Sazon- Puerto Rican Seasoning Salt

This is absolutely amazing for seasoning meats, poultry, or seafood. Liberally season your food before grilling and you will get awesome flavor.

This recipe calls for starting with whole peppercorns and cumin seeds. Use ground, if you like. It is still so great. Use the whole amount of ground as you would whole.


Ingredients:

2 Tablespoons black peppercorns
2 Tablespoons cumin seeds
2 Tablespoons dried oregano
1/2 cup kosher or sea salt
2 Tablespoons garlic powder

Combine the peppercorns and cumin seeds in a small skillet.
Toast over medium heat for about 3 minutes. Shake pan occasionally.
Pour into a bowl to cool.
When cool grind in a mortar & pestle or a spice grinder.
Pour into a jar.
OR
Add the ground pepper and ground cumin to the jar.
Add the rest of the ingredients.
Put lid on.
Shake well.

Makes about 1 cup and will season about 6-8 pounds of meat.
Will taste best within 6 months of making.
Keep out of heat and light.

Pumpkin Ginger Cupcakes

These are not just ordinary pumpkin cupcakes. They have little pieces of crystallized ginger in them.
That along with being covered in cream cheese frosting make these an awesome treat.


You will need a cupcake pan that fits 12 regular size cupcakes.
Fill those with liners.
Preheat your oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit.


Ingredients:

CUPCAKES-

1-1/2 cups flour
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 cup(1 stick) butter, melted and cooled slightly
1 cup sugar
1 cup pureed pumpkin
3 large eggs
1/4 cup crystallized ginger cut into 1/8-1/4 inch pieces

Mix the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and ground ginger in a bowl.
Set aside.
In another bowl, beat the melted butter, sugar, and pumpkin until smooth.
Mix in the eggs and crystallized ginger.
Gradually mix in the flour mixture.
The batter will be nice and thick.
Divide the batter evenly into the liners.
You will need about 1/4 cup for each.
Bake about 25 minutes until the tops are firm and poking them with a toothpick yields a clean toothpick.
Cool on a wire rack for 10 minutes.
Remove from pan.

Let cool while you make the frosting.




CREAM CHEESE FROSTING-

1/2 cup softened butter
6 oz softened cream cheese
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 cups powdered sugar
1/2- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
1-2 teaspoons milk


In a bowl, add the butter, cream cheese, vanilla extract, and powdered sugar. Beat until smooth.

Take 1/4 cup frosting and put it into another bowl.
Add the cinnamon and milk and blend well.


Frost the cooled cupcakes with the frosting.

With the remaining cinnamon frosting you can either do what I did in the picture. Which is to put small dollops in the center of each cupcake and take a toothpick and draw lines through it to make swirls and look like stars.
You can also put the frosing into a pastry bag and draw 2 circles on the top and run a toothpick through the circles to get a spiderweb effect.


No matter how you do it, it will be yummy!

You can store them for 3 days at room temperature. After that, due to the cream cheese frosting, you need to refrigerate.

Banana - Oat Pancakes

These are great pancakes. The taste is similar to banana bread, but like a pancake.

These are gluten free. Just make sure the oats or oat flour has not been manufactured on the same machines as wheat or other gluten products.

You can buy oat flour or you can just grind up oatmeal in a blender or food processor until it is a flour.


Ingredients:

1 cup mashed bananas- about 3 small/medium bananas
2 Tablespoons melted butter
1 Tablespoon lemon juice
1 Tablespoon sugar
2 eggs
1 cup oat flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

In a medium bowl, whisk the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Set aside.
In another bowl, beat the bananas, butter, lemon juice, and sugar together. Mix in the eggs.
Add the banana mixture to the flour mixture and blend just until everything is moistened.
Set aside for about 10 minutes.
Heat a griddle or heavy skillet.
Oil the pan lightly.
Drop the batter by 1/4 cupfuls onto the hot pan.
Cook for about 3-4 minutes until bubbles start to form around the edge of the pancakes.
Flip over and cook another couple minutes on that side.
Serve or keep warm in a 200 degree Fahrenheit oven until the rest of the pancakes are done..

You will get about 10(4") pancakes.

