A Scone Redo: Ginger-Cardamom Scones with Cocoa Nib Chocolate

A few years ago, I came up with these ginger-cardamom scones with cacao nibs that my kids loved. Now, cocoa nibs are kind of expensive to buy already shelled from cocoa beans (though if I see a bag of cocoa nibs at Costco or Sam’s Club, I will probably buy them!) so instead of trying to shell cocoa beans myself, I buy chocolate bars with cocoa nibs in them and use those instead. All I have to do is chop up the chocolate bars and use the chunks. So it is almost like using cocoa nibs, right?

(more…)

9 Comments
Read more about the article Pomegranate Soda
The bottle on the right is Pomegranate Soda, the left is Cranberry Pomegranate Soda

Pomegranate Soda

This year for Christmas we got a DrinkMate Sparkling Water and Soda Maker. Our children like soda, but we don’t really want them to have all that extra sugar. With this soda maker we can make our own soda and control the amount of sugar. This particular machine can carbonate any drink. What you make is limited only by your imagination.

Our children did take that a little far though. They were all spouting off things that we could use the soda maker for, and many of the ideas were bizarre. Our 10 year old had the oddest ideas. He wanted to carbonate gravy. I don’t know what he thought we could do with carbonated gravy though.

(more…)

5 Comments

Homemade Oreos

My mom got The Messy Baker for Christmas.

It looked interesting, so I decided to look through it. Inside there was a recipe for homemade Oreos, which is something I’ve wanted to make for a while. We got the whole family together, and the younger ones “helped” by sifting flour (and making a mess) and pouring ingredients in bowls. These cookies ended up being an all day project, as they had to chill in the fridge. We also didn’t have a big enough baking sheet and had to do it in three batches. I didn’t exactly do a great job filling them. They are kind of sloppy, as you can see below.

(more…)

2 Comments

Pomegranate Syrup

In November, I wrote a blog post about making pomegranate jelly. I gave a small jar of that jelly to a neighbor who invited us to their party. The neighbor has a friend with a pomegranate tree that produces a lot of fruit that they weren’t using. Our neighbor knows that we love pomegranates so he bagged up a bunch of them for us!

(more…)

1 Comment