Chocolate Tamarind Muffins

We bought a small box of tamarind and my family just decided the fruit wasn't worth the effort. You know, first you need to get rid of the shell and then there are those big seeds inside which leaves almost no room for the actual edible part. As I was staring at the box I got a crazy idea. You can add any fruit in your muffins to make them less plain, right? So, I started an hour long martyrdom of sticky fingers and shells everywhere. At the end I got half a cup of the fruit. Half a frickin' cup! There is now way I'm ever gonna repeat the process.

So even though the muffins are really good - a bit sour and moist, this is it. Never again will I make them unless I find canned stuff or something like that. I bet it exists somewhere.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup tamarind
• 1 1/2 cups flour 
• 1 cup sugar
• a pinch of salt
• 1/3 cup cocoa powder
• 1 tea spoon baking soda
• 1 cup water
• 5 table spoons sunflower oil 
• as many chocolate chips as you can handle

1) Mix all the wet ingredients with sugar and let it sit for a while so that the sugar has a chance to dissolve. 

2) Add the rest of the ingredients and combine.

3) Distribute evenly in your muffin pan and bake at 180°C for about 15 minutes (or until your toothpick comes out clean).

Diana Laurence: How To Catch And Keep A Vampire

We covered the teenage game in the last two weeks and it's time to follow into adulthood. Honestly, I don't even know how these books appeared on my bookshelf. It must be from the era I discovered on-line used books stores and basically put into my cart everything which had a name VAMPIRE on it. These stores don't usually add description or a picture of the book so it is one big leap into the unknown. I wonder how I managed to buy so many adult books and almost no children literature. 

Anyway, to the dating the undead when older. I am happy that despite the fact that this book is also a post-Twilight book, the portrayal of a vampire tilts more toward the classic one rather than to the sparkly kind. 

The author claims to have dated many a vampire and her dating story is mixed with case studies, FAQs and other people's experience. The writing is more mature than in the previous books and even though there is a lot of puns in there, the humor is not as strong as in Mezrich's book.  See, it's written almost as if the author was serious.

But as I've already written, the focus of this book are those manipulative always elusive vampires, that's a plus. One the whole it wasn't a bad book but I caught myself not paying attention in some passages because it was getting dull every now and then. 

GENRE: self-help for adults

FANGS OUT: the real vampires are there
FANGS RETRACTING: not as funny as one would like
TOTAL SCORE:

Apple Oatmeal Cheese Bars with Cinnamon

This recipe is for 23x23cm pan. It may seem too little but trust me, these bars are pumped and you will be filled instantly. They are a classic - I mean, apples and cinnamon go together very well in many recipes (like, most of the strudel thingies) and if you add another classic - cream cheese - you have a winner, right? It's got a crispy top, moist middle and very dense bottom. Yay!

Ingredients:

Batter

• 100g oats
• 200g flour (again, use whichever you want, I made these with whole grain rye)
• 250g soft butter
• 200g sugar
• 1 egg
• 2 tea spoons vanilla extract
• 2 table spoons cinnamon
• 1 tea spoon baking powder
• 2 tea spoons corn starch

Cheese Filling

• 200g cream cheese
• 1 egg
• 50g sugar
• 1 tea spoon cinnamon
• 1 egg

Apple Layer

• 2 big apples
• 2 table spoons sugar
• 1 table spoon cinnamon
• 1/2 tea spoon ground nutmeg 

1) Beat the butter with sugar first till ... well, I'd tell you light and fluffy but if you use dark sugar like me, then there is no light and fluffy. Just beat it for a couple of minutes and then start slowly adding the rest of the batter ingredients till very thick batter appears.

2) Combine everything in the cheese filling section.

3) Grate the apples and combine with the rest of the apple layer stuff.

4) Prepare your pan by greasing it or line it with parchment paper.

5) Take 3/4 of the batter and spread it evenly on the bottom of your pan.

