Over the Kitchen Counter: Angie's Place for Cooking and Crafts

Scary Treat

Happy Halloween!  The best part of the day for us?  Roasting the pumpkin seeds...we buy extra pumpkins to have more!  Some recipes call for rinsing the seeds before baking but I find it better to just separate the goop as well as you can and just plop the seeds on a baking sheet - that way they are nice and flavourful and get that nice, crispy golden crunch. 
I toss them with a tablespoon of butter and sprinkle with salt, then roast slowly at 325 F for about 40 minutes or so - they'll be nice and brown and kind of dried out looking.  I love the smell!  Make sure to stir them occasionally so they don't burn and are evenly golden.  Yum! Yum!

The Perfect Gift or What?

I couldn't resist taking mum one last gift before being discharged...

Holly Jolly

My poor crafting supplies don't know what they've done wrong to warrant such neglect!  I haven't been in my workshop for days and it now turns out mother will be in the hospital for at least another day so I'm off again to visit with her and 4 other inmates - including Stanley, who insists on trying to escape the bed (and not keeping his gown tied up in the rear!!) - poor mother has seen the moon rising at all times of the day!

I did rattle off this card, in about 6 "30-second" sessions, trying to design a quick Christmas card for general giving.  The punch stamp is from the Christmas Punch SU set and the dsp is called Merry Moments.  The brown dsp is from last year's Ski Slope pack.  The best part is the Dazzling Diamonds on the snowflakes - it just makes anything look sparkly and festive!

A Little Encouragement

Today I took mom one of her favourite treats: McDonald's pies!  It's a bit of a blow to my home baking ego but the woman just raves about those little deep-fried hand-held pies so I grabbed a couple (they now have berry pie in addition to their apple pie...who knew?).  I made a cute belly-band out of card stock, decorated with designer paper and a scalloped "Think Happy Thoughts" stamp and took them over to the hospital for an afternoon snack.  You truly can make anything a gift with the right presentation.

I made up the poster above for her bulletin board next to her bed which everyone loved (note: when you are in the hospital visiting you are also required to visit with all the other people in the room, whether you like it or not!  No conversation is private, and no detail of the other patient's illnesses seems to be either!  I have already been called from behind a curtain "Visitor, visitor!  Can you bring me my tray?" and "Can you lower this bed for me?  Can I go home now?")...it's sad really, there is such a nurse shortage that any warm, mobile body will be hailed for assistance.  But I try to accommodate and make everyone laugh with stories from the outside...but hopefully one or two more days and my patient load will be reduced to one.
 
 

Coconut Cake

This is one of my favourite cakes to eat and funny enough, it is a recipe from Weight Watchers so you can eat it (almost) guilt-free.  I love coconut and this light and simple cake is flavoured with coconut extract on the inside and real toasted coconut on the outside.  The recipe is so easy and fast because it only yields one 9" cake which you then cut in half to make the layers.  The fat-free 7-minute frosting is a cinch to whip up over a double-boiler and the whole thing assembles in a jiffy.  Make the cake as you would any butter cake (combine dry ingredients, set aside.  Beat butter, sugar, eggs & extracts.  Add dry ingredients, alternating with milk) - just let me know if you have any questions.  Check out my other videos for demonstrations on cake-making methods and for 7-minute frosting.  Sprinkle the whole cake with your toasted coconut.

Coconut Cake

1-1/2 cups cake flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/8 tsp salt

2 eggs

2 tsp vanilla

1/4 tsp coconut extract

4 Tbsp butter

3/4 cup sugar

1/3 cup buttermilk

 

Oven 350 F.  9" round greased cake pan. 20-25 minutes.

Toast 1/2 cup sweetened shredded coconut in 300 F oven for about 10 minutes (watch carefully to make sure it doesn't burn)...

 

7-minute Frosting

2 egg whites

3/4 cup sugar

4 Tbsp water

1 tsp light corn syrup

1 tsp vanilla

1/8 tsp coconut extract

* combine everything except the vanilla and coconut flavouring in a double boiler and beat for 7 minutes

* Mom's surgery went very well with no problems and she was feeling great as soon as she was done (ok, she did have a morphine pump in her hand, but she really hadn't used it!)  A few days recovery in the hospital and then we will be busy getting used to that new bionic hip!
 

Stuffed Peppers

(Quick post today - it's operation day, off to the hospital shortly.)  Here is a short - filmed with one hand - video showing you how I make Stuffed Green Peppers. They are a tasty and economical fall dish.  I won't lie, I can't get the kids near them!  Even though they like the ingredients individually once those green peppers get cooked: rejected!  But I like them and every once in a while I will make stuffed peppers for the DH and myself...and just freeze the extras for another time.  Have a great week! 

One More Cranberry Recipe

Those darn left-over bananas!  This week's installment of loaf is the Cranberry Banana Loaf.  A nice mix of regular banana bread with a tart hit of cranberry offers a slight variation of quick bread - because I always have bananas and I still have a bag of cranberries to get rid of!  I just bake these things up as the opportunity arises and then slice, wrap, and freeze for easy additions to the lunch bags...

 Cranberry Banana Loaf

1/4 cup butter, melted

1 cup sugar

2 eggs

3/4 cup mashed banana

1 cup chopped cranberries

1-1/2 cups flour

1-1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp cinnamon

9x5" loaf pan, greased.  350 degrees F for 1 hour.  Any questions on method just let me know...

 

Spatulas

I use my spatulas almost every single day - especially the largest one.  It is perfect for leveling off my dry baking ingredients, (because you all know that you should spoon dry ingredients into a dry measuring cup with a scoop until over-flowing and then level off with a straight edge for an accurate measurement, right?) and since I bake on most days it's always at hand.  I like the smaller off-set spatula (the one that bends up) for smoothing out batter in a pan, spreading frosting on a cake, or easing muffins out of the tin.  It's nice and small so I have lots of control.  The small straight edge one offers a little bit of both - leveling and control - for smaller jobs.  All three are made by Wilton (the cake decorating people) and are available in most kitchen-supply stores and in the cake decorating section at Michael's.  They are not very expensive and I have had mine for almost 15 years.  Just make sure to keep them out of the hot dishwasher because of the wooden handles.

Roasted Beets

  There's something very pioneer-ish about using root vegetables this time of year - freshly harvested, slow-roasted, hearty.  Usually I just boil beets but this time I roasted them in a foil packet in the oven (just trim off the stem end and add a 1/4 cup of water.  Roast at 425 F until tender, about an hour and 15 minutes).  You can eat them just like that or take it a step further: peel and quarter the beets, toss with a couple tablespoons of olive oil in a baking dish, salt & pepper, and then re-heat covered for 20 minutes.  I added a teaspoon of basil as per the recipe but none of us cared for that addition.  Other than that the beets were sweet and tender with a caramelized flavour, pretty good.

Treat Bags

These are the little treat bags I made up for my Halloween monsters - we're at the point where I don't have to come up with a costume for them but I knew they would still want the goods!

I cut the pumpkin out on the Cricut using the Hello Kitty cartridge.  The topper is just some card stock measured to fit the top of the small zipper craft bags I got at the dollar store.  I stamped Happy Halloween and added a piece of ribbon.  They won't care about all that though...as they mow through "one of everything"...scary!