Pinteresting a Welcome Barbecue

Pin It It's been quite a while since I last blogged.  I don't know what happened to the past three weeks! Anyway, last week was definitely a hectic one as one of my best friends from the Philippines came over for a visit.  Naturally, because it is her first time in the US, she had to be taken on a whirlwind tour of NYC.  I'll save the tips on how we did it way under her budget for another post.

Ever since I got hooked on Pinterest, I had sworn that I would try to do as much of the pins as I can.  I found the perfect opportunity to do so when we had an intimate barbecue to welcome my friend to NY.  While I decided to keep it simple by having a salad, burgers and hotdogs for the main "entree", I (with a lot of help from our guest!) put a little more effort on the appetizers and dessert.

For starters, we had tuna ceviche (recipe in the next post), chips with mango salsa (recipe here), and my Pinterest-inspired mini tacos.  I topped off the mini tacos with mango salsa and they were incredibly easy to assemble and looked impressive on the table.  We made the taco-seasoned ground turkey and mango salsa a day before so we only needed to assemble it before the party.

Finally for dessert, we made what would be my third attempt at banana pudding pie, coconut cupcakes a la Ina Garten frosted via Pinterest instructions, and another Pinterest-inspired dessert of red velvet brownies.

The photo sucks... and so does my frosting skills.  But I imagine with practice and a little bit more generosity with the frosting, my cupcakes will be much prettier in time.

 I followed the red velvet brownie recipe to the letter, except I took them out of the oven about 5 minutes earlier because of the much warmer weather.  They were just fine.  Also, the recipe calls for a white chocolate frosting, which I'm not a big fan of because I find it way too sweet.  So I decided to use Ina Garten's cream cheese frosting, along with some changes as I wrote here.  I also used 1/3 less fat Philadelphia neufchatel cream cheese with no noticeable change in flavor.

All desserts, except for the banana pudding pie, were done ahead of the party so there really wasn't much to do on the day itself.  And most importantly, everybody seemed to enjoy our little gathering and we had an awesome time reminiscing about high school.

Super Duper Easy Blueberry Cobbler

Pin It I found this recipe for blueberry cobbler that takes literally 10 minutes to prepare.  Really a quick dessert especially for a weeknight.  I can imagine this would be super yummy with ripe Philippine mangoes too.  Maybe I'll try it with the mangoes we get here.  I used frozen blueberries for this experiment.

As usual, I made some revisions. One is replacing the milk with fat free half and half.  Then I cut the sugar to about only half a cup for the batter.  It was plenty sweet even with less sugar.  In addition, I sprinkled a little bit of dark brown sugar and ground cinnamon on top of the blueberries after I put them in the batter. 

 Perhaps because I used fat free half and half, my cobbler was done in 40 minutes.  I served it warm with vanilla soy ice cream on top. The crust was crunchy and chewy at the same time, and the blueberries gooey.  With the cold ice cream, this dessert delivers a variety of textures and temperatures that will satisfy your weeknight dessert cravings.  And because there were no eggs in the batter, I imagine this is a lower cholesterol dessert.  My hubby suggested it would actually be also good for breakfast with yogurt on top and I agree.  Being forced to watch the Food Network does seem to be getting to him.

Red Velvet Cupcakes With A Tad Less Guilt

Pin It To follow my attempt at a Southern-inspired baked chicken, my attempt at another Southern classic.  The ubiquitous red velvet cupcake.  My recipe of choice was Ina Garten's because I looooved her coconut cupcakes.  However, some revisions to the red velvet cupcakes in an attempt to reduce the guilt on these treats.  Even if these are lower fat cupcakes, they're still a lot better than some of those store-bought (for $2 each!) nuclear red cupcakes that are not velvety at all.

I ran out of red food color, so I just had pinkish brown cupcakes!

But they really weren't too red at all when I originally tried this recipe.

