Cinnamon Muffins for Fathers Day

I didn't have a present for my Dad for fathers day so I decided to make him something the recipe I decided on was cinnamon muffins, the recipe I used can be found at http://www.muffinrecipes.net/cinnamon-muffins.html

The muffins:

It was fairly easy to make, the only problem I encountered was that I didn't have any shortening. After browsing the net for a while I found out that you can substitute butter for shortening at a rate of 1 cup shortening = 1 cup + 2 tbs butter. Though since this recipe only calls for 5 tbs of shortening I had trouble converting that to butter, in the end I put in a total of 1/2 cup and 15 tbs (which is one tablespoon short of 1 cup), that total does include the 5 tbs of butter that it calls for.

The first step is to mix all the muffin ingredients together in a bowl, I find it easiest to mix the ingredients if the butter has been melted (or softened) beforehand. When mixing in the flour and the milk it is very important to alternate the two by putting in a bit of flour stir then a bit of milt and stir and repeat this order until all the flour and milk have been put in. If you don't put a little in at a time and just pour all the flour & milk in at the same time then you'll have a big mixing mess to deal with (it's a pain, I know from experience). The next step is to put the batter into the pan (spray the pan beforehand with p

am, oil, or butter) and put it into the oven that's preheated to 350F for 20 minutes. When it's done let it cool before taking the muffins out of the pan. To get the muffins out of the pan it's easiest to pinch the muffin top on either side and wiggle it a little until it's loose, you could use a knife to loosen it but when I tired that the muffin ended up loosing it's hat so unless you want your muffin it pieces... ya. Another option would be to use two pans and fill the cups only halfway, that way the muffin would overflow so much (I haven't tried this so I don't know how it'd turn out).

Icing:

It seems I was supposed to put the butter and sugar blend on separately but I didn't, I mixed them together. For fathers day my sister and I were going to put some icing on the muffins and then dye the rest (with food coloring) and with the dyed icing spell out "Happy Fathers Day!" on the muffins but the icing ended up being too runny to be able to do this. What we ended up doing was putting just a little bit of icing on top of the muffin and then using a previously un-used paint brush to paint the food coloring onto the muffins. The extra icing was just left in the bowl so that when we ate the muffins we could add the icing as needed to our muffin.

Results:

In the end the muffins were quite yummy, and my Dad loved how we'd written happy fathers day on top, all in all a very successful fathers day gift and as a bonus it was a yummy breakfast.

Here's a picture of the finished muffins:

Pork Hot and Sour Soup

Today for dinner I made pork hot and sour soup. I got the recipe from the Shoujo Beat magazine in the section called "Easy Does it bye Jennifer Olvera". I tried uploading a picture of the recipe but the text was too small, so I'll just type it out:

Ingredients:

1/2 lb pork tenderloin

1 pkg char sui (Chinese bbq) seasoning

1/2 cup water

1 tsp vegetable oil

1/2 a while onion finely diced

3/4 cup or thinly sliced button mushrooms (About 6 mushrooms)

2 cloves minced garlic

7 cup low-sodium chicken broth

1 Tbsp soy sauce

2 Tbsp red whine vinegar or wine garlic vinegar (I used red cooking wine)

1 tsp sugar

1 tsp salt

2 large eggs beaten

2 green onions, trimmed and sliced

1 tbsp cilantro, chopped

I wasn't able to find any char sui at the store so I found a recipe online to substitute (found at

http://bbq.about.com/od/barbecuesaucerecipes/r/ble10312.htm)

"

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Cook Time: 10 minutes

• Ingredients:

  • 1/2 cup sherry
  • 2/3 cup hoisin sauce
  • 2/3 cup soy sauce
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 4 cloves garlic, minced
  • 2 teaspoons black bean paste
  • 1 1/2 teaspoon Chinese 5-spice powder
  • 1 teaspoon salt

  Preparation:

  Combine all ingredients in a double boiler and simmer for 10 minutes or until it begins to thicken. Allow to cool and store in the refrigerator."
  
  

The only real problems I had with the recipes was the issue of missing ingredients, we didn't have any hoisin sauce or black bean paste so I had to go to the store to try and find it, fortunetally the store I went to had an Asian food section that I did find the hoison sauce in, although I had to substitute a different sauce for the black bean paste since they didn't have that. At the start of the recipe it tells you to mix the pork, char sui, and water in a zip lock baggie to marinate, we were out of the large zip locks so I just used a bowl. The mixture is supposed to marinate for 2-4 hours but I didn't have that long so I only marinated it for 1 hour, which ended up being fine.

While it was marinating I got out the rest of the ingredients and I cut up the onion, this would also be when I would cut up the mushrooms but I didn't put mushrooms in. After the pork was done marinating I put it in a pot to pan on medium heat, it takes about 20 minutes to cook. Leaving the meat to cook I put the onions in a soup pan to cook you let it cook for about five minutes and then added the garlic and let it cook for about three more minutes. After that I added most of the remaining ingredients to the pot (Didn't add: the eggs, cilantro, or green onions). I then brought it to a boil and then turned it down to low to simmer for about 20 minutes, then I turned it up to medium heat and added the now fully cooked, and cut up, meat and the egg, the instructions then say it's done but I let it simmer on low for about 10 minutes I then served it, I put the green onions and cilantro on the table so that people would have the option of whether or not they would put some in their soup.

Overall I found this recipe very easy to make and it was very delicious to eat afterwards. Everyone enjoyed it ^_^ Although it didn't taste like any hot and sour soup I'd ever eaten, it was still delicious to eat! I served it with hot Jasmine Green tea which made it taste all the better. I was going to post a picture of the finished product but I forgot to take one...