The Bread is in the Baking

I just moved into the house I will be living in for the next year. Whew. I can start baking more often again and I can stop living out of my suitcases! All of my things are now unpacked and put away and the only thing I have left to do in my room is put my posters up!
So far only 2 out of the 3 of us have moved into the new house so we had a pre-house warming house dinner to celebrate! Mooney doesn't eat gluten so we actually made this recipe with gluten free flour and it worked out great!
This recipe was supposed to be for shrimp (thus calling this coconut seafood because any seafood will do) but when we went to Trader Joes they didn't have any uncooked shrimp! I was really disappointed. Mooney suggested we use cod instead so we grabbed some of that.
 We got frozen cod, which worked fine, we just thawed it out first by placing seafood in a water bath. If you are using fish, place the fish in a sealed plastic bag in the water bath. You should not use already cooked meat because when you deep fry it, the meat will be overcooked.

The recipe I found for the coconut shrimp was really fatty so I left a lot of ingredients out and it turned out just fine, nice and crunchy! This meal goes really well over rice, which you can start while you're waiting for the seafood to marinate.

Coconut Seafood
1/2 lbs of meat of your choice (cut into 1 inch pieces)
1/2 lbs of broccoli cut into bite size florets
About 2 cups of oil
1 lemon

Seafood marinade
2 tbs cooking wine
1 tbs salt
1/2 tsp pepper

Coating for seafood
About 2 cups of flour
2 cups of medium shredded coconut
2 eggs (well beaten)

Mix together the marinade and place the seafood in the marinade for about 15 minutes.  Prepare the coating for the seafood by whisking the eggs in a bowl and shaking out about 1/4 cup of flour and 1/4 cup of shredded coconut onto separate plates. As you coat the seafood add more flour and coconut to the plates, but not putting all the flour and coconut on the plates, less of it is gummed up by the egg when you toss the seafood in it.
After the seafood is done marinating, take 1 or 2 pieces at a time and dip them into the egg and then coat them in the flour and then the coconut. Place the now coated seafood on a plate or baking sheet and repeat until all the seafood has been coated.
Heat up the oil in a deep pan or a deep fryer. While the oil is heating up, place the broccoli in a double boiler to steam, while you are frying the seafood make sure to check the broccoli ever 4-5 minutes to make sure it hasn't been overcooked and cook to taste (I like my broccoli to be just a tiny bit crunchy, which takes about 10 minutes). After the broccoli is cooked place in a large bowl (you'll add the seafood soon)
After the oil has heated up, place about 5-10 pieces of now coated seafood in the pan/deep fryer. Leave the pieces in the oil for about a minute or until golden, flipping the seafood at least once. Use a slotted spoon to take the seafood out of the oil and place on a plate covered in paper towel to soak up the excess oil.

Toss the Broccoli and now fried seafood together and squeeze the lemon over the broccoli and seafood. If you want something more flavorful, you can also use any other sauce you like!

Total Time: About an hour

Started getting a little hungry around 10pm, was sick of the almonds I have for munching on and had a craving to make muffins.

When I was younger my twin sister and I went through some different baking phases, one of which was a muffin phase. Our mom has a little cookbook of muffin and scone recipes and we just went through it and made all the muffins that sounded tasty. Then making muffins became too easy and we stopped.

But back to tonight. I have a craving for muffins, specifically spinach cheese muffins.

Problem: All the recipes I found called for ingredients I didn't have on hand
Solution: Try to come up with my own recipe based kind of sort of on a recipe I found. I took out the butter (because there's cheese in the recipe, no more fat needed), chives and instead of using Parmesan (which would have been really great) I used a Mexican mix (that's all they had at the student store). I am currently sitting here hoping that they don't come out like rocks.

They didn't come out like rocks! In fact they're really light and golden brown and just a little crispy on the outside and light and fluffy on the inside.

Spinach Cheese Muffins

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 egg
• 1-1/2 cups milk
• 1/2 cup chopped fresh spinach or 1/4 cup frozen chopped spinach, thawed and well drained
• 3/4 cup Mexican cheese mix

So I got off work yesterday and checked my phone to see if I had any missed calls, and I did! From my extended family in town inviting me over for dinner! I called back and said that I would love to come for dinner (and it was a good thing I did, because dinner was delicious). But you can't go over to someone's house last minute for dinner empty handed, so I went on the trusty FoodGawker and found a really quick and easy recipe for coconut cake!
Seriously, this is one of the easiest recipes ever. It takes about 15 minutes to mix all the ingredients together (and I did this all by hand, so imagine doing this with a mixer!) and then you pop it in the oven for 45 minutes and voila! It's also light, airy and not too sweet.
The only thing I changed in this recipe is that it asks for cornstarch (which is a thickener) and I didn't have any, so I added more flour (the recipe asked for 1 tbs of cornstarch so I added 2 tbs of flour) instead and it worked fine.

Coconut Cake
1 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 cup and 2 tbs flour
1 1/4 cup sugar
1 1/4 cup shredded coconut
125 g melted butter
3 eggs
3/4 cup milk
powdered sugar for sprinkling

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit because this is not going to take long!
Mix flour, baking powder and coconut and mix. In a separate bowl, beat eggs and sugar until pale creamy and then add the milk and cooled butter to the mixture and stir together.  Mix the dry and wet ingredients together, adding the liquid ingredients slowly. Then Grease an 8 inch angel food cake pan with butter or vegetable oi and then sprinkle it with flour and remove the excess flour.

Pour the dough into pan and level the top. Bake 40-45 minutes, checking the cake with a toothpick or small knife. Cool cake 5 minutes in the form, then turn over onto a wire rack.
Sprinkle it with powdered sugar and serve.


Total Time: About an hour

I came home from work today and I was craving something sweet, but being low on money I could only use supplies I had in my kitchen and the only oil I have in my kitchen right now is olive oil. I'd seen some cake recipes floating around the interwebs with olive oil in them instead of vegetable oil or butter and was interested in giving one of them a whirl.
This one was the only one that fit my parameters exactly and it came out really great (so great, I'm pretty sure I've eaten half of the cake by myself...). This cake is dense and silky with wonderful flavor and the glaze really helps bring out more of the flavor.

Lemon Olive Oil Cake
3/4 cup olive oil (don't feel the need to use really fancy olive oil, I got mine from Trader Joes)
1 large lemon
1 cup all-purpose flour
5 egg yolks
4 egg whites
3/4 cup plus 1 1/2 tablespoons sugar
1 cup powdered sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease an 8 inch springform, or 9 x 5 inch loaf pan with olive oil and line with parchment paper. Grease the parchment paper and then dust with flour.

Grate the lemon zest from the lemon and mix together with the flour in a medium bowl. Juice the lemon.

Quickly beat together the egg yolks and 1/2 cup sugar for about 3 minutes and then slowly beat in the olive oil and 1 1/2 tablespoons of lemon juice. Add the flour mixture and fold in gently with a wooden spoon or spatula.

  Using a mixer, beat 4 egg whites high speed with the whisk attachment until foamy. Continue to beat on high, slowly adding 1/4 cup of sugar until soft peaks form. Fold the egg whites into the cake batter until just combined. Pour into the prepared baking pan and sprinkle with the remaining sugar.

Bake until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, about 45 minutes. Cool for 10 minutes in the pan, then remove to a wire rack to cool completely.

Prepare the glaze by whisking together the powdered sugar 1 tablespoon of the fresh lemon juice. Add more lemon juice if necessary to get the desired consistency and pour over the cooled cake.