Orange Glazed Citrus Cupcakes

Most of the specialty items in my kitchen come from the clearance aisle or as the result of a determined hunt, armed with coupons. Pink silicone heart pan? Week after Valentine's Day. Nordicware mini bundts that make 3-D pumpkins? Just after Halloween. So what do you think happened when I ran across this item at Target, labeled "This Just In!"

Total. Impulse. Purchase.

I would have bought it even if we weren't planning another dinosaur birthday party this year. (Sorry, Shellyfish, I don't know if they're available in France!) First I tried making nice, healthy muffins in the muffin pan, but the coarse texture damaged the dino detail.

(Hmmmm, what could I possibly bake with a wetter batter and finer texture in a muffin pan? I'm sure it'll come to me eventually!)

All the eggless experiments and concave cupcakes I've baked are starting to pay off, because this is a really lovely cake with a distinct citrus flavor and nice crumb. For the first time, I've even achieved a cupcake dome without the use of egg replacer. I'm so proud! [wipes tears from eyes]

Ingredients:

1 3/4 C all purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt

1 lemon, zested and juiced

Orange juice added to juice from lemon to equal one cup
1/4 C vegetable oil, preferably canola
1/2 C sugar

1-2 Tbs poppy seeds (optional)

Preheat oven to 350°F. Prepare muffin pan with margarine or vegetable shortening and flour or break out the fluorocarbons and use Bakers Joy or similar baking spray. (I wasn't going to risk cementing batter in any of those tiny crevasses.)

Sift flour, baking soda, and salt together into a medium bowl. Grate the lemon directly into the flour mixture and stir, then juice the lemon and pour the juice into a measuring cup. Add orange juice to measuring cup until mixture equals one cup total. Combine juice, oil, sugar, and poppy seeds if desired and stir until completely integrated.

Fill muffin openings no more than three quarters full. I gave the filled pan a couple of good whacks to get rid of any air bubbles. Since almost half of my batter was left after filling the dino pan, I added 1 1/2 tsp poppy seeds to the remaining batter, prepped my mini bundt pan, and filled half of its openings, as well.

Bake for 20-25 minutes until nicely brown and the sides have pulled away from the edges. (You can do the thing with the toothpick, too.) Allow to cool 5-10 minutes in the pan, then place a cooling rack on the top of the pan and gently turn it upside down to release the cupcakes.

Glaze:
1 C powdered sugar, sifted
1-3 Tbs orange (or lemon) juice

This glaze is amazingly easy: sift powdered sugar into a bowl and stir in orange juice. The only decision is how thick you want the glaze to be. For the bundts, I added just enough orange juice to make the glaze drizzle-able. You can see how thick it is on them.

Since I didn't want to hide the detail on the dinosaurs, I added additional orange juice to the glaze before covering the dinos. At first I had a terrible time drizzling it onto the cupcakes with a spoon and trying to cover the entire area. Then I remembered that I owned a pastry brush, and finished them up quite easily.

The thin glaze doesn't look very fancy giving the dinos just a little shine, but the juice soaks into the cupcake, leaving it wonderfully moist and flavorful, almost like a nonalcoholic rum cake.

I am sending my lovely dinosaurs and mini bundts to Joelen's Culinary Adventures for her Tasty Tools Muffin Pan event. Be sure to check out her round up!

Dinosaur Lunchbox

Today's lunch will feed not just The Kid's body, but also his almost pathological dinosaur obsession. It contains dinosaur shaped soy wonder and pomegranate jelly sandwiches, dinosaur crackers (I added a few more after I made them lie down for the trip to school), carrots, grapes, the usual juice/water mixture and a Tyrannosaurus Rex sticker.

I'm sending the Jurassic lunch to Margo at Coffee and Vanilla for her monthly Wholesome Lunchbox event. Rawr!

Dinosaur Birthday Party

We finally had the big day! All in all, it was a roaring success (i.e., all the kids had fun and the EpiPen was unnecessary.) The first preparation for the social event of the season, after reserving a shelter at the park, was to send out the invitations. I included a slip of paper requesting that no food or drink be brought to the party and made sure I provided all my contact information for the other parents.

For the party itself, we planned a few activities for the kids. I bought a variety of bubble makers: big ones, little ones, battery operated ones, crazy wands, and a huge bottle of bubble juice. They kept the kids (and my husband!) occupied for a surprisingly long time. If you are having an outside party, I really recommend making bubbles as a noncompetitive fun activity. I'm pretty sure we'll do it again next year, and reuse all the same equipment.

For a theme activity, I made a "dinosaur dig." To hold it, I emptied out the long plastic box that my wrapping paper lives in, and filled it with sand. (We saved the sand afterward, in case we got hit by Almost Hurricane Fay.) I found this recipe for making "dinosaur eggs" and buried them, plus various other goodies, including little plastic snakes and "petrified" insects in green slime, since an archeologist never knows what he or she will find. (I had also purchased little plastic pith helmets as party hats, but they turned out to be to hot for the kids to wear in the sun.)

