Many of you have been telling me that you’re using Freakin’ Flamingo jams and marmalades in ways that have nothing to do with toast, but that’s no surprise to me – I’m doing the same. Today, I mixed some of my Piña Colada Jam (part of “The Cabana Collection“) into muffin batter, and ended up with a light, sweet muffin that’s just full of tropical flavor. Perfect for breakfast, snack time, or even dessert!

I’m also guest-posting over at Restless Chipotle! Many of you know the fabulous and talented Marye Audet. She’s one of my great friends – always ready with support and a good word – so when she asked me to give her a day off, I was more than delighted to help out. So, please stop by and check out the Piña Colada Chicken I cooked up, just for her! And you!

But, I’m taking these babies to the Miami Food Swap tonight!

Piña Colada Muffins
(makes 14 regular/small – not mini – muffins)

Ingredients:

3 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
3 large eggs
1 tsp. vanilla extract
4 Tbs. Freakin’ Flamingo Piña Colada Jam
1 cup sugar
1 cup vegetable oil (I used canola)
1 cup pineapple juice

Preparation:

Preheat oven to 375º F. Prepare regular-sized muffin tin by inserting cupcake liners or by spraying lightly with cooking spray (if using good non-stick pan, you can skip this step).

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt. In a medium bowl, whisk together all the rest of the ingredients.

Pour the wet ingredients into the dry, and stir by hand to combine well.

Fill each muffin cup nearly to the top and bake for 17 – 20 minutes. They’re done when a wooden skewer or toothpick poked into the center comes out clean.

Have you been playing with your Freakin’ Flamingo? If you have, drop me a line at FreakinFlamingo @ att{dot}net! Include a photo and the recipe or link to your recipe, and I’ll feature it in the Freakin’ Flamingo Newsletter!

Sign up for the Freakin’ Flamingo Newsletter and get lots of perks at the website, in person when I’m at the South Miami Farmers Market, and links to recipes, just like this!

Now go visit me at Restless Chipotle!

Six days down and two to go. The eight-day Passover holiday is nearly over and we’ve run through our cookies and our brownies and our sponge cakes. Time to make macaroons. I grew up thinking of macaroons (as opposed to the French macaron) as Passover cookies. My mother would buy a couple of cans of macaroons (one coconut, one chocolate… and yes, I said cans) every year with her Passover groceries. Even today, when the Passover food displays appear in the grocery store, the predominant sweet lining the shelves is macaroons. And then — they disappear. Poof!

There’s no rational reason for that, of course. Macaroons can be enjoyed all year-round, and flavored to suit your tastes and the season. They’re also entirely gluten-free. My adult tastebuds were asking for something a little different, this year – a little fresher and less cloying. My eyes landed on a pile of fresh limes I’d just bought, and I thought, “Aha! What’s a more natural pairing with coconut, than lime?” And so, the Coconut Lime Macaroon was born:

Coconut Lime Macaroons
(Makes 20-24 large-ish cookies)

Ingredients:

4 large egg whites
pinch of salt
1-1/4 cups sugar
8 oz. (by weight) fine almond meal
7 oz. (by weight) unsweetened dried coconut
Grated zest and juice of 1 large (or 2 smaller) limes

Preparation:

Preheat the oven to 350º F. Prepare 2 cookie sheets by either lining with parchment paper or silicone liners.

In a large glass or metal bowl, beat the egg whites and salt until stiff. While continuing to beat, add the sugar in 4 parts.

Fold in the almond meal, coconut, and lime zest and juice, continuing to fold until everything is completely incorporated. There should be no streaks of whites and you should have a very thick, scoopable batter.

Mound by tablespoonfuls (I used a scoop 2” across) onto the prepared pans, about 1/2″ apart, and bake for 18-20 minutes.

Allow to cool completely on the pans.

Notes:

If you can’t find unsweetened dried coconut (got mine at Whole Foods in the nut/snack aisle), you can use the usual sweetened coconut that you find in the baking section of your grocery store. Just reduce the sugar to between 3/4 cup – 1 cup. I think this makes the macaroons less cloyingly sweet and you don’t have big shreds of coconut to deal with. Your choice.

No almond meal? Just weigh out 8 oz. of blanched almonds and run them through the food processor until they’re finally ground. No need to sift as you might for French macarons.

The lime really enhances the flavor of the almond and coconut, while at the same time cutting the sweetness a bit and adding a fresh note.

These Coconut Lime Macaroons are such a hit around here (my husband said they were the best I’ve ever made), that I’m adding them to the roster of treats I’m making for our National Food Bloggers Bake Sale, benefiting Share Our Strength / No Kid Hungry.

