RECIPE: ANGELA'S PUMPKIN CHIA SPELT SCUFFINS

One of my closest friend's dog died a little less than a month ago and Sean and I decided to go over and cheer her up. Not wanting to go over empty-handed, Sean and I opted to make her cookies but since she's on the Weight Watchers diet (and doing a mighty good job), I had to find a recipe that would suit the WW points scale but also be delicious.

Enter Pumpkin Chia Spelt Scuffins by Angela from Oh She Glows. What the heck is a scuffin? Well, I kind of wondered the same thing but then continued reading and found out that it's a mix between a scone and a muffin. I followed Angela's recipe with my substitutions in italics below:
PUMPKIN CHIA SPELT SCUFFINS
Ingredients:

• 2 1/2 cups whole grain spelt flour (I used whole wheat as I didn't have any spelt on-hand)
  
• 1 t baking powder
• 1 t baking soda
• 2 t cinnamon
• 1/2 t nutmeg
• 1/2 t ground cloves
• 1/2 t fine grain sea salt
• 1/2 cup Earth Balance vegan buttery spread
• 1/4 cup agave nectar
• 1/2 cup organic cane sugar (I used white granulated since I didn't have any cane sugar)
• 1 cup canned or fresh pumpkin
• 1 flax egg (1 T ground flax + 3 T warm water, mixed)
• 1 t vanilla

Directions: (straight from Angela's website)
Preheat oven to 350F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Whisk flax egg in a small bowl and set aside. In a medium sized bowl, combine the dry ingredients (spelt, baking powder, baking soda, sea salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves). Set aside. In a different bowl mix the butter, sugar and agave until smooth. I melted my butter a bit in the microwave for 15 seconds first as I find the Earth Balance is easier to work with when melted slightly. Now add pumpkin, flax egg, and vanilla. Beat well. Carefully mix in dry ingredients being sure not to overmix. Spelt is broken down very quickly when mixed and you can end up with a tough batter if you overmix it. But relax it will turn out regardless! The batter will be very moist and sticky, but don’t worry. Drop the batter onto the baking sheet. I wet my fingers to slightly shape the scuffins. Pop a stick in the end if preferred to have your scuffin on a stick! I got my sticks at Bulk Barn. Sprinkle with chia seeds for a spooky, yet nutritious, effect for Halloween! You can also have fun decorating little pumpkin faces on them (great for kids!). Bake for 17 minutes or until the scuffins slightly bounce back when touched. Handle the scuffins on a stick very carefully because they are delicate. I found that I improved this by making smaller scuffins on a stick- then they weren’t as heavy!
Believe it or not, these cookies are only 1 point on the WW point scale. My friend was not only really happy to have some company to cheer her up and not only happy to receive cookies (Sean made a cookie containing coconut and white chocolate), but really happy to find out that these cookies were only 1 WW point. Score!

I've made these once again since that first time and made the following substitutions according to what I had on-hand:

• 2 1/2 cups whole grain spelt flour (I used whole wheat as I didn't have any spelt on-hand)
  
• 1 t baking powder
• 1 t baking soda
• 2 t cinnamon
• 1/2 t nutmeg
• 1/2 t ground cloves
• 1/2 t fine grain sea salt
• 1/2 cup Earth Balance vegan buttery spread (I used butter as I was out of EB and the calorie count actually turns out to be very similar)
• 1/4 cup agave nectar
• 1/2 cup organic cane sugar
• 1 cup canned or fresh pumpkin
• 1 flax egg (1 T ground flax + 3 T warm water, mixed)
• 1 t vanilla

The second round of baking these cookies turned out to be better than the first. I don't know if it was the use of cane sugar or butter but the cookies were less dense than the first batch. They were addictive, crazy addictive.

HONEY LAVENDER ICE CREAM SANDWICHES!

Now if this If that doesn't get your mouth-watering, then I don't know what will:That right there is a homemade honey lavender ice cream sandwich and I could not be more proud of it. That's what you do with your chewy lavender cookies. Of course, let's see a few more photos, shall we?Yum!Yes, it tastes even better than it looks. And even though I hate Blogger for not letting me rotate my own photos, it was just this good:Well I guess that's enough.

