DIY Pumpkin Trifle

We love pumpkin around here. Pretty much anything with pumpkin in it we like. But this pumpkin trifle is amazing.

I like pumpkin pie, but I love this pumpkin trifle... Even if you don't like pumpkin pie, you should try pumpkin trifle, because it really is awesome.

I think it would be a great choice for Thanksgiving or Christmas if you wanted to serve something pumpkin, but didn't want to serve traditional pumpkin pie. Make it in a trifle bowl or in individual glass jars, either way makes a great presentation.

Homemade Pumpkin Trifle Recipe

• Pumpkin bars (bake in a 9x13 cake pan for a trifle bars or in muffin tins for sliding into glass jars)
• Pumpkin pudding (one batch makes 3 cups which is plenty for this recipe)
• Whipped cream (at least 1-2 cups whipped) or whipped topping
• Chopped walnuts or chocolate chips would be great additions as well if you wanted to add some crunch

1. Layer prepared ingredients starting with pumpkin bars and ending with whipped cream or additions. Repeat layering until you reach the top of the container. Sprinkle a little cinnamon on top if desired.
2. Chill at least 2 hours before serving to allow flavors to meld.

DIY Snowman Soup (Marshmallow Snowmen and Hot Chocolate Mix Recipe)

As the weather gets cooler, hot chocolate sounds more and more inviting. Making snowman soup is a great activity to perk up little kids on a dreary day. This would make a great snack for preschoolers (as long as the hot chocolate wasn't too hot of course).

Setting out marshmallow snowmen and hot chocolate at a party is also fun. And packaging up a few snowmen, hot cocoa mix, and a few chocolate spoons would make a great holiday gift.

Marshmallow Snowmen

• Marshmallow in three progressively smaller sizes (I used homemade)
• Orange sprinkles for noses
• Chocolate sprinkles for eyes

1. Push two chocolate sprinkles into the smallest marshmallow for eyes and one orange sprinkle for the nose.
2. Stack up marshmallows like you are building a snowman.
3. Wrap individually in plastic wrap or cellophane bags if giving as a gift or add straight to your hot cocoa to make snowman soup.

 Fresh Hot Chocolate by the Cup

• 1 cup milk
• 1-2 Tbsp cocoa powder
• 1-2 Tbsp sugar
• Dash of vanilla and/or salt if desired

1. Heat milk in microwave or small saucepan, until just bubbling around the edges (not a rolling boil).
2. Remove from heat and add remaining ingredients, adjusting to personal taste.
3. Add a marshmallow snowman to make snowman soup or top with whipped cream if desired.

Basic Hot Cocoa Mix Recipe

• 1 cup dry milk powder
• 1 cup powdered coffee creamer (can used flavored to make flavored hot cocoa or even just another cup of dry milk powder)
• 3/4 cup cocoa powder
• 1 1/2 cups sugar

1. Blend powdered milk in the blender to make it dissolve more easily and look less chunky.
2. Either blend all other ingredients as well to mix, or layer in a jay to create a sand art type effect for gift giving.
3. Store in airtight container.
4. To serve boil one cup of water and mix in 2-4 Tbsp hot cocoa mix.
5. Add a marshmallow snowman to make snowman soup or top with whipped cream if desired.

DIY Pumpkin Pudding

It fall again and that means it is time to make all things pumpkin. This versatile pumpkin pudding is fast becoming a fall favorite around our house.

This pumpkin pudding is great by itself, with a little whipped cream, and in other desserts.

It is probably the best pudding I have ever had in terms of being great at any temperature. Serve it warm on a cold winter night, cold from the fridge, or freeze as you would ice cream and make a great frozen custard.

Homemade Pumpkin Pudding Recipe

• 3/4 cup sugar
• 2 cups whole milk (divided)
• 1 cup pumpkin puree (homemade or store bought)
• 2 eggs
• 1/4 cup cornstarch
• 1 tsp vanilla 
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg

1. In a small mixing bowl, begin by stirring together 1/2 cup milk, eggs, and cornstarch until well combined.
2. In a medium saucepan, combine 1 1/2 cups milk, pumpkin, sugar, vanilla, cinnamon, and nutmeg. 
3. Stir over medium heat to warm the milk.
4. Take a couple of big spoonfuls (1/4 to 1/2 cup) of the warm milk mixture, and add it into the cornstarch and egg mixture. Don't skip this step. This tempers the egg and prevents it from becoming a scrambled egg when adding it into the hot milk.
5. Pour the cornstarch and egg mixture into the warm milk, and stir quickly to combine well.
6. Continue to stir over medium heat until the pudding thickens and begins to bubble.
7. Strain if necessary or desired to remove any lumps or pieces of egg.
8. You can serve this pudding warm (sounds good in the winter) or chill for at least 2 hours or up to 2 days and serve it cold.

