SMS - Eep! And Strawberry Shortcake Crumb Muffin Recipe

I'm glad that SMS is not very demanding and only requires you to, at a minimum, participate once a month. Unfortunately, this will be my first time not participating for two weeks straight! I know, I'm terrible! I'll be up and running again soon, I promise. I haven't forgotten about you SMS, life is just getting in the way right now! For now, I leave you with a recipe I promised you a long time ago, that a reader just reminded me I never posted (Thanks, Linda!)

Way back when I was entering my muffin recipe into the Mimi's Cafe contest, I promised that I'd post the recipe I came up with in the future. Well, here it is - sorry it took so long, it completely escaped my mind!

Strawberry Shortcake Crumb Muffins

Ingredients:
1 3/4 C all purpose flour
1/4 C cornstarch
1/2 C sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 C buttermilk
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/4 C butter, melted
10 strawberries, washed, dried & sliced

3/4 stick unsalted butter, melted
1/4 C packed light brown sugar
1/4 C granulated white sugar
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1 C + 1 tblspn flour (+extra if needed)

Muffins:
1. Grease & flour a standard muffin/cupcake pan. Preheat the oven to 425F.
2. Whisk together flour, cornstarch, sugar, baking powder & salt, & set aside. In another small bowl combine the melted butter, buttermilk, vanilla & beaten egg. Stir in to the flour mixture. Stir just to incorporate, do not overmix - it will be lumpy.
3. Pour into the muffin pan, filling each cup about 2/3 full. Gently insert the strawberry slices into the batter so that they are vertical (they will stand up and down in the batter).
Sprinkle with crumb topping.
4. Bake 15 - 18 minutes, or until the crumb topping is browned, and a toothpick inserted into the muffin comes out clean with only moist crumbs.

Crumb:
1. Whisk together the butter, sugars, cinnamon and salt until smooth.
2. Stir in the flour with a whisk, then stir with a butter knife to create the crumbly texture. Add more flour as needed to create the correct crumb size.
3. Sprinkle on to muffin tops - crumb topping with dry up and crisp in the oven.

Oops!

I'm sorry I missed a week of SMS!! This weekend was BUSY - an anniversary dinner, a baby shower and a bridal shower, WHEW! But I will be back on track soon. :)

Sweet Melissa Sundays: Fallen Chocolate-Peanut Butter Souffle Cake

This week, the sweet Sarah of Blue Ridge Baker chose our recipe: Fallen Chocolate Souffle Cake from the Sweet Melissa Baking Book. I was pretty excited to make this one, as I'd never done any sort of souffle anything before. Half way through making it, I realized how crazy it is that this cake doesn't need any flour at all! Ahh, the power of egg whites.

Overall, this was very easy to put together. It went very quickly and was rather painless. I halved the recipe and baked up the batter in 2 mini-bundts + 2 mini springform pans. I made only slight variations to change this Chocolate Fallen Souffle Cake into a Chocolate-PEANUT BUTTER Fallen Souffle Cake:

Adaptations:
I Halved the recipe and made some changes:
5 ounces ghirardelli semi-sweet chocolate
+ Approx 1 - 1.5 ounces Reese's Peanut Butter Chips
*Omitted Orange Zest
*Reduce the amount of Grand Marnier by a smidge. (Used about 1 teaspoon)





The result was quite nice. The peanut butter flavor was a nice addition. The cake came out almost like a rich, chocolate sponge brownie... if that makes any sense. It has the rich chocolately moist-ness of a brownie, but was light like sponge cake. Yum! Can't wait to try this with ice cream later. :) Be sure to see how the other SMS bakers' Souffle Cakes baked up!!! And see Sarah's wonderful blog for the recipe. Cheers! And happy Labor Day!!

Key Lime Meltaways

Sorry I missed last week's Sweet Melissa Sundays! I am quite the busy girl right now. First, I wanted to show you all the new website we have for the aprons, Woo! Check it out here! Right now, the site up is just a temporary one until we really figure out what we want to do there, but I just thought I would share it with you. What do you think??

