Creamy Rice Pudding

Recently, Peter and I went out for chinese food with my family and ended up with a bunch of extra rice. I feel like this happens every time we have chinese food. I hate to see it go to waste, so I usually like to make rice pudding with those superfluous servings of rice that they serve.


I love Kozy Shack rice pudding, so I found (what claims to be) the history and recipe behind it. I recreated it at home to be a slightly healthier version. This one is SO good that you might actually confuse it for Kozy Shack, and you'd never even know that it's a better-for-you version too!


The 'Kozy Shack' recipe that I found, uses whole milk and uncooked rice that simmers in the whole milk mixture to cook into the pudding. Instead, I used one part non-fat milk and one part half & half for the creamy base, and I used precooked rice so that you can use that leftover rice that always makes it into your fridge after a chinese food dinner.


Recipe (4 servings)

• 2 cups Half and Half
• 2 cups Nonfat Milk
• 1 Egg
• 1/3 cup Sugar
• 1/8 tsp Salt
• 1 1/2 cups leftover or precooked Rice
• 1 1/2 tsp Vanilla
• dash of Cinnamon

Combine your half & half and milk in a pot and bring to a simmer over low heat (about 5 minutes)

While your milk simmers, cream together the egg, sugar and salt:

Stir the egg mixture into the simmering milk. Mix well. Then add the rice into the pot and stir again.

Continue to simmer pot over low heat, stirring constantly

Simmer, stir, and allow to thicken for about 30-40 minutes

Eventually the rice grains will swell, and you should be able to see them in the mixture without even stirring it up. Then remove pot from the heat.

Stir the vanilla into the mixture:

Sprinkle just a dash of cinnamon into the pot (I just tilted the cinnamon shaker and gently tapped it twice to get this much):

Stir well:

Serve:

Eat:

Enjoy the sweet, creamy goodness:

OR, cool in a tightly sealed container in the refrigerator...

and enjoy it chilled, Kozy Shack style!

Alternative Options: 

• Add 3/4 cup golden raisins into the pot for the last 10 minutes that it simmers
• Serve topped with raisins, chopped pistachios, or an extra sprinkle of cinnamon for a little garnish and extra flavor.

Angel Food Cake

I have always loved angel food cake because it is really light and not too 'sicky-sweet'.  Ever since I was a little girl I would ask for an angel food cake with strawberries and whipped cream for my birthday.  This week, on my 25th birthday, it was no different :)

In fact, I love angel food cake with strawberries so much, that I even had it for our wedding cake!

I had never made an angel food cake from scratch before, but a year or two ago (I don't remember what inspired me at that time) I decided that store-bought varieties were too dry and I was going to make one myself. I must have looked through 30 different recipes to gather ideas that I liked. I had to have known at the time why I decided the amounts and techniques that I did, but now I have no idea why I have to mix it the way I do; I just follow the directions on the old torn piece of scratch paper that I wrote it on back then, and it faithfully yields the most moist, yet fluffy and perfectly sweet angel food cake every time!

Recipe: 

• 1 cup Flour
• 1 1/2 cups Sugar
• 12 Egg Whites
• 1/2 tsp Salt
• 1 1/2 tsp Cream of Tartar
• 1 1/2 tsp Vanilla

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Then sift together the flour and half the sugar (3/4 cup)

Separate the eggs, do not let ANY hint of yolk into your whites. Angel food cake is light and fluffy because the whites rise, but if there is any oil from the yolks then it will not rise quite like it should.

(don't waste the yolks, keep them to make ice cream, or creme brulee or anything else that may require yolks)

**Helpful Hint: Use a very big bowl for your whites, much larger than mine here, because eventually all of your ingredients will end up in this bowl. You will soon see that this one was not quite big enough and I had to transfer it all to a bigger bowl later.

Add the vanilla, cream of tartar, and salt.

Whip to a medium peak (when your 'peak' can stand up on its own, but not quite straight up- it should slouch over like Free Willy's fin)

Then add the other half of the sugar (3/4 cup) to your medium peaks, and whip again until firm (much stronger and stiffer than before.)

See how my bowl was not big enough! And this is without even adding the sifted flour/sugar mix yet!

Now add the sifted flour mixture to your firm-whipped egg mixture, just a little bit at a time...

...and fold in gently until it is well incorporated, but without breaking down the stiffness of your whites too much. It should look smooth, but still be pretty stiff, like this: 

Then carefully transfer it to an UNGREASED angel food cake pan (do not use a non-stick spray!). If you spray it, those oils will cause the same collapsing damage that the oils from the yolks would do!

Bake at 375 degrees F for about 40 minutes

When you take it out, let it cool upside down so that it doesn't fall in while it's cooling... like a bad souffle.

