My Halal Kitchen — Healthy, Halal Recipes From My Kitchen To Yours

Cranberry & White Chocolate Mini Muffins

I offered samples of these muffins to those who attended the My Halal Kitchen Baking Demo for ICN just a couple of days ago. I was demonstrating how versatile the batter for my Banana Blueberry Loaf can be just by substituting a few ingredients and changing up the presentation. The base is the same, so you can rest assured that you can pretty much have it any way you like.

Makes about 60 mini cupcakes (2 in. round)

Wet Ingredients

3 eggs
1 cup vanilla flavored yogurt or plain, full fat yogurt
1 cup vegetable, grapeseed oil, or flavorless oil.
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

Dry Ingredients

2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. baking powder
2 cups pure cane sugar, granulated

Additional Ingredients

1 cup white chocolate morsels with real cocoa butter
1 cup frozen cranberries

Directions

Measure all dry ingredients into a metal or glass mixing bowl. Set aside.
In a separate mixing bowl, measure out the eggs and yogurt. Using a wire whisk, mix together well. Next, add the vegetable oil and whisk again until all three ingredients are well-blended.
Using 1-2 cups at a time, add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture. Using a wooden spoon or heavy wire whisk, blend all ingredients until there are no lumps.
Gently fold in the cranberries, then the white chocolate morsels.
Using an ice cream scoop or rounded measuring spoon, add the batter to paper-lined muffin tins. Since these are small muffins, be sure to add no more than one cranberry per muffin.
Bake for 30-33 minutes or until the tops of the cupcakes are light golden brown.
Allow to cool. Frosting is optional.

For alternative and yummy frosting options, try using things like créme frâiche, mascarpone cheese, or Nutella.

These are great for breakfast, kid treats, or party desserts.

Pass it on!

Tagged as: cranberry, mini muffins, white chocolate

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Baking Tips All Summed Up

in Baked Goods, Baking, Demos

I spent a wonderful hour with some delightful women at today’s Baking Demo where I discussed baking tips and halal ingredient options and substitutions while making a Chocolate-Banana Cake. The questions were great and the discussion lively. For those who attended, I promised to post the tips mentioned during the class and for those who were not able to attend, this is a summary of what was covered. Happy baking, everyone!

Check back soon for the Chocolate-Banana Loaf recipe made at the demo and the Cranberry & White Chocolate Mini Muffins sampled at the demo. For the Banana Blueberry Loaf recipe sampled at the Baking Demo, click here.

15 Baking Tips from the My Halal Kitchen Baking Demo

Read recipe thoroughly before beginning to bake
Assemble all of your ingredients before you start the recipe
Select fresh, high quality ingredients to include in your recipe
Keep separate bowls for dry and wet ingredients
Have your oven calibrated or get an oven thermometer to make sure your oven temperature is working as indicated
Bring all ingredients to room temperature before working with them
Preheat oven once you start the recipe
You don’t always have to sift dry ingredients unless the recipe calls for it. Sifting helps make the end result lighter and fluffier
Use flavorless oils in baking unless you want the flavor of olive oil, for example, to overpower the rest of the ingredients
Baking is more of an exact science than cooking. If a recipe calls for a specific pan size, be sure to use it. If you don’t, you’ll have to adjust baking temperatures and cooking time on your own, which can be tricky.
If you’re using a stand mixer, use the paddle attachment to mix and the whisk attachment for whisking.
If a recipe calls for ‘folding’, use a spoon to carefully mix in things like blueberries and chocolate morsels
Use ice cream scoop or 2 Tb. scoop to drop cookies or mini muffins, regular muffins
Rinse the surface of eggs to clean off any unseen traces of contamination (salmonella is commonly found on the surface of eggs)
Store items like flour and semi-sweet chocolate morsels in the freezer to preserve freshness

For the Banana Blueberry Loaf recipe sampled at the Baking Demo, click here.

Experiment with….

Flavored oils
Flavored yogurts
Dried fruits
Frozen fruits

Substitute…

Yogurt for sour cream and vice versa
Applesauce for sugar and vice versa
Vanilla beans for vanilla extract (non-alcohol) and vice versa

Basic Baking Tools

Whisk
Wooden spoons
Spatula
Measuring spoons
Measuring cups
Bowls (stainless steel or glass)
Sifter
Baking pans
Loaf pans
Cookie sheets
Parchment paper
Comfortable shoes or a comfortable mat like Silpat to provide support while standing. Baking often means your in the kitchen for a while!

