Posted September 12, 2017 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Link Up / 2 Comments
This week’s Top Ten Tuesday prompt was a freebie, so I decided to cover a topic I’ve had on the brain for a while. When I made astronaut pudding for my Amelia’s Notebook menu, I loved how kid-friendly it was, and I got to thinking about how tough it can be to find fiction-inspired recipes for kids. Dishes like Turkish Delight or Deeper ‘N Ever Pie are fun recipes, but they can be intimidating for kiddos who are just starting to get curious about cooking.
I decided to do a roundup of quick, easy literary recipes for kids here on the blog, so here are ten of my favorites! These recipes require minimal cooking or cutting, and several of them are well known foods from history (sugar plums, hardtack, johnny cake, etc.) that kids are likely to come across in classic books. You can incorporate them into a homeschooling lesson, use them to satisfy your children’s curiosity about foods they’ve read about, or just whip them up for fun. The choice is yours! 🙂
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Posted September 7, 2017 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 3 Comments
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Our new Book of the Month is here, and it’s the Amelia’s Notebook series by Marissa Moss!
When I was a kid, Amelia’s Notebook was my JAM. After reading the books, I insisted on buying wild colored composition notebooks for school. I dressed as her for Halloween. I even had My Notebook (with Help from Amelia) and brought it to school with me. She was seriously my hero. So how could I NOT make a menu of all the awesome foods from the series?
In Amelia Takes Command, she gets to go to Space Camp. She spends the night before daydreaming about what it will be like, and one of the things she hopes for is the chance to eat astronaut food. Although she has a great time at camp, she’s disappointed that they had to eat “gross cafeteria food three times a day.” So I decided to restore Amelia’s dashed hopes by making astronaut pudding for our appetizer!
The recipe I use here is a slight variation on one from Feels Like Home. You’d think astronaut pudding would be super complicated or require special tools, but it’s actually really easy (and all you need is a ziplock bag!). It’s a great dish to make with kids and tastes great alongside freeze-dried fruit. So let’s get cooking! 🙂
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Posted September 5, 2017 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Reading Kits / 2 Comments
That’s right, folks! Our new Book of the Month is the Amelia’s Notebook series by Marissa Moss. I fell in love with the books as a kid, and they were a big inspiration for me to start writing my own stories. Plus, Amelia’s signature composition notebooks and focus on school make September a great time to feature her books, what with everyone heading back to school for fall. So let’s get started! 😀
Today we’re kicking things off with an Amelia’s Notebook reading kit. It’s got loads of Amelia-inspired items: lunchboxes, eraser, notebooks (of course!), and a lot more. This is definitely one of those kits where I had to limit myself. I kept thinking of more things that would be perfect for the kit—I almost couldn’t stop! In the end, I included only the best of the best. I had a lot of fun putting it together, and I think you’re going to love it. 🙂
So let’s get ready to start reading Amelia’s Notebook…and don’t forget to check back on Thursday for our first Amelia-inspired recipe!
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Posted August 31, 2017 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 1 Comment
       
I always tend towards making a cocktail whenever I have a chance to make a bonus recipe, and my Man in the Iron Mask menu is no exception. Smoking Bishop is actually a traditional British beverage—not French, like all my other recipes for this menu—but it was just too perfect to pass up. The mulling spices (nutmeg, allspice, and cloves) along with the rich wines make it a perfect companion to our French Onion Soup and Secret Note French Bread. Plus, the name goes perfectly with the story, since Aramis (the Bishop of Vannes) is such an important character in Man in the Iron Mask.
The recipe I use here (a slight variation on one originally from PUNCH), is easy to throw together. Though roasting the orange adds to the prep time, I highly recommend it. Juice from the roasted orange adds so much flavor! The final cocktail is cozy and warm, with a lovely spiced aroma and a bit of citrus bite to offset the sweet wine. I can just imagine Aramis sipping this to calm his nerves before helping the prince break out of the Bastille!
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Posted August 29, 2017 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Uncategorized / 1 Comment
This post is sponsored by Chef Inside the Box. I was given one free box of four meals in exchange
for an honest review of the service. The thoughts and opinions are my own.
Most of you know I’m juggling a cookbook, a blog, and a baby…which basically means my life is a crazy, wonderful mess at the moment! 🙂 Despite loving to cook, these days I don’t always get dinner on the table at a reasonable time (or at all), and when I do, it’s often a hassle.
That’s where Rachel comes in. She emailed me a couple weeks ago representing Chef Inside the Box, a brand new Chicago-based meal kit service. They send a box of 4 quick-to-make meal kits right to your door, complete with instructions…all for $27.80/meal! Since I’m a Chicago-based blogger, Rachel offered to send me a free box in exchange for an honest review. And I was instantly like:
I mean, who DOESN’T want to get a package on Monday that takes care of dinner for the rest of the week?
Plus, with a new school year starting, I figure there are a lot of people out there whose lives are in a similar state of craziness. And I’m pretty sure we could all use an easy way to take the headache out of dinner. So let’s talk meal kits! 🙂
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Posted August 24, 2017 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 4 Comments
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When I first decided to make a Man in the Iron Mask menu, I fell in love with the idea of making a traditional French dessert. And when I read about Monsieur Fouquet’s famous peaches, I knew my dessert would have a peach theme. I tossed around the idea of peach madeleines, but I already made madeleines for my Hobbit menu (and adding fruit to the batter can be tricky).
