donut muffins

muffins. no, donuts. no, muffins. yes, muffins.
it's that time of the week when we make muffins once again. last week, i joined this awesome initiative and baked some vegetable-y and cheesy muffins. i brought some of the spinach and feta muffins to shawn's work and everybody loved it! obviously that made me quite a happy, happy boy. that's one of the things i love about cooking, instant feedback. anyway, let's get back to this week's task - donut muffins.

i love donuts, so imagine my disappointment when my favorite donut place was no where to be found. not within a 50 mile radius. if you're thinking dunkin' donuts, you're right. i can't believe that they upped and left california. what's worse is that their ads are still running in local channels. can you believe that? it's like showing a diabetic with a sweet tooth cake and not giving it to him. it's torture people, torture!
i love those cake donuts with an nutty, orange-colored crust. after googling that description, i found out that it's called butternut cake donut and it has 300 calories. well, i'm pretty sure that the fact that it's fried does not help it's calorie count. my love for that particular donut was inexplicable until i had it again a couple of years ago. i researched and found out that nutmeg was the spice my tongue was obsessed over. i rarely use nutmeg that's why i did not figure out what that flavor was.a little over a month a month ago, i tried making a version of those particular donuts and it was a success. the flavor was there and my nutmeg obsession was satisfied. unfortunately, i failed to bookmark the recipe and i don't remember what i searched for, so that recipe is now somewhere in the interwebs waiting to be found once again. it's sad i know, but when an of bakerstreet emailed me the recipe of this week's muffin, i got excited since it was very simple and that's how i like my donuts - simple and straightforward.halfway during the baking time, i opened the oven with the intention of rotating the muffin pan, but i ended up smelling the wonderful aroma of the baking batter and forgot about the 350-degree-F heat radiating to my face. after i pulled those babies out of the oven, i immediately took them out of the pan, rolled them into the cinnamon sugar mixture and took a bite. i was in heaven, the flavor was awesome. sweet with a hint of spice, it was totally wonderful.
what's your favorite donut? let me know by commenting below. :)

donut muffins

ingredients:

1 3/4 cups all purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/3 cup room temperature butter
3/4 cup sugar
1 egg
3/4 cup buttermilk

instructions:

1. preheat oven to 350 degrees F. in a medium bowl, combine flour, baking powder, nutmeg, cinnamon and salt, set aside.

2. in a large bowl, or with your stand mixer with a paddle attachment, cream butter and sugar together until it becomes pale and fluffy.

3. with your mixer on low, slowly add flour and spice mixture into the creamed butter with sugar in 3 additions alternating with buttermilk. so basically, flour mixture, buttermilk, flour mixture, buttermilk and flour mixture. make sure you only mix until it's combined. over mixing will lead to a very dense and rubbery muffin and who would want that?

4. fill you greased or paper lined muffin tins halfway and bake for about 25-30 minutes or until the time when you insert a toothpick into a muffin and the toothpick comes out clean.

5. while still hot, roll donuts into a mixture of 1/3 cup sugar and 1 tsp of cinnamon. the heat will make sure that the cinnamon sugar mixture will stick to the muffins.

Muffin Monday is an initiative by Baker Street. A culinary journey of sharing a wickedly delicious muffin recipe every week. Drop in a quick line to join her on her journey to make the world smile and beat glum Monday mornings week after week.

make sure to check out these awesome bloggers' take on the recipe. enjoy!

randall loves peanut butter treats

up until our acquisition of our not-so-little pup, i was not such a big fan of owning a dog. i like other people's pets because i know that i could play with them and still know that i don't have to deal with the stress of cleaning up pee and poo and also the i don't have to deal with the unwanted barking alarm in the morning. then a little over a couple of years ago, shawn started talking about getting a dog. obviously, since he was still in school that time, i said no.