Serve with butter and syrup.

Enjoy!

Cinnamon Pastry Roll-ups

If your grandmother or mother ever made pie, you probably remember enjoying these tasty morsels.

Cinnamon pastry roll-ups are made from leftover pie crust dough.
It is very simple to make.

There is no set measurement. It all depends on how much pie crust you have leftover.

You will need a baking sheet or pan.

Ingredients:

Leftover pie crust dough- either butter crust or simple pie crust
butter
sugar
cinnamon

After making your pie, reroll the pastry scraps.

If it is a really large piece , divide it into 2 or 3 sections so that when you roll it up the roll-ups won't be too fat to cook completely.
With a knife, spread a thin layer of butter over the pie crust dough.
Sprinkle sugar liberally over the butter.
Sprinkle the cinnamon over the sugar.
Roll the pastry pieces. They will be like long cinnamon rolls.
Cut them into desired lengths.
Put on the baking sheets and put in the oven along with the pie.
Bake for about15-20 minutes until the pastry seems done and is just getting some color.
Pie crust made with butter will brown more and faster than a shortening crust.
Take out of the oven and let cool or eat warm.

Makes ?

Homemade Potato Chips

Potato chips are great. Homemade is awesome AND easy.

If you are lucky enough to have a mandolin slicer, it's faster but you can just slice the potatoes with a knife.

You will need either a deep fryer filled with oil OR a wide skillet with about an inch or two of cooking oil.
Large knife or slicing mandolin

Ingredients:


Oil for fryer OR skillet
2 or 3 medium-large size potatoes- Russet works great for these
salt or other seasoning

Heat you oil in the fryer to about 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Or heat up the skillet with oil until hot.
It is ready when a test slice bubbles immmediately upon dropping in.

Peel and slice the potatoes very thinly.

One at a time, add the potato slices to the hot oil.
Fry for about 10 minutes until the chips are crispy all the way through.
Every couple of minutes stir them up to keep them separated. This will ensure they don't stick to each other in spots and they will get crispy all the way like a chip should be.

When they are crispy, remove from the oil and drain on paper towels.

Season with salt OR any other seasoning you want to try.

Makes enough for 4-5 people. Maybe more depending on the size of the potato or how much everyone eats.

Batter Dipped Morels

Morels are wild mushrooms that only come around one time a year. If you love mushrooms and are lucky enough to find any of these, you are in for a treat.
You can fix morels in many ways. This is the way my dad always made them and they are pretty yummy.

You will need a large skillet.


Ingredients:

Morels, cleaned and sliced in half- enough for a nice batch

A stick of butter for frying the morels


BATTER-

1 cup flour
1 cup milk
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 egg


In a bowl, beat all the batter ingredients until smooth.

Set the skillet on medium high heat and put in the butter to melt.
When the butter is melted and hot, dip the morel halves into the batter and let excess batter drip off. The morels should sizzle when put in pan or the butter isn't hot enough.
Add the morels to the skillet.
Fry for a couple minutes until golden. Turn over and cook on the other side.

Chocolate Chip Cupcakes

Chocolate chip cupcakes. What could be better? You can either top these with a chocolate glaze or dust with powdered sugar. I had cocoa sugar so I used that. Also good as is.

Makes about 18 regular size cupcakes.

Preheat your oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit.
Line the muffin pans with liners or grease the cups well.


Ingredients:

2 cups flour
2 cups brown sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup(1 stick) cold butter, cut up
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup sour cream
1/4 cup milk
2 cups chocolate chips

2/3 cup chocolate glaze or powdered sugar for tops- optional


Mix the flour, brown sugar, and baking soda in a mixing bowl. Cut in the butter until the mixture is coarse looking.
Mix in the egg and vanilla.
Add the milk and sour cream and stir well.
There may be some lumps of batter and that's OK.
Fill all the muffin liners with a little over 1/4 cup batter.

The cups will be pretty well full.

Bake for 23-25 minutes until the tops are firm to the touch and a toothpick comes out clean when poked into the middle of a cupcake.
Cool for 10 minutes in the pans.
Remove to a wire rack to cool.

Drizzle with the glaze or sprinkle with the powdered sugar, if desired.