Brown Bananas? Yuck!

I try to keep as much fruit in my house as humanly possible because I simply cannot get enough of it. Especially bananas. I know a lot of people don't like them--don't ask me why--but I adore them. However, I have this quick I inherited from my Mama where I will not eat a banana unless it has reached a peak of perfection: solid yellow peel, even a litte green at the top, firm, no bruises and certainly not mushy.

Mushy bananas = death.

I'm serious about this. I do not joke around when it comes to bananas.
However, as it often happens, I buy more bananas than I can consume in a short period of time. My fiance does not eat them, and even if I eat two a day, sometimes they end up looking like this:

Such was the case last week with this particular bunch of fruit. I was especially unhappy because they went from dark green, to light green, to this. They never even touched the golden stage!

So what do you do when you have mushy, over-ripe bananas?

Make banana bread, of course! 

My future mother-in-law gave me the best banana bread recipe ever, which is what I turned this sad things into:

We put walnuts in our banana bread, but it's possible to omit them completely, or trade them out for pecans, raisins, seeds of some kind, or even chocolate chips if you are so inclined. As pictured above, I did make a double batch. However, my bread came out a little drier than usual. Here's the secret: if you double your batch (or if you use small bananas) throw in an extra one. All it does it make it more moist. 

Unfortunately, because I didn't ask my mother-in-law's permission, I'm not going to post her recipe for you all. But I've googled "banana bread recipes," and I believe thousands pop up. Any of them will serve your purpose of getting rid of nasty bananas.

Happy baking!

Irish Cream Brownies

Happy St. Patty's Day Weekend, everyone! Whether you are Irish or not, you can't help but indulge in some of the treats this holiday offers. My father loves Irish soda bread, other relatives enjoy Irish potatoes, and one of my best friends has a feast of cabbage and stew. I also heard that some of the bars serve green beer for the occasion.

Me?

I'm a quarter Irish, but never really celebrated it.

During my Spring break this semester, my girlfriends came over for a post-birthday celebration. One of our usual adventures involves baking--chocolate chip cookies, smoothies, and brownies.

We adore brownies.

In all forms.

To celebrate the Irish in all of us, no matter how small, I found a recipe on Betty Crocker's website for Frosted Irish Cream Brownies. You can follow the link to the recipe.

Our results looked like this:

We put a splash too much milk in the icing, which made it a little runny. Next time, we are going to cut the recipe for it in half to make less of it and leave it thicker. I used applesauce instead of oil (see a previous blog post), which gave them more of a flaky texture. Next time, I'll omit the Irish cream in the brownies themselves because we couldn't taste it anyways. 

Otherwise, our results were fantastic! The brownies were chocolaty, fulfilling and definitely Irish-y! Even though I don't celebrate St. Patty's Day, I do think these treats were a great way to indulge! 

Open Thread: Re-Baking Childhood Memories

How many of you, maybe coming home from college on the weekends, or visiting a grandparent's house for dinner, have walked into the front door and confronted a smell that automatically takes you on a magic carpet ride? Maybe it's garlic, cayenne pepper, or even chocolate chip cookies, but all of a sudden you are seven years old again and all you have to worry about is multiplication homework and your younger sister stealing your clothes; the hardest decision you have to make is whether or not to watch cartoons after dinner or a movie.

Those days were simple.

But now we have bills, midterms, jobs, roommates, and more responsibilities than we knew existed at that sweet, innocent age. I know that when I come home from a stressful day of tutoring and school, I crave the favorite dinners or desserts my mom or my mom-mom made when I was younger: chicken with mushrooms, roast beef, monkey bread, and meat stuffing. They are my comfort food.

There's one food that transports me back faster than any other.

Pizza Fritta.

Ever since I was a child, donuts and the fried dough at the pizza shops couldn't cut it. The donuts tasted stale and too sweet, while the fried dough was often hard and too sticky. Pizza fritta, on the other hand, comes out of the oil crispy and crunchy on the outside, but soft and fluffy in the middle. Dipped in powdered sugar or white sugar, they are the perfect combination of sweet, warm and fulfilling. We ate these for dinner, or breakfast or lunch; they were a meal unto themselves.

Sometimes I come home on the weekend my mom has the dough rising in a pot on the counter. When we cook them, we often cut the dough into shapes and the kitchen fills with the smell of oil. One bite and I'm ten years old again, sleeping over at mom-mom and pop-pops, frustrated by the thirteen-times tables.

Sometimes I wish life was that simple again.

