Strawberry Belgian Waffles

I am so sick of pancakes. Every Sunday, Lemon Ricotta Pancakes. Over and over and over again. I know, if I'm going to over indulge on pancakes light, moist and fluffy Lemon Ricotta Pancakes are the way to go. But I just needed to make something else for Sunday Brunch. I've been lusting after a Belgian Waffle-maker and while I was at Target I went ahead and bought this one for $20. I was having a really bad day so buying this waffle-maker and thinking about tomorrow morning's strawberry Belgian waffles made me a little happier.

It's simple, small and easy-to-use. All the things I needed in a Waffle-maker.

Strawberry Belgian Waffles

2 cups of flour

1 tbsp of baking powder

1/2 tsp of salt (optional)

2 tsp of sugar

3 eggs

1/2 cup of melted margarine (or butter)

1 tsp of vanilla

1 cup of almond milk (or soy milk or regular milk)

1/2 cup of chopped strawberries (fresh)

Heat up that ole waffle-maker!

Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl. Beat the 3 eggs separately and melt the margarine. Add the eggs, vanilla, milk and stir and slowly incorporate the margarine. Whisk until smooth but don't over whisk. Fold in the strawberries. Pour some into your waffle-maker, make sure not to overload and cook until it's the desired crispiness and shade of brown. Serve with some sliced strawberries and bananas and a little bit of maple syrup. Happy Brunch!

Eggland's Best ~ Pasteis de Belem - Portuguese Custard Tartlets

Pastel de Belem is also known as Pastel de Nata. Pluralized they read Pasteis de Belem and Pasteis de Nata. These traditional Portuguese custard tarlets originate from Belem, Portugal. In the 19th century, monasteries were places in which monks tried out different types of desserts. This one happened to be created in a Belem monastery and when the monastery closed a bakery called Casa Pasteis de Belem started selling these treats. Egg whites were in such high demand for various purposes that egg yolk desserts, like Pastel de Belem, were created to make use of the leftover yolks. Pasteis de Belem have become so popular and such an important dessert in Portuguese cuisine. I grew up eating Pasteis de Belem and as an adult I still get giddy. Even a bad pastel is a good one. They are little cups of heaven. A special puff pastry shell is filled with luscious egg custard. You'll find some with slightly burnt edges and some browning on the skin of the custard. Others will be topped with cinammon and powdered sugar. The original recipe is a secret and I'm sure the bakeries of Portugal who specialize in this dessert keep their recipes under lock and key.

I've adapted Emeril Lagasse's recipe from FoodNetwork.com and David Leite's recipe from the book The New Portuguese Table. I added my own twist. My favorite pasteis de Belem always had a slight hint of orange flavor in them. So I added orange extract to the custard. I didn't want to add fresh orange juice as I was worried that the citric acid would curdle the eggs, disrupting the creaminess of the custard. The result: one of the best desserts I have ever made.

A special thanks to Eggland's Best and Food Buzz who provided me with a carton of Eggland's Best eggs in order to make some recipes with them. This opportunity encouraged me to make something I never thought I'd be able to do on my own!

Ingredients and Materials:

A package of Pepperidge Farm's Puff Pastry*
(thawed in the refrigerator)
Dry Beans, preferably small ones
Cupcake liners
Regular sized Muffin/Cupcake tin

Custard:

6 Eggland's Best Eggs, Yolks Only
3/4 cup of sugar
1/4 teaspoon of salt

1-1/2 cups of heavy cream
1 heaping tablespoon of cornstarch
1 teaspoon of Orange Extract

Cinammon
Makes 18 Pasteis

----
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

Lay out 2 sheets of your puff pastry. Cut each sheet into 9 squares, total of 18 squares.

Place each individual squares into the muffin molds and shape into the mold so that the pastry is even on the bottom and all the way up the sides. Please make sure the pastry goes up to the very top. Also, make sure there is no air bubble at the bottom. The more even you can get the dough, the better the pastry cup will come out.

Once you get them all in the molds, add cupcake liners to the centers of each. Fill each liner with small dry beans (you can use rice, but beans are easier). The weight of the beans will hold down the pastry, preventing it from puffing up too much. Bake the pastry cups in the oven for 20 minutes. Set aside and cool.

In a small mixing bowl, add the 6 Eggland's Best egg yolks, sugar and salt. Whisk until thoroughly incorporated.

 

Then add cornstarch and mix thoroughly into the sugared yolk mixture. Add the orange extract and the heavy cream. Whisk until fully incoporated.

 

Discard the cupcake liners and beans. Fill the individual pastry cups with the egg mixture. Put back in oven for 20 minutes. Let cool for about 5-10 minutes so that the custard sets. Sprinkle with cinammon.  These are fine either warm or cold. They are just absolutely delicious.

Pasteis de Belem - Portuguese Custard Tartlets

Thoughtful Eating at the Office Craft Fair

My office had a craft fair in which employees that are creative on their own time can bring in their goods to showcase and to sell. I decided this was a good opportunity to showcase my talent as a baker. So last Tuesday, I brought in baked goods that I have posted about here on Thoughtful Eating.

I spent the night before baking and trying to figure out how much I wanted to sell each item for. I wanted my goods to be affordable but I also didn't want to lose money.

The craft fair was held in a conference room and I had one corner of a large table. Here is what the set up looked like:

I sold Vegan Almond-Raspberry Chocolate Cupcakes for $0.50 each.

I sold miniature Chocolate Chip-Banana Bread loves for $3.00 each. One of the loaves came out smaller and had a corner missing (from not coming out completely from the loaf pan), so I downpriced that loaf to $2.00.

Finally I did bags of Hazelnut-Toffee-Chocolate Chip cookies for $1.00 a bag. Each bag contained 2 cookies.

