Posted July 26, 2018 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 0 Comments
Time for our Wizard of Earthsea dessert! While I was developing this menu, I knew I wanted to have a recipe dedicated to the dragons. There isn’t a specific one mentioned in the book, and none of the savory ideas I came up with felt right. Then I thought of making a flame-themed dessert.
One of the tricky things about blogging for almost 5 years is that sometimes the ideas you get for new recipes are too similar to something you’ve posted in the past. Flame cupcakes were the first thing that came to mind, but I made them before for my Hunger Games menu and couldn’t think of a way to make a second version unique enough. Then cookies came to mind, but plain old sugar cookies just felt too boring.
Then I thought of meringue! It’s one of my favorite desserts to play with, and I loved that meringue cookies would allow me to make tiny 3D clusters of flame. I whipped up my favorite meringue recipe (a combo of the instructions from my baked Alaska post and this Taste of Home recipe) and started experimenting—and came up with these little beauties! They were SO fun to make. I love that each one is different. It makes you want to take the time to really look at and appreciate them before you take a bite. Enjoy! 🙂
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Posted July 19, 2018 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 0 Comments
I wanted to continue this month’s Wizard of Earthsea menu with a fun little item we hear about during Ged’s revelry with his friends at a festival on the wizards’ island, Roke. The boys are playing around with various spells, and as Ged’s friend Vetch causes the leftover chicken bones from his dinner to turn into owls and fly around, Ged uses magic to fashion breadcrumb arrows that he sends after the birds. I loved the idea of bread arrows, so I created a recipe for Parmesan garlic basil breadsticks using premade pizza dough and added arrowheads with some extra dough.
They turned out delicious! Everyone in our family loved them, especially the baby. He wouldn’t let me walk by the tupperware container I had them in without grunting and reaching for a piece. I’d say that’s a pretty rave review! 😉
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Posted July 12, 2018 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 3 Comments
For my Wizard of Earthsea menu this month, I really loved the idea of making a recipe in honor of Ged’s shadow monster, the otherworldly beast he unleashes when he accidentally creates a tear in reality trying to call on dead spirits (y’know…as you do). The monster was a wonderfully spooky antagonist, and its introduction was what really pulled me into the story.
A black food sounded perfect for a shadow monster, and I LOVE black bean soup. This particular recipe from Umami Girl became a quick favorite of mine. Both the ingredients list and the instructions are short and simple, and it’s delicious while keeping the flavors focused on the beans themselves. And it tastes great when paired with with breadsticks!
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Posted July 5, 2018 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 4 Comments
Welcome to our Wizard of Earthsea menu! I wanted to start the Earthsea series for years, and a few months ago I finally got around to it. It felt a little slow at first, though this may be due to the fact I read it as an audiobook and wasn’t in love with the narration style. However, I stuck with it, and around chapter 5 things REALLY picked up. Forbidden magic, shadow monsters, dragons—I was hooked!
I wanted to start off our menu with a nod to one of my favorite characters: Ogion, the reclusive wizard who lives deep in the wilderness and acts as Ged’s first master. His gentle guidance and wisdom are a great foil to the rashness of Ged’s youth. Since Ogion loves his goats and has been known to serve cheese to his rare visitors, I loved the idea of making a goat cheese appetizer. I hunted through Pinterest for inspiration and came across this recipe for fried goat cheese balls with honey. It sounded just right for Ogion, so I whipped up a batch with a couple changes to make it my own: I mixed chopped basil into the cheese for a bit of freshness and swapped out the original Honey Bunches of Oats coating for panko crumbs. You can definitely try the cereal coating if you want (it sounds delicious!); I just felt like a simple bread crumb was more in keeping with Ogion’s humble home.
I know goat cheese isn’t everyone’s cup of tea and fried goat cheese with honey may sound a little odd, but oh my gosh, guys. The FLAVORS. There’s a bit of tang from the cheese balanced with just the right amount of freshness and sweetness from the basil and honey. You get two different textures too: the crisp outer panko layer and the creamy inner cheese. The flavors and textures all come together to make a perfectly balance bite that, despite having so many distinct components, feels simple and fresh.
So even if you’re not big on goat cheese, I recommend giving this one a try. I DEFINITELY think Ogion would approve. 🙂
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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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Posted May 31, 2018 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 6 Comments
For my Lord of the Rings bonus recipe, I loved the idea of making the cake from Bilbo’s birthday party. It’s not expressly mentioned in the book, but it’s hard to imagine a birthday without one. As you may recall, the one in the movie is huuuuge—2 giant tiers with 2 layers each, enough to fit 111 candles and a host of fresh flowers. I thought about doing a recreation of that same cake, but I’ve seen enough other bloggers do it that I wanted to try something different. Plus, I just finished making a giant chocolate chip cookie, and I made a 10-inch 2-layer double chocolate cake last month. They were fun (and delicious), but I think I’m done with giant desserts for a while. I was in the mood for something mini, but not JUST mini. I wanted a unique, creative element to make this dessert just a little bit special. And that’s where I got the idea for these cupcakes!
The cake in the movie appeared to be white cake with vanilla frosting. I decided to stick with the white cake for the cupcakes themselves but went with a lemon frosting on top, garnishing with candles and edible flowers just like the movie. Inside, I added a surprise: homemade blackberry curd! It’s super delicious and easy to make—an invisible surprise, just like at the end of Bilbo’s party!
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Posted May 24, 2018 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 4 Comments
The round, green door of Bag End is one of the strongest icons in the stories of Middle Earth. It represents so much—home and journey, beginnings and endings, comfort and adventure—and it holds all these otherwise contradictory ideas in effortless resolution. It’s the door through which Bilbo greets his unexpected guests and leaves for adventure in The Hobbit. It’s a symbol of the home that Frodo longs to return to in The Lord of the Rings, but when he does, he finds that although we can go home, we can never go back. It’s a door that, when opened, leads to the promise of good company, a full larder, and a kettle of hot tea. It holds a special place in my heart (and that of many other Tolkien fans as well), so I knew my Lord of the Rings menu wouldn’t be complete without a tribute to it.
I’ve made giant chocolate chip cookies in the past, and I loved the idea of making one to look like a hobbit door. So here it is! The recipe is the giant chocolate chip cookie recipe from Tollhouse. I love how it turned out, though if I’d been thinking ahead, I might have tried to create a wood grain effect with my smoothing knife as I spread out the frosting for the base. I love the yellow doorknob and Gandalf’s rune in the corner. The quote around the border comes from Bilbo and Frodo’s traveling song, and it couldn’t be more perfect! 🙂
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