Sometimes I realize all I need is a little taste of my childhood.

Now you know the one food I cherish and still love from my childhood. Now I want you to tell me about the food that takes you back to your innocent years, a food you miss or a food your parents surprise you with on the weekends. Tell us a story. And if you can, leave the recipe so I can add it to my recipe collection: it can be a dessert, a snack or even an entree.

Thanks for reading, and I look forward to seeing your responses!

A Baking Must Have

Upon scanning my fridge this past week, I realized I was missing a very important ingredient from my shelves.
I had the milk.
The eggs.
The butter.
I even had the flour and sugar (although that's located in the cabinet).

I was missing . . .

Applesauce! 

Stop looking at me like I'm crazy. I use no sugar added-natural applesauce as a substitute for oil and sugar for quite a few recipes because I grew up on homemade applesauce, applesauce bread and even just regular applesauce as a snack. It's a sweet, guilt free indulgence that can be used in a variety of ways around the kitchen. One of my favorite things to make with it is brownies. 

Yes.

BROWNIES.

All it does is make them a little cakier, but still leaves the chocolatey goodness and fudge heaven behind. One of my favorite recipes is from Weight Watchers, which is great because it's healthy and uses some ingredients college students have on hand: 

Below is a recipe that uses it:

Rocky Road Brownies:

1 package regular brownie mix, about 21 ounces

1/4 water

1/4 cup applesauce

4 large egg whites

1/4 cup walnuts, chopped

1/4 cup mini chocolate chips 

8  medium marshmallows, chopped

·  1. Coat a 9- x 13-inch pan with cooking spray; set aside.

·  2. Prepare brownie mixture according to package directions for lower fat brownies using 1/4 cup water, applesauce and egg whites. Pour into prepared pan.

·  3. Sprinkle walnuts over top of brownies; bake according to package directions. Remove from oven about 10 minutes before the end of the baking time, and toss chocolate chips and marshmallows over top; cook 10 minutes more. Remove from oven and cool brownies on a wire rack. Cut into 24 pieces; serve.

Once I started making these brownies this way, my fiance and I have never gone back. And he's the one who tells me he hates imitation recipes, and he would rather have the original! The ones made with oil taste too heavy; I can eat two of these without feeling guilty, all because of the applesauce! Feel free to omit the walnuts, chocolate chips and marshmallows if you don't like them; I often just make regular brownies with this recipe. 

See? I'll bet your feelings about applesauce are starting to shift a little now. Below I have posted some recipe links, as well as some information about cooking with applesauce. Give it a try and let me know your thoughts! And if you have any applesauce recipes you'd like to share, I would love to know!

 Substituting Applesauce

Applesauce Substitutions

Oat Applesauce Muffins

Applesauce Cake

Applesauce recipe

Toffee Crunch Muffins

This week, I decided to give my Kitchen Aid cookbook a chance to redeem itself and asked my fiance to pick something special out of it. He finished his undergraduate courses this week, and I wanted to celebrate. He decided on the Toffee Crunch Muffins, which looked a little something like this in the cookbook:

 Magical, right? I was a little weary because of the previous debacle, but decided to give them a try. But while reading though the ingredients, I was slightly horrified by all the, shall we say, "badness" in them: regular milk, sour cream, and most horrifying, 3 bars (1.4 ounces each) chocolate covered toffee. How awful is that!? Just because I like to bake does not mean I forget all about calories and fat and stuff. Oh no, I avidly follow Weight Watchers, so I decided to make some substitutions: I used skim milk, light sour cream, and about seven small Weight Watcher by Whitman's English toffee. Each of those English Toffee bits were one point each, not bad at all. I really cut down on the candy because I did want me or my fiance to indulge in the extra colories. To make up for it, I shelled some almonds and chopped them up too.  My batter looked something like this:

They look good, huh? You can see the chunks of chocolate heath and small almond slivers (kinda, they're white so just pretend). At first, I was really confused because my batter had the heavy consistency of dough. This worried me because I hadn't made muffins in a while. In my brain, I was calling them cupcakes. Cupcakes have liquid batter, muffins are more doughy. In my fear, I kinda just plopped them in the tin; there are spots where you can see the bottom of the pan untouched by dough. I had saved some of the heath and almond mixture to sprinkle on top. Apollo, my doberman, stared at me the whole time these were baking:

Anyways, I kept checking the muffins in the oven and after about 25 minutes and pulled them out. They were in the exact same shape and were the exact same color as when I put them in.

