Hit by a Pitch

These are the cupcakes I made for Soren’s birthday. They were easy to make and everybody seemed to like them. Also, I’m pretty cautious about food safety and I’m happy to report that after the party, the leftover frosted cupcakes sat out (unrefrigerated) for a week and were less-than-super-fresh but still fine.

Cupcakes

Note: I doubled this.

Ingredients

1 cup white sugar (3/4 cup at altitude)
1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
2 eggs (have them sit out with the butter)
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 3/4 teaspoons baking powder (1 1/4 teaspoons at altitude)
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup whole milk

Directions

Preheat oven to 350. Line a muffin pan with paper liners (one batch will make 12-15 cupcakes). In a medium bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, and salt. In a standard bowl on a stand mixer, cream together the sugar and butter for 8 minutes on medium-high (6 on a KitchenAid) (this is a long-ass time to cream butter and sugar but it’s worth it). As always, when mixing anything in a stand mixer, scrape the sides of the bowl, turning the mixer off when necessary, every couple minutes or so. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, beating (medium-high/6) for a minute or 2 after each egg. Add the vanilla and beat for another minute. With the mixer still running (turn down to 3 or 4), add some of the flour mixture alternately with the milk, a bit at a time (1/4 to 1/3 of each), beating until just incorporated. Remove bowl from mixer and scrape well, making sure you have everything mixed together.

Spoon the batter into the muffin pan and bake for 20-25 minutes (mine were perfect at 22 — they’ll spring back when touched).

Adapted from Simple White Cake Recipe on allrecipes.com.

Frosting

Note: I doubled this, too.

I used the Creamy Chocolate Frosting Recipe from allrecipes.com. I’m not a big frosting person but I liked it! My very slightly modified version of the recipe is as follows:

Ingredients

• 2 3/4 cups confectioners’ sugar
• 6 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder (I used Ghirardelli natural unsweetened cocoa)
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 6 tablespoons butter, softened
• 5 tablespoons whole milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions

In a medium bowl, sift together the confectioners’ sugar, cocoa, and salt. In a standard bowl on a stand mixer, cream butter for a few minutes (at medium-high/6). With the mixer still at medium-high, gradually add sugar mixture alternately with milk. Then add vanilla. Beat until light and fluffy — 3-5 minutes.

To frost the cupcakes, I used something that looks like this that I got at Target. It was the same price as the cheapest bag + tips and seemed like it would be easier. I’ve never used anything other than a knife to apply frosting and I thought it was super-easy to use. I added some nonpareils, too. The cupcakes didn’t look all that exciting, but they tasted pretty good.

Enjoy!

You guys. This has been the most boring weekend, ever. Yesterday, I almost wrote a post about how bored I was, but I realized it would be rude to inflict my boredom on you. I was so bored it took me 4 1/2 hours to drink two beers and then I was so bored I gave up on having another beer and figured I’d just sit around and wait until it was a reasonable time to go to bed. I spent the evening sitting on the couch, watching a college football game about which I did not care in the slightest, and putting dresses I’m not going to buy (spending fast!) in my Nordstrom cart (seriously OMG I need this and the color being my child’s middle name is only part of the reason have you ever seen anything so gorgeous I could wear it to beer fest and my kid’s second birthday party and holy crap that’s the most awesome dress, ever ever ever).

Today I’m being more productive and cooking some stuff. First up is granola. Do you know how ridiculously easy it is to make granola? It’s one of the easiest things in the world to make and homemade granola is way better than anything you’ll buy, which, by the way while we’re being honest, is probably totally overpriced. Second is pumpkin soup. If you read any healthy-living bloggers (I sometimes do this for snark value), you’re probably already sick of pumpkin. Don’t be! Pumpkin is delicious, and this soup is a fresh way of serving it that doesn’t rely on the usual suspects like cinnamon and allspice. Seriously, this soup is so good I could eat it every day for the rest of my life. I’m not even kidding. It’s one of my favorite things, ever.

