Orange Butterscotch Muffins

Shortly after J was born a lady from our church brought us a bag of lovely orange and date muffins. She shared the recipe with me. Couple of weeks ago I really wanted to make some muffins but I didn’t have all the ingredients at home. I played around with the recipe a little, and here is the result.

Orange Butterscotch Muffins

1/2 cup orange juice (preferably fresh)
1 orange, peeled and cut into pieces
1 egg
1/2 butter, softened
1/3 cup sugar
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
3/4 cup butterscotch chips

Preheat the oven to 200C / 400F.

Puree the orange juice and pieces in a food processor or blender. Add egg and butter, and blend until smooth. Add sugar and blend to combine.

Mix flours, baking soda and baking powder in a bowl, and make a well in the middle. Pour in the orange mixture, and stir until just combined. Fold in butterscotch chips.

Scoop the batter into lined or greased muffin tin. Bake for 15-20 min until golden on top, and thoroughly done (use the toothpick test). Cool on a wire rack.

This batch makes 12 muffins – unless you’re baking with a toddler, in which case it makes 11. And in that case you’ll also have to wash the kitchen floors and walls afterward.

If you’re not a fan of butterscotch chips I think chocolate chips or chopped pecans might be nice. But I haven’t actually tried the recipe with those… If you do, please let me know the results.

The Best Gingerbread Cookies

Sorry I’ve been so silent. Life has been busy, and I just haven’t had much to say.

Here’s something, though… My friend and I have spent two days this week baking cookies. This gingerbread cookie recipe is my mom’s, and it’s the best I’ve ever tasted. It’s a bit of work but so worth it!

Gingies

150 ml molasses
200 g sugar (approx. 250 ml)
250 g butter
2 tsp each, cinnamon, cloves and ginger
1 tbsp powdered orange peel (I haven’t been able to find this anywhere! The recipe works well without)
2 eggs
500 g all-purpose flour
3 tsp baking soda

Melt the butter in a kettle. Add in molasses, sugar, and spices, and bring to a boil. Remove from the heat and let cool down for 10 min.

Add eggs, one by one, beating well after each addition. Stir in the flour and baking soda. Let the dough chill until the next day.

Cut the dough in four or five parts (depending on your counter space). Roll it out to approx. 2 mm for crispy, thin cookies or 5 mm for thicker, chewier cookies. Cut out shapes and bake them in 175C / 350F for 5-8 min, depending on the thickness.

Decorate the cooled down cookies with royal icing (blend of icing sugar and water, with food colouring if desired). This recipe makes about 100 thin cookies. You can also use the dough for a gingerbread house – in that case roll the dough thicker.

Enjoy! Merry Christmas to you and yours.

Travels, Old Photos and Distractions

I’ve been absent for a while. You may have noticed. This is the time of the year when I seem to be really busy every time. Christmas craft sales are coming up, and with J around, I have even less time to spare than I used to… And somehow I end up with jobs that get more and more busy, the closer to Christmas we get.

I also took J to Finland to visit mummo and pappa (grandma and grandpa in Finnish) in the beginning of October. It was a good visit, in spite of us all being sick most of the time… I got to spend time with my parents and sisters, and spent a lot of time going through old photos and listening to stories from the days past.

All my grandparents are now gone, but their old photo albums are at my parents’ place. My grandmother (dad’s mom) had a serious Alzheimer’s, and she had torn many photos off her albums and thrown them away. I looked through the rest. There were no names, no dates, just photos. My dad recognized many of the people but more were left unnamed. I took lots of photos from the albums since apparently no one else cares.

Matti & Iida Niemi (my great grandparents) and their daughter Sylvi, 1915

My grandfather (mom’s dad) passed away less than two years ago. He was interested in genealogy, and had written down names, dates and descriptions for the photos. He had albums full of photos, and many loose pictures in a tin. I browsed through, and took many of the photos from the tin, especially because many of them had duplicates in the albums.

Kerttu Varri, my grandmother, 1930s or 1940s

So now I have piles of old photos – family history, WWII photos, people long gone. The plan is to scan them all and then make albums – but considering I’m really bad at getting albums or scrapbooks done for our own photos I’m not sure when that’ll get done… Maybe when I’m retired.

Terttu Niemi, my other grandmother

Now, posting this has been the distraction part… I’ve got work to do.

You Know You Have Too Much Yarn When…

Apple Chips

I made some lovely spicy apple chips last week! Here’s how – try it. It’s easy and delicious!

First, take two or three apples, and core and slice them. Peeling is optional – but I’d recommend it if you’re using wax-covered apples. Firm, slightly tart apples work best for this job. I’m using Royal Gala because that’s what we had at home.

Next, lay the apple slices on a baking sheet, as tight as you can. Sprinkle the spice of your choice over the slices. Cinnamon and cardamom go well with apples but you can always experiment. I used Garam Masala, an Indian spice mix, and it was great! Don’t add sugar, the drying process will bring out the sweetness even from the most tart of apples.

Next, turn your oven on to the lowest possible setting. Put the pan in the oven and leave it overnight. Since the whole point of the process is to get rid of all the moisture, leave a spatula or something in between the over door to keep it open and let the moisture escape.