DIY Chocolate Covered Bananas

So this isn't so much of a recipe, as an nudge to go make this quintessential summer treat. My kids loved the experience of making and eating these creamy chocolatey wonders.

Homemade Chocolate Covered Frozen Bananas Recipe

• 5-7 Bananas
• 1 (12 oz) package chocolate chips
• sprinkles or nuts (optional)

1. Cut bananas in half and place on popsicle sticks (or in my case chopsticks). Place in freezer at least 30 minutes or until frozen. (At this point you have all natural, 100% fruit banana popsicles, perfect for an everyday treat. Also great for the teething baby in the house. But if you want to make something really special carry on.)
2. Melt chocolate chips carefully in a double boiler or microwave.
3. Dip frozen bananas in chocolate. I spread the chocolate around some of them with a spatula too.
4. Dip in sprinkles or nuts if desired. (This was my boys favorite part!) 
5. You can eat them immediately, but they hold together a little better if you return them to the freezer for at least a few minutes. Once frozen you can also wrap them up and save for later.

It's funny, I didn't realize there was a goat in the kitchen until now.

DIY Key Lime Pudding

We are loving all things Key lime here and this pudding is amazing. This pudding is very thick and rich, almost like pie filling. I think that sometime I am going to try making a Key lime pudding pie out of this recipe.

I made this to include in a Key Lime Trifle back in June for Father's day, but this pudding would make a great dessert all by itself warm, cold, or even frozen as frozen custard or pudding pops.

I made it the night before and it kept well in the fridge. I wouldn't making it much farther ahead of time though, mainly because I kept wanting to eat it all right away.

Homemade Key Lime Pudding Recipe

• 1 cup sugar
• 2 1/2 cups milk (divided
• 1/3 cup cornstarch
• 3 egg yolks
• 1/3 cup Key lime juice
• 3 Tbsp butter

1. In a small mixing bowl, begin by stirring together ½ cup milk, egg yolks, and cornstarch until well combined.
2. In a medium saucepan, combine 2 cups milk and sugar.
3. Stir over medium heat to warm the milk.
4. Take a couple of big spoonfuls (¼ to ½ cup) of the warm milk mixture, and add it into the cornstarch and egg mixture. Don't skip this step. This tempers the egg and prevents it from becoming a scrambled egg when adding it into the hot milk.
5. Pour the cornstarch and egg mixture into the warm milk, and stir quickly to combine well.
6. Continue to stir over medium heat until the pudding thickens and begins to bubble.
7. Turn off heat. Add Key Lime juice and butter. Stir until well combined.
8. Strain if necessary/desired to remove any lumps.
9. You can serve this pudding warm (sounds good in the winter) or chill for at least 2 hours and serve it cold. I would imagine it would make lovely frozen custard as well.

DIY Key Lime Pie Ice Cream

Ever since we've discovered key limes here, we've fallen in love with every recipe I've incorporated their flavor into. I made this key lime pie ice cream for our anniversary, and it is amazing. Basically, you make key lime curd and vanilla custard (just like for vanilla ice cream) mix them together and freeze. Add graham cracker bits, toasted coconut, or whipped cream for extra special touch.

Because the lime curd adds extra sugar and butter, this is by no means a diet recipe, but works much more easily than most recipes to freeze and keep in a regular freezer. It stays softer and creamier. I'm thinking all homemade ice cream could be improved with butter since this Key lime pie ice cream and this caramel ice cream are both so amazing. When in doubt, add butter.

Key Lime Pie Ice Cream Recipe

Key Lime Curd

• 1 cup sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1/3 cup fresh Key lime juice
• 1 Tbsp freshly grated key line zest
• 1/4 cup  butter cubed

1. Combine eggs and sugar in a sauce pan or double boiler. Then stir in lime juice and  zest.
2. Simmer in a sauce pan or double boiler for 10–15 minutes or until thickened.
3. Pour through a strainer to remove any egg white particles if necessary/desired.
4. Add cubed butter and stir until melted and well incorporated.
5. Allow to cool; the curd will continue to thicken.

In the meantime make the vanilla custard.

