Coconut-Orange Muffins

New years are often characterized by new beginnings, fresh starts, and leaving the heaviness of last year behind. Well these muffins are no different! The light texture and freshness of freshly grated oranges combined with the tropical taste of coconut will have you leaving the soggy, heavy winter behind and sprinting towards spring time.

I think Food Network did a fantastic job pairing muffin flavors with the season or holiday that surrounded the month it debuts in, but this one eludes me. The original recipe is Pomegranate-Orange Muffins, but I am personally not a fan of eating pomegranate seeds and I love shredded coconut so I made a last minute switch up, which in baking is totally acceptable. Either way neither recipe screams the month of January to me. I would think it would be a muffin speckled with edible glitter with a bold flavor combo that screams New Year! However, maybe they had the same idea that I had. Start off 2018 with a refreshing muffin and cleanse the palate after all the food consumed over the holidays.

Baking is a science, whereas with cooking you have a little more room for freedom, but too much of baking powder or accidently switching sugar with salt can be detrimental to your recipe. So when I made the decision to swap pomegranate seeds for unsweetened shredded coconut I hoped it wouldn’t be a death sentence to my muffins, after all this was the first recipe of the year!

It ended up being a fantastic swap! The unsweetened coconut paired so well with the fresh clementine’s that it made me wish spring was less than 4 months away. Also, now this is a baking preference, but I prefer to bake with unsweetened shredded coconut flakes compared to sweeten unless the recipe specifically calls for sweetened, but even then I am selective. Baked treats are usually pretty sweet to begin with and adding extra sweetened ingredients can overwhelm the baked treat, in my opinion. I am all about indulging my sweet tooth, but I don’t want to feel like I am eating a bar of sugar either. Again, personal preference!

Another change up moment I had with this recipe was that it tells you to put the ENTIRE clementine in the blender, yes, including the peel. I was like “what?!” I even debated back and forth with my fiancé if I should follow the recipe or if I should take the peel off. In the end I decided Food Network knew what they were doing and wouldn’t steer me wrong.

Both my ingredient switch up and going again my hesitation worked out perfectly! The muffins were a huge hit and tasted light, refreshing, and the perfect combo of citrusy to sweet.

Let’s get baking!

What You’ll Need:

•             3 cups all-purpose flour

•             1.5 cups granulated sugar

•             1.5 teaspoon baking soda

•             1 teaspoon aluminum-free baking powder*

•             .5 teaspoon salt

•             3 clementine’s

•             1 cup whole milk, at room temperature**

•             2 large eggs

•             1 cup unsweetened shredded coconut flakes

•             2 sticks unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly

•             .5 cup pomegranate seeds*

•             .5 cup confectioners’ sugar

*These ingredients are only needed if you make the original recipe of the Pomegranate-Orange Muffins; if not then omit these 2 ingredients. You use aluminum-free baking powder because regular aluminum baking powder can react with the pomegranates and turn your batter blue!

**I used unsweetened almond milk and they turned out fine!

Let’s Get Baking:

1.            Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Line 18 muffin cups with paper liners. Whisk the flour, granulated sugar, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl. Make a well in the center (See picture). *If making recipe with pomegranate seeds, add the aluminum baking powder.

2.            Wash 2 clementine’s and cut them into 8 pieces each (peel and all!) and transfer into a blender. Add the milk, blend until smooth. Add the 2 eggs and blend until combined. Pour the mixture from the blender into the well in the flour mixture. Add the butter, ¾ cup coconut flakes, and stir until just combined. The batter may be a little lumpy.

3.            Divide the batter among the muffin cups until they’re almost filled to the top. The original recipe says to fill the cups ¾ full, but I like a big muffin top on a muffin so I fill them all the way to the top! Sprinkle the remaining ¼ cup shredded coconut evenly among the muffins. If using pomegranate seeds instead top the muffins evenly with the pomegranate seeds.

4.            Bake muffins until they are golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 20 minutes. Those last 5 minutes keep an eye on the muffins to make sure the muffin top edges don’t burn. Allow muffins to cool in the pans for 5 minutes before transferring to a rack to cool completely.

5.            Put the confectioners’ sugar in a small bowl and squeeze the juice from half a clementine into the bowl. Stir to make a thick glaze, adding juice from the other half of the clementine as needed. After the muffins have cooled all the way drizzle the glaze over the muffins and let set for 10 minutes. If you put the glaze while the muffins are still warm they will absorb the glaze or it will melt off, same if you make the glaze too runny the muffin will absorb it. Make it the thickness of the glaze you’d get to put on top of a toaster strudel from when you were a kid.

Enjoy for breakfast, with an afternoon cup of coffee or tea, with colleagues, family, or all to yourself!

                               

If you have any questions, please leave a comment! :) Happy Baking!

