Hello November!

November spells warmth to me. We're getting close to Christmas and New Year's but not quite there yet. The air is chillier, and as summer approaches, the afternoons are getting heavy downpours just before it stops raining all together. You see, in Costa Rica we have two seasons, rainy season and dry season, that's it. We're approaching the dry season right now, but right before it gets here there are usually heavy rains preceding it. That's where we're at, heavy rains.

Seeing as it is still raining and doesn't look like it's going to stop soon, my mind immediately goes to comfort food. One of my favorite childhood memories was when my mother used to make Pan de Miel or Honey Bread, literally translated. Recollections of the smells surrounding the kitchen, cutting the bread while it's still warm because you can't wait to try it and the sweet taste of this dense cake are what prompted me to make this tasty reminiscence of my childhood.

Pan de Miel is more like a very dense cake than an actual bread. At least that's what I think since there is no yeast in this recipe, there's also no kneading involved so I say it's a cake, and while it is called Honey Bread it is not too sweet. As the days go by, this loaf of cake gets even better!

I pried the recipe from my mother since I have been dying to make it only to find that she has decided to change some things. What?? Are you sure about this?

I guess I take after my mother, always trying to improve recipes or just adding stuff until they come out like I want!

But how could she change this recipe? Will it taste so utterly different from what I remember that I won't like it? What if she has ruined it for me all together, Oh no!

I had to try anyways, I needed to see if there was still any part of my childhood left in that bread! Um, I mean cake, whatever, I'll call it bread.
You see she's added icing now, I wonder what that will taste like...

Did my mother's new and "improved" (still to be decided) recipe for Pan de Miel deliver???

Yes it did!!!!

It was all that I remembered. Needless to say I ate half a loaf while it was still warm. I blame you mother! Good thing they were mini loaves.

And the icing? Did that work? It did, but I must say I prefer the original recipe, without icing.

To make these honey breads you will need:

1 kg. flour
1 stick butter at room temperature
1 cup honey
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 tablespoon cocoa
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon cloves
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1 cup warm water
1 teaspoon baking soda

The icing is just confectioner's sugar and water.  I don't have the exact measurements because my mom likes to do things as she goes, but you just add water to the sugar until you get a desired consistency. 

With an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add honey and water and mix well. Add the dry ingredients until incorporated.

Grease two loaf pans and pour the batter until a little over half full.

Bake at 325 degrees F for 50 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. Let cool on a wire rack, remove from pan and pour the icing on top, just like the picture.

Enjoy!

Tasty Recipe Review: Pumpkin Cupcakes

Pumpkin is back and it's scary hehe! This week I'm reviewing a recipe by My Kitchen Addiction Pumpkin Cupcakes with Cinnamon Brown Sugar Buttercream. That sounded wonderful to me, I just needed to try them. Unfortunately I did not have a chance to make the Cinnamon Brown Sugar Buttercream but it sounds absolutely delightful I will have to try it one day, that's for sure!

The cupcakes were incredibly easy to make. I did add a few things to the recipe, more pumpkin, a bit more spices, honey and some orange zest, because I think orange zest goes great with pumpkin. And I was right!

These cupcakes were not only easy to make but they were delicious! I loved how all the flavors came together and created a wonderfully complete and balanced taste. The orange zest really gave this recipe a nice twist and brought out the pumpkin at the end. I truly enjoyed these cupcakes and found them very light with great texture.


To make these delicious cupcakes you will need:

• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup dark brown sugar, packed
• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
• 4 eggs
• 1/2 cup milk
• 3/4 cup pumpkin puree
• 1 stick unsalted butter, softened

(For my variation add 1 tablespoon honey, 1 1/4 cup pumpkin puree, 1/4 teaspoon cloves, 1/4 teaspoon ginger and orange zest to taste.) 

Combine all of the ingredients (yes, I said all of the ingredients) in the bowl of your stand mixer (or just a large mixing bowl if you are brave and have a hand mixer). Beat on medium speed for 20 minutes (that’s why I said you must be brave… or at least energetic). (I found that there is no need to beat the mixture for this long)

While the mixer is doing all of the work, preheat the oven to 350°F, line two standard muffin pans with cupcake papers (for 24 cupcakes). 

Once the batter is smooth, fill each of the cupcake liners about 2/3 full with batter.  Bake the cupcakes for about 20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.  Cool the cupcakes in the pans for a few minutes, and then transfer to wire racks to cool completely.
Cinnamon Brown Sugar Buttercream

• 1 stick unsalted butter, softened
• 1/4 cup shortening
• 1/3 cup dark brown sugar, packed
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 3 cups powdered sugar (varies based on temperature/humidity)
• 3 tablespoons half and half (varies based on temperature/humidity)

In a large mixer bowl, combine the butter and shortening. Whip together with the whisk attachment until light and fluffy.  Add the brown sugar and cinnamon and whisk until well combined.
Gradually add the powdered sugar, 1/2 cup at a time. Alternately add the half and half, whipping the icing on medium-high speed after each addition, until the desired consistency is reached.