RECIPE: LAVENDER COOKIES!

I almost never crave cookies. It's true. As much as I never crave chocolate, I just don't crave cookies. I just don't crave sweets, period. I'd rather snack on a bag of chips or my beloved Cheetos which I have not tasted in at least half a decade. (Excuse me while I go shed a tear or two.) One morning Sean and I were walking around downtown and we started talking about ice cream sandwiches. I started talking about the cookie part of the ice cream sandwich and that was it. For the rest of the day, subconsciously, that's all I could think about. Even in the evening, as I sat in front of the TV with my mother, I actually found myself saying out loud "I want a cookie. Do we have any cookies?" and of course, we don't have any cookies in this house. Even if we did, they probably wouldn't be cookies I could eat unless they were homemade by myself and I hardly ever make cookies. Cupcakes or muffins yes, cookies no.

But the desire for a cookie was growing more and more with each passing hour until the very next day, I couldn't take it anymore. I grabbed all the ingredients from the pantry and took the butter out of from the fridge. (I had actually just stuck it back into the fridge 30 minutes earlier from having let it set to room-temperature, doh!). 30 minutes did the trick though; it was soft enough that the KitchenAid could do all the work for me. Of course, I didn't want just any cookies, I wanted lavender cookies. And not just the typical lavender lemon shortbread cookies you see all over the internet but a chewy lavender cookies, reminiscent of a chewy chocolate chip cookie. I scoured the internet for a chewy lavender cookie recipe but came up short and that's when I decided to improvise...
DOM'S CHEWY LAVENDER COOKIES (makes 10 big cookies)
Ingredients:
- 1 1/-8 cup all-purpose flour
- 1/4 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 cup butter, room temperature
- 1/4 cup white sugar
- 1/4 cup brown sugar
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 1 egg
- 3 tsp dried lavender buds

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350F. (I use the convection bake button on my oven.)
   
2. Whisk together flour and baking soda and set aside.
3. Using a stand-up mixer or electric mixer, beat butter and both sugar until pale and fluffy on medium speed, about three minutes.
4. Reduce speed and add salt, vanilla and eggs. Beat until mixed, about one minute.
   
5. Add flour mixture and mix until combined, about one minute. Stir in lavender buds with a wooden spoon or spatula.
6. Divide cookie batter into 10 balls using the 'two spoon' method onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Bake for 10 minutes, edges will be golden but center will still be soft.
7. Remove from oven and let sit on baking sheet for 1 to 2 minutes. Transfer to wire rack to cool completely. Store in airtight container or...
8. Spread honey lavender ice cream on one cookie and place another cookie on top.
   

Say what with that last step? Yeah, that's right...stay tuned!
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Note: I also made chocolate chip cookies for Sean and those are the ones you see above the lavender ones in photo of the mass cookies. They were good too. I just added 1/2 cup of milk chocolate chips and 40g of Lindt chocolate with Sea Salt broken into small chunks into the dough. The Sea Salt chunks were so good. Next time I'm making them with no chocolate chips and just the Sea Salt chunks. I'm quite obsessed with that chocolate. It's the ONLY chocolate I actually sometimes crave. Sometimes. Like maybe once every....4 months?

REVIEW: ARNOTT'S TIM TAMS

Arnott's Tim Tams. Sigh. I've heard about you for so long and thought you only existed outside of Canada. But alas, there you were, sitting on the shelf at Walmart, with the rest of your clearout hooligans, waiting to be snatched up by some frugal shopper like myself. It was a good day for waltzing into Walmart.