after a few weeks of talking about getting a dog and getting the same same answer, shawn finally stopped bringing up the topic. then one day, he tells me that his neighbor's dog gave birth to a bunch of pups and that he bought one. i was dumbfounded. i didn't know what to say. i was left on the other end of the phone saying, "okay". the next day, after my class ended, i immediately drove up to sacramento to see the craziness that he brought into our lives. i saw the little critter inside their little pen and i was in love. now, i couldn't even imagine life without this little brown monster.
now that we have a dog, and that i have to deal with all the things i used to hate about them, i am quite surprised that i am not that stressed over it. don't get me wrong, i still go crazy when i get woken up by randall whimpering and nudging my hand that is hanging off the bed signaling me that it is time to eat, but the stress that goes with owning a dog wasn't as much as i expected - which is a good thing.
what's surprising about having this particular dog is the ridiculous amount of treats he wants. i mean seriously, he whimpers, cries and begs for treats. it's crazy! when randall had surgery for intestinal obstruction (that's a whole other story), he weighed 80 pounds. apparently, he was overweight. we were surprised because he didn't look like he was. so after he recovered from surgery, a goal to make sure he loses some of the weight was in place. we, more shawn than i, really made sure that randall's weight loss plan was in motion. we decreased the amount of store-bought treats he's having and upped his celery and carrot intake. he loves those veggies as treats. now, whenever he sees those veggies being chopped up, he's there next to me in the kitchen looking up and waiting to get some.
now that randall has lost some of the weight, i thought it would be great to make some homemade treats for him. i have been planning to make treat for him ever since we found out that noah's bagels carries little bagel treats for dogs. now that i found enough time to cut little shapes out of a rolled out dough and bake them i did it.
after painstakingly cutting little hearts out of the fragrant peanut butter dough and baking them, i gave randall one of those little hearts and after he inhaled the whole thing, he was already begging to have another one. obviously, he liked it. as i am writing this post, i only have half a jar left and i need to make more! so if your dogs love treats, it's time for you to get this recipe into the oven.

peanut butter dog treats
(adapted from dogtreatrecipes.org)

ingredients:

2 cups all purpose flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1 cup smooth peanut butter
1 cup oatmeal
1 cup soy milk or water

instructions:

1. preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

2. in a big bowl, combine all ingredients and mix until combined and a dough is formed.

3. roll out dough on a well-floured surface until it's about 1/4 inch thick. it'll puff up when baking.

4. cut out pieces from the dough using your favorite cookie cutter or a dog bone shaped one. if you don't have a cookie cutter, you can just cut bite sized pieces.

5. on a parchment lined baking sheet or a lightly oiled one, lay out cut out dough and bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until golden brown.

6. store in a ziploc bag or an airtight jar, if you can resist not giving it to your dog during the cooling down process.

spinach feta muffins for muffin monday

a few weeks ago, i was going through the blogs i frequent on a regular basis, then on annapet's blog i saw that she was baking muffins for the first time. the title of her post had muffin mondays on it, and i thought that it was such a clever idea. after reading the post, another blogger, anuradha, invited invited her to do this. i was intrigued and click on the link that led to her site. i was drooling when i got there. a whole slew of baked goods right in front of me ripe for the picking. anyway, after a few weeks of reading though other people's post for muffin mondays, i've decided to join.

i emailed an, author of baker street, if i could bake with them. when she replied telling me i could, i was excited. on her first email she told me that she'll send me the details about the recipe we're doing that coming thursday. i told shawn about this new thing i am joining and he thought that it'd be fun. ever since i started this new blog, i told myself that i would join blogging things like this. i also planned to be more friendly and try talking to other bloggers - but i seem to be failing at that right now. i think i should really try harder.
thursday came and in my inbox was the recipe we were going to make this week. when i read spinach feta muffins, i immediately planned on what i'm going to do with it. since it's very greek, shawn suggested that i should add olives but unfortunately i'm not a big fan of olives so i ignored that suggestion. it would've been good though. anyway, i thought I'd stick to the original recipe, but I felt the need to tweak it a little bit. so what i ended up doing is increasing the amount of some of the ingredients and adding garlic because I think it'll go well with the other stuff in the veggie filled recipe.

after making it, I was kinda apprehensive because there was so much spinach that it might end up overpowering all the other ingredients, but when I took a bite, it was perfect. I could taste the feta, sundries tomatoes, a hint of parsley and the bite of garlic. after eating one, I decided that I will make a spread just to make it better. don't get. me wrong, the muffins were good by itself, but I'm a spread kinda guy so I wanted something to smear on my muffin (no pun intended). since I have cream cheese in the fridge, some chopped green onions, a dash of of ground black pepper and a squeeze of lemon juice would surely go well with what's inside the muffin. after smearing it on one of them, I was right, a spread would totally enhance everything. so, let me just give you the recipe and make sure that you try it out.

spinach feta muffins

ingredients:

2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
3 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
250g (about 1/2 bunch) spinach, trimmed, washed, dried, shredded
1 cup feta cheese, crumbled
1/2 cup sundried tomatoes, drained and chopped (optional)
1/3 cup finely grated parmesan
1 cup milk
1/3 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 egg
1 tbsp dried parsley
1 tbsp granulated garlic
finely grated parmesan, extra to top cooked muffins

instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

2. Line with muffin liners or brush muffin pans with canola oil to lightly grease.

3. In a large bowl, sift flour and add shredded spinach, feta, tomatoes and parmesan, stir to combine.

4. In a measuring jar or another bowl whisk together milk, oil, egg, dried parsley and granulated garlic until well combined. Add milk mixture to flour mixture and use a metal spoon to stir until just combined (do not over mix).

