Cottage Cheese Blueberry Muffins

Cottage cheese?!  I know, sounds disgusting, but don’t knock it ’til you try it.

I was wary, too. However, when I looked in the fridge and we had an almost-full container of cottage cheese, I had to use it.

I just can’t waste food.  Did you know that American’s waste almost 40% of food produced for consumption?? And that was in 2011.

That’s just sad.  I use slimy spinach in my green monsters, black bananas in banana bread, and almost moldy bread for bread pudding.

Here are some more tricks for using “bad food”:

• Freeze sour milk. I know that sounds sick, but you can use sour milk for baking. (Hello, buttermilk.)
• Save vegetable scraps for stock. 
• Save fruit scraps for a nice smelling house. Just boil them in water and your house will smell great in minutes.
• Put oil and vinegar in an almost empty Mayo container to make salad dressing.
• Make “Overnight Oats in a Peanut Butter Jar” with almost empty peanut butter jars.
• Keep bacon grease for cooking.  
• If you don’t like the heels of bread, throw them in the food processor and use them as bread crumbs.

We waste so much because we can. Plain and simple.  Put yourself in someone’s shoes who doesn’t have the luxuries we do, and maybe you’ll think twice before you throw something out.

What do you do with “bad foods”?

Cottage Cheese Blueberry Muffins

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup butter, softened or coconut oil
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup creamed cottage cheese
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 cups flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1 1/2 cups blueberries

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. In a food processor, cream the cottage cheese until smooth.
3. In a mixer cream butter, sugar and cottage cheese until fluffy. Add eggs one at a time. Mix in vanilla.
4. In separate bowl, mix flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Blend flour mixture with butter mixture just until blended.
5. Add milk and only stir just to blend — do not over mix.
6. Carefully fold in blueberries. Batter mixture will be thick.
7. Grease and flour a muffin tin (or use muffin tin holders).
8. Bake for 18-20 minutes or until the tops are slightly browned and an inserted toothpick comes out clean.

Lemon Blueberry Chocolate Chip Muffins

Happy Father’s Day to all the wonderful dad’s out there.  I’m blessed to have such an awesome one! 🙂  Love you dad!


This is actually not what I made my dad for father’s day, but they’re still yummy and I’ve been meaning to put this recipe up!  They’re delicious muffins and fairly healthy for you!


I surprised my dad with one of his mother’s old coffee cake recipes and he loved it.  I’ll post the recipe soon!

I also made him this card:

He loves McDonalds.  He goes there to get coffee at least twice a day!

How are you all celebrating Father’s Day?

 

Lemon Blueberry Chocolate Chip Muffins
93 cals each!


Ingredients:


1 cup flour
1/4 cup brown sugar

• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 egg
• 1/4 cup applesauce 
• 1/4 cup plain yogurt
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/4 teaspoon lemon extract
• 1/3 cup dried fruit (I used blueberry infused craisins… umm YUM)
• 1/3 cup semisweet chocolate chips

1. In a large bowl, combine the egg, oil, yogurt and vanilla. 2. Add the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
3. Stir ingredients just until moistened.
4. Fold in dried fruit and chocolate chips.
5. Fill greased or paper-lined muffin cups by the tablespoon.
6. Bake at 350 degrees F for 22-25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool for 5 minutes before 
removing from pans to wire racks.

NYC Trip/ Fig and Blueberry Scones

Wow wow wow!!!

I’m feeling a little overwhelmed about writing this post, so if it’s scattered, bear with me!

I just got back from New York and it was amazing.  We had great food, awesome entertainment, and wonderful hosts.  I am so bummed to be home; school, work, and exercise just don’t compare.  Back to reality it is…. but I don’t like reality, so I’m going to relive our trip in this post with pictures.

Also, a HUGEEEEE thanks to Alyssa for doing a guest post for me.  I hope you all made her yummy balls (ha ha ha).  They’re next on my to-do list.

You should all go enter in this amazing giveaway, by the way!