There are about a dozen different options of Tim Tams available in Australia but I just happened across the Original version, which features two layers of malted biscuit sandwiched between a layer of chocolate. This is obviously the only version I've happened across. Take a look. Notice the sweet bird in their logo:This is what they look like upon opening:
Here's the biscuit, roughly 2.5" in lengthy. Hahaha, lengthy. I'm keeping it.
And a lovely cross-section: (that bird is everywhere!)
Verdict: It's pretty good. The biscuit don't contain any high fructose corn syrup, or any corn syrup for that matter. It does contain golden syrup but I was told that that's completely different from corn syrup and that my migraines had nothing on me. Since there are no freakish sugars added, it wasn't crazy sweet. One thing I've noticed about organic vs. regular sweets/treats which I've discussed before is the sweetness factor in said products. Like those organic Late July Oreo-type cookies I consumed about two weeks ago. I was expecting something crazy, toothache sweet and was actually quite surprised and impressed when the sweetness that resulted was something milder and nothing compared to a real Oreo cookie. It's sometimes astonishing just how sweet regular snack foods can be and this isn't just me...Sean said the same thing.

Cost: $3.47
Purchased at: Where did I finally find the elusive Australian chocolate biscuit? Walmart's clearout food section, of course! Not. This was actually a weird find but I'm glad I finally found them.
Purchase again: The two other packs acting as "back-ups" in my "snack" drawer say yes.

HELLO WHOLE FOODS, GOODBYE $75.17

I can't believe I've spent almost $150 on groceries this week. That is insane--to the MAX! Fo' shizzle. I don't think I've ever spent that much money on groceries. Damn!

The Staples:Artisana Coconut Butter. Now I've never had this stuff before and at $15 a jar, I was really reluctant to purchase it. But as I looked at it longingly in the aisles and held it up to gaze at its coconut wonderfulness, Sean told me that if I was going to use it sparingly (like, not eat it as quickly as I do with popcorn), it probably would be a good food investment. So I took that as a sign to buy it. (Heck, I would have bought it without Sean's prompting since I almost ordered it online from Hamilton.) And then we have Madhava agave nectar (a great alternative to white sugar or other sweeteners--aspartame I'm looking at you!) and Nativas cacao nibs, which I typically add into my oatmeal. Oi, there goes $35.

The Boxes O' Goodness:Barbara's Bakery Puffins cereal (PB flavour). I first came across Barbara's Bakery cereal in the US. Yeah, that's right...I brought a box of cereal across the border. It was the cinnamon flavour and totally worth it. I poured that cereal into milk, ate it on top of yogurt, stirred it into oatmeal. That cereal and I had some really good times. Then I read all about other bloggers' experiences with PB Puffins. I had to get some.

It has been AGES since I've eaten cookies...ones that I haven't baked myself anyway. I typically peruse the cookie aisle in whatever grocery store I'm in, looking at what new sugary delights there are and if my mom is with me she'll say "are you getting anything?" but then I remind her that no, I'm not getting anything because all these cookies contain at least 2-3 ingredients I can no longer consume for whatever reason (usually a migraine is the trigger reason). But not at Whole Foods! At WF there are a whole bunch of cookies I can eat and so Sean and I settled on a box of Late July organic Vanilla Bean with green tea cookies, which are very similar to Oreos. The thing is that I'm not a fan of cookies in the first place (I prefer mine soft and chewy), so I had to ask Sean if he'd eat most of these before their October 2010 due date and he agreed. We had one each on the ride to the concert venue (Wrongbar, anyone?) and they were great! Not too sweet and just the right amount of vanilla bean and cocoa. There really is a huge difference between regular and organic eating. I'm all for the latter. You can consider that my Late July cookie review. Oh and of course, 365 Organic water crackers, which I'm obsessed with so I got two boxes just because.

The Indulgences:Vita Coco coconut water (the left with pineapple and the right, original). Two Kind bars and some dried mango from the bulk bin without all kinds of nasty stuff like sulphites--yay!

So that plus a carton of organic chocolate milk (which Sean consumed) and a bottle of organic blueberry St. John's Wort salad dressing is what you get for $75.17. Now, to defend the green space of goodness--despite my claims, I do love WF--I did buy a lot of stuff so that I could stock up. The coconut butter, agave nectar and cacao nibs were really pricey (each $15, $10 and $10) but each of those will last me a really long time and any subsequent trip to Whole Foods will not require the purchase the coconut butter, agave nectar or cacao nibs and so, $35 will be saved--or used for other things, hahaha.