Vanilla Custard

• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 1/2 cups whole milk (divided)
• 4 egg yolks
• 3/4 cup heavy (whipping) cream
• 1 tsp vanilla

1. Get out all of the ingredients, as well as a saucepan, a small bowl, a mixing bowl, a whisk, a spatula, measuring cups, and spoons. 
2. Begin heating 1 cup of milk and sugar slowly in a saucepan. Whisk egg yolks, and begin adding some of the warm milk mixture to the egg yolks. When the egg yolk mixture is warm, add it into the milk mixture, and continue heating over low heat, stirring frequently until the custard thickens enough to coat the spatula or spoon.
3. Pour 1/2 cup milk and 1 cup cream into the mixing bowl. Add the custard into the milk and cream. If the custard has any lumps, pour through a strainer when adding it to the milk and cream. Add vanilla, and stir well.

Once both the curd and the custard have cooled, stir together until well incorporated.

At this point, you can freeze this mixture in an ice cream maker if you have one. Or if you don't have an ice cream freezer, simply mix all ingredients in a freezer safe bowl or pan and follow the instructions here to freeze in your regular freezer.

You can either mix in graham cracker bits (store bought or even homemade) and/or toasted coconut to the ice cream while it is freezing, while it is still slightly soft, or simply add any desired garnish(es) right before serving.

Makes 1 generous quart/liter/

DIY Key Lime Curd

We are so glad we discovered "Key" limes here in Asia. They have such a wonderful flavor and we've been enjoying trying to incorporate that flavor into lots of new recipes.

This Key lime curd is so good on just about any everyday bakery product  and in special desserts. If you ever need to have a tea party that feels formal just set out lemon or lime curd, whip cream, and maybe some other sort of fruit jam to go with basic scones and everyone will ask out how you got so good at throwing tea parties.

Homemade Key Lime Curd Recipe

• 1 cup sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1/3 cup fresh Key lime juice
• 1 Tbsp freshly grated key line zest
• 1/4 cup  butter cubed

1. Combine eggs and sugar in a sauce pan or double boiler. Then stir in lime juice and  zest.
2. Simmer in a double boiler for 10–15 minutes or until thickened.
3. Pour through a strainer to remove any egg white particles if necessary/desired.
4. Add cubed butter and stir until melted and well incorporated.
5. Allow to cool; the curd will continue to thicken. Spread on a cooled cake, muffins, or enjoy on scones or toast.

DIY Fresh Coconut Pancakes

We love the variety of fresh produce available here and like trying to out new recipes. One new thing we've been enjoying this spring has been lots of fresh coconut in all kinds of things. My husband is getting quite good at opening them. :)

I haven't seen many recipes for baking that use straight fresh coconut, so I am creating new recipes. One of the first I made up, was these delicious fresh coconut pancakes. Topped with butter, pancake syrup, and toasted coconut these are a real treat.

This recipe uses the coconut juice (also known as coconut water) that you pour straight out of the coconut and shredded fresh coconut meat. I also toasted extra shredded coconut in the oven to sprinkle on top. If you wanted to make or double this recipe and don't have enough coconut juice, you can add regular milk just fine. I would imagine that you could also substitute coconut milk and dry coconut flakes but haven't tried it myself.

One thing you don't want to do, is to try to save the coconut water in the refrigerator for very long, like more than one day. It goes bad really fast once opened. Trust me, don't try it. It does however freeze fine to use later.

Homemade Fresh Coconut Pancake Recipe

• 1 cup flour
• 1 cup fresh coconut water/ juice or milk
• 1 cup fresh shredded coconut (plus more toasted flakes for topping if desired)
• 1 egg
• 1 Tbsp oil
• 1 Tbsp Sugar
• 1 tsp cinnamon if desired
• 1 tsp baking powder

1. Combine all ingredients in a large mixing bowl, and stir until well combined.
2. Pour about 1/2 cup of batter onto a hot greased griddle.
3. Cook until underside is brown. Flip over, and cook until the other side is brown.
4. Continue until all of the pancakes are cooked.

DIY Fresh Sugarcane (or Sugar Cane) Syrup

Alright, so here is quite a unique post and recipe (process?) that I am sure is not for everybody or to do everyday, but it was fun to try a couple of times. I also could find hardly any info online on how to make fresh sugar cane syrup with regular kitchen equipment, and while their may be a reason for this, maybe this post will be helpful to someone.

Perhaps the greatest thing about the food here in southern China, is that you can buy fresh items at the market that are practically unheard of in the states. I have seen sugar cane at a few Mexican supermarkets around New Years though, so if you have high quality ethnic markets nearby you may be able to find some sugar cane at certain times of the year. Anyway, sugar cane is very easy to get lots of seasonally in the spring here. Around spring festival time.

Getting unusual ingredients inspires us to try new, and sometimes crazy things. Most people here just chew on the sugar cane to taste the sugar and then spit out the fibrous pulp. We've done that too. But the regular sugar takes longer to dissolve and tastes more manufactured than in the states. So we wanted to see if we could make a simple syrup to sweeten drinks, pour on pancakes, and possibly even bake with.