But then I tried them. And they were magical!!! The small bits of almonds and heath were the perfect combination. I could taste the fluffy sweetness of the muffin itself and then was pleasantly surprised by the small bursts of chocolate. Some of the heath had melted and created a kind of syrup on the top and bottom of the muffin. Although I never baked with sour cream before, I was pleased with the sweet taste it created. I would definitely recommend making these; I haven't been able to stop nibbling on them all week, and I don't feel too guilty about doing it. Below I will post the recipe as I read it in the book, but if you are interested in making the muffins lighter, just use light sour cream, skim milk and Weight Watcher or light heath bars.

Toffee Crunch Muffins from Kitchen Aid Baking Basics:

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1/3 cup packed brown sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup milk

1/2 cup sour cream

1 egg, beaten

3 tablespoons butter, melted

1 teaspoon vanilla

3 bars (1.4 ounces each) chocolate covered toffee, chopped, divided

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 . Grease 10 standard muffin cups (I think I made mine smaller because I used 18 muffin cups).

2. Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and slat in bowl of electric stand mixer. Combine milk, sour cream, egg, butter and vanilla in small bowl until well blended. Stir into flour mixture until moistened. Fold in two thirds of toffee. Spoon batter into prepared muffin cups. Sprinkle evenly with remaining toffee.

3. Bake for about 20 minutes or until toothpick comes out smooth (I had to bake mine for 25 minutes, but start with less time and then go up). Remove from pans; cool on wire racks 10 minutes. 

Enjoy! Let me know if you try it! I would love to hear how they came out!

The Trials and Errors of Baking

Let it be known that not all baking adventures turn out so well. And although I did not mean for it to happen, I am completely guilty of this. I bought myself a five-dollar cookbook at Barnes and Noble one day and was dying to try one of the cookie recipes: Kitchen Aid Baking Basics--Oatmeal S'Mores Cookies.

Makes you hungry just thinking about it, huh? I'll make it even worse; here's what the photo in the cookbook said they would look like:

Does this not look amazing? Mini chocolate chips, fluffy white marshmallow pieces, and bits of chocolate graham cracker to create the ultimate s'more cookie.

So here's what mine looked like while baking, after I followed the directions exactly:

Not exactly true to the photo, right? Here's what happened when they came out of the oven:

100% NOT like the picture in my cookbook. Instead, the marshmallows actually completely melted and turned into glass on the cookie sheet. The chocolate chips were still intact, but definitely not like the photo. I think the only way Kitchen Aid could have gotten the marshmallow bits to stay fluffy and white was to plop them on at the last second. After baking for 16 minutes, there's no way they could stay intact.

They were not the best cookie I have ever eaten, but they weren't the worst either. Because the marshmallows spread out, the cookies became really chewy but not necessarily hard. My father loved them because he loves oatmeal cookies, but my fiance was not impressed. Neither was I, to be honest.

Despite the debacle, I learned a few things:
1. Marshmallow recipes are deceiving. Don't believe them. If I want to bake with them again, I will plop them on at the last second. It was upsetting because marshmallows (like everything else in moderation) are actually good for you (Two large marshmallows are only one point, for those familiar with Weight Watchers). I try to use them when I can because they are a sweet treat that won't make me feel guilty afterward.
2. This recipe is actually a pretty good oatmeal cookie recipe. I am plotting to already alter them for next time. Because I love chocolate chips, I am going to leave them, but I think I'll substitute the graham crackers and the marshmallows with walnuts or pecans, or even white chocolate chips. I might add more old-fashioned oats next time to make them a bit healthier.
3. Even following a recipe EXACTLY does not guarantee it is going to look like the photo or taste great.

Baking is a lot of trial and error, figuring out what works and what doesn't. This recipe has really taught me that but helped me realize I can personalize the ingredients to fix what didn't work.

I did not post the recipe because I would not really recommend it, but if someone is interested, just leave me a comment and I will post the image for you. Thanks for reading, all!

Welcome!

Welcome to Baker's Blog!

Studying, writing papers and reading take up a huge portion of my time. Reading has always been a favorite pastime of mine, but once I'm done, my brain is exhausted. To relieve that tension and to do something fun, I love to bake. I decided to pick this as my blogging topic because I like to experiment with the process and would like to share my failures and successes. I hope to see if my baking talents improve (or worsen) as I record my adventures, ideas, and catastrophes on my blog. I'm not sure how commenting works on Blogger, but if anyone has any recipes or advice they would like to share, I welcome feedback.

Thank you for taking the time to read this; I hope you enjoy the blog posts to come.