Season's Greetings!

I'm currently on the road, visiting family for the holidays, but I wanted to stop in here and wish everyone a very Merry Christmas!


My original plan was only to say hello and point out the pattern for this awesome little Christmas light. However, after talking on Twitter about some delicious jam doughnut mini-muffin that I baked, some of my Twitter friends asked me to share the recipe. So here is a Christmas gift for them and for you!


Jam Doughnut Mini-Muffins

Adapted from Nigella Lawson's How to be a Domestic Goddess

1/2 cup milk

7 Tbsp canola oil

1 egg

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1 1/4 cup flour

1/3 cup sugar

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

3 Tbsp strawberry or raspberry jam

4 Tbsp butter

1/2 cup sugar

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Line mini-muffin pans with paper liners.

Beat together the milk, oil, egg, and vanilla. In a separate bowl, mix together the flour, 1/3 cup sugar, baking powder, and salt. Pour wet ingredients into the dry and stir until just combined; lumps are okay.

Spoon batter into muffin liners, filling 1/3 of the way up. Add a dollop of jam (about the size of a bean) to each muffin. Fill remainder of muffin liner with batter to just below the top of the liner.

Bake for 15-17 minutes.

After removing muffins from the oven, warm up the butter and place 1/2 cup sugar into a shallow dish. Dip muffin tops into butter followed by sugar.

Makes 24 mini-muffins.

Yogurt 101

I'm doing a little experiment today, not only in the form of this blog post as a pattern plus recipe but also an experiment in microbiology--culturing milk to make yogurt.

It's worth making your own yogurt for two reasons: (1) it is fairly easy and inexpensive to make yogurt at home and (2) yogurt has a number of health benefits. Milk becomes yogurt by encouraging friendly microbes to multiply and breakdown lactose and other molecules in milk. To do this, you simply combine a small amount of yogurt (from the previous batch or from store-bought yogurt) with milk and heat everything up to encourage the microbes to grow.


So how does this all relate to knitting? Well, the yogurt/milk mixture needs to be kept warm for several hours during the culturing process. Wrapping a towel around the culturing container is one way to keep the liquid warm, but as a knitter I find the idea of using a jar cozy to be much more appealing. Both in terms of the cozy-factor and the cute-factor.


My Yogurt 101 lesson goes through both how to make yogurt in a standard one-quart canning jar as well as how to knit a cozy for that jar to help with the culturing process. Do try this at home!

Making the Yogurt
Using directions from The Curious Cook

Ingredients:
1 quart whole milk
2 Tbsp store-bought or homemade yogurt

Recipe:

Slowly warm milk to just below boiling (180-190 F), being careful not to scorch it. Allow the milk to cool to 115-120 F. Whisk in yogurt and pour mixture into warm one-quart canning jar. Cover jar with cozy and let sit undisturbed for about 4 hours or until the yogurt sets up. If you want your yogurt to be thicker, strain it through a cheesecloth. Store yogurt in the fridge.

Making the Jar Cozy


Requirements:
- 75 yards Cascade Eco Wool (or another bulky wool yarn)
- Set of five US size 10 [6 mm] dpns

Gauge:
15.5 stitches and 22 rows = 4 inches in stockinette

Pattern:
Cast-on 48 stitches. Divide stitches evenly over 4 needles (12 stitches per needle).
Join to work in the round, bring careful not to twist.

Work in [K1, P1] rib for 2 inches.

Work in stockinette (all knit) for 5 inches.

Decrease for bottom as follows;
Work [K to last 2 stitches on needle, K2tog] a total of 4 times.
Repeat this row 9 more times until 8 stitches remain.

Break yarn and pull end through remaining stitches.
Weave in ends, put jar into cozy and make yogurt!

Periodic Table of Cupcakes

What do you make to win a baking competition amongst chemists? A periodic table of mini cupcakes!


I had fun making these last weekend for my department's annual bake-off. Having won the competition the previous two years, I knew I had to go all-out this (my last) year. And I'm happy to report that I won this year's competition!


The table is pretty easy to make, provided you have a free afternoon. Here are some tips:

* Batter for 36 regular cupcakes makes at least the necessary 112 mini cupcakes. The minis bake in half of the time of the regular size cupcakes. I made red velvet with cream cheese frosting from Martha Stewart's Cupcakes.

* You'll also need at least 6 cups of icing, plus food coloring. A color copy of the periodic table really helps to make sure you have enough cupcakes in each of the many colors.

* I used dark chocolate for the lettering. I melted some in the microwave, put it in a ziploc bag with the corner snipped off, and piped the letters on. Again, it's very helpful to have a periodic table on hand.


I had a lot of fun assembling this table on the day of the competition and seeing my fellow chemists' faces light up when they saw it. The funniest part of the whole thing was the selection process, as there was a strong preference to pick the elements they use in their research. But even if they did not get the element of their choice, at least the cupcakes were all very tasty!

Apple-Rhubarb Sauce

Every fall since I started graduate school, I have made applesauce. Perhaps it's my way of reliving the happy days of my childhood, when we would go apple picking and grandma would make applesauce in a big pot on the stove. I always loved eating it warm, in big spoonfuls right out of the pot. Interestingly, I have no memories of eating this applesauce cold and I suspect that very little actually made it into the fridge at the end of the day.


It wasn't until this year, however, that I discovered the joy that is rhubarb sauce. Sweet and tart, it's even easier to make than applesauce and just as delicious. If I don't watch myself, I will eat an entire pint in a single sitting, it's that good.


I'm not entirely sure when I had the brilliant idea to combine the two sauces, but I suspect it corresponded to finding two Ziploc bags full of rhubarb in the back of the freezer this week. With apple season in full swing, I knew I had to try this right away. The base recipe is the one I use to make applesauce each year, swapping half of the apples for rhubarb and omitting all of the spices except cinnamon. However, the most important thing in making apple, rhubarb, or apple-rhubarb sauce is to taste and adjust as you go. That way, you are sure to get the balance right for your type of apples and your particular flavor preference. Besides, it makes me really happy to eat spoonfuls of warm sauce straight from the pot.


APPLE-RHUBARB SAUCE

12 apples, peeled and cores
4 cups rhubarb, chopped
1 cup sugar, or more to taste
1/3 cup lemon juice
Cinnamon to taste

Put apples and rhubarb in a large pot and fill with water so that half of the fruit is submerged. Heat to boiling, then reduce to a simmer. Add sugar and lemon juice. Cook until apples and rhubarb become soft and fall apart. Add cinnamon. Cook until desired consistency (if sauce becomes too thick before the fruit falls apart, add a little more water). Enjoy a bowl of warm sauce and stick the rest in the fridge, where it should keep for 1-2 weeks.