5. Spoon mixture into prepared pans. Bake for 20 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the center comes out clean. Turn out onto wire rack to cool. Serve warm or at room temperature. Top with freshly grated parmesan cheese.

cream cheese spread

1/2 cup cream cheese, room temperature
1/2 tsp ground black pepper
2 tbsp chopped green onions or chives
juice of half a lemon
salt to taste

cream cream cheese and mix in all other ingredients. adjust salt amount to your taste. smear on to your muffins. enjoooooy!

by the way check out what the other bloggers did with this recipe.

Asian American Cooking
Baker Street
Cook That Book
Mind Your Bees and Trees
When Adobo Met Feijoada

Muffin Monday is an initiative by Baker Street. A culinary journey of sharing a wickedly delicious muffin recipe every week. Drop in a quick line to join her on her journey to make the world smile and beat glum Monday mornings week after week.

peppery beef and basil stir fry

i love weddings. a lot of times, i find myself looking at wedding blogs and spending hours clicking away at every link i can find on each site. there's just something about weddings that gives me a better perspective on life - that it's not all about murders and wars. a couple of years ago, i was enlisted by my cousin to help out with her wedding. i was excited. she sent me what her invitation looked like and gave me the task of designing place cards, menu and mostly everything that needs to be printed. this gave me something to do for the next couple of months.after a month or so, a multitude of emails, a few gigabytes of attachments and numerous phone calls, the date of the wedding was closing in. shawn and i finally found time to go down to union city to give my cousin, her sisters and her friends some extra manpower to speed up the process of finishing up everything they need for the wedding. we spent most of the time catching up before getting some work done. right before we started, hunger presented itself. so my cousin asked her then-fiance-now-husband to cook diner for everyone.
when the rice cooker clicked back to warm, i knew it was time to go to the kitchen and check out what's brewin' in the kitchen. i smelled basil and i was intrigued. you know i love basil and anything recipe that has it on its ingredient list. i looked into the steaming pot, lifted the cover and scooped a big spoonful of the peppery ground meat into my plate. i immediately had a spoonful, and the moment it touched my tongue, a grin was plated across my face. it was sweet from the onions and bell peppers, meaty and there was a mild burn from the generous amount of pepper added into the dish.
that dish was simple but quite remarkable. the combination of all the flavors were amazing. it was like my cousin and now husband, a wonderful combination. i love how you can combine simple ingredients and come up with a very satisfying meal. i guess that's one of the other things i love about weddings. no matter how complicated the preparations and how extravagant the set up is, none of the matters if the bride and groom are not there. you can take away the white dress, expensive tux and grand location and you'll still have the same wonderful result, two people who vow to spend the rest of their lives with each other - just like this dish.

peppery beef and basil stir fry

ingredients:
1 lb ground beef or turkey
2 large onions, sliced, divided
3 stalks celery, sliced
5 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
1 red bell pepper, sliced
1 green bell pepper, sliced
1 tbsp ground black pepper
10-15 leaves basil, chopped
2 tbsp lemon juice
2 tbsp oil
salt
green onions (optional)
instructions:
1. heat up your wok or frying pan over medium high heat. once hot, add oil.
2. saute half of the sliced onions, celery and garlic. when the onion are soft, add ground beef/turkey.
3. when the meat is brown and there's no more pink, add ground black peppers, the other half of the onions, red and green bell peppers and cook for about 7 minutes until the bell peppers are slightly soft.
4. once the bell peppers are soft, take the pan out of the heat, then add lemon juice and basil. it'll wilt and distribute it's flavor into the dish from the residual heat. serve with rice and top with chopped green onions. enjoy!

*note: always remember to add a bit of salt every time you add an ingredient into your pan. it wouldn't make it too salty. it'll season each ingredient you add and bring out its flavor. you can't just add all salt in the end. if you do, you'll learn the difference between having a well-seasoned dish and a salty one the hard way. this just doesn;t apply to this dish, it goes all across the board. have fun!!!