New York: Spring Break ’11

View from Central Park… It was a pretty chilly.  I hate cold weather, but I would take it right now!

Kellen and his bro, Stuart on the subway.  I llooovveed the subway.  Freak? Maybe..

We had a pastrami sandwich at Kat’z.  It was so, so good.  I wish I would’ve taken pictures of all the food we ate.

Beautiful St. Patrick’s  Cathedral.

So. Much. Walking…

In awe of the gorgeous church.

My silly boyfriend…

…posing.  What’s new?

Taking a little photo shoot break.

View from the Brooklyn Bridge.  We walked all the way across.  So many lights!

Still loving the subway.

Times Square!

Checkin’ out the sky from the Museum of Modern Art.

Haha!

Kellen could not get enough sushi.  I’m pretty sure we ate it 3 times… and then had it for dinner the day we got home. Ridiculous.

Yumm… Donut Plant donuts.

The Met!!  So awesome.

Watching “Newsical the Musical”.  It was hilarious!!!  If you go to New York, I definitely recommend going to see it.  I laughed all the way through.

Bye, New York… 😦

Well, there’s our trip in a nutshell.  I wish I would have documented more, but it’s probably a good thing I didn’t, considering that this post already has about 50 pictures.

————

When I got home, I had a nice surprise waiting for me.   I’m going to leave you with these Blueberry and Fig Scones from the Green Market Baking Book that I wrote about last week and I’ll let you figure out what the surprise was.  😉

By the way, the book is now half off at Amazon if you click on this link.  I suggest you buy the book and make these scones because they are seriously tasty.  The outside has a nice crunch to it and the inside is soft and fluffy.  Also, I never realized how easy it is to make scones.  I was always too intimidated to make them before because they seemed like a daunting task.  Not even!!  I was unsure about the fig and blueberry combination, but it’s to die for.  For real.  If you buy the book, the recipe is on page 96.

Any guesses as to what my surprise was? 🙂

NYC Trip/ Fig and Blueberry Scones

Wow wow wow!!!

I’m feeling a little overwhelmed about writing this post, so if it’s scattered, bear with me!

I just got back from New York and it was amazing.  We had great food, awesome entertainment, and wonderful hosts.  I am so bummed to be home; school, work, and exercise just don’t compare.  Back to reality it is…. but I don’t like reality, so I’m going to relive our trip in this post with pictures.

Also, a HUGEEEEE thanks to Alyssa for doing a guest post for me.  I hope you all made her yummy balls (ha ha ha).  They’re next on my to-do list.

You should all go enter in this amazing giveaway, by the way!

New York: Spring Break ’11

View from Central Park… It was a pretty chilly.  I hate cold weather, but I would take it right now!

Kellen and his bro, Stuart on the subway.  I llooovveed the subway.  Freak? Maybe..

We had a pastrami sandwich at Kat’z.  It was so, so good.  I wish I would’ve taken pictures of all the food we ate.

Beautiful St. Patrick’s  Cathedral.

So. Much. Walking…

In awe of the gorgeous church.

My silly boyfriend…

…posing.  What’s new?

Taking a little photo shoot break.

View from the Brooklyn Bridge.  We walked all the way across.  So many lights!

Still loving the subway.

Times Square!

Checkin’ out the sky from the Museum of Modern Art.

Haha!

Kellen could not get enough sushi.  I’m pretty sure we ate it 3 times… and then had it for dinner the day we got home. Ridiculous.

Yumm… Donut Plant donuts.

The Met!!  So awesome.

Watching “Newsical the Musical”.  It was hilarious!!!  If you go to New York, I definitely recommend going to see it.  I laughed all the way through.

Bye, New York… 😦

Well, there’s our trip in a nutshell.  I wish I would have documented more, but it’s probably a good thing I didn’t, considering that this post already has about 50 pictures.

