Cinnamon Swirl Pancakes

T and I have been out of town all week for family reasons. The kids have been with my mum and we missed them. T leaves today for business and we wanted a special breakfast treat for the family without going out and spending $75.00 on breakfast. I didn't have time to whip up a batch of cinnamon buns, so cinnamon swirl pancakes will just have to do.

Pancakes: Use whatever recipe you normally use for pancakes. They're all the same essentially, but whatever works for you is just fine, including your favourite mix.

Cinnamon Swirl sauce:

4 tbsps butter

1/4 cup hard packed, lump free brown sugar (light or dark, it doesn't really matter)

2 tbsps ground cinnamon

Melt butter in bowl in microwave.

Add in cinnamon and sugar and stir. 

I have a plastic squeezy container I put the mixture into and could nuke when it got too cold to squeeze, but a ziplock bag with a hole at the end works just as well. You do need something though to embed the cinnamon into the pancake.

Glaze:

4 tbsps butter (room temp)

4 tbsps cream cheese (room temp)

3/4 cup icing sugar

1 tsp vanilla

Using a hand mixer cream together butter and cream cheese.

Add in icing sugar and whip well.

Add in vanilla until well blended.

Take half of the mixture and put it in the microwave until everything melts, maybe 15 seconds.

It should have looked like a light whipped cream mixture before the microwave. It should now resemble white molten lava. Do not burn it or over cook it. 

It's just gross with the cream cheese.

Again, plastic squeezy container or ziplock bag with small hole nipped off the corner. Or just smearing the mixture over the pancakes works too. 

Use the second half as needed.

Using coconut oil put your pancake batter into a hot pan like you would for every other pancake you have ever made.

When the bubbles begin to come up, signalling they're cooked enough to flip add in that cinnamon swirl mixture and flip over.

Cook like a pancake is normally cooked and put on a plate.

Add the glaze, wether by squeeze tube, ziplock or spoon.

Serve hot.

Even the 8 year old boy couldn't do anymore than 3 of these puppies. They're really that sweet.

The Helper of Hamburger

So, the Helper of Hamburger. 

I, being a child of the 80's am no stranger to this concept. However, we tend to not buy prepackaged food whenever possible, preferring to go from scratch/homemade. I am finding this tougher and tougher to do with hockey and dance and swimming lessons and archery and yoga and work and basket weaving. Quick, easy meals don't have to always mean a box is involved. This is a one pot meal that can be on the table in 25 minutes. I serve it with a green salad but I'm sure you could easily toss in a handful of spinach. 

It also reheats really well.

1 pound lean ground beef

1 1/2 cups uncooked penne

1/2 tsp onion salt

1/2 tsp garlic powder

1/4 tsp paprika

1 1/2 cups milk

1/2 cup cream

1/2 cup water

2 Tbsp flour

1/4 cup havarti cheese

1/2 cup cheddar cheese

1/8 cup asiago cheese

Salt and pepper to taste

Brown ground beef and drain off grease. Drain well because even when it's lean ground beef I find it can be super greasy.

Add in uncooked pasta, spices and cheese.

Stir in milk, cream and water and mix well.

Sprinkle the flour slowly into the mixture until combined, don't dump it in or it might seize.

Over medium high heat bring mixture to a boil and then drop down to low, cover and let simmer until pasta is cooked to taste.

Make sure you open the lid and give everything a good stir every now and again and mix things up so the contents don't stick to the bottom or fry the cheese.

Add in salt and pepper to taste. You will need a little 

Habanero Coconut Margarita

There is a restaurant in Cowtown with amazing Margaritas. The kinds that I dream about when I'm craving it. (They have great tacos too, but that's another story). The problem with this place is that it is in Calgary, and I live in the 'burbs. Yes, yes I know suck it up and go, but the plain truth of the matter is that with everything else that goes on in our ives, my cravings for tacos and margaritas don't get to rank that high on the priority list. So let's figure out a solution… make it myself. I found a couple of recipes online, tinkered and smashed them together and made a night of it.

Habanero Coconut Simple Syrup

1 cup water

1 cup white sugar

2 to 3 Habanero peppers quartered with seeds.

1 tbsp coconut extract

Directions:

Boil water, add sugar and let it dissolve for 2-3 minutes.

Add quartered habanero peppers and let it simmer for 15 minutes, stir occassionally

Turn off heat and let syrup "steep" with the peppers for a minimum of an hour.

Let it steep longer for more heat.

Drain using cheese cloth.

I pulled all pieces except 1 out and let that last piece steep overnight.

Add coconut extract and store in a glass container. 

A mason jar is perfect, not to pour, but to store.

Coconut-chili margarita

1 oz tequila

1/2 oz triple sec (optional) 

3/4 oz fresh lime juice

1/4 oz fresh lemon juice

1/2 oz habanero coconut syrup

Coconut sugar rim (exactly what you think it is. You can use normal white sugar, but larger crystals are better)

To rim glass take a spent lime and run it around the edge of the glass. 

Turn the glass over and run it into the coconut sugar.

Add ice to glass.

In a shaker combine tequila, triple sec, lime and lemon juice, and coconut syrup, and shake with ice. 

Strain into the coconut sugar rimmed glass full of ice.

Ombré Cake

Pretty and easy.
The inside matched the colour on the outside too.
The writing wasn't my best effort, but I was super pressed for time!

Eggnog Cheesecake

This was a challenge that a friend from work put to me. She said she had seen a picture of a cake like this online and it looked tasty. So I set out to make one. I took a look at 3 or 4 similar recipes and tinkered to make it a little easier and more her taste. I used rum in place of the extract. I was quite liberal with the 1 tbsp because I think it adds a nice punch, I used good dark spiced rum from Turks and Caicos.

