The Balanced Kitchen

Time for food. Time for Life.

BIG ANNOUNCEMENT!!

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Six years ago, I was struggling with the path my life had taken. I had two very small children, I had left my career working with trauma survivors, and I was doing erratic consulting work that bored me to death. I knew I needed a change and so I wrote an email to my closest friends and former colleagues and asked them a question: “If you could see me doing anything, what would it be?” I encouraged them to be creative, to be crazy, to think outside of the box. Every single person responded, and everyone said the same thing: something with food! As soon as I saw the word food, I knew I had found my answer.

Within the year, I completed a training program to become a health coach and launched The Balanced Kitchen. I had found my true calling! I was able to share my belief that cooking could be a simple, easy, healthy, and delicious part of life. I got to help people who really wanted to eat a healthier diet and cook for themselves and their families, but didn’t know where to begin. In short, I had the best job ever!

Today, I am sharing the latest development in this wonderful, challenging, exciting journey. I am SO excited to announce that I have become the new CEO (and owner) of The Six O’Clock Scramble!

 

What’s The Scramble?

For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, The Six O’Clock Scramble, founded and run by the amazing Aviva Goldfarb, is an online meal planning service committed to helping busy people get quick, easy, and delicious meals on the table every night. Aviva and I share the same philosophy: making dinner should be a low stress and enjoyable experience and that family dinners are one of the most rewarding and important opportunities to connect with and nourish the people we love and ourselves!

The Scramble will give me a platform to encourage even more people to get back into the kitchen, to experiment with new tastes and cooking techniques, and to feed their friends and families healthy, delicious meals that are simple to prepare.

 

But What About The Balanced Kitchen?

Some of you may be asking, what will happen to The Balanced Kitchen, to the recipes found here, and to my weekly musings on food, feeding kids, feeding ourselves, and life balance? The answer is twofold: my recipes will stay archived here on The Balanced Kitchen, but my new recipes and posts will all be on The Scramble.

I invite you to join me at The Scramble to continue getting inspiration and ideas for feeding yourself and your family well. In an effort to make that as simple for you as possible, I will be merging my list with The Scramble’s. What this means is that you will continue to receive emails from me from time to time with recipes, cooking ideas, and lots of other opportunities to experiment with cooking and eating, just from The Scramble rather than from The Balanced Kitchen.

 

Join The Scramble Family!

Finally (and perhaps most importantly), as an enticement and in celebration of this big change, I am offering a Friends & Family discount if you’d like to join The Scramble’s meal planning service. I love and believe in this service because it helps to make cooking that much easier and more accessible. So, if getting a meal plan delivered to your inbox or phone each week sounds appealing, if a generated-for-you shopping list sounds amazing, if access to a database of over 1,000 carefully curated recipes sounds wonderful, then join us! (And if you aren’t sure we have a 2 week free trial, so there’s no risk!)

Thank you for your support of The Balanced Kitchen over these past years. I have loved carving out my space in the food and cooking conversation. I have loved working with you as clients, meeting you at workshops, and sharing ideas with you online. I look forward to our relationship growing over at The Scramble! Sign up for a free trial now (and use the code FANDF17 to get 25% off all memberships now through August 16th).

Happy Cooking, Happy Eating, and Happy Scrambling!

Vanilla Mini-Cupcakes with Tangy Chocolate Glaze

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In honor of The Recipe Redux turning 6, we were challenged this month to come up with a small bite dessert. So fun! And a very welcome excuse to bake some cake!

When I first started pondering what to make, the dessert that popped into my mind was the mini-cupcakes at Whole Foods. I have a weak spot for them. I love that they are small enough that I can happily have two (or, let’s be honest, often three) and that they give me a nice hit of chocolate without being too much. So I thought I would try and come up with a homemade version.

If you have been following me for a while, you have probably caught onto the fact that I am a big fan of using yogurt in baking. I like it for three reasons: 1) like buttermilk, it makes things fluffier, 2) unlike buttermilk, I almost always have it in the house, and 3) it adds some protein to whatever I am baking. My love for using yogurt in cakes was firmly solidified a couple of months ago when I came across the yogurt cake recipe on the Kitchn. No beating or stiffening of eggs, only one bowl used, and yet out comes a fluffy, delicious cake—it is a lazy cook’s dream cake recipe! So I adapted it a little to make it a smidge healthier by including some spelt flour and cutting down on the sugar and the outcome was outstanding! (Note: I have found that using whole grain flours, like whole wheat or spelt, in cakes works better in cupcakes than it does in full-sized cakes, it just doesn’t rise quite enough as a big cake because the flours are denser…)

For the chocolate glaze, I also wanted the tangy-ness of yogurt to enliven the flavor and bulk up the nutrition, even if just by a little bit. So I tweaked a Cabot recipe by decreasing the sugar (why does every frosting recipe call for so much sugar?!). All I can say is that if I could eat these cupcakes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, I totally would. And, in fact, I just might have them for breakfast tomorrow…

Happy Birthday, The Recipe Redux!