BAKING UPDATES!

I've done a lot of baking in the past month but haven't had a chance to post about it yet. There's been much Olympic-watching going on and a lot of sickness, plus I decided to take Wednesday off blogging (not one food photo!). Here's a recap of recent baking:

BAKERELLA CAKE POPS:
I made these for a work bake sale last Thursday with the proceeds benefiting the Hospital for Sick Kids. I followed Bakerella's recipe but halved everything as I was feeling under the weather and wasn't really in the mood to be baking. I honestly wouldn't have followed through with this recipe had I not already signed myself up for the bake sale early last week. Because I just really wanted to go to bed rather than create these things, I only made a dozen. Here's the process and the reveal at the end. There's so many final end product photos because it took so long because I was sick.

So first thing's first...you have to bake an entire sheet cake and crumble it. Again, I halved the recipe and since I wanted to keep the rest of the cake as cupcakes, I used a cupcake box mix and made 24 cupcakes. Thank goodness Sean's food processor started working again that night because there's no way I would have gotten this fine crumb without the use of a food processor:

After that I added in the cream cheese and then mixed it all together until it stuck together and was sweet enough. I ended up using about half a can of cream cheese frosting:

After that was complete I rolled the mixture into 15gram balls. Yes, I actually weighed each ball. I think I ended up with around 30-something...I think 34 or 36 to be exact. Then I started dunking and decorating.

Here are my final dozen:I completely forgot to pick up a big block of styrofoam so I made do with some styrofoam I found in the basement, cut it to size and then wrapped it up in some festive tissue paper. It did the trick. It was now nearing 1am so I just wanted these cake pops to be over with. Here's a few more pics:
I like the way the sprinkles come together in a circle in the white one above. It was completely unintentional as I was dipping the pops in a bowl of heart-shaped quins. It kind of reminds me of a Valentine's Day baseball.

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MERINGUE COOKIES:

I went a little bit nuts making meringue cookies last week. I made two batches on the 12th and then another batch the next day. The first batch I made I split into two and flavoured as follows:

Above are chocolate with chocolate chips and I also made a batch of chocolate with dried cherries:

My second batch made the next day were vanilla meringue cookies with dried cherries. As I was packing the cookies into an air-tight container, I had to flip a few upside-down in order to make them all fit. That's when I stumbled upon this one and decided to keep it for Sean:

Cute huh? I think he liked it. He's Sean so he probably thought it was corny and cheesy and silly but I liked it. I mean, how the heck do hearts just appear on the bottom of meringue cookies? It did all the work for me.

My second batch of meringue cookies were vanilla with dried cherries but I forgot to take photos of them. They were incredibly sweet though. I followed the recipe to a T but found them to be ridiculously sweet (hence the use of fruit sherbet served to Sean and his parents but the sherbet was ridiculously sweet anyway). By the way, you can find the recipe here but if you do plan on using the recipe, I'd cut the sugar down by at least 1/4. I also piped my cookies with a pastry bag instead of spooning them onto a cookie sheet. It saved time and effort. Oh and cream of tartar is key to keeping your meringue stable...very key!

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STRAWBERRY COCONUT CUPCAKES WITH VANILLA BEAN AND MALIBU COCO FROSTING:
I wanted to make cupcakes for dessert for dinner at Sean's. I wanted these to have a Valentine's Day theme and was going to make red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting but wanted to include coconut since I love coconut. I couldn't find a coconut cupcake recipe that I was happy with so I decided to stick with a favourite but had to include some kind of fruit puree. I decided to go with strawberry for a strawberry coconut cupcake--yum! After piping with vanilla bean and Malibu Coco-flavoured frosting and decorating half with toasted coconut and the other half with heart-shaped quins, this is what I've got:

Here's a couple close-ups of each. First up the toasted coconut (my fave):

And the heart-shaped quins:

And that's all the baking I've been up to lately. I have wanted to bake some more but there aren't enough taste-testers in my household--boo!

