I'll see you in the ICU!

Wahhh!!!

I just want to go to bed now and yet this is when I have to stay up. So, I'll tell you about the baking I did earlier tonight. I made my super good oatmeal cookies that I always make (I'll share the recipe with ya, in case you want to make them) and I made a pretty decent carrot cake with the pulp from my juicer.

I've been using the Champion Juicer with more regularity. As with all juicers, the clean up is what makes you not pull it out of the cupboard, but I am getting used to it so it goes faster each day.

It's great to be able to get all the vitamins from all 5 or 6 veggie and fruit servings in one glass, without filling up. I juiced 4 carrots, a pear and a plum. If I had to eat those, I'd be so full it would pretty much take me all day to eat them, and I wouldn't be able to eat anything else. I'm the first person to advocate eating LOTS of veggies and fruits for the fiber, but I'm losing weight steadily, and at my height, I'm starting to look like I have an eating disorder...I think the people I work with think I have issues, anyway. They're very concerned with what I eat and when and how much, but they all outweigh me by several, several pounds.

Anyway, I always hate throwing out the pulp, and I was pleased to see the Jack Lalane juicer comes with a recipe book for creatively using the pulp.

SO--here goes; my take on carrot cake. Adapted from How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman...it's one of the most used books in my kitchen.


1 & 1/4 cups whole wheat flour
1 & 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup cornmeal
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup sugar
2 eggs
1/4 cup (half stick) melted butter
1 & 1/3 cups milk
1 cup grated carrot (mixed with fruit pulp is good, too)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

mix dry ingredients together, mix wet ingredients together in separate bowl, combine by making a well in the dry ingredients and add wet ingredients. Mix until well blended. Pour into a greased 5x9 loaf pan and bake in a preheated oven at 350 degrees for about an hour+15 or 20 minutes.

tastes a bit more like corn bread, than an overly sweet carrot cake. I really like it and will make it again.

Now here's those cookies. Every time I make these they're very popular and I must have given the recipe away a dozen times now.

1 stick (8 tablespoons) butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 eggs, room temp
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup all purpose flour
2 cups rolled oats
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
pinch of salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 cup milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
Then, I add a couple of fists full of either raisins, or milk chocolate chips, tonight I made them with bittersweet chocolate chips and a bit of chopped pecans.

in a large bowl, mix the flour with the softened butter, into a crumbly meal. When it's well blended, add the rest of the dry ingredients and mix well with a fork. Slowly add the wet ingredients, and mix. Bake on a cookie sheet in an oven preheated to 375 degrees for about half an hour or just until the edges start to turn golden brown. The book says 15 minutes, but in my oven, they're still wet at this time.

and that's all I have to say for tonight I guess. (sigh)

Hope you enjoy these recipes!

posted by sketchmonkey @ 12:31 AM