Jill Can Cook: Blueberry Muffins

I woke up this morning with a hankering for some blueberry muffins. Probably because I haven't had a delicious bluberry muffin slathered in butter since forever. In fact, I can't even remember when, since it's such a rare occasion. When I worked in the mall, right across from the Dunkin' Donuts, I bought and ate so many blueberry muffins that I nearly turned into Voilet Beauregarde (you know, from "Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory").

 

After a quick search for a recipe (found here: Sally's Baking Addiction) and a quick search in my freezer and pantry for the ingredients, I was on my way. In fact, this was almost too easy. My kids were even being really quiet as I made these.

 

Blueberry Muffins

 

Ingredients:

 

• 3 cups all-purpose flour 
• 4 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 2 eggs, room temperature preferred
• 1 cup  granulated sugar
• 1 cup milk
• 1/2 cup canola oil (or vegetable or melted coconut oil)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 and 1/2 cups fresh or frozen blueberries
• coarse sugar for sprinkling (optional)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 425F degrees. Spray your muffin tin of choice with non-stick spray or line with muffin liners. Set aside.
2. In a large bowl, gently toss together flour, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon. Mix until all dry ingredients are combined - a 20 second toss to disperse everything together. Set aside.
3. In a medium bowl, whisk together eggs and sugar until combined. Mix in milk, oil, and vanilla. Mixture will be pale and yellow. Fold wet ingredients into dry ingredients and mix everything together by hand. Avoid overmixing. Gently mix until all the flour is off the bottom of the bowl and no big pockets of flour remain. The batter will be VERY thick and somewhat lumpy. Fold in the blueberries.
4. Pour batter into prepared muffin tins, filling all the way to the top. Top with a sprinkle course sugar, if preferred. Bake at 425F degrees for 5 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 375 and continue to bake for 25-26 minutes until tops are lightly golden and centers appear set. Allow to cool for 10 minutes in pan before enjoying.
5. Muffins taste best fresh the same day. Store muffins at room temperature in an airtight container for up to 5 days. Muffins freeze well for up to 3 months.

The first thing I did was probably wrong. I thawed out the blueberries. I thought I would need to. Unfortunately, I didn't need to. Oh well, I started putting all the ingredients together anyway.

Dry ingredients

Wet ingredients

The wet and dry ingredients all mixed together.

I didn't have any huge sugar crystals, so I just put some regular sugar on top.

Since it's pretty close to Valentine's Day, I used muffin liners that reflected the holiday:

Aww.. So cute!!

This recipe ended up making quite a few muffins (17). I was quite impressed with the quantity, but not the quality. I think that because I thawed out the blueberries first, they lost all their juices, so when I cooked them, they didn't emit any of the juice into the muffin. The muffins ended up being super, duper dry and somewhat bland. Sorry for screwing this one up! I was really looking forward to yummy, buttery blueberry muffins and I got disappointment instead.

At least they don't look too awful in the pictures:

I bought that plate specifically for this blog! Haha I wanted interesting backdrops for my pics.

I guess they kind of look delicious from this angle.

But they look really dry from this angle. Even a ton of butter didn't help them.

Along with thawing the blueberries when I shouldn't have, maybe I should've added more blueberries, too. Now I have a third of a bag left and no idea what to do with it. I also wonder if cooking the muffins on a higher temperature for a few minutes also added to the dryness of my muffins. I have a double oven, with a small oven on top and a larger oven on the bottom. I usually bake in the smaller oven, but maybe next time I'll forgo the higher temperature and make them in the bigger oven.

I'd give this recipe a B-, but only for my own mistake.

Jill Can Cook: Garlic Cheddar Scones

I've been really interested in trying to make dinner rolls/biscuits from scratch. We really like having a bread product with dinner (or breakfast) but I don't always buy dinner rolls or Grands biscuits because they can be a little expensive. I really love garlic bread and I have been known to eat an entire loaf on my own (granted, not all during one meal!! I'm bad, but not that bad! Hahah).

So, I wanted a bread product. I was craving garlic. And like usual, I had an ingredient that I had hanging around with no use for: cheese. Surprisingly, it wasn't hard finding a recipe that encompassed all my needs/desires. I used this recipe at All Recipes.

