Homemade GInger Mango Granola

Now winter is starting to back off and plans of camping and hiking are starting to form.  My favorite thing to munch on is granola.  Granola is super easy to make, and it is tastier when you make your own.
Ginger Mango Granola
4 cups rolled oats
pinch of salt
1 cup chopped walnuts
2 cups chopped mango
1 tsp ginger
syrup:
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup honey
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F.

In a large bowl mix together everything but the ingredients for the syrup.











In a sauce pan bring the vegetable oil, brown sugar, and honey to a boil.

When it is boiling take off the heat and add the vanilla.  Mix with your wooden spoon, and then add it to the rest of your ingredients.  Mix until everything is evenly distributed.






Pour the granola onto a sheet pan and spread it out evenly.  Cook in the oven for about 15-20 minutes and stir it every five minutes.  When granola is lightly browned, pull it out of the oven and let it completely cool.

When it is done cooling you can store it in an air tight container for weeks!

It tastes good with your favorite yogurt.  I love snacking on it with Greek honey yogurt.

Hazelnut chocolate tart

 

I wanted to make these because I bought a set of six little tart pans, perfect for one serving and I was dying to use them.  If you are a chocolate lover you will love this tart.  For the filling I used agave syrup which you can find in the baking section of any grocery store.  If you don't want to use agave syrup you can substitute it with corn syrup.  I got the idea for this recipe from the "Golden Book of Desserts".  The idea came from the chocolate pecan tart.  These tarts were so good but next time I may roast my hazelnuts first.

Here is what you will need:

 Pastry
1 1/4 cups flour
1/2 cup confectioners sugar
1 large egg yolk
7 tbsp cold butter
2-3 tsp iced water

 Filling
1/2 cup of coarsely chopped dark chocolate
1/4 cup butter
2/3 cup firmly packed brown sugar
2/3 cup agave syrup
3 large eggs, lightly beaten
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups chopped hazelnuts

First make the pastry.  In a bowl add the butter, flour, and confectioner sugar.  Mix this with a pastry cutter.  I like to start with a pastry cutter and then use my hands.









Mix until it is crumbly.  Add the egg yolk and 2 tsp of water.  Mix this using your hands.  Add more water 1 tsp at a time until you are able to pull the dough together into a nice ball.  I ended up using 4 tsp of water.  It will depend on the moisture in the air on how much water you will need.


wrap the ball in plastic wrap and let it rest in the refrigerator for about 30 minutes.

Take your pastry dough out of the refrigerator and cut it in half.  Roll out one half to about 1/4 inch thick.  To lift the dough roll it lightly around your rolling pin and place a pastry tin in front of it.  Gently unroll the dough over the top of the tin.  Using your fingers, push the dough down and into the sides of the tin then push your hand down over the top using the top of the tin as a cookie cutter.  Remove the excess and roll it out again.  Repeat this six times with all of your tins, then return them to the refrigerator for 30 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Line each tart shell with parchment paper and fill with beans, or pie weights.  Place in the oven for about 15 minutes, or until a light golden brown.

To make the filling,  put your chocolate chips in a double broiler and cook over a slightly simmering water until full melted.  Beat the butter, and brown sugar together until creamy.  Add the agave syrup and beat again until smooth.

While the mixer is on low, slowly add the egg, vanilla, and then chocolate, continue to mix until everything is incorporated.  Stir in the hazelnuts by hand.

Pour the filling into your pastry shells and cook for about 30 minutes or until set.  This tart cooks like a pecan pie, when it jiggles slightly in the middle it is done.

Allow the tarts to cool, and then remove them from there tins.  Decorate however you like.  I sprinkled powdered sugar on mine, then cut a flower out of a piece of paper.  Using the flower as a stencil I placed it on each tart and sprinkled cocoa powder on them.  You can also garnish them with melted chocolate and roasted hazelnuts.  Serve with whip cream or ice cream.