For the Crust:

1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs
1/3 cup white sugar
6 tbsp melted butter
1 tbsp ginger
-you could use fresh or powdered. If you use fresh, you don't need as much, but powdered you might want more if you really want that finer flavour.
1/2 tbsp cinnamon

For the Filling:

4 (8 oz.) packages softened cream cheese

4 large eggs

1 1/2 cups egg nog

1 1/4 cups white sugar

3 tbsp AP flour

1 tbsp rum

1 tsp cinnamon 

The Crust:
Assemble the crust ingredients in a bowl and mix well, then dump the contents into a greased, parchment bottom lined spring form pan.
I was taught by my mother in law that if you have a tall, straight, smooth glass or vase in the house you can use it to press the crumbs to the side of the pan and it looks a lot cleaner than using your hands. If you make sure the crumbs are pressed down well and into the sides well, the whole cake stays together a lot better and looks cleaner too.

The Filling:
In your Kitchen Aid with the whisk attachment whip the cream cheese until fluffy. My poor machine hates me already from all the Christmas baking, but this make it very warm indeed.
Add the eggs one at a time and scraping down the sides and bottom after each egg.
Add in the egg nog and the rum and mix until smooth, scraping down the sides again.
Mix together the flour, sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl and add slowly into the cream cheese mixture and whip until smooth again.
Make sure you have no lumps that haven't been incorporated into a smooth mixture. You want a nice uniform mixture when you pour it into the crust.
Carefully pour the cream cheese mixture into the crust, set on a baking tin and put into a 325 degree oven for an hour.
Once the hour is up, leave the cake in the oven, open the oven door a crack and leave it another hour.
Move to a cooling rack to come to room temperature.
Cover and put into the fridge to chill overnight.
At this point, I had actually frozen the cheesecake because I used the "big outside fridge" (aka outside in winter).
I whipped a pint of whipping cream and added just a little sugar to take the bite out of it.
I decorated the edges with rosettes, with one large rosette in the middle and dusted with a little cinnamon to make it pretty.

Loves in a lifetime

I read this, posted by someone on FB and it resonated with me, it made sense of a topic that has absolutely no sense. It's one of those pieces that quiets your soul for a moment and a peace can be attained. It seems a little on the hyperbole side of things, but it really did make me pause.

It was of course without credit, but I believe I have found the original source. If I haven't, I apologize and please correct me.

http://www.elephantjournal.com/2016/11/we-only-fall-in-love-with-3-people-in-our-lifetime-each-one-for-a-specific-reason/

It’s been said that we really only fall in love with three people in our lifetime. 

Yet, it’s said that we need each of these loves for a different reason. 

Often our first is when we are young, high school even. It’s the idealistic love; the one that seems like the fairytales we are all read as children. 

It’s a love that looks right. 

The second is supposed to be our hard love; the one that teaches us lessons about who we are and how we often want or need to be loved.

Sometimes it’s unhealthy, unbalanced or narcissistic even. 

It’s the love that we wished was right.

And the third is the love we never see coming. The one that usually comes dressed as all wrong for us and that destroys any lingering ideals we clung to about what love is supposed to be. 

It’s the love that just feels right. 

Maybe we don’t all experience these loves in this lifetime; but perhaps that’s just because we aren’t ready to. 

Possibly maybe we need a whole lifetime to learn or maybe if we’re lucky it only takes a few years. 

And there may be those people who fall in love once and find it passionately lasts until their last breath. 

Someone once told me they are the lucky ones; and perhaps they are.

But I kinda think that those who make it to their third love are really the lucky ones.

They are the ones who are tired of having to try and whose broken hearts lay beating in front of them wondering if there is just something inherently wrong with how they love. 

But there’s not; it’s just a matter of if someone loves in the same way that they do or not. 

And maybe there’s something special about our first love, and something heartbreakingly unique about our second…but there’s also just something about our third.

The one we never see coming.
The one that actually lasts.
The one that shows us why it never worked out before. 

And it’s that possibility that makes trying again always worthwhile, because the truth is you never know when you’ll stumble into love.
#thethreeloves #katerose #mayitbeofbenefit

http://www.elephantjournal.com/2016/11/we-only-fall-in-love-with-3-people-in-our-lifetime-each-one-for-a-specific-reason/

Ham cheese and bacon scones

400° oven, preheated

2 1/2 cups AP flour

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp pepper

1 tbsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 tbsp onion powder

1 tbsp garlic powder

1/4 cup light brown sugar no lumps

1/2 cup very cold butter

1 large egg

1/2 cup plain yogurt

2 tbsp a butter milk

1/3 cup chopped ham

1/2 cup shredded cheese (cheddar, Swiss whatever)

1/4 cup bacon bits

Mix all dry ingredients together in a large bowl.

Cut in cold butter and use your hands (or pastry knife) to turn into sand like crumble. I always started out with a pastry knife and give up and use my hands because it works better and I can get a good idea on the consistency. You have to work quickly if you use you hand as the heat from your hands can melt the butter.

Mix together wet ingredients and then dump into sand mixture and mix until just combined.

Add in the cheese and meats and fold in using your hands. Again it's just easier and quicker and you'll need your hands in the next step anyhow.

Dump on parchment paper

Form into disks and cut into 8's or more depending on desired scone size.

You can form into 2 smaller disks if you don't want monster scones.

Bake for 20-25 minutes