Peanut Butter Frosting

I needed to send Logan to daycare with a gluten-free cupcake a couple of weeks back, as they were celebrating our daycare provider's son's birthday.  What better excuse than to make ourselves some cupcakes???  

I cheated and made one of the Betty Crocker gluten-free cake mixes that is new to Canada.  I am definitely not the "make a cake from a box" type.  But I'm cutting what corners I can these days, and this is one of them.  I didn't want to be wasting my time testing gf cakes that ended up not working.  And, as it turns out, these were actually pretty good.

I whipped up some of this delicious frosting to go on top of them.  I've made this with both peanut butter and sunbutter.  And since I'm a bit of a pb-aholic, I have to say that I preferred the peanut butter version.  But the sunbutter ones weren't too shabby either ;)

1 C creamy peanut butter
1/2 C margarine
2 C powdered sugar
1/2 tsp. vanilla
3 tbsp. milk

Whisk or blend together all ingredients until smooth and creamy, adding more or less milk to achieve the desired consistency.  

This is super quick to make.  I whipped it up, dug out a bit of the cupcake with an apple corer,

and stuffed it full of this frosting.

Then I just piped some on top.  For instructions on how to pipe the icing, check out my lemon cupcakes here.

Difficulty level:  easy to make the icing, moderate to pipe it

For a dairy-free/vegan version, use Earth balance instead of the margarine and coconut or almond milk for milk.

For a nut-free version, use soy butter or sunbutter instead of the peanut butter.

Blueberry Maple Syrup Pie

Since starting my blog a few years back, I have spoken frequently of my various food obsessions: yogurt, cake decorating, brownies, taco salad, fondants au chocolat, soup, chai lattés... the list goes on.  In fact, if you type the word obsessed in my search engine, you get quite a few hits.  These obsessions tend to come and go in phases.  Right now, I'm not so slightly obsessed with fruit.

This happens to me every summer.

Fruit is sooooooooo much better in the summer.  And most fruit is really only at the peak of its season for a short time.  So I stock up and gorge myself on fresh seasonal fruit the minute it starts hitting the markets.  Because I am so done with the whole apple, banana, not so good strawberries, blah, blah routine of winter.  We actually usually go get our own strawberries and apples each year, but chose to forego our usual strawberry picking trip until the kids get a bit older.

But back to my obsession.

When I went shopping the other day, I must have been in a particularly fruit craving mood.  As here is what I ended up coming home with: 

- a bag of oranges
- a Costco-sized bag of apples
- a watermelon
- 3 containers of blueberries
- 2 containers of raspberries
- a basket of strawberries
- a Costco-sized box of plums
- 2 huge bunches of bananas
- 4 huge bags of cherries (what??? they were on sale for $1.79/lb)

Now let's not forget that there are really only two of us eating all of this fruit, since Logan eats like a bird.  A dead bird.  At least Camille is here visiting with us, so she'll be able to help us actually see inside the fridge again.

(This is sooooooooooooo Lindsay... I'm sure my family is laughing at me now).

So when we invited Heather, Bap and the kids over for a barbecue this past weekend, I decided that dessert had to meet three criteria: 

(1) it had to do something with some of my fruit; 
(2) it had to be simple, as I didn't have a ton of time; 
(3) of course, it had to be delicious.  

And this recipe, which I had made once several years back, completely fit the bill.

This is kind of like a blueberry version of sucre à la crème.  In a pie.  And perfectly sweet.  The filling would also work wonderfully as a topping for ice cream, pound cake, pancakes or as a cake filling. Or even canned as gifts.

I normally would have made my homemade whole wheat crust, but I have been so busy lately that I ended up just buying a store bought crust (gasp!).  Not so good.  I don't recommend it.  Particularly if you're serving it to two French people.

1 pie crust
1/4 C butter
6 tbsp. flour
1 C maple syrup
2 C blueberries (fresh or frozen)

1.  Allow pie crust to defrost 10-15 minutes at room temperature.  Heat the oven to 400 degrees Farenheit.  Pierce the bottom and sides of the pie crust with a fork.  Cook for 8-10 minutes or until slightly browned.  Let fully cool.

2.  In a pan, melt the butter, then add the flour.  Cook for approximately 2 minutes, constantly stirring in order to avoid discolouration.

3.  Add the maple syrup and, with a whisk, mix constantly so as to dissolve the butter/flour mixture into the syrup.  

4.  As soon as the mixture begins to boil, add the blueberries (add while frozen, if using frozen).  

 

5.  Bring to a boil again and continue cooking until the mixture thickens (approximately 3 minutes).  It is super, super important to keep stirring the entire time this is cooking.  Due to the maple syrup, this will quickly burn if left unattended.

6.  Pour the mixture into the pie crust and let cool completely, then place in the refrigerator for 3 hours before serving.

 

I served this accompanied with a bit of homemade vanilla bean ice cream.

Difficulty level: moderate  

Lil' Miss Maddykins Turns One!

Remember this post from last year, when I was visiting my teeny, tiny, newborn niece when she was only 5 weeks old? 

