Blueberry Chocolate Truffles

I haven't made you candy in such a long time!  In order to make up for it, I made you the most decadent chocolate treat around - the truffle.

Made from chocolate, heavy cream and butter, these truffles are not diet friendly.  In reality though, you won't want to eat more than one.  They satisfy a chocolate craving in just two bites.

These aren't just chocolate truffles though, they are infused with blueberry flavor!  You don't have to wait for blueberries to be in season to make these, you just have to find a box of blueberry tea at the store.

After making these truffles I realized that I've been missing the fun of candy making.  Get set to see some more candies this fall!  The holidays are going to be sweet around here.

Chobani Protein Drink

There is a whole secret world happening behind the scenes (or shelves) of the grocery store.  From Frozen Pizza to Bleach and even delicious bacon, there is an army of people who work to get the products you love on the shelf of your local grocery store - even more work to get you to buy them!

Boyfriends job title is "Food Broker."  In his role as food broker, he plays the middle man between the manufacturers of products and the grocery store buyers. From planning Sunday ads, to fighting for eye level placement on the shelf, it is his job to make sure the brands he represents get into your shopping cart.

I'm sure you also realize we live in a highly digitized world.  Manufacturers, grocery stores and brokers alike use the massive piles of data available to them to help sell to us, the consumer.  Here are some fun facts about how we spend our precious dollars at the grocery store.  I was surprised at quite a few of them!

- The average monthly budget for groceries is $311
- 37% of U.S. Shoppers use technology for grocery shopping
- Half of shoppers decide what to have for dinner the same day

Do you make a shopping list before going to the store, here's how the average U.S. shopper writes it:
- 45% write the product type
- 6% write the Brand name of the product
- 1% write the Brand name and specific type
- 29% write a combination of the above
- 19% don't typically write a shopping list

When you go to the grocery store, do you go alone?
- 46% Shop alone
- 32% Shop with their Spouse/Partner
-10% Kids under 5
- 8% Kids 6-12
- 6% Kids 13-17
- 5% Adult children
- 3% Other relatives
- 2% Friends
- 1% Roommate
- 1% Someone else

Next time you go to the grocery store and stand in front of that shelf of yogurt, you will have a new found understanding of all the work involved to get it there!

Help show your support of BF's job campaign by tweeting Chobani:

Let @pitchCHObani sell me @Chobani yogurt so @WildeKitchen keeps posting delicious Chobani inspired recipes #InterviewOverYogurt

Blueberry mallomars

We're getting so close to the WITK online bake sale for Relay!  Therefore, I've been a little busy and have just a few pictures and thoughts for you today...

What have I been making in the preparation for the bake sale?

Let's just say there is a lot of sugar involved...

And some more sugar...

But you won't be seeing these tomorrow, I ate them all...  What you'll be treated to is a similar mallomar, only with a traditional Americana twist.  That's right, a peanut butter and jelly mallomar. 

Be sure to stop by tomorrow for the bake sale round-up!  You'll be able to decide what you want to bid on when the sale starts Thursday morning at 6:00 am, EST!  There will even be some items especially for my friends in the UK and Canada!

Why Bother? 2012 - Bagels

Monday morning I walked into work with three bags full of fresh, homemade bagels.  I sent around an e-mail to my coworkers and they came by for breakfast.  People limiting themselves to a half bagel soon came back for the second half.  Some showed up later in the day for a second bagel, wanting to try each of the flavors that I brought in.  I don't know whether it was the draw of a homemade treat or that never-dying grad student mentality.

For those of you that don't understand the "grad student mentality," let me explain.  Grad students live on a small income and love free stuff.  Any free stuff.  By the time you hear that there is free food in the building, it's already gone.  Grad students are like little piranhas.  After five years of perfecting this skill, it never goes away.  Former grad students will always find the best free stuff, make friends with them!

Of course I'd like to think that it was the bagels that brought people back for seconds.  This past weekend I spent half a day prepping, kneading, rising, boiling and baking two batches of bagels.  I decided upon two different recipes, one requiring oil and one a simple dough.  Both recipes required quite a bit of hands on time and a lot of flour! 

Today I'm sharing the recipe for my blueberry-oatmeal bagels with you (tomorrow we'll have some cherry-coconut beauties).  These were the favorite of my two weekend endeavours.  Beginning with a traditional bagel recipe, I swapped out some of the bread flour with oat flour.  Once the dough came together I poured in a pouch of dried blueberries, they turned the dough a beautiful color. 

After a short rise period, the bagels were boiled for a short time in slightly sugared water.  A nice egg-wash and sprinkling of rolled oats and the bagels went into the oven.  Within a few minutes, the apartment was filled with the sweet smells of yeasty bread.  The first batch of bagels wasn't ready until around noon, but that didn't stop me from having one for lunch!

Now the big question, was all the time invested worth the final product?  No doubt about it, yes.  Store-bought bagels, even some deli-bought bagels, tend to be too tough on the outside and too huge for a normal person.  Making your own bagels at home gives you the option to change the flavor, size and texture of the bagels.  And really, nothing beats a house that smells like freshly baked bread.  It's a bonus.