Till next time, I hope you enjoyed this review and remember, if you have a Tasty Recipe that you would like to share, or if there's a recipe that you have been wanting to try and just haven't been able to, let me know about it. I'll give you a Tasty Review!

Tasty Treats!

I've been having the hardest time posting this week. My schedule has been so incredibly busy that I rarely get a chance to sleep! Well, that's actually pretty normal, but I'll tell you all about that in another post.
 I really wanted to have my Halloween Cookies post done before Halloween! Ugh!
Anyways... Happy Halloween everyone! This year I wanted to make Halloween cookies, I have seen some amazing cookies this year. One of my favorites and the one I chose to replicate (read steal) are these spiderweb cookies from this great blog Bake at 350. These cookies are adorable! I chose orange and green for my cookies, they didn't come out quite as perfect but everyone loved them! Which is always good. You can find a step by step tutorial for these cute cookies at the Bake at 350 blog by clicking here.

I also wanted to make some ghost cookies for the office and because I thought they would be really cute.

Take a look

Spooky!

I  made some white ghosts to keep with the tradition

The white ghost cookies were made with MMF and royal icing.

To make these cookies you will need:

Sugar cookie recipe

Marshmallow Fondant MMF

Royal Icing

Enjoy!

Tasty Recipe Review: Parisian Toffee Crisps

Putting the pumpkin aside for now (I'm coming back to it, don't worry!) this week's Tasty Recipe Review comes to us from Elinor Klivans's book 125 Cookies to Bake, Nibble and Savor. I bought this book like a million years ago and have really only tried very few of her recipes, not sure why because they were very good. She has little anecdotes with all of her recipes which always make for interesting reading. This recipe's introduction in her book is this one:


"Most people who dine at the Ambassade d' Avergne in Paris try the aligot, an elastic puree of cheese, potatoes and garlic which the waiters lift several feet into the air as they serve it. But I go to this family restaurant so I can have these toffee crisps that are served with the house-made ice cream. They are dark cookies with the crunch of butter toffe candy and the intense taste of caramelized brown sugar and butter."

After reading this I knew  I just HAD to try them!

One of the first things I noticed is how simple the recipe is. It's just 5 ingredients and go! No whisking or folding or incorporating. There is some sifting, but that's pretty standard. I love the simplicity.

First of all I have to say WOW. I did not expect these cookies to be so good. They are crisp and buttery and sweet, but not too sweet.They're just as she described!

Recipe follows:

Parisian Toffee Crisps

Makes 26 cookies

1 cup plus 2 tablespoons unbleached all purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks) soft butter
2/3 cup packed dark brown sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla

Position 2 oven racks in the middle and upper third of the oven. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line 2 baking shhets with nonstick liners or parchment paper. (I just greased mine)

Sift the flour and salt together and set aside.

Put the butter and dark brown sugar in the large bowl of an electric mixer and beat on low speed for about 1 minute, until the mixture is smooth and blended. Mix in the vanilla. Add the flour mixture, mixing just until it is incorporated (Whoops there's incorporated! ) and a smooth dough forms. Stop the mixer and scrape the sides of the bowl during this mixing. (She's so thorough!) Form each cookie by rolling 1 tablespoon of dough between the palms of your hands into a 1-inch ball and flattening the ball into a 1 3/4 inch circle. Place the cookies 2 inches apart on the baking sheets.

Bake about 12 minutes, until the edges and bottoms darken slightly and the cookies flatten. Reverse the baking sheets after 7 minutes, front to back and top to bottom, to ensure that the cookies bake evenly. Cool them on the baking sheets for 5 minutes, then transfer them to wire racks to cool completely. The cookies become crisp as they cool.

How easy is that? It took no time at all to make these cookies and they were great! The dough was a bit sticky but easy to work with. They cooked in exactly 12 minutes and smelled delightful. The texture is crisp and buttery, the taste,well, actually there is no better way to describe them than how she does! This is definitely a Tasty Recipe in my book!

Till next time, I hope you enjoyed this review and remember, if you have a Tasty Recipe that you would like to share, or if there's a recipe that you have been wanting to try and just haven't been able to, let me know about it. I'll give you a Tasty Review.

Oh Pumpkin!

