Posted June 23, 2022 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 0 Comments
This recipe goes out to my brand new “brother-in-law-in-law” (anybody know the term for a sister-in-law’s spouse?). My sister-in-law got married last month, and her husband LOVES guava! For her bridal shower, she made cupcakes filled with super luscious guava jam, and I’ve been dreaming about them ever since. So when I saw guava mentioned in SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON, I knew I had to try my hand at making my own guava jam.
But what to pair with it? That was easy: coconut. In the book, coconuts are mentioned no less than 36 times! Such a prominent ingredient simply HAD to be in my dessert, so I decided to make coconut macaroons and turn them into little guava thumbprint cookies. I used this macaroon recipe from The Slow Roasted Italian as my jumping off point, then started riffing from there.
These cookies turned out SO good. They’re sweet, a bit tart, and caramelized at the edges where the coconut get nice and toasty. Plus, the cookies are egg free, so they’re perfect if you have an egg allergy!
DEFINITELY making these again soon. Maybe for the next family gathering!
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Posted June 9, 2022 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 2 Comments
Time for more tropical goodness! This recipe is a snap to throw together and includes multiple ingredients mentioned in Swiss Family Robinson: pineapple, cabbage, carrot, and lime. Plus, it’s dotted with cute little carrot hearts. Let’s make some Pineapple Slaw!
Pineapples turn up regularly in Swiss Family Robinson, so even though I used them in my Seared Salmon with Pineapple Mango Chutney, I wanted to use them again. I loved the idea of a cold, fresh side dish to pair with my salmon entree, so I went hunting on Pinterest and found this Hawaiian Slaw recipe from The Skinny Fork. I love that it uses so many ingredients from the book, and it has a touch of gingery, peppery spice to complement the chutney in my entree. Plus, how cute are those little veggie hearts??? I just made a few minor changes to suit what I had in the fridge.
With the weather heating up, this refreshing, sweet-n-spicy side dish is the perfect thing to keep in mind when those sweltering summer days are upon us. Enjoy!
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Posted April 14, 2022 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 2 Comments
For the last dish in my PETER RABBIT menu, let me introduce you to these sweet little bites of heaven: mini no-bake blackberry cheesecakes! As soon as I started planning my menu, I knew I wanted the dessert to draw from the blackberries and milk Peter’s siblings enjoy at the end of the story. I tossed around lots of ideas, eventually deciding on no-bake cheesecake because my daughter loves cream cheese (her egg allergy prevents her from enjoying regular cheesecake). Plus, cheesecake is one of my husband’s favorite desserts. I made several batches during recipe testing, and he LOVED being my guinea pig! 😀
This was my first time developing a cheesecake recipe, so to make sure my proportions were right, I consulted two no-bake cheesecake recipes from Live Well Bake Often and Chenee Today. I found my filling to be a bit too loose after it set (possibly due to the additional liquid from the blackberry puree I mixed in), so I used a method I found at Simply Recipes, which calls for mixing a bit of gelatin in at the end. It set perfectly, which was a huge relief, since I would have been so sad to nix the puree. Not only does it provide a fun sweet-tart kick, but it turns the cheesecake an adorable lavender color. Bon appetit! 🙂
NOTE: THIS RECIPE NEEDS TO SET FOR AT LEAST 4 HOURS.
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Posted June 17, 2021 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 0 Comments
I know what you’re thinking. “But, Ali, you already made a recipe inspired by Stuart Little’s car.”
Yes, I was thinking that too. But hear me out:
- That was savory, and this is sweet!
- Plus these cupcakes have flavors inspired by rocky road ice cream.
- And they’re topped with a car with a little “S” on the hood and a wee mouse in the driver’s seat. UNBEARABLY CUTE.
- And I really REALLY wanted to make them.
These Stuart Little cupcakes are perfect for a birthday party or baby shower. I made them using my favorite, super-moist chocolate cake batter, marshmallow frosting from a recipe by Lil Luna, and the cutest little marzipan toppers. I loved the idea of developing a recipe with a chocolate/marshmallow/almond flavor combo reminiscent of rocky road, given the car theme. Plus, you can serve them with rocky road ice cream! Too perfect. 😀
My 4-year-old LOVED these. He’s been obsessed with cars since he was a baby, and he got hooked on marzipan after taste-testing the decorations when I made rüeblitorte. Plus, we read Stuart Little together not long before I started this menu (our first chapter book read-aloud! 😭 ), so he loved that he could connect the food to something he knew. Do I sense a theme for his next birthday party?
P.S. My 5-year-old nephew saw me working on this and pointed out you could also make Mario characters to put in the cars. So it turns out these work for a Mario Kart birthday too! Whodathunk? 😀
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Posted June 3, 2021 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 0 Comments
Remember earlier this year when I made a historically accurate JANE EYRE menu? Today I’m adding a historically accurate recipe to my STEWART LITTLE menu too! Although the story is set in a fictional New York and no time period is given, the book was published in the 1940s, and the clothing and speech styles of the characters give that vibe. So let’s make some 1940s food!
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Posted June 6, 2019 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 0 Comments
This recipe wasn’t exactly reader-requested, mostly because the reader in question is still learning to talk: it’s the Little Mister! He loves the library. If he had his way, every book we checked out would probably be about trucks (little dude is OBSESSED). Still, I like to encourage him to widen his horizons, so at each visit one of the books we check out is always one I pick pout. This time, that book was “The Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry, and the Big Hungry Bear” by Don and Audrey Wood. It was a favorite of my childhood, and I hoped he might like it too.
Friends, he DEVOURED it. We read it 6 times that first day alone, and it’s been a daily request ever since then. I’m pretty sure we’re gonna have to buy our own copy. In the mean time, I thought it would be super fun to make a strawberry recipe the Little Mister and I could munch on while reading the book, so I jotted down a bunch of ideas.
