Second Annual Un-Pizza Week Day Five: Puff the magic pizza

ACTING PSA!
My improv 401 class at The Upright Citizens Brigade (UCB) is performing this Saturday at 5:30. Student show info is here. If you come and laugh, we will be even funnier than we already were. So do that if you like.
I’d like it. Smiley face.

Now for the gruel!
Totes adorbs pizza puffs! For realz!
Like, gag me with a spoon!
No please don’t, ignore that outburst it meant nothing.
There is quite a theme of cuteness going on this week.

Please do make these cute lil’ bundles of joy. I suggest that you make them like I did and call them pizza sliders. How 2008.
But I was rather pleased with my idea to not mix soy pepperoni in and instead cut a notch in the puff’s side and slide a piece in. Slide it in the slider.Too damned cute:

These “Pizza Puffs did indeed puff. I had my suspicions they would be tough because the recipe required mixing the batter until smooth. Normally when making quick breads you don’t do that in order to avoid gluten over-development. But no, these were light and delightful and…yes, cute.

I think they might not have been quite as delightful if it were not for the seasoning sprinkled atop them. They certainly would have been less pizza-y.

It is almost the weekend, y’all. So go ahead and make yourself these sliders, serve em’ with some marinara to dip, crack open an ice cold beverage and get yer weekend on now.

Pizza Sliders adapted from this recipe by Kirbie’s Cravings
For the puffs:
3/4 cups flour
3/4 tsp. baking powder
3/4 cup almond milk
1 egg
1 cup shredded cheese (I used Swiss)
Italian seasoning (I made my own blend of basil, oregano, freshly ground black pepper, and sea salt)
To Serve Them:
vegan pepperoni
marinara sauce
Preheat the heat monster (your oven!) to 400 degrees. Beat the flour, baking powder, almond milk, and egg until the batter is smooth as a playa’s moves. Playa as in player. Not the beach. Although sand can be pretty smooth too. Stir in the cheese. Grease miniature muffin cups or line them and grease the liners. Fill them about two-thirds full. Sprinkle with the Italian seasoning. Bake about 15 minutes and serve with the pepperoni and marinara. Adorbs. Just saccherine sweet adorbs.

Boyfriends and bran

Surely if I had one he’d desire his lady to have good digestion. Enough to make her bran muffins.

And he did. Well, my cookbook lovah Mark Bittman at least made a bran muffin recipe. When he was writing his cookbook. I need higher standards.

In the meantime I’m still seeing that classy lady, my career. Sexy wench just gave me the gift of turning a short I’m set to act in into a feature so I supposed I should reward her.

I made not one but two renditions of bran muffins. Because ladies are all about their muffins.

One version with the egg separated, for the fluffy factor, one with whole eggs. Generally girls like to keep their eggs intact but I preferred the muffin with the separated.

Then I went girly and consulted my new Joy the Baker Cookbook and made a pretty pb and j milkshake:

As you can see I tried to make it pretty by layering in a wine glass but there was a huge amount so in the end my hot career and I just cozied up and ate this super-thick shake out of a bowl:

These are the exciting things you can do in a long-term relationship, people. I love my career, I do I do. To us I say I do.

Make your own love muffins.
That’s all!

Bran Muffins(reduced and adapted from Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything Vegetarian)

2 Tbsp. applesauce
1/2 c. Flour
1/2 c. Wheat bran
1 Tbsp. honey or more maple syrup
1 Tbsp. maple syrup
1/4 tsp. salt
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 egg, separated or not
1/2 c. Almond milk
Heat ya’ oven up to 400. Hot! You and your oven. Spray 5 muffin cups with a lady-named nonstick spray or one of her cheaper knock-offs.
Mix dry stuff. Beat wet stuff. If you separated your eggs only add the yolk. Add wet to dry. Stir in until all is moistened. Don’t overdo this. Lumps are fine n dandy. If you separated your egg, you must now beat the white until stiff, but not dry peaks form. Fold in. Spoon into cups. If you have empty ones put some agua in them. Bake 20-ish minutes. Do the toothpick test.
Present them to yo lovah fo evah.

Something’s coming

Duuuuude, I’m taking next week off from the blog.

I’m swamped. On set as we speak. Write. Read?

But! Coming up a week from Monday is the Second Annual Pumpkin Week in spring!

Just when you least suspected.

The picture is of my pumpkin colored walls. Due the the way the light filters through my curtains it’s always sunset in my bedroom. Except at night.
For color ceases to exist sans light.

I think I had approximately 2 readers for last spring’s pumpkin week so I’ll recap how the first year went.

Day one: cracked open a can of pumpkin and grilled that mother.

Day two: shook it up

Day three: still shake-ish but prettier

Day four:
Not even.

Day five: the grand finale

There have been other delights of punkin’ nature:
Pumpkin Chia Pudding

As well as pumpkin bars, time dos:

A muffin:

And of course, pumpkin pie:

So take the next week to relax, buy some pumpkin, catch up on your reading, go hiking and get ready. Pumpkin week is on it’s way.
Got a favorite pumpkin recipe? Feel free to link to it in the comments! Yah.

One is not enough

Neither one muffin, nor one recipe.
Katie, you did it again. This single-serving muffin was fan-friggin’-tastic.
So go get this recipe and make it-and um, you may want to double the recipe. Then tell Katie she rocks. A lot of blog readers do these days but that is because she does. Like, totally! Sorry, valley girl moment.
So maybe the point of this recipe is that it only makes one. But when it comes to bread products, I eat for two: me and…you. That’s right. I eat a second just to MAKE SURE its good enough to share the recipe with you. Except I couldn’t with this muffin since it only made one. I’m talking in circles. I’ll stop.
So a week later I decided to tackle another single serve Katie recipe, this one for a Cinnamon Roll Baked Oatmeal.

I feared wanting more but this recipe was bigger and have the option of cooking it as one big portion or two smaller so I stuck with it. I figured that the extra large portion would cancel out my need for seconds: I cooked it as one.

Yeah, duuuude. This hit the spot. It was after midnight and I wasn’t up to making frosting so I slathered with smart balance. Mmmmmm, slathering. It’s like lathering without the bubbles. Hopefully sans soapy taste too.
This Boatmeal is good stuff! I would add a touch more cinnamon in the future, but I’m a cinna-holic, take that as you will.