Classic Blueberry Muffins

For a few years I had been trying to come up with a traditional blueberry muffin that makes a speciality of the herbal sweetness of fruit. Too frequently, blueberry desserts are loaded up with subtle sugar and are more like mini cakes. The twist right here is adding some chopped apple that provides greater moistness and more herbal sweetness combined with the berries. I like to bake, generally easy brief breads, as they may be perfect for breakfast, brunch or lunch and indeed a snack whilst the yearning hits. Yes, there is still sugar in those delights, however lots much less than most blueberry cakes I have tried.

Other muffin recipes from my kitchen you're sure to enjoy:

Blueberry Goat Cheese Muffins

Cherry Blueberry Muffins

Cornmeal Honey Muffins

Tomato Cornmeal Muffins with Cheddar Cheese

Black Bean and Quinoa Chili Casserole

Every yr I sound like a broken file as I claim that each winter is the only to be able to never cease, as it usually feels like that, even in March and now April. Comfort meals can often enhance my mood. And despite the fact that this dish is not the maximum photogenic, or at least I changed into in an excessive amount of of a hurry to spend a great deal time with plating and lighting fixtures, it's miles a balanced, big and comforting meal.

Vegetables, grains and legumes are all baked collectively within the same dish with masses of grated cheese. I normally move mild at the cheese, but there are times while a tacky dish is just the factor to cheer you up and fill a grumbling tummy. Besides, I don't sense too responsible in any respect due to the nutrients that are scooped onto the dinner plate. I recommend serving with a refreshing lightly dressed leafy inexperienced salad to complete the meal. You can also wish to serve with a few dollops of sour cream for a few greater decadence and perhaps some crusty bread or cornbread if you are feeding a small crowd. Either manner, frigid temperatures and dreary climate might not be the focal point of your interest after some forkfuls of this.

More comforting casseroles you're sure to revel in from Lisa's Kitchen:

Pasta and Goat Cheese Casserole with Black Olives

Azuki Bean Casserole

Baked Tempeh & Japonica Rice Casserole

Mini Vanilla Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Molasses Icing

I'm a savory gal, but on occasion I like a wee deal with and I do like to bake. Most desserts are loaded with manner more sugar than I can cope with and the perpetrator is often the icing, so I got here up with a mini cupcake recipe with reduced sugar content material and one of the most mellow however pleasing toppings that I even have enjoyed on a baked appropriate. Cream cheese with some dashes of molasses and powdered sugar without a doubt take the cake to the subsequent degree with out overpowering the flavor buds or spiking blood sugar to close to deadly levels.

My husband and nice friend Basil had been most thrilled with the end result and I indulged in a few of these adorable bites myself.

Notes: Eggs are less complicated to overcome if left to take a seat for a while in order that they attain room temperature. You can pick out to line your muffin tray with parchment liners though they will come out simply as properly in case you grease your non-stick pan. I decide on them that manner to avoid the paper mess that results in more crumbs than I take care of. Another tip in case you want a fancier presentation is to pipe the icing onto the tops of the desserts. I don't have a "right" piping bag, but a reasonably-priced, disposable and much less messy solution is to reduce a small hollow in a nook of a ziploc bag, scoop in the icing, and there you go.

More desserts you could desire to attempt from Lisa's Kitchen:

Guinness Gingerbread Cake

Gluten-Free Honey, Lemon & Poppy Seed Cake

Ricotta Cheesecake with Mixed Berries and Balsamic Vinegar

Blueberry Ricotta Cheesecake

On the top of the reading stack: Everyday Raw Express: Recipes in 30 Minutes or Less by Matthew Kenney

Audio Accompaniment: Robert Rich

Kashmiri Chickpeas with Mushrooms

This dish is an clean, nourishing and gratifying curry with formidable and complicated flavors that is an specially top preference for a midweek meal whilst you are pressed for time and energy and need a few spice in your existence. I will upload that it is a superb choice for mushrooms fiends like myself to get their weekly repair. Serve with a mattress of warm steaming buttered rice and you've got all the makings for glad tummies.

Amchoor or dried mango powder and Kashmiri chili powder are without problems available at any Indian grocer, however you may substitute every other chili powder for the Kashmiri, and upload the juice from one sparkling lime or lemon on the cease of the cooking time to substitute for the amchoor.

More chickpea curries you're sure to experience from Lisa's Vegetarian Kitchen:

Chana Saag

Chickpea Vindaloo

Chickpeas in a Tomato and Tamarind Gravy with Spices

Chickpeas Smothered in a Tangy Tomato Gravy

Indian-Spiced Chayote (Chow Chow) Rice

An huge array of sparkling distinctive vegetables and culmination is something I've end up acquainted with seeing inside the huge metropolis supermarkets and ethnic grocery shops, but it is something that might have astonished me as a girl developing up in a small northern Ontario city where dinner produce consisted broadly speaking of potatoes, onions, carrots, corn and peas with Brussels sprouts, cabbage and cauliflower on occasion making their look at the supper plate.