Last week, I had a few moments to kill. The week's homework was done already, so I thought I would whip up a batch of cookie's I've had bookmarked for about 989 years. We had some key limes sitting around on the counter, so I figured I'd put em to good use in this Martha Stewart recipe (which ALL user comments raved about, by the way...always a good indicator for me). I made some slight adaptations because I wanted to use Key Limes instead of regular ol' lime, and I really them wanted to pack a limey punch.

These came out really really good. We tried one about a half hour after they came out of the oven, and they were totally disgusting. Totally. I think the combo of sweet, lime, and WARM but a Baddd, Badd combo. It was too tart, and honestly was just really weird. I feared I'd have to toss the whole batch. But a second taste test the next day fixed all that - it seems they just needed some time to relax before they'd become yummy. These are perfectly sweet, limey, and crumbly. I can't imagine any lime lover not enjoying these. here is the original, and below is my adapted version.

Key Lime Meltaways, adapted from Martha Stewart's Lime Meltaways

Ingredients:
1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
1/3 cup confectioners' sugar + Extra for rolling cookies in
Grated zest of 4 Key Limes
3 - 4 tablespoons freshly squeezed key lime juice
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
1 3/4 cups plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1/4 teaspoon Sea salt


Yummm, flecks of key lime zest

Directions:
In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream butter and 1/3 cup of the powdered sugar until fluffy. Add the key lime zest, juice, and vanilla; beat until fluffy. In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, cornstarch, and salt. Add this to the butter mixture, and beat on low until combined. Between two pieces of parchment paper, roll dough into two 1 to 1 1/4-inch-diameter logs. Chill at least 1 hour. (I chilled mine for a few days...I told you I've been busy! The dough was just fine)
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line two baking sheets with parchment or silicone baking mat. Fill a small to medium sized zippy bag about half way with powdered sugar. Remove parchment from logs; slice dough into 1/8-inch-thick rounds (I find it easy to slice the dough with thread - just wrap it around the log, tie a knot, and pull tight to cut a slice). Place the cut rounds on baking sheets, spaced 1 inch apart (AND DON'T MAKE THE MISTAKE I DID WITH THE FIRST TWO COOKIES... for some reason, my sleepy brain tossed them in sugar BEFORE baking... they actually came out pretty normal. But it's much easier to toss them after they're baked, hehe :)
Bake about 15 minutes, or until barely golden at the edges and sides. Transfer cookies to a wire rack to cool slightly, 8 to 10 minutes. While still warm, place cookies in the sugar bag; shake the bag to coat. Store baked cookies in an airtight container for up to 2 weeks.

Cool N' Easy Jello Pie

Oops! As several of you pointed out - I totally forgot to post about the pie! What a goober!!! This weekend for Dan's sister's birthday celebration, I got a request for this Cool N' Easy Jello Pie, which I kind of think of as like a jello cream pie. It is a super simple dessert to prepare, produces a very tasty finished product, and is totally diet-friendly! I loved making this as it's so different from the things I normally make. I would definitely recommend this recipe, the entire pie was gone within minutes! And what is so great about it is that there is a lot of room for creativity - experiment with different flavors, add different fruits, mix the fruit in, lay it on top, etc etc.

You can find the recipe here. Below is what I did to make a nice cutely decorated pie :) If you're going to be bringing this somewhere, I would suggest decorating the top with fruit, or else it's kind of boring and weird looking.

Cool N' Easy Jello Pie

Ingredients:
2/3 cup boiling water
1 pkg. (4 serving size) box of JELL-O (the original recipe says strawberry, that's what we did, but you can experiment with others like lemon, key lime, banana, etc... yum!)
Ice cubes
1/2 cup cold water
1 tub (8 oz.) Cool Whip, thawed
1 HONEY MAID Graham Pie Crust (6 oz.)
About 5 - 7 Fresh Strawberries
Additional Cool Whip for decorating

Bring 2/3 C of water to a boil. Stir the boiling water into the dry jello mix in a large bowl at least 2 min. until completely dissolved.
Add enough ice to the 1/2 C cold water to bring it up to 1 cup. Add to gelatin; stir until slightly thickened. Remove any unmelted ice.
Add whipped topping; stir with wire whisk until well blended. Refrigerate 15 to 20 min. or until mixture is thick enough to mound.
Spoon into crust, and smooth over with a rubber spatula.
REFRIGERATE at least 4 hours or until firm.
Wash and dry approximately 5 - 7 strawberries. Cut them into slice (with the help of a handy dandy egg slicer!)
Starting in the center of the pie, cover the surface of the pie with the strawberry slices.
Place some additional cool whip into a piping bag and decorate the top of the pie.

