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Wednesday, November 10, 2004

Strawberry friands 

I thought I'd better add the recipe, considering I posted the pic on my blog!

You'll need:
175g butter, melted
100g icing sugar (I'd run out, so used raw sugar, powdered with my kitchen whiz thingy)
100g ground almonds
75g plain flour
5 egg whites
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 cup coarsely chopped fresh strawberries
Extra chopped strawberries for garnishing

Method:
Preheat oven to 200°C, grease friand moulds or muffin cups. (You can see from the pic, that I used some of each.)

Put icing sugar, ground almonds and flour in a mixing bowl. Blend well with a wooden spoon. Add egg whites and vanilla and mix lightly.

Pour in melted butter. Mix until well-blended. (I stuffed this bit up and added the melted butter before the egg whites and vanilla - I don't think it made a difference - they were still delicious!)

Stir in strawberries and spoon mixture into moulds, up to 2/3 full. Scatter more pieces of strawberry over the top for decoration.

Bake in preheated oven for 25 minutes or until the tops are firm to the touch. Allow to stand for 5 minutes before removing from moulds to a wire rack to cool. Dust with icing sugar if desired. (I didn't.)


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Monday, November 01, 2004

Blueberry Beer-Batter Pancakes 

Heheeeheee... what to make for breakfast when you realize that you want blueberry pancakes, but forgot about eggs and milk...

Ingredients
  • 1 bottle or can (12 oz.) beer -- the lighter/cheaper the better ... Coors Light, Rolling Rock, Bud Light are good choices. If you normally drink heavier beer, try Killians Irish Red as an alternative here. And yes, the alcohol cooks off.
  • 2 C. Bisquick or Jiffy Baking Mix
  • 1 pt. blueberries, washed
  • oil or cooking spray

Instructions

  1. Add ~ 2 T. oil to large skillet or griddle (or spray with cooking spray). Heat pan over medium high heat until it "sizzles" when you sprinkle a few drops of water on it.
  2. Mix 2 C. baking mix with beer. This is "to taste"... NO, DON'T *actually* TASTE IT...I mean, depending on how thick or thin you like your pancake batter. Everyone does it differently, so use your own judgement. I've used almost a whole bottle to 2 C. mix, and it works great.
  3. Pour pancake batter onto hot pan into desired size pancakes.*
  4. Add blueberries to pancakes -- I like to make smiley faces with mine... :-)
  5. Cook first side of pancake til the outside edge starts to turn "matte" (i.e. not shiny) and the bubbles that come to the surface of the uncooked side all pop. If you peek at the underside it will be golden brown.
  6. Flip the pancake!
  7. Cook second side til golden brown and the whole pancake sort of "puffs up" a little.
  8. Butter your beautiful** blueberry beer batter pancakes (say that 3 times fast!) and enjoy with or without syrup!

* Generally, the first pancake is always the cruddiest... so if you are trying to make them look good, make one pancake (to soak up the extra oil on the skillet) and eat it yourself. :-)

** Okay, so this is just for alliteration... these don't always look so beautiful, because blueberry pancakes tend to be messy, but they always taste delicious!


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