Embrace the Camera: October 7, 2010

Today we captured one of our daily activities - the wagon ride. We got some vitamin D and good exercise. And though we only go around the block, it takes about half an hour because we pick up every single dandelion and crunchy leaf along the way. These wagon rides play a vital role in keeping us all sane during the week. Colby never makes a peep while in the wagon (he's been whining a lot lately). And Zoe gets the required exercise needed for her daily nap (which is crucial to ME!) Colby is also sitting up like a big boy in there now which is totally cute.

Magical Coconut Cookie Bars

From Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar...here we have "Magical Coconut Cookie Bars" which are, essentially, vegan seven layer bars. They are amazing.

Zoom in on this baby, I dare you.

These bars require a good overnight chilling to really firm them up before slicing, so plan accordingly.

Tip: Press the graham cracker crumb crust like crazy into the pan; the more you pat it down the firmer the resulting crust will be.

Ingredients:
One 14 oz can (regular or lite) coconut milk (about 1 3/4 cups)
2/3 cup dark brown sugar
2 cups graham cracker crumbs
1/2 cup melted margarine
2 tablespoons sugar
1 1/2 cups chocolate chips or chocolate chunks
2 cups flaked, sweetened coconut
1 cup walnuts, chopped

In a large saucepan whisk together coconut milk and brown sugar over medium high heat. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to low and simmer for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Mixture may form a thin skin on the surface; just stir it back into the liquid. Remove from heat and let cool while preparing the crust.

Preheat oven to 350°F. Line a 13 x 9 x 2 inch baking pan with parchment paper. In a large bowl combine graham cracker crumbs, melted margarine and sugar; mix well to moisten crumbs completely. Firmly press mixture into prepared pan, pressing evenly from center to sides of pan.

Pour warm coconut milk mixture evenly over crumb base. Top with an even layer of chocolate chips, flaked coconut and nuts, in that order. Firmly pat everything down until coconut milk mixture soaks upward into the toppings. Bake for 28-30 minutes or until coconut is deeply golden and filling is bubbling, remove from oven and let entire pan cool on a wire rack for 15 minutes. Transfer pan to the refrigerator to completely cool and firm up for at least 4 hours, even better overnight or until very firm. Use a sharp, heavy knife to run along the edges of bars, slide bars on parchment paper out of pan onto a cutting board then to slice into 24 squares.

Store in a covered container in the refrigerator. These also freeze well, tightly wrapped and allowed to thaw for 20 minutes before serving.

Golden Vanilla Cupcakes

I came across a wonderful little cookbook during my search for non-dairy desserts - Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. It's worth checking out, even if you're not vegan. Rotating milks (cow, rice, almond, soy, etc.) is actually good for our bodies, says my nutritionist. "Rotation, rotation, rotation." Anyway, the Golden Vanilla Cupcakes are a great basic. They are delicious and can be topped with various frostings. This time I or, rather, Johnnie chose the chocolate buttercream frosting and we piled it high. Mmmm. Here's the recipe:

Vegan Golden Vanilla Cupcakes
1 C. soy milk
1 tsp. apple cider vinegar 
1 1/4 C. AP flour
2 TB. cornstarch
3/4 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt (increase to 1/2 tsp. if you're using oil instead of margarine)
1/2 C. margarine, softened, or 1/3 C. canola oil (oil is easier!)
3/4 C. sugar
2 tsp. vanilla
1/4 tsp. almond, caramel, or more vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350. Line muffin pan with liners. Whisk the soy milk and vinegar in a measuring cup and set aside for a few minutes to get good and curdled. 


{If using margarine} Sift the flour, cornstarch, powder, soda, and salt into a large bowl. In a separate large bowl, use a mixer at medium speed to cream the margarine and sugar for about two minutes until light and fluffy. Beat in the vanilla and other extract, then alternate beating in the soy milk mixture and dry ingredients, stopping to scrape the sides of the bowl a few times. 

{If using oil} Beat together the milk mixture, oil, sugar, vanilla, and other extracts in a large bowl. Sift in the flour, cornstarch, powder, soda, and salt and mix until no large lumps remain. Fill cupcake liners two-thirds (seriously, only two-thirds, you don't want muffin tops) of the way and bake for 20-22 minutes. Transfer to a cooling rack and let cool completely before frosting. 

Chocolate Buttercream Frosting
1/4 C. margarine, softened
1/4 C. shortening
1/2 C. unsweetened cocoa powder (sifted if there are clumps)
2 1/2 C. icing sugar, sifted
3 TB. soy milk 
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract (pure!) 

Cream together the margarine and shortening until well combined. Add the powder and incorporate well. Add the sugar in 1/2 C. batches and beat well, adding a little splash of soymilk after each addition. When all ingredients have been well combined, add the vanilla and beat until light and fluffy. 

This is such a bad picture, but it's better than no picture.

 Obviously, I have not figured out how to post in my "recipes" section. If anyone out there wants to give me a tutorial, I'd appreciate it :)

Embrace the Camera: September 30, 2010

Style hair or blog? This morning I chose to blog. Who am I kidding, I almost never choose to style my hair! It's a busy day, so let's get to it - it's Embrace the Camera Thursday!







I was spying on dad and baby here, so please pardon all the distracting wood. Looks like Colby is "checking in" with dad. I love how they look to us to know how to feel about certain situations. "Mom thinks this is okay? Okay, I'm good." Know what I mean?

Oh, and I love that dimple.

