Coconut Chiffon Bundt Cake with Coconut Frosting

Coconut Chiffon Bundt Cake with Coconut Frosting 

I hate the s word. Not the one that some of you are thinking of (I have thought that word in relation to this word), no this is another 4 letter word. Snow. I hate it. I grew up in the Pacific Northwest where a lot of people ski, and when I say a lot of people my school had ski fridays. They would take a big bus up to Snoqualmie and go skiing, every friday for 12 weeks. The kids that stayed behind got to watch movies, bake cookies, learn computer etc. Every 2 hours we would switch to a new activity. It was a no brainer for me, I chose to not go skiing.

I love to cross country ski and am an adequate down hill skier and snowboarder. I had to be since all my friends wanted to go on ski trips during the winter. While snow is pretty, I hate, hate to be cold. When you ski you are in this in between weird world where your sweating, but also it's freezing. If you take off your coat you get cold, since your working out if the jacket stays on you sweat. While some women can stay attractive while skiing, I don't. I don't just sweat, I sweat buckets. After a 2 hour cross country work out I look like a bucket of water has been dumped on my head.

So while I grew up around ski and snow lovers I would be happy if it just stayed away. My poor in-laws live in the mountains and it snows all winter. Not just inches, but feet. My mother-in-law is already worried about Thanksgiving and the weather. It always seems to snow here around the holidays, we had our first snow the week of Halloween (which is way too early for my tastes). So my mother-in-law and I are both hopping the snow that is supposed to start tomorrow stays away. The s word can stay where it belongs, out of my vocabulary.

During the holiday months I bake frequently. I seem to turn to sugary foods when the weather gets colder. The summer months I turn towards fruit and light foods, but during the winter I love cakes and cookies. Luckily I also love my treadmill (not really, but I still do it). Last week I tried a new recipe for Gluten Free Coconut Bundt Cake with Coconut Frosting from the December 2013 issue of Food and Wine magazine.

Coconut Chiffon Bundt Cake with Coconut Frosting 

This recipe has 10 ingredients. It takes 2 hours 30 minutes of total time, 30 minutes of which is active and makes 12 servings. I did make a few significant changes to the original recipe. First, I used white rice flour to replace the cake flour. Since I eat gluten free I try to change regular recipes to be gluten free. Many specifically gluten free recipes are too dry or just plain bad. Make sure to adequately grease and dust the pan. The cake tends to stick a little to the pan. I found that my total baking time was slightly longer than suggested, by approximately 10-15 minutes.

Huntington Museum of Art

My kids and I really liked this recipe. It was light and worked well being made gluten free. The coconut milk made for a delicious, moist texture and would be a nice replacement for people that can't have milk. This cake would be great for a party, it is beautiful on the plate and would serve 16 people if the slices were made thin.

For the recipe go to Coconut Chiffon Bundt Cake with Coconut Frosting.

Thai Coconut Chicken with Pineapple Salsa

Thai Coconut Chicken with Pineapple Salsa

We live in a college football town. Once the college football season starts, during every home game the city gets a little crazy. Everyone literally bleeds green and white. This past Saturday I had forgotten it was a game day until we pulled into the drive thru and the person in front of us had painted themselves green. Yeah, it's that kind of city. Everywhere I went - the bank, grocery store you name it everyone was wearing green. Our state is divided. There are two big schools, Marshall and WVU (West Virginia University). Since there are no professional teams in our state, college teams reign king. While both schools have a large alumni base, most of the fans of both teams never went to school at either university. Somehow though they feel a connection to their football teams and get very adamant that their team is the best during games. According to my husband twitter gets a little crazy with back and forths between fans. So for Saturdays during the season we are a Marshall town through and through. Football season means lots of chili and game day foods, but with 95 degree days we are still enjoying food that sticks to the ribs a little less. I am a little behind on posts, so the recipe I am sharing tonight I actually made a few weeks back. I tried a new recipe for Thai Coconut Chicken with Pineapple Salsa from the April 2012 issue of Martha Stewart Living.

B'nai Shalom Synagogue Huntington, WV

This recipe has 12 ingredients. It takes 35 minutes of total time, 25 minutes of which is active and makes 4 servings. I only made a few changes to the original recipe. First, since I have never actually seen a fresh Thai chili at any store in my area, I substituted a jalapeno. I left the seeds in since my kids weren't going to be eating the dish. For the oil I used peanut oil, I love cooking at high temps with peanut oil, it's great. The recipe states that the dish turns out brothy, but I found that it didn't make as much broth as the photo in the magazine showed. It was still enough for three servings, but not like the soup shown in the photo.

