Raisin Gingerbread Muffins

I've been baking and cooking up a storm lately!

Last night, for example, I made Raisin Gingerbread Muffins, thinking that they were a little more neatly portable than the boy bait was.

Recipe with my modifications follows.

Raisin Gingerbread Muffins

Take your butter out of the fridge, and let it soften.

Preheat your oven to 375°F

If you forgot to soften your butter, pour yourself a lovely beverage and sip it while you wait for your butter to soften.

Cream together:
1/2 cup butter (which is softened, right?)
1/2 cup sugar

Beat in:
2 eggs, 1 at a time

Beat in:
1/2 cup sour cream

Beat in:
1/2 cup blackstrap molasses, which has more nutrients in it than other molasses, so this gets the mystical allure of being a Healthy Muffin

In a separate bowl, mix together:
2 cups plus 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour, divided
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 generous pinch salt

Add dry ingredient mixture to wet mixture, and stir to combine. Just to combine -- once everything's gotten damp, stop stirring.

Stir in:
1/2 cup golden raisins

Line your muffin tins with, well, muffin tin liners/cupcake wrappers; you're making 12 muffins, so line enough indentations. Distribute dough evenly between the cups. They'll be about 3/4 full, but don't worry too much about it, as long as they are evenly full. Grab a tin by the short sides, lift a few inches off your work space, and thunk it back down on your workspace to help settle the dough in nicely -- it's sticky, so if you try to even 'em out from above, be prepared to lose some dough.

Pop the tins in the oven. Check in on them in 18 minutes: if you can slide a toothpick or broomstraw into one and have it come out clean, you have muffins! Otherwise, rotate your trays in the oven, and give 'em another 3 minutes.

Remove from oven to wire rack. After 5 or 10 minutes, tip them out of the tin to finish cooling on the rack.

Once they're all-the-way cooled, you can pop 'em in a zip top bag -- a gallon size works nicely, if you eat two of the muffins first. (What? They smell good.) Close the zip top almost all the way; you don't want it completely air tight. Store on the counter or in your breadbox if you're going to eat them all in the next few days, otherwise fridge 'em or freeze 'em.

These taste VERY GOOD. They'd be even better with cream cheese frosting.

Fantastic Fruit Bars: Improvisational Cookery

We can't end our week with Amazing Magical Jell-o Desserts without having at least one ★-rated recipe "for children with more cooking skills." The fine folk at General Foods seem to think that more cooking skills translates into better improvisational choices, so there's more freedom in this recipe than the others we've looked at.

This freedom might come in handy this weekend, if you're on the East Coast of the U.S., and stuck inside waiting out Hurricane Irene -- you can mix up flavors to suit your tastes and your pantry supplies. Of course, if you're still standing in line at the grocery store, you could ask the nice person behind you to watch your cart while you run to get the ingredients, and then you can plan a little more specifically.

★ Fantastic Fruit Bars

THESE GO IN:
1 cup graham cracker or vanilla wafer crumbs
1/4 cup melted butter or margarine
2 packages (3 oz. each) Jell-O brand orange, lemon or peach flavor gelatin*
1 cup boiling water
1/2 cup light corn syrup
1 cup chopped dried apricots or prunes or chopped mixed dried fruits*
1 teaspoon grated lemon or orange rind (optional)*

GET THESE READY:
1-cup dry measure
1-cup liquid measure
small saucepan
medium bowl
measuring spoons
9-inch square pan
small knife

HOW TO MAKE IT:

1. Combine crumbs and melted butter; sprinkle 1/2 cup ccrumb mixture over bottom of a 9-inch square pan.
2. Dissolve gelatin in boiling water.
3. Stir in corn syrup, fruit and rind. Chill until slightly thickened.
4. Pour into pan over crumbs; sprinkle with remaining crumbs. Chill until firm, about 3 hours.
5. Cut into bars; store in refrigerator. (Bars hold well at room temperature for several hours.) Makes 20 confections.

*Suggested combinations: Orange flavor gelatin with apricots and orange rind. Lemon flavor gelatin with prunes and lemon rind. Peach flavor gelatin with mixed fruit; omit rind.

They're not coddling kids here: they recommend prunes. Prunes! Instead of raisins! You could use raisins. Or sultanas. Or Craisins. Or...any other dried fruit. Dried blueberries with Berry Blue Jell-O -- why not! Okay, other than my firm belief that food is not nor should it be blue. Regardless, we have a lot more flavor options in the gelatin world these days than we did back in the 70s, so branch out. If the idea of finding a flavor on a cookie tray doesn't make you hurl, try it here.

If I were writing this recipe, I'd change the order of the HOW TO MAKE IT so that you'd do step 2, step 3, and then step 1 -- there's no need for you to make the crust before making the gelatin, and you're going to have some time to twiddle your thumbs as the gelatin thickens slightly. This thumb twiddling time is the perfect time to throw a sleeve of graham crackers in a heavy duty zip top bag and start bashing the crap out of it.

It is entirely acceptable to use pre-crushed, comes-in-a-box-as-crumbs graham cracker crumbs. It is easier to measure, as there's no guess work as to how many crackers you'd need to whack. (We're full service here: 14 graham crackers make a cup of crumbs. You're welcome.) I do have a box of said crumbs on my shelf, in case I get a hankering to make a seven layer cookie. No shame.

Stay safe, folks. It's going to be a heck of a weekend, weather-wise. We'll be back with a new cookbook tomorrow.