6) Pour the cheese filling on top.

7) Cover it with the apples and the rest of the batter (take small chunks and distribute them as you want)

8) Bake for about 35 minutes at 180°C (or till nicely brown). 

...as everything with cheese in it it's best from the fridge... 

Vlad Mezrich: The Vampire Is Not That Into You

Last week we discovered a first book which helps with the undead love affairs. This week we have another one. The target group of this book is the same as of the previous one so it is ideal for comparing. 

Firstly, this book is written by a vampire so you get more insight in all undead matters. 

Secondly, the design is much more sophisticated (the cover doesn't look it but the inside is covered in the timeless combination of red with black and is decorated by very tasteful pictures and patterns).

And the content? Oh, just lovely. This book also goes through all possible stages of relationship starting with finding your undead date to breaking up or keeping him. However, this time it's hilarious. 

There are many tests, diagrams, notes from different people, vampire hunter's pieces of wisdom, various points of view (be it smitten teenager or her chosen vampire), e-mail analyses, charts with what was said and what was meant by that, recipes, decoration ideas and lastly, even links to helplines when things start to go downward. It's full of funny stuff and there are even classic vampires mentioned so I have absolutely nothing against this. It's clever and entertaining, so compared to last week's book you should definitely go for this one and forget about that one. 

GENRE: self-help for teenagers

FANGS OUT: funny and gripping
FANGS RETRACTING: nope, no retraction
TOTAL SCORE:

Thyme Focaccia Spinach Burgers

These "burgers" look complicated but are actually very easy to make and they are definitely a nice break from all that meat. 

One will fill you up for hours, so don't think that just because it's green it's something less (my meat-eating family upon seeing them: "eh, we have some beef burgers in the freezer, should we add it in the bun?" --> after eating one half of the bun: "thank goodness you forbade us to defrost those burgers, we are stuffed!").

Ingredients:

Focaccia

• 42g yeast (I use the cube, not the dry one)
• 500ml warm water
• 500g flour (I had mercy and used plain)
• 4 table spoons dry thyme 
• olive oil to smear the buns with
• sea salt to sprinkle it with

Pesto

• 150g fresh chives
• 50g parmesan 
• 50g sunflower seeds
• 100 ml olive oil
• salt, pepper

Burger

• 400g spinach leaves
• 200g ricotta
• 150g mozzarella 
• 3 eggs
• salt, pepper
• oil for frying

1) Let's make the buns first. Mix the yeast with water and when the yeast dissolves into it, start adding the flour and thyme. Incorporate well and let it sit in some dark warm spot for about an hour.

2) When the dough is ready, wash your hands so that the water is still on them and divide your dough in four parts, make them look as closely to buns as possible and put them on a baking sheet lined with baking paper. Smear the buns with olive oil and sprinkle some salt on top. Bake at 250°C till they are nice golden-brown. Or you can use the toothpick technique here. 

3) For the pesto you will need to roast the seeds first - take your frying pan, heat it up and roast the seeds on it (no oil needed!) or put it on a baking tray and put it in the oven for a while if you are still baking your buns at this point. When the seeds start to get brown from both sides, take them out and let them cool down a little. 

4) Add the seeds to the rest of the ingredients for the pesto and either pulse it in the blender or use your hand blender to make it. It's kinda curd-y but all should be blended - no big pieces of anything allowed!

5) The last thing to do is the burger. Take the leaves, put them in hot salty water till they shrink. Then get rid of the water (wait for it to cool down and squeeze them). 

6) Chop mozzarella to small pieces and mix all the burger ingredients together. Divide into four portions and put them in your frying pan with a little bit of oil. Fry from both sides to get brownish tint and then put them in the oven for next 10 minutes to bake them through. 

7) When everything has cooled down, you can assembly the stuff- cut the focaccia in half, smear it with a thin layer of pesto, put in the burger and some veggies and you are done!   