Cream puffs with vanilla and chocolate pastry cream

I mad these for my sister for her 18th bday.  Though they are a bit time consuming, they are really easy to make.  You can make the pastry cream ahead of time but I suggest making your choux pastry the day ahead because pastry always tastes better the fresher it is.  I made two different kinds and then garnished the chocolate ones with melted chocolate so I could tell the difference between the two.  The recipe below will make more than enough pastry cream, and you will probably have a little bit left over.  I think it is better to have more than less so you don't feel like you have to ration the amount of cream you are putting into these puffs.  With cream puffs, the more cream the better I say!
I got this recipe out of a book called "The Golden Book of Desserts" edited by Ann McRae.
Choux pastry
1 Cup water
1/3 cup butter
1 cup unbleached flour
2 tsp sugar
1/4 tsp salt
4 large eggs

Vanilla Pastry cream
5 large egg yolks
3/4 cup sugar
2 tbsp corn starch
pinch of salt
2 cups milk
2 tsp vanilla

Chocolate pastry cream
5 large egg yolks
3/4 cups sugar
2 tbsp corn starch
pinch of salt
2 cups milk
2 tsp vanilla
5 oz of chocolate

First make the pastry cream.  Beat the egg yolks until the are pale and creamy.  Next add the corn starch and salt, beat until completely mixed and set aside.  In a sauce pan bring the milk to a boil on a medium heat occasionally stirring.  When the milk is boiling slowly pour it into your egg mixture and stir.  Return everything to the stove and cook on low heat continuously stirring with a wooden spoon.  If you are unable to break up the lumps that form use a whisk.  Boil for a full minute or until mixture has thickened.  Remove from the heat and add the vanilla.

When you are done place in a bowl and cover with plastic wrap.  gently push the plastic down until it is touching the top of the cream, this will prevent a skin from forming as it cools.  To make the chocolate cream, follow every step except for add the chocolate to the milk as you are bring it to a boil.  When the milk is boiling and all of the chocolate has melted add it to your egg mixture.  Allow both creams to cool on the counter top for about half an hour.  Place in the refrigerator until you are ready to use it.

For the Choux pastry, preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.  In a saucepan bring the water and the butter to a boil on low heat.  Make sure you don't cook it to long or on a high heat otherwise your butter will brown.  Will the butter is heating up combine the sugar, flour, and salt in a small bowl.  When your butter mixture is boiling, add the flour mixture to it stirring constantly until it comes away from the sides of the pan and starts looking like a soft dough.  Remove from heat, and let cool for five minutes.

Beat the eggs in one at a time.  When you are done the mixture will be a sticky glossy dough.

Fit your pastry bag with a plain nozzle and fill it up half way with the choux pastry.

On pastry lined baking sheets pipe walnut sized balls about about 2 inches apart.  Place in the oven   Bake for about 20- 25 minutes or until golden brown.  When done poke with a skewer or a small knife on the bottem of each puff to release steam.  Turn your oven off and leave it slightly ajar with the pastries still inside for about 15 minutes, then transfer them to a rack.  Turn the oven back on, when it is back to 350 degrees F, place your second batch in.  This is the most time consuming part!

 

Wait until your pastries are completely cool until moving on to the next part.  Fit a pastry bag with a small plain tip and fill half way with either the chocolate cream.  Using the holes you made earlier to realease steam, fill half of the puffs with the chocolate cream.  Do the same with the other half and the vanilla cream.  Garnish with powdered sugar, melted chocolate, and whipped cream.  I made these for seven people and they were gone withing a couple of minutes.  Even though we each had enough we could have eaten more.  I would say this recipe fully satisfies five people, the recipe makes forty small cream puffs so that would be eight per person.  This seems like a lot but the are so light and creamy that eight seems like a reasonable serving to me ha ha!

P.S. This was my attempt at a swan, it was a lot harder then I thought it would be!

Chocolate checkered cake

 

This was my first attempt at putting a cake together and decorating it.  I'm not going to share the recipe today because I am still fixing it, But I will show how the whole thing came together.  I had fun putting it together and I learned a lot along the way.  I used a chocolate and a vanilla Italian sponge cake, Chocolate glaze, Reeses pieces, and Italian butter cream frosting with peanut butter.

First step was to cut my sponge cakes into rings.  First, I cut each cake in half horizontally, so I had four cakes total.  I used a tea set to measure out the different sizes of circles.  The larger outer circle was the plate, the middle circle was the saucer for the tea cup, and the circle shown here was the tea cup.  I also cut a smaller circle withing this one but I just free handed it.  In total I had four rings for each cake, and a center piece.

To construct the cake I used Butter cream for the glue.  Starting with the vanilla outer ring, I placed a chocolate ring inside.  I kept this up until I had placed all of the rings making a whole cake, ending with the vanilla center.  within each ring I put a layer of butter cream so the rings would stick together. Before starting my second layer I made sure everything was level, and I covered the whole layer with butter cream.  The second layer starts with a chocolate outer ring, and ends with a chocolate center.