Garlic Cheddar Scones

Ingredients:

• 2 cups self-rising flour 
• 2 tablespoons butter 
• 1 pinch salt 
• 1/2 cup shredded Cheddar cheese 
• 1 clove garlic, minced (I used garlic salt)
• 1 cup milk

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C). Lightly grease a baking sheet.
2. In a large bowl, sift together flour and salt. Rub in butter lightly with finger tips until mixture resembles coarse breadcrumbs. Stir in cheese and garlic. Make a well in the center of the mixture and pour in the milk, reserving 1 teaspoon for a glazing the scones. Gently mix, just until combined.
3. Turn out onto a lightly floured board and knead briefly and lightly. Be careful not to overwork the dough. Press out dough to form a 1 inch thick round. Cut into 8 wedges. Place on prepared tray and brush with reserved milk.
4. Bake in preheated oven for 10 to 20 minutes, or until light brown. Serve hot or let cool on a wire rack.

I don't own self-rising flour. I checked out the prices for it at the grocery store the other day and it seemed pretty outrageously priced. I almost nixed this scone recipe, until I found out that with just a few ingredients that I already had on hand, I could make self-rising flour!! All I needed was:

• 1 cup All Purpose Flour  
• 1 1/2 tsp Baking Powder  
• 1/2 tsp Salt  

Nothing exciting here, but this is my "self-rising flour."

All you have to do is whisk it together and that's it. Super easy and super cheap. Whew, that was close. Also, that recipe is per cup. The scone recipe needed 2 cups of self-rising flour, so I doubled it. Now back to my scones:

I had some cheese slices to use up. I originally bought them to make the kids some grilled cheese sandwiches, but I used up all the bread and still had a few slices of cheese left. These would be great in my scones. But, I somehow had to grate them. This would prove to be pretty impossible.

I tried. I really, really tried, but this did not work at all.

First of all, the cheese was kind of crumbly, so that alone made this difficult. On top of that, I was afraid to grate the skin off of my hand, so I might've given up prematurely. Anyway, this cheese was going to be melted into the scones, so I wasn't too worried about having uniformly grated cheese.

See?! You can't even tell the cheese was mostly just broken apart by hand!

The dough ended up being a little on the sticky side, so I used a hefty amount of flour. I patted it into a roundish shape, then cut it up like a pizza. I ended up with 8 triangular scones, of varying sizes.

I popped them into the oven and when they were done, I was very impressed that the homemade self-rising flour worked!

I might've left them in a little too long, but they still tasted wonderfully!

Joe was also impressed that I didn't have to buy the $4.00 thing of self-rising flour to make these scones. They were a little more work than your average pre-made dough or dinner rolls, but the flavor was definitely worth the extra effort.

I also think this could be one of those recipes that you can make into your own. I made mine with garlic and cheese, but they could easily be made with one or the other or neither or something entirely different. The sky's the limit. 

I'm giving this recipe an A.

P.S. We obviously didn't eat all 8 scones that night, so we saved the extras and reheated them the next day. They tasted great as leftovers as well!

DIY: A Mens Button Down Shirt Into Kids Doctors Coat

My almost 4 year old daughter, Quinn, is really into a cartoon called, "Doc McStuffins." I don't let the kids watch a whole lot of TV, but when I do, this show is in the rotation. It's about a little girl who fixes little toys/stuffed animals like a doctor would fix people. It's really cute.

Last year for Christmas, I got Quinn a fakey toy medical kit with a stethoscope and stuff and she likes pretending that she is Doc McStuffins. What better way to make this pretend play more fun than to make her a little doctors coat?!

I found this mens shirt at the thrift store, for my favorite price of $0.50, and thought it would make a great addition to her fakey items while she pretended to be a doctor!

It was hard to pull her away from playing to take this picture.. Can't you tell? Lol

She's such a flippin' ham. It makes the whole process way more fun!

At this point, Quinn had no idea what we were doing. All she knew was that her shirt had really long sleeves. "Mama, my arms are gone," she kept yelling at me, while waving her arms around. She just could not get over it and would not stop moving.

So, I turned the shirt inside out, took some very rough measurements, and then sent Quinn to go color for the rest of the refashion.

I knew straight away that the pocket would have to go:

Maybe we'll see you later, huge pocket that's in the way.

I'll just set you aside for now.

With the pocket gone, I placed the shirt as neatly as I could on the kitchen counter and started to pin where I'd need to sew it.

I didn't realize the shirt was so huge until I got to this part.

I know, I pinned the wrong way, but I'm still new to sewing and I really wanted to make sure I was going to sew this in a straight line. I don't have any fabric chalk or fancy stuff, so dorky pinning would have to do.

Sewing it and stuff.

Now onto the bottom hem. I took a rough estimate on the length when I still had a model at my disposal, so I cut the bottom off, folded over the hem.

