First Snow of the Season!

I woke up today to find that we had been graced with the presence of the first dusting of snow this season!

Chilly morning snow

Yesterday, on my way to campus I saw Evanston's Christmas tree on its way into town on the back of a City of Evanston truck. Then it was snowing that light, swirling kind of snow on my way home from work. Could it be that the making of merry isn't far away?

Stay warm, friends!

Pumpkin Bonanza!

Well, folks, it was a late night in the lab yesterday. I had to run a long furnace experiment (and had to go into lab today to finish it blah), and while I waited, I decided that I should tell you good people about all of the delicious fall baking I've been doing lately. I noticed that even though I included cupcakes in the title, my blog is definitely lacking in baked goods. Worry not...this sad fact will change in the coming chilly months.

My research group had coffee hour last week, which I always use as an excuse to go a little crazy with the baking. I made some apple cinnamon muffins (not as interesting) as well as a few pumpkin dishes (more interesting).

These pumpkin pie bars are a fun, easy twist on pumpkin pie. They're sort of halfway between pumpkin pie and pumpkin cheesecake. The only modification I made was to decrease the amount of the topping/crust to 3/4 of the original recipe. Since they turned out so well, I made another bunch for a "practice Thanksgiving" that my friends Lauren and Kellie had at their place on Saturday. Our lovely hosts made the turkey, mashed potatoes, and stuffing, and everyone else brought sides, desserts, and appetizers. There were great friends, great food, and great times all around. :)

Even though the bars were well received, the star of the show was something I made on a whim: pumpkin spice puppy chow. No, not like the stuff by Purina. This kind of puppy chow (aka muddy buddies in some places). If you haven't had it before, a very important piece of your childhood is missing, so go make yourself some. Right now. I'll wait.

The recipe for the pumpkin spice version replaces the peanut butter with Biscoff spread. However, since I couldn't find that, I used Trader Joe's Speculoos Cookie Butter, which is basically heaven in a jar. Seriously, the clouds will open up and angels with trumpets will appear when you first taste it. Couple that with some white chocolate and pumpkin pie spice, and you have a deliciously addictive snack. (I may or may not have eaten all of the puppy chow left over from coffee hour...but you have no evidence of this, do you? Mwahaha.) Puppy chow is super easy, and this version really seemed to be a crowd pleaser. Try it at home!

A little bowl of heaven

Also, not quite as heavenly as speculoos butter but still quite delicious is Trader Joe's Pumpkin Butter. (I swear I'm not paid by TJ's in any way) It's like apple butter...but with pumpkin. I'm really digging it stirred into Greek yogurt with some granola.

The triumvirate

Once I discovered exactly how nutritionally sparse the PSL from Starbucks is, I've tried to avoid them (sigh). Thus, I sought to make my own. This recipe from Skinnytaste is an excellent substitute which uses the pumpkin butter...and it's super easy! Also, I can make mine more pumpkin-y if I want to without having to learn the language of Starbucks to get my order across. Be your own barista!

Starbucks, eat your heart out!

To use up the last of my pumpkin as well as some walnuts and applesauce I had lying around, I made a small batch of pumpkin nut muffins. They are moist and delicious and a festive way to use up any extraneous gourd you may have hanging out in your fridge.

As much as I love pumpkin, I'm super excited for the next season in line: peppermint! I think I saw some seasonal items popping up on menus already, so it's just around the corner! What's your favorite seasonal flavor?

Weddings and Kale & Quinoa Cakes

Happy November, friends! Hope the new month is treating you well so far.

I've been busy the past few weeks with school, work, and travel in addition to some cooking/baking. Andy and I traveled to PA last weekend for the wedding of Jake, our good friend from college. Andy was a groomsman, and I just got to sit and enjoy the ride. It was really great to see some of our friends from college as well as to meet the families of both Jake and his new wife(!) Audrey. They seem like a great match for each other.