If you’re in the South Florida / Miami area on May 14th, I hope you’ll come out and join me and our roster of fabulous South Florida food bloggers and baking talent, at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden – one of my favorite spots on Earth! We’ll have wonderful treats, both sweet and savory, and an incredible Raffle – all to raise money to feed hungry children here in the U.S. Click here to get more information or to donate.

One day last week (I think), Elle tweets me something along the lines of “Renee! You have to check this out!!!” Seriously, there were at least 3 exclamation points. The “this” she was referring to, was a “recipe” for One-Ingredient Ice Cream on another blog, The Kitchn. Really?!? How’s that work? Every brain cell is telling you that this shouldn’t work, but it does!

Apparently, 1 cup of mashed banana contains approximately 1 gram of fat. Which ain’t much in the grand scheme of things, especially when you consider the nutritional powerhouse that is the Banana. That little trace of fat is the source of the magic.

Essentially, you peel and slice some bananas, lay them out in a single layer on a plate, and freeze them for about 2 hours. Then you run the frozen bananas through your food processor. (For step-by-step instructions with photos, see the post at The Kitchn.) At first, it just looks like a crumbly mess, and doubt sets in. But you keep going, and suddenly, that crumbly mess transforms into a creamy, rich, decadent delight, exactly the consistency of ice cream! Who knew?

Well, the mind boggles, doesn’t it? If you like bananas – and it’s still the Number 1 fruit in America, so chances are that you do – how many umpteen-thousands of add-in combinations can you come up with? Our minds raced. And as we tweeted back and forth excitedly, we sucked in Kathy of A Good Appetite, Heather of He Cooks / She Cooks, and Barbara of Vino Luci Style. At some point today or tomorrow, all 5 of us (don’t forget Elle of Elle’s New England Kitchen!), are posting some of the variations we came up with that you should try at home.

All of mine are based on 2 bananas per batch, adding the other ingredients just after they begin to get creamy in the food processor. I’m going to show you three of my favorite variations:

Coconut Macadamia: 1/4 cup sweetened shredded coconut and 1/2 cup coarsely chopped salted macadamia nuts.

Chocolate Hazelnut: 3 Tbs. Nutella and 1/2 cup coarsely chopped toasted hazelnuts (This one’s my favorite!)

Kahlua Pecan: 2 Tbs. Kahlua liqueur and 1/2 cup coarsely chopped toasted pecans. (This one was MJ’s favorite)

With summer coming up (already here for some of us!), isn’t it nice to know that there’s another healthy option in the frozen treat category? Just keep in mind that the riper the bananas, the sweeter this is, so if you use some that are just ripe, you may want to add some sweetener, such as honey or agave nectar. Yes, the base-flavor is always going to be banana, but how’s that a bad thing?

Print this post for your Moleskine journal

The PhotoHunt theme this week is “Sweet”

I can’t think of anything much sweeter than the Macaroons I baked for Passover. Okay, there’s a sweet little giveaway for my U.S. and Canadian readers at the end of this post, too!

These wonderfully chewy almond and coconut drop cookies are so easy to make and keep so well, you should make them all year-round!

Chocolate Macaroons

Ingredients:

1 2/3 cups blanched almonds (about 8 oz)
3 large egg whites
1 cup sugar
7 oz. sweetened, shredded coconut
3 1/2 Tbs. cocoa powder

Preparation:

Preheat oven to 350º F. Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper.

Grind the almonds in a food processor and set aside.

In a large bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff. Alternately fold in the sugar and ground
almonds, then gently fold in the chocolate and coconut.

Drop from a teaspoon onto the lined cookie sheets, spacing them 1/2” apart. Bake for 20
minutes. Allow to cool completely before eating or storing.

Notes:

Don’t like chocolate? Really? Okay, then simply omit the cocoa powder.

I scooped these out using a small ice cream scoop, but you can use a spoon for a more free-form shape, or if you want to get fancier, load the dough into a piping bag and use a large star tip.

I mean it when I say “Allow to cool completely.” Once cooled, they firm up nicely, giving a great crunchy texture outside and firm, chewy inside. They keep super-well in a zip-top plastic bag.

The Giveaway!

A few weeks ago, I was approached by the people at Skin M.D. Natural, asking if I’d like to try out their “Shielding Lotion” for review. With all the cooking and baking and cleaning and yard work – not to mention washing my hands a zillion times a day at work AND all the antibacterial gel to try and keep that nasty flu bug away – I was definitely ready to try something other than the usual hand lotions. So, I said “Sure, why not?”

A few days later I got a package in the mail containing a full-sized 4 oz. bottle of Skin M.D. Natural Skin Shielding Lotion, plus three little purse/pocket sized packets: two of the Shielding Lotion, and one of their Shielding Lotion + SPF 15.

