KT Baked It: Flourless Blueberry Muffins

For the past few weeks I have been trying to perfect a flourless blueberry muffin that I can grab for breakfast, especially because I am about to start my surgery elective and I really want to be able to workout in the mornings without worrying about losing time trying to make breakfast as I run out the door. After much experimenting, here is the recipe that I am finally satisfied with enough to share.

What you need:
6 Tbl coconut flour
1 egg
1.5 cups liquid egg whites
1 Tbl agave nectar
1 cup frozen blueberries
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/8 tsp salt

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees (and set your measuring cups and spoons to the side looking really cute for a picture)












Whisk 1 egg and 1.5 cups liquid egg whites in a mixing bowl.

Measure 6 Tbl of coconut flour, and mix thoroughly with your eggs. 

Next, add 1 Tbl of agave nectar. Then mix in the baking soda and salt.

Finally, add in your blueberries. 

Put 1/4 cup of batter into your greased muffin tin. This recipe makes 8 muffins. 

Bake at 350 degrees for 35-40 minutes (test to make sure your muffins are fully baked by inserting a knife into the center - if the knife comes out clean, your muffins are ready to come out!). 

And here you have it, delicious flourless blueberry muffins to grad on your way out the door. 

KT Painted It: Sunset Beach

I've never painted anything on a canvas.

I've also never painted a picture for someone else.

Drawing is different - pencils are easier to control. Paint on the other hand. Meh...not so much for this untrained artist-want-to-be.

All self-degradation aside, I wanted to paint a picture for my hubs for his birthday this year.

One of our favorite pictures is of a sunset we watched while at Key West, FL in 2011. Here is the picture:

Amazing, right? This was one of the two pictures that we asked my little sister to paint for us for Christmas, but she chose another one instead. Eric was a little bummed, and I told him that I would paint the picture for him. So here is my attempt!

I decided to use a technique with short brush strokes using acrylic paints and a brush type called a "scrumbler". Here are my paints and brushes (a 4.0 and 6.0 size). The paints are all acrylic.

I chose a 24x30inch canvas for no particular reason, but it turned out to be a good thing that I didn't go any larger because using such small brush strokes was tedious. 

I printed the picture that I was attempting to duplicate, and taped it to the top of the canvas so that I could look at it while I was painting. 

I started from the bottom with the ocean, and worked my way up toward the sky, incorporating all of the colors that I could see, trying to add as much dimension as possible (woah! that sentence has a TON of comas...)

Here is was I came up with. A couple of notes to myself for the future - I really liked the 6.0 brush that I used for the sky. The brush strokes were not as coarse, and the colors blended together a lot nicer than they did for the water using the 4.0 brush. 

Next, I added in the tree line. I decided to make the tree line taller than the original picture, which was reflective of being closer to the tree line. In doing so, I also decided to bring the tree in the foreground of the picture "close" by making it larger in the front of the painting. Here is the tree line below...

And the final and most arduous task: the tree in the foreground. I really wanted to make sure to have enough details to show the leaves and the skyline in the background between them. This was not an easy task! However, I'm pretty excited about the results:

Finally, I went back and improved some of the parts of the painting that I wasn't so happy with initially. I also added some more color to the sky to incorporate the clouds from the original painting.

Here is my finished product:

This was a Katy-Did-It with love, for my amazing husband. Happy (early) birthday, Eric. I love you so much!

KT Made It: Fruit-topped Baked Brie

Baked brie is by far one of my favorite things, but until recently I had never made it myself. Lucky for me, my friend Sara from the food blog, A Glimpse Into My Cravings, is a brie lover and an amazing cook! After watching her whip up a delicious baked brie with a berry topping over some great girl talk and a couple of glasses of red wine, I realized how easy it was to make this deliciously cheesy dish.

On my birthday a few weeks ago, I decided to make some baked brie of my own. And here is how I did it!

What you need:
1 wheel of brie with the rind - I used President brand
1 jar of fruit preserve - I used apricot
1 cup of frozen berries - I used blueberries















First, preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Once the oven is ready, unwrap your brie and place it on a baking stone. I leave the brie in the rind, but you can also use a puff pastry from the grocery store to wrap around the brie and back it that way! Bake the brie for 20 minutes or until it is bubbly and slightly browned on top.















While the brie is baking, empty the jar of preserved into a sauce pan on low-to-medium heat. Add the frozen fruit and allow the mixture to simmer.

After your brie is baked, top the brie with your fruit topping and serve with some french bread. Mmmmm!















There are, of course, many other variations of this. I think next time I will make a brown sugar topping with pecans and walnuts...