DOM + THROAT INFECTION = HOME SICK

It's day two of my homestay. Thursday morning I woke up and my throat was still hurting and my larynx (?) was closing up on me--or that "hole" at the back of your throat--so I figure that was good enough reason to call and sick and head to the doctor. She told me I had a throat infection (and kind of chastised me for not coming in sooner, doh!) and told me to stay home for the next two days. So I've been home, catching up on the Olympics; last night taking in the men's long program and am really happy for American Evan Lysacek taking home the gold medal. Evgeny Plushenko--even though I was a fan of his when I was younger--is now just a really huge douchebag. Who the hell gets up on the gold medal platform when you've not earned it--even if you are just being funny? This ain't the Ice-capades or Stars On Ice, you idiot! Plus on top of that, his comment regarding the quad and men's skating not being men's skating without the quad--ugh! I'm just about done with Plushenko. I'm glad that Evan Lysacek was able to take home the gold medal with a solid performance that did not include a quad jump--hopefully proving to Plushenko that a quad doesn't necessary guarantee you a gold medal.

Anyhoo, back to the food, here's a quick recap:
Feb. 16...Tuesday.
First breakfast was half a whole wheat bagel with PB and Crofter's Asia spread with a banana:Second breakfast was instant organic oatmeal with ground flaxseed, chia seeds, frozen peaches and strawberries that defrosted by the time I got to work. This is what my frozen fruit looks like:I usually use half for my oatmeal and then keep the rest for my lunch "dessert." Speaking of lunch, for lunch I had a mish mash of stuff:Leftover lamb chop, 6 butternut squash ravioli, 2 small pieces of boiled potato and 3 sweet potato balls. Totally random stuff that was leftover in my fridge but it tasted really, really good. I also packed myself some vanilla bean and dried cherry meringue cookies but only ate a couple before I had to get back to work:
Dinner was at Mevame restaurant for my parents' 37th wedding anniversary. We were celebrating a day early because their actual anniversary falls on Ash Wednesday. I've previously reviewed Mevame so I won't go into too much detail this time but I don't know whether it was because of my sore throat but everything was just a tad underwhelming. My family skipped out on appetizers this time (last time we got two and it was way too much food) and started off with our entrees which came with salads:Mine was drenched in salad dressing (which you can't really see here) but I couldn't finish it. It's a shame since I love this salad which features mesclun mix, spiralized beets and carrots, red onions, cucumbers and tomato wedges. My oldest brother and I ordered the same entree, the lamb chops:He got his with a side of fries while I got mine with a side of rice:My mom ordered the dark meat chicken skewers with fries:While my dad and other brother ordered the rainbow trout:One with vegetable and the other with mashed potatoes.

So this time around the lamb chops didn't seem as flavourful as the ones we had upon our first visit to Mevame. Maybe it's just because I had had lamb chops the day before and those were plenty flavourful or maybe my tastebuds were getting tired of lamb chops (I had had them for every meal prior excluding first and second breakfast), but these just didn't seem as tasty. The fries were spot-on and my mom's chicken looked delicious. I wish I could have tried a piece.

I was stuffed after 1/3 of my salad, one pita bread, two lamb chops, 1/4 of my rice and a good helping of my mom's fries so we all skipped out on dessert. Plus, the restaurant's dessert menu isn't terribly interesting knowing that I can make my own creme brulee at home in no time and at 1/3 of the cost. One thing that really irks me about Mevame is that they never refill your water; you always have to ask for it. Personally, I find refilling a person's water glass the easiest thing you can do to guarantee a good tip. If you refill my water glass without having to be asked to do so, it shows that you're being attentive. It guarantees a good tip from me. We had to ask our waitress for water twice. Not really cool considering that we showed up at 7:50 on a Tuesday night and by the time we were halfway through our meals the restaurant was hardly half full. There was clearly no excuse for her not to refill our glasses. That's just my one waiter/waitress pet peeve.

Anyway, my oldest bro and I split the bill so Happy Anniversary mom and dad!