The food was a lot of work, but turned out great. Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures before we ate, so I just got a few shots of the leftovers. (As I post all the recipes I made at the party, I'll come back and add the rest of the links.) For starters there was a vegetable tray with Ranch Dip, the always popular Dinosaur Crackers with Cilantro Hummus, and tortilla chips with Zesty Tomato Salsa.

For the meal we had Pterodactyl Drumsticks, both turkey and Sunbutter & jelly dinosaur sandwiches made with this sandwich cutter. (I wish I'd gotten a picture of the tray, since I alternated whole wheat and potato bread sandwiches, making a very pretty tesselating pattern.) I also made calzones with this pizza recipe, both vegan (for friends who keep kosher) and turkey sausage.

The all important dinosaur cake (made with this pan) was red velvet, per The Kid's request. Fearing a recreation of the scene in Steel Magnolias with the infamous armadillo groom's cake, I decide on red frosting. My mom was kind enough to do the actual decorating of the cake, since I just am not talented at creating cartoony frosting characters.

The T. Rex pinata from iParty was definitely the climax of the party. I found a three pound bag of safe candy, and stuffed that thing with enough sugar to keep The Kid and his friends buzzed for days. The pinata was unfortunately a little too sturdy, and I ended up having to partially disembowel it with the pinata stick after the kids had thoroughly beaten up on it so that they could knock the candy out of it. Here are a few suggestions for those who haven't done pinatas before: I decided against blindfolds and spinning, since there are kids with some motor/balance problems in the group. We lined them up from shortest to tallest to make sure the younger ones all had a good shot at it, which proved unnecessary, since it didn't want to break open at all. I learned it's a good idea to discretely weaken it before hand, so that the kids can actually break through it. Also, don't hang the thing until you are ready to actually hit it, since the kids just fixate on the candy in the sky as soon as it is up.

Finally, I wanted to share the gift bags we made before the party, not because they were so fabulous, but because they were inexpensive, fit the party's theme, weren't filled with cheap plastic junk, and most importantly did not have any food in them. (I always have to take away the candy The Kid gets at parties, which is frustrating for both of us.)

The bags themselves were a couple of dollars at the craft section at Walmart. I picked up the crayons for about ten cents a box in the Back to School section there. The dinosaur stickers and "Play D'oh" came from my stash, so I'm not sure exactly what their source was. I picked up the dinosaur pencils and snap together gliders (not on theme, but kinda cool) from the clearance aisle at iParty, and printed out some dinosaur coloring pages to roll up and tie with curly ribbon. To involve The Kid in the bags' preparation, we had him decorate the bags with these dinosaur stamps, which had previously been given to him as a gift by his Grandma.

It was an exhausting day, but worth all the hard work. The Kid was able to have a "normal" birthday party and can't wait for his next one!

Living With Food Allergies Blog Carnival #23

Posting around here is going to continue to be a little light as we prep for The Kid's birthday party in just over a week. I'll have lots of great foods and activities to share afterward. In the meantime, check out the latest Food Allergy Blog Carnival hosted by Mamique of Casein Point.

If anyone has any suggestions for a dinosaur themed party, I'd love to hear them!

Turkey Roll Up Lunchbox

This was a sandwich I wanted to keep for myself! The turkey roll ups were made by spreading a fajita size flour tortilla with a very light layer of the basil & marinated artichoke pesto, covering it with some thinly sliced deli turkey, and rolling it up and cutting into six individual rolls.

The rest of the lunch is pretty standard. Pretzels, red grapes, baby banana, juice/water mixture, and a dinosaur sticker. Today it's a Dacentrurus.

Chicken Drummy Lunchbox

These barbecued chicken drummies are still favorites, but lately we've been making The Kid pick them up and eat them himself, rather than cutting the meat off for him. Last night as we were having them for dinner, he objected, saying they were too sticky. (This was after he ate his mashed potatoes with his fingers.) I remembered this fantastic tip from Lunch in a Box by way of Lunch Bucket Bento, and he ate them without any complaint.

It worked so well, that for Preschool today I packed up the leftovers with red grapes and animal graham crackers with the usual bottle of half apple juice and half water plus a dinosaur sticker (a Brachiosaurus for those of you keeping track) to make an extremely simple lunch.

Butterfly Pasta, Dinosaurs and Dewclaws

The sun did not shine.
It was too wet to play.
So we sat in the house
All that cold, cold, wet day.
"The Cat in the Hat" by Dr. Seuss

Today was wet and rainy, causing any plans to go to the park and/or pool to be canceled, so The Kid bounced off the walls, while I suffered from general sluggishness. I also failed to make it to the grocery store, so when dinner time rolled around, I was faced with "nothing to eat" in the kitchen. In reality, my pantry is fairly well stocked, so I just had to use a little more creativity than I had on tap at that moment. I heated some olive oil in a skillet to medium high, cut up a sweet onion and threw it in, then started digging.

