Banana and Chocolate Chip Muffins with A Trefoil Girlscout Cookie and Heath Crumble Topping

These muffins turned out so well.  I love the crunch of the topping and the light, airiness of the cake.  Perfect for brunch or an after school snack!  Enjoy!

 

Ingredients

Crumble Topping

1/2 cup cookies crumbled (I used GirlScout Cookies: Trefoils but you can use any cookie)
1/4 cup melted butter
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup Heath English Toffee Bits O Brickle Toffee Bits (sold with chocolate chips)
2 Tbsp flour
6 oz chocolate chips
2 Tbsp milk (if needed)

Muffins

2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 cup ripe mashed banana
2 large eggs
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup brown sugar
2 tablespoons milk
2/3 cup sour cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup mini semi-sweet chocolate chips

Directions

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F and Oil the top of the muffin pan so the muffin tops release more easily.  Then line  the muffin cups with paper liners or grease them well.  
In a medium bowl, mix the flour, salt, baking powder and baking soda together.
In a mixer bowl, use the paddle attachment to mash the bananas until no lumps exist.  Add the eggs and then mix in the remaining ingredients one by one, including the chocolate chips
Add the dry ingredients but do no over mix.  Only mix for approximately 1-2 minutes. Use your spatula to scrape the bowl and give a final mix before filling the cups.
Fill muffin cups to completely full. They will rise to spill over the top and create a muffin top. .
Bake for 8 minutes and then reduce the temperature to 350 and add the crumble (recipe above) and continue baking for another 6-10 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.
Let the muffins sit in the pans for a few minutes before removing them to wire racks to cool.

Cornbread Recipe

I must admit that I am not a big cornbread fan.   I never have been.... I blame that on the many box mixes I have had in the past.  This recipe may have changed my mind about that old Southern classic that we northerners have misunderstood.   

I like that it is made with actual cornmeal and flour and sugar and Greek yogurt and fresh corn.  I think this is the recipe I have been looking for.  Perhaps you, as a Southerner, will look at this recipe and tell me I am still misunderstanding, but this was WAY better than anything I have had thus far. It was moist and hearty and had a lot of texture due to the fresh corn kernels.

I would have linked to the recipe, but it isn't on the FoodTv site.  I will make this again.

I would wait a little while longer before loosening and slicing it as mine was not quite cool enough in 15 minutes.

Now that I've found a nice recipe, maybe I will invest in one of these!

Healthy Breakfast Crepes

This morning I looked for a healthy whole-wheat crepe recipe and hit the jackpot with the first try.  With just a small amount of flour, 2 tbsp. of butter, 3 eggs and milk, you get a lot of lovely, tasty crepes!   I made 9 using a 7-inch non-stick pan.

The fillings are where you can get into trouble, but I filled some with Chobani's 0% Raspberry Greek Yogurt, some Reddiwip spray whipped cream and topped it with more (for good measure) and fresh blackberries.  It really was delicious.  My husband doesn't like yogurt, so we filled his with applesauce and whipped cream.  He loved it.

This is the link to the recipe that I used.  It really is super and my first crepe turned out perfectly {which NEVER happens!}

Pumpkin Cheesecake Muffins

Mmmmm..... I had been thinking about making pumpkin bread, pumpkin muffins, pumpkin mousse, etc. etc. for a while now.  Fall is finally here.  Our leaves have begun to change in upstate NY and the weather at night is getting cooler.  The sweater and riding boots have come out and I am ready for PUMPKIN!  I bookmarked and pinned A LOT of recipes, so I pulled up the first one I saw and made them today.   I don't know if I need to move on in the list of pumpkin recipes.  This one is so good and so easy that I think I will make it again!

Check these out!