Peach macarons also came to mind, but I’ll admit I was a little intimidated. I’ve never tried to make the infamously difficult macaron before, and I wasn’t confident that I’d have enough time to perfect such a temperamental recipe. Then I hit on the idea of meringues.
I’ve had great luck making meringue in the past, and I liked the idea of trying it as a cookie, something I’ve tasted but never made for myself. I used a combination of recipes to get my cookies: the proportions and prep instructions come from my baked Alaska recipe and the baking instructions come from a Taste of Home meringue cookie recipe my mom recommended.
But how to add the peaches? Since meringue can be fussy, I didn’t want to mess with the flavoring too much, but I’ve had fruit curd on the brain since I recently finished developing a blueberry curd recipe for my cookbook. So I consulted a peach curd recipe from Chocolate Moosey and made adjustments to my blueberry version to suit the differences in the fruit.
The final cookies had crisp, delicately sweet meringue with clean lines from the piping (no cracks or melting—yay!), and the peach curd was silky and fruity. Top with a sprig of mint to contrast the sweetness, and you’re in business! 🙂
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Posted August 22, 2017 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Link Up / 8 Comments
The new school year is just around the corner! Now’s the time for what I consider one of the best parts of the back-to-school season: shopping for school supplies. I loved school shopping as a kid because every item was an opportunity to show my personality. I remember purple and teal composition notebooks, novelty erasers, highlighters in every color of the rainbow, and scented markers (but you wouldn’t believe how disappointed I was that my graphing calculator only came in black).
So when The Broke and The Bookish announced that this week’s Top Ten Tuesday prompt would have an open-ended back to school theme, I knew I wanted to make a list of back to school items for book lovers. Below you’ll find everything from backpacks to study materials, all with a bookish theme. May they help you ace that classic lit exam…and maybe strike up a friendship with a fellow book lover!
P.S. Since we’re all book lovers here, I just wanted to note that your supply shopping can benefit National Novel Writing Month by shopping through Amazon Smile! (NaNoWriMo didn’t sponsor this post, I just think they’re really awesome. :))
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Posted August 17, 2017 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 4 Comments
     
Finding a side dish for my Man in the Iron Mask menu proved to be more difficult than I anticipated. No one dish jumped out as the obvious choice, but I noticed soup was mentioned in the long list of elaborate dishes the governor of the Bastille sups on with Aramis. It’s also mentioned in a scene with the king.
I had already decided that all my Man in the Iron Mask dishes would be classic French food (tilapia meunière, French bread, etc.), so I decided to make a well-known French soup: French Onion Soup! And since I wanted to make a truly authentic version, what better recipe to use than Julia Child’s French onion soup? I made a few small tweaks to allow for modern conveniences (like using a toaster for the croutes) and ingredients I had on hand, but apart from that I stuck to the original as closely as possible.
The base itself has a robust, beefy (and of course onion-y) flavor with plenty of texture from the grated fresh onion you add just before ladling it out. With the toasted bread and broiled cheese on top, you wind up with quite the hearty side dish.
Full Disclosure: I’d never actually eaten French onion soup before I made this. Not even in a restaurant. I guess I always thought of it as the “beginning” of a soup, the sort of base you add things to but not a soup unto itself. And maybe if the soup were just plain on its own, I’d still feel that way. But with the croutes and toasted cheese, I totally get it! 🙂
You can make my Secret Note French Bread to slice on top or just go with store bought. Bon appetit! 🙂
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Posted August 15, 2017 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Teas / 2 Comments
Truth be told, I was little stuck when it came time to create a tea for Man in the Iron Mask. There’s not a drop of tea to be seen in the book, and the only beverage Dumas mentions is wine. The idea of making a wine-themed tea was intriguing, but I knew it would take a LOT of experimentation to get right. With a cookbook in the works and the Little Mister cutting teeth, I knew I couldn’t give a wine tea the attention it deserved.
Then I remembered Fouquet’s peaches. Dumas describes them with so much care that you almost get the feeling he’s eaten a few! I had fun making peach tea in the past (like Becky’s White Peach Tea and James’ Peaches & Cream Tea), so I was eager to try again. But to increase the challenge, I set out to create a more unique blend than the previous two.
I used Adagio’s Peach Oolong as a base. Oolongs are new to me (I’ve only had them a few times in the past), but I loved how mild yet distinctive this tea was. I combined it with some apricot green tea and extra apricot pieces to lend a little complexity to the flavor. I love how it turned out, and I hope you will too! 🙂
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Posted August 10, 2017 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 2 Comments
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When I first read Man in the Iron Mask, I agonized over the fact that there didn’t seem to be any distinctive entrees in the book. Sure, there was a brief mention of quail, partridge, and other fowl (but only in passing). I went back to combing through the text, worried I wouldn’t be able to find anything, when I suddenly stumbled upon an idea: the alley of limes.
Five different times in the book, Dumas mentions that Athos likes to walk with his son down a path lined with lime trees on their estate. It’s where they have important conversations about Raoul’s future, and Athos’ increasing difficulty with walking the path is used to show how his age affects him.
Limes themselves aren’t an entree, but tilapia meunière is. It’s a variation of sole meunière, a simple, classic French fish dish that is traditionally served with lemon sauce (I used tilapia instead of sole because it’s easier to get). And Bon Appetit has a great recipe for sole meunière. I just swapped the lemon for lime, and I had the perfect entree.
The butter sauce is mild and delicate, with just a hint of bite from the lime. The acidity of the citrus cuts through the fat of the fish, resulting in a delicate dish fit for a refined nobleman like Athos! 🙂
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