Recipe: Nanay's Blueberry Cobbler

Ingredients

• 3 cups fresh blueberries
• 1/3 cup orange juice
• 2/3 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1/2 cup  butter, softened
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1 egg

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C)
2. In an 8-inch square baking dish, mix blueberries and orange juice. Set aside.
3. In a small bowl, thoroughly mix flour, baking powder, cinnamon and nutmeg. Set aside.
4. In a medium bowl, cream  butter and 1/2 cup sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in egg. Gradually add flour mixture, stirring just until ingredients are combined. Drop batter by rounded tablespoons over blueberry mixture. Try to cover as much of filling as possible.
5. Bake in preheated oven for 35 to 40 minutes, until topping is golden brown and filling is bubbling.
6. Best served with vanilla ice cream. Breyer's Vanilla Ice Cream is our family's favorite. I recently found out that Breyer's has a No Sugar Added version.

Recipe: Nanay's Apple Crisp

Ingredients

• 10 cups apples, peeled, cored and sliced. We used gala apples but I think any apples will work
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 cup water
• 1 cup quick cooking oats or Quaker Old Fashioned Oats. 
• 1 cup all purpose flour
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 cup melted butter

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C)
2. Place the sliced apples in a 9x13 inch pan. Mix the white sugar, 1 tablespoon flour and ground cinnamon together, and sprinkle over apples. Pour water evenly over all.
3. Combine oats, 1 cup flour, brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda and melted butter together. 
4. Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for about 40 to 45 minutes.
5. Best served with vanilla ice cream. 

Recipe: Not-So-Sinful Brownies

On March 19, 2020, Governor Gavin Newsom of California released an Executive Order ordering all individuals living in the State of California to stay home or at their place of residence except as needed to maintain continuity of operations of the federal critical infrastructure sectors, as outlined at https://www.cisa.gov/identifying-critical-infrastructure-during-covid-19. 

Since then, our family has never gone out to eat at restaurants, not even ordering to go. I am comfortable with cooking meals from scratch but baking has never been my expertise. I make a few muffins. It's the easiest thing to make, I think. 

My youngest daughter's birthday was coming up and in our paranoia, we didn't want to order cake. So, I didn't have a choice but to try to bake the cake myself. I thought maybe I should experiment on making brownies first before I level-up to baking cakes. The cake didn't turn out the way I like it but the brownies did. 

I searched online for brownie recipes. With my first try, I followed everything to the letter. It was way too sweet for me. I've been trying to lose weight too but at the same time, I love desserts. It's hard but I have to indulge from time to time. With my second try, I experimented on the ingredients to make the brownies a little less 'evil' 😏  It was a success! You know how I knew? My sweet expert husband approved of it and my 3 kids loved it! Kids are always the best critics when it comes to dessert. 

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup butter
• 3/4 cup white sugar (the original recipe asked for 1 cup)
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder. I used Hershey's.
• 1/2 cup oatmeal flour (the original recipe used all purpose flour)
• to make oatmeal flour: Place the oats into the bowl of your food processor. Pulse the oats until they are ground into a powder-like consistency. I used Quaker's® Old Fashioned Oats.
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder

Directions

✪ Step 1

Pre-heat oven to 370⁰F (175⁰C). Grease and flour an 8-inch square pan.

✪ Step 2
In a large saucepan, metl 1/2 cup butter. Remove from heat and stir in sugar, eggs, and 1 teaspoon vanilla. Beat in 1/3 cup cocoa,1/2 cup oat flour and baking powder. Spread batter into prepared 8-inch square pan.
Optional: sprinkle dark chocolate morsels on top.

✪ Step 3

Bake in preheated oven for 25 to 30 minutes. Do not overcook.

In line with making this not so sinful, I chose not to make the frosting.