The bottom hem.

Sewing it up!

Now onto the sleeves. I thought I might adjust the arm seams up to Quinn's actual arms, but quickly decided I was too lazy to do that. So, I just kept the arm seams at their original location and adjusted the sleeves to fit on her little arms. All I had to do to the sleeves was cut them down to size, make a little cuff..

... and sew them up. I didn't take a picture of that though. I just want to say how tough it was to sew the tiny little hole! I don't know how people who sew kids clothes do it!! I thought I was going to mess the whole thing up!!

And, folks, that's it!!! All that's left to do is steal Quinn away from her coloring books (which wasn't too hard surprisingly). She was such a doll and wanted to pose for A TON for pictures, so here are about 500 of the best shots:

I told her to put her black boots on, but she had to have her pink cowgirl boots!

She wouldn't pose for a normal picture.

At least her poses were all a bit different.

Who's been letting her watch "Saturday Night Fever?!" Lol

My favorite one, with a thumbs up in it!

She saw the small coat and knew exactly what was going on. She said, "Mama, did you make me that white coat because you love me?!" Haha of course!!!

After the modeling shoot, I thought she'd want to take it off, but she kept it on the rest of the day! She took it off to sleep and then grabbed it this morning to wear it again.

Oh a couple more things:

1. I have a toybox and several buckets and baskets of toys hanging around the house and for the life of me, I couldn't find the fakey medical stuff anywhere!! I'm guessing most of it is under the couch!!
2. I planned to use the pocket I set aside for something on this refashion, but it proved to be too big. I'll save it for some other project, I guess.
3. I really need to super remind myself to buy some pinking shears!! Every time I start a project, I realize I need them but as soon as I'm done my project, I totally forget I need them!
4. I love this coat on Quinn so much that I think I might make another one for Mitchell!!

Jill Can Cook: Brown Sugar Meatloaf

Sometimes, there's no rhyme or reason to what I choose to cook and when. Kind of like last nights dinner. I felt like making meatloaf. We haven't had it in a while. In fact, we've hardly had any ground beef recently. What better use of ground beef than a hearty meatloaf meal! I wouldn't normally veer away from my normal "recipe" for meatloaf, since I already love the way it turns out. My "recipe" is so loose that it's not really a recipe, more like a dump and cook, involving ketchup, eggs, onion soup mix, garlic powder, etc.

But, I've got this blog now. I might as well try something new that you guys might want to know about. So, I found this recipe at American Heritage Cooking that seemed like it would be delicious, but also not so "out there" that I didn't already have all the ingredients at the house. No special trip to the store for lazy me.

 

Brown Sugar Meatloaf

Ingredients

Makes servings USMetricAdjust Recipe (Help)

I opted for Ritz crackers because I had them on hand, but you could use bread crumbs, saltine crackers, unsweetened cereal, mashed up bread. Whatever you think will act like a good binding agent!

 

• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup ketchup
• 2 tbsp. Worcestershire sauce
• 1 1/2 pounds lean ground beef
• 1/2 cup milk
• 2 eggs
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1 small onion, chopped (or 1 1/2 tbsp. onion powder)
• 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1 sleeve crushed Ritz crackers

                    

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Lightly grease a 5x9 inch loaf pan.
2. In a mixing bowl, combine brown sugar, ketchup, and Worcestershire sauce. Set aside.
3. In a large mixing bowl, mix all other ingredients together. Form loaf on pan.
4. Top with brown sugar/ketchup/Worcestershire sauce mixture.
5. Bake in preheated oven for 1 hour or until juices are clear.

Before we get into the pictures portion of this post, I just want to mention that I changed the recipe up here to what I would've done not what I actually did. I'll tell you more about it later, but trust me, you'll agree with the change.

Onto the pictures!!!

This looks extremely gross.

Normally, I'd cook a meatloaf in my special meatloaf pan, but since this recipe boasted a fantastic sauce, I wanted to make sure as much of the surface of the meatloaf could be covered with it. So, I made it on a cookie sheet.

The sauce.

The original blogger made the sauce sound so fantastic that she mixed hers in a pan so she could heat the leftovers up to use as additional sauce. I thought I would do that, but after tasting it, I thought that maybe less would be more.



The loaf all sauced up!

I made this completely on my own, but Joe was the one to take it out of the oven and plate it up. Before he cut into it, I begged him to take a picture of the finished product for you guys. This is what he came up with:

Not what I would've done, but I really like that he encompassed the loaf and the extra sauce. Kudos, Joe.