**Helpful Hint: my mom taught me that a wine bottle fits right into the center hole of the pan to hold it upside down while it cools. 

with a long skewer or rubber spatula (or anything non-metal that wont scratch your cake pan), loosen the edges of the cake and invert it onto your platter.

Then top with some of my sister's homemade whipped cream and just a few strawberries!

or maybe a lot of strawberries... and an extra bowl full for serving!

Kinley and 'Baby Blue Bear' are helping to put the birthday candles on the cake

Uh oh! Baby Bear's foot got into the frosting...

   

It was a difficult clean up job, but Kinley didn't complain:

...STILL workin' on it :)

My 25th piece of birthday cake!

Citrus-Zested Blueberry Muffins

It was my birthday this weekend, and one of the presents Peter got me was a new citrus zester! I was so excited to use it, so I took an inventory of my kitchen to see what I could create using my new zester. I had a bowl full of oranges from Grandma Joanie and a big bag of blueberries in my freezer...  perfect; orange-zested blueberry muffins! I remembered a killer-looking blueberry muffin recipe that I came across when I was browsing some recipes awhile ago. I dug out the recipe from 'Cooks Illustrated' and whittled in some room to add orange zest into the recipe. 

I thought muffins would be a great treat for Peter to take to the office in the morning and share at work. However, after he ate one for breakfast, he decided that he liked them too much and wanted to leave them... all... at home. So he asked me to make something else to send to the office so that he could keep his arsenal of blueberry muffins for breakfast this week. I guess this means it's a pretty darn good recipe. Give it a whirl:

Recipe (for a dozen regular sized muffins):

• 2 cups Blueberries
• 1 /18 cups Sugar, plus 1/3 cup sugar, plus 1 teaspoon (separated like this)
• 2 1/2 cups Flour
• 2 1/2 teaspoons Baking Powder
• 1 teaspoon Salt
• 2 Eggs
• 3 Tablespoons melted Butter
• 1/4 cup Vegetable Oil
• 1/4 cup Milk (I used nonfat but you can use any type)
• 3/4 cups low-fat Yogurt (I used Vanilla, but you can use plain or any flavor you wish; orange or blueberry might be fun to try!)
• 2 teaspoons Orange zest

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. And before you start anything else, prepare the topping that will go on the muffins later before they go into the oven. To do this, zest 1 teaspoon of orange and mix with a fork into 1/3 cup sugar until well combined and fluffy (not clumpy): 

 The sugar will lightly take on the orange color of the zest and look so beautiful and sparkly orange!

 Then bring 1 cup blueberries and 1 tsp sugar to a boil in a small saucepan:

 Stir it frequently and break up the blueberries so that all of their juices are released. Allow to simmer over medium-low heat:

 Continue to simmer and stir for about 5 minutes or so until it reduces and thickens up a bit, then remove from heat and set aside:

 While the blueberries are cooling, mix together the flour, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl:

 In a separate bowl, whisk together the eggs and 1 1/8 cups sugar until smooth. Then add in the vegetable oil and and the melted butter. Mix well.

 Combine the 3/4 cup yogurt and the 1/4 cup milk.

And add the yogurt mixture and another teaspoon of orange zest into the bowl with the egg mixture: 

(Can you faintly see the speckles or orange zest in the bowl):

Stir in the remaining cup of whole blueberries into the flour mixture until well coated. 

Then gently fold the egg mixture into the flour bowl. Be careful not to over-mix these together. It's okay if some of the berries burst; they just make pretty swirls in the batter. Do not mix so much that the blueberry juice dyes all the batter, just leave it be at the 'swirl' stage.

Spray your muffin tins with a non-stick spray and fill each cup only part-way (about a shy 1/4 cup each)

Remember the sweetened blueberry 'sauce' that you made earlier? Nestle about 1 teaspoon of that mixture into the middle of each muffin:

Then finish filling each tin with the rest of the dough until the tin is full:

Then top-off with a good spoonful of the orange zested sugar on top of each muffin. 

Bake at 425 degrees F for about 16 minutes or so, until the tops puff up and get a crackled sugar top, like this: 

Let them cool for a minute before removing from pan otherwise they may pull apart.

We enjoyed ours for breakfast with fresh coffee from another one of Peter's gifts, a french press!

(Peter had his blueberry muffin AND a slice of banana bread):

Then it was a good thing Peter didn't take the rest of the muffins to work, because Mom surprised me with a morning visit and a walk on the beach...

 ...which turned into a long, fun adventure of the two of us climbing around cove after cove after cove....

 ...and each little cove was so beautiful that we had to keep climbing to see what new tide pools and secret beaches awaited us around the next point:

Possible alterations: 

• You could use lemon zest and make blueberry-lemon muffins!
• Cook's Illustrated says you can use 1 cup buttermilk instead of the mixture of 3/4 cup yogurt and 1/4 milk.
• Use fresh instead of frozen blueberries :)