For what it’s worth, the granola and the soup earned the Soren Seal of Approval. And yes, a toddler eating soup is just as terrifying as you might imagine.

Recipe: Cherry Granola

Ingredients

• 8 cups old-fashioned oatmeal (not quick cooking)
• 1 cup sliced almonds
• 1 cup slivered almonds
• 1 cup salted sunflower seeds
• 1 cup Grape Nuts cereal
• 1 cup vegetable oil
• 2/3 cup honey
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 8 to 10 ounces dried cherries

Directions

Put oatmeal, almonds, sunflower seeds, and Grape Nuts in a giant bowl and mix well. Put oil, honey, and brown sugar in a medium bowl. Mix well and microwave for 1 minute. Mix again. Pour over the dry ingredients and mix well. Spread on the biggest cookie pan you have and bake at 350 for 20 minutes, stirring well after 10 minutes. Allow to cool (somewhere other than on the stove — I think the heat contributes to stick-to-the-pan-itiveness). Add cherries and mix well.

Lightly adapted from Mary’s Cherry Granola, White Lace Inn, Door County, Wisconsin.

Recipe: Pumpkin Soup

Ingredients

• 4 tablespoons butter
• 1 medium onion, coarsely chopped
• 1 15-ounce can pumpkin (just plain pumpkin — not pie pumpkin with spices added)
• 3 cups vegetable broth
• 2 cups milk
• a conservative pinch of ground nutmeg
• 2-3 ounces (guestimate is fine and I probably use quite a bit more than this) thin whole wheat spaghetti, broken into small pieces
• 1/2 cup Parmesan cheese (the good kind, not the kind in the canister)
• salt and pepper to taste

Directions

First, grate the Parmesan cheese the lazy-people way — cut several chunks off your piece of cheese, throw them in the food processor with the default blade attachment, and process until the cheese is in uniform, small pieces. Remove from food processor and set aside. Put the coarsely chopped onion in the food processor and process until finely chopped. You want to make sure there are no big onion chunks. It’ll look like a wet, slushy mess.

In a large saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat. Add the onion and cook, stirring occasionally, for two minutes. Stir in the pumpkin and vegetable broth. Increase the heat to medium-high and bring to a simmer, stirring occasionally. Simmer for two more minutes. Decrease the heat slightly, to what could be referred to as medium-medium-high heat (if your stove has numbers like ours, you should be at 7). Stir in the milk and nutmeg (you don’t have to be conservative with the nutmeg — that’s just me, because honestly nutmeg kind of freaks me out). Bring the soup to a boil and then add the spaghetti. Cook until the noodles are done (for me, this took 7 minutes at medium-medium-high heat; keep in mind I’m at high altitude, so you might need a little less time). Turn off the burner and stir in the Parmesan cheese plus salt and pepper to taste. Serve immediately, preferably with some delicious, crusty bread.

Adapted from Vegetarian: The Best-Ever Recipe Collection by Linda Fraser. The original recipe calls for fresh (not canned) pumpkin. I’m sure this is even more delicious than my version, but I’m nothing if not lazy. Plus I have approximately 90 cans of pumpkin I hoarded last fall when I thought I wouldn’t be able to find pumpkin in the pumpkin off season, which proved to be false and I didn’t make that many pumpkin loaves, anyway.

Enjoy!

I’ve been threatening to make cookies forever, but more often than not, laziness wins out and I have ice cream for dessert (vanilla ice cream with Heath bits is my default dessert option these days). (Most of my days fit into one of two categories: (1) days I have beer; or (2) days I have dessert.) In his old age (haha, just kidding, because if he’s old, what am I?) Ben has developed a bit of a sweet tooth. It’s gotten to the point where he (almost) wants homemade cookies more than I do. As the official baker of this family (Ben is the official cook), I finally got off my butt and made what might be some of the best cookies I’ve ever had. If these cookies and my favorite cookies of all time got in the ring like Floyd Mayweather and Victor Ortiz, I’m not sure which one would sucker punch the other.