Fruit and Yogurt Jars

The heat of the summer is starting to hit most of the country and I’m very excited. I’m the type of person who will not put on shorts until it’s at least 80 outside. And that’s a humid 80. When I lived in Colorado, it routinely got up to 100 degrees during the summertime. However, you would still see me going to work in jeans. I know it sounds cliché, but it’s totally true! It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity, blah blah blah…

Well, I’m back on the coast and there’s definitely humidity here. Lots of it. I can see all the humidity hanging in the air when I open my blinds in the morning. My mornings have been going like this… Alarm goes off – I wake up, excited for a new day. I walk to the windows and open the blinds. My day turns to bad as I realize my hair is going to be crazy today. I’m going to look like Einstein, minus the snazzy mustache.

With all this heat and humidity, I have also been avoiding turning on my oven. Mostly because I’m too cheap to turn on my air conditioning. It was the exact opposite in the winter, when I baked a lot because I was too cheap to turn on my heat. What can I say, I’m a postdoc, we are a cheap bunch. So, instead of baking, I’ve been churning ice cream, making no-bake candies and tossing salads. Today I give you a light, refreshing snack. It’s full of vitamins and topped off with a bunch of protein-rich Greek yogurt. Enjoy some and stay cool!

Blueberry Macarons

The year is coming to an end. Have you accomplished your new years resolutions and goals? At the beginning of 2010 I made several resolutions and decided upon a number of goals. My resolutions might sound a bit strange, but I wanted something that would be attainable and fun at the same time. During my first BodyPump class of the year, I shared my goals with my class. There were mixed reactions. I think it’s because none of my goals and resolutions were fitness or health oriented. Maybe next year, I’ll have to think on that and get back to you on Friday! Here were my resolutions for 2010.

1. Wear more Hats. Now, I was not trying to be metaphorical, suggesting that I wanted to become more of a renaissance woman. I meant that I literally wanted to wear MORE HATS. Berets and cowboy hats, beanies and chapeaus. I look good in hats. Sadly, I did a poor job of accomplishing this goal. Send me pictures of cute hats, I need to try again this year.

2. Eat more Chinese food. Why? Because it is delicious. I’m not sure if I can check this one off the list. I think that if I had made it a more generic goal, like “Eat more Asian cuisine,” then I could put a check mark there. I ate an exceptional amount of Thai food this year. I’m going to include all the Indian food I ate as well, since India is on the continent of Asia. Asian Cuisine accomplished.

3. Complete current work project. Easy enough to understand - finish my total synthesis. A work goal. Sometimes being a synthetic chemist is a little disappointing because it can take an entire year (or five) to complete a single project. Thankfully it is done and I’ve moved on to another project, which will hopefully be done soon!

Making French macarons was not on my original resolution/goal list. They weren’t even on my radar in the beginning of the year. This year I have transformed into more of a foodie, with the start of Wilde in the Kitchen and my many worldly travels, I have learned so much more about cooking, baking and eating! Here’s to 2010! I hope that whatever the year brought you, you’ve learned, loved and had some great moments along the way.

Peach and Blueberry Buckle

We are coming to those last precious days of summer. August is winding down and fall is right around the corner. As a kid, I always loved this time of year. As we have previously discussed, I’m a bit of a nerd. By the last week of August I was ready to go back to school. I loved getting my school supply shopping list in the mail. I would beg and plead my mom to go to the store and pick everything up right now!

We would go to Vix (in the days before Target in western New York) and I would look thru the aisles at all the new school supplies. Even though I already had two sets of colored pencils, they simply would not do. It was a new year, I needed new pencils! Same goes for folders and pens, binders and erasers. A new year meant a new beginning.

I was always a fairly simple shopper though. I was never one to get bright cartooned folders or Trapper Keepers (c’mon, you remember). I wanted plain colored binders and a matching folder to go along with it. I had that kind of OCD. The organizational OCD. I would write my name on all my new supplies and lay them out, ready for school to start.

In these last few days of August, there is something else to revel in. Stone fruits are at their best right now. I’m talking peaches, nectarines, plums. Those fruits that, when eaten by hand, make an enormous mess of everything in a five foot radius. I find myself in the grocery store or at the farmers market, fondling and smelling the peaches. Keep your peaches away from me, I just might accost them.

When I find some good ones I have a hard time deciding what to do with them. Do I eat them fresh? Do I slice them up and put them over breakfast? How about simmered on the stovetop with cinnamon and nutmeg and eaten warm with ice cream? No, today we make a buckle. There are so many different types of fruit cobbles that I have a slim understanding of how they differ from each other. I think it easiest to define each, as I make them. So for today…

Fruit Buckle – A single layer of cake, generally with berries added to the batter, topped with streusel. Also known as a crumble.

Now that you know what you are baking, head out to the store (or the farmers market) and get yourself some peaches. And some blueberries. There, now we’re ready to bake.