vanilla extract Archives | Musings on Momentum

Dairy Free Pots de Crème

May 10, 2016

I am something of a chocoholic. I always have been and imagine that I always will be. In fact, I have distinct early memories of “helping” my mother prepare chocolate mousse prior to dinner parties when I was a tiny little thing. She always made amazingly rich mousse that my infantile palette could handle all of about two bites of. It wasn’t for the faint of heart.

Fast forward twenty-odd years and I now find myself living a dairy-free, mousse-free existence. It isn’t any fun at all. To remedy this I’ve been experimenting with various lactose-free mousse alternatives in hopes of creating something even remotely close to my mom’s amazing chocolate mousse. I’m happy to report that I finally succeeded in this dairy free pots de crème recipe.

Gluten Free Peanut Butter S’more Cookies

April 19, 2016

Have I ever mentioned that summer camp was a huge part of my life throughout my middle school and high school years? I both attended and later worked at camps in Washington State as a camper and then as a counselor. In fact, my first real job was at Camp Don Bosco in Carnation, Washington as a dishwasher! To this day it was one of the hardest yet most rewarding jobs I have had.

To me camp was an escape from reality; an escape from being bullied in school, an escape from feeling out of place and awkward every day. At camp I was given the acceptance and support to really discover who I was and who I wanted to be. It was working at camp where I met one of the best friends I will ever have and it was camp I turned to when I lost him unexpectedly seven years later. Camp was life, camp was love, camp was the smell of crackling embers, the sound of water lapping against the shore, the sight of hundreds of stars against the pitch black night sky. Camp was…s’mores.

I always adored s’mores and the fact that I got to make them with my campers on our weekly campouts in the woods was something I always looked forward to, as did my campers. The whole lot of us equated s’mores to a complete camping adventure and, even when our camp outs were occasionally rained out, I always made sure to still give the kids that part of their summer camp experience.

It has been years since I slept beneath the stars and even longer since I successfully built and started a campfire on my own. I’m not sure I could flip a canoe these days to save my life and the words to some of the camp songs I once loved are long since gone from my head. What remains are fleeting memories of being blissfully happy and free, memories of the sound of my best friend’s voice and laughter, sounds I will never hear again, and memories of roasting marshmallows around a campfire. Camp may be gone from my daily life but every time I bite into a s’more I’m taken back to a less complicated time and place where I fell asleep to the stars and woke to the sunrise, where I’d surprise myself by discovering tan lines on my cheeks from smiling so much, where I fell in love for the first time, where I grew up.

Today, in honor of the warming weather, in honor of the days getting longer, in honor of it almost being time for summer camp once again, and in honor of my best friend, I’m sharing a piece of myself I don’t normally share along with a recipe for s’more cookies.

Rich and Easy Gluten Free Brownie Cake

January 12, 2016

As the big 3-0 approached, I found myself craving the taste of the rich chocolate birthday cakes I enjoyed in my youth. The only problem was that all of the chocolate cake recipes I had in my arsenal contained gluten. Not one to be deterred by my gluten-free lifestyle, I set out on a quest to find an easy and delicious alternative to the chocolate cake recipes I remember from my childhood.

Easy Peanut Brittle Recipe

December 8, 2015

When I was growing up I could always count on my grandparents making two treats on Christmas Day. My grandfather would make what was in my humble opinion the most delicious homemade treat ever, peppermint ice cream, while my grandmother would make what was in my father’s humble opinion the most delicious homemade treat ever, peanut brittle. Over the years both grandparents made an effort to teach all of us how to create these delights but, in all honesty, I was always terrified to attempt either of them both because they are ridiculously labor intensive and because it would make me really sad to create an end product that didn’t properly do justice to their originals.

Despite my trepidation I decided that I wanted to give peanut brittle a go last Christmas. After discussing my grandmother’s recipe with my mother and being reminded of how absurdly challenging it was to get the peanut brittle to turn out well, I took to the internet. I came across several similar microwave recipes, melded them all together and gave it my best shot, all the while assuming it would be an absolute disaster. But wait…it wasn’t. It wasn’t at all. Somehow my crazy microwave witchery produced peanut brittle of the exact same taste, texture and consistency as my grandmother’s!

Easy peanut brittle in Grandma’s tin, every bit as good as her original recipe.

Berry Crumble

December 1, 2015

I have a secret. I have been selfishly withholding what is possibly the yummiest breakfast dish EVER from you. I didn’t mean to keep this gem to myself; I have actually been planning on sharing it for months now. But then June turned into September which turned into December and in the blink of an eye I found myself smack dab in the middle of the holiday season, still clutching this recipe close to my chest. Ultimately I don’t think the timing could have worked out better because it just so happens that this berry crumble is the perfect breakfast to whip up when you need to dazzle a houseful of guests.