Last night I made a rather nice dinner for the family: brown rice cooked with sesame oil for flavour and olive oil to prevent sticking/burning (which it did admirably), pork carnitas with fresh deli salsa, steamed baby brussel sprouts (yum!), and Cherry Shortcake a la mode. My intent had been to serve Strawberry Shortcake, but, alas, that was not to be.  It seems that strawberries go bad fast.

My next problem was that I was out of white sugar.  Shortcake is easy enough to make with Bisquick, but how can I do it without sugar?  Stevia, honey, and molasses are all valid sweeteners, but I didn’t think they would do the trick.  I decided to try brown sugar.  Success!

So, the quick and dirty on how to make Cherry Shortcake a la mode.

1. Make the shortcake recipie on the Bisquick box.  I doubled the recipie and cooked it in a casserole dish as opposed to in biscuits.

2. Put a piece of shortcake on a plate (sliced in half if you prefer, I think it’s moister that way), fill with cherry pie filling (canned is fine), and top with vanilla bean ice cream!

3. Enjoy!

ListVerse:

Nutmeg is a hallucinigenic drug which is regularly used to flavor such lovely things as custard tarts and fruit cakes. It is also a poison which will kill you while you suffer a variety of extremely revolting (and one or two not-so-revolting) side-effects on the way. Ingesting 2 grams of nutmeg will give you similar feelings to having taken amphetamines (the not-so-revolting side-effect) but will also cause nausea, fever, and headaches. Ingesting 7.5 grams will cause convulsions, and eating 10 grams will cause hallucinations. Eating a whole nutmeg can lead to “nutmeg psychosis” which includes feelings of impending doom, confusion, and agitation. There have been two recorded cases of death by nutmeg (one in 1908 and one in 2001).

Wikipedia:

In low doses, nutmeg produces no noticeable physiological or neurological response. Large doses of 1g per lb of body weight or more are dangerous, potentially inducing convulsions, palpitations, nausea, eventual dehydration, and generalized body pain[1] In large amounts it is a reputed to be a strong deliriant. Users report negative and difficult experiences, involving disturbing visual distortions (hallucinations) and in many cases quite severe anxiety and users may feel a sensation of blood rush to the head. Nutmeg contains myristicin, a weak monoamine oxidase inhibitor.

Speculative comparisons between the effects of nutmeg intoxication and MDMA have been made.[2] However, nutmeg contains no amphetamine derivatives nor are any formed in the body from the main chemical components of nutmeg.[3] Use of nutmeg as a recreational drug is unpopular due to its unpleasant taste and its side effects, including dizziness, flushes, dry mouth, accelerated heartbeat, temporary constipation, difficulty in urination, nausea, and panic.

A risk in any large-quantity ingestion of nutmeg is the onset of ‘nutmeg poisoning’, an acute psychiatric disorder marked by thought disorder, a sense of impending doom/death, and agitation. Some cases have resulted in hospitalization.

Also, nutmeg was once considered an abortifacient.

And here is more info on nutmeg as a drug.

Who knew? I guess this means enjoy at your own risk!

But these aren’t cookies.  They are snickerdoodle muffins!  Isn’t that cool?  They taste better than any snickerdoodle cookies I’ve had, so I think I am gonna try to modify the recipie back to cookies!

The original idea (so far as I can tell) to convert cookies to muffins came from Culinary Concoctions by Peabody, and I have been craving snickerdoodles and snickerdoodle muffins since I first saw the recipie.

So yesterday I impulsively decided to make the Snickerdoodle Muffins (really need a shorter name!) for my family.  Since we are a large family (large by most people’s standards, that is), I doubled the recipie.  Then I did what I always seem to do: I modified it!  When I told my mom that I hadn’t followed the recipie exactly, she asked, “Do you ever?” *grins*

I am going to provide my doubled modified version, AND I will provide the modified version without the doubling.  It may not work quite the same, but if you are too scared to try it, you can always use Peabody’s original recipie.

Snickerdoodle Muffins (normal sized)

Original by Peabody, Modified by Agreeable Vodka

2 sticks butter (softened) 
1 cup sugar (I would be interested to see how using brown sugar instead of white worked)
2 tsp vanilla
2 eggs
¾ tsp baking soda
¾ tsp baking powder
¾ tsp cream of tarter
1 tsp ground nutmeg
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 and ¼ cup sour cream (this is approximately equal to 12 ounces)
2 cups whole wheat flour
¼ cup oat bran

1 cup sugar and 2 TBSP cinnamon mixed together for rolling

1.Cream the butter, sugar, and vanilla until soft about 3 to 5 minutes.  Add in the eggs and mix until each is incorporated.

2.In a separate bowl, mix together the flour, oat bran, baking soda, baking powder, cream of tarter, nutmeg, and cinnamon.

3.Add the flour mixture and the sour cream alternately to the egg-butter mixture. Start with the flour and end with the flour. Scrape the bowl occasionally.

4. Using a normal kitchen tablespoon, scoop out muffin batter and drop one at a time into a shallow bowl containing the cinnamon sugar mixture. Roll the muffin around in the mixture until it is covered completely in cinnamon sugar. Place muffin into a greased muffin tin. Depending on the size of your tins, you should get about 12 to 14 muffins. (That’s from Peabody, I seriously haven’t a clue. ) Bake them for approx. 20-22 minutes in a 350F oven or until they are golden brown.

Snickerdoodle Muffins (doubled version I used)
Original by Peabody, Modified by Agreeable Vodka
4 sticks butter (softened) 
2 cups sugar 
4 tsp vanilla
4 eggs
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp cream of tarter
2 tsp ground nutmeg
2 tsp ground cinnamon
2 1/2 cups sour cream (this is approximately equal to 24 ounces)
2cups whole wheat flour
1/2 cup oat bran

1 1/2 cup sugar and 4 TBSP cinnamon mixed together for rolling

1.Cream the butter, sugar, and vanilla until soft about 3 to 5 minutes.  Add in the eggs and mix until each is incorporated.

2.In a separate bowl, mix together the flour, oat bran, baking soda, baking powder, cream of tarter, nutmeg, and cinnamon.

3.Add the flour mixture and the sour cream alternately to the egg-butter mixture. Start with the flour and end with the flour. Scrape the bowl occasionally.

4. Using a normal kitchen tablespoon, scoop out muffin batter and drop one at a time into a shallow bowl containing the cinnamon sugar mixture. Roll the muffin around in the mixture until it is covered completely in cinnamon sugar. Place muffin into a greased muffin tin. I ended up with 30 very large muffins (need to make them SMALLER next time, because I couldn’t get them out of the tin without breaking off the tops!) and a little batter left over which I baked in a small bread loaf tin.  Bake them for approx. 20-22 minutes in a 350F oven or until they are golden brown.

EAT!  These are SOOO yummy!  They were fairly crumbly, and I attribute that to using whole wheat flour and oat bran.  I think adding gluten or using whole wheat bread flour would help.  Also, they stuck like crazy.  I think next time I would just drop the batter into the greased tins and sprinkle the cinnamon sugar on top.  That would help me control the sizes of the muffins better, as well.  I want to try using this recipie for mini muffins.  Oh, and these are really good hot, but I think even better after a night in the fridge!

Who am I?  I am a homeschooled 18 year old who loves to cook, read, and write.  I decided to combine these loves into my own cooking blog, a totally original idea, I assure you.  I have a warped sense of humor, but at least I have a sense of humor, right?

Hat tip to GroupThink at The People’s Cube for that bit of translation trivia.  It’s quite amazing the sorts of things one can run across when surfing the internet!

~Miss Agreeable