Scrumptious Street

Scrumptious Tea Time

Some Sundays, I make a full-on feast and other days I just want to relax and spend quiet time with Mr. Scrumptious. On those days, one of our favorite rituals is late afternoon tea.

This weekend after cleaning up the brunch dishes, Mr. Scrumptious came into the kitchen to find me busy with the bowls and pans and pulling ingredients from the pantry.  He smiled gently and asked "What are you making?" I replied, "Mini Banana Pecan Muffins" and he laughed, saying "The smell of overripe bananas got you, didn't it?"  Indeed.  I spied two ripe and browning bananas and knew they were bound to be the snickey snack for our afternoon tea. 

I used a pretty standard banana and pecan bread recipe but added a couple of my unique touches.  We bought the tea set you see in the photos at a great store here in New York called Subtle Tea and since the set is so festive and whimsical I decided to do mini muffins instead of a bread.  Actually, I did 24 muffins and a small loaf of bread since I still had some extra batter after filling the cups.  I used the mini silicone baking cups for the first time and loved them! I should have bought 36 of them, however.  I'll be writing them up over on one of my other blogging gigs.  If you happen to live in New York, I heart this tea shop! They have incredible quality and mixes available.

Here's my recipe for the "Mini Banana, Pecan and Ginger Muffins".

Ingredients:
Makes 36 mini muffins or about 18 small muffins

2 ripe bananas, peeled and mashed
1/4 c. whole milk
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
1/4 tsp. ground ginger
1 c. sugar
1 medium egg
1/2 c. salted butter
2 c. all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 c. pecans, toasted and chopped

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 360˚Farenheit.  Place the bananas in a medium bowl and mash.  Add the milk, vanilla extract and ground ginger and continue mashing and stirring until thoroughly mixed and the consistency of very thick soup.

2. In a large bowl cream together the sugar, egg and butter making a smooth and even consistency. Set aside.

3. In another bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder and baking soda.

4. Add one-third of the flour mixture to the creamed butter and mix evenly with a wooden spoon, stopping as soon as the flour is incorporated.  Add one-half of the banana mixture and stir gently.  Repeat with the remaining flour and banana and stir only until it's all incorporated.  Do not overmix this batter or the muffins will be dense and chewy instead of light.  Add the chopped pecans and fold in gently. 

5. If using the silicone muffin cups, you don't need to prepare them, you'll simply fill them and place them on a baking sheet.  If using regular or small muffin tins, grease thoroughly.  Fill the muffin cups of choice to a level just below the rim, a little over 2/3 full.

6. Bake the muffins until golden brown, springy to the touch and a toothpick comes out clean.  The length of time will depend upon your muffin cups.  My mini silicone cups took 16 minutes.  Small muffin tins would take about 20-25 minutes and large muffins would probably take 30-35 minutes.

7. Remove from the oven when done and set the baking sheet on a cooling rack for a few minutes.  Move the muffins to the rack directly and let cool completely before removing the silicone muffin cup.  Serve and enjoy!

These are delicate, moist and the classic combination of bananas and pecans works so well as always.  The vanilla and ginger give them a more balanced flavor but I promise I haven't used so much  that they taste of ginger.  They do not, it simply has a deeper flavor and it goes extremely well with the light and floral flavor of the rooibos tea we drank.  Sunday tea is such a treat when it's done with love.

Scrumptious New Year

Happy New Year to all my Scrumptious Street readers! I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season and you either escaped the temptation to over-indulge or you're mature enough that the guilt of doing so doesn't bother you!

We held our inaugural New Year's Eve party this year and had a blast with some of our closest friends.  Since it's a time of year when everything can be hectic and normally over-scheduled New Yorkers become frantic, it was a relaxing celebration with some seriously cool people.  Thanks to all our guests for ringing in 2007 with us and hopefully next year even more people can make it. 

We'd only arrived back in town the night of December 30, so the food was on the light and simple side.  I didn't keep track of any recipes, but you see some photos here and it was really a cocktail party rather than a dinner party.

