Liquid Cocaine (Espresso and White Chocolate) Muffins

Having fun with muffins:  Our Muffin Monday ingredient today is coffee.  My younger daughter/art director suggested that I research alternative Starbucks recipes and then turn one of them into a muffin.  (The photo set up above was also her brilliant idea.)  Who knew there is a whole list of secret drinks that aren’t on the Starbucks menu?  Neither did I!  But a simple search turned up lots of fun and delicious choices.  I couldn’t resist the one called Liquid Cocaine.

Here’s how to get one at your nearest Starbucks:  Order 4 shots of espresso and 4 pumps of white chocolate syrup over ice in a grande cold cup.  Stir and enjoy.

Or make these muffins.

Ingredients
1 cup or 160g white chocolate chips (reserve about 1/8 cup or  20g to sprinkle on muffins before baking)
2 cups or 250g flour
1 cup or 225g sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup or 80ml milk
4 shots espresso (1/2 cup or 120ml), cooled
1/2 cup canola or 120ml other light oil
1 egg

Method
Preheat your oven to 350°f or 180°C and prepare your 12-cup muffin pan by greasing or lining it with muffin papers.

Put your white chocolate chips (reserving some to sprinkle on before baking) in a microwaveable bowl.  With the microwave on 50 percent power, heat for about 1 minute.  Remove from the oven and stir.  If it’s not completely melted, microwave for 30 seconds more.  Stir well and set aside.

In a large mixing bowl, combine your flour, sugar, baking powder and salt.

In another small mixing bowl, whisk together the milk, canola, egg and espresso.

Fold the wet ingredients into the dry ones, until just mixed.  Some flour may still show.

Pour the melted white chocolate into the bowl and fold gently until just mixed.  There should still be some swirls of while showing a little bit.

Divide your batter between the 12 cups.

Sprinkle with the reserved white chocolate chips.

Bake for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Allow to cool in the pan for a few minutes and them remove to a wire rack to cool completely.

Enjoy the pick-me-up!

Muffin Monday is an initiative by Baker Street, a culinary journey of sharing a wickedly delicious muffin recipe every week.  Drop Anuradha a quick line to join her on this journey to make the world smile and beat glum Monday mornings week after week.  Make sure to go and check out what my fellow bloggers have come up with this week!

Plus learn all you ever need to know about muffins, right here at Muffin 101.

Spicy Sweet Tomato Chutney

Spicy sweet tomato chutney based on Madhur Jaffery's delicious recipe from Spice Kitchen. Perfect with any meat.

If you have been reading along for a while, you know that our family has lived all around the world, in a variety of great places.  This nomadic lifestyle introduced us to vegetables, fruit, spices and other ingredients that we grew to love and adopted into our family meals, but when we moved on, sometimes those items weren’t available in the next place and we had to do without.  Mourning the loss not just a little.

With the advent of catalog shopping, the world got a little bit smaller.  When I posted my recipe for potato curry, I went on about Madhur Jaffery’s Spice Kitchen cookbook, and how I came to own curry spices again in Brazil, so I won’t tell the story again here.  But I will show you a photo of the little containers those spices came in because I remembered to take a photo this summer.  Empty now, and a little bit rusty, they live on the small shelves over my sink in Houston and their bright colors make me happy, even when I’m washing dishes.

Anyway, this tomato chutney recipe is adapted from that same well-worn, food-bespattered book. It makes a great gift for neighbors and relatives but I always have a couple of jars on hand for personal consumption.

Spicy Sweet Tomato Chutney

Tomato chutney dresses up a plain grilled chicken breast or pork chops like nothing else can, with a hit of sour, sweet and spicy. But most importantly, it preserves a bumper tomato crop for enjoyment year round.

Ingredients
12 cloves garlic, peeled
1 piece fresh ginger, about 4 inches long, 2 oz or 60g
3 cups or 710ml red wine vinegar
3 tablespoons mustard oil or extra virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon brown mustard seeds
12 fenugreek seeds
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1/2 teaspoon fennel seeds
1/2 teaspoon kalonji
4 lbs or 1.8 kg fresh ripe tomatoes (2 28-ounce cans whole tomatoes can be substituted)
3 cups or 600g sugar
3 teaspoons salt
1/2 – 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper (according to your personal preference – I use at least a teaspoon)

Method
Measure your spices out so that they are ready for adding to the pot in a hurry.

Cut the brown ends off of your garlic and peel and coarsely chop your ginger.

Put the garlic, ginger and 1/2 cup of the vinegar into the container of an electric blender and blend at high speed until smooth.