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Feb. 17th...Wednesday. Because I was feeling sick and because most of my food was almost an exact repeat of the day before, I decided to take the day off from food-photographing.

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Feb. 18th...Thursday.
Home sick! Since my throat was hurting, I didn't really feel like eating anything. Before heading out to the doctor, my stomach wanted to eat a bowl of oatmeal but my throat didn't feel like it. I was the mediator and had a banana instead. Then upon arriving back at home after visiting the pharmacy, my dad helped me make some free-range chicken broth to which I added some rice noodles to fill me up:But even after a couple of bowls of that, just an hour later I was still hungry and dying for some real flavour, so I had a bowl of Frosted Flakes with organic 2% milk:Along with that I decided to try out my new tea: chamomile with lavender:Quatchi decided to chill out with me on the couch while we caught up on the Olympics and later on, I fell asleep:Here we are on the couch pre-nap time:The rest of the evening was spent watching the Olympics and eating the exact same thing for dinner that I had had for lunch with the added bonus of beef broth from some bones I found in the freezer. I also added some napa cabbage.

VALENTINE'S DAY RECAP! (Celebrating A Day Late)

Sean and I celebrated Valentine's Day a day late this year. We weren't really planning on celebrating Valentine's Day at all--Sean really hates the "holiday"--but I was really in the mood to cook, so he agreed that I could make him dinner on the Monday since he had to work the night before (on actual Valentine's Day). We decided to include his parents in the meal since it would have been rude not to since they were going to be in the house as well.

Monday was Family Day, a public holiday, so I got to sleep in until 11 when I woke up and decided to make Valentine's Day-themed cupcakes for dinner with Sean and his parents.

Previous to dinner, this was the day's eats...lunch was congee with Chinese New Year leftovers of stir-fry:
And then a couple of hours later (after making strawberry coconut cupcakesI had a pear followed by another bowl of congee:The dinner menu at Sean's had to be altered a few times because I had forgotten that Monday was a holiday and that the grocery stores would not be open and also, Sean had forgotten to pick up some groceries the night before. Good thing the Asian markets were open so we were able to pick up a few things before heading to Sean's house.

Appetizer was bacon-wrapped asparagus. Thank goodness the bunch of asparagus had just enough for the 9 slices of bacon I had leftover in my fridge:
Main: rosemary and garlic lamb chops:
Side: Gordon Ramsay's "Cook-a-long Live" rosemary potatoes (but with dill since the Asian market didn't have fresh rosemary)
Dessert: chocolate + chocolate chip meringue cookie, strawberry coconut cupcake with vanilla bean and Malibu Coco frosting, vanilla bean and dried cherry meringue sandwiched between pomegrante and cranberry sherbet:
Dinner was a huge success (even with the ingredient flaws) but the best was yet to come. Sean had a surprise in store! After helping Sean's mom clean up, Sean presented me with this card. The first words that came out of my mouth when I saw it were "did a child write this?" to which Sean replied "I dunno..." and I had no clue what he was up to!
Here's the actual card:Funny enough I had totally forgotten about the card even though I had picked it out (we were at Hallmark the day before picking out a card for Sean's parents) and pretty much forced Sean to give it to me. I love penguins and think that it's cute that they're "holding hands." Then I read the inside:And as soon as I read it, I started laughing...especially at the part that says "Valentides" so much so that my eyes were watering and I wasn't really paying attention to the rest of the card. The other side said this:So even though I was mega excited because Sean and his mom had mentioned something about a giant box, I was laughing so hard and my eyes were still watering.
I had a hard time getting "Q" out of the box because he's this big:And this fat:We're now the best of buds:e's seriously the best present ever! I was so, so happy! He's really heavy though. He's a lot bigger and a LOT heavier than I had imagined. I guess he's got to be if he's going to cost $350! I was just ecstatic and super surprised because I didn't think Sean was going to get giant Quatchi for me for my birthday. He let me open my present early so that Quatchi and I could enjoy the Olympics together, which is what we've been doing since then (photos follow). Quatchi is 38" of pure entertainment!
Hope you all had an awesome Valentine's Day like I did!