Pantry Magic

At the same time as the WISH Card Challenge, I've been taking the opportunity to organise my pantry, freezers and stockpile.  It's meant that I've uncovered some finds that quite frankly nobody wants to claim.

The finds have not been anything to be excited about - usually something that has been pushed to the back of the pantry because nobody wants to look at it never mind eat it.  The exception are the surviving chocolate bunnies from Easter. Said bunnies are now living on borrowed time now that TootToot has remembered they are there.

One particularly unpleasant find was the discovery of a container of a muesli type cereal which had been lurking at the back of the middle pantry shelf since February. The picture on the box had promised us a feast of dried fruits, wholegrain flakes, oats and slivered almonds.  At home and with the box opened up it both resembled and tasted like horse chaff or sawdust.

Could frugal knowledge and cooking from scratch skills allow me to turn something that was truly inedible garbage into a tasty treat?

Muesli bars were thought of and swiftly discounted. TootToot has braces and really chewy sticky foods are not on the menu.  GuitarMan asked if it could be used in cookies. Brilliant!

I grabbed my $21 Challenge Book and made a half quantity of the basic biscuit mixture on page 176 and added a few additional ingredients.  Here's the result.

Muesli Cookies

1/2 quantity of bulk cookie mix (you can view the basic recipe and method via the link above)

To this I added

2 Cups Muesli Cereal
5 Tablespoons Maple Syrup
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

These may not be the best looking cookies you ever saw but they're tasty and will make good lunchbox treats in coming weeks.  I got 65 cookies from this batch and I'll freeze them to grab later when making up lunches.

You know, when I think of the amount of food we previously threw out I cringe.  When we were still firmly in our spendthrift ways, the cereal would have gone straight into the garbage with never another thought. Now I view things differently, challenging ingredients are an opportunity to work some pantry magic.

Raspberry and White Chocolate Muffins

For Mothers Day I was lucky enough to get a red Kitchenaid mixer.  Well Mothers Day was just the excuse. I'm not Guitarman's mother but he knew I needed a new mixer as our 25 year old hand mixer had mixed its last batch of muffins.  I expect that this new mixer will see me through the rest of my baking days and it is so lovely to use.

Wherever I can I cook from scratch.  By cooking from scratch I know exactly what my famly are eating and we take time to sit down together and eat as part of connecting with each other at the end of the day.  I read a blog post today from overamillionorbust about her daughter's milk intolerance.  That post reminded me that I started cooking pretty much everything from scratch when TootToot was a baby. 

TootToot was a premmie and she couldn't tolerate cows milk in any form before she was two.  A lot of commercially prepared foods contain some form of milk solid, never mind all the sugar and salt.  Eight years on TootToot has very diverse tastes and none of the pickiness around food that other kids her age do - and she's a healthy weight because her diet is varied.

The other effect of cooking from scratch is that you can eat really good quality food for a hell of a lot less money.  I'll post a favourite recipe each week.

This week's recipe is Raspberry and White Chocolate Muffins.  I picked this up while in the US from a Ghirardelli chocolate packet. The mix makes twelve standard size muffins and would probably make around eight Texas style muffins.

Warning: don't even think about counting the calories in these. Enjoy!

Raspberry and White Chocolate Muffins

100g butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg
1 cup milk ( I use milk powder and water)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon baking powder
2 cups flour
225g of chopped white chocolate
1/2 cup fresh or frozen raspberries

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 180 C
2. Grease muffin cups or line with papers.  I use silicone and don't need to grease or use papers.
3. Cream the butter and sugar until smooth
4. Add egg, milk and vanilla. Mix until well blended.
5. Combine the baking powder and flour.  Add to mix along with chocolate. If you don't have white chocolate you can also use milk or dark but won't be as nice.  I've even used leftover Easter eggs.
6. Mix until just combined.
7. Gently fold in your raspberries.
8. Divide between muffin cups.
9. Cook for twenty minutes (may need slightly longer if your oven isn't fan forced)
10. Cool in tin for ten minutes before turning out.  This is very important - the muffins will disintegrate if you take them out of the tin too soon.
11. Dust with icing sugar.
12. Equally yummy served warm or cold.
13. Can be served warm as a dessert with ice cream.