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Whole Wheat Strawberry Pancakes and the Spiciest Fried Rice in History

On Saturday, Santana actually let us sleep in a little bit (after she went outside and got breakfast by 7, of course!), so instead of having breakfast, we had a mid-morning brunch-type meal that ultimately messed up our entire eating schedule for the day and resulted in a super-late dinner!

Another healthy thing to mention first: Emily at the health nut has a great Green Tote giveaway going on through Friday!  I like to think healthy and green when I can, even though our lifestyle might be a bit indulgent at times…great healthy blogs give me lots of ideas about how to incorporate more and more healthiness without even thinking about it!

We had gotten a gorgeous package of organic strawberries (not local, obviously, but still delish) through our CSA box on Thursday, so I chopped those up to make into pancakes! I am not always a huge fan of pancakes, because they are sometimes way too fluffy for me. I lean towards the super-thin crepes over the pumped-up fluffy pancakes. Matt loves pancakes though, and if I make them at home I can control the texture and usually enjoy them a lot.

I started with a recipe from Alton Brown’s I’m Just Here For More Food, which is the cookbook that follows I’m Just Here for the Food: Food + Heat = Cooking. The second book focuses on baked goods and for his pancakes he uses “The Muffin Method”. I love these books for the same reason I love watching Good Eats and anything Alton Brown really…he actually explains the science behind what’s going on with the food. Gives you a formula, a method for doing something and a few recipes that follow that formula.  Since you know the formula, you can change the recipe to suit your own desires! Sometimes it’s a little on the corny side and makes you want to roll your eyes, but at the end of the episode/page/rambling you understand why the meat turns brown, why the batter rises when you cook it, why you don’t want to use too much flour when you’re breading chicken. Plus, in I’m Just Here for the Food there are these awesome diagrams of a cow and a pig, outlining where all the cuts of meat come from…this makes me happier than I can describe. I use his books less often for the recipes, and more often for the techniques, tips, and general ability to understand what’s going on when I cook. I absolutely recommend them for anyone who wants to cook on a regular basis without recipes—after enough AB, you can do a lot of basic things without even thinking about it, because you know the science! Alton Brown is my geeky food crush…let’s just take a minute to come to terms with that.

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Ok, enough of that…here’s the recipe, with pictures of my oddly shaped pancakes along the way.

Alton Brown had 2 recipes: Buttermilk and Whole Wheat Pancakes.  I added the strawberries because we had them, and I went with the whole wheat because we had whole wheat flour in the cupboard and it’s just tasty!

What you need:

1. Whole Wheat Flour (2 cups)
2. Baking Powder (1 tsp)
3. Baking Soda (1/2 tsp)
4. Salt (1tsp)
5. Sugar (3 Tb)
6. Eggs (2 large)
7. Buttermilk (2 cups at room temperature) **I didn’t have buttermilk so I used regular milk with a couple tablespoons of lemon juice added while it came to room temp**
8. Unsalted butter (4 Tb, melted and slightly cooled)
9. STRAWBERRIES! (I used a whole small container)

The Muffin Method, as described in the book, is pretty basic and easy.  The dry stuff (flour through sugar) get mixed together quickly, then the wet stuff gets mixed together separately (eggs through butter).  The wet goes into the dry and they get stirred together just until combined, not until smooth.  For The Muffin Method to work, you cannot overmix! Super important…Alton Brown puts it in big bold letters several times: DO NOT OVERMIX!  The Muffin Method creates a cross section that looks like, well…a muffin: different sized air pockets, creating an uneven and course, crumbly texture.  This is distinguished from a cake mixture (or “cake masquerading as a muffin—better known as a cupcake”), where air is creamed into the batter and creates even air pockets throughout and a more tender texture. Very different! Alton Brown says “Yes, Virginia, pancakes are muffins—flat, griddle-cooked muffins.”

Heat your pan or griddle to 350 degrees while you put everything together with The Muffin Method and let the batter rest for 5 minutes.  I added the strawberries after the batter set.  You can tell if the pan is hot enough if a sprinkle of water dances across the surface! A little bit of butter or a spray of cooking spray preps the pan and then you’re ready to ladle the pancakes out!

I think because of the strawberries, my pancakes refused to form a circle! So frustrating! So we had oddly-shaped breakfast. I’m really fine with that. If you compare the two pictures of the batter in the pan, you can see how much the batter puffs up while the first side cooks…that’s the muffin method at work!

When I make pancakes, the first one is always a dud that we use to test the flavor…does it need more sweet?  Maybe some cinnamon? What kind of toppings should we get ready for them? And we pick at this first one as we cook the rest.  You can tell the pancakes are ready to flip when bubbles break on the surface and you can see the edges drying out a bit.  Use a spatula to peek under and if the pancake is brown enough, flip as carefully as possible!  I usually make small pancakes so there is less risk of pancakes breaking in half during this flipping process. I tend to make a mess either way, so I went with huge pancakes this time.

