Rice Pudding

I can't remember the exact date of this attempt, but I do remember how delicious it was! Catching up with unposted recipes, I give you, Rice Pudding!

Ingredients:

1 and 1/2 cups cooked rice
2 cups milk (I used Lactose-free 1% and fat free--Lactaid brand)
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 egg (beaten)
1/3 cup white sugar
1 Tablespoon butter
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:


1.) Combine the rice, 1 and 1/2 cups milk, and salt in a saucepan over medium heat, stirring until thick, about 15-20 minutes.

2.) Add in the last 1/2 cup of milk, egg, and sugar into the mix, stirring constantly. Cook another 2-3 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in butter and vanilla.

3.) Top with cinnamon and garnish with a cinnamon stick. Refrigerate 6-8 hours to serve cold.

Found on Allrecipes.com under Old Fashioned Creamy Rice Pudding.

Homemade PSL!

Continuing my pumpkin theme (because there's only so many months you can bake and post pumpkin), I attempted another easy recipe that fit perfectly with this year's transition into fall--and wasn't even any baking involved.

For those coffee addicts among us (I am one of them), the season of PSL (pumpkin spice latte) is a reason in itself to rejoice. However, not everyone spends this time of year celebrating. Recent reports of unhealthy ingredients in the Starbucks PSL and a comparison by John Oliver equating the taste to a candle can make even the most die-hard PSL fans a little disheartened. I won't go into a rant defending the taste of pumpkin (my bias is clear) or breakdown the unhealthy ingredients and excessive sweetening pumped into most Starbucks beverages (like the 79 grams of sugar for a non-seasonal Venti Mocha Frappuccino...). Instead I'll just point out that if you're a coffee addict and a pumpkin addict you probably enjoy the PSL. If you're also a bit health conscious/lactose intolerant like me, you might try ordering the PSL in a size small (tall) with soymilk, no whip, and maybe one pump of syrup. Or, to save money, confusion, and a potential waxy aftertaste, you might try making your own.

Recipes for PSL knockoffs can be found all over the Internet, but my mom recently presented me with one from Averie Cooks, who offers a vegan, gluten-free option that is also as easy as pumpkin pie. I tested it with my mom after inviting her over for afternoon tea and have since had three more cups and then made a second batch to last me through the weekend. It does, admittedly, taste a bit different from the Starbucks version, but it also tastes more natural, more fall-like, with the flexibility to doctor it up as sweet or less sweet as you like and the added health benefits of actual superfood: pumpkin.

Ingredients:

1 cup of your favorite brewed coffee
1/4 cup (heaping) canned pumpkin (I used Libby's, as usual)
1 cup unsweetened vanilla almond milk (Averie's recipe recommended this kind of milk, and it also happens to be what I use every day for cereal!)
2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 Tablespoons brown sugar or sweetener of choice
a pinch of your favorite fall spices to taste (I did a sprinkling of cloves and a sprinkling of nutmeg)

Directions:

1.) In a microwave-safe bowl, combine the canned pumpkin and almond milk, whisking or stirring well to blend (I just used a fork). Add in the spices, vanilla, and sugar, continuing to stir.

2.) Heat the concoction in the microwave for about 1 minute or until warm (you can also heat the ingredients together in a small pot of the stove). Brew your coffee as normal and pour into a mug about one half to two thirds full.

3.) Add 1-2 ladles of the pumpkin milk to your cup of coffee and stir well (the pumpkin may separate out by the time you finish drinking and get a little thick, but it still tastes delicious).

You can top with whipped cream and sprinkles of spices if you desire, and experiment with the amount of sweetener to get it just right for your taste.

So easy! And such a nice treat to really make you feel like fall is finally here. It certainly jump started my season as I continued on that week to make pumpkin pancakes (to go with my second batch of pumpkin spice lattes), and enjoy pumpkin pie flavored Italian ice (which my boyfriend surprised me with this weekend before taking me to the local Pumpkin Patch). Trust me, I'm getting in all the pumpkin, and all the autumn, while I can.

Halo-Halo!

If you haven't heard of "Halo-Halo," you're missing out on an amazing and unique treat that's perfect for the upcoming summer weather. A fun sounding word that literally means "mix-mix" in Tagalog, this milk and ice cream dessert originates from the Philippines but is said to have been introduced by the Japanese 100 years ago when they used the Philippines' local fruits to create new sweets to sell in their businesses. Today, the bright colors and creamy textures of Halo-Halo are still drawing in crowds of Filipinos and Americans alike.