I’m not easily impressed, but I have to admit that I really do like this stuff. It’s light, not at all greasy, and quickly absorbed into the skin without leaving that filmy “something’s on my skin” sensation. I’ve seen a definite improvement in the skin on my hands and those rough patches on my elbows seem to have pretty much disappeared.

Guys, you can use this too – it’s hypoallergenic, fragrance, colorant and paraben-free and dermatology tested. Even those with the most sensitive skin types can use it.

Also – and this is a biggie for me – it contains no animal products, nor is it tested on animals! So I can use it in my kosher kitchen, and even you vegetarians and flexitarians out there can use it with confidence.

I’m not going to get into all the whys and wherefores of how it works – go to Skin M.D. Natural’s website and check it out for yourself. Then come back here and leave a comment about something you learned, or some aspect of how you think this pretty cool shielding lotion could help you out.

What’s in it for you, you ask? Well, I agreed to review this product on one condition: That I can give some to one of you guys, too! Skin M.D. Natural agreed to give one of you the same exact package they sent me: One full-sized 4 oz. bottle of Shielding Lotion, plus 3 sample-sized packets, including one with SPF 15. And those sample packets go a long way, too. Each one contains enough product for 3-5 uses – I guess depending on how big your hands are. )

Here’s how you enter:

The one must, is that you go to Skin M.D. Natural’s website and check it out. Come back & tell me about it.

For additional entries, follow me on Twitter, become a Fan on Facebook, follow me on Google Friend Connect (in the sidebar), and/or follow me on Networked Blogs (also in the sidebar). Each one of those things gets you an additional entry! If you already do one or more of those things, just leave additional comments letting me know.

You can also Tweet or Re-Tweet about this contest on Twitter. Come back and leave another comment with the URL of your tweet (Just click on the time stamp under your tweet and it will open a page with just that tweet. The URL will be in the address window of the page.)

So that’s six ways you can enter! And please do enter – I’m really eager to share this with you and find out what your results are! Deadline for entering is Thursday, April 15th. I’ll submit the number of entries to Random.org and will announce the winner on Friday, April 16th! Unfortunately, only U.S. and Canadian residents are eligible.

Disclosure: I have not been compensated in any way for writing about this product, other than to have received the above-mentioned, at no charge, to test and review. I have not been directed what to write, other than to give my honest opinion. Which I have done. So there.

Welcome to Day 8 of The 12 Days of Cookies! Again, we (no, not the royal “we” – the group) are baking 12 cookies in 12 days from the Bon Appétit 2008 Holiday Cookie-a-Day collection. Why, yes, we are insane. Thanks for asking.

My offering today is a fairly simple recipe, and really delicious. Oh, and if it hasn’t snowed in your area yet, we can fix that – just watch the powdered sugar fly!

First the recipe, then my notes.

Coconut Orange Snowballs

Ingredients:

• 1 1/4 cups sweetened flaked coconut

• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 2 1/4 cups sifted powdered sugar (sifted, then measured)
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 3/4 teaspoon coconut extract
• 2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
• 1 1/2 tablespoons grated orange peel
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

Preparation:

Preheat oven to 350°F. Bake coconut on rimmed baking sheet until light golden, stirring occasionally, about 12 minutes.

Using electric mixer, beat butter, 1/2 cup powdered sugar, and both extracts in bowl to blend well. Beat in flour, orange peel, and salt. Stir in coconut. Cover and chill at least 1 hour and up to 1 day. Soften dough slightly before shaping.

Preheat oven to 350°F. Line 2 large baking sheets with parchment paper. Using 1 level tablespoon dough for each cookie, roll dough between palms of hands into balls. Place on prepared sheets, spacing 1 inch apart. Bake until golden on bottom but pale on top, about 18 minutes. Transfer cookies to racks; cool 5 minutes. Place remaining 1 3/4 cups powdered sugar in bowl. Roll hot cookies in powdered sugar, covering completely. Cool cookies on rack. Roll cookies in powdered sugar again, coating generously. (Can be made 5 days ahead. Store airtight between sheets of waxed paper at room temperature.)

Notes:

Living in the tropics, I was ready for something a little lighter and more tropical, after all the cranberries, nuts, and chocolate.

Please visit my partners in holiday baking, below, and see what they’ve got in store for you. And don’t forget to come back tomorrow for the ninth installment! (I should live so long.)

Andrea of Andrea’s Recipes (honorary member and our founder but not participating this year)
Claire of The Barefoot Kitchen
Courtney of Coco Cooks
Di of Di’s Kitchen Notebook
Judy of No Fear Entertaining
Kelly of Sass & Veracity
Michelle of Big Black Dog
RJ of Flamingo Musings (hey! that’s me!)
Sandy of At the Baker’s Bench
Tiffany of The Nesting Project