————

When I got home, I had a nice surprise waiting for me.   I’m going to leave you with these Blueberry and Fig Scones from the Green Market Baking Book that I wrote about last week and I’ll let you figure out what the surprise was.  😉

By the way, the book is now half off at Amazon if you click on this link.  I suggest you buy the book and make these scones because they are seriously tasty.  The outside has a nice crunch to it and the inside is soft and fluffy.  Also, I never realized how easy it is to make scones.  I was always too intimidated to make them before because they seemed like a daunting task.  Not even!!  I was unsure about the fig and blueberry combination, but it’s to die for.  For real.  If you buy the book, the recipe is on page 96.

Any guesses as to what my surprise was? 🙂

Pancake Cookies

When dessert = breakfast, the world is right.

When these are around, even this stupid cold weather can’t get me down.

I’m thankful that it’s taken so long for it to start getting cold, but the getting cold part had to come and that’s stupid.  And it came without snow, which is even stupid…er.  More stupid.

Luckily, cold weather means Christmas, and who doesn’t love Christmas?  Probably a lot of people.  I’m not one of them, though.

Christmas can be pretty expensive, right? So you should bake for people!  Start freezing things now and you’ll have plenty of stuff by Christmas.  Start with these cookies!  I’m pretty proud of these.  I had to bring food to class for one of my finals, and I couldn’t decide between breakfast food or dessert.  Always a hard choice, so why not combine the two… which would make it completely acceptable to eat dessert for breakfast… because it’s not even dessert, it’s breakfast.  They are in the form of cookies (light, fluffy, delicious cookies), but they taste like pancakes.  And the frosting tastes like butter and maple syrup. Perfect!!


Pancake Cookies

 This is what the dough…batter.. whatever… looks like.

 Put on baking sheet and add topping of choice.

 This is what they look like baked.

 And this is how they look iced.. yummm!

Ingredients

 Cookie:

• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 tablespoon milk
• 1/2 cup butter, room temp (8 tablespoons or 1 stick)
• 1/2 cup frozen blueberries, thawed or chocolate chips

Icing:

• 1/2 cup butter
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 4 cups confectioners’ sugar
• 1 tablespoon maple syrup
• 1/4 cup milk

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. In a large bowl, sift together flour, salt, and baking powder. In a small bowl, beat together sugar and butter. Stir into flour mixture. Beat together the egg and milk and add to the mixture.  Fold in the blueberries or chocolate chips. (Or you can just wait until you put them on the baking sheet and put a few on top like I did)
3. Scoop by tablespoons onto a parchment-lined baking sheet.  Bake for 10-15 minutes or until slightly golden, but still fluffy to the touch. Let cool.
4. In a large bowl, cream butter until light and fluffy. Add salt, vanilla, confectioners’ sugar (to your liking…may not use it all), milk, and syrup. Beat well. 
5. Once the cookies are cool, drizzle icing over cooled cookies. 

Pancake Cookies

When dessert = breakfast, the world is right.

When these are around, even this stupid cold weather can’t get me down.

I’m thankful that it’s taken so long for it to start getting cold, but the getting cold part had to come and that’s stupid.  And it came without snow, which is even stupid…er.  More stupid.

Luckily, cold weather means Christmas, and who doesn’t love Christmas?  Probably a lot of people.  I’m not one of them, though.

Christmas can be pretty expensive, right? So you should bake for people!  Start freezing things now and you’ll have plenty of stuff by Christmas.  Start with these cookies!  I’m pretty proud of these.  I had to bring food to class for one of my finals, and I couldn’t decide between breakfast food or dessert.  Always a hard choice, so why not combine the two… which would make it completely acceptable to eat dessert for breakfast… because it’s not even dessert, it’s breakfast.  They are in the form of cookies (light, fluffy, delicious cookies), but they taste like pancakes.  And the frosting tastes like butter and maple syrup. Perfect!!


Pancake Cookies

 This is what the dough…batter.. whatever… looks like.

 Put on baking sheet and add topping of choice.

 This is what they look like baked.

