Easy delicious homemade poptarts?!

Oh man, Poptarts. I remember those things from America. They were nasty! I always liked the Toaster's Strudel better. I was sipping peppermint tea on my porch thinking longingly back to my past of the little sweet toaster pastries with more instructions than a nuclear missile (why IS that?). I thought of being a child and running with a Pop-tart in my hand towards my friends.

I lied.

Honestly, I just had way too much jam and preserves from the last few weeks of being inundated with fruit that I wanted to beat that smug look off my neighbour's face. You know the one. The one that INSISTS packaged food is the best and homemade cannot compare. I can hardly blame the woman - she is clearly suffering from brain trauma due to malnutrition since she doesn't know what food tastes like.

The "Ha-ha I'm Better Than You" Easy Peasy Wheat Poptarts

2 sticks (1c) of butter, chilled and cubed into small pieces
1 1/2c wheat flour
1 1/2c self raising
1 tsp. salt
1 tablespoon sugar
Small bowl ice water

Place butter, salt, sugar and flours in Kitchen Aid or food processor. Blitz until the little pieces resemble wet sand. Keep on low while pouring cold water a tablespoon at a time into the dough until it begins to stick together. Roll onto floured surface into equal sized disks. Refridgerate for an hour.

Flour surface of table. Measure out ten to twelve balls from each disk (use one disk at a time, the colder and more last minute, the better). Roll each ball until large rectangle. Place jam on one of the short sides, away from the edges. Fold dough over and press with fork. Place in pan, wash with eggs and sprinkle with raw sugar. Bake at 200c/400F for 15 minutes.

Make-Your-Own Monday: Freezer Pot Pie (but cuter!)

I made these the other day and had some requests for the recipe, so I'm sharing it here. I really seem to have a pie fetish going on these days; it seems like all I'm posting about lately is pie! Rest assured we do eat other foods in this house. But I love savory pies for a lot of reasons, and small individual-size pies are perfect for a quick portable meal. I used to buy them at the store many years ago, but quit buying them because they were loaded with sodium and trans fats and G-d knows what else... good thing we can make them ourselves!

I got this idea the other day when I felt like baking at a friend's house, and my friend didn't have a pie plate but she did have a muffin tin. Pot pies are awesome, but how much cooler would it be to have muffin-sized pot pies? It took a bit more time to roll out each crust individually, line the muffin tins, and assemble each small pie individually... but the little pies, once cooled, went to the freezer beautifully and held up great in the microwave. I zapped a frozen one for about 4 minutes to see how it would do, and the crust was still nice and flaky. So these are cute little quickie meals later - I also thought these would be good for kids' lunchboxes as well as take-to-work lunches for adults.

Use a storebought pie crust if you want, or use this one (with a tablespoon of cider vinegar added in), or try my gluten-free perfect pie crust. And the filling can be whatever you want - my chicken pot pie filling (over at my other blog) is always good. For my project the other day, I adapted the chicken recipe to use veggies and tofu instead since my friend is a pesco-vegetarian; I also made the tuna pot pies in the picture above, and I'll give you that recipe now. (I adapted it from this one.)

TUNA MUFFIN PIES

Crust for TWO double-crust pies
4 Tbsp butter
1 small onion, diced
6 Tbsp flour (any flour, wheat or gluten-free is fine)
Salt and pepper to taste
1 tsp garlic powder *
1 tsp paprika *
1/4 tsp chili powder *
Sprig fresh thyme, leaves only (optional)
2 cups milk
2 cans sustainable, water-packed tuna, drained and flaked
2 heaping cups fresh or frozen veggies (I used corn, peas, and a carrot)
1/2 cup cheddar cheese (optional, I left it out but will include it next time)

Beaten egg for brushing on crust (optional)

Preheat oven to 425 F.

Melt the butter in a big saucepan and saute the onion over medium-low until it softens up. Sprinkle in the flour, a tablespoon at a time, blending it in with a fork after each addition. Cook another minute until you have a paste, adding in your salt and pepper and other seasonings. (*I did not measure my seasonings, so this really just means season to taste with whatever herbs and spices you have handy.)

