Ask a Hopeless Romantic Fridays

I'm starting a new segment where I'll feature a question asked to me about romance, or any other sort of "problem" that plagues the everyday person. I'll post the articles on Fridays with my responses and the original question... and on the weeks I'm not asked anything, I'll just write about a random dilemma.

Looking forward to hearing your questions!

-HR

CDKitchen 100: Recipe 5

AHA!

Bet you thought I was going to do another Violet Beauregarde plug, huh? Didn't ya? Didn't ya!?

But I gotcha, heh heh heh.

Nope, instead it is Bluebeard, Europe's own ever-eligible bachelor who just can't stop murdering his wives. (This picture does him no justice -- he had to have been a stud otherwise why would so many girls marry him?)

...And the reason I picked him is because his name sort of sounds like "Blue Bread."

I am so clever it frightens me sometimes.

Ending off the wonderful (terrible?) trifecta of blueberry recipes, I've got to say that out of the three, I ended up eating most of this recipe's product than any of the other ones (blueberry ones that is.) It was delicious, a sort of "staple" food that could work as dessert, breakfast, and a snack, and it even satisfied me when I had a sweet craving. It was really fun to make too.

Blueberry Bread

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cup flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 cup of margarine (I used butter)
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1/3 cup milk (I didn't have much "real" milk left so I substituted for condensed milk)
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla
• 1 1/2 cup blueberries

First, we're just gonna toss in both eggs, butter, and sugar, and mash it together until it's got a nice creamy substance to it.

Oh yeah, you know what Mama likes...

Even though the recipe said to alternate between flour/dry ingredients and milk, I just poured all the flour in...

...and then I poured the milk. (Oops on my part.)

Then add the vanilla:

Now it's looking quite marvelous if I do say so myself!

Take a loaf pan and grease it (I used some baking PAM)

Flour the pan

Pour in the batter

The finished product:

Is that a loaf in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?

Impressions:

• It tasted more like pound cake rather than actual bread, per se.
• The baking time given on the original recipe was way too long. Like, thirty minutes too long I think. By the time I opened the oven (about ten minutes early) it was a very dark brown. It was still edible, mind you, but I think it would've been tastier if it was a nice golden brown instead of a tan color.
• It was easy to make which is a super huge plus in my book.
  
• It was delicious, and I think I'll definitely make this again with revisions to it.

Found via CDKitchen (original recipe: Blueberry Bread).

CDKitchen 100: Recipe 4

Let it be said that Violet Beauregarde (I never get tired of her as an example...) is probably the definition of a "muffin-top." I mean, just look at her: bloated, BLUE, her top is bigger than her bottom.

Jeesh. Someone definitely needs to visit the gym.

Aside from forcing beauty ideals on someone so young, this entry is dedicated to Violet's favorite treat: Blueberry Muffins. After having a surplus of blueberries from my last endeavor, I personally like muffins. They're nutricious, they're the perfect snack, dessert, breakfast combo.

But they're also really, really yummy too.

Blueberry Muffins

Ingredients:

• 2 cups flour
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup milk
• 1/3 cup butter -- melted (like my heart, mmm)
• 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract (I used the last bit of my organic stuff)
• 1 cups fresh blueberries
• additional butter -- melted
• additional sugar

First off, you're going to take your dry ingredients and mix them together in a bowl. This would include:

...flour

...sugar

...baking powder

...and salt

And mix it all up!

Take the butter and microwave it until it's liquid-y.

It doesn't suspect a thing.

In another bowl, beat your eggs (they're just askin' for it anyway).

Yeeaah, that's the ticket.

Blend in the milk

butter

nutmeg, and vanilla (both not photographed) into this bowl. Mix it.

Take this time to preheat your oven at 375F.

Pour into the dry ingredients

It lives... IT LIVES!!

...and mix just until moistened.

Pour in the blueberries.

Now it in the original recipe, it says to fold in the recipes. Learning from my previous mistake with the blueberry fritters, I looked up what folding was exactly and proceeded to do that with the blueberries in this batter.

Then I took a muffin pan and greased it up with baking PAM and filled it up.

Oooh yeah, let's get a close up of that.

Without much further ado, I put in the pan and waited about 20 to 22 minutes.

You see the missing one? ...I ate that one.

Blueberry goodness...

Mmm-hmm! They look so good.