 And this is how they look iced.. yummm!

Ingredients

 Cookie:

• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 tablespoon milk
• 1/2 cup butter, room temp (8 tablespoons or 1 stick)
• 1/2 cup frozen blueberries, thawed or chocolate chips

Icing:

• 1/2 cup butter
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 4 cups confectioners’ sugar
• 1 tablespoon maple syrup
• 1/4 cup milk

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. In a large bowl, sift together flour, salt, and baking powder. In a small bowl, beat together sugar and butter. Stir into flour mixture. Beat together the egg and milk and add to the mixture.  Fold in the blueberries or chocolate chips. (Or you can just wait until you put them on the baking sheet and put a few on top like I did)
3. Scoop by tablespoons onto a parchment-lined baking sheet.  Bake for 10-15 minutes or until slightly golden, but still fluffy to the touch. Let cool.
4. In a large bowl, cream butter until light and fluffy. Add salt, vanilla, confectioners’ sugar (to your liking…may not use it all), milk, and syrup. Beat well. 
5. Once the cookies are cool, drizzle icing over cooled cookies. 

Creamy Homemade Blueberry Pie Ice Cream

I have a corny sense of humor.

I love jokes that are so stupid you just have to laugh at them.

Why did the golfer wear two pairs of paints?
In case he got a hole-in-one.

Haha!  Funny, right?

Well anyway, you can imagine my disappointment when, on Sunday, I tried making this ice cream concoction and my (moms) ice cream machine wasn’t cold enough so I wasn’t able to name this post “Ice Cream Sunday”.

I’m sorry that I wasn’t able to provide you all with such a clever title, which I’m sure has never been used before.

What I can provide you with, though, is an extremely delicious ice cream recipe!  We had some blueberries in the fridge and I still hadn’t thought of an ice cream to make yet, and from there it’s all history.  The pieces of frozen pie crust in this are so delicious, and the whole blueberries/blueberry sauce add a very nice touch to the whole thing.  Mmm!

Put together oil and water.

Roll out dough and poke holes in it.

Baked pie crust.

Break cooled pie crust into pieces.

Somewhere in between here, make the blueberry filling.

Make Ice Cream mixture

Make ice cream according to ice cream maker’s instructions.

Put in a cup.

Admire the gobs of blueberries and broken pie crust.

Devour!

Blueberry Pie Ice Cream

Ingredients

Mom’s Pie Crust:
1/3 cup water
2/3 cup vegetable oil
2 cups flour
(Or use a store bought pie crust/your own recipe)
**You will probably only use half of this recipe.

Blueberry Filling:
1 cup blueberries
1 tbsp cornstarch
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup water

Ice Cream:
Adapted From:  Cuisinart
1 cup whole milk
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 cups heavy cream
1 tablespoons pure vanilla extract

Instructions

Preheat oven to 375.
First, make the pie crust.  Fill a measuring cup 1/3 cup full with water.  Add 2/3 cup oil, add in a couple of ice cubes, and mix until combined and cold.  Put flour in a bowl and slowly pour the oil/water mixture into the flour, combining with your hands.  Mix with hands until just combined. Do not overmix!
Let dough chill in the fridge while you make blueberry sauce.
For the blueberry sauce, combine all ingredients in a small saucepan on low heat until the mixture thickens a bit, adding more water if needed.
Once your blueberry mixture is finished, chill in the refrigerator.
Get out the pie crust.  **You will only need half, unless you want your ice cream to consist mostly of crust.  Freeze the other half or refrigerate for later use… like for this!: Delicious Symphony Bar Pie.  Roll out the dough on a well-floured surface.  Once rolled out, place on a cookie sheet and poke holes in the dough.  Bake in preheated oven for 12-15 minutes or until dough is firm.  It will not be darker.
Let the crust cool, break into small pieces and store in freezer for later use in ice cream.
Now, make the ice cream.
In a medium mixing bowl, use a hand mixer on low speed to combine the milk and granulated sugar until the sugar is dissolved, about 1 to 2 minutes.
Stir in the heavy cream and vanilla. Turn the machine on; pour the mixture into freezer bowl, and let mix until thickened, about 20 to 25 minutes. The ice cream will have a soft, creamy texture.
At this point, go ahead and pour in your chilled blueberry mixture and desired amount of broken up crust.
If a firmer consistency is desired, transfer the ice cream to an airtight container and place in freezer for about 2 hours. Remove from freezer about 15 minutes before serving.
Enjoy! 🙂