And that’s how easy it is! Unfortunately I don’t have a picture of the finished apple chips… They vanished quickly. I’ll add a photo when I make them again.

If you try some unique flavouring on your apple chips, please share it on the comments below. We’d all love to hear it!

Paperless kitchen

I have decided that paper towels are useless. They have to be, people survived hundreds of years without them… (For the record, I hate it when people make that argument. Life and society have changed so much in a hundred years, it’s usually not valid. But I digress.)

Where was I? Yes, paper towels. I think we can do without them. And once again, inspired by Pinterest, I took out my sewing machine and got to work.

I happened to have a stack of flat diapers that we had never used.

They are made of cheese cloth like cotton, and I figured they would be a good base for our towels. I cut them into squares and trimmed off the hemmed edges.

Next I found some cute cotton flannel from our local fabric store (very addictive place, I might add). I looked for old cotton flannel sheets from thrift stores first but didn’t have any luck – I only found cotton-polyester blends. But this one wasn’t too expensive.

I cut it into squares according to the diapers I had already cut, and a meter of flannel gave me a dozen pieces. Next I simply layered a piece of flannel with a piece of diaper fabric, and sewed a short zig zag stitch around all the edges. If you have a serger it’ll probably do a better, much neater job… But I don’t so zig zag had to do. Afterwards I trimmed the edges as close to the stitch as possible.

Next step; snaps. Just in case I haven’t mentioned before, I’m really excited to own a pair of snap pliers… I’d like to put snaps on ALL THE THINGS but that might not be convenient. (“Honey, did you really have to put snaps on my socks and ties?”)

Then, all that was needed was to snap all the towels together and wrap the whole thing around an empty paper towel roll!

Ooops, it’s not looking very tidy…

The next problem – our paper towel roll holder is very, very cheap and very, very flimsy. I can barely hold up the weight of a regular paper towel roll, and this thing is way heavier…

So I used one of those over-the-door bars and a piece of ribbon, and voila!

The towels are really absorbent and are getting a lot of use. There are just two things I’d rather use the paper towels for – cleaning up cat barf, and cleaning fish for cooking. It would be more pleasant to use something disposable for those jobs…

Baby Spa

Next time your baby or toddler flings his or her meal on your face or leg, consider it a free spa treatment! Here’s how:

Yogurt (the real stuff, you know, made with milk and bacterial cultures, nothing else) is a great cleanser. It helps to get rid of acne and greasiness, moisturizes the skin and exfoliates dead skin cells! For a homemade facial, mix yogurt with lemon or honey, spread it on your face and leave for 20min. Rinse and feel the freshness! You can also use it on dry, itchy scalp before washing your hair.

Your home spa

Watermelon is the Best Thing Ever in our house right now, and yesterday I was practically speaking covered in watermelon juice. If that happens to you, leave the juice on the skin for 15min. Then rinse it off first with hot and then cold water, and feel the freshness! Or if your face is covered with not only the juice but the pulp as well, leave it for 10min and then rinse, and that’ll give you a natural face lift. And don’t forget to eat your melon, it’ll keep you hydrated, and that’s important for a beautiful skin.

Cucumber cools your skin down, soothes it and softens it, and helps you and your skin relax. I’m sure you’ve seen those pictures of beautiful women with slices of cucumbers over their eyes? That helps to reduce puffiness. Grated cucumber or cucumber juice helps to soothe sunburns. And for a glowing skin, mix 4-5 leaves of fresh mint and one peeled cucumber. Mash them together, stir in one beaten egg white, spread on your face for 20min and then rinse.

Oatmeal makes a great scrub, cleansing off dead skin cells and helping your skin glow. It’s even better if it has brown sugar in it! However, it won’t leave your skin dry because it also moisturizes gently.

Honey is a great natural moisturizer that works wonders especially on oily skin. It has antibacterial and anti-ageing properties. Blend one tablespoon with a peeled, cored apple and use it as a toner, or add half a cup of honey into your bath. But please, please don’t give honey to your babies until they are at least one!

And then there’s milk. Queen Cleopatra, it has been told, used to take regular milk baths. Milk moisturizes and keeps the skin soft and young. Use it as a cleanser as is, mix with honey and a few drops of lemon juice for a toner or a little bit of almond oil for a cleanser and make-up remover. And if you don’t want to carry home all those gallons to take a bath in it, use a cup of powdered milk instead.

Avocado is full of healthy fats, vitamins and minerals. So eat it. And spread it on your face – but make sure it’s really ripe. Avocado slices over your eyes can reduce puffiness. Mashed avocado rejuvenates skin, leave it for 30min and rinse. For extra oomph, mix with tablespoon of honey and one beaten egg yolk. Avocado is especially great on dry skin.

Eggs are also great for your skin, toning it and reducing greasiness. But since we usually eat our eggs cooked we’re not going to discuss them further since they usually work better in skin care when they’re raw… But if you really want to spread scrambled eggs on your face as a face mask, I’m not going to stop you…

No, I didn’t just make these up. I used Google a lot… I also browsed through an old notebook where I’ve copied recipes from many library books (but unfortunately I haven’t written down their names). And some ideas are from a great book in my shelf called India’s Beauty Secrets.

You’re welcome.

And once I find out how these things are also good for your carpets and walls, I’ll let you know…