I even had Thoughtful Eating business cards for people to take. These mini-cards were created by Moo and came from my sponsor Foodbuzz. It was a great opportunity to get some folks acquainted with my blog.

In all I made $27.00. I sold all 9 bags of Cookies ($9), all 5 breads ($14) and 8 out of the twelve cupcakes ($4). In hindsight, I shouldn't have labeled the cupcakes "vegan" as that turned some people off. I might have sold them all if I had just labeled them as Almond-Raspberry-Chocolate cupcakes. Oh well. All in all, it was a success. If I get a chance to do this again next year, I'll bring more volume of things I think will sell. I could have sold 20 bags of cookies rather than just 9.

I got a lot of compliments from my customers and I was really glad everyone enjoyed the treats.

Happy Holidays!

Chocolate-Chip Banana Bread

On Friday evening, Carlos and I ventured out to Flatbread in Burlington for some amazing food that we were sure was illegal in 48 states. Flatbread is all about keeping things local. They buy as many locally-grown and locally-produced items as they can for their menu. Even their beer, wine and spirits are as local as possible. We had a delicious pizza topped with free-range chicken, beans, corn, jalapenos, tomatoes and sour cream. Mmm... I really wish I had taken a photograph, it was a thing of beauty. After we nommed that, we reluctantly (yet willingly) took a look at the dessert menu and Carlos kept pounding his finger at the Chocolate-Chip Banana Bread option. So that's what we got! They took a slice of the bread, toasted it in their clay oven. Then they cut it on the diagonal, pour hot fudge sauce over the top and serve it with two scoops of vanilla ice cream and home-made whipped cream. It was heaven.

The following day, I decided to try to make my own Chocolate-Chip Banana Bread because that half-a-slice I had just wasn't enough! I really love Emeril Lagasse's Banana Bread recipe, so I altered a bit to create the Chocolate-Chip version. I took out the walnuts and replaced them with the chips and reduced the sugar from 3/4 cup to 1/2 cup.

Ingredients:

2 ripe bananas, chopped
1/2 cup of sour cream
2 eggs
2 teaspoons of vanilla

10 tablespoons of butter mostly melted and cooled

2 cups of flour
1/2 cup of sugar
1 teaspoon of baking soda
3/4 teaspoon of baking powder
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1 cup of chocolate chips
Ghirardelli Milk Chocolate ones are great!)

-----

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Add the chopped bananas into a bowl and mix with a hand-held blender or puree in a food processor. Or you could just mash them by hand with a couple of forks. Add the sour cream, eggs and vanilla and mix thoroughly.

In a separate larger bowl, add the flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder and salt and mix together. Add chocolate chips and toss to coat. This is an important step so that the chocolate chips don't sink to the bottom of the bread.

Add your melted and cooled butter to the banana mixture and incorporate thoroughly. Fold that into the dry mixture until no flour is showing.

Add it to a buttered loaf pan and bake for 1 hour and 10 minutes. Take it out and cool for a good while before you attempt to take it out of the pan.

Black-Bottom Banana Cream Pie

I found this jewel of a recipe on the Kraft Foods Food & Family Newsletter. I have heard of black-bottom banana pies but have never tried it. This one is very simple and easy to make and is quite delicious. My only complaint is that the chocolate hardens considerably on the bottom making it difficult to cut into and to eat! I wonder if adding cream to it instead of just butter would make a nice soft ganache that would be more conduce to this otherwise soft cold pie. One final note: I know that Jello makes Banana flavored instant pudding but go with Vanilla instead. Don't make artificial banana flavoring compete with the nice fresh bananas in the pie!

Black-Bottom Banana Cream Pie

Nilla Wafer Pre-made Crust
2 tablespoons of butter melted

4 Baker's Semi-Sweet Chocolate Baking Squares
4 tablespoons of butter

Jello Instant Vanilla Pudding
2 cups of milk

Cool Whip softened in the fridge

-----

Mix the Jello Vanilla Instant Pudding mix and the 2 cups of milk according to package instructions. Set aside so the pudding can start to gel.

Rehydrate the Nilla Wafer Pre-Made Crust by brushing it with the 2 tablespoons of butter. Heat the other 4 tablespoons of butter in a bowl with the chocolate baking squares in the microwave for 1 minute. Mix thoroughly and let cool for a couple of minutes. Then pour into the pie mold at the bottom.

Slice two bananas and place the slices on top of the chocolate.

Pour in the Jello Pudding. Do this very carefully! If you start dumping all of it in, bananas and chocolate will go flying. Easy does it!

Cover with saran wrap so that the plastic touches the top of the pudding. Otherwise the pudding will create it's own skin (which you'll have to peel off later, blegh!). Put in the firdge for 3-4 hours.

Take out of the fridge and cover with Cool Whip. Again, be very careful so the Vanilla Pudding doesn't mix with the Cool Whip.

Use a knife with a sharp point (like a good size paring knife) to cut a slice. Then scoop out with a large spoon or small flat spatula. Enjoy!

Hey here is a picture of a slice! Like it Tommy?!

Luxurious Mid-Morning Snack ~ Bananas, Strawberries and Agave Nectar

At work, I usually have a mid-morning and mid-afternoon snack. I need the sugar hit to keep me going and to prevent my blood sugar from getting too low. I have grown accustomed to pre-packaged sugar snacks but have been trying to switch to something healthier. Although fruit on an empty stomach isn't all that great for me, it's at least a healthier alternative to processed sugars.

I've been bringing a banana and a few strawberries to work with me. In the company kitchen, I hull and halve the strawberries and slice the banana and put the piece into a bowl. At my desk, I always have Trader Joe's Agave Nectar for sweetening tea. I drizzle a little bit over the fruit and for a few moments I'm in utter ecstasy.

Who knew eating healthy could be so luxurious?