Blueberry Tart on Puff Pastry

What to do with bucketful of blueberries after picking fresh from the farm? A quick and easy dessert with puff pastry and fresh blueberries. This dessert was inspired from this Blueberry Tart recipe. Mine turned out smaller but the taste is wonderfully light and sweet with a bit of tanginess from the cream cheese and lemon.

I suggest you follow the recipe from the source. With the smaller puff pastry, I adjusted the cream filling proportionately.

 

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Quick Easy and Healthy Blueberry Muffins

It’s blueberry season! No matter what time of year, this quick and easy blueberry muffins are a great snack or breakfast on-the-go alternative. You can make these blurry muffins using fresh or frozen blueberries. Super simple to make with only one bowl and a 2-cup measuring cup to use and no electric mixer required! What could be simpler?

Blueberry Muffin Recipe

Mix together in one bowl all the dry ingredients

• 1 1/4 cup all purpose flour
• 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
• 1/4 cup oat flour
• 2 tablespoons ground flax seed
• 1/2 cup brown sugar (you can use white sugar if you don’t have any brown sugar)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt (prefer Himalayan pink salt for added minerals)
• 2 teaspoon baking powder

Mix together in a 2-cup glass measuring cup:

• 1 egg, beaten (crack the egg into the cup and beat with a fork)
• 1/3 cup olive oil (grape seed oil)
• 1 tablespoon molasses (Tip: coat the measuring spoon with oil before measuring molasses and the molasses will easily slide off)
• Milk – pour enough milk to the 1 1/2 cup mark on the measuring cup

1.  Pour the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients. Mix until just blended (do not over mix).
2. Fold in 1 1/4 cup frozen or fresh blueberries.
3. Use an ice cream scooper to spoon into silicon muffin cups or liners.

Yield: Approximately 16 regular size muffins

 Substitutions for a healthier muffin:

• white flour = whole wheat, oat flour, flax seed
• white sugar = molasses for added nutrition, reduce sugar by 1/4 cup
• Himalayan salt = for adding more minerals

Moist muffin with plump blueberries. These muffins have a great texture with minimal mixing of the batter. It can easily be frozen after baking. It’s great with a little dab of butter while still hot or pair it with a slice of cheddar cheese for a satisfying snack.

A Tulip Study in 3 Different Mediums

For the last little while i have been doing healthy and kid-friendly recipes, now it is time to vary things a little bit with some art – a study of a subject. In the past, I have done studies of one subject in the same medium. This time I did one subject, tulips, in 3 very different mediums – a photograph, a pencil drawing and a vector drawing. This just happened spontaneously and in retrospect, I believe it would be good to do this more often.

How To Do A Study of One Subject in Different Mediums

1. Take pictures. Start with a close up view of your subject and take pictures. – whatever camera you have will do. Take the time to compose it and in different angles.
2. Sketch. I carry a small sketch book with me and use it when there’s opportunity to do even a quick sketch using a printed photograph or straight from a phone camera. I find that sketching by hand really helps in understanding the shapes, proportion and subtle colour shifts and gradients. Do  more than one if you can.
3. Create a vector art without looking at your reference material (photograph or sketch).  Use the reference material only after you’ve tried digital drawing from memory. You’ll be amazed how much you can remember of the subject.
4. Fine tune. Now you can refers to the reference materials and make changes to your vector art.
5. Compare all your art work, just as I did here side by side.

Try it! You’ll get to understand more about your choice subject and as I found it, the approach I took in creating each art improved.

Delicious Monkeybread With Easy Shortcut

If you ‘re like me, I like to make our own baked treats at home but sometimes I don’t want to make everything from scratch. This is a shortcut to making delicious monkey bread using a bread machine for the dough and finishing it off in the conventional oven. I’ve reduced the amount of the caramel sauce by half as I find it is just enough sweetness and buttery richness with half the sugar and fat. The result is a pull-apart bread with evenly distributed caramel/cinnamon goodness as an afternoon treat or dessert.

Here’s a step-by-step on how to make it. The recipe follows below.

1. Prepare the dough as per your bread machines instructions. Use the dough only setting.
2. Prepare the caramel sauce (with raisins) and set aside.
3. Once the bread dough is ready, knead a few more times on a clean floured surface and divide into 4 balls. Make into logs and cut into 12 pieces to make approximately 48 pieces of dough.
4. Dip each small ball of dough in the caramel sauce and layer in a bunt pan. Add the nuts (optional) in between layers. Remember to use oil spray on the inside of the bunt pan. Repeat until all balls of dough are in the bunt pan.
5. Cover the filled bundt pan and let the dough rise for approximately 20 minutes or until the dough rises to the top level of the bunt pan.
6. Bake in a 375 degree oven for 20 to 25 minutes.
7. While still hot, using oven mitts, carefully put a plate on top of the bundt pan and invert the bundt pan. The monkey bread should easily slide off on to the plate.

 Recipe

For the dough

• 2 teaspoons active dry yeast
• 3 cups of all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 2 tablespoons olive oil

For caramel sauce

• 1 cup butter
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 cup raisins
• 1/2 cup pecans or walnuts

Healthy options and tips

1. Flour substitute  I substitute up to 3/4 of the white flour to a combination of 1/4 cup oat flour, flaxseed flour (2 tbsp), and whole wheat
2. Use only half of the caramel sauce.
3. Add a dash of freshly ground nutmeg.