When life throws you breadcrumbs...
...make bread pudding. Okay, so it was really bread crusts and ends of breads that were left over from making sandwiches for Marley's party. It seemed such a waste just to throw them out. As you know, bread pudding is a good way to use up stale bread. Well I got to thinking that it might be a good way to use up my left over crusts. What? You say, surely I am crazy since most recipes for bread pudding tell you to throw away the crusts. Never you mind, here are pictures of my perfectly delicious, frugal, pudding made only with crusts and an unusual ingredient (for me anyway) courtesy Miss Norma. All I can say is yah mon!
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Monkey's Swan Song
Marley no longer sucks his thumb. I am soooooo proud of him. Early on I introduced the pacifier hoping it would replace the thumb. It never entirely did. If he did not have his 'sucker' he'd revert to the thumb. He was pretty much contented one or the other.
Around 3yrs, I noticed that excessive sucking was precipitated by his 'lovey' Mikey Monkey. He'd be fine playing, watching TV whatever- no finger sucking- until he saw monkey. We had a chat and it was agreed that Mikey was only for night time. At about 3 1/2 yrs, I was chatting with him about how big he was, almost 4 (he wanted to be 4 so badly he was walking around telling anyone who'd listen that he was 4). Anyways one night I said to him that big boys of 4 don't suck their finger or walk around with monkeys and he should think about giving him up. Immediately he said, "OK, I'll give him to Amari. I was stunned and then I realized, maybe I was the one who wasn't ready to give up monkey! "You don't have to do it right now." I said, you can think about it and then when you are 4 give him up. "Uh uh" he said, " right now," and he hopped out of bed, went to the other room and rather unceremoniously (it seemed to me), tossed Mickey into his baby brother's crib. " Amari can have him."
Back in his room I asked, "So how are you going to sleep without sucking your finger?" Sure enough he had a plan for that too. He put both his hands under his bum and by the time my bedtime story was over he was fast asleep sans thumb sucking!!!He hasn't sucked his finger since. I am amazed because I had anticipated a battle of apocalyptic proportions when the time came to quit.
So as a sort of farewell to Mikey monkey I decided to bake a monkey cake for Marley's 4th birthday. I wanted something that involved minimum cake decorating skill as I wasn't prepared to run out and buy specialty equipment that would not be used again. I decided to make Martha Stewart's somewhat, sinister-looking, sock-monkey cake because the video how-to made it look easy enough. I should mention that I gave little thought to the fact that Martha has people to do this stuff for her, until it was 1:00am and I tried to reference the video to see how to attach the ears and found that the video link was no longer w-o-r-k-i-n-g. Martha and her staff were properly fire-trucked and it sooo WAS NOT a good thing!
Lacking the recommended Martha Stewart 8 1/2" bowl, I used one of my regular stainless steel mixing bowls. I eyeballed the dimensions which turned out to be a bad idea since I ended up with a flatter wider monkey's head. Fortunately the diameter was 9" so I quickly whipped up another regular round 9" base layer. Bonus, as I did not then have to slice the cake in half to frost the center.
Martha advises that the cake be frosted 3 hours before it is actually needed. I frosted this cake the day before and I am glad I did as I learned something that maybe already obvious to you bakers out there; a butter-cream frosting is not well suited to tropical weather.I had to keep putting it back in the fridge so the frosting could firm up as it was very messy to work with it. The whole time DH kept giving me the "why did you bother to embark upon this project when we could have ordered a perfectly acceptable store bought cake," evil eye.
But you mothers out there understand right? Homemade cakes create memories. I remember my own mom baking a cake for me and loading it onto the stroller to bring it to my pre-school which was a 3 min walk from my home, for my birthday. Beside homemade cakes are soooooo much better than those dry up specialty cakes that sit on the shelves for days; all iced perfection on the outside but they are dry dry and tasteless.
I am pleased with the final result. It did take a bit of effort and my end result looks decidedly more homey than Martha's but that is the point of a HOME made cake isn't it? Some advice for anyone wanting to try this cake. It is important to make an 8" diameter cake not 9" like I did. Why? Because 8" gives you some allowance for the addition of the ears so that your cake cover will fit. My cake cover touched the ears and once the frosting hardened up in the fridge the tips of his ears were ripped off and had to be repaired when we removed the cover.
As to the taste of the cake....I altered Martha's recipe by using freshly grated nutmeg which IMO pairs better with banana than cinnamon. I also tossed in some chopped up caramels. This recipe calls for 1 1/2 cups of sugar. Diabetes do I hear you I hear you calling? I reduced the sugar to 3/4 cup and after tasting it could probably go as little as half cup in the future. The kids gobbled it up. Let's face it, so long as there is frosting, children aren't fussy about the taste of the cake itself. The adults however all felt it was missing a little something...no one could quite say what, until my MIL suggested rum. Ahhah! A little rum sprinkled over my slice. Just Perfect.
