Chocolate Guinness Cupcakes with Bailey’s Icing

What is more festive for St Patrick’s day then these? Chocolate cupcakes made with Guinness and topped with mint icing with Bailey’s? And they were delicious.

I followed the recipe on epicurious.com (www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Chocolate-Stout-Cake-107105) for Chocolate Stout Cake, but just made cupcakes – since – well – I love cupcakes! So follow this recipe for them. Or I have heard you could use a Betty Crocker cake mix and just add a can of Guinness instead of the oil and water? I am going to try that next year and will report back!

Icing Ingredients:

4 Cups Icing Sugar
3/4 Cup Butter, softened
1/4 Cup Bailey’s Original Liquor
2-3 Tablespoons Milk
1 Teaspoon Mint Extract
Green food colouring

Icing Directions:

Mix all the ingredients in a bowl with a hand mixer. Add food colouring until you get the colour you were looking for! Pipe onto your cooled cupcakes and lick the bowl clean – watching out you don’t catch a little buzz! Enjoy!

Oatmeal Flax Pancakes

Though I am a little late for Mardis Gras this year – no reason not to enjoy these every weekend! Made with whole-wheat flour, ground flax, oatmeal and Greek yogurt, these healthy pancakes were delicious and nutritious – and since I made them in the blender super easy!

Ingredients:

½ cup whole-wheat flour
½ cup oatmeal
2 tablespoons ground flaxseed
1 tablespoon white sugar
¾ teaspoon baking soda
¾ teaspoon baking powder
½ cup plain Yogurt
1 egg
¼ cup of milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:

Throw all of the ingredients into a blender (or you could mix in a bowl with a hand mixer). Blend until smooth. If it’s a little too thick pour some extra milk. The first time I did these with regular yogurt and it was fine, but with the Greek yogurt it was too thick so added more milk. Once blended let sit for a few minutes.

Pour pancake batter onto a pre-heated (medium heat) lightly oiled/buttered pan. Once the pancake starts to bubbly a bit flip over. Only takes a couple minutes. Serve with butter and maple syrup – or berries and whipped cream – or both! Enjoy!

Mediterranean Couscous Salad

Mediterranean salad with couscous quinoa and orzo

I was looking for a light and nutritious side dish to serve with a chicken dinner and asparagus that would also work as the main for myself (vegetarian). I had this Mediterranean mix my mom bought from the States while she was there. It was a mix of couscous, quinoa, orzo and red lentils. I decided to cook that up and make a salad.

Ingredients:

Salad:
3 cups cooked and cooled couscous and/or quinoa and/or orzo
1 cup washed cherry tomatoes sliced in halves
Small handful of fresh basil chopped up
Small bunch of green onions cut up
¼ cup of feta cheese diced

Dressing:
1/3 cup of balsamic vinegar
A few splashes of red wine vinegar (I did this at the end to get more distance out of the dressing, could just do more balsamic)
¼ cup of olive oil
1 tablespoon of honey
Garlic powder, salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

So I cooked the package as the directions say. If you were doing this at home I would cook up just couscous/quinoa/orzo or combination of, as directed and let cool.

Mix in all of the ingredients for the salad. In a separate dish mix together dressing ingredients until honey is well dissolved.

Drizzle over salad and mix. Let sit in the refrigerator (if you can – its addictive!) for a couple hours and serve. Amazing side dish, great on its own, or on top of spring mix with a little extra balsamic vinegar. Love this! Enjoy!

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I am going to try this again soon with just a mix of couscous and quinoa to see if it tastes the same. I am sure it will….

Murray’s Bagels, NYC

While visiting NYC it seemed an obvious “Must Do” to find the best bagel in the city. And I did. A small little bakery on Avenue of Americas, Murray’s Bagels was worth the wait – and the 20-city block walk to get to it!

Served fresh from the oven, I got a whole wheat everything bagel with light cream cheese. It was heavenly! Warm bagel, (hot out of the oven not toasted) with oozing  cream cheese.

Jenn, a salmon lover, got the “Scottish Special” Fresh pumpernickel bagel with cream cheese, tomato, capers and Scottish salmon. Apparently it was to die for… I wasn’t quick enough to snap a shot before it was ½ gone. So I will take that as a sign!

Pumpernickel Bagel with scottish lox.

If you go to New York City – please, please, go there!

Lentil Salad

This nutritious and delicious salad is easy to make and a great way to get protein in without meat, and its loved by my non-vegetarian husband.

Ingredients:

1 can lentils (rinsed and drained)

1 can peaches and cream corn (rinsed and drained)

1 tomato deseeded and diced

2 green onions chopped

¼ cup feta cheese crumbled

2 cloves of garlic minced

Juice from ½ lemon

1 tablespoon of lemon juice

2 tablespoon olive oil

Directions:

Mix everything together and stir well. Let chill for a couple hours. Its that easy! Enjoy!

Chewy Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

My computer crashed so I have lost all my backlog of posts (not to mention the $400 bill for a new mac hardrive). To cheer myself up, I made these cookies http://allrecipes.com/recipe/chewy-chocolate-chip-oatmeal-cookies/detail.aspx That have been in my “must try” pile for quite some time. I cut the recipe in half, removed a tablespoon of each sugar and then also added a ¼ cup of raisins. They turned out really good! Enjoy!

Quinoa Pudding

I tried making rice pudding but with quinoa instead. It tasted the same, but  the texture is a little chewier, much like quinoa is over rice – think more like tapioca. But since this is a nutrition packed snack I will be making it again. For a treat I might make it with 2% or homogenized milk instead of the skim.

Ingredients:

1 ½ cups cooked quinoa
2 cups of milk
1 egg
2 tablespoons sugar
1/3 cup raisins
1 tsp vanilla
1 tablespoon cinnamon (optional)

Directions:

Over medium heat in a pot cook 1 ½ cups of milk, the sugar and the quinoa stirring occasionally, careful not to let the milk froth over (especially when you have black glass stove top!) for about 20 minutes. In a small bowl whisk egg and reaming ½ cup of milk together, add into pot along with raisins. Stir continuously for the next minute. Add in vanilla and an optional teaspoon of butter and stir. Serve warm or allow to cool and sprinkle with cinnamon. If you are positive everyone will like the cinnamon then just add it in while you are cooking – but it looks nicer when you sprinkle it on top! Enjoy!