Baking Pantry Items to Keep on Hand

Agave nectar
Applesauce
Baking powder
Baking soda
Chocolate, Dark
Cocoa
Coffee, ground
Extracts (vanilla, almond)
Flour
Honey
Nuts (almond, walnut, cashew, pecan, etc.)
Salt
Oils
Sugar- raw cane and brown; powdered sugar
Vanilla extract
Vanilla Beans, Whole
Yogurt, sour cream

Refrigerated/Frozen Items to keep on Hand for Baking:

Berries
Butter
Chocolate morsels (semi-sweet)
Crème Fraiche
Eggs
Mascarpone cheese
Milk
Sour Cream
Yogurt

For more halal pantry items, click here.

Pass it on!

Tagged as: Baked Goods, Baking, baking demo, baking tips, demo

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5 Reasons to Care Where Your Food Comes From

in Articles, Food Documentaries, Food Films, Food News

This article was recently published on the Indiana Public Media’es Earth Eats site. I wanted to be sure that all MHK readers could benefit from this information, esepcially those who are not part of our Facebook fan page or follow our Twitter page.

My interest in healthy living began in the teen years when I devoured magazines and books that offered information on eating right and exercising. I not only wanted to keep off weight, but also feel healthy. In the process, I was fortunate to develop health-conscious habits and attitudes about food well into my adulthood. Alhamdullilah, thank God.

The same concept is as true today as it was when I was a teen: we need to educate ourselves about food, nutrition, exercise, and now more than ever we need to know where our food comes from.

Important things in our commercial agricultural system have changed, and not necessarily for the better. For example, so much of the food entering into the marketplace is actually being modified, over-processed and lowered in quality faster than you can bring a fork to your mouth. What’s worse is that without consumer action, don’t expect much to change for the better.

I’ve spent a lot of time studying food documentaries as part of my self-initiated health education. Not only was learning about the process of agribusiness an eye-opening experience, but the more I learned, the more I realized I needed to educate myself about the source of my family’s food. I sincerely believe that the quality of our lives and the generations after us depend on this knowledge, which is why I pass it on to you.

5 Reasons To Care About Where Your Food Comes From

Big corporations don’t have YOU in their best interest. Some food corporations put a lot of salt, sugar and fat in our diet because it is cheap, fast and easy. Does this include healthy? Nope- and if you saw what it takes to add salt, fat and sugar into ‘food’, you probably wouldn’t even want to eat it. [1]
Knowing what’s fed to animals is knowledge of what’s being fed to YOU. Most people make a stink about commercial farmers that give antibiotics to animals because eventually those antibiotics will not work for you. This is just the tip of the iceberg of the types when it concerns what animals are being fed. Need I remind anyone of mad cow disease caused by cows given feed mixed with diseased animal parts? [2] That issue may be in the distant past, but did you know that grass-fed cows don’t get sick the way corn-fed animals do? [3]
If you don’t care, you may end up spending more on your health (or illness) care. Spending less of our income on food doesn’t necessarily make it good for us. In fact, the less we spend on food, the more we spend on health care. Today, 9.5% of our income goes to food, the cheapest it’s ever been for us in the U.S.- a proud achievement of government back commercial agribusiness, but we’re not any healthier from eating cheap, over-processed, packaged foods. [4]
To determine for yourself what is actually worthy of a ‘food’ label. Much of what you see is not worthy of the term “food”; instead, they are edible food-like substances.[5] Almost everything Americans eat contains corn in the form of high fructose corn syrup, corn-fed meat, and corn-based processed foods, the staples of our modern diet.[6]
Because our government does not subsidize healthy food. The American food system is built on the abundance of corn, an abundance perpetuated by a subsidy system that pays farmers to maximize production.[7] What this translates to is that you will have to do your own homework- expensive television commercials won’t be advertising local farmer’s markets or healthy organic fruits and vegetables. You have to overcome the ‘outta sight, outta mind’ concept by taking the first steps towards putting information and resources about food on your radar at all times.

In addition to watching documentaries about the source of our food, I’ve also paid a great deal of attention to one writer, Michael Pollan, who is an incredible food researcher and translates all the lingo of this food research into comprehensible data and information that the average consumer can understand and utilize to take charge of his/her own food choices.

A few of my favorite bits of advice from his new book, Food Rules, are as follows:

Get out of the supermarket as much as you can. This means getting to your local farm markets, niche grocers and other small-scale vendors who you can actually talk to about the source of your food.
Eat food, mostly plants, not too much
Eat minimally-processed amount of plants, animals and fungi
Eat only foods that will eventually rot
Eat meat that has eaten well

What will you do about it?