I like to take benefit of the abundance to be found in my urban center and check produce this is completely new to me. I've determined the delights of bottle gourds, bitter melons, mustard vegetables and plantains this manner, and the exercising adds journey to the kitchen and the eating revel in.

This time round I've added a chayote to the basket and give you a gently spiced white rice dish to serve as a backdrop for it. Pronounced "chi-YOH-tee", the chayote or custard marrow is the fruit of a squash plant local to important America that looks like a inexperienced apple with a large wrinkled pleat tucked in at one quit, with a firm white crispy and juicy flesh like an apple and a slight and slightly sweet taste that resembles the tastes of apples, cucumber and summer time squash. The chayote is widely utilized in Latin America and inside the American South, wherein it's far referred to as a mirliton or merleton. It's extensively utilized once in a while in India wherein it goes under the charming call of "chow chow" and in which it is slight taste makes it an ideal automobile for the feature assertive spicing of Indian food.

Although paired here with cumin, coriander, cloves and cayenne, this chayote rice is in reality pretty moderate and serves as a delicious and palate-soothing accompaniment to a hot and zesty curry. Tender portions of gently cooked chayote upload splendid bursts of crisp, juicy and fresh mild sweetness that make a exquisite assessment in flavor and texture to the soft buttery rice and astringent spices. This is in reality a cute dish to add to any Indian meal, and I quite plan to apply chayote once more quickly ? In all likelihood simply simmered in a little milk or cream with cinnamon and nutmeg for a simple palate-cleaning dessert.

The recipe below includes instructions for starting a chayote and doing away with its single seed. I have to observe that it is considered by means of some people desirable to peel a chayote with kitchen gloves or under walking water to keep away from an traumatic stickiness from the uncooked vegetable (a stickiness that disappears while cooked), but I become no longer stricken myself. When shopping for a chayote, search for one this is firm but now not too tough and with an unblemished skin.

Other Indian side rice dishes you will enjoy:

Yellow Lemon Rice with Fried Cashews

Tamarind and Coconut Pulao Rice

Sweet and Spicy Rice

Green Tea & Curry Rice

Gigantes Bean Tomato Casserole

I by no means used to love lima beans, that is instead odd I think as I actually have quite a deliver of various dried beans reachable always as they occupy this sort of principal place in my diet. My first enjoy become less than great, as I used beans from a can that had a slimy texture that just did not paintings with a combined bean salad, and yet again I made a huge pot of "fortunate bean" soup that lacked any actual flair and seemed as if it is able to have fed five thousand men.

That turned into in the course of my early days of exploring vegetarian meals and cooking. Since then, my cooking skills have strengthened and my know-how and palate are greater refined, and this recipe certainly proved to me that frequently whilst we think we do not like sure ingredients, it's miles due to how they had been organized and served. Lima beans or giant lima beans ? Gigantes ? Have joined the ranks with the other dried legumes in my kitchen.

I've shared this dish before on this space but made a few minor changes to the recipe and it is really worth sharing once more. It's a comforting casserole that you will want to serve on a ordinary basis. Easy to make, you may prepare the rest of your meal at the same time as it bakes within the oven. If this recipe does not convert lima bean skeptics, I do not know what is going to.

More Greek recipes you're positive to experience from Lisa's Vegetarian Kitchen:

Quinoa Dolmadakia (Stuffed Grape Leaves)

Fried Saganaki with Halloumi on a Greek Tomato Salad with Kalamata Olives

Greek Lentil Soup - Fakes

Skewered Greek Salad

Pineapple Upside-Down Pancakes

I love making pancakes for a special weekend breakfast, so I'm continually seeking out new and creative ideas to bring life to the deal with. One of those ideas took place to me when I turned into looking at my recipe for a pineapple upside-down cake in which butter, brown sugar and earrings of fresh sweet pineapple are baked at the lowest of a easy white cake, after which the cake is inverted so that the cooked pineapple sits on top. Well, what may be simpler than pineapple upside-down pancakes, since the pancakes ought to be flipped in any case? So this recipe became born, with the clean rings of pineapple fried in butter and brown sugar until golden-brown and then placed on top of pancakes proper before they're flipped. These grew to become out to be a scrumptious weekend treat.

Any pancake batter may be used, however I might propose a thicker batter inclusive of the one I used right here to guide the pineapple earrings. A little almond extract is a first-rate addition to the batter as properly.

More recipes you may revel in:

Pineapple Upside-Down Cake

Oatmeal Apple Pancakes

Strawberry-Rhubarb Cottage Cheese Pancakes