After they came out, I brushed the tops with melted butter with my silicone pastry brush and sprinkled them with sugar. I used confectioner's sugar instead of granulated, which may have been a slight mistake because granulated would've given some nice texture to the muffins.

Still, it came out rather beautiful in a blueberry grotesque way.

Bon appetit!

Impressions:

• I found that these muffins, while good, came out a little too nutmeg-y for my taste. Next time (and yes, there'll be a next time) I'll cut the nutmeg in half.
• I added too many blueberries and it was painfully apparent. Less blueberries next time.
• I might try whole-grain wheat flour instead of all-purpose for a more nutritional approach.
• I liked the recipe, but I didn't love it. Maybe with revisions next time, it'll be bumped to "adore" instead of "meh."

Found via CDKitchen (Blueberry Muffins).

CDKitchen 100: Recipe 3

Sorry for the gap in posts, but I HAVE been working on the recipes; just not uploading them. Bad me, I know. But I come bearing gifts! Lots of blueberry gifts!

I went to the local Farmer's Market and picked up a bunch of these little blue suckers for a nifty little price. I've been meaning to tackle blueberries for a while now, especially since they're not my favorite little berry (strawberry's got that title). I figure this challenge would be just the thing to give them a second chance.

I just hope I don't end up like Violet Beauregarde there. Gulp.

Blueberry Fritters

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cup flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 2 tablespoons of confectioner's sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/3 milk
• 2 eggs (separated, not divorced)
  
• 1 cup fresh blueberries

In one bowl, pour in all the dry ingredients.

Mix them all together.

Now after all that hard work, let's just forget about it and move on. We had our fun with it.

Time to separate the eggs.

The kids were never the same afterwards.

Be careful to save the yolk and beat the whites lightly in one bowl, like so:

In another bowl, put the yolks in and stiffly beat it to show how to take it like a real man, er, egg:

Yolk's on you - ha ha ha. ...Get it?

Going back to the soon-to-be-wet ingredients, take the bowl and make a sort of "well" or "indentation" in the dry mix and pour all the milk in.

Drowning microbes since 1988.

Add the whites and mix:

BUT LO! THERE'S MORE!

Here's where I made one of my boo-boos. Instead of putting in the blueberries first, I put the egg yolks in:

AND THEN I MIXED! OH NOES!

Well, it doesn't look too bad.

Ick.

Okay, NOW I put in the blueberries (I am ruining this recipe.)

Mix it around.

Let's get a close-up of that.

OH MY GOD, THAT DOESN'T LOOK GOOD. ...Those blueberries look sort of like chocolate chips to me. Hmmm.

Alright, we've done all we can. Now we let it chill for about 30 minutes.

In the meantime, get the rack ready, ladies...

....Uh...

THIS SORT OF RACK, I MEAN

Don't forget paper towels, y'all.

And the oil! In the saucepan!

Heat it up, nice and hot.

Now here was my problem... on the original recipe, it says to take two spots and make a sort of "ball" for the fritter and then dip it in the oil to cook. I tried that and it was surprisingly difficult. But I managed to get through it. This is what I hate about fried foods though... I can never tell if they're cooked enough on the INSIDE or not.

So I always manage to burn them (I've learned to love this taste; others can't.) Someone once said you have to listen for a distinct crackle/popping sound... and me? Well, I've pretty much destroyed my hearing with my iPod.

Oh well.

Voila! Fini!

It looks...

It looks... burnt. And not appetizing. At all.

Yeah, you said it, Simba.

Oh boy.

But biting into it, it's not terrible, especially if you coat the thing in powdered sugar. Like really, really coat it.

So what do I think of this recipe? Not a favorite, for sure -- I may have done a few things wrong such as:

• My cousin's chef friend said that I was supposed to use peanut oil instead of regular corn oil. It gives it a better taste. Also, there's supposed to be enough oil to completely immerse the fritters in. I was rather stingy and only filled it in halfway.
• I didn't know how to "fold", and silly me, didn't look it up before I tried to "fold" on my own. My stirring probably made the batter heavier than it needed to be.
• I left a few of them (okay, most of them) in the oil too long and probably made it more "burnt"/brown than they needed to be.

However, my better half says that they came out rather tasty; for me, however, they tore the roof of my mouth. Literally. Couldn't eat for a few days without wincing.

Do it again? Maybe, in some distant future when I'll forget why "fritters" strikes fear into my heart.

Find the recipe @ CDKitchen (Blueberry Fritters).

Stay tuned for blueberry muffins next!