Garden Salsa

Today I made a batch of my favorite salsa again. We were out of the bottles I had made in the fall, and I still had jalapeños and zucchini in the freezer and cans of tomatoes were on sale so I went for it! It might not be as fresh as straight from the garden, but it is still good. Here is the recipe:

Garden Salsa
6 tomatoes, peeled and diced (or a 796ml can)
4 jalapeño peppers, seeded and minced
2 cloves garlic, minced (or 1/4 tsp powdered garlic)
1 cup chopped onion
1 cup shredded carrot
1 cup shredded zucchini
1/2 cup chopped sweet green pepper
1/2 cup chopped sweet yellow pepper
1/2 cup chopped parsley (I use less because we do not love parsley)
1/2 cup white vinegar
1/3 cup tomato paste
1/4 cup chopped fresh oregano (1 Tbsp. dried)
1/2 tsp. pickling salt

1. Place all ingredients in a large stainless steel or enamel saucepan. Bring to a boil over high heat, reduce and simmer, uncovered, for 30 minutes or until thickened.
2. Remove hot jars from canner and ladle salsa into jars to within 1/2 inch (1 cm) of rim (head space). Process 20 minutes for half-pint (250 ml) and pint (500ml) jars.

Makes 5 1/2 to 6 cups. Enjoy!

Thanks to my friend, Carmen for requesting the recipe. It comes from the book Small-Batch Preserving by Topp &  Howard.

Nutty Cream Carrot Muffins

Wow! Three days in a row I'm here. When I looked around my blog, I noticed this entry, still in draft. I never posted it even though I wrote it back in 2013. It's not too late. So without further ado, Here are wonderfully decadent cream cheese and nut covered carrot muffins. These were so heavenly right out of the oven! The soft cream cheese topping was melt in your mouth goodness atop these beautiful, tall muffins!

The nuts were only on top, with the cream cheese, but the orange and carrot showed everywhere else!

This was a recipe out of "Company's Coming Mostly Muffins" page 43. I'll share the recipe since it was so good.

Nutty Cream Carrot Muffins recipe

4 oz. Block of cream cheese
1/4 cup sour cream
4 tsp white sugar
1/4 cup finely chopped walnuts

1 3/4 cups white flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt

2 large eggs
1 1/2 cups finely grated carrot
1 cup soured milk (1 Tbsp. lemon juice with milk to make 1 cup)
3 Tbsp. frozen concentrated orange juice, thawed (I used 1 Tbsp. orange rind and 2 Tbsp. orange juice)
3 Tbsp. vegetable oil
1 tsp. vanilla

Topping: Combine first 3 ingredients in small bowl. Add walnuts. Stir. Set aside.

Measure next 5 ingredients into large bowl. Stir. Make a well in centre.

Combne remaining 6 ingredients in medium bowl. Add to well. Stir until just moistened. Fill 12 greased muffin cups full. Spread about 1 Tbsp. cream cheese mixture on each muffin. Bake in 375 degree oven for 18 to 20 minutes until a wooden toothpick comes out clean. Let stand in pan for 5 minutes before removing to wire rack to cool. Makes 12 muffins.

Note: in the future, I will not convect bake these. I'll use regular bake so the muffins rise straight up. On convect bake, they went a little lop-sided. Terrific muffins though!

Better for you Carrot Cake

I found a cake recipe online when I went looking for one with less sugar and perhaps a higher glycemic index. The one I found, I added pineapple to it and it was well received. It made a beautiful cake.

Better for you Carrot Cake Recipe
 Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Line a 9 x 13" pan with parchment paper and grease the sides.

Combine in a large bowl:
1 1/2 cups flour
2/3 cup flax meal
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt

Combine in a medium bowl:
2 1/2 cups finely grated carrot
1 cup finely chopped pineapple, juices squeezed out
4 eggs
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup vegetable oil

Make a well in the dry ingredients. Add wet ingredients. Stir just until combined.
Bake at 350 for 30 - 35 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted near centre comes out clean.
Cool in pan for 10 minutes and then cool on a wire rack.

I made this recipe of icing to make the cake pictured. I added the pink fondant flower after, but the rest is:

Cream Cheese Icing
4 oz. cream cheese, softened
1/4 cup butter, softened
1 - 2 Tbsp. milk
3 cups icing sugar, sifted

Combine all ingredients and stir until smooth.

Obviously, the cream cheese icing is not "better for you", but hey, if you want icing, it's gotta be icing, right?

Enjoy!

Creamy Carrot Coffee Cake

Carrots! Carrots! Carrots! We finally picked the last of our carrots on Friday and I had a baking day with them on Saturday! That was fun. My favorite thing I made was the Creamy Carrot Coffee Cake.

This was a recipe in "Company's Coming Mostly Muffins" page 137. It is awesome! A nicely spiced, decadent cake that was just plain delicious. Loved the cream cheese icing on top. Just enough to be perfect! I used fresh pineapple instead of canned and omitted the nuts they called for. It was a good use of carrots, to be sure. I can post the recipe if you leave me a comment to that effect.

Have a nice day!

Carrot Date muffin Recipe

I've made these before, but I was asked for the recipe since I served them again yesterday. I'll post the original recipe and how I modified it.

The recipe comes from the Company's Coming Mostly Muffins book. Page 46. Here is their

Date Nut Carrot Muffin recipe
1 cup all purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
2/3 cup brown sugar, packed
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg

2 large eggs, fork beaten
3/4 cup buttermilk (or use 1 Tbsp lemon juice and enough milk to make 3/4 cup)
1/3 cup cooking oil
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
1/2 cup chopped dates
1/2 cup chopped pecans

1 1/2 cups grated carrot

Measure first 8 ingredients into a large bowl. Stir. Make well in centre.
Combine next 6 ingredients in medium bowl. Add to well.
Add carrot. Stir until just moistened. Fill 12 greased or lined muffin cups 3/4 full. Bake in 375 degree oven for 20 to 22 minutes until wooden pick inserted in centre of muffin comes out clean. Let stand in pan for 5 minutes before removing to wire rack to cool. Makes 12 muffins.

Now then, Keep reading to see my variant of the recipe.
Most noticeably, after typing in this recipe, I realize that I did not remember the brown sugar! Oops. I did think as I was mixing that there should be SOME sugar, so I put in 3 Tbsp of white sugar. Here's what I actually put in the muffins in the photo:

1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
3 Tbsp. white sugar
1/2 cup home-made granola (oatmeal, sunflower seeds, whole wheat flour, honey, oil, sesame seeds, wheat germ)
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/3 tsp. salt
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
dash ground nutmeg

2 large eggs, fork beaten
1 Tbsp lemon juice and enough milk to make 3/4 cup soured milk
1/3 cup cooking oil
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 cup chopped dates and raisins combined
1/4 cup fine coconut

1 1/2 cups grated carrot

I used the same method as above. They made very textured, moist muffins.

Carrot Date muffins

I wanted to make muffins this morning, but there was a lack of bananas in my house, so I found a recipe I hadn't made before: Date Nut Carrot Muffins. I wanted to take them to my play group to share so I couldn't add nuts. I just made them without nuts. The recipe is from the "Company's Coming Mostly Muffins" page 46.

They are lovely muffins, but I like a bit of crunch or squish in my muffins so I would have preferred them with nuts or raisins. The dates disappeared almost entirely! They made the carrot muffins even softer than usual. Certainly a make-again!