Author Archives: Meg
Food 101: How to Make Basic Frosting
I am very particular about frosting. I find a lot of frostings to be too sweet and often times are piled on too thick on cakes. Then there’s also the frostings (generally I’ve encountered them on store bought cakes) that don’t have much flavor at all but are weirdly artificial and greasy in texture. No thank you. This means that I pretty much have to make my own frosting if I want it to be to my tastes. Fortunately basic frosting is really easy to make at home. We’ve covered basic icing on the blog before, but while some people using “icing” and “frosting” interchangeably to me they are different things. Icing is more thin and glaze-like, whereas frosting is more thick and fluffy. This is primarily due to the addition of fat in the form of butter. Icing is mostly just sugar and milk, while frosting has sugar, milk, and butter.
This is a good place to mention why making your own frosting is better than using the kind that comes out of a can. While flavor-wise store-bought can frosting isn’t terrible, its ingredients aren’t really great. In order to be shelf-stable it tends to be full of things like hydrogenated oils, corn syrup, preservatives, and artificial flavors and colors. Even if you’re someone who is anti-butter I would think one ingredient you don’t like is better than a whole list of potentially sketchy ingredients.
Recipe Time! Chipotle Brownies
As some of you may know, I’m on a continuing quest to find ways to use up leftover chipotle peppers (the canned ones in adobo sauce). Even after using them in the original dish I needed them for, making chipotle butter, and chipotle ranch, I still had some left. It was time to expand my thinking. Since the combination of chocolate and spicy is a popular thing now, I turned my mind to dessert. Now, I may have mentioned before (though I’m too lazy to actually go back and check) that I’m not the biggest fan of brownies. I know, I know…I don’t know what’s wrong with me. But in this case brownies seemed like the perfect subject to turn to for my chipotle experiments. Actually considering I’m kind of a weenie when it comes to spicy it’s somewhat surprising that I’m the one who came up with these brownies. And that I actually like them! But the chipotle adds a nice subtle, smoky kick without setting your mouth on fire. So I guess the point you should take away from this is that if someone who isn’t a huge fan of brownies or spicy likes these brownies they must be really good. 
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Pizza Lab #30 : Breakfast Pizza
I’m sure I’m not the only one who still remembers the jingle that Bagel Bites used to use in their commercials: “Pizza in the morning, pizza in the evening, pizza at supper time. When pizza’s on a bagel you can have pizza any time.” But I think we can all agree that pizza doesn’t have to be on a bagel to be eaten any time of day. I fully own up to having eaten cold pizza for breakfast on occasion, and I know there’s others out there like me. I suppose that means that any pizza could be a breakfast pizza if you eat it for breakfast. But! This month’s pizza lab is not just a pizza that you happened to eat for breakfast. It is a breakfast pizza.
We’ve seen breakfast pizzas other places before but they’re not really breakfast food pizzas. They’re more like brunch pizzas at best. Most are more like flatbreads with some greens and cheese and maybe eggs on them. We wanted to make a breakfast pizza that was actually inspired by breakfast foods. Not stuff people pretend to like to eat for breakfast (spinach? No thank you…) but stuff people actually eat for breakfast (helloooo bacon).
Tea Time: Garlic Green Tea
One handy feature on the behind the scenes aspect of this blog is that we can see what kind of search terms people used to find our blog. Sometimes though, people find our blog through search terms for something that we don’t actually have directly on our site. It always makes me a little sad when this happens, thinking about someone coming here and then leaving disappointed. So whenever possible I want to try and remedy that. One search that’s come up a few times is “garlic green tea” or some variation on that. And while we have our regular garlic tea (and also garlic lemonade) recipe, I want to give the people what they’re looking for! So I came up with a garlic green tea recipe as well.
The Snack Report: Entenmann’s French Toast Donuts
I think everyone can agree with Homer Simpson that donuts are great. They’re a breakfast, they’re a dessert, and even just a snack. They’re one of the great “on the go” foods because they’re so easily portable. Unfortunately if you eat too many donuts you’ll end up sharing a waistline with Homer Simpson and not just a food appreciation. I suppose this has been my roundabout way of saying that I’m reviewing donuts this week.
I first saw Entenmann’s French Toast Donuts in the grocery store last week, and since they happened to be on sale I decided I couldn’t pass them up. They sounded too yummy not to try, and obviously I always like things better when they’re on sale. Besides, I’m all for interesting breakfast food mash-ups (we did come up with francakes after all). I could already faintly smell the hints of French toast when I picked up the box, so I was excited to give them a taste. So, how’d they do?
The Poor Couple's Food Guide 
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