We topped them with powdered sugar and froze a few extras to heat up in the toaster oven for breakfast later this week!

 

(these are our tiny plates, not our full-sized dinner plates…they weren’t THAT huge!)

Because we had a really late breakfast/early lunch, we were feeling snacky in the middle of the afternoon and splurged on some nachos, leaving us full until pretty late in the evening.  I usually don’t like to eat a late dinner because I get grumpier and grumpier as I get tired and hungry, so cooking is not a great option as the evening wears on. 

Our super-late dinner was a Thai Fried Rice recipe I found online. I’m not going to link to it because it was SUPER spicy. As I tweak it, I’ll try to post a better fried rice variation. Normally I just wing it with a blend of veggies, an egg, a little hoisin, chicken broth, and soy. Usually we have some leftover meat from earlier in the week that I throw in, or we make pot stickers for the side. I do the same variation with noodles every once in a while to make a lo mein type dish that is really really satisfying.

I was craving Thai Fried Rice, though. Our weekly Thai Tuesday location has been out of commission for quite a while because they’re remodeling the entire thing. This has led to lots of yummy International Tuesday adventures, but I like the reliability of our regular place. So I found this recipe and just went with it…I had less rice than the recipe called for, but a lot more veggies, so I figured it would even out.

I don’t have any pictures of this, because I was completely blown away by the spicy level. On a 1 to 5 star scale, this was at least a 7. As I was dishing it up, I got a little sauce on my finger and licked it off…I needed a glass of water just to cool down from that little bit! I managed to eat almost a whole bowl, and Matt liked it quite a bit. I tried it as leftovers with lunch today and put it over a green salad with a light ranch dressing…it helped a bit, but still SO spicy. My standard throw-everything-in-the-wok-without-a-recipe method is still my favorite, but as I play with Thai recipes, maybe another one will come out on top and I’ll provide some details if that ever happens!

I am so very very fruity today…

A yummy organic apple pre-lunch and a Mango Sunrise Stretch Island fruit leather waiting on my desk for 2pm! Delicious Monday snacking!!

In other news, Matt and I added some cardio to our weekend racquetball, and my legs are killing me! Apparently I found some muscles in there that I hadn’t been using very much. 

In other yummy news, Missy at Missy Maintains is having a delicious MixMyGranola giveaway to celebrate her new domain name! Check it out!

And, so no one confuses me for someone who is too healthy, I am considering this meal created by my friend Daniel, which includes bacon, pasta, cheese, and salmon cakes. Mmmm.

Scallops & Asparagus from the market, Flagship cheese from Beecher’s (last Sunday’s Dinner)

After Sunday morning racquetball, we wandered in the strangely warm, snowing afternoon through Pike Place Market and designed a dinner for the night.  This is one of the most relaxing and rewarding kinds of afternoons for me. 

First, a piroshky from Piroshky, Piroshky…DELICIOUS.  I had potato, onion, cheese.  Matt had beef and cheese I think.  They were both delish, but the potato is still our favorite.  It is really dangerous having this right down the street from the gym…we’ll have to start trying other walking lunches from the market one of these days.

We decided we wanted to try cooking scallops, since all we had done before was bay scallops in fried rice.  We are relatively new fans of scallops, so I did some internet searching for a basic recipe.  I found this one, which I used as inspiration. Mushrooms are not on either of our favorites lists, so we decided to go with the basic scallop method and make the rest more suitable for us.  I have made a delicious side of peas in the past, with diced onions and a bit of cream, so we planned for that, but then we saw some gorgeous, thin-stalked asparagus from a market vendor.  It had been a while since either of us had asparagus, so we went for it.  We wandered over to one of the fish vendors and picked up 4 average-sized sea scallops for just over $6 and we also got some Flagship cheese from Beecher’s Handmade Cheese on our way to the car.

This really could only end well.

Matt made a side, using the Beecher’s and some grits we had on hand, along with a little thyme.

I had a handful of shallots left from our last CSA box, so I sliced them thinly in place of onions, knowing they would be super sweet and mild cooked down. They cooked down in a bit of olive oil until they were nice and soft, but not caramelized.  I spread them along the pan and placed my washed, trimmed asparagus tips on top (I didn’t want them to be directly in the bottom of the pan). I added water to the pan just to cover the bottom and covered the pan…this kept the steam in to cook the asparagus, but because they were on top of the layer of shallots, they didn’t get overcooked.  This stayed on low heat while I cooked the scallops. 

I used the recipe linked above, using minced garlic that I had on hand and dried thyme.  They didn’t turn out quite as pretty as his, but the apartment smelled AMAZING while they basted with the butter, garlic and thyme. 

As the scallops were finishing, I added a tablespoon or so of cream to the asparagus and shallots, removing the cover and letting it cook down. 

