Recipes

A dream realized: Whole wheat mamey muffins

April 20, 2009 by Lesley Tellez

As you know, I’ve been adoring mamey lately. I bought another one on Friday at Mercado San Juan (more on that trip later), and I thought: I HAVE to bake something with this. It’s crying out to be more than a breakfast fruit.

Bread seemed like too much work. Pancakes, eh, not feeling them lately. But muffins. Muffins I could do. Muffins barely required any mixing. And my muffin pan was getting a little muffin top-ish around the middle. It needed a workout.

Since mamey tastes faintly of sweet potato (to me anyway), I trolled the Internet for a sweet potato muffin recipe. And bingo. The Wednesday Chef delivered.

Last night around 9 p.m. the sweet, warm scent of baking mamey muffins filled the apartment. I seriously wanted to bottle it and somehow post it on the Internet, just so you could all know. Hopefully scent technology is not too far away.

When they were done, I carefully extracted one from the pan, burned my fingers, split the muffin open and smeared it with butter. LORD. They were moist. Hot. Gently spicy, with just a whisper of ginger. My brain did backflips. This is how good they were. (Also, another sign, when I tasted the batter earlier — because you know, you gotta do that — I wanted to ravish the whole bowl.)

Recipe after the jump.
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El amor de pineapple pie

March 22, 2009 by Lesley Tellez

Pineapple pie is kind of like my culinary secret weapon. Most people are like, “I’ve never heard of such a thing!” And then they try it and make pleasurable moaning noises. Or at least, pineapple-lovers do.

I made it for Crayton when were first dating. He loved it so much, he ran out and bought another pineapple, so I could make it again. The pineapple ended up rotting on his counter. And that’s how we figured out that overripe pineapple actually makes a pretty good air freshener.

Yesterday was Crayton’s birthday, so I decided to make it for dessert. Plus, since I’m a pie nerd, I was super excited to try Smitten Kitchen’s all-butter crust. It’s the best I’ve ever had — flaky and shatteringly crisp. Mmm. My stomach’s rumbling just thinking about it.

The recipe’s after the jump for folks who want to try it. In the meantime, another photo for you. (I ended up eating that already-cut slice as soon as I was done writing this post.)

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Moist mango breakfast cake with granola crumble

March 10, 2009 by Lesley Tellez

I was on a tear a few days ago to make Rick Bayless’ Mango Upside Down Skillet Cake. It’s from Mexican Everyday, a cookbook a friend gave me before I left. I’ve been reading it in little bites every day.

It was only after I started chopping my mangoes — purchased at the tiangius before we left on vacation, and ergo, slowly rotting in the refrigerator — that I realized I didn’t have enough. By a lot. The recipe called for three cups; I had barely one, after throwing one of the mangoes out. (Lesson here: One mango does not equal one cup chopped. Or, um, check your darn fridge before you start a recipe.)

I’m not usually a daring baker, but I decided to fold the mango into the batter and create my own cake. Adrenaline pumping (because this is the first time I’ve actually done something like this), I creamed the butter and sugars, whisked together the dry ingredients. Then, because I’m currently obsessed with amaranth granola, I decided to make a granola crumble topping.

That’s when the panic set in. I couldn’t remember how to create a crumble. Was it melted butter or softened butter? Or butter cut into 1/4″ pieces? Did you use a lot of butter and a little sugar, or the other way around? The cookbooks that could help were sitting in a box somewhere, and I didn’t have the Internet to consult. That’s getting installed — “supposedly” — tomorrow.

“Crayton!” I yelled. He was in the back room playing Mario Kart. “I need moral support here!”

Because he’s a great husband, he didn’t scream, “Whaddya want, woman?! I’m playing my game here!” Instead he wandered into the kitchen and offered to look up crumbles on his Blackberry. In the end, we mutually decided that finding a cookbook would be better. The Betty Crocker Book of Baking (a Christmas gift when I was 14) lay in the third box he opened. The crumble ratio, according to one recipe: A few tablespoons of softened butter and about 1/4 cup sugar.

The cake turned out pretty good — hearty from a big scoop of whole wheat flour, moist from 3/4 cup of yogurt and not overpoweringly sweet, because I like to use turbinado instead of the white stuff. It’d be perfect with coffee in the morning.

Here’s the recipe, if you’re interested. Although winging it is way more fun.
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