Homemade Iced Coffee

Now that the awful weather that makes you want soup is over and Boston’s starting to feel like it’s supposed to in June, it’s time to talk iced coffee. When it’s hot and sticky and humid out, the last thing I want to do is reach for a boiling hot cup of coffee. I love Dunkin Donuts’ iced coffee, but they rarely get my order right and buying iced coffees every day can really add up. So, like with many things, I make my own iced coffee and it’s actually a lot easier than I thought and cheaper. 

The key to making iced coffee is to cold brew it. There’s a lot of articles out there (including this one, if you care to read about it) that tell you that cold brewing is the only way to go. I personally haven’t tried other methods like making it hot and letting it cool down, because the cold brew method works really well and I didn’t need to try anything else. The one thing to note is that this recipe makes a coffee concentrate that is pretty strong. Depending on your tastes, you can dilute it with equal parts water and coffee or more or less. Then sweeten as you like. Me, I just add a splash of skim milk pop in a straw, and I’m good to go.

Whole Wheat Blueberry Muffins

Good morning sunshine! It’s the weekend and you know what that means, right? Awesome breakfast food, like this muffin right here: See, at the weekends, you can actually take time to make breakfast instead of grabbing something as you run out the door. Since you also don’t want to work too hard, these muffins are great because they’re pretty easy and quick to make. You don’t even need fresh blueberries, frozen ones work great. In fact, I usually buy a lot of blueberries in the summer when they’re on sale and freeze them for later use. It’s my grown-up, city version of picking blueberries. When I was younger, my whole family would pick pounds of blueberries that would allow us to have delicious blueberry muffins and pancakes all winter.

This recipe is actually from the farm where we used to pick blueberries. Before we found this recipe, my mom used to make a very sweet, unhealthy muffin made with shortening and lots of sugar. These muffins are made with whole wheat flour, less sugar, and oil instead of shortening. Plus, you can keep the leftovers for weekday breakfasts- perfect to grab when you’re running out of the door.

Traditional Irish Brown Bread

With St. Patrick’s Day coming up tomorrow, I know you’re probably getting ready to celebrate. For lots of my fellow Americans, this mostly means dying foods green: green beer, green bagels, and this awful Burger King promotion for green ketchup to go with free fries. Me, I like to keep to my roots and make some Irish brown bread.

This bread is ridiculously easy, super fast to make, and also pretty healthy. Even better, it doesn’t require a stand mixer or yeast. Pair it with some Kerrygold Irish butter (available at Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, and Shaw’s in the Boston area) and it makes me feel like I’m back at my Granny’s house in Dublin, preparing to go out with my cousins to celebrate.

 

Homemade Bagels

For my first blog post, I think it’s fitting to tell you about one of my favorite things to make: bagels. They’re absolutely delicious and not that hard to make. I swear.

What they do take, though, is time. I usually start them either early on a Friday or Saturday night and finish them the next morning. The sponge/rising/kneading/shaping/resting steps do take a few hours to do so make sure you don’t start too late or you’ll be going to bed much later than planned (a mistake I’ve made a few times).

Bagels also require either a stand mixer or a food processor, and a strong one at that.  Bagel dough is really tough. I only recently acquired a food processor and haven’t tried to make the bagels in it so this post has instructions for using a stand mixer.  I’m sure you can knead the dough by hand, but I have no idea how long that takes or how strong your arms have to be. I’ve been able to make bagels for years with my beautiful Kitchen Aid, which was a college graduation gift from my awesome Granny.

The bagels are delicious plain, but you can also add toppings like sesame or poppy seeds. My favorite bagel is rarely seen in Boston: the salt bagel. I added sea salt on one right after boiling and before baking.