Banana Wobbler: Everything Else Is Shaking, So Why Not?

Great googly moogly, we had an earthquake here today! For those of you not familiar with the mid-Atlantic region of the US, DC is a couple hour's drive away from the epicenter. There was some (thankfully limited) damage to the National Cathedral up the road, but everything chez nous is safe and content. That being said, I had to change up my Amazing Magical Jell-o Desserts plans a bit to reference the incredibly out of the norm occurrence -- no matter if the world rumbles or no, Jell-O will jiggle and wobble.

♦ Banana Wobbler

THESE GO IN:
1 package (3 oz.) Jell-O brand gelatin, any flavor
1 cup boiling water
1/2 cup cold water
2 medium bananas, cut in half
Lemon juice
Shoestring licorice

GET THESE READY:
3 empty 6-ounce juice cans
mixing bowl
1-cup liquid measure
mixing spoon
paring knife

HOW TO MAKE IT:

1. Dissolve gelatin in boiling water. Add cold water and chill until thickened.
2. Place a spoonful of gelatin in each of 3 empty 6-ounce cans.
3. Center the banana halves and spoon remaining gelatin around bananas.
4. Chill until firm, about 2 hours. (Dip remaining banana half in lemon juice; set aside for another dessert.)
5. Dip each can to the rim in warm water, invert onto plate, puncture bottom and lift off can.
6. Insert piece of licorice in one end of each mold to resemble firecracker. Makes three servings.

I have never once felt a need to eat a firecracker. That being said, how cool would this be for an Itchy & Scratchy/Simpsons-themed gathering? Also, I adore licorice, so even though I'm skeptical about pairing it with banana and random Jell-O, I'm willing to give it a try. This is our first "appeals to older children" recipe, and it is a good deal fussier than the others featured this week.

You may have noticed some weird little cartoons in the bottom corners of pictures this week. They're part of two different flip books! The right-hand pages show a boy eating a dessert until it's gone; the left-hand pages show a rabbit escaping a magician's hat. There's also tons of magic tricks throughout the book, which helps explain the cover art somewhat. They're "magic tricks by Marvello the Great." If anyone's really eager, I'll post a magic trick before we're done this week. For now, though, I'm going to sign off, have some pizza, cuddle my dog, and remember that earthquakes are really, really rare here, and we're all safe.

Cherry Cola Cooler: Pop, Soda, Coke

Back in June, I posted a recipe for a cherry Coke salad, and made mention of a similar recipe from a remembered cookbook from my youth. Lo and behold, that book is this week's Amazing Magical Jell-o Desserts and it seems like it's altogether appropriate to feature the recipe that triggered the memory.

I'll admit: I waffled a bit though. I mean, more than one eggnog recipe, sure. More than one way to roast a turkey? Of course. Five different sugar cookie variations? It's only natural. But two cherry Coke Jell-O dishes? It seems a bit...indulgent. But I asked Kelly which recipes she thought I should write about this week, and she immediately said the cherry Coke one. Far be it from me to say no to my sister (at least when her dictates nicely coincide with my wants).

♥ Cherry Cola Cooler

THESE GO IN:
1 package (3 oz.) Jell-O brand cherry flavor gelatin
1 cup boiling water
1 cup cola beverage

GET THESE READY:
mixing bowl
1-cup liquid measure
mixing spoon
4 small glasses

HOW TO MAKE IT:

1. Dissolve gelatin in boiling water. Add cola beverage.
2. Pour into small soda glasses or individual dessert dishes.
3. Chill until set, about 1 hour. Garnish with thawed Birds Eye Cool Whip non-dairy whipped topping and maraschino cherries, if desired. Makes about 2 cups or 4 servings.

It's another ♥ recipe, so think about your preschoolers. Or preschoolers in general. Whatever...it's an easy recipe.

I know I normally take a moment to tell you to use better ingredients, but I'm not going to say a bad word about Cool Whip. I love Cool Whip. It's not a substitute for whipped cream for me; it's an entirely different substance with different applications. For example: whipped cream goes on mincemeat pie, Cool Whip on pumpkin pie. There's an order to the universe.

When this cookbook came out, Cool Whip was just 10 years old. Back then, it was made by Birds Eye -- which makes some sense, as Birds Eye was the really super nifty division of General Foods that was all about revolutionizing frozen foods. Cool Whip: a revolutionary dessert topping. Cool Whip: totally okay to dollop on your cherry cola cooler.

And, no, that's not a paid endorsement. I just loves me some Cool Whip. (If you're hearing Stewie Griffin in your head right now...you're welcome.)

Since we're taking the time to talk brands here, I want to say flat out that I think you should use honest-to-goodness Coca-Cola in this treat. Why? Because I just think it tastes better. It tastes more like a soda fountain. It tastes more like...well, what I think Pop Shoppe cola must have tasted like, and I was a kid who was enthralled at the idea of Pop Shoppe pop. I was a rabid watcher of Ramblin' Rod growing up as I did in the Portland area in the 70s, and Ramblin' Rod gave birthday boys and girls Pop Shoppe pop. It seemed important. It seemed magical. It seemed good. Helluva good bit of promotion, there, ye olde Pop Shoppe.

And, yes. I called it pop. I call it soda now, but that shift only happened once I moved to DC (21 years ago this week!). My dad has held on to "pop" longer, but he calls it "soda pop." No one in my family has ever called anything other than a Coke a Coke, though, so I haven't lost all my sparkling soft drink lingo to the South.

Yet.