Pepperjack Tomato Soup

I first ate this soup at Isaac's, a small chain restaurant in the Lancaster/suburban Philly area. I've always thought of them as the place with sandwiches named after birds. However, on this particular day, after a long cold morning of shopping (MCC sale!), I decided to try the pepperjack soup. Yummmmmmm.

Fortunately, it's not too hard to reproduce with simple pantry ingredients, so Dan and I ate this for dinner several times when I had nothing else planned.

Pepperjack Tomato Soup

Comments & Modifications:

• Well, the pepperjack already was a modification based on the comments at the bottom of the recipe, which I can't seem to access now. Basically, in addition to the cream cheese, you just throw in a hunk (2-4 oz) of pepperjack cheese, and maybe a bit of Tabasco.
• With the addition of the pepperjack, I don't think all the cream cheese is needed, maybe only half? Unless you need some more fat in your diet, which I certainly don't.
  
• I've been making half the recipe as written, and it's sufficient for Dan and me for dinner with no other sides. Although, we might fight over the last couple of scoops.
• I went with the higher amounts of dried basil, paprika, and garlic powder. Using dried basil is important; I think using fresh would change the results quite a bit.

Verdict: YUM. This is such a simple and tasty dinner during the cooler seasons. Not too great for you with the sodium from the canned soup and the fat from the cheeses, but it's worth it every now and then.

Apple Pie Muffins

I'm not really sure why these are called Apple Pie muffins. There's no crust, the apple-y innards don't really resemble apple pie, why not just call them apple muffins? I guess apple pie sounds tastier.

Apple Pie Muffins

Comments & Modifications:

• I cut down on the toppings on these a lot, and just used streusel from fridge, again from last fall, oops.
  
• The apples I used may have been "tart" but only because they had been sitting in the fridge for at least a few months. I wouldn't have eaten them plain, but they were fine for baking.
• I subbed dark brown sugar, and I think it added a lot of flavor.
• I may have added some cinnamon to the batter, to compensate for less in the topping. I have no idea, but I'm sure it would work out fine either way. I bet a bit of nutmeg would also be lovely.
  

Verdict: Dan really liked these. Hopefully I won't only make them when I have nasty old apples to use up.

Update: The nutmeg was indeed lovely. However, these muffins are just overwhelmingly sweet. I don't know how to fix that without changing the texture and flavor! Also, I'd increase the salt to at least half a teaspoon.

Lemon Yogurt Cake

I promise all these muffin recipes were tested at a rate of one per week, not all at once, like it must seem based on my posting habits.

Lemon Yogurt Cake

Comments & Modifications:

• Technically the recipe is for Lemon Blueberry Cake, but it says right there in the description that the cake could be modified any number of different ways. That's why I'm posting it here as Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins.
• I used lemon flavored Dannon yogurt instead of plain. It tasted okay, but next time it would be better to find a naturally-flavored and naturally-sweetened variety. I'm not sure what baking might do to that unnatural stuff.
• I bet I could make my own lemon yogurt by mixing some lemon juice into plain . . . better try that next time.
  
• Three large eggs were sufficient; no need to get into partial eggs to convert extra-large to large.
• Of course, I left out the blueberries and added poppy seeds instead.
• I tried doing the glaze, but had a hard time getting it to sink in, even with holes poked into the tops. It made a nice mess on my counter. Next time I would add more lemon flavor to the muffin (via juice or zest) and skip the glaze.

Verdict: After several failures with lemon poppy seed muffins, this one finally got it right. Good texture, strong lemon flavor, they were delicious.

Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins

More muffins . . .

Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins

Comments & Modifications:

• This made more like 18 normal-sized muffins, not the 12 specified in the recipe. All my muffin tops grew together into one giant cake-thing.
• We opted to skip the glaze, since it's a little inconvenient for traveling in a baggie.

Verdict: These were gross. They hardly tasted like lemon. The texture was okay, but nothing special. Move along, move along.

Cinnamon Muffins

Yet another entry in the long list of attempts to satisfy Dan's muffin cravings . . . okay, that sounded dramatic, he just finds them more palatable for breakfast than most other breakfast foods. Plus, they're portable.

Cinnamon Muffins

Comments & Modifications:

• I think I just made these as written.
• Maybe I added a little extra cinnamon?
• I made twelve muffins instead of eleven. They didn't seem particularly small.
  

Verdict: These have good flavor, but are a little dry. I think we could do better.

Blueberry Muffins

Actually, in the allrecipes.com link these are called "To Die For Blueberry Muffins" -- but "to die for" always seemed excessively dramatic to me, so I left it out.

Blueberry Muffins

Comments & Modifications:

• Frozen blueberries are what we had, frozen blueberries are what I used. They did sink to the bottom a bit. I read somewhere that if you toss the blueberries with flour before mixing into the batter they sink less. Also, I didn't defrost them.
• I'm pretty sure I used my own streusel topping for this, since I had some in the fridge (from last fall . . . oops).

Verdict: These muffins are Dan-approved. I didn't try them at all, but he said they were moist and light just like Betty Crocker (what a role model). Hey, whatever floats his boat.

Raspberry Buttermilk Cake

Alas, it has been far too long since my last blog post. You see, work intervened, and although I made time to try out new recipes, I did not manage to blog about them. I'll do my best to dig up what few memories remain, but let's not be too optimistic.

And what better recipe to post about after a long hiatus than something I made just the other day? Hopefully this will help me get back in the groove.

Raspberry Buttermilk Cake

Comments & Modifications:

• I omitted the lemon zest; too much trouble.
• I think I used salted butter, but it may not make much difference.
• Since I had real cultured buttermilk in the fridge, that's what got used, rather than soured milk.
  
• Instead of carefully placing the raspberries facing up or down, I scatter them, and most of them ended up sideways. They all sank into the batter.

Verdict: Since Dan's first reaction on taking a bite of this was "Wow!" we can probably can call this a winner. My coworker also made it, and she and her husband had a hard time holding back from devouring it on the spot. The tart raspberries worked perfectly with the creamy, buttery, not too sweet cake. We think it would work well with blueberries, and I think blackberries might be okay too but it's hard to say. I hope to make this again soon because the batter was excellent!