I'm not in the photo below, but I might as well be. My heart and soul go into my baking and to let a little two year old help me, well, let's just say that's a giant step for this perfectionist! J was out of town until late. Baby was in bed. I wanted to bake some cupcakes, but I didn't want to wait another hour until Zoe went to bed. Plus, I thought she'd enjoy it. She loves helping me do the pancakes and we've done cookies before, too. I'm so glad we did it together. She loved it. She accidentally snorted the cinnamon which caused some upset, but she recovered well. So here she is, fresh out of the bath, pjs on, baking some cupcakes with her momma. How cute is this?

BETHy Crocker

Once upon a time, friends and family called me Bethy Crocker. I LOVE to bake and my name is Beth (for those who don't know that), so it just made sense. I was famous for pumpkin rolls, sugar cookies, giant chocolate chip cookies, brownies, no-bake cheesecakes (my husband dislikes the baked kind), lemon bars, you name it. Most recently, the husband loves my pumpkin scones. Fast forward five years and here I am nursing an infant with a milk-protein sensitivity along with an egg sensitivity. No baked goodies for this mama. Or so I thought...


A couple of weeks ago I was baking pumpkin scones for our Sunday School kickoff breakfast and I actually couldn't remember how to make them - it had been that long! Disgraceful!  I feel very strongly about my need for something sweet and decadent that TASTES good. I was doubtful I would find such a thing - desserts with no eggs, butter, or milk that actually taste good? No way. But, yes, there is a way! And I will share it with you in hopes that I can help some other mother (or anyone, really) out there who is feeling desperate.


This first recipe I found randomly on the internet, I do not know to whom the credit belongs (and I do not know if that's proper English). These cupcakes are delicious and the icing, well, it's amazing. I made a few changes because I didn't have some of the ingredients on hand. I also didn't have the last cup of icing sugar I needed on hand, so I walked up and down my street asking for "a cup of (icing) sugar" while both children were napping. I had no luck. I mixed all the icing stuff together and added the last cup of sugar a few hours later. No big deal. But all of that is neither here nor there. Here's the recipe: 


Chocolate Cupcakes with Peanut Butter Frosting

For the cupcakes:

1 1/2 cups unbleached white flour

1 cup sugar

1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/3 cup expeller pressed oil (I used olive oil)

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar 

1 cup water (room temperature)

I also added some non-dairy, mini semi-sweet chips, just for fun

Preheat your oven to 350°. Put the flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda and salt into a bowl and whisk well to combine. Mix the oil, water, vanilla, and vinegar together in a separate bowl. Pour the liquid mixture over the dry ingredients and stir until just blended. Line a cupcake tin with paper liners. Fill each one 3/4 of the way. Bake for 18 - 20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

For the frosting:

1/4 cup non dairy butter (I used 1/2 C. original Crisco for this and the shortening below)

1/4 cup palm shortening 

1/3 cup creamy peanut butter

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

2 cups powdered sugar (make sure you have 2 cups :) ) 

2 tablespoons rice milk 

Beat the non dairy butter and palm shortening with a hand held mixer on medium speed until smooth. Add the vanilla and peanut butter and beat until very smooth. Add the sugar and beat again until combined. With the beater still running, dribble in the rice milk, a little at a time until the frosting is fluffy. Using a pastry bag and large tip, decorate the cupcakes. Enjoy! (I ate 7 of these babies in 36 hours time. They were either really good or I was really desperate. Or, perhaps, both.)  

Look at me - posts on photography, recipes, suckling infants - I could be the next Pioneer Woman! I am from Oklahoma, after all. (By the way, if you don't know who The Pioneer Woman is, you're missing out! Check her out -- The Pioneer Woman). Now I'm off to figure out how to move this post to my "recipes" page and to find my picture of these delicious cakes. I almost never make a recipe that doesn't have a picture to go with it. 

Embrace the Camera: The Trying Twos Edition - September 23, 2010

I just love this picture. My two year old daughter is being, well, a two year old, and lately has either been running from the camera or cheesing it up so much that her eyes are closed. Here she is with her daddy in a very natural embrace. The new camera is great at capturing what I once called "my baby, the blur!"

Here's me with the little man again because that two year old was refusing a picture with her mother. Sigh.

Photography: My Brief History

In the fall of 2002, I was enrolled at the University of Tulsa as a freshman with "photography" as my declared major. That seems really hard to believe. And it didn't happen. But it was my dream. I fell in love with photography in high school. Manual photography. Working in the darkroom. I recently found an old syllabus and started reminiscing about how we had to load film - open the canister, cut off the leader, roll it onto the reels, cut off the spool, etc. - all in complete and utter darkness! Such a cool process. I had a very strict teacher who, as she was passing out our final grades at the end of the semester, slapped mine down on the table and said "I don't give A's." I turned it over and there it was - an A. I was so excited. I loved photography AND someone thought I was good at it. TU doesn't have much beyond introductory photography classes, though, and my dad worked at the university, so I got a "free ride" to a very nice private school. Needless to say, I wasn't going anywhere else! After two years of floating from art class to art class, I realized if I wanted to finish school in four years time, I was going to have to change my major to something more realistic. I chose English. And for the next two years, I had rigorous courses with long reading lists and too many paper deadlines to count - ugh! All of that being said, please don't judge my english ;)

I walked into the camera store the other day and felt completely overwhelmed. I was amazed at the dslr! I have a lot to catch up on. It's been eight years since I've practiced photography -- I had to finish school, then I got married, two years later we had our first baby, and now we have another babe. We've been busy around here. But I feel really excited to get back into one of my favorite things! Thank you to my wonderful husband who understands that women (stay at home moms, especially) need "projects" too, and for getting me back into something I love.

We had a photographer take newborn pictures of both of our children while I was on hiatus - a stage we really wanted captured professionally!

 

Husband using the old point n' shoot for it's "last" photo - we chose the Nikon D90.