Before Decorating:


After: (much nicer)

Sweet Melissa Sundays: Banana Bread

Before I begin blogging this week's tasty SMS recipe, I want to shout from the rooftops for a minute.... guess what?... I'M ENGAGED!!!!!!!! It happened Friday night, my Daniel proposed. I am the happiest girl on the planet right now. :) I'm sure I'll continue to be blabbing a lot about it in the future.

Whew! Sorry, I just had to brag for a minute. Ok, now to this week's recipe, chosen by sweet Joy Hot Oven, Warm Heart. She chose well, because this was delicious. I omitted the apples because I'm a bit of a banana bread purist. Unless it's peanut butter of cinnnamon, I don't like a ton of stuff going on in my banana bread. The only other change I made was to add a little sugary crunch topping:


Banana Bread Sugary Crunch Topping:
2 T Granulated Sugar
2 1/2 T Brown Sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
~ 1 heaping T chopped walnuts

After preparing the banana bread according to the recipe, I sprinkled enough of the above topping to coat the top of the banana bread (I had some topping left over). The topping added a nice slightly crunchy topping to the otherwise soft banana bread.

I really enjoyed this week's recipe! I've never put nutmeg in a banana bread batter before, but in this recipe it was great. It was JUST the right amount. Enough to be noticeable, not enough to be overpowering. The only thing I have to say about this banana bread is that my regular recipe is much more moist. Not that this recipe is dry, it is not! But my go-to recipe produced a much moister product. But it was still Delicious, Thanks for this week's pick, Joy! Be sure to check out the other SMS'ers take on Sweet Melissa's Yummy Bread!!!!!

Sweet Melissa Sundays: Hazelnut Truffles!

Ohhh boy. Hazelnut coffee every morning. Hazelnut Creamer. In Italy, the gelato of choice: nocciola. Favorite thing to go with peanut butter: Nutella. Needless to say, I was totally excited about this week's choice: Hazelnut Truffles. Yummm!!

But! Some things got in the way of making them strictly according to the recipe in the Sweet Melissa Baking Book. I went to virtually every store in Central Florida and found no hazelnuts! Ug! I know for a fact that I've purchased hazelnuts this time of year in New York... when I first came back from Italy last July armed with an authentic and delicious hazelnut biscotti recipe, I went to the closest Stop and Shop and picked up a big bag of them to immediately bake into the crunchy italian cookies. However! Just like I have trouble finding almond paste here in Fla year round (no such problem in NY) I could not get my hands on any hazelnuts. Arghh!! So I bought some macadamia nuts (which turned out to be half price, gotta love those at-the-register surprises!). And Dan's mom surprised me by picking out all the hazelnuts from a big container of mixed nuts! Is she not the nicest ever??? So, I learned how to blanch nuts, too... which turned out to actually be rather simple, really. And I wound up with a delicious mixture of toasted macadamia nuts and hazelnuts. The smell as they were toasting was... increddddddible.



After they were toasted, and cooled, I pulse chopped them in the food processor:


For the chocolate, I didn't use anything super fancy-shmancy. I chose the Ghirardelli Semi-Sweet chocolate chips.


Oooh and the smell of the toasted nuts, the melted chocolate mixed with the Frangelico... mmmmm


For my topping, I experimented! After reading Nina's post on the Truffles P&Q page of the Sweet Melissa Sundays group site, I totally copied her idea for coating in Rice Krispy treats. Thanks, Nina! And it turns out great minds think alike, because when I read her post on truffles, I saw she decided to coat with Graham Cracker Crumbs, too. I had four toppings: Graham Cracker Crumbs, Nilla Wafer Crumbs, Rice Krispies, and the toasted nut mixture:


The end result? Ohhh so good. Even Daniel who "doesn't like chocolate" could be spotted poppin' a few in his mouth.





Be sure to read the other SMS Bloggers' posts on Truffles! And see Annie of Living Life Foodcariously for the recipe. Nice pick, Annie! It was a winner in this house.