Sophie Collins: How To Date a Vampire

Oh summer, the time of short-lasting romance. Did you know there are books that help you find your perfect undead dude? I didn't either but I got my hands on a couple of them so let's take a judgmental look at them. Needless to say they are all post-Twilight publications so they may be a little (or more) biased by that book.

The first impression is: Wow, this cannot be for older teenagers (based on the word DATE I'd give it to late teens) but for kids. And if it's for kids then it is wrong on so many levels. But yeah, it is focused on high-school kids so I think the designer just didn't get the memo. 

Apart from the terrible graphics it is not amusing at all. I thought this book would be hilarious but it turned out to be a bore. It gets you through the process of finding your undead till the end (or never-end) of the relationship so all bases are covered. 

However, it is done in a very schematic way. There are some DO's and DON'T's and PROs and CONs pages, then there is a lot of quizzes to find out if you are doing things right etc. and there are blank spaces for your observations. But all chapters go like this so it may seem amusing in the first chapter but once you go through it the third time it looses its charm. Needless to say that it isn't as funny as one might expect. Plus there isn't the overlap I expected - you know, allusions. So, I don't think you would find your undead dude based on this book, sorry.

GENRE: self-help for teenagers

FANGS OUT: funny concept
FANGS RETRACTING: optically unpleasant, too schematic
TOTAL SCORE:

Banana Chocolate Chip Cookies

While I was at mashing bananas for oatmeal cookies, I thought it would be cool to make a variation of the classic chocolate chip cookie. So I did. And they are great. They are moist so if you like your cookies crunchy, steer away from this recipe. 

You'll need (12 cookies):

• 1 ripe banana mashed or thinly sliced
• 1/2 cup melted butter
• 1 table spoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1,5 cups rye flour
• 1 teaspoon cornstarch
• 1/2 cup chocolate chips

1) Combine everything well (add the chocolate chips last).

2) Arrange in preferred shape on your baking tray (they will move to the sides only a little so you better flatten them when putting them on the tray).

3) Bake at 180°C for about 15 minutes. 

Vivian Vande Velde: Companions of the Night

The cover promised a thrilling dark story so I took it with me to a school trip to read at night while being on watch (being a teacher sometimes sucks, I can tell you - there is nothing worse than being up most of the night in order to catch misbehaving teenagers who don't exist these days - who would bother to leave the cottage with all its comfort and free wi-fi, right?).

Anyway, I took the book because it looked short enough to read through two nights and because it looked promising - I knew I needed something entertaining not to fall asleep.

At first, the book looked promising - an interesting evil vampire and hunters were involved, even though the teenage lead character was probably its weakest point but still I had hopes. And no other book so, beggars can't be choosers. I kept on reading. 

It was getting more and more unbelievable and  I just didn't understand why the characters behaved in a certain way. Weak, weak, weak. Really, their illogical behavior somehow blew the story and left only shards of something that could have been a really nice plot. The vampire could have done so much more with his potential.

GENRE: horror, I guess

FANGS OUT: the beginning
FANGS RETRACTING: the characters are unrealistic, the situations even more so
TOTAL SCORE:

Banana Oatmeal Cookies

Easy to make, baked in no time, moist and ready to sate your hunger for hours. What more should one want, right? So, let's not waste time and make them, 'cause I'm really hungry:

Ingredients (about 15 cookies):

• 1/2 cup melted coconut oil
• 1 egg
• 1 table spoon vanilla extract
• 1 big ripe banana - mashed or thinly sliced
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup rye flour
• 1,5 cups oats
• 1 table spoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tea spoon ground nutmeg 
• 1 tea spoon baking soda
• 1 tea spoon corn starch

1) Mix everything together till well combined.

2) Make disc shaped heaps of dough on the baking sheet (they will spread only a little, so they should be put in the oven more or less the way you want them to look when you pull them out).

3) Bake at 180°C for about 15 minutes.