B'nai Shalom Synagogue Front Steps Huntington, WV

My husband and I were big fans of this recipe. The flavors from the fish sauce and ginger were delicious and the spicy kick from the jalapeno was perfect. I liked that the broth was slightly sweet and savory, while the salsa was a little on the spicy side. They worked perfectly together and the flavors played off of each other nicely.

For the recipe go to Thai Coconut Chicken with Pineapple Salsa.

Recipe for Coconut Shrimp Curry

Coconut Shrimp Curry with Basmati Rice

As many of you already know my oldest son is a shrimp fanatic. He could eat shrimp three times a day and be completely happy. Especially if it also involved bacon in some manner. My mother had a shell fish allergy growing up so we rarely ate shrimp at home and it was always too expensive at restaurants. Luckily I haven't seemed to have inherited the allergy (except I avoid oysters) so my family has shrimp once every week or two. My kids could eat shrimp plain, but my husband and I prefer sauces and curries. Last week I tried a new recipe for Coconut Shrimp Curry from the Oxygen Summer Meals 2012.

This recipe has 14 ingredients. It takes 40 minutes of total time, all of which is active and makes 4 servings. I only made a few changes to the original recipe. First I served the curry over basmati rice. I used one large red onion and bought pre-sliced shiitake mushrooms. As I always do I bought wild caught US shrimp. The majority of the time spent in this recipe is from peeling and de-veining the shrimp. Since I do it so frequently I can get it done pretty quickly and I buy extra large shrimp which has about 20 shrimp to the pound.

My family loved this recipe. It had a little bit of kick from the sambal oelek, but not enough to be spicy. There were no leftovers since my kids ate their servings and the extra sauce that was left. If you don't want to serve the curry over rice it would also be delicious alone.

This recipe is not currently available online, but can be found in the Oxygen Summer Meals 2012 on page 48.

Thai Chicken Curry

I hope everyone is having a great New Year's Eve. In my twenties I loved going to friend's parties and ringing in the New Year. Now that I have two kids and am in my mid-thirties (we aren't talking about what age I am turning this year :) I prefer to stay at home and enjoy the beginning of the New Year with my family. 2012 had a lot of ups and downs for my family. My health for the first 6 months was all over the place with pneumonia, low potassium levels and a high heart rate. Luckily everything seems to be better now, but I am definitely ready for 2013 to be rung in. I will be surprised if my two kids make it much past 10 pm, but they might surprise me and stay up until midnight. I think I will make it to midnight and not much farther. When I was in college I could stay up all night and still be at work the next morning at 7 am, now I need my beauty sleep. My cooking this week has been easy. I haven't been motivated to spend a lot of time in the kitchen since my oldest is home for winter break until Thursday. This weekend I tried a new recipe for Thai Chicken Curry from the January issue of Bon Appetit magazine.

This recipe has 10 ingredients. It takes a total of 45 minutes, 30 minutes of which is active and makes 4 servings. I did have to make a few modifications based on ingredient availability. First I have never seen yellow curry paste at any of my local grocery stores so I substituted green curry instead. Additionally, instead of regular Yukon gold potatoes I used baby Yukon potatoes. I prefer the baby Yukon potatoes when cooking since they are smaller and cook much quicker than their larger counterparts. I had no problems finding any of the other ingredients and made no further ingredient modifications. The recipe states to cook the curry on a simmer for a total of 20 minutes. I let my curry cook for closer to 30 minutes to ensure that it had thickened adequately. I followed the remainder of the recipe as written.

I wasn't sure what my kids would think of this curry. They can be hit or miss with ethnic foods. Sometimes they love them and other times they won't even try a bite before they decide that they don't like the dish. However, I am happy to report that they loved this recipe. My oldest was especially fond of the chicken. The chicken turned out very tender and the potatoes were a nice addition. I chose not to serve the dish with fresh herbs since my kids were eating it, but it would be delicious either way.

For the recipe go to Thai Chicken Curry.