I replaced half the butter with unsweetened applesauce in the cupcake batter.  The original recipe called for half a cup of unsalted butter, but I only used a quarter cup.  So I replaced the rest with a quarter cup of applesauce.  My husband certainly didn't notice any difference in texture and didn't know I did anything different with it until I told him.  It was just as moist.  Also, I just used Hershey's Special Dark cocoa powder and the taste was just fine.  Another important change was the baking time.  My cupcakes were done between 15 and 17 minutes.  Ina calls for 25 to 30 minutes, which would totally dry out the cupcakes.  I've made these cupcakes before following the original recipe and I did have to cut the baking time down so I know using the applesauce didn't affect the baking time.  I'm still puzzled why the original recipe called for such a long baking time.  Another note, because the applesauce has natural sweetness, I suppose the sugar can be cut by a quarter cup.

For the frosting, I pretty much followed the recipe to the letter, but I only used about a cup of unsifted confectioner's sugar (Just because it was easier for me to measure, and then sift).  I'm quite sure this would still be much less than what she used.  I like to taste the cheese in my cream cheese frosting and not have it too sweet.

About using applesauce to replace fat in baking, I've also tried this on my Go-To Loaf Recipe and it was just fine.  I've also replaced the oil in brownie mix with not much change in texture or moisture.  I do taste a slight hint of the apple flavor in the brownies, but it's not too big a deal.  However, I can imagine that applesauce may not be appropriate for cookies as it would be too soupy for cookie batter.

My Go-To Loaf Recipe

Pin It

Two years ago, I would never have thought that a ten-pound bag of flour will be a regular in my pantry.  Today, I can make this loaf from memory. This is based on my friend Franny's banana bread recipe that I tweaked a little bit. The basic loaf recipe below is a great blank canvass that I use mostly for banana and blueberry loaves. But I imagine the recipe can work for several fruits, like dried cranberries or fresh/frozen raspberries (hmmm... I have to try that).

Here's the basic loaf recipe:

1/2 cup (1 stick) melted unsalted butter
1 cup dark brown sugar (no need to pack the sugar, the fruit will sweeten the bread enough)
2 eggs
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
pinch of salt
2/3 cup buttermilk (I use reduced fat, so if you use regular, maybe you can use less)
1 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven at 350-degrees F.  Sift flour, baking soda, and salt into a bowl.  Add the vanilla to the buttermilk so the wet ingredients are already mixed together.  Set these aside.

In a mixer, beat melted butter and sugar together until well blended.  Add eggs one at a time, mixing until egg is incorporated before adding the next. Now add the dry and wet ingredients alternately, starting and ending with the dry ingredients. The dry ingredients will be added in three parts, mixing well before adding the next.

Pour the batter into a greased loaf pan and bake for a minimum of 50 minutes.  Depending on the flavor of the loaf you made, this may take longer. My banana bread is done in an hour and my blueberry loaf is done in exactly 57 minutes if I use fresh fruit, and one hour if I use frozen.  I like to check if it's done every five minutes after the first 50 minutes (stick a toothpick in the heftiest part of the loaf; if it comes out clean, it's good).  The crust should be golden brown and crunchy, while the inside is moist.

For the banana bread

3 large bananas, mashed
bittersweet chocolate chips (optional--eyeball the amount depending on how chocolatey you want it)

After beating the eggs into the butter mixture, add the mashed bananas and mix well before adding the dry ingredients.  If you're adding the chocolate chips, these are folded into the batter in the end.  Adding the chocolate makes this loaf extra yummy.

For the blueberry loaf

about 1 cup of fresh or frozen blueberries


Make the batter as indicated above.  Fold in the blueberries gently so they don't get crushed, making sure that they are well-distributed.  Add more blueberries according to your liking. After pouring the batter into the pan, I also like to sprinkle a little bit of brown sugar and ground cinnamon on top. This makes the loaf extra crunchy and tasty. Proceed as indicated above.

The money-saving tips here... great for using those overripe bananas that you would otherwise throw out (And bananas are cheap!).  Also, I find that using frozen vs. fresh blueberries doesn't make much of a difference in taste, but frozen blueberries are much cheaper.  These don't really take much time to make (most of it is spent just waiting for it to finish baking) and it's great to just have around for breakfast, snacking and even dessert.  If you have the time to make it, it's actually cheaper to make the loaf instead of buying from the store.

Oh, I also found that using good vanilla does make a difference.  It can be expensive, but I got a bottle of good quality vanilla extract from Marshall's at about the same price you'd get the cheap ones in the grocery store. So now I check this section every time I go there.