Well, lil' Miss Maddykins turns one today.  Can you believe it?? 

 

 
Happy birthday to my favourite niece!!   

I swear, you can tell me all sorts of dirt about your life as you get older and I PROMISE, I won't tell your mom ;)

Maddy's birthday celebration was the weekend before last.  My sister Ashley did a luau theme for her party.

LOVE the colour scheme!

even Chloé got into the leis

best picture of Maddy EVER!

Even Logan got into the grass skirt theme!

Maddy wasn't terribly interested in either the presents or the cake, but she had a blast, playing with her bff Evan.

I undertook the task of putting my newly learned cake decorating skills to use.  We were also celebrating Logan's 2nd birthday at the same time, so I ended up making two cakes. 

I made a quatre-quarts cake for Maddy's cake, which is a bit like a French version of pound cake.  But soooo much better than regular old pound cake.  I'll post the recipe for this shortly.

On a friend's mom's suggestion, I filled the cake using Shirriff brand coconut pudding, which I had never used before.  But it worked quite nicely in this cake.  On her suggestion, I mixed the pudding with 1 C homogenized milk, 1 C evaporated milk and 1 C table cream instead of the suggested 3 C of milk.  I also stirred in 1/2 C of finely shredded, unsweetened coconut while cooking.  She suggested I stir in 1 tsp. of vanilla, but I used pina colada flavouring instead, to stick with the luau theme.  And she stirs in 2 tbsp. of butter once the pudding is cooked, but I didn't, only because I didn't have any.

Here's a peek at Maddy's cake:

all crumb coated and ready to go

sparkly bow

 

didn't get a picture until the very last slice, so it's a bit of a mess...

Despite my best efforts, Maddy didn't seem too impressed with her cake...

For Logan's cake, I used the regular recipe for Katie's chocolate sour cream cake (the one with the baking soda).  I split it between three cake pans and used my chocolate peanut butter (soy butter) ganache to fill them.  And, of course, they needed to be decorated in a Cars theme for Mr. Logan.

a mountain of gooey deliciousness

And, again, despite my best efforts, Logan didn't appear to be overly impressed with his cake either.

C'mon kid!  It's McQueen.  And Mater.  And cake!

One little baking lesson that I learned while making Logan's cake that I feel the need to share:  you should not, ever, try to break an egg into a KitchenAid mixer while it is mixing.  Now, you'd think this should maybe be written somewhere in the instruction manual.  Alas, it is not.  I guess KitchenAid figured that no one would ever be quite stupid enough to attempt such a feat.  They did, however, underestimate just how many corners a mom may try to cut when scrambling to make cakes and pack for a road trip with two little ones.

You guessed it... the whole egg got mixed into the batter.  Shell and all.

But this did not deter me on my birthday cake baking mission!  I just washed my hands and picked that little broken egg shell outta there.  I mean, I had no more butter.  And it was 10pm.  What's a girl to do??  I hope no one noticed that the cake had a little crunch to it!!

Maddy was a trooper through the long day.  And, despite being sick, she even helped clean up after the party:

Some other random photos I wanted to share from our weekend with family:

one of my faves - great-grammy with 2 of the 3 great-grandkids

I also want to wish Ella, Logan's first love, a very special 2nd birthday today.

Super, super long post...  However, last, but not least, I wanted to share a couple of my proud mama moments from that weekend:

- Logan was soooo extremely calm on our way to my sister's (on a 7 hour drive!!).  I couldn't even recognize him as my own child.  On Logan's Occupational Therapist's recommendations, we packed a bag full of sensory tools: relaxing music, both crunchy and chewy snacks, drinks with straws, a vibrating toy, a wide-brimmed sun hat, a weighted toy and a heavy blanket that could be tucked in tight all around him.  Oh - and let's not forget the portable DVD player!  And it worked!!!  He was even quieter than a mouse.  That was not so much the case on the way back, but it was nice that we didn't all have to suffer both ways.

- watching Logan learn to not be afraid of going down Maddy's slide.  We have learned from Logan's Occupational Therapist that he is hyper sensitive to movement.  Which basically means that he is more afraid of movement than most kids and also, that he gets dizzy more quickly than others.  This means that he tends to be quite afraid of heights, slides, swings, etc.  While at my sister's, he climbed up to the top of the slide, but then didn't want to go down.  Advantage of having such a big family?? Everyone started cheering together  "go Logan go" and Logan took a big breath and pushed himself off.  And he looked terrified.  And when he got to the bottom, everyone burst into huge cheers.  And off he went.  

Logan is also a sensory seeker for movement.  Which means that once he's comfortable with a movement, he wants to do it non-stop.  I have a hard time wrapping my mind around how you can be both hyper-sensitive to, and also crave, the same thing.  Yet I can see by observing Logan that this is true.  I was so proud to see my little guy learn to tolerate something he is terrified by.  This encourages me that, over time, and with therapy, he will learn to be able to deal with more and more of the sensations he cannot currently tolerate.

- watching Chloé attempt sitting alone for the first time at Maddy's party.

All in all, it was a great party and was wonderful to see my whole family again.