PS. I checked my mom on the pre-school cake story and it just goes to show that you can't trust all your childhood memories. My mom remembered the particular birthday and cheerfully informed me (while giving my husband the thumbs up) that it was a perfectly acceptable store bought cake that she brought to my preschool that day!
Also Marley disappeared at some point in the day and was eventually found hiding behind the sofa 'tiefing' a little suck finger with Mikey:-)!
Some like it hot!
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Porridge was not eaten in this house a lot before dare I say it before kids. What really made it a regular addition to the breakfast menu was a high colestoral result on my DH doctor. A lot of people talk about it being comfort food. Me I hate it, I find it to have both the taste and texture of cardboard. It's more the gagging texture that I can't get over babies apparently love it and it is one of the first foods we give them....I don't remember eating a lot of it as a child....I do remember lots of American style cereals. In the 80's it was very a la mode to toss out local methods of food preparation in favour of American trends. I rememembr Kellogs was big back then. While whipping up a batch of oatmeal and worrying that it might be the cause of my son's ecceam flare ups it stuck me tatsteless rice cereal for the baby it struck me...Maybe I'd like other kinds of porridges
My porridge adventure began with farine mmm taste like a cassava pone
The Greeks and Romans found the grain coarse and inedible and dubbed it 'barbarian's food' and fed it to their animals. They did however plant and harvest oat crops in Britain where it became eaten widely in Wales and even more so in Scotland - hence Dr Johnson's jibe.Dr (Samuel) Johnson's 18th Century dictionary definition of oats reads "a grain which in England is given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people." And was in fact a dig at them. Which I gues was his way of saying they lkiked dogfood
Chocolate HeartBeet Muffins
I made these muffins because I became bored with banana muffins. Before kids, muffins were not something I ate a lot. Now they are a staple in my home simply because they are quick and easy to prepare. They are the working mom's answer to having breakfast on the table in under 2 minutes. The process is simple, measure wet ingredients, then the dry ingredients, dump everything in one bowl. A quick stir just enough to combine and voilà - a quick breakfast or healthy snack. Bonus! They freeze well. A couple seconds in the microwave and you’ve got breakfast in seconds for those rushed mornings. Around here we usually have a healthy banana-oat-bran, or whole wheat muffin, only because bananas are a year round fruit and readily available. Additions to the banana theme might include dates or raisins, or pecans or walnuts and as a treat chocolate chips.I am always on the look out for great tasting, healthy, recipes. So my interest was piqued by several online recipes for a chocolate beet cake with the cutesy name, Can't be Beet Chocolate Cake. Several sources suggest that beets are an effective defense against heart disease and can lower blood pressure. They are high in antioxidants and may even prevent cancer. Wow! Here's the thing. I do not like beets. My kids do but I don’t. I do however love chocolate and that's being touted these days as being good for your heart, right?
I decided that this would make a great heart-healthy breakfast muffin. The first obvious adjustment was to lessen the amount of oil used. One recipe called for a cup of oil-not very heart healthy. Because it was going to be a muffin and not a cake it didn't need a lot of sugar, besides beets are fairly sweet AND more importantly I needed to leave room for a few chocolate chips. Okay so the addition of chocolate chips may seem over the top but in my experience low-fat, low-sugar baked goods end up being rubbery and dry. The chocolate chips counteract this by providing small bursts of creaminess to the texture of the muffin.
So this recipes makes a strange amount because I wanted to use a full can of beets with no leftovers. I hate when recipes call for part of a can of something which usually ( in spite of intentions to use later ) just ends up growing mold in the fridge.
Ingredients:
Makes 28 cupcakes
Batter:
* 1/2 brown sugar
* 1/4 cup canola or vegetable oil
* 2 large eggs
* 1 egg white
* 1/4 cup cocoa powder
* 1/2 cup beet purée
* 1 cup non fat plain yogurt
* 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
* 1 cup whole wheat flour
* 1 cup all-purpose flour
* 1 teaspoon baking soda
* 1/4 teaspoon salt
* 1/4 cup mini chocolate chips
Method
As I said before muffins are what I call dump cakes. Dump dry ingredients in one bowl and stir. Dump wet ingredients in another and mix. Dump both in one bowl and mix with a fork until just combined. Don't over mix or beat or they will be rubbery. Easy peasy right?
So here is the final verdict - big hit with the family. DS did however think it could be improved upon. "Next time make it like this" he said, pointing to a picture of a mile-high frosted cupcake in one of my recipe books. "Put frosting and sprinkles and it will taste great!"
Others have posted that family and friends were completely astounded to learn that the secret ingredient in their chocolate cake was beets. Sadly my family is not in the habit of eulogizing the food that they eat and were suitably unimpressed by the beet factor or the quirky name. My own thoughts were that the beet flavour was only almost completely covered by the chocolate. Maybe I was aware of it because I knew it was there. The rest of the family did not know until I told them.
Well as much as I originally started off trying to create a healthy breakfast muffin the next day my son prevailed and we did put frosting and sprinkles, transforming the last one into a tasty dessert cupcake? Now that's a two for one recipe that would appeal to any multi-tasking mom!
