Friday, April 5, 2013

April 5, 2013

Another really busy week with little time to cook...but we were on a pumpkin muffin spree!  I think we baked pumpkin muffins 4 times this week...sometimes mini, sometimes standard sized.  We made them from a mix, and then we took out some pumpkin from the freezer and baked Grammie's favorite completely homemade pumpkin muffins (including the processed fresh pumpkin!).  They were absolutely delicious.  And honestly, the hardest part is actually assembling all the ingredients and measuring everything, which was done in no time at all.  So, if you have the ingredients on hand (and yes, canned processed pumpkin will absolutely work!), throw these together, and you won't be disappointed!

Hannah requested taco burgers this week, which sounded good to everyone (thanks again, Melissa, for turning us onto this recipe a few years ago!).  I had everything needed to cook these except we were out of taco seasoning.  Not feeling like running to the store I did a quick search and found a recipe on Allrecipes that had almost 3000 reviews!!!  Something rated 5 stars with that many reviews was definitely worth trying.  It worked great for our taco burgers.  We are looking forward to trying it out in traditional tacos sometime this week or next.

Happy Cooking!!!

New Recipes
Grammie's Favorite Low-fat Pumpkin Muffins
DIY Taco seasoning

Grammie's Favorite Lowfat Pumpkin Muffins


Ingredients
* 1 cup brown sugar
* 2 large egg whites
* 1 cup pumpkin
* 1/4 cup canola oil
* 1/3 cup low-fat plain or vanilla yogurt
* 1 tsp vanilla
* 1 cup AP flour
* 3/4 cup whole wheat flour
* 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
* 1 tsp cinnamon
* 1/2 tsp nutmeg
* 1/2 tsp baking soda
* 1/2 tsp salt

Directions
1. Mix the wet ingredients (brown sugar through vanilla).
2. In a second bowl, mix the dry ingredients (AP flour through salt).
3. Mix the wet ingredients with the dry ingredients.
4. Put batter into prepared pan of your choice.  For a loaf pan, bake 45-50 minutes.  For mini muffins, bake 14 minutes.  For standard muffins, bake 23 minutes.  Be sure to check for doneness before removing from the oven.
5. Let cool in the pan for 5-8 minutes, then remove to a wire rack to finish cooling.

Notes
Liam made these with Grammie to bring to preschool this week - and his young classmates couldn't get enough!  Many of them wanted a third mini-muffin!  These also might be great if you mixed in some chopped walnuts or pecans.

DIY Taco Seasoning


Ingredients
* 1 tbsp chili powder
* 1/4 tsp garlic powder
* 1/4 tsp onion powder
* 1/4 tsp  dried oregano
* 1/2 tsp paprika
* 1 1/2 tsp ground cumin
* 1 tsp salt
* 1 tsp black pepper
* 1/4 tsp crushed red pepper flakes, optional

Directions
Mix all the ingredients together!  3 tbsp of this mix would take the place of one store bought package.

Notes
We ran out of taco seasoning when we were going to make taco burgers this week.  So, since we had such good luck with making our own fajita seasoning, I decided to make the taco seasoning.  I found this recipe on Allrecipes and it worked really well!  I did leave out the crushed red pepper flakes, but if we were using it for traditional tacos I would likely add it if we had it on hand.