This is a picture of the finished layers.  There are four layers total.  From the side view you can see the alternating exterior rings.  There is butter cream in between each ring and each layer.  Next cover the whole cake with a thing layer of buttercream and place it in the Refrigerator for about two hours.

When the crumb layer has chilled add a full layer of butter cream and place it in the freezer for two hours.  Placing it in the freezer will make the butter cream hard and the next step easier.  A note on the butter cream,  I wasn't a fan of the Italian butter cream, it kept on separating and I had to keep on beating it.  The butter and the egg whites did not like each other.  I'm sure this problem had to do with my skill level.  After doing some research on line I realized that this happens to a lot of people.  I may try it again someday and practice a bit, but I think for this cake I will use the traditional butter cream of powdered sugar, and butter.  For those who don't know Italian butter cream is made with butter and an Italian Meringue.  An Italian meringue is made with egg whites and a hot sugar syrup.  The meringue is extremely stiff and shiny when done.  Then you slowly add in softened butter.  I did make two batches and the second one came out better, but I still wasn't a fan.  

Next pour on the glaze.  A chocolate glaze is just heavy cream with melted chocolate.  To glaze the cake I placed it on a cooling rack over a pot, to catch the excess chocolate.  After pouring the chocolate I realized that the chocolate layer was really thin.  I placed the cake in the refrigerator for about ten minutes and then placed all of the chocolate that had poured into the pan back into my bowl.  After a second layer of chocolate glaze I got the desired thickness.

I decorated the sides with crushed Reeses pieces and the top I piped on "happy bday".  Piping was a lot harder then I thought. I started out trying the cursive and ended with bold capitol letters.  The butter cream was not working very well either.  To thicken it I added some powdered sugar.  This helped a lot, otherwise I wasn't going to be able to pipe anything with the soft Italian butter cream.

The design worked out great, but I am still working on the recipe.  Like I said, next time I probably will use a more traditional butter cream, also instead of the cocoa powder that I used for the chocolate cake I think I will use real milk chocolate.  I also learned that I need to practice my piping!

home made protein bars

 

These protein bars kind of taste like no bake cookies, only not as sweet.  They are super easy to make and they don't have all the weird ingredients that store bought protein bars have in them.

Chocolate Protein bars

10 tbsp organic peanut butter

5 egg whites (make sure they are pasteurized)

5 scoops of chocolate protein powder

2 cups of rolled oats

1/2 cup of soy milk

1 tbsp raw honey

1 tbsp cinnamon

First mix the peanut butter and egg whites.  At first they will not mix together very well, place them in the microwave for 30 seconds and then mix again.  Repeat this step 4 or 5 times until the egg whites and peanut butter are completely mixed and creamy.  This may cook the egg whites enough but I'm not at all sure so to be safe I would use pasteurized eggs.

Gradually add the protein mix one scoop at a time.  When this is fully mixed add the cinnamon, honey, and soy.  Now at this step I noticed that I had a huge sticky glob in a puddle of soy milk which I couldn't mix.  To fix this I set up a double boiler, as my sticky chocolate glob heated up it was easier to mix in the soy milk.  To avoid this step I would add the soy milk first right after the microwave step and then add the protein mix at the very end.




Set your chocolate mix aside and place two cups of rolled oats in a shallow frying pan.  Lightly toast the oats to bring out some flavor and then add them into your chocolate mix.

Lightly spray a 13x9 inch pan with non-stick spray and pour your mixture in.  Make sure it is level and then place it in the refrigerator for about 30 minutes. 

After it has cooled down, cut it into ten bars by cutting five pieces one way and then cutting that in half the other way.

When I removed the bars they were still very sticky so I placed them in the freezer for about 30 minutes.  This made it easier and less messy to wrap the bars in foil.  Store in the refrigerator.  These bars are about 230 calories,  9 grams of fat, 19.5 grams of protein, 16 grams of carbs.

I eat every three hours, five meals a day.  This protein bar is one of my meals.

I know a lot of my posts have been unhealthy so I thought I would throw something in that is fun to bake and is also good for you.  I will try to post some more of my healthy meals on here but I will also continue to post the unhealthy ones too cause after working so hard during the week I think we all deserve a little indulgence.

Strawberry lemon sponge cake

 

This cake is pretty easy to make and has a nice fresh taste to it.  Tools you need for this are: a spring form pan, parchment paper, A whisk, a medium star pastry tip, pastry bag, electrical mixer.  You can make the desert without the pastry tip and bag.  I just used it to pipe on the whipped cream which covers the top of the cake.  An alternative is just to spread the whipped cream over the top with a large flat knife.

