I Did A Thing With Stuff

I'm resurrecting this blog! Why? Because I just decided to go to culinary school. Why? Because I want to open a restaurant. Why? Because I really like food and I did a thing with food and had a blast doing it, and since then I've been mentally flooded with food ideas, and because I'm half Sicilian so sharing food is in my DNA.

Blog Objective: chronicle my food journey. Specifically: food I cook and bake, recipes I create and how they turn out for good or bad, my culinary education, and hopefully breaking into the restaurant business.

Tying in with my other passion, sewing, I will be making aprons in various novelty fabrics (bacon-print fabric!) and sharing them as well, simply because it's impossible for me to take things 100% seriously.

But to begin with, here is the thing I did last week:

For a little background, I am obsessed with anything made in a muffin tin, and mashups of all kinds. So I got it in my head to make a meal mashup muffin.

Let's do a thing with stuff!

I found a couple recipes on allrecipes.com that sounded good: a savory corn muffin, and a cream cheese and sour cream mashed potato. I already have a recipe for cream cheese mashed potatoes but I didn't have it with me at work and I was going to get groceries after work, so I just found a new one that sounded good.

I also bought a tin for giant muffins.

Baking in progress!

I did the corn muffins first so they could bake and cool while I made everything else.

1 14.75-oz can of creamed corn

2 c yellow cornmeal, divided (I bought a huge sack of cornmeal and didn't realize we had a tub at home... looks like we'll be having a lot of corn muffins! Whoops!)

1 c buttermilk (They didn't have small containers at the store... again with lots of corn muffins in our future!)

2 large eggs

8 tbsp melted butter (I always use butter. NEVER margarine. I'm picky about that.)

1 c all-purpose flour

1 tbsp white sugar

1 1/2 tsp salt

2 tsp baking powder (Once when I was little I mistook tsp for tbsp. Cake overflowed in the oven. Whoops!)

1/2 tsp baking soda

Adjust oven rack to middle position and preheat oven to 450F. Put muffin tin in oven to preheat. (This is the first time I've ever preheated a pan of any sort.)

In a medium saucepan over medium heat, bring creamed corn to a boil. Reduce heat and stir in 1 c cornmeal to make a thick, pasty mush. Stir in buttermilk, eggs, and butter. I used a wooden spoon with a flat edge so I could scrape the bottom of the pan in case the mush was sticking and burning. Also make sure it's no longer boiling when you start adding to the corn because you don't want the eggs to cook in the mush.

In a mixing bowl, mix remaining cornmeal with flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, and baking soda. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and stir until just combined. (I prefer large, wide bowls that I can get my arm around to stabilize while mixing.)

Remove muffin tin from oven and coat with nonstick cooking spray. Divide batter evenly among the cups. I used a spring-action ice-cream scoop and used two scoops per large muffin cup. I made six large muffins and four small muffins in the end.

Bake until golden brown. Approximately 15 minutes for regular muffins. I did my large muffins for 30 minutes and checked them by inserting a knife, which came out clean. They were a bit too crumbly for my purposes, so I will try 25 minutes next time and see what happens. I let them cool in the pan until I could handle them, then put them on a wire rack to finish cooling.

While the muffins were in the oven, I started the potatoes.

Aren't we forgetting something?

9 large potatoes (The bag said they were large potatoes but I think it was a liar so I put in 12. Maybe not 12 next time. This made a ton of potatoes.)

1 8-oz package of cream cheese

1 c sour cream

2 tbsp butter (I had a stick already cut down to 4 tbsp so I just chucked that in, nbd.)

1/4 c minced green onions (The only green onions they had at the store was a big package already chopped up. One, I'm not paying 3 times as much just because it's already processed. Two, I'm not going to use as much as the package contained. So I used my brain, thought "Sour cream and... chive!" and I bought chives instead. I used the recommended 1/4 c.)

Salt and ground black pepper, to taste.

Here's where we went off-script. I put the potatoes in a stock pot and covered them with water. Yep, didn't peel them. I forgot that step, to be honest, but it turned out well so I played it off like I did it on purpose. I boiled the potatoes until I could easily stick a knife in them. I drained them, then put them back in the pot and mashed the bejeezus out of them.

The finish line is in sight!

Then I dumped in the cream cheese, sour cream, butter, and chives. I just held the chives in one hand and snipped them with scissors over the measuring cup until I had the right amount. I mashed everything together, tasted it, added salt and pepper, tasted it again (I double-dipped my spoon, so sue me), and declared them the best potatoes I've ever tasted.

Lots of potatoes! I'm glad we like mashed potatoes in my house.

While the potatoes were boiling, I also cooked up an entire pound of bacon. Why? Because the words "leftover bacon" do not compute.

I can still smell it... and feel the grease burns on my hands. (Worth it.)

I also heated up the can of baked beans. Usually I doctor up baked beans too, with extra barbecue sauce and brown sugar. I didn't this time, and I wish I had. I think it would have added a more significant flavor to the beans that would have been amazing. Next time!

So we reached the assembly process! I was certain we had a small biscuit cutter that I could use to hollow out the muffins, but I couldn't find it anywhere. So I improvised. With the lid to my vodka bottle! The muffins were a bit to crispy and they crumbled a bit when I pushed the lid into them, and I think the hole was too small. Lessons for next time!

I gave the scraped-out bits to my dog because he is spoiled.

Then I used a spoon to fill it with baked beans.

Needs more bean space!

I wanted to pipe the mashed potatoes onto the top, all fancy-pants. I had searched the grocery store for piping bags in the most logical places: housewares, and the baking aisle with the rest of the cake decorating supplies. Only later was I told that piping bags are actually in the CRAFT section with wedding stuff like cake toppers. Because that makes sense. (Sarcasm.)

So I tried to use a plastic food storage bag, which worked on ONE muffin before the side seam blew out and I said, "Screw it, I'm not making them for anyone but friends and family" and used a spoon to smush the potatoes onto the rest. I garnished them with pieces of bacon and called it a success!

Obviously my piping skills need work but it was delicious so I don't care.

Cross-section view!

I had a TON of fun making these. I enjoyed the challenge of juggling four things at once, making sure things would come together at the appropriate times. I posted this photos in progress on my personal Facebook page. A friend of mine who does a ton of baking commented, and I said we should open a restaurant with her being sweet flavors and me being savory flavors! Now I just need pretty pieces of paper that say I can cook and run a business!

via Skeletor Is Love

All other photos in this post are mine. No infringement intended by showing brand names.