dry ingredients

I made a lot of yogurt the other day, but have not made any more granola, so we haven’t been eating it.  Because of that, I know have a pleathera of yogurt, and not wanting it to go to waste, I began looking for something to make with it. And where better to look, then  The Book of Yogurt.  I had had it for a while, because I thought, when I first go it, that it would teach me how to make yogurt. It does, but only in the beginning. The rest of the book  tells you want to do with the yogurt once it is made.

First thing, was to find something that I had the ingredients for. I chose the yogurt muffins, as they seemed simple enough.

Here is what it called for:

• 2 cups flour (I used rice)
• 1/3 cup sugar (I used raw sugar)
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 egg well beaten
• 2/3 cup yogurt (I ended up using about 2 cups or so)
• 4 tablespoons of melted butter
• Also: one mashed banana, one cup of blueberries, and 3/4 a teaspoon of xanth gum

the mix

The recipe said it would be lumpy, but with my usual problems with using non-wheat flour, I figured I would use extra yogurt, to make it smoother. It was much smoother, and moister, and actually mixed up rather well. I used the blueberries which had started to be a little on the mushy side, and the banana which was in the same state.

out of the oven

The recipe called for putting it in the over for half an hour at 400F. I tried one batch that way, and the second batch at 350F. 400 worked best.

Other than the muffins not rising, as they so often don’t, they were very tasty. I will have to figure out how to make them fluffier.

Still have apples

I still had plenty of apples, so the next recipe I decided to make was one from the newspaper, and I decided to alter it as much as I wanted…and yes, I knew that was a bad idea, but oh well. I not only wanted to use up apples, but the plums I had, and some of the blueberries. Oh, I was going to make the best cake.

I cut up two cups worth of apples, and dropped them in the food processor, along with some blueberries that had started to change color,and the plums that were going soft. It made a dirty purple color that looked a bit like cement, but I figured it would taste good, at some point.

Cement Apple Cake

I used one cup of raw sugar, 2 eggs, some bananas that had started to go bad, one cube of melted butter, 1 cup of coconut flour and 1/2 cup of gluten-free, 1 teaspoon of baking soda, 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon and 1/2 teaspoon of salt.

Finished cake

It looked dreadful going in, so I cut up another banana and another apple, and put it on top, thinking it would make it better. The recipe called to cook it at 350 for half an hour.

It was not done in half an hour. It was not done in an hour. It was still soggy and horrid, and after an hour of cooking, it came out looking like this. So I let it cool, and didn’t even bother to put it in the compost, just dumped it in the trash.

Failure in the kitchen number 2.

Cartoonist wakes up

We have a lot of ingredients in the house, since we started cooking from scratch, but they all aren’t put together. Makes for having to make things rather than grabbing things in the morning.

The other morning Cartoonist woke up and didn’t like anything that I could offer her that was pre-made, but rather then demand I make something for her, she asked for a recipe instead, which we found in How It All Vegan cookbook, which up until that moment, we hadn’t cooked anything from.

She changed it, of course. It called for one cup of flour, she used white rice flour. It called for one banana, she used two. It called for 1 1/4 a cups of soy milk, which we didn’t have, so we used the left over half and half that my sweetie had left from coming to visit.  It called for 1 tbsp of sweeter, she used honey.  I think the only thing she didn’t change was the two tbsp of baking soda.

Pancakes cooking

When she had made all she wanted to eat, she asked me what to do with the batter. I told her to use it up, as she could always eat them later.

Finished pancakes