Ingredients

Italian Sponge cake

1 cup unbleached flour

1/4 tsp salt

6 large eggs, separpated

1 1/4 cups sugar

1/2 tbsp finely grated lemon zest

Lemon pastry cream

5 large egg yolks

3/4 cup sugar

4 tbsp cornstarch

2 cups milk

juice from one lemon

Whipped cream

1 cup of heavy cream

2 tbsp confectioners sugar

1/2 tsp vanilla

Garnish

Lemon juice

box of blueberries

box of strawberries

1/2 cup of melted chocolate

First make the sponge cake.  Preheat the oven to 250 degrees F.  Butter a 10 inch spring form pan and line it with parchment paper.  Sift the flour and salt in a medium bowl and set aside.  Beat the egg yolks, sugar, and lemon zest in a large bowl with an electric mixer at high speed.

The egg yolks will become extremely pale and the mixture will become thick and creamy.  Using a spatula fold the dry ingredients into the egg yolk mixture.  Next prepare the egg whites.

If you are using the same mixer you used to make the egg yolks make sure that it has been thoroughly cleaned and then dried.  If a little bit of water is added to your egg whites it will ruin them.  Beat the egg whites on high until it forms stiff peaks like the picture to the right.  Using a spatula carefully spoon the egg whites into the egg yolk mixture.  Carefully fold in the beaten egg whites.  You want to keep all of the fluffiness of the egg whites so don't over mix and don't use a spoon or an electrical mixer.  When you are done folding the egg whites into the mixture, quickly pour it into you spring for pan and place it in the oven for 35-40 minutes.  When the cake is done it will be springy to the touch and it will begin shrinking from the pan sides.

Cool the cake in the pan for about five minutes.  Loosen around the pan sides and invert the cake onto a rack.  Remove the pan and then carefully peel off the paper.  Turn the cake back, right side up and allow it to cool completely.  After it has cooled completely place it in the refrigerator.  In the next step the cake will have to be sliced in half and this is done easier when the cake is cold.

For the pastry cream.  Beat the egg yolks and sugar until pale and creamy.  Beat in the cornstarch and salt.  In a deep saucepan bring the milk to a boil.  Careful while doing this otherwise you will scald the milk.  Put the stove on medium so the milk slowly heats up and stir it occasionally.  When the milk has come to a boil, pour it slowly into your egg yolk mixture and stir it in.




Return everything to the pan and turn the heat to low.  For about five minutes or until the mixture starts thickening stir with a wooden spoon.  Then switch to a whisk so you can easily break up any lumps that form.  Bring to a boil and boil it for about one minute.  The mixture will become noticeably thick, remember to stir constantly otherwise it your cream will be lumpy. 





When done remove from heat and stir in the lemon juice.  Pour the done cream in a bowl and cover it with plastic wrap.  Make sure the plastic wrap is right on the top of the cream, this will prevent a skin from forming.  Let the cream sit out on the counter until it has cooled, and then place it in the refrigerator for about 30 minutes.  Allowing it to cool makes it thicker and easier to spread onto your cake.





While your cream and cake are in the refrigerator prepare your whip cream by placing all of the ingredients in an electrical mixer and mixing it on medium until it becomes thick.  Careful not to over mix, other wise you will get butter.  When the whipped cream is done, if you are using a pastry bag, spoon it into the pastry bag and place it in the refrigerator while you prepare the next step.

For a garnish I washed the blueberries and splashed just a small amount of lemon juice with about a tbsp of sugar.  I prefer raw sugar but if you don't have any regular sugar works fine.  Carefully stir the blueberries making sure they get completely covered.  For the strawberries, save about 12 and slice the rest.  For the 12 make sure you wash and then completely dry them.  Get about 1/2 a cup of your favorite chocolate and melt it.  It is best to use a double boiler rather then the microwave because you may over cook and burn your chocolate in the microwave.  When the chocolate is melted, hold a strawberry by the green and dip it in the chocolate,  When done place them in the refrigerator.

Now it is time to get your cake out of the refrigerator.  Slice it in half, horizontally.  Place the bottom on a plate and spoon the pastry cream onto the middle.  Using a spatula or a flat knife evenly spread the cream over the whole bottom half of the cake.  Cover it with the sliced strawberries, and then place the top half of the cake on top.

Get your whipped cream and decorate however you like.  Have fun with it!  When your done place the chocolate covered strawberries on top and garnish with the blueberries.

Happy Valentines day!