muffins, tortillas, and apples too!

yesterday i made a double batch of sourdough english muffins. half plain, and half i added cinnamon and raisins to (those are my favorites!). they turned out wonderfully and we have been enjoying them.

yesterday when my husband looked at the weekly menu i posted on our fridge, he said, "oh good! it doesn't say boiled eggs for breakfast everyday!" oops...maybe i got in a bit of a rut for a while there. this morning we had toasted english muffins for breakfast. the beauty of english muffins is that there are so many ways to eat them - we ate them for lunch yesterday topped with pizza sauce and cheese. what a treat!

for supper, i made my first batch of sourdough tortillas, which we filled with beans, cheese, corn, and tomatoes for "tacos". oh my goodness. the tortillas were so, so, good.

i also made a batch of applesauce, which really made it feel a bit like fall around here.

treats

this morning i woke up to find a layer of snow on the ground. it's a good thing there was a baby in the next room crying for my attention, or i definitely would have crawled back into bed, pulled the covers over my head, and told my husband to wake me when spring decides to show up for real (at this point, i don't think i would have cared how long it took).

mondays always seem to be long days at our house. jeremy has a full morning and early afternoon of class, and then he works an extra hour and gets home shortly after seven. the combination of this long day, my strong desire to be with family in california, piles of laundry to fold, the snow this morning, and still struggling to get back into our routine really put me in a funk this morning.

so what was i to do? well...after folding those piles of laundry and doing various tasks around the house, i decided it was time to bake something. i couldn't decide between brownies and mounds candy bars, so i made both.

the brownies are absolutely delicious. they are very rich, so a little goes a long way, which i like. our little one loves to "help" me cook and bake, and she fully participated in the creation of these brownies. she poured, stirred, and loved helping me grease the pan with butter. when i cook or bake, i like to let her touch as many things as possible - all those different textures are great for learning. fingers stuck in the salt container? sure, why not. a little one reaching for a handful of batter? that's fine, see what it feels like! this is all easier when daddy is here to hold her up next to me, but when he is not, we make it work.

greasing the pan:

the recipe for the brownies is from elanaspantry.com. i haven't made very many recipes from her blog, but the ones i have made have turned out very well and i look forward to trying more. i appreciate the fact that the food she makes is nutritious. although these brownies are sweets, they don't have any sugar, and are packed with a lot of nutrition. (i have to confess that the ones i made did have some sugar in the chocolate chips. we had a bag of regular semi-sweet chocolate chips left over from the little one's birthday party that i couldn't let go to waste. usually, however, i would probably use a chopped up dark chocolate bar or dark chocolate chips). 

i used honey instead of agave nectar, and peanut butter instead of almond butter. yum. some (most!) of these brownies will definitely be going in the freezer.

the "mounds candy bars" were next on my list. the recipe calls for a candy bar mold, which i don't have, so i decided to make them in muffin cups...similar to how i made peanut butter cups a while back (after clicking on the link, scroll down to find the recipe). because of that, they ended up being more like mounds candy drops for me. either way, they are yummy. i melted half of the chocolate on the stove, poured it into the muffin cups and let it harden in the fridge (for about 15 minutes?). meanwhile, i mixed up the coconut filling using honey instead of agave nectar. i formed little balls and placed them on top of the hardened chocolate. 

waiting for another layer of chocolate...

i melted the rest of the chocolate, poured it over the coconut filling, and put it all in the fridge to harden.

 they turned out kind-of big, so they are definitely best cut in half. 

yummy treats over here. they don't take away the snow, or the laundry, or the sadness we are experiencing...but it is therapeutic and satisfying to create them, and a great little treat for the day.

keep on keepin' on

well...the stomach flu is totally over, and i think the three of us are on our way to recovery from this cold. my hubby is in between his january term and spring (SPRING...did i say spring?!) semester, so he doesn't have any classes this week! he still has work in the afternoons, but it's nice to have a lighter schedule this week. yesterday afternoon we were all getting quite antsy and decided to have some family baking time.

i really look forward to baking and cooking with my little girl as she grows...it will be so fun when she is able to stir things and dump things in the bowl for me! even though she couldn't do much of that yesterday, it was certainly still a fun way to spend time together. the three of us made "brownies"...ones that we can eat with the current way we are eating. they have no sugar but honey instead, and are made with coconut flour. the recipe is from here. they are SO yummy. i don't know if they would be yummy to people who eat lots of very sweet things, but considering we haven't had sugar or anything chocolaty in quite a while - yum.

the babe was happy in the sling. she watched everything with wide eyes. reminds me i need to slow down and spend more time involving her in my daily tasks.