2 Tbs olive oil
1 sweet onion, roughly chopped
4 mushrooms, sliced
1-2 tsp mixed Italian herbs
1/4-1/2 tsp powdered garlic
kosher salt and ground white pepper to taste
9 oz package frozen green beans
15.5 oz can cannellini beans, rinsed
14.5 oz can stewed tomatoes with liquid
8 oz bowtie pasta, cooked according to directions

After discovering that the fresh vegetables that I thought were still in the vegetable drawer were a figment of my imagination, I found some more than acceptable substitutes in the freezer and cupboard. I added the mushrooms and seasonings to the onion before I began to search, and the dish's good flavor is mostly due to the extended time that the onion had to caramelize!

Once I'd finalized my vegetable/legume/pasta choices, I put some water on to boil for the pasta and added the green beans and cannellini to the skillet. After they were both warmed completely through, I stirred in the tomatoes and liquid from the can, then turned the burner down to a simmer, while the pasta finished cooking. I added the drained pasta to the pan and discovered that I had a really good dish on my hands.

The Kid was initially suspicious of the new meal and asked what kind of pasta it was. I told him that they were bowties, and he promptly disagreed with me, claiming that they were butterflies, not bowties. Which was absolutely charming, until he started waving the things around in the air so that they could fly.

We then had a spirited discussion over dinner about the differences between two of his many plastic dinosaurs, one of which was a Tyrannosaurus Rex, and one of which was not. The not T. Rex was very similar, but unidentifiable, despite bringing several dinosaur books to the table for reference. We established that:

1. The not T. Rex has distinctive fan-like ridges over its eyes.
2. The T. Rex has two digits/claws on its tiny front arms, the not T. Rex has three.
3. The not T. Rex's dewclaws are on the inside of his rear legs, the T. Rex's in back.

We moved on to the subject of dewclaws and what kinds of animals have them. Then came the evening's stumper, "Do swans have dewclaws?" I couldn't figure out how The Kid came to ask the question, let alone answer it, despite resorting to the Google. He explained to me that we needed to go to the zoo, get a boat, and turn the swans over to look at them! Then I remembered that the very first animal exhibit walking into Lowry Park Zoo is the pond with the black-necked swans in it.

It was an evening that left me in need of more adult conversation, but also very grateful that despite a tanking economy, my family is fortunate enough that, "nothing to eat" in my kitchen is actually a hearty, delicious meal with lots of leftovers. I'm also grateful that my child is so interested in the world and capable of planning elaborate ruses to get us to take a trip to the zoo!

Plus, I liked my Butterfly Pasta with Beans enough to make this my first submission to the fantastic weekly Presto Pasta Nights Roundup by Ruth at Once Upon a Feast.

I still have a few questions, though. If anyone can help us identify the mystery dinosaur or establish whether or not swans have dewclaws without getting arrested at the zoo, I'd really appreciate it.

Garlic & Rosemary Wheat Crackers

These tasty little snacks without egg, dairy, or hydrogenated anything can be cut into any shape you desire. At our house, they are always the very popular Dinosaur Crackers.

1 C whole wheat flour
1 C all purpose flour
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp kosher salt
1 tsp dried rosemary, crushed
2/3 C water
2 Tbs olive oil
additional kosher salt to sprinkle on crackers

Preheat oven to 350°F. Measure out and cut parchment paper to cover at least two cookie sheets. Sift both flours and the garlic powder together into a large bowl. Stir in salt, rosemary, water, and olive oil until completely combined. (You may need to knead the dough a little bit to finish combining the ingredients.)

Divide dough into 3 or 4 pieces. Cover all but one in plastic wrap or place in a sealed plastic bag. Roll out the first portion on a lightly floured surface as thinly as possible. This is the most important step. The thinner and crisper the crackers are, the better they will taste. If you are making standard crackers, then it helps to roll out the dough on the pre-measured parchment paper, cut off the overlap, then transfer the parchment paper with the dough on it to the cookie sheet. (Trying to move the rolled out dough by itself can be difficult.) Gently dock the dough with a fork or docking tool to prevent them from trying to turn themselves into pitas, then use a pizza cutter to make parallel lines two to three inches apart in both directions. Try to avoid cutting all the way through the dough. Sprinkle with kosher salt to taste. Bake 15 to 20 minutes until crackers just begin to brown.

If you are using cookie cutters to make prehistoric animals or other shapes, roll out the dough as thinly as possible on a lightly floured surface. Cut out the shapes with cookie cutters, gently transfer to papered cookie sheet, dock, salt to taste, and bake 15 minutes. Leftover dough can be reused if kept moist. Making the cookie cutter shapes is very time consuming, so I usually make half the batch as dinosaurs, and half as squarish crackers.