Indian Corn Pudding with Date Honey for #RandomRecipeChallenge

This simple cornmeal pudding is flavored with date honey but you could easily substitute any syrup you love.  Cooked in a crockpot or slow cooker, it makes an easy, belly-warming sweet finish to any meal.

I’m now in my second go-round of living in the Middle East, but the fact of the matter is that I fear I have barely touched the surface of the ingredients available here. Take date honey, for instance.  I first noticed date honey, or date syrup as it sometimes called, when we moved to Dubai back in November last year but I’d never bought it because I had no idea what to do with it.  Then, last May, on a holiday with my mother in the region, our hotel had a bowl of it out at breakfast.  I put it in my plain yogurt and everyone else was spreading it on buttered toast.  But I still never bought any of my own.  So I was delighted when Dom from Belleau Kitchen set using a local ingredient as our Random Recipe Challenge for this month.  I love Dom’s challenges because they are the impetus I need to try something new, even when sometimes it’s just a recipe in a book I’ve had for years so I bought a big bottle of date honey and prepared to use it in a recipe.

Unfortunately, an EatYourBooks search of date syrup and/or honey showed up zero recipes in my own cookbook collection.  It tastes more like molasses rather than honey or syrup, so I changed the search parameter to molasses and my chosen number lead me a recipe in a book I have never, ever cooked from, Lora Brody’s Slow Cooker Cooking.  I bought it online several years ago meaning for it to be a gift for my elder daughter, along with a crockpot, but she declined the gift idea, saying, quite rightly, that she didn’t need a heavy appliance to lug around.  So I was left with the book and I popped it on my shelf and forgot about it.  It’s actually quite a nice cookbook and I regret neglecting it.  That said, I halved the recipe because I wasn’t sure about a slow cooker sweet dish.  I shouldn’t have worried.  It was delicious, especially with a big slurp of pouring cream.  My husband declared it very good, in fact.  So go ahead and double everything and cook for nine hours.  Live large!  And try something local that is made or grown in YOUR neighborhood.

Click on the badge to see the Random Recipe Challenge rules.

Ingredients
1/4 cup or about 70g yellow cornmeal
2 cups or 275ml whole milk
1/4 cup or 60ml date honey or syrup (or sub molasses/treacle as in the original recipe)
1 tablespoon granulated sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon butter, cut into two pieces, plus extra for greasing slow cooker
1 egg, lightly beaten

Method
In a small mixing bowl, whisk your egg, a half cup of the milk and the date honey. Set aside.

Check out how dark this stuff is! 

Butter the inside of your slow cooker.  Do not turn it on yet.

Place the cornmeal in a medium heavy-bottomed saucepan.  Pour in a half cup of the milk; whisk constantly as you pour, so that the cornmeal does not form lumps.

Add your sugar, salt and baking soda to the egg/milk/molasses bowl and whisk again.  Add this mixture to the saucepan along with the butter and whisk well.

Set the saucepan over medium-high heat and cook the mixture, whisking constantly and making sure to reach into the corners of the pan, until small bubbles start to form on the surface and the mixture starts to thicken.  This takes just a few minutes.

Remove from the heat and immediately add the remaining cup of milk, whisking vigorously to dissolve any lumps.

Pour the mixture into the buttered insert of the slow cooker.

Cover and cook on LOW for about four and a half or five hours, or until the outer edges and top have darkened and the middle just jiggles a little.  Turn off the slow cooker and let the pudding cool slightly, uncovered.

Serve with vanilla ice cream or a good helping of thick pouring cream.

It rather makes its own sauce as well. 

Enjoy!

Pumpkin Pie Muffins #MuffinMonday

Baking with mashed pumpkin adds moisture to batters and doughs, making breads, cakes and muffins healthier because of you can cut down on oil and butter, not to mention the betacarotene, but don’t let that reason alone convince you.  Pumpkin adds enormous rich flavor as well.  

I’m going to admit to something autumnally treasonous.  I am not a fan of pumpkin pie.  Please don’t hurt me.  It’s a texture thing.  That doesn’t mean I don’t like the flavors though so I prefer to put pumpkin in blondies, cookies, muffins, bread and cake.  Adding pumpkin pie spice to this muffin batter gave me the joy I imagine folks find in pumpkin pie without that icky wobbly pie filling to endure.  And the whole house smelled like Thanksgiving and Christmas while they baked.  Win-win.

I can’t find pumpkin pie spice here in Dubai, so I used this recipe here  for the batter and made up my own mix of spices.  I’d say it was a successful substitution.

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups or 190g all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon pumpkin pie spice
(or 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon, 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger, 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg, 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves and 1/4 teaspoon ground allspice)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup or 225g sugar
1/2 15 oz can or almost one cup or 215g pure pumpkin (not pumpkin pie filling)
2 eggs
1/4 cup or 60ml canola oil
1/4 cup or 60ml orange juice

Method
Preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C and prepare your 12-cup muffin pan by greasing it thoroughly, spraying with non-stick spray or lining it with paper muffin cups.

In a large bowl, mix together the flour, spices, baking soda, salt and sugar and stir well.

In another bowl, whisk together the pumpkin, oil, orange juice and eggs.

Pour your wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and fold them together until just mixed.

Divide the batter evenly among the muffin cups.

Bake in the preheated oven about 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

Cool for a few minutes and then remove the muffins and put on a rack to cool completely.

Enjoy!

Pin it!

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Triple Booberry Muffins #MuffinMonday

I love flavoring muffins with jams and fruity yogurts because I almost always have both on hand.  This recipe is easily changed to suit whatever is in your cupboard or refrigerator, with or without the addition of extra fruit. 

A couple of weeks back, I made a normal blueberry muffin.  Some cinnamon, a beige batter, a dusting of powdered sugar – simple but lovely.  This week, with our ingredient of choice actually being blueberries, I knew I had to kick it up a notch or two.  Make it the blueberriest possible.  So, I stirred in some blueberry jam, blueberry yogurt and whole blueberries.  Which left me with a distinctly purple batter.  As I browsed through my embarrassingly large collection of paper muffin cups, the Halloween ones seemed like the perfect match.

It's a sickness, people! Send help!  (Or more muffin cups, as the spirit moves you.)

So then I had to change the name from Blueberriest Muffins to Triple Booberry Muffins.  Yeah, I know.  Corny.  But if you are looking for a relatively healthy addition to your Halloween party table, these babies are it!

Ingredients
For the muffin batter:
2 cups or 250g flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
2 eggs
1/2 cup or about 120g blueberry yogurt
1/2 cup or about 150g blueberry jam (Mine was “no sugar added” – if your jam is really sweet, you can adjust the amount of sugar or you may like a sweeter muffin – up to you)
1/3 cup or 80ml canola oil
1/2 cup or about 65g fresh or frozen blueberries

For the glaze: 1/4 cup or 75g blueberry jam (optional)

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

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

In another smaller bowl, whisk together your eggs, blueberry yogurt, blueberry jam and oil.

Pour your wet mixture into the dry ingredients and stir until they are just combined.  There should be some dry flour still showing.

Check out that deep purple! 

Fold in the whole blueberries.

Divide the batter evenly between the muffin cups.

Okay, so it's not a pretty color - but the taste! Blueberrilicious!

Bake for about 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean when inserted in the middle.  It’s hard to see when a purplish blue muffin is golden so the toothpick test is best.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool for a few minutes.  Remove the muffins from the pan and cool further on a wire rack.

If you want to glaze them, stir your extra jam around to loosen it a little bit and then brush it on your muffins while they are still slightly warm.

Enjoy!