January provides the most beautiful citrus here in Southern California. I like to take advantage of it by using it in baking and cooking as much as possible. Instead of going with a typical lemon flavor, I thought orange would be a little different but still that same yummy citrus-y flavor.

cupcake ingredients:
1 stick of butter
1 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
1-1/2 cups flour
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup milk
2 Tablespoons orange juice
1 Tablespoon orange zest

vanilla glaze:
1/3 cup powdered sugar
1-1/2 Tablespoons milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Prep a mini cupcake pan with liners.

I like to prep ahead, I am big on mise en place, so I try to juice and zest the orange ahead of time so I can just toss it all in at the end, and keep on going.

In a bowl whisk the flour, baking soda and salt. Set aside.

In a mixer cream the butter and the sugar. Add the eggs, one at a time until blended.

Add the vanilla and almond extracts. If you don’t care for almond, you don’t have to use it but I think it brings out the orange in a nice way. Just leave it out if bothers you that much, sheesh.

To the butter mixture, alternate the flour mixture and the milk. Finally stir in the orange juice, and the orange zest.

Fill the lined cupcake pan, depending on the liners you use, for these, I like them to kind of puff up so they look like flowers, so I fill them more than I would a normal cupcake liner. The recipe should give you 24 mini cupcakes easily. Bake for 10 – 12 minutes depending on your oven.

Test with a toothpick and let cool on a wire rack. Start the glaze while the cupcakes are cooling – in a small bowl mix the powdered sugar, milk and vanilla. You can add more milk if it’s too thick, but it should be a nice runny consistency. This is a glaze, not a frosting, so you’re going to drizzle it, not spread it.

Once the cupcakes are cooled, drizzle with glaze. These are the perfect size to pop in your mouth…one…after the other…then another. Yikes.

The Kid wanted to make cookies, but since I am sick I told him he’d have to do all the work. He insisted that he had to make ‘cinnamon cookies’ though. Er…I figured a sugar cookie pumped up on cinnamon was my best bet. True to his word, he did all the work – I just had to put them in the oven. He is only 5 after all.

ingredients:
2-1/4 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
pinch of salt
1 cup butter (2 sticks) softened
1 cup white sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1-1/2 teaspoons vanilla

for topping:
2 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In a bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon. (If you think that much cinnamon is gonna kill you, go ahead and hold it back to 1-1/2 tablespoons.)

In a mixer, cream together the butter and the sugars until mixed. Add the egg and the vanilla.

Slowly add the flour mixture into the egg mixture. Until the batter is well blended.

Drop by teaspoonfuls onto a prepped cookie sheet. A small ice cream scoop works well for this. Sprinkle the cinnamon sugar mixture over the rounded balls of dough.

Bake for 10-12 minutes. Let cool on wire racks. They taste FANTASTIC right out of the oven. They are soft, with a crunch. Perfect for snacking.

This recipe is adapted from Martha Stewart’s Everyday FOOD magazine years ago. I still make it fairly often because it’s so easy to throw together on a night when you don’t have dinner planned. I changed it up (you’ll see why) and it’s easy to add and subtract ingredients based upon what you have in your pantry.

Ingredients:
3 cups water
2 cans chicken broth
sliced ginger
sliced garlic
4 green onions sliced finely
shitake mushrooms – soaked and sliced
frozen wonton/dumplings
frozen corn
frozen spinach

To a large pot, add the water, chicken stock, green onions, ginger and garlic. Bring to a boil…

Meanwhile, soak the mushrooms in a bowl of water til they are good and soft, then slice them thinly, removing the stems. Throw the mushrooms in there and boil for about 5 minutes.

Now here’s where I venture off – Martha calls for baby ears of corn and watercress. Nasty.

I just threw in regular frozen corn and frozen spinach, just as good, if not BETTER.

Add all that to the pot along with the “dumplings”, we call it gyoza, but whatever – boil for about 8 minutes til the dumplings are ready.

How fast was this? And so tasty!

I love individual servings. Something about mass digging into a big pan of something kind of grosses me out, whereas little individual pot pies all your own, well that’s just special.

ingredients:
2 Tb butter
1/2 onion diced small
2 carrots
1 clove garlic
2Tb flour
1 (14 oz) can chicken broth
2 TB whole milk
salt
pepper
1 potato diced small
1/2 cup corn
1/2 cup peas
2 cups cooked chicken, cubed
1 package frozen pie crust
butter
salt

In a deep pan melt butter, and add the carrots, onion and garlic. Stir over medium high heat until the onions and carrots are softened. Add the flour and cook through until you get a nice roux, about 5 mins. Add the chicken broth, and the milk, a dash of salt and some freshly ground pepper. Cook over high heat until boiling.