Competition Prep 2019: Month 2

I just finished my second month in competition prep and I am already into my third month. Crazy!

I am 8.5 weeks out from my first show and 9.5 weeks out from my second show. They are a week a part to optimize my competition prep and they both sound really fun! But wow, typing out those numbers makes it feel so much more real right now that I just got nervous and now suddenly wonder if I am doing enough and working hard enough to be ready by then..ah!

You may think I just went from 0 to 60 in a matter of seconds, but when you're working towards a goal and competing these are thoughts that can come often. I just have to remember to breathe and trust the process, which can be easier said than done.

Anyway, there have been quiet a few changes this month that I want to share with you! Perhaps the largest change was that I switched my competition coaches. It was NOT an easy decision and a scary one on top of that. My amazing friend Jana has helped me train these past 2 years and I have learned so much from her and we've become closer friends through it. However, she lives in Michigan and I live in Virginia so the distance was starting to get a little tough and I ultimately decided it would be easier to have my coach be closer to me in the area I live in. So I found a new coach and it's been going great! We have been working together since the beginning of February now.

After I switched coaches I got a brand new meal plan and workout schedule. For my workouts she told me what I should work on everyday and it was really nice for me to not have to make my own schedule, with all the other thoughts consuming my brain, it was one less thing for me to think about. The workouts consist of mainly using the cable machine. This past month we have been focusing on building more internal muscle so when it comes time to shred more weight I will have deeper muscle definition. This is especially a work in progress for my core....it needs to be tighter and more defined than it was last August. At first I was unsure of the cable machine because it was one of those machines I saw, but never used. Well you can work up quiet the sweat on those things!

This month I also started carb cycling. Carb cycling is when you do a few days of high carbs low fat and then high fat low carb days. For me I had 4 high carb days rotated by 3 high fat days. My calorie intake was between 1,500 and 1,700 calories. I was surprised how much food I was eating and the variety. I ate pineapple, black beans, rice, rice cakes, lean protein, spinach, yogurt, flax seed, berries, plus a handful of other foods. My favorite meal was greek yogurt with berries and flax seed because it tasted like dessert to me. I didn't mind the carb cycling and there was times I was hungry, but I didn't feel like I was starving, which is a nice feeling!

Let's talk traveling while in competition prep. It is NOT EASY. Not only are you not at home to prep your food....but you have to pack it for those long days at the airport. I eat 5 times a day and packing my food for the plane easily saved me $50-$60 in food costs since I traveled for 9 hours. TSA allowed me to bring whole meals through security, they took my yogurt and closed iced coffee drink, but only because they were over 3.4oz (see airplane meals below). This month I flew to Cali to visit my sister and the family in Folsom and my fiance's sister in San Francisco. Thankfully, I stayed at my sisters house and she took me grocery shopping so I could buy the food I needed and meal prep. Eating different dinner than everyone else isn't always fun and sometimes I wouldn't even eat dinner with my family because the way my meals were arranged, but they were understanding and flexible. Just know that you can stay consistent with your food/fitness goals while traveling. We went out to dinner with my fiance's sister and her boyfriend and I didn't eat anything I wasn't supposed to.  I have a work trip in March so we will see how that goes!

Cravings. Cravings.Cravings. What do I crave most? Peanut Butter. Stacks and Stacks of pancakes. Tacos. Ice cream. Cookies. Quest Bars. Pizza. Chicken Nuggets. Smoothie. Bananas. Cheeseburger. Wine. Ice Cold Beer. But mainly pancakes and peanut butter.

March is expected to see changes in my meal plan and workouts so I am looking forward to a little variety and see what this next phase of my prep looks and feels like.

I am a little over halfway there! Stay tuned for the rest of my journey!

Chocolate-Raspberry Cookie Pops

When I saw the cookie of the month for February I felt a mix of emotions: nervous, excited, delighted, and scared. These cookies looked really impressive and my first thought was “there is no way I can make these!” These were made by a professional baker and I just bake for fun!

BUT I made the decision to follow the magazine and make a cookie a month for the year of 2019. Also, what kind of person would I be to back down from a challenge because it looks hard? So, I committed!

After I decided to push forward I needed to decide how I was going to tackle making royal icing and my pipe work, both of which I have never used or attempted before. First I needed to find meringue powder. It’s one of those baking ingredients you can’t find in a normal grocery store. I found the meringue powder in the baking aisle at Michael’s, but I am sure you could find it at Joann’s as well. Another item i had difficulty finding was cherry extract. So I substituted raspberry extract instead….basically any extract (strawberry, raspberry, cherry) that would go well with chocolate.