5.0 from 1 reviews
Vanilla Mini-Cupcakes with Tangy Chocolate Glaze
 
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Cupcake recipe adapted from: The Kitchn Yogurt Cake Glaze recipe adapted from: Cabot Chocolate Layer Cake
Author:
Recipe type: Dessert
Serves: 48
Ingredients
  • For the cupcakes:
  • 1 ½ cups whole milk plain yogurt
  • ⅔ cups extra virgin olive oil
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 3 eggs
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • 1 ½ cups all purpose flour
  • 1 cup spelt flour (or white whole wheat flour)
  • 2 ½ teaspoons baking powder
  • ¾ teaspoons baking soda
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • pinch freshly ground nutmeg
  • For the glaze:
  • ¼ cup plain whole milk yogurt
  • ¼ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
  • ½ teaspoon vanilla
  • 1 ¼ cups confectioner’s sugar
Instructions
  1. To make the cake:
  2. Preheat the oven to 350 and line two mini-cupcake pans with liners.
  3. In a large bowl, whisk together the yogurt, olive oil, sugar, eggs, and vanilla.
  4. Add the flours, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and nutmeg and stir until there are no lumps.
  5. Distribute the batter amongst your muffin cups and bake for 15 minutes. Place them on a cooling rack and allow them to cool completely before glazing them.
  6. To make the glaze:
  7. Combine the yogurt, cocoa powder and vanilla in a large bowl.
  8. Using an electric mixer, slowly beat in the confectioner’s sugar until there are no lumps.
  9. Carefully dip the top of each cupcake into the glaze, turn onto its side, and spin gently to let any drops fall off, then place them on a tray. Place the tray into the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes to let the glaze firm up a bit.

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Recipe Roundup: April Edition

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This month is kind of a wacky month for my recipe roundup because three of these recipes come from one cookbook: Ottolenghi’s Jerusalem: A Cookbook*. I have a complicated relationship with this cookbook. I love it because everything that I make from it comes out so well, the pictures are beyond beautiful, and the recipes are truly inspiring, but I also find it challenging because many of the recipes include obscure ingredients that, truthfully, I am not willing to drop lots of money on to possibly use just once before they go bad. So I have started adapting when I use the book and so far that has worked out pretty well!…

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Waffleritos: And How to Use Up the Food You Already Have in Your House

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I’ve got an awesome, super simple, extra flexible recipe for you guys this week! Waffleritos. Yup, you guessed it, a combination of waffles and burritos, and what could be better than that? But first, some practical tips on how to cook with what you’ve got. The inspiration for the recipe and this post comes from this month’s challenge from The Recipe Redux:

Spring Clean the Kitchen. Cook with at least 3 ingredients that are actually in your refrigerator or pantry right now. Try not to go to the store to buy anything new. Give tips on how to make a healthy dish out of whatever you have on-hand.

This topic is near and dear to my heart and is tied to one of the complaints I hear from people over and over again—that they struggle with food waste—vegetables go bad before they can use them all up, meat is forgotten and goes off, and they are reluctant to buy recipe-specific ingredients because they aren’t sure how they will use the remainders in other recipes. I have even spoken with people who have decided that they’d rather order out instead of grocery shop and cook because the food waste stresses them out so much. I am very sympathetic to this struggle as it is one that I experienced for years when I was first becoming comfortable with cooking. I vividly remember going into my produce drawer and finding slimy green things that made my stomach turn. I also remember struggling with what to do with leftover ingredients from new recipes I had tried (I used to avoid buying cabbage and bok choy at all costs for this reason). Over time, though, as I became more comfortable with cooking and improvising, I found this source of stress started to dissipate and I developed a couple of tricks that were really helpful in avoiding food waste….

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Beet Rosemary Muffins

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We’re not big Valentine’s Day people in our household. One of the first times my husband and I ever really hung out was at an anti-Valentine’s gathering. But I’m a sucker for special meals on special days… so since I am on a big beet kick right now I couldn’t let the holiday go by without a red-themed recipe and this one is a keeper!…

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Cranberry Yogurt Cake with Maple Glaze: A Simple Dessert for the Holiday Season

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In my foodie family there are many holiday dishes that are considered sacred: Eggs Benedict on Christmas morning, my mom’s buttery fresh spinach, my brother’s carefully timed and rotated stuffed turkey, my mom’s poached pears with chestnut puree, and my mashed potatoes. Most of these dishes are not only a little bit richer than I would usually make, but they are also very labor intensive, and that’s how we like it. We love spending hours in the kitchen together, usually with bouncing fun music playing, creating these rich and delicious meals.