Do you ever have an idea that excites you and you just can’t shake it? That’s how I felt when I wrote strawberry muffins on the list. I try to keep his snacks pretty healthy, and I liked the challenge of developing a sugar-free, low-fat muffin that didn’t compromise on flavor. Using the coffee muffins from my cookbook as a rough starting point, I set to work cutting the unhealthy components. I nixed the sugar, of course, and also cut half the butter, subbing in applesauce instead. I supplemented the strawberries’ natural sweetness with honey and added a mashed banana in lieu of an extra egg. In the end, we had a fluffy, naturally sweetened muffin that the Little Mister can’t get enough of. His daily battle cry has become “Mo cake!”. I’m more than happy to let him have some, and with these muffins’ healthy goodness, there’s plenty of room for a generous schmear of cinnamon honey butter! 😉
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Posted June 28, 2018 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 0 Comments
Are you all ready for dessert? Because I DEFINITELY am! Jiballian fudge cake is an iconic Star Trek Voyager dessert, and I knew I wanted its blue icing and rich chocolatey-ness to have the place on honor in my Voyager menu. I’ve made many chocolate cakes here on the blog, so I wanted to do something a little different. Then I thought: cake pops! I’ve never done them before, and the concept of a Star Trek-inspired pop intrigued me.
The cake in the TV show has blue icing with a few other colors swirled through (looks like purple and silver/white). I thought it would be fun to make galaxy pops reflecting this color scheme, and away we went! I had to try a few different decorating techniques before I found one I liked, but in the end I think these cake pops turned out super cute. What a fun way to end a Star Trek menu!
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Posted June 21, 2018 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 0 Comments
Given the title of this post, you’re probably already wondering about the story behind this recipe. It all started with I started hunting through the Star Trek cookbook for any recipes I might want to include in my Voyager menu. I saw the Maquis Breakfast Bars and thought they looked delicious: homemade granola bars with rolled oats, dates, cranberries, dried apples, shredded coconut, and a bit of honey. I haven’t made anything like that before, so I whipped them up one morning. They turned out great…until it came time to cut them. When I tried to slice the giant sheet of baked granola it absolutely crumbled. There was no way I was going to get even a few bars out of it.
Disappointed, I began to nibble on the crumbled bits as I thought about what recipe I should make to replace it. I stopped short. The granola tasted A.MAZ.ING. I couldn’t stop eating it, and after I shared a handful with the Little Mister, he was hooked too. I crumbled up the remnants in the pan and turned it into loose granola, which the Little Mister and I have been eating with our breakfast every morning since (once it runs out, he may mutiny).
Since I loved the flavor so much, it seemed wrong to scrap the recipe in favor of something else. I didn’t want to risk adding more liquid, since it held together really well in the bowl and I didn’t want to risk soggy granola. Instead, I decided to present it here on the blog as granola bowls. I hope you all enjoy it as much as we did!
P.S. The original recipe calls for melted butter and honey to hold the granola together. For a healthier option, I think melted coconut oil would work equally well with the honey. I haven’t tried it yet, but I intend to. I’ll let you know how it turns out! 🙂
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Posted June 14, 2018 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 3 Comments
Chili may not be the first thing you think of when you picture eating lunch aboard a starship, but Voyager’s head chef Neelix takes great pride in creating foods his shipmates find comforting and familiar, no matter what planet they call home. His foray into chili began as an experiment with classic American cuisine…and ended with several crewman in sickbay with heartburn! Luckily, the chili recipe I’m sharing here today has a spice factor that’s easy to customize, so you don’t have to worry about making an unscheduled trip to sickbay. 😉
Fun fact: this is actually my grandma’s chili recipe! Once I decided I wanted to make the Rodeo Red chili from the show, I knew right away this was the recipe I wanted to use. I’ve always loved it, and it’s super easy. It was a go-to cold weather dish for my family when I was a kid, and a lot of times my mom would serve it in delicious sourdough bowls (which is an addition I HIGHLY recommend). It’s actually not that spicy on its own, but I added a few extra ingredients (Tabasco, cayenne pepper, and red pepper flakes) to give it the kick you’d expect from Neelix’s super spicy chili. Enjoy…with some milk close at hand! 🙂
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Posted June 7, 2018 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 2 Comments
When I first decided to make a Star Trek: Voyager menu, I started hunting through Memory Alpha for recipe inspiration. Unlike the other Star Trek series I’ve seen, this series features a HUGE amount of food, since the ship’s cook (Neelix) is one of the main characters. As I scrolled through his various creations, algae puffs jumped out at me. They appeared in S3E6 (Remember) when Neelix serves them to an Enaran diplomat, but it isn’t their significance to the series that got my attention. It was the fact that they reminded of a recipe I already make all the time! 🙂
Everyday for lunch, my husband packs a spinach and cheese omelet, which means we ALWAYS have a bag of spinach in our fridge. However, he doesn’t need a ton of spinach per omelet, and our grocery store only sells it in big bags (they technically have small bundles of organic spinach, but it’s rarely in good condition and costs as much as a bag). Which means every week I’m scrambling to figure out how to use up almost an entire bag of spinach before it goes bad.
Enter these delicious, healthy spinach muffins from SuperHealthyKids.com. They feature whole wheat flour, honey, and a whopping 6 ounces of spinach. I stumbled upon the recipe after I decided I couldn’t eat one more bite of sauteed spinach ever again in my life. And these are GOOD. I love them; the Mister loves them; the baby loves them. They’re gone in a day or two every time I make a batch.
When I read up on Neelix’s algae puffs, I knew this was the way to go. So buckle up, crew, we’re off to bake some tasty green muffins!
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