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Kitchen Tips: Baking with Blueberries

4/26/2016

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Kitchen Tips: Baking with Blueberries
Alternate title: When Good Muffins Go Bad

A friend was coming over for coffee and conversation one day last week so I made a batch of muffins as a tasty little go-with. Ilise suggested marrying two great muffin flavors together – “I now pronounce you blueberry and banana.” I found a random recipe on the internet (not linked here because, well, did you see that alternate title?) and started mixing.

Partway through I had an aha moment and then it was gone. For half a second I remembered some advice about tossing blueberries in flour before adding them to batter in order to minimize color bleed and avoid having the berries sink to the bottom. I thought, “You know, I should go look that up. Yes indeed, any minute now I’m going to look it up. No, I certainly will NOT proceed to make these blueberry banana muffins without solid guidance in the matter!”

I think you know how this ends. I researched NOTHING and wound up with ugly gray muffins. They didn’t taste terrible but it’s hard to overlook the look of ‘em. 
Kitchen Tips: Baking with Blueberries

​So here’s how to avoid blueberry badness, from no less a source than the 
U.S. Highbush Blueberry Council.

I mean, they oughta know, right?

Have you ever noticed that in muffins and other baked goods, fresh and frozen blueberries can easily sink to the bottom of the pan? This is easy to prevent! Just spread half of the batter in the pan, then add half the blueberries, top them with the remaining batter and top it off with the remaining blueberries. You can also coat blueberries with flour before stirring them into your batter.

One reason blueberries sink is because the batter may be too thin. Another reason might be that too much air has been incorporated into the batter: avoid over blending during the first stage of mixing. Here are a few more tips for baking with blueberries:

Try substituting dried blueberries for fresh or frozen ones. They remain suspended in the batter during baking and maintain a more structured texture than their fresh or frozen counterparts. They’re also less likely to burst when they get hot.

When adding blueberries to your batter, minimize streaking by gently folding them in at the end of the mix cycle.
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If you’re using frozen blueberries, add them before they have a chance to thaw and bake your dish immediately to prevent color leeching and streaking.

Please share your best muffin-making tips in the Comments. I need all the help I can get!
Kitchen Tips: Baking with Blueberries
Yes, I served them anyway.

​Photos: Ann Johnson
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The Supper Club Gets Zesty with Citrus – Part 1

2/12/2016

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Photo: Karen Wollins
The Supper Club is a group of friends who love to cook, eat, drink and laugh together – plenty of each occur at our periodic themed dinner parties. Our friends and family like to live vicariously around our feasts so we’ll share the stories, pictures and recipes here from time to time. Click here for previous Supper Club posts, and here for the group’s origin story. 

One upside to winter in Chicago (and other parts of the Great Frozen North) is the 'simple pleasures' type of joy that citrus from the sunshine states can bring. Biting into a juicy orange is sweeter and more refreshing in a cold weather locale than it ever could be in a place with balmy temps and sunny skies year round. There’s an urgency to that orange in Chicago in January, you see, it becomes more than just fruit, it’s representative of summer yet to come. Eventually. Hang in there, li’l Windy City-ans, have a bite of sunshine to tide you over.

That was the thinking behind the Citrus theme for our recent Supper Club dinner party. Not super-difficult as themes go, but still a nice opportunity to explore the wide variety of citrus out there and create a wonderful meal from start to finish. As it turns out, we all leaned towards the classics and then added a few twists of our own. ​

How to Supreme Citrus Fruits - Part 1

As with many culinary techniques, we have the French to thank for inventing a method which divides the peel and pith from the succulent fruit beneath, leaving your guests free to indulge in citrus without staining their fingernails. This method is called supreming. It is simple enough to learn and a handy thing indeed for those of us wishing to show citrus to its advantage. A bowl of supremed fruit has a place on even the whitest of tablecloths.
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-- The Joy of Cooking
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The Menu:
  • Ellyn – Cocktails: Clementine Negroni; Paloma; Assorted wines
  • Karen & Kathleen – Appetizers: Fennel and Citrus Salad with Tuna Patties; Brie and Kumquat Chutney Toasts; and Lemon-Marinated Olives with Artichokes.
  • Ilise & Ann – Main Course: Smoked Barley, Beet & Grapefruit Salad; Duck a l’Orange; Wild Rice Pilaf; Fennel with Blood Oranges
  • Greg – Dessert: Lemon Meringue Tartlets; Lime-Basil Macarons; Blood Orange Polenta Cake; Assorted citrus-flavored liqueurs. (Dan was absent due to a business trip. We missed you, Dan!)

​Continue reading for all the juicy details about the Drinks and Appetizers, plus recipes, pictures galore and a Lemons to Lemonade playlist. Don’t worry – the Part 2 post will be coming soon featuring the Main Course and Dessert.

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Kitchen Tips – Keeping Fish Fresh

6/22/2015

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Got a favorite kitchen tip that doesn’t even count as a tip because it’s so obvious and everybody probably knows about it already? Share yours in the comments. Here’s one of mine.

I used to have lots of excuses for not cooking fresh fish at home more often. No great recipes; no desire to stink up the house; no knowledge of how to keep the fish fresh for more than a day. Since becoming a Hooked on Fish subscriber, I now feel prepared to handle all of those things with style and grace. The final item – keeping fresh fish fresh – is the subject of today’s kitchen tip.

I learned this technique from my friend Karen. Check out this easy process + photos after the jump.


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Kitchen Tips: Best “Tools” Ever

5/14/2015

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In all honesty I can’t even call these tools. Well, I guess the kitchen shears count but the gloves are really stretching the point.

It’s true though. My life in the kitchen changed dramatically when I realized how these simple items could make such a big difference. 

The kitchen shears: I very rarely use a knife to trim meat anymore; it’s much easier to trim fat from chicken breasts or silverskin from a tenderloin with the shears. Sometimes I’ll use them to segment a large piece of meat or fish into smaller portions. I also use the shears to mince chives and other herbs, to chop dried fruit, plus a million other uses. 


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Kitchen Tips: Save Time and Effort when Blanching Vegetables

4/22/2015

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Is it getting steamy in here or is it just me?

I’m a little hesitant to provide kitchen tips or advice because I have no deep knowledge or magic tricks. There are a few little shortcuts and easy-makers that I’ve picked up over time, and I know you have some too. Generally speaking though, I assume that anything I know about is probably common knowledge.  

Except what if it isn’t? What if I’ve been holding onto the holy grail of culinary time-savers? Prolly not, but I’ll share just in case.

Today’s tip is about blanching multiple vegetables quickly and easily.



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