Now, being sadly lactose intolerant myself, I can only have but a small taste of these heavily dairy-laden concoctions when I visit Filipino restaurants (and a few other local Asian restaurants that have similar desserts). But that doesn't mean I can't make this cool parfait for others! In the middle of March, I brought a whole tray of them into my Tagalog language class that I'm taking for fun (I love learning languages).

We were not required to bring Filipino food in to class, though it was strongly encouraged by my classmates. Being the baker and experimenter that I am, how could I not? I've made the Filipino dessert Bibingka in the past, but this time I thought I'd try something a little different. After seeing delicious pictures of Halo-Halo online, and finding most of the ingredients prepackaged in the Filipino market near my house, I decided it would be the perfect treat to bring, if I could just pull it off without everything melting ahead of time.

So I purchased my ingredients, used this handy WikiHow video as a guide to get the construction right, and started to put my Halo-Halo desserts together about 10 minutes before class (luckily I had a nearby fridge and freezer I could borrow to store the ice cream at work).

Ingredients:

Ube ice cream (it's purple yam ice cream, and it's delicious) or an ice cream flavor of choice
Jar of Kapuso Halo-Halo Fruit Mix and Beans (see image below as well)
Ice (small cubes or shaved--I bought my ice from Sonic since they use the small kind)
Lowfat evaporated milk (I used Carnation brand)
Ube or other flavored wafer stick cookies (if you can't find Filipino cookies like Stik-O's, regular Pepperidge Farm Pirouettes will do as well)

Directions:

1.) In a clear glass or plastic cup, drop in the fruit and beans from the Halo-Halo mix.

2.) Add shaved ice, filling the glasses almost to the brim.

3.) Pour evaporated milk over the ice (be careful, it may spill) and top with a scoop of ice cream and a cookie stick.

When you're ready to eat it, just take a spoon and "mix-mix" all the ingredients together. The result is such an amazing (and very sweet) flavor--the perfect way to cool down on a hot day and treat yourself to something delicious that you might not have thought to try.

Halo-Halo might be a little harder for casual blog readers to make if they don't have a Filipino market nearby, but I would have to say the results are worth doing a little shopping outside your comfort zone (many of the ingredients can be found online if you can't find them in stores). Once you have the ingredients, the quick steps make it so easy to impress your Filipino friends or introduce others to a new kind of summertime fix.

Mickey Mouse (Trademarked) Waffles!

Yes, you can use this recipe for any kind of waffle--not just Mickey-shaped ones. (And yes, Mickey is probably trademarked). But after getting a Mickey Mouse waffle iron for Christmas I just had to test it out!

Again, the Internet gave me recipe options since I didn't have a normal waffle recipe memorized. With no buttermilk, I just searched other ingredients until I came across a recipe on Tasteofhome.com for "Fluffy Waffles." Sounded good to me!

Since I never have dairy milk around the house, I used lite coconut milk instead, halved the recipe (doing the best I could to "halve" an egg) and stuck with my go-to whole wheat pastry flour. I didn't bother with the Cinnamon Cream syrup in the original recipe either since 1) I can't digest cream, and 2) I love my waffles with pure maple syrup or soy whipped cream if I top them at all.

Ingredients

1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 Tablespoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 and 1/2 eggs, separated (use two yolks and just don't pour in all the whites)
1 cup lite coconut milk
1/8 cup (2 Tablespoons) canola oil plus extra for greasing

Directions

1.) Plug in your waffle maker and grease with canola oil (using a pastry brush or a paper towel) until it is evenly coated. Allow the waffle iron to come to full heat.

2.) In a medium-sized bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt, stirring lightly to combine. In another bowl, combine the egg yolks, coconut milk, and oil. Slowly add the wet and dry ingredients together in the larger bowl and stir until just combined.

3.) Stir the egg whites briefly in another bowl or cup, then add them in to the batter and stir everything just to combine. Once your waffle iron is at full heat, use an ice cream scoop or other large spoon to drop the batter onto the lower plate of the iron and allow to spread to all corners (or ears) of the mold.