Halve the fresh tomatoes and cut out the hard cores.

Pretty summer tomatoes from the UAE.  Yes, farms do grow things in the desert. 

Heat the oil in a 4-quart, heavy-bottomed pot with non-metallic finish, over medium high heat.  When hot, add the mustards seeds.  As soon as they start to pop – this takes just a few seconds – add the fenugreek, cumin, fennel and kalonji.

Stir once quickly and add the paste from the blender. Stir paste for one minute then add the tomatoes (and juice from the can, if using,) the rest of the vinegar, the sugar, salt and cayenne pepper.  Bring to a boil.

If such things matter to you, feel free to pick the skins out of the pot with tongs as they become detached from the tomatoes.  Some can be rather thick so I do pick them out when I have that type of tomato.  Otherwise, I leave them in.

Lower heat a bit and cook, uncovered, over medium heat at first and then, as the chutney thickens, on increasingly lower heat for about 1½ - 2 hours or until chutney becomes thick.

Stir occasionally at first and more frequently as it thickens.

Pour chutney into sterilized jars while still boiling hot, putting a metal teaspoon in each jar to keep it from cracking.

Remove the teaspoon and screw the lids on tightly and turn jars upside down until they are cooled.

When the jars are cool, you can turn them upright and the vacuum seal will pop in, keeping the chutney fresh for months in a cool dry cupboard.  If the seal doesn't pop back in, store the jars in the refrigerator.

If you are giving it as a gift, by all means, make and print a pretty label.

Enjoy!

Want to continue to enjoy the season’s bounty all year long? Have a look at the wonderful Preserving the Harvest recipes we have for you today.

Cool Condiments

• Chow Chow Relish from Magnolia Days
• Homemade Hot Dog Relish from Juanita’s Cocina

Fabulous Fruits

• Apricot Ginger Jam from Happy Baking Days
• Banana Jam from Killer Bunnies, Inc
• Blueberry Cheesecake Ice Cream from Gotta Get Baked
• Blueberry Lemon Basil Jam from Daily Dish Recipes
• Candied Watermelon Rind from What Smells So Good?
• Fig and Strawberry Jam from Jane’s Adventures in Dinner
• Mixed Berry Rhubarb Jam from Hezzi-D’s Books and Cooks
• Mulberry Jam from Curious Cuisiniere
• Quick Peacharine Chutney from Shockingly Delicious
• Pineapple Upside Down Cake Freezer Jam from Cookin’ Mimi

Other Outstanding Recipes

• Fireweed Jelly from The Foodie Army Wife
• Flavoured Butters from Small Wallet, Big Appetite
• Gravlax from That Skinny Chick Can Bake

Vivacious Vegetables

• Corn Cob Jelly from Blueberries and Blessings
• Deep South Dilly Beans from Eat, Move, Shine
• Fermented (Sour) Pickles from Growing Up Gabel
• Fire Roasted Salsa from Peanut Butter and Peppers
• Hot and Spicy Giardiniera from The Messy Baker
• Hot Italian Giardiniera from Healthy. Delicious.
• Jalapeños en Escabeche (Pickled Jalapeños) from La Cocina de Leslie
• Oi Kimchi (Korean Cucumber Kimchi) from Kimchi MOM
• Refrigerator Dill Pickles from Country Girl in the Village
• Spicy Sweet Tomato Chutney from Food Lust People Love
• Traditional Escabeche (Pickle) from Basic N Delicious

Deep-fried Oreos - Guest post for Noshing with the Nolands

When fellow food blogger, Tara Noland of Noshing with the Nolands, put the call out a couple of months back for guest posts during Stampede, the Calgary equivalent of the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, you know I had to step up.  Calgary and Houston, my hometown, have much in common.  Both are cities that oil built, with a great heritage of cowboys and rodeo.  And Houston and Calgary have fabulous carnival food, including barbecue of all kinds, things on a stick, and heart-stopping fried everything.  My younger sister and I were researching and brainstorming (imagine dueling banjos but with laptops) what I should make and deep-fried Oreos came up.  They sounded perfect for this post. 

Deep-fried Oreos.  Roll that around on your tongue for a bit.  Uh-huh.  That's what I'm talking about.  Doughnut batter engulfing an innocent Oreo, deep-fried till the melty double stuff melts.  Yes, I said melt twice.  Have another quick look at the photo above. That's right.  This is a guest post, so that means you have to head on over to Noshing with the Nolands to read it.   Follow this link and git along now!  

Enjoy!