Stirring with your fork, slowly pour the milk in, whisking it up to blend it with the flour. Make sure you get the lumps out so it's nice and smooth. Keep stirring it for a few more minutes until it simmers and thickens up like white gravy. At that point, stir in everything else except, duh, the pie crust. Shut off the heat and let the filling sit aside while you roll out the crust.

Take about a fourth of the crust and roll it out thin. Using a bowl as a cutter or a guide, cut circles out of the crust and line the muffin tin, making sure that the crust sits against the bottom and walls of each cup. Leave a bit hanging over the edges of each cup, trim up the rest, and keep rolling up your trimmings with additional dough until you've got the tin lined up.

Now gently spoon the filling into the muffin cups. You should have just enough filling for a dozen muffin pies - go ahead and pile them up, it's okay if the filling mounds up a little higher than the muffin cup. That's what the top crust is for. Once the pies are all filled, roll out the rest of the crust and use a glass or another smaller guide to cut circles for the top crust. Lay each circle on top of each pie, pinch around the edges to seal, and trim off the excess. Brush with a little beaten egg if you want a golden crust, then use the tip of a sharp knife to poke a few holes in the top. Bake for 30 minutes.

When the muffin pies are done, carefully run a butter knife around the outside edges if you need to loosen them up, and gently move them to a plate. You can also hold a large plate upside-down over the pan and carefully flip the pan over so the muffins slide out upside-down. Let them cool a bit, eat one right away, and let the rest come to room temperature before you wrap them up individually and pop 'em in the freezer or fridge.

This will make you 12 regular-sized muffins or 6 of those big ones.

Make Your Own Monday - Baby Food

Check this shit out from Sydney U.

*snip*
The survey, which involved 429 children from Western Sydney aged 6 to 24 months, found that all but one of the children consumed 'extra' foods during the three-day period of the study.
*snip*

All but ONE child in three days ate a junk food of some kind, all children being less than two years old?! You're telling me 428 children in a three day period ate some sort of junk? Well, that's to be expected. One in three days is a treat, right?

*snip*
Fats and oils and products such as biscuits, pastries and cakes were consumed by 90% of the children over the three-day period when their intake was recorded. One in four (41%) of the children studied consumed cordials daily, and another 29% did so on alternate days.
*snip*

That's 70% of children drinking a cordial at LEAST every other day. Cordial? Is sugar syrup. Nice. Pastries are being consumed by 90% of children under the age of 2! Two thirds of children ate sweet biscuits on the MAJORITY of the days - meaning two out of three. Two thirds of children are eating sugary biscuits two thirds of the week!

So, I bring you: Make your own damn baby food. There is absolutely no reason that all but one child should be eating sweets, expecially when the bottom age is six freakin' months. Who on earth is giving their six month old biscuits two days out of every three?!

Thank heavens for websites like this, promoting making your own baby food. Basically most of the recipes require the fruit you plan on feeding your child and either boiling it in water or simply mushing it with a fork. How hard can that be?! Surely not harder than opening a chip packet.

Now I don't have children* so I decided to make a healthy alternative to apple pie baby food because, well, I'll eat it. Don't judge me.

3 cooking apples
1 egg yolk (for babies 6 months to 10 months,
omit egg yolk and thicken with infant cereal)
1/2 teaspoon lemon juice
1/2 tsp stevia
1 teaspoon water or apple juice
Small pinch of ground cinnamon

First:
Slice and decore apples. Place scraps in school bowl.
Second:
Cover partially with water and squeeze in lemon. Boil over mediu until it looks like this:

Third: Mash and add rest of ingredients. Bake at 350/180 for 15 minutes or until set.

And that's all there is to it! Heck, the rest of the ingredients are even easier. Making full meals is as simple as blending leftover beef with overcooked brown rice. No reason for biscuits again!



*I used to, but I am only allowed to visit on Wednesdays from 2-4pm and I can't bring food. Something about parole.