Woman's Day Coconut Beef with Rice Noodles

I absolutely love coconut! I love it in cakes, cookies, curries, you name it, I love it. Growing up I was always the odd one out in the family. While everyone was raving about the great brownies, I was disappointed that my mom hadn't made macaroons. So one of the first things that I learned to bake was macaroons. Then quickly came coconut cake and seven layer bars. To this day, seven layer bars might possible be my favorite dessert food, it combines all the great memories of my mother baking them every Christmas with my love of all things coconut. To me they are the perfect food. As an adult I have tried to tone down my sweet tooth which has been helped by turning thirty. I always thought that everyone was joking when they told me that my thirties would slow down my very fast metabolism. To my dismay I have learned that having two pieces of coconut cake in a day will indeed catch up with me now. So in order to not give up all things coconut I have learned to cook with coconut and coconut milk in various dishes and curries. The May issue of Woman's Day magazine had a recipe for Coconut Beef with Rice Noodles, which looked like an easy crockpot recipe full of flavor.

This recipe has 12 ingredients.. It takes 15 minutes of prep and five hours of cooking time and makes four servings. I did have to make a few recipe modifications. I was unable to find rice noodles, so I substituted the only similar thing at the grocery store, rice sticks. I chose to use fresh cilantro instead of basil and the full 2 tablespoons of red curry paste. I would suggested browning the beef before placing it in the crockpot, it was very dry by the time it was done. Additionally, if I made this recipe again I would add the full can of coconut milk and increase the other ingredients accordingly.

I was a little disappointed by this recipe. The beef turned out dry and the flavor was too subtle. I would suggest making the changes I suggested in the last paragraph. Without the changes this recipe is lacking. I do think that it could be saved, it just needs the beef to be browned before placing it in the crockpot and the liquid to cook the beef in definitely needs to be increased so the beef doesn't become overly dry. What this recipe does have going for it is that it has 39 grams of protein and 11 grams of fat and only costs $3.07 per serving.

For the recipe go to Coconut Beef with Rice Noodles.

Taste of Home Pineapple Curry Chicken

Both of my children are currently in picky eating stages. My youngest has decided that he will eat nothing but peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and his older brother is determined to eat all the cereal in the house. Previously they were great about eating their dinners, but lately I have thought out my menu plans with their tastes in mind. One of the foods that everyone, including my children can agree on, is chicken. They both love chicken and will eat larger servings of it than pretty much any other food currently. I like to try a variety of chicken recipes since I prepare the protein so frequently and I was pleased to find a recipe for Pineapple Curry Chicken in the February/March issue of Taste of Home Magazine.

This recipe has 19 ingredients. It takes 25 minutes of prep and six hours of cooking time and makes 6 servings. I made one major modification to this recipe. The price of bone-in chicken breast halves was higher than I cared to spent. It would have cost approximately 20 dollars for 6 breasts, so I chose to use bone-in thighs instead, which were less than half the price. I had to go to multiple stores in order to find light coconut milk, our area only had regular full-fat. Finally, I chose not to top the curry with basil and toasted coconut. I followed the remainder of the recipe as written.

Substituting the chicken thighs for the breasts worked well and the chicken was very moist. The taste of the curry was very mild and kid friendly. My husband felt that the flavor was a little too mellow, but would be perfect for someone that wanted to try curry dishes that didn't want a strong/spicy curry flavor. If you like more curry flavor in your dishes I would recommend adding a lot more curry powder than the 3 tsp. recommended by the recipe. Overall, I liked that the crockpot did all the work for me and the prep was easy. My kids ate their servings and liked the mild taste.

For the recipe go to Pineapple Curry Chicken.

Food and Wine Keema Beef Curry

When my oldest son was around two-years-old he became obsessed with spicy foods. One day I walked into the kitchen and discovered him eating a habanero pepper like an apple. Even I have a hard time with unseeded habaneros, but not my son. He loves spicy food. My husband shares my oldest son's love of spicy foods, especially curry. They have been known to go out to the Indian restaurant in town, just the two of them to indulge their cravings. I try to cook curry at home at least a couple of times a month and recently the January 2012 issue of Food and Wine magazine had a recipe for Keema Beef Curry, which looked delicious and easy to prepare.

This recipe has 16 ingredients. It takes 45 minutes of total time and makes 4 to 6 servings. I had no problems finding any of the ingredients at my local grocery store. I ground my own beef and used homemade chicken stock. The texture on home ground beef is better and the beef quality can be better controlled than any I can buy pre-ground at my local grocery store. I found that the potatoes took longer than the 15 minutes suggested by the recipe, closer to 20-25 minutes. I followed the remainder of the recipe as written.

My family loved this recipe. It made more than enough for a meal for my family of four, plus enough leftovers for an additional meal. I served the curry over rice and added Greek yogurt to my youngest son's plate to cut down on the heat. This is a very easy recipe that I will definitely make again in the future.

For the recipe go to Keema Beef Curry.