Other than my mom’s poached pears, however, there are few dessert recipes that are considered essential (and even that one isn’t made every year). So when The Recipe Redux announced the challenge for this month: “The holiday baking season is upon us. Time to pull out all the stops. Show us the healthy holiday dessert you will be sharing with family and friends this season.” I was excited to see what I could come up with. I wanted to create a recipe that would not only have some redeemable nutritional aspects to it, but that would also be a simple one that anyone could do. My goal of simplicity was a bit selfish because I hoped that in making one that was easy, perhaps I could entice the boys to start making it with me and that over time it could become their special recipe to contribute to future holiday meals….

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Wild Blueberry Corn Muffins

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“By posting this recipe I am entering a recipe contest sponsored by Wild Blueberries and am eligible to win prizes associated with the contest. I was not compensated for my time.”

Can you believe that Thanksgiving is just around the corner?! It completely snuck up on me. Luckily, this year is kind of like my year off. Our family has a tradition of staying in the DC area for one year and then going up to extended family in New Jersey the next. When it is nearby I am in charge of the Turkey (high stakes cooking!), but on the New Jersey years I am usually assigned a simpler, more transportable set of dishes. This year I am responsible for the corn bread and an appetizer. I will likely bring some classic cornbread so as not to rock the boat too much, but I also like to bring a new and different spin on recipes and now I’ve got two contenders: last week’s feta jalapeño corn muffins and this week’s wild blueberry corn muffins. It is going to be a hard call……

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Wild Blueberry Oatmeal Waffles

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“By posting this recipe I am entering a recipe contest sponsored by Wild Blueberries and am eligible to win prizes associated with the contest. I was not compensated for my time.”

When we think of holiday meals we tend to think of the dinners. Those big, heavy meals that leave us feeling comatose and overfull. But what about the other meals on those days? For me, I always try to start the mornings of the big holidays off with a good, healthy breakfast so that I can face the day knowing that I started out on the right foot. I also am fan of a hearty breakfast on those mornings because it helps me to not get too hungry too early in the day, which helps to minimize snacking. So when I was invited through The Recipe Redux to come up with healthy holiday recipes that included frozen wild blueberries my first thought was breakfast. I wanted to create a recipe that would be healthy and hearty, but also one that would feel special enough to use on a holiday morning and I think that these wild blueberry oatmeal waffles fit the bill perfectly!…

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Feta Jalapeño Corn Muffins

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Let’s talk breakfast for a minute. When I was a kid I hated breakfast. I mean, I really hated breakfast, but I also needed a good one because, as I have written about before, when I didn’t get protein in the morning I turned into a little monster and got into trouble at school. So for years my poor mother struggled to find foods that I would be willing to eat in the mornings that had protein. Fast forward to current times and I couldn’t imagine starting the day off without a protein-rich breakfast. It is my foundation for the day and I have found that if I start off on the right nutritional foot the rest of the day’s food choices fall happily into place, but if I don’t get what my body really needs then I often make more sugar-laden or impulsive choices later.

For years my solution to this was, and often still is, homemade granola with a lot of fruit and some plain yogurt. The combination of the fiber and protein has worked really well for me and I really enjoy it. But recently I have noticed that sweet breakfasts are a little less appealing, so I have been trying to build up my savory breakfast options. So far my go-tos have been a rice cake with brie, tomato, and cucumber and frittatas packed with vegetables, but I wanted to have another option that I could rotate in and so the Feta Jalapeño Corn Muffins were born….

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Whole Wheat Oatmeal Cookies

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There are few things I love more than a warm cookie right out of the oven. Even in the middle of summer. There is something so comforting about the warmth, the chewiness, and, of course, the sweetness. When I was a kid the first thing I learned to make on my own was cookies. There were all kinds of stumbling blocks along the way as I experimented with baking. Some of them were fiascoes, like the time I used a tablespoon of baking soda instead of a teaspoon. But some of them turned into specialties, like the time I let the chocolate chips get too chopped up in the food processor and the result were sugar cookies with chocolate swirls running through them. My dad called them “spider cookies” and they were his favorite for years.

And yet for years I experienced a combination of craving and guilt when it came to baked goods. I was constantly trying to control myself, which often left me wanting more and thinking about the leftovers incessantly. I would negotiate with myself, finding ways to get another cookie or rationalizing why I should have “just one more.” It was exhausting and stressful and, honestly, took a lot of joy out of eating the treats. So finding a balance in my life where I could eat what I enjoyed and not feel deprived was essential. One of the ways to find that balance was to find ways to make some of my favorite baked goods healthier, but still deliciously satisfying. The interesting thing is that once I found the right balance and was comfortable with the foods I was eating, the intense cravings started to dissipate. The enjoyment was there and the forbidden-ness was gone. It was a revelation!

oatmeal cookie

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