4.) Close the waffle iron and allow to cook approximately 4-5 minutes, depending on the intensity of your iron. Mine came out pretty nicely at 5 minutes, though the first one was a little off, as per usual with waffles and pancakes. Serve with butter and maple syrup, and be sure to eat while still crisp!

These waffles can also be stored in the freezer to toast later in a toaster (challenging but possible if you stick them in twice, once on the face side and once for the ears). Or you can toast them in the oven set to about 250 degrees for a few minutes until warm again.

Yay for fun, delicious, holiday-time breakfasts!

Dirt Cup Pudding

Before the heat of summer rolls around we can still all enjoy the fun activities that spring has to offer! For some people, spring is the time for planting flowers in the dirt. For me, it was making "dirt cups" for kids at the public library to go with our "Spring" story time theme on March 31!

On the agenda for story time was reading There was an Old Lady Who Swallowed Some Bugs by Johnette Downing, When Will It Be Spring? by Catherine Walters, and Diary of a Worm by Doreen Cronin. We also planted our own Morning Glories in a real cup of dirt before ending the program with a much tastier kind of "dirt!" I promise, this pudding is not as "gross" as it looks!

Dirt Cup Pudding

Ingredients:

2 cups cold milk
1 small package (3.4 oz.) chocolate pudding mix (I used JELL-O brand)
8 oz. whipped topping (like Cool Whip), thawed, not frozen
16 oz. crushed Oreo cookies (I crushed them by hand by pouring them into a large zipped-top plastic baggie)
10 gummy worms and 10 clear cups

Directions:

1). Mix the pudding and milk together in a large bowl. Let sit 5 minutes.

2). Stir in the whipped topping and half the crushed cookies.

3). Drop about 1 teaspoon of crushed cookies into each clear cup. Fill 3/4 of the way full with the pudding mixture. Top with the rest of the cookies.

4). Refrigerate at least one hour (if possible). Garnish each cup with a gummy worm and eat up with a spoon!

Special thanks to Cooks.com for helping me find the perfect dirt cup recipe to try and to all the Saturday Drop-In story time kids at the library who were my eager taste testers!

Breakfast of Champions

Though maybe not as exciting as caramel apples, pancakes, or pie (just wait--the fall pies will be coming soon!), I did take on a couple of mini experiments yesterday to use up ingredients we had around the house. Oats, skim milk, and browning bananas easily turned into a rather healthy family breakfast for this morning: a pot of Oatmeal and a Peachy-Banana Fruit Smoothie. If you're in a hurry and need to feed 3-5 people on a weekday morning, this might just be the way to go.

Oatmeal

Ingredients:

1 quart (4 cups) skim milk (or liquid of choice--soymilk, almond milk, water, etc.)
Pinch of salt
2 and 1/2 cups oats

Directions:

1.) Pour the milk into a large pot, add the salt, and bring to a boil on the stove. When bubbles just begin to form (watch it carefully so the milk doesn't scald), stir in the oats and reduce the heat to a low simmer.

2.) Simmer the oatmeal for about 5-8 minutes, stirring occasionally until it reaches your desired consistency. (I like my oatmeal a little more toasty, so I'll leave it on the stove a while. But if you like it creamy, stick to five minutes or less).

3.) Remove from heat, let cool slightly, and enjoy! Also tastes great cold--after being refrigerated overnight--with a fork. Yes, I'm weird. Moving on....

Peachy-Banana Smoothie


Ingredients:

2 medium bananas, sliced
1 package (10 oz) frozen peaches
1 cup light vanilla soymilk (I used Silk brand)


Directions:


1.) Add the bananas, peaches, and soymilk into your blender and blend about 15 seconds, making sure all big chunks are broken up. A few small chunks are okay, especially if you like a thick smoothie like I do. Pour into a glass and top with chopped almonds if you desire. That's it!

The smoothie didn't end up quite as "peachy" as I would have liked, so next time I might up the amount of peaches and cut back on the banana, maybe even using bananas that are slightly less brown, and adding just a touch of honey or other sweetener. Still, it was an experiment using what we had. For the oatmeal, I'd love to test out different liquids (almond milk with a touch of almond extract perhaps) as well as potential flavor additions like maple syrup, brown sugar, dried fruits, and fresh strawberries. Since it is fall, however, I'm leaning everything toward...pumpkin.

Yes, you'd better believe there will be pumpkin treats on this blog before November. If you thought I got excited about making caramel apples....