Another snap-fu I came across was the recipe said I needed to use a 3in circle cutter to make the cookies. Well, I don’t have a 3in circle cookie cutter, but I have a pint glass, a wine glass, and a highball glass. So I measured which one was closest to 3in and the stemmed wine glass was the winner! *Disclaimer: I was SUPER careful and I would NOT suggest using this method on a regular basis or if you’re cooking with your kids or even yourself! If the glass broke while cutting out the cookies you’d have to throw away all of your dough and you could hurt yourself. So don’t be dumb like me! Buy the cookie cutter from Michael’s when you buy your meringue powder!

No matter how the cookies turned out I made the decision to have fun with it! I definitely learned a thing or to as well, including how easy it is to make royal icing and how fast you need to work with the royal icing so it doesn’t dry before you’re finished spreading it on the cookie.

I made these cookies for my office for Valentine’s Day. Everybody has been working hard and long hours so I wanted to bring a little holiday cheer! Even though Valentine’s Day is over you could make these for your significant others birthday, a wedding shower, or for any person/event you want to show some love!

Okay, enough chatting. Let’s get baking!

You Will Need:

For the Cookies

• 2 cups all-purpose flower
• ¾ cups confectioners’ sugar
• ⅓ cup unsweetened cocoa powder (I used Hershey’s)
• ¼ granulated sugar
• 1.2 teaspoon salt
• 2.5 sticks cold unsalted butter, cut into cubes
• 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

For the Icing

• 2.5 cups confectioners’ sugar
• 5 teaspoons meringue powder
• ¼ cup water, plus more as needed
• ½ teaspoon cherry (or any flavor your choose) extract

Other Tools

• 3in round cookie cutter
• Red food coloring
• 8in lollipop sticks

Let’s Get Cooking!

1. Make the cookies! Pulse the flour, confectioners’ sugar, cocoa powder, granulated sugar, and salt in a food processor until combined. Add the cubed butter and vanilla extract until the mixture looks crumbly. I had to pulse the mixture several times, stop it and scrap down the sides, a few times to make sure the mixture combined well. When you're done the mixture should look moist and a dark brown color. Keep pulsing until the mixture holds together when pinched.
2. Transfer the dough into a large bowl and press into a ball. Knead the dough and roll it in the bowl until the mixture forms a ball and all of the stray crumbs stick to the ball of dough. Turn the cookie down out onto a large sheet of parchment paper. Place another piece of parchment paper on top on the dough. Using a dough roller, roll the dough until it’s ⅜in thick. Refrigerate the dough (on the parchment paper) in the fridge until firm, about 1 hour.
3. Position racks in the upper and lower thirds of the oven and preheat oven to 325 degrees. Cut out the cookies using a 3in round cookie cutter (or in my case a wine glass ha!). Do not thaw the cookie dough before you cut out the cookies, the dough should be cold.  Arrange them 2in apart on unlined/ungreased cookie sheets. Insert an 8in lollipop stick about ¾ of the way into the cookie. (Bakers Note: I lightly pressed them into the back of the cookie and then used some excess dough to cover up the stick a little bit and then flipped them over to cook so the stick was on the baking sheet). Gather the scraps and reform into a ball and place them in between 2 pieces of parchment paper and refrigerate until ready for the next batch.
4. Bake the cookies for 25-30 minutes, switching halfway through, until the cookies are set. Let cool on the pan for 10 minutes and then transfer to a cooling rack to finish cooling. If you have more dough, remove the dough from the fridge and re roll to 3/8in thick repeating steps 2-4 until all the batter is used.
5. While the cookies are cooling make the icing. Whisk the confectioners’ sugar and meringue
   
   powder in a large bowl. Beat in the ¼ cup water and cherry (or raspberry) extract with a mixer on medium speed until a soft glossy peaks forms, about 3 minutes. Add up to 1 more tablespoon of water as needed so the icing is pipable but not runny. Tint the icing with red food coloring.
6. Decorate the cookies: Transfer about ½ cup icing to a resealable plastic bag and snip the corner. Pipe the icing around the edges of each cookie to form a border around the cookie. Set aside the icing for decorating later. Let set for 10 minutes.
7. Thin the rest of the icing in the bowl until the consistency of runny yogurt, adding 1 teaspoon of water at a time. Transfer this icing into another resealable plastic bag and snip the corner. Use this frosting to fill in the cookies within the circle you just drew on the cookie. Pipe a good amount of frosting into the middle of the cookie and use the back of a spoon, or an offset spatula, carefully spreading the frosting to fill in the cookies. Only do 1 cookie at a time because this icing (royal icing) sets pretty quickly. Let he cookie set about an hour. Pipe the reserved thicker icing that you used to draw the border on the cookie, to detail the cookies drawing on top of the cookies to make a floral design.

Then go celebrate because you did it!!! Phew! You survived! You’re on your way to being the next Food Network Star! I remember feeling exhausted after making these cookies, but also content with trying something new and not having it look like something off of the TV show Nailed It!

If you have any questions while making these comment or let me know!