFFINS:

• ⅓ cups Rolled Oats
• 2 cups Flour
• ½ cups Brown Sugar
• 2 teaspoons Baking Powder
• ¼ teaspoons Baking Soda
• ½ teaspoons Salt
• 2 teaspoons Ground Cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoons Nutmeg
• 2 cups Packed Grated Zucchini
• ⅔ cups Buttermilk
• 2 whole Eggs
• ½ cups Butter, Melted

FOR THE STREUSEL TOPPING:

• 2 Tablespoons Butter, Melted
• 4 Tablespoons Brown Sugar
• 4 Tablespoons Rolled Oats
• 2 Tablespoons Flour
• ½ teaspoons Ground Cinnamon

What You'll Do: 

• Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
• Spray muffin cups with nonstick cooking spray.
• Combine streusel ingredients in a small bowl and stir until well mixed. Set aside.
• For the muffins: Stir together all dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Fold in the grated zucchini and mix until it is well coated with the dry ingredients.
• In a small bowl whisk together the eggs, buttermilk and melted butter. Fold into dry ingredients stirring just until combined.
• Spoon batter into prepared muffin cups and top with struesel topping.
• Bake for 18-20 minutes.

Grab a cup of milk and enjoy eating your veggies! 

Creme Brûlée... Heaven in my Mouth!

When we lived in Las Vegas my husband and I would occasionally go to one of the many buffets to eat for date night. There were lots to choose from, but there was one that had the most gorgeous desserts. I don't usually get dessert when we go out but the ones at this place were too good to pass up.

They had  all kinds of homemade pies, and pastries, and tarts, and cookies, and even gelato... mmm, the gelato, SO good! I think I can taste it now! 

Among all these wonderful culinary creations I discovered a love for a dessert which I hadn't had much previous experience with - Creme Brûlée. Something about the silky texture, delicious vanilla-y taste, and a warm caramelized sugar on top really hit the spot for me. I'm not sure that their's was any better than anywhere else, but it sure was good, and I found myself looking forward to date nights at that restaurant just because of it. 

Well, now that we've moved away from Buffet City, um, I mean Las Vegas, it's back to skipping the desserts when we go out (which is probably a good thing). And I thought my Creme Brûlée days were a thing of the past. 

I never even considered that I could make them myself. I didn't have a recipe, or a torch to caramelize the top, and I figured that the whole process of actually making such a thing must be pretty difficult. 

But, things change! A while back, while  perusing through Pinterest I came across a pin for a Creme Brûlée recipe that claimed to be easy, so of course I pinned it. Then, the stars really aligned when I found an inexpensive torch for sale at a garage sale. 

It seemed like fate was telling me it was time to try making my own Creme Brûlée! And when fate tells me something, I know I'd better get to it (that's good justification for dessert, right?!?).

So, I did just that, and besides a few malfunctions with the garage sale torch, this recipe was pretty easy, and so delicious! It does take some time since you have to cook and cool, etc. but the process isn't difficult, and the results are definitely worth the wait!! 

Here's the recipe I followed to make my very first (and I'm sure not my last) Creme Brûlée: 

INGREDIENTS

• 1 quart heavy cream
• 2 tsp. vanilla extract
• ½ cup sugar
• 6 large egg yolks
• 2 quarts hot water
• ½ cup sugar

INSTRUCTIONS

• Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F.
• In a medium saucepan, combine heavy cream and vanilla. Stir constantly over medium heat for about 7-8 minutes until mixture starts to bubble, close to a simmer.
• Remove saucepan from heat. Cover and let set for 15 minutes.
• In a medium bowl, whisk together ½ cup sugar and the egg yolks until it is well blended and just starts to lighten in color. Add the cream a little at a time, stirring continually until everything is combined.
• Pour the liquid into 6 (7 to 8-ounce) ramekins. Place the ramekins into a large cake pan. Pour enough hot water into the pan to come halfway up the sides of the ramekins.
• Bake at 325 degrees F, just until the creme brulee is set, but still trembling in the center. Bake approximately 40 to 45 minutes.
• Remove the ramekins from pan and refrigerate for at least 2 hours and up to 3 days.
• Remove the creme brûlée from the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes prior to browning the sugar on top.
• Divide the remaining ½ cup sugar equally among the 6 dishes and spread evenly on top. Using a torch, melt the sugar and form a crispy and browned top. The Creme Brûlée needs to sit at least 5 minutes before serving.

Countdown Blocks

December is always a busy month for me. I try to make a lot of homemade Christmas gifts to give friends and family, which always ends up taking longer to make than I think they will. Then I'm ususally waiting in long lines at the post office, hoping that my gifts will even get to thier recipients in time for Christmas. 

The past many years I've felt like things were so hectic during the holidays that I've had a really hard time being able to enjoy the season like I used to. Every year I promise myself that next year I'll do things better, I'll be on the ball and get my gifts made and mailed early so that things are not so crazy with all the last minute preparations.

That's been kind of hard for me, because I tend to be a last minute kind of girl. It's when the pressure is on that I get the inspiration and drive to get things like this accomplished. So, December comes and I find myself once again rushing to get all the gifts made and sent, and as usual promising myself that next year will be different. 

Well, hopefully this will be the year that things are different! 