The grits and the sauce on the vegetables worked together really nicely with their complementary creaminess. The sweet, smooth scallops and the little bite of the garlic in their sauce complemented the sides really well.  Since there was an abundance of shallots in relation to the number of asparagus in the pan, for lunch on Monday I had a side salad with the leftover grits and creamy onions on top.  Sitting in their little Pyrex bowl all day, waiting for lunch, the cream sauce and the cheese grits came together into this amazingly satisfying, creamy indulgent accompaniment to my healthy salad!

If you happen to be someone looking for ways to cook asparagus tips, you could do this the same way, leave out the shallots or onions if you want and just sauté the fresh asparagus for just a few seconds, add a bit of broth or water to steam by covering and cooking for a few minutes, then adding a splash of cream to cook down and coat them, letting them cook until they are as soft as you want them! You could also do this without the cream and just let the broth cook down.  A touch of garlic or other herbs/spices would bump up the flavor a bit if you wanted! 

Pre-workout snack

I make it through my work day with snacks. Usually there is a healthy lunch somewhere in there, but the morning and afternoon drag drag drag drag unless I have snacks to keep me going! I try really hard to keep completely horrible treats out of my desk, otherwise they’d disappear way too quickly and I would not feel so OK about my many mini-munchings during the day.

Here is today’s:

Odwalla is my favorite bar so far (I haven’t tried many), and this Banana Nut one was DELICIOUS!

When life gives you a free box of cake mix…

QFC sent us a coupon for a free box of cake mix! Apparently this is one of our frequently-purchased products? I think we have maybe bought 1 box of cake mix since Matt moved to Seattle almost 2 years ago.
Whatever their reasoning, we got a free box of Devil’s Food Reduced Sugar cake mix! This weekend I decided to finally pull it out and turn it into treats for a game night at a friend’s place. I am not a huge baker and get really frustrated when baked goods don’t turn out correctly (I can fix a stir fry or the seasoning on a roast if something is off…if a cake goes bad, I just throw up my hands), so random urges for sweets and free cake mixes are the rare causes of Mallory Baking Time.

I prefer cupcakes for non-birthday needs…the slicing and serving of a cake is a headache sometimes, and a cupcake can just pick up and go, without all the baggage of plate, fork, blah blah blah that a regular slice of cake brings along.

Cupcakes it is!

I made 12 regular-sized cupcakes in my silicone cupcake pan (have I used this before?? I can’t really remember…)

I put the rest of the batter into two mini-cupcake tins. One regular metal and one silicone. I noticed that both were by the same company even though I got them at completely different times, places, and they are clearly different materials and slightly different sizes! Interesting!

I figured I’d experiment and see exactly how the silicone bakeware affected my cupcakes. I have used the silicone stuff several times before, but more for non-cake type things (quiche, cheesecake, frozen treats, etc.).

(Also, I’d like to throw in a mini-review for Crisco Spray with Flour…this is AMAZING! My cupcakes slid right out of both the silicone and the regular pan with no paper cupcake liners!!)

Not sure if it was my unevenly heated oven or just the silicone, but the large cupcakes had a very noticeable hump on one side…these would be perfect for decorating as monsters or something for a kid’s birthday party!

 

The two trays of mini-cupcakes went in together and while the silicone tray created similarly-humped miniatures, the regular tray was gorgeous and adorably rounded! I am eager to figure out what makes the difference between the two materials. I bet Alton Brown would have some input!

Look how perfectly rounded the ones in the metal pan are!!! These two trays cooked in the oven at the exact same time!

The humped and the non-humped both tasted delicious and I covered them with a cream cheese frosting that was deliciously lemony (and mostly covered the freakish look of the silicone-baked cupcakes).

 

 

We had originally bought this can of Rainbow Chip frosting which has been my favorite since I was tiny…I love the candies inside the frosting, and will tell you in great detail how this is NOT the same as Funfetti frosting! But we had cream cheese and I wanted to put my tiny hand mixer to the test (I may have killed the $4 Goodwill mixer, but the frosting was worth it). This was my first time making cream cheese frosting (from this Cooking Light recipe), but Matt loved it!

 

I have plans to turn this into a cherry cream cheese frosting in the future, but it will have to wait until our next free cake mix!       

In cupcake-related news, one of my favorite cakey treats mixes cake and ice cream.  Warm brownie sundaes, baked alaska, cake and ice cream…I’m guessing this stems from lots of birthday parties as a kid?  I’ve also been test-driving some lactose free milk because of a hunch that I’m developing a slight lactose intolerance (mostly when I chug giant glasses of milk or have a big bowl of cereal, ice cream or other dairy deliciousness).  So how exciting when I found Turtle Mountain’s soy and coconut milk-based goodies at the blog, Heather Eats Almond Butter. Check it out for a coconut milk product giveaway and other healthy food fun!