This is where I complain a little bit. As I mixed the loaf ingredients together, I noticed that it was REALLY juicy. Like, no bueno. Like this whole thing was going to fall apart like my cake. I only had one sleeve of crackers, so I couldn't sop up any of the seemingly extra liquid with more crackers. Into the oven it would go and I would just keep my fingers crossed for the next hour hoping it would still be delicious.

I wasn't there, but when Joe cut into it, he was surprised by how liquidy it was. When we ate it, it was very moist. Almost too moist. The original recipe called for 3/4 cup of milk, but I think the average meatloaf eater would be happier with 1/2 cup of milk, possibly even less. I usually eyeball the milk and I could kick myself for actually following directions!

Yummy, yummy, gimme more!!

I don't know about all 3 of you that read my blog, but I am picky about textures when it comes to my food. The texture of something can really ruin it for me, regardless of the flavor. Case in point: I love, love, love the flavor of cooked onions, but I can't stomach the texture. That's why I tend to dwell  on these things. Sorry for being a weirdo!

Anyway, even though the meatloaf didn't have my preferred texture, it still had a wonderful flavor and I still ate it (I almost went back for seconds!!). I am really glad I went for something new since putting ketchup or a can of tomato soup on top of my regular meatloaf was getting a little boring.

Same piece, different angle.

And the sauce was very delicious, although I'm glad I didn't put any more on top than I did because it could've easily overpowered the whole dish. We ended up serving this alongside baked sweet potatoes, since I'm on a sweet potato kick right now. The sauce really complemented the side dish as well.

A+ for this recipe! As long as the milk is kept to a minimum.

DIY: A "No Sew" Dress Refashion!

No sew refashions are way boring. In trying not to bore you to death, I try to find clothing items that take at least some sewing or a couple of steps of transformation.

But...

I found this very cute dress for $0.50:

I'm working barefoot today.

 You're wondering what I'm going to do to this dress, aren't you? I mean, it's not hideous. It fits pretty well. The length is perfect. So, how am I going to refashion this, you ask. Well, first of all...

I need a closer shot. I don't think you quite understand...

FAKE JEWELS!!!!!!

These fake jewels at the neckline really make this dress look dated and cheap (as far as I'm concerned). The dress is the kind of dress that could easily be dressed up or down, depending on what kind of accessories it's paired with. It's also the perfect blank canvas type of dress that one could wear, styled lots of different ways, and no one would know that it's the same dress.

The only problem: those fake jewels at the neckline.

Well, there's another problem, too:

I'm like a T-rex. My arms just aren't long enough.

I can only wear this dress if someone else zips me in and out of me. Hahah... I'm kidding, that's not much of a problem. The other problem, for real this time:

Massive amounts of pilling.

The material of this dress is kind of sweater-like. It's thick and it has a tendency to pill.

So, those are my 2 issues with this otherwise wearable dress. This refashion is going to fly by!

First, I need to get rid of the offending jewels.

So easy.

And even though I was not a fan of the jewels on this dress, I thought I might like them for some other project...

Gotta love little snack baggies!

... so, I saved them for future use.

That takes care of the jewel portion of the dress, onto the pilling. Once upon a time, I owned a sweater shaver thingy but I broke it a long time ago and never replaced it. Oh well, I'd have to make due with something I had on hand:

A cheapy disposable razor!

This ended up working pretty well, but there were a lot of pilly areas, so it took a little while.

After I was done, I popped the dress into the washer/dryer, just to get rid of whatever little pilly parts might still be stuck on. I was left with this:

Decided to go for a different background for once! Too bad it's blurry though!

I am too lazy to re-do my picture into something better, which really sucks because all the "after" pictures were either blurry (see above) or just really terrible in general (see below)

At least the room is clean.

Anyway, you get the idea. The jewels are gone. The pills are gone. I'm left with a comfortable, nice fitting, pretty versatile dress. I didn't style it up too much because I didn't want to overwhelm the "after" shot like I usually do!

To tell the truth, I almost didn't get the dress because of the off-putting bejeweled neckline until I realized it was a pretty simple fix. So, this post just proves that you don't need a sewing machine or all that much creativity in order to take something from "not something you'd wear" over to "something you'd love to wear!"

Mehhh.. Hardly looks like I did anything in pictures, but it's quite noticeable in person.

Jill Can Cook: Mayonnaise Cake

I saw this cute little recipe box at my local Goodwill a month or two ago. It looks like the kind you sign up for and you're sent a couple of recipes a week until the box is filled up. My mom ordered stuff like this in the 1980's. Anyway, Goodwill was selling it for $5.00. Considering I can (and do) get tons of recipes for free on Pinterest, I thought $5.00 was a bit too much to spend on this.