Creamy Homemade Blueberry Pie Ice Cream

I have a corny sense of humor.

I love jokes that are so stupid you just have to laugh at them.

Why did the golfer wear two pairs of paints?
In case he got a hole-in-one.

Haha!  Funny, right?

Well anyway, you can imagine my disappointment when, on Sunday, I tried making this ice cream concoction and my (moms) ice cream machine wasn’t cold enough so I wasn’t able to name this post “Ice Cream Sunday”.

I’m sorry that I wasn’t able to provide you all with such a clever title, which I’m sure has never been used before.

What I can provide you with, though, is an extremely delicious ice cream recipe!  We had some blueberries in the fridge and I still hadn’t thought of an ice cream to make yet, and from there it’s all history.  The pieces of frozen pie crust in this are so delicious, and the whole blueberries/blueberry sauce add a very nice touch to the whole thing.  Mmm!

Put together oil and water.

Roll out dough and poke holes in it.

Baked pie crust.

Break cooled pie crust into pieces.

Somewhere in between here, make the blueberry filling.

Make Ice Cream mixture

Make ice cream according to ice cream maker’s instructions.

Put in a cup.

Admire the gobs of blueberries and broken pie crust.

Devour!

Blueberry Pie Ice Cream

Ingredients

Mom’s Pie Crust:
1/3 cup water
2/3 cup vegetable oil
2 cups flour
(Or use a store bought pie crust/your own recipe)
**You will probably only use half of this recipe.

Blueberry Filling:
1 cup blueberries
1 tbsp cornstarch
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup water

Ice Cream:
Adapted From:  Cuisinart
1 cup whole milk
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 cups heavy cream
1 tablespoons pure vanilla extract

Instructions

Preheat oven to 375.
First, make the pie crust.  Fill a measuring cup 1/3 cup full with water.  Add 2/3 cup oil, add in a couple of ice cubes, and mix until combined and cold.  Put flour in a bowl and slowly pour the oil/water mixture into the flour, combining with your hands.  Mix with hands until just combined. Do not overmix!
Let dough chill in the fridge while you make blueberry sauce.
For the blueberry sauce, combine all ingredients in a small saucepan on low heat until the mixture thickens a bit, adding more water if needed.
Once your blueberry mixture is finished, chill in the refrigerator.
Get out the pie crust.  **You will only need half, unless you want your ice cream to consist mostly of crust.  Freeze the other half or refrigerate for later use… like for this!: Delicious Symphony Bar Pie.  Roll out the dough on a well-floured surface.  Once rolled out, place on a cookie sheet and poke holes in the dough.  Bake in preheated oven for 12-15 minutes or until dough is firm.  It will not be darker.
Let the crust cool, break into small pieces and store in freezer for later use in ice cream.
Now, make the ice cream.
In a medium mixing bowl, use a hand mixer on low speed to combine the milk and granulated sugar until the sugar is dissolved, about 1 to 2 minutes.
Stir in the heavy cream and vanilla. Turn the machine on; pour the mixture into freezer bowl, and let mix until thickened, about 20 to 25 minutes. The ice cream will have a soft, creamy texture.
At this point, go ahead and pour in your chilled blueberry mixture and desired amount of broken up crust.
If a firmer consistency is desired, transfer the ice cream to an airtight container and place in freezer for about 2 hours. Remove from freezer about 15 minutes before serving.
Enjoy! 🙂