Like everyone else in the world, I’m really digging the savory-sweet thing. Deciding to go with chocolate chip cookies with sea salt, google brought me to “The Best Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe EVER!” So I made them. And let me tell you, this Savory Sweet Life blogger does not lie. You want these in your dessert arsenal.

I figured I’d share my high-altitude adjustments here. I did the math so you don’t have to!

High-Altitude Ingredient List

• 1 cup (2 sticks) salted butter, softened
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1 cup + 2 tablespoons packed brown sugar
• 2 eggs (I let these sit out and come to room temperature.)
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 3/4 cups (12 oz) all-purpose flour
• 3/4 teaspoon smallish-medium coarse sea salt
• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 1/8 teaspoon baking powder
• 2 1/4 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips

Aside from the high-altitude adjustments, I followed the recipe. (Except! I used regular coarse sea salt because that’s what we had. Less-coarse sea salt would’ve been better, but I don’t think it would make a huge difference.)

Mmmmm cookies! My next baking project involves finding a recipe for and doing a test run of white cake with chocolate frosting. I’ll keep you posted!

When I was a kid, my mom, who is of German and Norwegian descent, used to make homemade pizza. It was a very mom kind of pizza. It was rectangular and topped only with sauce, cheese, and seasoned hamburger meat. You wouldn’t really call it spectacular, but it ranks way up there on my comfort-food scale, somewhere near homemade mac & cheese and peanut butter cookies.

As a teenager who was starting to learn how to cook, I made my own version of mom’s pizza. I always made the same mistake back then — I added way too much of everything to the sauce. It took me a long time to figure out that the sauce should be delicately seasoned. If you want to go hard on anything, make it the meat — or, in my case now, the vegetarian meat substitute.

Now that I have Ben, who makes the best pizza I’ve ever had in my life outside the original Pizzeria Uno and Pizzeria Due locations (Not the chain Pizzeria Unos!), I rarely make pizza. Once in a while, though, I get a craving for my old-school mom pizza. Here’s how I make it.

Old-School Pizza

Crust

The crust recipe is adapted from “Thin Crust Pizza with Fontina and Mozzarella” from The Great Chicago-Style Pizza Cookbook by Pasquale Bruno, Jr. This is my default pizza crust recipe.

• 1 teaspoon active dry yeast
• 1/2 cup + 1 tablespoon warm water
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1 1/2 cups white flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon olive oil + a little extra for brushing on the crust

Add yeast and sugar to warm water and stir well. Set aside. In a large mixing bowl, combine flour and salt. Make a well in the middle and add the yeast mixture and olive oil. Stir until the dough sort of forms a ball. Take dough out of the bowl and place on a lightly floured surface. Knead for 5-7 minutes, adding more flour as necessary if the dough is sticky (mine always is). Sprinkle a little flour in a large ziplock plastic bag, place the dough in the bag, sprinkle a little more flour on the dough, and seal the bag. Leave it in a warm place for an hour and a half (we stick it in the microwave so no animals or children can get to it). Punch down the dough, knead lightly for a couple minutes on a lightly floured surface, and roll out to fit a 15.3″ x 10.2″ cookie pan (if you have a set of 3 cookie pans, the middle one is probably the right size). Place the dough in your pan, squishing the ends up the side of the pan to make edges. Poke several holes in the crust with a fork. Brush a sprinkle of olive oil over the crust. Let it sit while you prepare the fake meat and sauce.