I also loved to have a chance to get back to my home state for a few days. There is nothing better than Pennsylvania in the fall. For real. Illinois just doesn't have the same rolling-hills-forested-area beauty that Pennsylvania does. It made me happy just to be around it for a short time.

In addition to all the usual delicious wedding things, there was something especially unique here: cookies. THOUSANDS of cookies. If you're not familiar with the tradition of a cookie table, you're not alone. It's kind of like the phrase "firehall wedding reception." You don't realize that not everyone knows what this is until you say it in mixed company, and people look at you like you have three heads. Anyway, every time I walked by the table there were new types of cookies appearing. Maybe there will be some cookies in the future on S&C as a result. :)

In order to recover from post-wedding gorging, I've decided that I need to cook more healthy things this week. I was in Whole Foods last week and bought some red quinoa on a whim. I've cooked with quinoa before, but never the red variety. Why is a grain that has been around for thousands of years all of a sudden super popular? Not that I'm arguing with deliciousness...

I served the cakes with the "Hot Pepper Mustard" that we received as a favor at Jake and Audrey's wedding. It was sort of like a spicy version of honey mustard, and it went really well with the cakes. Such a cute idea!

Kale and Quinoa Cakes

From Joy the Baker (recipe adapted from Super Natural Every Day)

1 1/2 cups raw quinoa
2 1/4 cups water
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 large eggs, beaten
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 medium yellow onion, finely chopped
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1/2 bunch (about 3 cups) chopped dino kale
splash of apple cider vinegar
1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese
1/3 cup coarsely chopped sun-dried tomatoes
1/3 cup chopped parsley
1 cup panko bread crumbs
1/2 teaspoon salt (or to taste)
1/2 teaspoon coarsely ground black pepper or crushed red pepper flakes (I did half and half)
1 tablespoon water (I used a little less)
2 tablespoon olive oil (or cooking spray) for frying, add a bit more as necessary
lemon wedges, olives or capers, spicy mustard, and greens for serving

Place dry quinoa in a fine mesh strainer.  Wash under cool water for a few minutes.  Quinoa needs to be rinsed or it tastes dirty.

In a medium saucepan place rinsed quinoa, water, and 1/2 teaspoon salt.  Place over medium heat and bring to a boil.  Cover, decrease the heat, and simmer for about 25 t0 30 minutes, until the quinoa is tender.  Remove from heat and allow to cool to room temperature.  We’ll need about 3 cups of cooked quinoa for the recipe.

In a small bowl, whisk eggs and set aside.

In a medium sauté man, heat olive oil over medium heat.  Add onions and cook until translucent, about 4 minutes.  Add garlic and saute for 1 minute.  Add kale and toss until just slightly wilted, about 1 minutes.  Remove from heat and add a splash of vinegar.  Place kale mixture in a large bowl with prepared quinoa.  Allow to cool to room temperature.  You can speed up this process in the fridge for 30 minutes.

Add cheese, sun-dried tomatoes, parsley, break crumbs, salt, and pepper.  Add beaten eggs and stir until all of the quinoa mixture is moistened.  Add water to thoroughly moisten mixture.  Quinoa should be slightly wet so it doesn’t dry out during cooking.

Scoop out mixture by the 2 tablespoonful.  (I used a small ice cream scoop to scoop the mixture right into the hot pan.)  Use clean, moist fingers to form into a patty.  Create as many patties as you’d like.  (Rinse your hands after every few patties… it makes making patties easier.)

In a large skillet over medium low heat, heat olive oil.  If you pan is large enough, add four to six patties to the hot pan.  You’ll need a bit of room to successfully flip them.

Cook on each side until beautifully browned, about 4 to 5 minutes on each side.  Low heat helps the quinoa cakes cook slowly. Brown on each side then remove to a paper towel lined plate.

Serve warm with a lemon wedge, mustard, fresh spinach, and salty capers.  It’s like a deconstructed salad.  Serve them any way you’d like. Makes about two dozen small cakes.