Yeah, that's the price sticker on the front. And some extra cards that look like they don't belong! Score!

Over the course of the next several weeks, I'd check to see if the box was still there, which it was, and if it was half price, which it wasn't. Well, that is, until last week when I snagged it for $2.25 (half price, plus an additional 10% off! Woo hoo!)

I bought it while I was with my mom and afterwards, as I sipped the delicious coffee my mom made us post-shopping, I leafed through the cards in the box, every so often, showing my mom a good sounding or weird sounding recipe. And then I came to this one:



Hmmm.. This is an odd one...

I showed it to my mom, who quickly snatched it out of my hand.

 "Oh wow! I used to have this recipe. I remember making it and loving it," she exclaimed. Then she started digging through her cupboards, searching out all the ingredients to make it. Which she proceeded to do. When it was done, I had a sliver and really liked it! I actually couldn't wait to make it also!

Mayonnaise Cake

Ingredients:

I haven't been to Market Basket in a couple of weeks as you can tell!

• 2 cups ap flour
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 4 tsp unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/8 tsp salt
• 1 cup mayonnaise
• 1 cup boiling water
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Directions:

• Preheat oven 325 degrees F. Grease and flour a 9X( baking pan
• Sift the flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda and salt into large bowl
• Add mayonnaise to flour mixture and mix well. Add boiling water and vanilla extract and mix well.
• Pour into prepared baking pan and bake for 25-30 minutes.
• Finish with frosting or pawdered sugar or just keep plain! Enjoy!

 

Dry ingredients

Getting ready to add the Cains, which is my favorite Mayo!

 

After the Mayo was added. This mixture smelled a little funky, but I was kind of into it.

The extremely soupy batter getting ready to go in the oven.

This is what will house my cake when I'm done.

I'm taking a break from the recipe/baking so I can send a special shout-out to Joe's grandmother for hooking me up with some fantastic baking accessories over the last couple of Christmases. I got this from her a year ago.

It's a really cool cake displayer/chips and salsa  holder/trifle type thing. I love that it has a few different functions. It's going to get a lot of use.. except...

Except, I am now afraid to make cakes because this happened when I took the cake out of the oven:

Not cool, Mayo Cake!!

And the rest of the cake is right here:

Dang... I really suck at this!

Well, that was a complete bust!! The cake was WAY too delicate. It just would not stay together. Once it was out of the pan, it just flattened and whole sections fell off. I went through every scenario in which I could've screwed up. The biggies were:

• Wrong type of pan
• Not enough grease/flour in pan
• Over cooked
• Under cooked
• Released from pan too soon
• Messed up one or more ingredients
• Wrong type of Mayo
• Should've cooled water before adding
• Aliens came and switched my perfect cake out for this awful cake due to jealousy of my awesome baking skills

After much researching on Pinterest, scouring all the other Mayonnaise Cake recipes (like 5 recipes. I got bored after a few minutes), I think I might've found out what my problem is, which is mostly just a guess considering there were a lot of differences in the recipes I found.

1.  4 out of the 5 recipes did not use boiling water. They either used room temp or hot. Boiling = bad.
2. Most of the recipes I found used 1/4- 1/2 cocoa powder. That's leaps and bounds more than what I used. I don't think this affected the issue of my cake being too crumbly, but it would definitely affect the flavor.
3. A lot of the other recipes called for a couple of eggs, too. Maybe the cake would hold up better with more eggs?

I'm in no rush to put my guesses as to how to fix this to use. We don't eat cake very often. Someday I will make it again, though, and I'll let you guys know if I screw it up again.

Oh, and by the way, once I "frosted" the cake, it looked a whole lot better. I put the word frost in quotes because the cake was completely falling apart and could not be frosted, so I heated up my frosting until it was liquidy enough to drizzle on the top.

It doesn't look too bad from this angle.

But there's a huge crack on this side.

And this whole area is just barely hanging on!

It looks the best when the cover is on.

Ohhh... I forgot to mention, when my mom made hers, it came out more stable than mine. It wasn't extremely chocolatey and from what I remember, hers was really soft and thin, too, although, it wasn't a dense cake. I chalk this up to the fact that maybe my stove heated my water hotter than hers, or maybe hers seemed less crumbly because she didn't sift her flour first. Not sure. But I really do think it's something wrong with the recipe and not Aliens, like I originally thought.