Delectable Lime Buttercream frosting

My dear friend Cathy and I are always trying new things when we get together to cook.  What I haven't been totally upfront about is that sometimes I'm totally winging it.  This was one of those instances, and I'm happy to say it turned out delicious!

This isn't the best picture for it, but if you squint real hard you can see the lime zest leaves pretty little flecks of green in the white icing. Makes enough for 24 large cupcakes or about a billion tiny ones

Ingredients:
1 stick of SOFTENED butter*
2 cups of sifted powdered sugar
1-2 tbsp (up to you) lime zest
1 tablespoon fresh squeezed lime juice plus more if needed+



Directions:
Stick the butter in a bowl and hit it with a hand or stand mixer at medium speed a few times.  It should sort of smush like melting ice cream (NOTE: if it stays in block form, but with marks on it, it needs to soften more)  Sift the powdered sugar into the bowl and blend on LOW SPEED (anything more than that will cover your kitchen in powdered sugar and you can't say I didn't warn you) 

At this point, it should look grainy and slightly yellowish.  Add in the lime zest and lime juice and blend again (you can turn the speed up now)  It should all stick together and look like...well...icing.  If it's still grainy or too thick for the texture you want, add more lime juice a drizzle at a time.

Easiest way to decorate with it is to shove it into a ziplock (I'm presuming, like me, most of you don't have actual piping bags) and nick off the corner to the width you want.  Then squeeze it on in a spiral pattern.  The thickness I described this as making will not spread on its own, so either spread it yourself or make it a tight spiral pattern.


*NOT melted^
^DEFINITELY not melted#
#In no way shape or form should you melt your butter!
+ If you want to dye your icing, you have to subtract an equal amount of lime juice from the recipe or it will come out soupy.  I'd recommend adding the dye to the measuring spoon, then filling it the rest of the way with the lime juice

You put WHAT in your chilli?!

I came across the basis for this recipe in a vegetarian cookbook I found and had forgotten all about.  It called for, get this, carrots.  I laughed, but figured that I couldn't really taste anything too subtle anyway (having a cold at the time) so no harm in giving it a go.  I was shocked (SHOCKED, I tell you) to find that carrots seem to be the missing ingredient in chilli.  They give it a flavor I didn't even know I was missing.

So give it a try.  Really.  It's super cheap to make and relatively fast, so no harm done.

Ingredients:
1 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, diced
2 cloves garlic
1 red pepper diced
2 carrots, peeled and diced no larger than the last joint of your pinky finger!!!*
1 can of diced tomatoes
2 cans of pinto beans, drained
5-10 slices of pickled jalepenos, diced super fine
Black pepper to taste

Directions:
Drizzle olive oil around the bottom of a large pan (I used a spaghetti pot) and heat over medium high.  Dump in the onion and garlic and snap a lid on that sucker. (be careful of oil spitting up out of the pan)  Lower the heat to medium and let cook for 10 minutes.

If you haven't already done it, chop the pepper and carrots while you're waiting.  Lift the lid, dump in pepper and carrots and give it a good stir.  Put the lid back on and let cook for another 10 minutes.  Take off the lid and get it out of your way, you won't need it again.  Jab at the largest carrot chunk you see with a fork: the fork should slide right in. (If it doesn't, you probably didn't listen to me about the size.  That's ok, just stick the lid back on and check at 5 minute intervals until you can sucessfully jab that carrot)

Dump tomatoes and beans on top of everything.  Turn heat back up to medium high.  Stir a few times, till everything is warm, then dump in the jalepenos.  Let cook for about 5 minutes (this is flavor-merging stage), then serve into bowls.  Very delicious with a sprinkle of cheddar.


Bonus!  It's good cold, too.

*If the carrots are too big, you'll wait forever for this to be done

Crockpot: Ginger Barbeque Pork

Found a recipe for Root Beer Pork and adapted this from it.  I'm not a huge fan of root beer.

Ingredients:
1 pork loin (1-3 lbs)
3 tbsp (Mostly) Barbeque Spice Rub (recipe)
1 bottle of ginger beer*

Directions:
Put pork loin in the crockpot.  Sprinkle the top with the spice rub and press it in.  Pour bottle of ginger beer over the top of it.  Turn crockpot on low for at least 4 hours.

This is also good shredded and on buns as a sandwich.


*Ginger beer is a different animal than ginger ale being entirely more gingery and not as sweet.  You can usually find it in foreign food stores (being quite popular in Jamaica) or in your grocery store's health and foreign food aisles.  Please don't substitute ginger ale, it'll hurt my feelings.

Where's the love?

Ok, I just flipped through some of the info available on blogger's new editor, and I can see over 500 views (44 of which are for Hot Lava Cakes) and not a single comment from a soul.  Tell me, folks, what do you think?  Good?  Bad?  Needs just a little something?  I love to tweak, and I need your help to do so.

(Mostly)Barbeque Spice Rub

This spice rub is something I use to "kick it up a notch" with pre-made barbeque things and my own barbeque recipes.  Keep an eye out next week for the recipe I most commonly use it in or sprinkle it on top of the next barbeque sandwich you have.

Ingredients:
3 tbsp brown sugar
1 tbsp salt
1 tbsp cumin
1 tbsp paprika
1 tbsp black pepper (freshly ground is better)
2 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp dried onions
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp cayenne pepper

Directions:

Mix it all together.  Package whatever you're not using right away in an airtight container or ziplock with extra air squeezed out.

Happy Father's Day!

 Happy Father's Day to all the men in our lives! 

 Most particularly to my father, who taught me all the basics and a love of food (and fun, as you can tell)

And my Papa, who taught me to garden and love REAL vegetables

Pizza Crust for the Fluffies

There are two camps of pizza crust eaters: the crispies and the fluffies.  I'm a fluffy.  I like big, fluffy crusts with chewy centers and crispy outsides.  This is my favorite crust recipe

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups warm water
2 1/4 tsp yeast (or 1 packet)
1 tbsp brown sugar
2 tbsp olive oil
2 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp salt

Directions:
 In a small bowl (or measuring cup, if you're like me and hate extra dishes) mix together the warm water, brown sugar, and yeast.  In another, larger, bowl, mix 1 1/2 cups flour with salt.  As soon as the yeast blooms*, mix the olive oil into the water mixture, then dump everything in on top of the flour and salt.  Mix together as thoroughly as possible, adding more flour if necessary to get the dough to the point where it's thick enough (and not sticky) to knead.  Knead it for 5 minutes, adding more flour as necessary, then coat lightly with olive oil, drop back in the bowl, and cover with a towel or plate.  Let it sit for 1 hour.

 Preheat oven to 425.

VERY lightly oil only the bottom of your pizza pan.  Do not oil the lip of the pan.  Plop your pizza dough down in the middle of the pan and squish and push the dough towards the lip.  Here comes the reason I  told you not to oil the lip of the pan: if you've oiled everything, your dough is going to shrink back towards the middle as soon as you stop pushing it.  Therefore, you want to push the dough up over the lip and curl it slightly down on the sides of the pan so it will stick.  Jab at the parts of the crust that are touching the bottom of the pan with a fork a few times so steam can escape.  Bake for 5 minutes.

Add toppings and cook until cheese/crust/toppings achieve desired brown-ness (for me, about 12 minutes)

*Instead of being  merely murky, you'll see the water/sugar/yeast mixture start to have light "blobs" of color that push out from the center of the bowl.  Fun to watch.