A Return to Baking: Apple Spiced Scones

I freakin' love fall. There I said it. The crunch of the leaves, the crisp smell of the air, the warm colors of the trees...

Magical.

I also freakin' love scones. When I saw the recipe for these apple spiced scones on Skinnytaste yesterday, I knew that I had to get back to baking. Now that our kitchen in the new apartment is pretty much all unpacked and painted(!), I'm starting to make the kitchen my own again and beginning to get acquainted with my new oven. I feel like I should name it. Maybe I'll call it Gladys.

My preferred scone recipe is a whole wheat cherry scone that I came across a few years ago on the interwebs, but I'm always looking for new recipes for my favorite breakfast treat. My friends and I went apple picking a few weekends ago, and as you can probably imagine, we still have a glut of apples hanging out in our fridge. What better way to put them to use than in something delicious?

Scones fresh out of the oven.

The kitchen smelled AMAZING while these morsels were cooking. Sort of like as if you were baking an apple pie and banana bread simultaneously. UH-mazing.

I followed the Skinnytaste recipe pretty much word for word with a few substitutions. I used the lemon juice/milk substitution for buttermilk. I didn't have applesauce, so I just used a one-for-one substitution with vegetable oil. I'm sure they would be even more apple-y if you used the sauce. Also, I just used straight-up whole wheat flour because I don't stock the white whole wheat flour regularly in my pantry.

My dough was very sticky (maybe it would have been less so with the applesauce?), so if your dough is like this too, I would recommend forming the dough into a round on a cutting board, flipping it onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper, and cutting it into twelve wedges once on the baking sheet. I learned that this would have been the better technique by doing things the hard way and cutting the wedges first. I had to reroll the dough into a disk on the baking sheet. Oopsy.

EDIT: I also might refrigerate my dough for a little bit before working with it. I usually do this when I make my cherry scones, and it really makes handling and cutting the dough much easier!

A solitary scone...

...plus cinnamon/nutmeg sugar glaze...

Glorious!

Also, the scones themselves aren't super sweet and are almost like an apple cake/scone combo. Thus, they really need the sugar glaze to give you that satisfying sweetness in every bite. One of my baking life mottos is that you can never really have enough glaze on baked goods, so the more the merrier. I wound up using pretty much all of the glaze that the recipe makes, which gave me a nice hearty drizzle of glaze in every bite. Enjoy!

Delightful Apple Spiced Scones

From Skinnytaste

Ingredients:

1/2 cup cold buttermilk
1/4 cup unsweetened apple sauce (or oil)
1/4 cup dark brown sugar, packed (light brown works, too)
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 large egg
cooking spray (I used parchment paper instead)
1 cup white whole wheat flour (I used plain whole wheat flour)
1 cup all purpose flour  
1 tbsp baking powder
1 tbsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp salt
3 tbsp chilled butter (must be cold) cut into small pieces
2 cups diced apples, peeled (I used Jonathan)

For the glaze:
1 cup powdered sugar, sifted
1/2 tsp cinnamon
pinch nutmeg
2 tbsp cold fat free milk (plus 1/2 tbsp if needed)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375°.

Combine the first five ingredients in a medium bowl, stirring with a whisk. Spray a baking sheet with cooking spray.

Combine the flours, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt in another large bowl, stirring with a whisk. Cut in chilled butter with a pastry blender, or you could use 2 knives, until the mixture resembles coarse meal. Fold in diced minced apples. Add buttermilk mixture, stirring just until moist.

Place dough onto a floured surface and knead lightly four times with floured hands. Form dough into an 9-inch circle onto baking sheet, about 3/4" thick. Using a knife, cut dough into 12 wedges all the way through.
Bake until golden, about 18-20 minutes, depending on your oven. Place on a cooling rack about 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, to make the glaze: Mix powdered sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg with 2 tbsp of milk, adding 1/2 tbsp more (1 tsp at a time) if necessary to get the consistency to the right thickness. 