A couple of weeks ago my teenage daughter and I decided to get busy and start making some of our Christmas gifts. A little Christmas in July! 

Admittedly, I had some push to do it since I had a brother coming to visit who could deliver some of the gifts, which would save me a ton of postage over mailing them all to Canada. 

This also gave me a deadline, so the last minute motivation was there, even though it wasn't December! 

My Christmas list seems to get bigger every year. More and more of my nephews and neices are getting married and starting families of their own. This year I wanted to make something fun for some of them that they could use for thier young families. 

After lots of Pinterest scanning, my daughter and I decided that we should make them some Countdown Blocks (seen here). 

We have a set of Countdown Blocks in our home that we've used now for a lot of years. My kids have had a lot of fun using them to get excited about upcoming events. The ones we have were specifically made for Christmas, but we keep them up all year long, and use them to count down to other holidays and birthdays, etc. 

So, for these blocks we decided to make them general, so that they could use them all year long, not just for Christmas. I hope they'll like them! 

Note to my married nephews and neices: I'm pretty confident that none of you read my blog, but if you do... pretend you didn't see this post! Forget all about it, and be surprised on Christmas! 

Here's how we made our Countdown Blocks

First I cut some blocks out of a 4x4 post (I had some leftover from when I made this welcome post). The post isn't really 4x4, because of wood shrinkage it was 3.5x3.5, so I cut them 3.5 to make them square. I also cut a 2x4 7.5 inches long. I sanded all the pieces down till they were nice and smooth.

Then I picked out some coordinating paper. Picking paper is always a hard step for me, but luckily I had in my paper stash some already coordinating paper perfect for this project. I'm pretty sure I bought this to use for some other project that I didn't get to, but since I can't remember what that was it must not be important! 

Next we painted the wood. We painted a couple of coats of blue, focusing primarily on the edges, since that is what would show up. We did end up covering the entire block of wood with paint on our last coat.

After painting the blocks we modged podged on paper squares (cut to 3 inches) to the blocks, and a paper strip (cut 7x1.25) onto the long piece. We inked the edges of the paper with blue ink before we attached them for a little added extra effect. 

I cut Vinyl numbers and "countdown", though you could use stickers if you don't have a vinyl cutting machine. The numbers you need for these are 0, 0, 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. This makes it so you can count anything down for one month (or up to 32 days). Notice that there is no nine because the six gets turned upside down to become the nine. When choosing a font to cut (or stickers) watch that the 6 can interchange to a 9 nicely. I didn't think of that when I chose my font so it's not the best looking nine, but it will do.

We attached the vinyl... one block of the set getting a 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. The other getting a 0, 1, 2, 6, 7, and 8. And of course, the "countdown" going on the 2x4.

Once we were happy with how everything looked, we coated all the blocks with more modge podge and let them dry. 

Lastly, we carefully wrapped them, and happily sent them on their way! Phew, that eases some of December's burden! 

We made a couple more Christmas presents that week that I'll probably tell you about another day!

Brownie Bowl Pin-tastrophe!!

So, as anyone who uses ideas and recipes from Pinterest very often will know, not everything from there always turns out just like the picture.

I'll admit that this has happened to me on occasion. Sometimes it's because I do something wrong, but sometimes it's just a lousy idea that simply doesn't work.

Last week we had one of those pin-trosities happen!

My twelve year old son and I were preparing to make our family a Monday night treat. As usual we went to Pinterest and looked through my "fabulous food - sweet treats" board for pinspiration.

We found an idea on there (pinned a couple of times actually...anyone else accidentally pin things multiple times?). It was for these brownie bowls that you could put ice cream in.

They looked good, and easy enough, so we got to work on them.
 

All you had to do, according to the instructions, was to make any brownie batter, pour it into a greased muffin tin, then set another muffin tin (greased on the bottom side) on top and bake it like that. Then, when they come out of the oven you should have beautiful, perfectly shaped bowls of brownie goodness ready to fill with your favorite ice cream.
 

Sounds easy enough, right?

Well, not so much.
 

We followed those very directions...mixed up our brownie mix, thouroughly sprayed our muffin tins (I even have a picture for proof!), filled them, put the other tin on top, and popped them in the oven.
 

... But what came out of the oven was NOT perfectly shaped bowls of brownie goodness ...

What we had was a big ugly brownie mess!! A big pin-daster!!
 

So, of course I did some more Pinterest searching to see if I could discover what we did wrong. But, what I found was interesting. I couldn't find any other successful attempts at making these bowls this way.

The pin I used, with pictures of beautiful perfect brownie bowls was from an ice cream company, and that particular advertisement was pinned hundreds (or more) times.

The only other successful actual attempts I found were from people who used specialty pans especially made for making these bowls.

That made us feel a a little better I guess.

And, it wasn't a total loss... We still ate the brownie we could scrape out of the pan, and it still tasted good!
 

But, I don't give up easily. And I'm still not satisfied that there's not a way to use the pans I have to make brownie bowls. I have a few ideas floating around in my mind that we could try... So stay tuned, maybe someday I'll be able to pin a more fool proof method for creating perfectly shaped brownie bowls with two muffin tins!

I don't think I'll have trouble finding kids to eat whatever brownie mess I make in the mean time!