Thus begins our little culinary adventure......

Homemade Sugar Cane Syrup Recipe (Using only regular kitchen equipment: knives, cutting board, blender, strainer, cheese cloth or tea towel, bowls, spoons, and pots)

• Fresh Sugar Cane
• Water
  
  
  
  1. The first step in the process (after finding the sugar cane) is cutting it into short lengths and removing the tough outer layer with a very sharp knife. When you buy it here, you can usually ask to have it removed and the friendly salesman will hack away like crazy with a giant clever and several pounds worth will be cleaned in minutes. This is totally the way to go. We had the outer layer removed from the first batch we bought by a professional, and then later we were actually given some free leftover sugar cane that still needed the outer layer removed. Our knife actually broke while trying to remove the outer layer ourselves, so the free batch might have actually cost us more in the long run. Anyway, long story short, remove the outer layer very carefully with a very sharp and very sturdy knife.
  
  
  
  
  
  2. Next cut the sugar cane into little pieces that your blender will be able to handle blending very small. (Side note: my blender isn't very powerful but it didn't have any problems. However, I already mentioned that we broke a kitchen knife the second time we did this, so use caution and good judgment and you may want to even try a small test batch to see if it seems like it is taxing you blender too much).
  
  
  
  
  
  3. Pour water to cover the sugar cane pieces in the blender. Put the lid on and pulse to blend into pulp.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  4. Now rig up a straining apparatus. I took a big bowl that a colander could hang down into and rest on, and then I covered the colander with a cheese cloth. You could also use a clean tea towel or other clean cloth. 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  5. Pour the pulp into the colander and let the liquid drain into the bowl. Use a wooden spoon to really push on the pulp and squeeze all the liquid you can out of the pulp.
  6. Repeat the above steps as many times as necessary to process all of the sugar cane you have in batches your blender can handle. This may be the point when we started to question how much this syrup was really worth to us, but we persevered and chopped and blended quite a few batches of sugar cane.
  7. The next step is to put this liquid into a pot and slowly boil it down until you get the consistency you desire. You may have to scrape foam and impurities off from time to time to keep this from boiling over. I boiled ours down to about one third of the original volume and it seemed close to a 1:1 simple syrup (one cup of sugar to one cup of water), the same viscosity or "thickness"  as simple syrup, but not quite as sweet. I didn't want to keep watching the boiling pot at that point so I called it good and we used at that sweetness. You would have to boil it way, way, way down to get actual store bought sugar cane syrup consistency.
  
  
  
  
  
  8. After you are done boiling the syrup, you will need to strain the mixture again to remove more impurities. Then you can store the syrup in a bottle or jar in your refrigerator.
  
  We used this syrup in hot tea and coffee and over pancakes. It did have a bit of a "grassy" taste (imagine that a syrup made from a grass and water tasting grassy), but not bad and it does taste less manufactured to us than our regular white sugar here. The second time we repeated the process (except for breaking the knife), turned out the same and the syrup was equally good. It was quite good as a natural sweetener. Since we didn't get a huge amount of syrup, I didn't try baking with it. I don't know if we will actually try it again with just regular kitchen equipment, but it was a fun adventure slash science experiment.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

DIY Protein Bars (Peanut Butter Black Bean Brownies)

Ever wish your chocolate fix had a little more staying power as a snack? These homemade protein bars are black bean brownies that are made with lots of eggs and peanut butter to really pack in the protein. You can even add walnuts, almonds, or other nuts to get even more protein into your dessert.

Unlike store-bought protein bars these taste like chocolate, not cardboard and don't have any questionable additives. This can be a completely organic whole food recipe if you choose and is gluten and dairy free.

This recipe tastes really rich and moist, but is actually fairly low in sugar and pretty healthy overall. Makes eating a brownie for a snack (or even breakfast) better for you than many, many store-bought snack and breakfast foods.

Homemade Protein Bars Recipe

• 1 1/2 cups cooked black beans (or one 15oz can drained and rinsed very well)
• 1/4 cup peanut butter
• 3 eggs
• 1/2 to 3/4 cup sugar
• 1/4 to 1/3 cup cocoa powder
• 1 tsp vanilla
• Optional additions such as such as additional nuts to pack in even more protein

1. Add all ingredients together in a blender (except for any optional additions) and blend until smooth.
2. Stir in additions if desired (or you could wait and sprinkle them on top too).
3. Spread into a greased 8x8 baking pan.
4. Bake at 350F for 20-30 minutes.