Pastries

During our cross-country drive, Lovemuffin and I got to see almost all of each of our families, which was wonderful. What great families we have! While visiting Older Brother in Michigan, we took a quick jaunt over to Dearborn, to go to a Middle Eastern bakery called Shatila. This is what we ate, as well as sampling the ice creams.

Knafeh-pastry with cheese and syrup with ground pistachio on top.

Two other pastries, also amazing. 

Not only did they have traditional looking stuff, they also had fancy looking cakes with all sorts of fruits on top that we salivated over. So if you ever happen to find yourself in Detroit or Dearborn, you should definitely give this place a try! Or you can order any of their stuff online, including their ice-cream. I guess people think Detroit and Dearborn are scary, dangerous places, but Detroit is having some kind of revival and has great Art Deco architecture, so it totally makes your trip to Shatila worth it.

So happy! We just love bakeries!

Fresh Fruit/Mint Juice

In our journey across the continent, we stopped and had dinner with some family at Cafe Rio and even though I don't usually go for big box chain fast food establishments, this one is different. But I'm not going to tell you about the amazing food. I'm going to tell you about these drinks they had. They were special limeades, there was mint limeade (everyone's favorite), strawberry limeade, and hibiscus limeade (my other favorite, so amazing!) And tonight we decided to make our own. We made strawberry peach mint limeade. It was delicious. I might just do mint and peach together next time, with just enough lime juice to keep the peaches from turning brown.

As far as I can tell you can use pretty much any fruit you like. You blend up the fruit with lime juice, water, a little ice, and add sugar to taste. And then you make more because everyone will need refills!

Pumpkin Coconut Spiced Cake

Pumpkin coconut cake, see how runny the frosting is!

Lovemuffin and I are packing up and moving across the country next week, and in order to take a break from the stress of packing stuff and selling furniture, we made a road trip for the weekend to visit some family. While we were there, we made this cake that got rave reviews from the cousins.

I decided to combine pumpkin and coconut because I had some in my cupboard and I want to get rid of as much stuff as possible. It was a pretty good experiment, but you can't taste the coconut as much as I would like, but I think there is a nice depth of flavor there, if you're paying attention when you eat it and not just snarfing it down. If I was going to make this again I would use some coconut flavoring just to emphasize the flavor there.

After I made the frosting, I realized I should have done it a little differently, I should have just used a couple tablespoons of the leftover coconut milk, powdered sugar, cinnamon, and coconut extract flavoring. Instead I had massive amounts of slightly too runny (but very tasty) frosting. But you'll be pleased, I know, to hear that cinnamon and coconut are a delightful combination.

pumpkin coconut cake baked in a bundt pan

Here is my recipe, based on a pumpkin cake recipe on allrecipes.com.

Pumpkin Coconut Spice Cake

1 cup coconut milk (I used a can of "light" coconut milk)
3 eggs
1 15 oz. can pumpkin puree (I had a 29 oz. can and we eyeballed half of it)
1 3/4 cups brown sugar
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup chopped walnuts
1 cup shredded coconut, cut even finer (if you have a food processor to do it quickly)

Preheat oven to 350, grease and flour one 10 inch bundt or tube pan.

Mix together the coconut milk, eggs, pumpkin and sugar. In a separate bowl, stir together the flour, soda, cinnamon, cloves, ginger and salt. Add the dry ingredients to the wet and stir just until they are mixed, add in the nuts and shredded coconut. Pour batter into the prepared pan.

Bake cake in preheated oven for about 1 hour, or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. Let cool for about 5 minutes, the edges should start pulling away from the pan a little, flip it gently onto a wire rack to cool some more.

Frosting (this is what I did, that didn't yield the results I was hoping for, but was still very delicious)

remainder of the can of coconut milk (about 1/2 cup)
some cream cheese, softened slightly (about 4 oz. I forgot to measure)
at least 4 cups powdered sugar (I might have put in more, I lost track)
cinnamon to taste (I used about 2 1/2 tablespoons)

Mix all ingredients together well. You can use more or less sugar to make a thicker frosting, mine turned into more of a glaze. Chilling it helps it stiffen up, too. Pour frosting over the prepared cake. Enjoy.

what's left of pumpkin coconut cake after 30 minutes

Fig, Apricot and Pecan Bars: the recipe

Here is the recipe I used for these delicious treats, it is adapted from the blondies recipe in my Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook (11th edition). They were still a little crumbly, I think because of the oats. If you want you could use only all-purpose flour, but the oats do give it a nice texture.

Fig, Apricot and Pecan Bars

1/2 c. chopped dried apricots

1/2 c. chopped dried figs

1 c. packed brown sugar

10 Tbsp. butter

2 eggs

2 tsp. vanilla extract

1 1/2 c. all-purpose flour

1/2 c. quick oats

1 tsp. baking powder

1/4 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. ground cardamom (or your favorite complementary spice)

1 c. chopped toasted pecans

Preheat oven to 325. Grease a 8 x 11 inch baking pan (Better Homes and Gardens says 9 x 13, but I like the bars tall instead of spread out), set aside.

Place the dried apricot and fig pieces in a small bowl and pour boiling water over them, enough to cover them. Set aside.

In a sauce pan heat the brown sugar and butter until the sugar dissolves, stirring constantly. Cool slightly. Mix in the eggs, one at a time, and the vanilla extract.  Mix in the flour, oats, baking powder, soda and cardamom. Drain the soaked fruit in a strainer and mix the nuts and fruit into the batter. Pour it all into the prepared pan and bake for about 30 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool slightly on wire rack, consume.

Grilled Pizza

We had some friends over for dinner and grilled some pizza. It is pretty much the greatest thing ever. We followed these directions and it turned out pretty awesome. We were making personal pizzas, but they ended up really big. But that's okay, we ate them anyway.

Fig, Apricot and Pecan Bars

After buying dried figs for my fig and almond bread last week, I needed something else to do with the leftover figs. I wanted to make cookies or cookie bars, so I looked up a recipe for blondies and modified it. It's pretty crumbly right now, but very tasty with a delightful texture with figs, apricots, pecans and oats . I should have a perfected recipe soon to share with you.

What do I think of the Thingamajig candy bar?

thingamajig

Here is Hershey's limited edition Thingamajig candy bar. It has a crisp rice part, and a peanut butter part. It is not stunning. It is mediocre. The peanut butter part is not great, and the crisp rice part is really hard. If you like crisp-rice candy bars, get a Crunch bar, if you like peanut butter candy bars, get some Reeses. This is not combining the best of both worlds. See a more detailed review here. Have you tried it? What do you think?