Place scones on parchment or wax paper and drizzle the glaze over the scones using a spoon - or- place the glaze in a shallow bowl and dip the top of the scones into the glaze, then let it sit on the waxed paper to harden.

Refried Bean, Corn, and Cheese Quesadillas

Now that we've FINALLY unpacked the kitchen stuff (mostly...sort of...sufficiently), Andy and I have finally started to cook things. Huzzah! Hopefully, Science and Cupcakes will include a little more cupcakes and a little less science the coming weeks.

This recipe is one of my favorite quick things to make when we don't want to get take out and don't feel like putting tons of effort into dinner. It includes my favorite cooking technique of all: opening up packages of things and dumping them into a bowl. The other nice thing about this recipe is that it is very flexible. Want to add cayenne pepper? Go for it. Cilanto? Sure! It works well with whatever spices you have on hand. Include the cumin, but everything else is up to you.

Serve with salsa, sour cream, and/or tortilla chips. Enjoy!

Refried Bean, Corn, and Cheese Quesadillas

Makes approx. 6 quesadillas
Adapted from Cooking Light

12 yellow corn tortillas
1 - 16 oz can fat free refried beans
1/2 cup frozen corn (do not thaw)
1/4-1/2 tsp cumin
1/4-1/2 tsp crushed red pepper
1/2 cup shredded cheese

Optional additions:
Green onions
Cilantro
Jalapeno peppers
Cayenne pepper
Etc.

In a small bowl, combine refried beans, corn, cumin, and crushed red pepper. Mix well.

Coat a non-stick skillet with cooking spray. Warm a corn tortilla on each side. Remove from pan. Place another corn tortilla in the pan to warm while compiling the quesadilla.

Spread first tortilla with 1/4 - 1/3 cup bean mixture. Sprinkle with ~1 tbsp shredded cheese. Place second warmed tortilla on top of filling to complete the quesadilla.

Return to pan and cook on both sides until the cheese is melted and tortillas are slightly brown. Enjoy!

(Source)

Sweet Home Chicago

Can you believe that it's almost the end of September already?! Where did the summer go? I've been back in Chicago for a little over a week now. And this time, when I say Chicago, I actually mean Chicago proper. Andy and I moved down to the city on the border of Lakeview and Lincoln Park, and so far, I am loving our new location! We're close to restaurants and the El, and our neighborhood is quiet enough that we can hear ourselves think yet busy enough that I feel safe walking around. We're still unpacking and such, but soon our place will be all spiffy and homey-like.

For those of you who have followed me around the country this summer, I hope you've enjoyed exploring the west with me. From the high desert of Albuquerque to the rolling hills of Livermore, I've tried to share my ups and downs with all of you, for better or worse. It's hard to encapsulate the summer in just one blog post, but I thought I could at least share a few musings that have been on my mind over the past few days. 

A few bullet point reflections of the past twelve weeks:

• Livermore is cute and quaint, and the Bay Area is lovely. Seven weeks there wasn't nearly enough time to see everything. This clearly means that I need to go back soon!
• Albuquerque is weird for reasons I can't quite put my finger on. We had sort of a rough time of it while I was there. The food is AWESOME, though. Ten points for Flying Star, green chile, and sopaipillas! I feel like to be fair, I need to give ABQ another try some time in the future. Maybe during the balloon fiesta?
• I really like biking everywhere. Livermore was super bike friendly, and I have a new respect for people who bike around Chicago. Maybe I'll get myself a spiffy new helmet and lights and stuff and become one of those people, too!
• Nature is amazing. Grand Canyon? Yosemite? I can't remember the last time my breath was taken away by something so beautiful. Nothing that humans can make rivals that which occurs in these places. Pictures don't do it justice; you need to see it yourself.
• You definitely need to have a car anywhere west of the Rockies. They're not built for public transportation. Gripe as you will, but the El is amazing.
• National labs are neat little places. They're a bit looser than the corporate world but still have that feel of academia. Perhaps a place for a post doc? 
• Even though the places I've visited were pretty nifty, there's no place like sweet home Chicago.