Once boiling add the potatoes, corn, peas and chicken – bring to a boil again and turn off the heat.

Prep your ramekins by greasing them with melted butter. This recipe makes 4 medium sized 5″ souffle ramekins or six small 3″ ones.

Spoon the chicken mixture into the prepped ramekins. I always place the ramekins on a baking sheet, inevitably the pies will bubble over or something, it’s just easier to transport in and out of the oven.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Now for the top – you can make your own dough of course, but if you’re short on time, frozen dough works well too. Just defrost it, roll it out and cut it fit the top of the ramekin. I like to have overlap of about 1/2 and inch. You can cut your traditional vent slits into the top, but I like to use a teeny heart cutter to cut a hole. It’s cute and still does the job.

Cover the filling and press the edges onto the sides of the ramekin. Butter the top and sprinkle lightly with sea salt.

Put the sheet pan with ramekins in the oven, cook for 30 minutes. They will be burning hot when you take them out and the filling will stay that way for a while, which is great unless you’ve got kids dying to dig into dinner. Yeah…then it’s not so great.

But in any case, it’s a nice little dinner on a cold winter’s day, and it would be great for dinner parties. The kids – I think they just had fun destroying them…

Every year I do a watermelon ice cream bombe. I’ve even been known to do mini 50/50 bombes. But for my Kid’s 5th birthday, in the height of an 80 degree ‘winter’ in L.A. I figured ice cream bombes were in order instead of a traditional birthday cake.

I made two, an orange sherbet filled with rainbow sherbet, and a chocolate filled with coffee chip. The coffee one was for the adult guests, of course. When I make bombes I always go for the element of surprise, so I like the inside ice cream to be colorful and complimentary to the exterior flavors.

Orange bombe ingredients:
one – half gallon orange sherbet
one – half gallon vanilla ice cream
one – half gallon rainbow sherbet

Chocolate bombe ingredients:
one – half gallon chocolate ice cream
one – half gallon vanilla ice cream
one recipe of coffee chip ice cream

First, line a large bowl with saran wrap. This will make for an easy escape when you are trying to turn them out.

For the orange, I ‘line’ the outside with a whole half gallon of orange sherbet, covering the sides and bottom of the bowl. Same goes for the chocolate – use a whole half gallon of ice cream. Use a spatula to help smooth it out, and you can put it back in the freezer if the ice cream is too drippy or melting fast.

Next, I always like to add a thin layer of vanilla in between the outer ice cream, and the filling. It adds a nice change of taste and looks darn pretty too. Use HALF of a half gallon, just follow along the outsides of the ice cream you’ve already put down.

Always put the bombes back in the freezer to set. You can do this process all in a few hours or a few days, as long as it’s tightly saran wrapped, it’s pretty smooth going. Now for the filling. For the orange sherbet, I used a whole container of rainbow sherbet, just soften it up and pour it in. Return it to the freezer. For the chocolate bombe, I used my homemade coffee ice cream recipe and added mini chocolate chips. Again, pour it into the center of the chocolate bombe, then return it to the freezer.

Now to continue with the element of surprise, I always like to ‘top off’ the bombes, by covering the bottom with more vanilla ice cream. that way you can’t see the filling, and again, you add a nice vanilla flavor to compliment all the ice creams. Use HALF of a half gallon to cover the bottoms – if you notice that means you’ll actually be using the other half of the vanilla ice cream that you had used to do the inner layer.

Look how gorgeous they are when you slice into them! These are a big hit at parties and you really need a party to serve them cause, come on, one bombe contains 3 containers of ice cream, that’s a heck of a lot to consume by yourself.

This is your basic coffee ice cream. It’s DELISH on it’s own, but you can always add a little something. In this case, mini chocolate chips…

ingredients:
1 cup whole milk
2-1/2 heaping Tablespoons instant coffee crystals
3/4 cup sugar
1-1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups heavy cream
one cup mini chocolate chips

I prefer Trader Joe’s instant coffee. I’ve tried Folgers and other brands and they are pretty crappy. But if you have nothing else, what are you gonna do. Still, in all the test batches I’ve made, Trader Joe’s brand certainly came out on top.

In a small bowl combine the milk, coffee crystals, sugar, and vanilla extract. Stir to dissolve the sugar. Add the heavy cream.

Pour into the bowl of an ice cream machine. Freeze according to the manufacturer’s instructions. In the last 5 minutes add the mini chocolate chips.

After the ice cream is made, transfer to an airtight container. The coffee ice cream is so tasty you won’t believe that it ISN’T an egg based ice cream (i.e. more work), but you can make it even better by adding nuts, toffee, candy…yum. Try different things, it’ll all work.

