Banana Dark Chocolate Chip Muffins

I tried my best to prepare for the arrival of our wee little guy. I organized his closet, arranged the furniture in his room, washed his clothes, prepared frozen meals- all the usual stuff. Well, I did most of that. But that last thing, that cooking thing, that did not happen. I made and froze two things: breakfast sandwiches and these muffins. 


Why? It could have been the fact that I was due at the very end of August and thus super pregnant during the hottest months of the year- who in their right mind wants to cook then!? It could have been that I could not stomach most meats while pregnant, and that I adored breakfast foods so that was all I could fathom cooking. It could also have been that I was just tired. Tired all the stinking time.

Regardless of the reason, I don't have much by way of frozen homemade meals in my freezer that I made. I do have these muffins though and I love them. I knew that as a nursing mom I might want sweet things and have no time to make a great meal three times a day, so these seemed perfect. They are sweet without having too much sugar and I could freeze them and thaw them whenever I wanted.

Our little guy is almost two months old and I still have some of these left, the chocolate is what gets me each time I eat one. It feels so decadent and tastes amazing. These would be great to make and share at work or to bring to new parents!

Recipe: Banana Chocolate-Chip Muffins 
from Cup of Jo's guest post by The Roaming Kitchen Makes 28 muffins 

Ingredients: 

1 cup brown sugar 
1/2 cup white sugar 
1/2 cup unsalted butter at room temperature
2 eggs 
6 over-ripe bananas (or 1 1/2 cups mashed bananas) 
1 tbsp. lemon zest 
1 tsp. vanilla extract 
1/2 cup applesauce 
2 cups flour 
1/2 cup wheat germ
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. kosher salt 
1 1/2 cups dark chocolate chips 


Heat the oven to 350F. Get your muffin pan ready by greasing it or spraying it. 

Add the brown sugar, white sugar and butter to a large bowl and mix for a few minutes or until it is fluffy. Add the eggs and keep on mixing until they are totally incorporated into the sugary buttery mixture. 

Add the bananas, lemon zest, vanilla and applesauce to the bowl. Mix it all up until everything comes together. The batter looks, not gonna lie, pretty gross right now. That means  you're on the right track. 

Add the flour, wheat germ, baking powder, baking soda and salt to the bowl. Mix it all just enough to get it all combined. Then, the best part,  add the chocolate chips and stir one last time. 

Spoon the batter into the muffin tins, filling them about 3/4 of the way. Bake the muffins for 20-25 minutes, or until a knife comes out clean. Let them cool a bit before eating, duh. 

(I also made a loaf out of this and, gasp!, used my donut pan to make banana chocolate baked donuts. So go crazy, have some fun with it!)

Enjoy!
-m

Oatmeal Pancakes

This year has been a quick one, passing fast as we count each week. I'm 24 weeks (6 months!) pregnant and my cooking has really taken a backseat during the pregnancy. I have been eyeing new recipes again and cooking 4 or 5 nights a week- which feels like a success to me!

I've been really loving breakfast foods lately. Fruits and eggs and whole grains, oh my! I made these pancakes one weekend and had some leftover which were promptly frozen. Later that week, we stuck them under the broiler (we are lazy with the toaster oven) and rejoiced- what a lovely way to start a week day!

I love these pancakes. They use oat flour, cooked oatmeal and all purpose flour which makes them hearty and flavorful and very satisfying.

Oatmeal Pancakes
From "Good to the Grain"

Ingredients

3/4 cup oat flour
1 cup all purpose flour
2 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon kosher salt
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled a bit
1 1/4 cups whole milk
1 cup cooked oatmeal
1 tablespoon unsulphured (not blackstrap) molasses
2 eggs

If you have some leftover oatmeal, toss it in here- but if you don't, just boil 2 cups of water with 1 cup of whole rolled oats and a pinch of salt. Once it's boiling, turn it down to simmer for about 5 minutes. I have done this as I mix the rest of the ingredients, easy peasy.

Work with the dry ingredients (oat flour, all purpose flour, sugar, baking powder, salt), mixing them all well, in a large bowl. Set aside.

Mix together all of the wet ingredients (butter, milk, oatmeal, molasses, eggs) until they are combined well and just a warning, this will look lumpy and gross.

Fold the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients, very lightly. The batter should be lumpy and a bit thick. Cook them up on a skillet with a bit of butter, and enjoy!

-m

Super Easy Hollandaise Sauce

Fun!

We had a very fabulous little brunch get together this weekend and I decided to make a sausage hash, topped with fried eggs and hollandaise sauce. I chose not to take pictures because I was sure it was going to turn out horrible, go figure.

Anyway, I was prepared to put some blood, sweat and tears into the sauce (not literally, of course, that goes by another name, surely). I bought waaay too many eggs, figuring I'd make attempt after attempt at it.

Instead, I rocked that sauce in one easy go, if I do say so myself. I found and used this recipe for Julia Child's method- using a blender. I have to say it was the easiest thing ever. Seriously. You have no excuses- go make some hollandaise!

Easy Blender Hollandaise Sauce

Enjoy!
-m

p.s. Have you heard of bromosas!? Craziness.

Sweet Potato Muffins

About two years ago, I fell in love with roasted sweet potatoes. I had been avoiding eating them ever since every single health related magazine article said I just had to try this 'super food'. I prefer to come to ideas on my own, or at least convince myself that I did.

What a goof, I know. I used to tell my high school tennis coach that I enjoyed doing my backhand wrong. Yes, enjoyed. He would come over and try to correct my form and I would resist. I'd tell him to go away. And I wonder why I never did as well as I wanted to...

I firmly believed that eventually the right way would just miraculously come to me with one swing and I would forever be relieved of my wrongness. I see the error of my ways.. kind of. I'm still guilty of this stubbornness on occasion. Case in point, I probably should have tried sweet potatoes sooner.

