Saturday, December 29, 2012

Persimmon Pudding

This year I got a bunch of persimmons in my bountiful basket and wanted to make something very traditional with them. So I did a search on old fashioned persimmon recipes and came up with a persimmon pudding.







The recipe looked very simple and really yummy.  I gathered all of my ingredients.
































 




































I was worried that the persimmons wouldn't puree very well, but after peeling and cutting them up I tossed them into a blender, they pureed up just fine. :)

 









 The rest of the ingredients get mixed up and folding them all together was a real easy and smooth process. I did not need a mixer at all, I could have even pureed the persimmons by hand too if I wanted to. They were very ripe and soft. :)










After mixing up the batter I sprayed a bunt pan and filled it with the batter. I actually had some left over and made a loaf pan as well. The recipe would have either made a very big bunt cake or 2-3 loaf cakes. 






It came out very spongy and moist.    While it was baking, I tried to think of a good way to top this moist cake.  I decided to make a buttered rum glaze.  
I heated the butter and the rum together in a saucepan and then stirred in the powdered sugar and made a glaze.  It worked very well on the cake. :)

 


While peeling the persimmons I made a rose for a friend of mine. :)

Let me know if you try out this recipe and how you liked it.  Me and my friends and family that got to try it really liked it. :)
Happy Eating!!

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Allergy Free Breakfast Tacos

I hate to use the term "Allergy Free" because everyone has different allergies, but to keep my title short, that is what I went with.  

I was tending a little 3 year old that is allergic to peanuts, egg, milk, and soy. (whew, right?)  So I made these breakfast tacos.  They were pretty darn good!!

I am sorry for the crazy fuzzy pictures, they looked fine on my phone, but then when I moved them to my computer they were not so grand, but by then all the tacos were gone. :(\



 First I chopped up some green peppers, mushrooms, white onions, turkey sausage, and bacon and sauteed them until they were nice and brown and smelled yummy.

While I was sauteing that I was boiling some rice. I love the long grain boil in a bag rice, but you can use any kind of rice you'd like.

I then added the rice and some black beans to the pan.  I use no salt added canned black beans and then drain and rinse them thoroughly first. 





Then I put them in a corn tortilla and top with some tomatoes.  (shown above)



I like to make sure that the corn tortillas are just corn meal and not corn treated with lime. Unfortunately the store I was at last night preparing for today did not have that option.  It makes it a better quality tortilla and besides, who the heck wants to eat lime???  (not lime the citrus fruit, but Lime the chemical.) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lime_%28material%29)

 


After I fed the little one I scrambled up some eggs to toss the rest of the mixture into. 
(no offense little guy, but I wanted to taste it that way too) 

And for the record: I really liked the plain one with no egg or cheese. Would be better if I had added a slice or two of avocado, but didn't think of that until later. 



I topped this one with some tomatoes and cheddar cheese.  It was Fabulous!

Again, I should have gotten out some avocado.  But next time I will. :)











Let me know in the comments if you tried this one and how you liked it. 

Have a Great Tuesday and
HAPPY EATING!


 


Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Mincemeat Pie

I really have been on this old fashioned cooking kick. I have been looking up old recipes, and hand me down reciepes from "way make when" and trying them.  This one I got from Harry Potter. I kept seeing the little pies and wondered what they could be.  The few british people I know all said that they were mincemeat pies.  A festive dish.  So I set out to try some.  I went looking for some homemade recipes, but there were many mentions of this brand Nonesuch that makes a few comparable filling.  So I decided to give it a try.  :)



 I got some roll out dough from the store as well. I had decided that if i was going to just buy a filling, I would pick up some pie crust and save me some time. That way if I do not like it, then I wasn't out much. :)








I used a mini muffin pan and cut little circles from the dough and put them in the cups, then filled with the mincemeat pie filling.











Once they were all filled, I started cutting the left overs into little strips to make some tops for them.







No one wants to make tiny lattice work on pies, so I just did a simple star on each.  Made it pretty simple.  








I think they are pretty good. They are different and have some more spice then I think I would have used if I had made it from scratch, so the first bite is pretty intense, and then by the time you are done with the pie (for me that is 3 bites) then you are wanting more. :)  They are different, but pretty good.   I had to save some to take with me for the Holidays to share this traditional little pie with everyone!  



Happy Cooking! (and Baking)


On a side note, I am very sorry that there has been such a gap in my posts. I misplaced the power cord to my laptop and didn't want to abandon or start over on a few pretty technical posts. One is the natural sodium contents of fruits and veggies, and the other one is the casein in sausage and how that effects the people with milk sensitivities.  So I kept putting off doing anything thinking that I would find the cord, but it still hasnt shown up.  So thank you to my wonderful husband for letting me use his laptop while he is at work to do all this, and Now for playing catch up of all the things I have been baking and hopefully my cord shows up and I can get all that work off my laptop.