A Hawaii classic, this is the short cut way. This recipe is so easy it’s ridiculous. I remember making it a lot when I was trying to get the babies started on solid foods. The kids loved it. Personally I find it very comforting when I have a cold or just feel cold.

Ingredients:
2 cans chicken broth
2 chicken breasts
2 (serving) packets of long rice
1 small brown onion
4 green onions
couple of slices of ginger

Put the chicken breasts in the bottom of the pot. Sit the long rice bundles next to them. Chop onions and throw on top. Nestle the ginger into the mix.

Pour cans of chicken broth over the ingredients, then add enough water to cover the chicken and the noodles.

Turn on the pot to HIGH.

Go away.

Come back 4 hours later.

Add salt and pepper to taste. You don’t have to put the onions – in fact my kids insist that I DON’T. You can also add mushrooms if you like.

This looks like sludge, but it’s delish – as a side dish or a main dish!

When O.G. was a kid she ate chocolate covered potato chips. She has always said it’s the perfect blend of salty and sweet. It also happens to be two of her major food groups. The woman eats barely anything else but chips….and chocolates. This is her key to living to be almost 90, by the way.

I decided to do something similar for her birthday gift. I made up some potato chip cookies. I’ve been working on this recipe for a while now. By getting a good mix of just the right ingredients, you get a nice buttery crunchy cookie.

ingredients:
1 cup butter (2 sticks)
1/2 cup brown sugar (firmly packed)
1/2 cup white sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/8 teaspoon salt
1-1/2 cups crushed potato chips

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Prep cookie sheets with parchment or silpats, to keep the cookies from sticking.

In a freezer bag, crush the potato chips with your hands, and a rolling pin to bash it for good measure. I like to use the ridged potato chips, I found those give a nice amount of texture to the cookie. Measure out 1-1/2 cups of crushed chips and set aside.

In a mixer, cream the butter and sugars. Add the vanilla and the egg until combined.

In a small bowl combine the flour, baking soda and salt. Slowly add to the butter mixture until combined. Mix in the crushed potato chips by hand.

Drop by teaspoonfulls on a prepped cookie sheet. You should get about three dozen out of this mixture. Bake for 10 minutes. I like mine crispy with a little softness to the middle.

Take them out of the oven and let them set slightly for a few minutes. Then carefully lift them to a wire rack to cool. They will crisp up quickly. If you want, drizzle with some melted chocolate. But I kinda like them plain. You get a nice butter cookie with a slight salty crunch.

Mochi is fantastic stuff, it can be savory or sweet. When made into desserts it has a nice familiar ‘chew’ that let’s you know mochi is a key ingredient. These are dense little cupcakes with just a little sweetness.

ingredients:
1 (1 lb) box mochiko
1-1/4 cups sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 eggs
1-1/2 cups milk
3/4 cup oil
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 (16 oz can) an – sweetened red bean (optional)

Mochiko can be found in most japanese markets, it’s a white flour, in a one pound box. Really useful to keep in your pantry, you can use it for a lot of other recipes.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Prep a cupcake pan with liners. I get about 18 cupcakes out of this recipe.

Mix all the ingredients together, EXCEPT the an, in a bowl.

IF you are using the an, only fill the cups about 1/2 full, add a teaspoon of an, then cover with more batter. If you don’t want the an, just fill the cups 3/4 of the way full.

Bake for 30-40 minutes depending on your oven, until you get nice little slightly browned tops. Let cool on a wire rack. Now these are best, just like this, dusted with a bit of powdered sugar. However, I was making these for New Year’s Day and added a little something extra.

I made some kagami mochis out of fondant, iced the cupcakes with a lemon frosting and stuck my little fondant creations on top. They were festive for the party and were a fun nod to the tradition of New Year’s Day mochi.

As I was going through my pantry for ingredients for New Year’s, I noticed an unopened slab of fondant and realized that the white fondant looked just like mochi. Specifically, the kagami mochi, which is stacked just so – for New Year’s Day – with a little orange on top to signify generations of family.

ingredients:
fondant
orange gel dye
green gel dye

Since mochi is white and so is fondant, all you have to do is shape it into little slabs. SO EASY. I wish all fondant work was this easy. Pat them down to look like mochi and stack the smaller one on top.

Now dye a tiny bit to make little oranges. And a VERY small amount – dye green for the leaves. After you’ve shaped the oranges into balls, place them on top of the white mochi slabs, take a toothpick and poke a little hole in the top. That’s where we’ll add the leaf.

Take a teeeeny pinch of green and just freeform shape it into something that resembles a leaf. Poke that into the top of the ‘orange’ to stick.

When I made these they looked so cute but now that I had dozen of these things, now what? Cupcakes of course.

I made mochiko cupcakes and stuck these on top. Festive and fun for the new year!