Pumpkin again! That's right, I'm all into pumpkin right now and seeing as how my last two attempts at making something "blogable" have failed, here's a pumpkin cake recipe for you to enjoy.

As I mentioned in my previous post, pumpkin hasn't really been my thing all these years, but after loving that pumpkin cheesecake I'm obsessed with making pumpkin desserts and I thought, why not try a pumpkin cake, see how that comes out?

You will need:

2 cups sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
4 large eggs
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups pumpkin puree

Combine sugar, vegetable oil and eggs in a large mixing bowl; mix well. Sift dry ingredients in a separate bowl; stir into oil mixture, beating well. Stir in pumpkin puree.

Pour batter into greased and floured bundt pan. Bake at 350 degrees F for 35 to 40 minutes.

Now this recipe was supposed to be this Sunday's review but due to the lack of material, I had to post today. I have to say though that I didn't love this cake. I would have added shredded pumpkin as if it were a carrot cake and more spices, maybe some pecans to give it a nice crunchy texture. It's a pretty good cake, but I didn't find any wow factor in it. I dusted it with confectioner's sugar and it improved, then I tried it with the cinnamon whipped cream I had left over from the pumpkin cheesecake and it was much better!

Hope you enjoy it!

 

Tasty Recipe Review: Pumpkin Cheesecake

Pumpkin. So widely used at this time of year it's like a cliche. I have never been that into pumpkin, but this year I really wanted to try it out and hopefully with something different, so instead of the regular Pumpkin Pie, I decided to go for a Pumpkin Cheesecake.

This week's review is a little odd. I'm not sure if I can call it a recipe review since it is a combination of recipes with my own changes, so I guess I'm reviewing myself!

To make this cheesecake you will need:

1 Cherry Cheesecake recipe (without the cherries of course)

Prepare as you would the Cherry Cheesecake adding the following:

For the crust add:

1/2 tablespoon brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
pinch of nutmeg

To the filling add:

1 cup canned pumpkin puree
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ginger
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon cloves

 I normally top off my cheesecakes with whipped cream. For this one, I decided to add cinnamon to the whipped cream and it was the perfect compliment.

Let me just say I loved this cheesecake. It was easy to make, the flavors were subtle yet there, the cinnamon whipped cream went beautifully with everything else. It's like cheesecake with a spice kick. Also, I didn't have any at the time but I feel that orange rind would go wonderfully with this dish. I found it delightful and will definitely be making this and hopefully more pumpkin recipes over and over again!

Till next time, I hope you enjoyed this review and remember if you have a Tasty Recipe that you would like to share, or if there's a recipe that you have been wanting to try and just haven't been able to, let me know about it. I'll give you a Tasty Review.

Single Serving Pies

I have had this recipe for years. I'm not sure where I got it from unfortunately, but it has always been a hit. I was in the mood for something kind of cute and instead of making a whole pie, I decided to make miniature personal apple pies.

I have to say, I wasn't sure if I wanted to post this today or if I wanted to use it for my recipe review tomorrow. But, I already had my recipe review, well, reviewed so I decided to show you these cute pies!

Recipe

Ingredients:

Crust:
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup butter or margarine
6-7 tablespoons of cold water

Filling:

6-8 apples of your choice, no preference here
1 tablespoon lemon juice (optional )
2 tablespoons flour
3/4 - 1 cup sugar ( I like my pies on the sweet side so I use the full cup! )
1/2 - 1 teaspoon cinammon
pinch of nutmeg

Directions:
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.
Spray muffin tins with non stick cooking spray
For the crust, I like using the food processor, it makes it so much easier!

Mix flour salt and butter in your food processor until the butter is the size of peas. Add the water one tablespoon at a time using the pulse button until you get a uniformed dough.
On a lightly floured surface roll the dough to about 1/8 in. thick. Or you can just roll it out to any thickness you like.

Using a round cutter, cut out the bases of your mini pies.

 

Place them in the prepared muffin tins.

For the filling, peel and cut your apples into small sized chunks. Combine with lemon, sugar, cinammon, flour and nutmeg. Toss to coat.

Like so

Fill the muffin cups to the top

Roll out the remaining dough and using a smaller cutter make the tops of the pies.

Cover the pies and pinch the edges

Using a toothpick, poke holes into the tops of your pies to let the steam out

At this point you can use an egg wash on the tops of your pies if you like and even sprinkle some sugar so it looks pretty. Personally I'm lazy and didnt' feel like wasting an egg, so I didn't do it.

 Bake for approximately 45 minutes until the crust is golden brown.

As you can see, some of my filling did ooze out and spill over so be sure to pinch those edges well.

Now you have single serving apple pies!

Enjoy!!