The Weekend of the Rental Car, or How I Got Lost Everywhere I Drove in California

This past weekend, I rented a car on a whim. The inception of this idea went something like this:

Me: uhhh, I don't know what to do this weekend. Maybe I should just rent a car and drive around.
Andy: Oh, look, Hertz has super cheap cars this weekend.

Done.

I was supposed to have a compact car but instead wound up with a Toyota Corolla, which is quite a bit larger than your typical compact. The larger size of the car will be relevant later in the story.

I had a vague framework of destinations in mind - Palo Alto to visit my friend Jakub, San Jose to see my friend Diana, and some sort of viewing of redwood trees. Also, since I was so close, I also decided to make a pilgrimage to the shrine of the Google. Mostly, I just wanted to embrace the California highway culture and explore the land beyond Livermore.

On the way to Google, I stopped at NASA Ames Exploration Center to geek out over space travel and to bask in the excitement of the Curiosity landing.

Almost my shoe size?

Just down the road was the place where all of the magic happens...

THE GOOGLE

I don't know what I was expecting (maybe armed guards or a labyrinth of mind games at the entrance?), but it was pretty cool that you could just drive around the campus. If I had some time, I probably could have even ridden around on a GOOGLE BIKE.

It's like seeing a unicorn or something.

After a quick lunch at a taqueria in Mountain View and a stop at the Stanford shopping mall, I visited my high school friend Jakub who is a grad student at Stanford in chemical engineering. En route to campus, I stumbled upon the Palo Alto Festival of the Arts, which very much reminded me of Arts Fest in State College. Lots of roads were closed off in the downtown because of this festival, and I got super disoriented and mildly lost. Eventually, I found my way to campus. Apparently the mall where I was shopping was adjacent to the campus. I did not know this at the time. Oops!

Stanford's campus is HUGE and absolutely gorgeous. I saw the brand-spanking new engineering labs and even managed to find the materials science building.

Ta da! 

In the main quad, we stopped by the beautiful Stanford Memorial Church. Check out the gorgeous mosaic on the front.

Proof that I didn't just take these pictures from the internet.

That night, I grabbed dinner with Diana, a friend of mine from my REU at Lehigh a few years back, and her boyfriend in San Jose. Again, I missed my exit at least ten times, but I finally made it to downtown San Jose. We ate at a Thai place just adjacent to the San Jose State campus. Then I drove back to Livermore and passed out for the night.

The next day, I decided to venture out of the 'burbs and get in touch with nature at Muir Woods. The journey to Muir Woods was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life. 180 degree turns? 45 degree inclines? Blind corners? The drive up to Muir Woods has it all!

The longest 500 ft elevation in my ENTIRE LIFE.

I think my crowning driving achievement was turning around on a road that was barely wide enough for two cars, with no guard rail, and parallel parking on a 20 degree grade along the side of the road. If I can do that, I can do ANYTHING. The drive was completely worth it, though, as I got to see these trees!

 That tree is gigantic.

On the way home, I drove through Sausalito, which has cute, quaint, nautical seaside charm a la Cape Cod. I topped off the day by getting horribly lost in San Francisco. This resulted in me driving around the Presidio for half an hour before inadvertently driving over the Golden Gate Bridge. I took a picture while driving. This is obviously super safe and probably voids some sort of agreement on my rental car.

Surprise! It's a bridge!

This time, I got super lost, and after freaking out a little (okay, a lot), I finally stopped at a Walgreens where a nice lady with an iPhone helped me with directions and a Russian woman thrust an atlas at me and insisted that I take it before I drove off. So now I have a U.S. Atlas, which will probably come in handy given how many times I got lost.

When I returned the car, I discovered that I had put 288 miles on it over the course of the weekend. I am fairly certain that I drove on pretty much every road in northern CA that ends in "80." It was a great experience. I think I'm really starting to like California. :)

Cheers for now! Have a great rest of the week, kids!