Blackberry Bread Pudding

I pinned a recipe for blackberry pudding with lemon sauce recently and bought the blackberries and was ready to make it today when I realized the recipe used canned biscuits.  I don't buy canned biscuits and store bought yogurt.   Well since I don't buy either of those foods anymore that meant it was time to start over and remake the recipe my way.  This pudding has very little added sugar versus the pinned recipe and I used Agave instead of sugar, I substituted and changed the desert and well it is similar to the recipe but with my own spin.

It isn't very pretty, but it does taste yummy.

Preheat oven to 425 Fahrenheit

 Ingredients for the biscuits are: 2 cups self-rising flour, 1/4 cup coconut oil, and 2/3 cup buttermilk(I used homemade, recipe is here).

 Mix flour and coconut oil together creating small pea size balls. Add buttermilk and knead dough lighty, create a ball.

 Roll out dough to 1/2 inch thickness.  Cut into triangles.  Place on coconut oil greased cookie sheet.  Brush coconut oil on biscuits.

 Bake biscuits for 10 minutes.

 Break biscuits into 1 inch pieces and put in greased 9x13 cake pan or round 9 inch tall cake pan.

Lower oven temperature 350 Fahrenheit

 Ingredients for custard are: 1 cup heavy cream, 16 ounces plain Greek yogurt(I used homemade, recipe found here), 1/2 cup agave syrup, 2 teaspoons vanilla extract, 4 eggs, 2 cups blackberries, and 1 cup blueberries.

 Add ingredients to bowl, do not add fruit. 

 Beat with whisk, until mixed.  After mixing add fruit and stir.

 Pour ingredients onto bread.

Bake for 40-50 minutes.

 Test center with toothpick, does it come out clean?

Again it isn't pretty in a bowl, but it tastes yummy.

Enjoy!

Banana Walnut Multigrain Muffins

This week when I bought all that wonderful $1 produce. I bought a bag of bananas too.  Those banana's were just begging me to make them into muffins.  I know what you're thinking. My goodness, this woman is obsessed with muffins.   What is her problem?  Good news, this will be my last muffin recipe for a while.  The muffin girl is retiring her quest to make all sorts of muffins.   I'll make them, just not new recipes to share with you.  I have found my four go to muffin recipes as of today!  Go forth today knowing I have given you a sure foundation of muffins to create your own muffindom, and you didn't have to go to Drury Lane!

 THIS is the culmination of muffindom!

Preheat oven to 350 Fahrenheit

 Ingredients for this recipe are: 1/2 cup unsalted butter, 1/2 cup turbinado sugar (brown sugar
would also work), 3/4 teaspoon baking soda, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon,
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg, 1 teaspoon vanilla extract,  1 1/2 cups mashed ripe banana
(approximately 3 medium-large bananas), 1/4 cup Agave Syrup (honey would also work), 2 large
eggs, 2 cups Wonderflour (whole wheat would also work, and 1/2 cup chopped walnuts.

 Cream butter, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and baking soda in a mixer with a whisk.

 Creamed mixture.

 Add bananas, and agave, beat till smooth.

 Add eggs and beat till smooth.

 this batter is looking smooth.

 Add walnuts, and flour and stir with a silicone spatula or wooden spoon.

 This batter is ready for baking.

Make sure you use muffin liners!  This recipe makes 12 muffins, I doubled it for my family.

Place filled muffin pans in oven and bake for 23-28 minutes, check if they are done with a toothpick.

 They are done!

This is a wonderful end to my muffin week.

Enjoy!

Chinese BBQ Chicken & Stir Fry

I really like Chinese food, and since we have a Chinese son (at least while he goes to school) it has been really fun to make Chinese food and get his opinion on how well the food tastes.  Today, Sunday, we ate left overs and our left overs included Rotisserie chicken.  When I asked my husband what he wanted with his chicken (he didn't like my idea of waffles and chicken) he said he wanted chicken, rice, and stir fry.  I wanted to make my own Chinese Barbecue Sauce.  Since it was precooked chicken, I wanted to make a Chinese shredded chicken barbecue sauce to reheat it in.  I made up a sauce recipe after looking at a lot of recipes.  I think my recipe comes pretty close to the barbecue sauce you would see in a Chinese restaurant minus the red color and some other mystery ingredients.

 Does it look like real Chinese take out? Better right?

 Ingredients for the Chinese barbecue Sauce are: 5 cloves of fresh peeled garlic, 1 inch piece of peeled ginger, 1 cup Hoisin Sauce, 1/2 cup Soy Sauce, 1/2 cup Agave Syrup, Piece of Cinnamon (2 teaspoons ground cinnamon will also work), 2 teaspoons whole peppercorns (2 teaspoons ground pepper), 2 teaspoons whole cloves (2 teaspoons ground cloves), and 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes.

 Add spices to a spice (coffee) grinder and grind until...

 It looks like this.

Grate your ginger with a handy Chinese multi-tool with grater or finely mince it.  This bottle opener, peeler, and ginger grater was a gift from one of our Chinese Exchange students we had two years ago.

Mix ingredients of sauce together.  The sauce needs something, the tang you find in Barbecue
sauce, it needs...

This,  add 1/2 cup Apple Cider Vinegar.  If you have Rice Wine Vinegar that would be good
(I ran out).

I wanted some sesame flavor too, so I added 1/4 cup Sesame Oil.  Perfect!

Mix the sauce.

Ingredients for Chinese Barbecue Shredded Chicken are: 3 cups shredded rotisserie chicken, and Barbecue sauce.

Ingredients for vegetable stir fry are: 1 zucchini, 1 cup baby carrots, 1 head of broccoli,
2 green onions.  You may add more vegetables as you like. 

Slice everything up.  I chose to slice the vegetables on the bias for the carrots and green onions
and sliced and quartered for the zucchini.  The broccoli I sliced into smaller florets.

Add enough sauce to coat the chicken in a saute pan and cover with lid.  Set burner to medium
and let the chicken heat up and absorb flavor.

Time to Stir Fry!

To stir fry, have everything ready to go.   This is a fast cooking method.  Preheat your wok on High.  Be sure to turn on your vent above your stove and also if need be, a fan in a window to draw out the smoke.  Yes this will be a smoking hot process, and that is the way you achieve Chinese Stir Fry properly.  If it wasn't so windy and cold I would use my propane camping stove outside so as to not have smoke indoors and to have a much stronger flame.  Use Peanut oil, it has a high smoke point (as in it can be heated as high as stir fry needs to be cooked and won't burn).  Are you ready to get smoking hot?  When your wok begins to smoke, add the oil, about 3 tablespoons.   It will smoke, but
keep going.  DON'T STOP NOW!!! Add broccoli, carrots, and 3 tablespoons of water.  Stir and
cover with lid. 

Let cook for 3 minutes.

The broccoli and carrots are a vibrant green and orange, so pretty.

Add zucchini and green onions, stir fry for a couple seconds.

Add Chinese Barbecue Sauce to coat, stir and...

When the zucchini is tender but not overcooked stop and turn off the burner, YOUR DONE!

We ate our Chinese Barbecue Chicken and stir fry over steamed brown rice.

Enjoy!