little miss cocoa

Say ‘whole wheat muffin’ and all anyone can think of is a dry, puck-like bran muffin, the kind you feed to people when you want them to be ‘regular’ and depressed.

These muffins, however, are light as air, sweetened with fruit and a lovely caramely crust. The secret? Whole wheat pastry flour. I didn’t even know this existed until I saw it in the bulk bins at the food co-op.

Turns out that a pastry flour is defined as such because it doesn’t have much gluten, so baking powder and baking soda can lift it up nice and light. Bread flour, on the other hand, has even more gluten than all-purpose flour, which gives you that nice, chewy breadiness.

Anyway, this is all to say that I thought my whole wheat cookies, muffins, quick breads and cakes were forever destined to be heavy and bitter. Now I know that whole wheat pastry flour is my new ticket to (relatively) healthy, delicious baked goods!

So here’s my new favorite breakfast recipe, tweaked from the blueberry muffin recipe I found on Cookie+Kate:

Gather:
5 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/3 cup brown sugar
2 tablespoons honey
3/4 cups plain yogurt
1/2 teaspoon lemon zest
1 1/2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup peaches, cut into 1/2 inch pieces (frozen works fine, and there’s no need to defrost, either!)
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2 teaspoons brown sugar

Do:
Preheat oven to 375F. Grease a muffin tin, or use paper liners. This recipe makes about 10 muffins.
With an electric mixer, ream together the butter, sugar, and honey on low, until fluffy. Add the egg, beat well, and then add the yogurt and zest and beat until just combined.
Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
Pour half the dry ingredients into the wet and mix until just combined. Then pour the second half of the dry ingredients in and mix just until the flour disappears.
Stir in the peaches.
Mix together the brown sugar and cinnamon in a separate cup.
Spoon into the muffin tin, and sprinkle with the cinnamon sugar combination.
Bake for about 25 minutes.
Try to eat just one, and fail.

It’s blizzarding like nuts out here, after a day of snow and slush and rain. I braved the sleet to the co-op, which was almost alarmingly full of people considering the horrible weather outside. I got two bags of groceries, and on my way out, saw a woman hunched over her shovel in just a long sleeved shirt and jeans, hurriedly shoveling the walk in front of her Vietnamese restaurant. It seems that on a night like tonight, restaurant owners should also be snug at home, and nobody should expect to be able to eat out.

Anyway, to keep the cold away, I made an African inspired curried coconut and chickpea soup. I got the recipe off epicurious.com, one of my many recipe staple sites. I made a few changes, to make it more vegetably; it can be hard in these cold months to swallow a cold salad, so I try to incorporate veggies into the warm things I make so I don’t just eat warm bread with butter all the time (although I still think this is much healthier than it gets credit for).

This soup is hardy enough to be a meal – it’s got chickpeas and rice and coconut milk, after all – but it’s surprisingly light and healthy. Since you’re using light coconut milk, it really doesn’t add much fat, and the veggies and soup make for a filling meal without weighing you down. It’s just the right kind of soup for winter, reminiscent of warmer weather while warming you up from your head to your toes.

Here’s the recipe:

Gather:
2 tablespoons grapeseed oil
1 medium yellow onion, chopped
1 medium red bell pepper, chopped into 1/2 inch pieces
1 bunch chard, stems removed and chopped, leaves roughly chopped and set aside
1 teaspoon chili pepper flakes in a tea ball
2-3 large cloves garlic, smashed or pressed
2 cups low sodium vegetable or chicken broth
1 (15-ounce) can chickpeas, rinsed and drained
1 zucchini, chopped into 1/2 inch pieces
1 cup chopped tomatoes (canned or fresh)
1 teaspoon mild curry powder
1 (14-ounce) can light coconut milk
3/4 cup cooked brown rice
2 tablespoons roughly chopped cilantro
salt and pepper to taste

Do:
Heat the grapeseed oil at the bottom of a medium sized soup pot, over medium heat. Add the chopped onion, pepper, and chard stems and stir until glossy and slightly transparent, about 5 minutes. Add the smashed garlic and stir constantly for 1 minute. Add the broth, chickpeas, tomatoes, curry powder, zucchini, and chard leaves and bring the whole soup to a boil over high heat. Once it’s boiling, take it down to a simmer and let it bubble merrily for about 5 minutes. Add the coconut milk and rice, and salt and pepper to taste. Once the rice and coconut milk have warmed up enough that the soup is at a nice simmer, your soup is ready! Sprinkle fresh cilantro onto each bowl of soup and serve with a hunk of whole wheat bread.

Note: Canned tomatoes are best when tomatoes are out of season, but fresh tomatoes are always nicer. If you’re using fresh tomatoes, be sure to remove the skins. Here’s how: prepare a large bowl about halfway full of ice water, and bring a medium sized pot of water (about halfway full) to a boil. Gently lower the tomato into the boiling water and let it sit for about 20 seconds before pulling it out and dousing it in the ice water. The skin should peel off in a completely satisfying manner. I like to do the tomatoes one at a time because you’re just trying to get the skin off, not boil the tomato altogether. Once you’re done with the tomatoes, chop them roughly and set them aside.

This Saturday, for no particularly good reason, I decided to make popovers after seeing the lovely photos on mybakingdom.com.

They’re super easy to make if you follow the instructions, and then you have crispy, eggy, light as air, bready things to eat with as much butter and jam as you can stand.

Here’s the recipe for six:

Gather:
2 eggs
1 cup milk
1 cup all-purpose flour (going to try to make these at least a little whole-wheaty at some point)
1/2 tsp salt
1 tablespoon butter, melted
3 teaspoons vegetable oil

Do:
In a medium sized bowl, whisk together the eggs and milk. In a separate bowl, mix together the flour and salt. Float the mixed dry ingredients over the wet ones, and stir until just incorporated. Pour in the butter and whisk until smooth (it’ll be impossible and to get it fully smooth, so just give up after a certain point). Cover with a clean, dry dish towel and let it rest for 30 minutes.

While the batter rests, heat the oven to 450 and spoon a half teaspoon of vegetable oil into ten center cups of your muffin pan (if you’re using a 12 muffin pan), or just all six if you’re using a 6 muffin pan. (They sell popover pans, but I’m going to assume that if you have one, you already know how to make popovers!) Slide the pan into the oven so the oil can heat while the batter rests.

When the batter is ready, as fast as you can, take the pan out of the oven and spoon batter evenly into the cups. If you have a six cup pan, your popovers will be huge!!! But I think that’s part of the fun.

Quickly slide the pan back into the oven and bake at 450 for 18 minutes, then lower the temperature to 350 for another 12-15 minutes. During the first part of the baking, I like to keep the oven light on because the popovers rise quickly enough to see, and you can actually watch them billow up into crazy iceberg like shapes. This is the only thing to remember: Do Not Open The Oven Door. A draft will kill your popovers, so keep the door shut until you’re ready to take them out.

Once you take them out, attempt to wait about 5 minutes before eating them. And again, you can never overdo it with jam and butter on a freshly baked popover.