Dates, dates, lovely dates. They add so much to these muffins!

I roast up a big bag of sweet potatoes fairly regularly, about once or twice a month. I eat them sometimes with my smoothie for breakfast, as an afternoon snack or with dinner. I just adore them. Their flavor is amazing to me- the wonderful not-quite-potato-more-like-squash texture and the natural sweetness. They are incredibly satisfying.

So aesthetically pleasing, no?

I've done all this roasting, but rarely do anything else with them. That's why this recipe has knocked my socks off something crazy. I've made it three times. I love it, but at first I thought I'd be the only one.

Do you see the chunks of sweet potato? The little bits of orange there at the bottom and top? No? Trust me, it's the best part.

I made mini versions of it the first time I made them, to share with some friends. They were gone so fast! Even when I said "whole wheat sweet potato muffins with dates".

Seriously.

People didn't run away screaming "What's wrong with you!?". I thought they might; the ingredients can sound a tad bit strange on their own, but just imagine each of those flavors mixed together and baked. Heavenly, eh? Well, so far, everyone I share these with just loves them.

These are great right out of the oven, but I usually make them for breakfast/morning snacks for the week. Even my picky husband gobbles them up, though I need to solve the 'sticks to the wrapper' problem as it really drives him bonkers.

Sweet Potato Muffins

adapted from Good to the Grain 


ingredients
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup all purpose flour
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon all spice
2 ounces (1/2 stick) unsalted cold butter
2 large roasted sweet potatoes, about 3/4 lb (I sometimes use 4 small ones if that's what I bought)
1/4 cup sugar (or raw sugar)
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup plain yogurt or kefir
6 large medjool dates, pitted and chopped

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Roast sweet potatoes on a baking sheet covered with parchment or foil. Roast for 1-1.5 hours, depending on their size. The bottoms should be dark and almost burnt looking and the juices should be caramelizing. After they have cooled, peel them and leave them in tact.

Lower the oven to 350 and grease your muffin pan. Use muffin liners if you wish, though they stick sometimes to the paper cups.

Sift the dry ingredients together. In a small bowl, mix the buttermilk and yogurt.

Add the butters and the sugars to a medium sized bowl and mix either with a standing mixer or by hand. Mix until creamy, about 3 minutes. Add the egg and just half of the sweet potatoes (yes! just half!) and mix until combined. Scrape down the sides of the bowl. On low speed, add the dry ingredients until they are just partly combined. Follow this up by adding in the buttermilk mixture and mix until combined.

Add the dates and separate them over the surface so they don't all clump together. You want them spread throughout the batter. Next (my favorite part!), add the remaining sweet potatoes and mix until only barely combined- you want pockets of sweet potato in the batter. Scoop the batter into 10 muffin tins, skipping every other muffin cup if you want to keep the tops from touching as they bake.

Bake for 35-40 minutes, or until the bottoms are dark and tops are springy to the touch. The author of the cookbook suggests placing the muffins on their sides to cool, as pictured above. They can be stored for 3 days or frozen for future enjoyment.

Enjoy!
-m

Breakfast Smoothie

Thar she be. My breakfast of champions. My on-the-go companion of hectic mornings and lazy summers. I make a smoothie like this for breakfast six out of seven days a week. Even during the school year, I put it in some plastic cup/container thing and sip it while I teach. I'm still auditioning for the part of 'serious smoothie holder', as most of my plastic cup things fall short in the 'easy to clean' category and thus get nasty quick.

I have added all kinds of things to the smoothie in order to make it more 'healthy' or basically, more than just a smoothie. I added protein powder, spinach, kale, milk. In the end, I usually don't add much other than fruit. Today I added greek yogurt though, and it was edible so I'll say it's a 'do'. The original recipe came from Alton Brown and it's a keeper.




Let me just say that I adore my immersion blender. I lubadubdub it. I highly suggest you get one. I use it every day, sometimes more than once! For example: I was making that veggie curry, and the canned diced tomato had to be put through a food processor *one thing I don't have yet* and so, I busted out the immersion blender and stuck it in the opened can for a quick second and boom. Done. No extra dishes either!



I start with a fresh, not frozen, banana. I'm a firm believer in this- I don't like it all to be too cold. I know, it's a smoothie, yadda yadda, you do it your way and I'll do it mine. :) I also believe in putting the banana at the bottom of this particular blending apparatus. After the banana, I pile in about 1/2 cup of three other (usually frozen) fruits. I like mango, strawberries and some other berry blend. I just picked up some frozen pineapple that I'm aching to try. Then I pour in some purple juice, another 1/2 cup or so. Today I also added a dollop of yogurt on top and then blended the wild heck out of it.
Sometimes, during the crazy school year, I make it at night and then right before the point where I would blend it, I toss it in the fridge and the next morning it's so easy to whip up. It feels to easy to be true. But it's not. Shh..



I love when it looks like this. Firm, like sorbet almost, and shiny. I regret all those years when I used ice, and had to suffer through icey smoothies. Oh, the tragedy. (hand must be on forehead, eyes looking somewhere to the left, so you can get the full extent of the drama)





Smoothie Recipe
adapted from Alton Brown

1/2 cup banana (fresh or frozen, I use one small banana or half of a large one)
1/2 cup frozen mango
1/2 cup frozen strawberries
1/2 cup frozen blueberries (or any other frozen fruit of your choice! Go wild!)
1/4-1/2 cup 100% fruit juice (I like blueberry or cranberry)
a dollop (heaping tablespoon or more depending on your desired consistency) plain greek yogurt

Put all the ingredients in a blender and mix away. Pulse at first, then blend continuously for about a minute to get the smooth texture. Enjoy!

-m