The food included:
* Artichoke and Red Pepper puree served in artichoke heart bottoms
* My own Guacamole
* My newly invented Pink Peppercorn Parmesan dip -- I'll do a separate posting on this, it was DELICIOUS
* Rosemary Olive Bread with Goat Cheese
* Shropshire Blue Cheese with Ruby Port Glaze and Spiced Walnuts
* Thanks to my shopping spree at Buon Italia, a phenomenal cured meats and cheeses antipasto platter including Proscuitto San Daniele with cantaloupe, Bresaola with ruby-red grapefruit, spicy Sopressata, sweet Sopressata, Provolone, Fontina, Parmigiano-Reggiano and a spectacular sour cherry preserve as the perfect topping for the cheeses.  It went especially well with the provolone.

We also had plenty of libations for our snickey snacks and gnoshes since the wine rack at Scrumptious Street is always full.  We had champagne and prosecco, as well as some gorgeous wine.  I was in the mood to play bartender, since the cooking was so easy, so I made a couple of terrific cocktails.  One is my own pomegranate martini, with a shot of vodka, a splash of Rose's sweetened lime juice and a shot of pomegranate juice.  Shake in martini shaker and garnish with a slice of lime.  The second and truly phenomenal cocktail was from Food & Wine's website, the Rosemary Gin Fizz.  It was fantastic! And, I am a professed anti-gin drinker! Make sure to make the rosemary syrup too.  Wow.  I was paying for too many of these the day after...

May you all have a happy, healthy and inspiring year and I wish you a life of personal fulfillment and wonder at life's surprises.  All the best in 2007 to you!

Snickey-Snacks Macadamia Style

I have always played with words, invented them and found language to be an endless source of entertainment and amusement.  Somewhere when I was growing up, I made up the word "snickey" and began to use it as an adjective with the noun snacks to describe some very tasty and playful little morsel.  Snickey-snacks.  I made this word up so long ago that now I don't remember exactly when; it is so natural that sometimes I forget it's a Stephanie word and not a dictionary word.  My Dad sometimes uses this phrase.  Mr. Scrumptious definitely has adopted this phrase.  The term snickey-snacks represents the sense of joy and fun that comes with not really going through the effort of a meal but popping something small, simple and delicious into your mouth.  Sometimes I don't want food, or a meal, or to dine.  I just want a really awesome snickey-snack.

Recently a colleague was feeling a little dejected and upset.  I know that she loves macadamia nuts and on the way out the door from work one night I stopped by her office and said, "Name an ingredient.  The first thing that comes to your mind."  Her immediate reply was "nutmeg".  My self-proclaimed mission, which I chose to accept, was to make up a snickey-snack using macadamia nuts and nutmeg to take into the office for her next day.  These simple, fun and comforting "Spiced Macadamia Nuts" were my result, and my own snickey-snack created just for her.  She liked them and this also fits well with some of the holiday themes we're thinking about these days.

Ingredients:
Serves 4

6 oz. roasted macadamia nuts
1/3 c. valencia orange juice, freshly squeezed and strained of pulp, about 1 1/2 oranges
6 tsp. turbinado sugar
1 tsp. freshly ground nutmeg
2 tsp. fresh shredded, unsweetened coconut

Method:
Preheat oven to 380˚ F.  Line a baking sheet or rimmed jelly roll with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat.

Place a small skillet over moderate heat and toast the macadamia nuts in the skillet until they begin to dry out and turn a light golden brown color.  Remove from heat and spread the nuts flat on the rimmed baking sheet or jelly-roll pan to cool slightly. 

Wipe out the skillet and add the orange juice strained of all pulp and seeds and the turbinado sugar.  Return the skillet to low heat and melt the juice and the sugar so that it combines into a simple syrup.  Add the nutmeg and use a wooden spoon to stir and combine the ingredients and allow the syrup to thicken.  When the syrup thickly coats the back of the wooden spoon but before it gets sticky, add the macadamia nuts back to the syrup in the skillet.  Quickly turn the nuts around in the pan, coating them evenly with syrup.  Drop the nuts onto the prepared baking sheet or pan, spreading out into an even single layer so they aren't touching one another.  Sprinkle the nuts with fresh shredded coconut. 

Bake at 380˚F for five minutes.  Remove from the oven and let nuts cool completely.  Snack to your heart's content.