“Meat”

• 1 teaspoon olive oil
• 1 12-ounce package Morningstar Farms Grillers Recipe Crumbles
• 1 tablespoon dried basil
• 1 tablespoon dried oregano
• 1 tablespoon garlic powder
• salt and ground black pepper to taste

Heat olive oil in a medium saute or frying pan over medium heat. Add everything else and stir well. Continue cooking over medium heat for a few minutes. You just want the crumbles to be thawed out and seasoned to your liking. *Note: If you follow my directions, the crumbles will be pretty heavily seasoned. You might want to add a little less of everything at first and then add more if you want.

Sauce

• 1 28-ounce can crushed tomatoes
• 1/2 teaspoon dried basil
• 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
• salt to taste

In a medium bowl, mix everything together. Even if you’re total sauce fanatics like we are (our default pizza order is cheese and extra sauce), this is way more sauce than you’ll need. The thing is, we only find crushed tomatoes in 28-ounce cans. So, when making pizza, we usually just prepare the whole can of crushed tomatoes, use what we need, and freeze the rest. The next time someone (Ben) plans to make homemade red sauce for pasta, he pulls the leftover pizza sauce out of the freezer, lets it thaw in the refrigerator for a day or two, and adds it to the sauce. This has never been a bad idea.

Etc.

• Parmesan cheese (the kind in the canister)
• grated mozzarella cheese (I used approximately 10 ounces)

Assembly

Put as much sauce as you like on the dough you’ve already placed in the pan. (We like a lot!) Distribute the prepared crumbles as evenly as possible over the sauce. Cover the crumbles with a light to medium dusting of Parmesan cheese and then the mozzarella, getting as close to the edges of the crust as possible.

Bake 6-8 inches from the bottom of your oven (this is the second-to-lowest rack setting for us — Ben says this is always a good idea when baking homemade pizza) at 425F for 15-20 minutes (our pizza was perfect after 17 minutes). Enjoy!

ready to go in the oven

ready to enjoy

Today’s edition of “WTF can I do with all this zucchini?” is brought to you by Ben. He heard about this from a Colorado native at work and made up his own version. It’s called calabacitas and it’s freaking delicious. And easy!

Calabacitas Recipe

Ingredients

• 2 T. vegetable or olive oil
• 1 large clove garlic, minced
• 1 cup diced onion
• 3-4 cups cubed zucchini (Ben used 1 1/2 medium zucchini)
• 1 cup corn (Ben used frozen)
• 1 cup or more Quorn Chik’n Tenders (Ben used 1 cup because that’s what we had; more would’ve been better. You could substitute any sort of fake meat here if you like — seitan would be great, or pre-cooked tofu.)
• 2 cups Colorado-style vegetarian green chili (I’ll post Ben’s recipe for this soon. It should be at least a little spicy. If you don’t have green chili, substitute a 15-ounce can of petite diced tomatoes and a 4-ounce can of hot green chiles. I would process the diced tomatoes because I don’t like tomato chunks and dice the chiles. If you go this route, you might want to add chili powder or cumin or both.)
• 1/2 cup water (Add enough water so everything in the pan is covered with liquid.)
• salt

Directions

Heat the oil and garlic in a medium pan (Ben used a saucier pan) over medium-high heat “for a few minutes, until it’s fragrant” (Ben said this). Throw in the onion, zucchini, corn, and Chik’n Tenders. Stir everything together and cook for 3-4 minutes. Add the green chili, water, and a couple dashes of salt. Cover and reduce heat to medium. Simmer, stirring occasionally, for 10-12 minutes, until zucchini is soft. Salt to taste if necessary. Serve hot in a bowl with warmed flour tortillas on the side. (It would also work as a side dish.) A quick consultation with google reveals that many people add cheese or put cheese on top, but I think cheese is absolutely not necessary here (and I love cheese).

This is the kind of dish that doesn’t really require a recipe. Once you understand the concept, you can pretty much do what you want. I love that kind of thing.

Here is a bad photo of our leftovers. Sorry about that. I didn’t take a picture before we ate because I didn’t know this would be post worthy. It is! It was super delicious!

Enjoy!