The swirl of the vanilla cheesecake mixed in lightly with the spicy pumpkin batter is a perfect mix of fall goodness!  I found this recipe on instructables.com. If you are comfortable with just following the recipe, you can check mine out.  I made a few changes to the recipe and it turned out perfectly, so I will tell you that I tried to make them a little more healthy and used whole wheat flour rather than white.  I also replaced the white sugar with brown just because I had no white sugar on hand and it was delicious!

Here is a link if you would like to see the STEP by STEP tutorial. 

Here is the recipe as I made it.

Pumpkin Muffin

1- 15 oz can pumpkin

1/4 cup canola oil

2 jumbo eggs

1 cup dark brown sugar

1 tsp vanilla

1-1/2 cups whole wheat flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp ground ginger

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1/8 tsp ground cloves

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper

Filling

8 oz cream cheese at room temperature

1 jumbo egg yolk

5 tbsp sugar

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Mix pumpkin, oil and sugar together on low.  Add in eggs and vanilla and mix in.  Mix dry ingredients into wet ingredients.  Combine thoroughly and scrape the sides of the bowl until well combined.

Make the filling:

Mix together cream cheese, sugar, egg yolk and vanilla until combined.

Assemble:

Line your muffin tins with paper cups (or grease your muffin tins if you don't want to use paper cups).  Drop in spoonfuls of pumpkin mixture to fill about 1/2 way.  Add smaller spoonfuls of cream cheese mixture to top to fill the cup to about 3/4 full.  Use a skewer or spoon handle to swirl.

Bake:

Mini muffins:  20-25 minutes

Standard muffins:  25-30 minutes

Jumbo muffins:  30-40 minutes

Easy Artisian Bread {Really!}

Mid-summer in Upstate New York does not lead one to think about baking bread or baking anything else for that matter.  Our humidity and heat levels generally take us to the grill where we flame-broil everything.  I have, however, been wanting to bake bread for some time now.  I had a recipe I really wanted to try because I, to be honest, have not had much luck with bread baking.  I have no patience and hate waiting for it to rise and then kneading it and then waiting again, etc.  It makes me crazy and it takes way to long!  Besides, with our busy schedule, my timing is never right for punching it down and letting it raise again, etc. 

We have had a relative break in the humidity, at least in the mornings, so I decided to try this recipe.  Seriously, it is the best I have ever made.  Look at it!  AMAZING!  I even changed the recipe to meet my whole wheat needs and it came out perfectly.  The crust is crunchy and tough while the inside is fluffy and delicious and a little salty!  My rolled oats and sunflower seeds didn't stay on the top when I cut it though.  Not sure why... maybe someone can tell me?  Do I need to stick them on with something? 

The best part of all is that this bread is $.40 a loaf.  Really?  I pay $3 or more at our local grocery store for an Artisian bread.  There really is nothing like a loaf of freshly baked bread coming out of the oven at your own home.  It gives you such a feeling of accomplishment and my family gobbles it down as soon as it is cool enough.  The smell is awesome too.  If you have never baked bread, I suggest you try this recipe.  It is great for those who have never tried because the step-by-step shows pictures and the description covers everything you need to know to get it right.

So, the secret to this loaf being so easy is the lack of need for kneading and a quick-rising yeast!  You just mix it up in about 2 minutes, set it aside for 2 hours and then pull some out of the bowl and shape it, let it rise for 30 minutes or so, cut the hash marks on top, put it in the oven.  It is perfect for a weekend lunch or dinner. 

Anyway, the original source of this beautiful bread at The Italian Dish.   I changed the recipe a bit for my needs so I will just tell you what I did differently and you can visit The Italian Dish for the step-by-step tutorial.  She (he?) did a wonderful job showing you how the loose bread dough should look and explains everything beautifully.

For my version, I replaced half of the flour with whole wheat flour and 1/2 cup of raw wheat germ and I used a yeast specifically made for whole wheat bread.  The packets of yeast had more yeast in them than the original recipe called for, so I used 1-1/2 packets.  I also added a bit more water because it didn't look as loose as her/his picture looked.  This worked perfectly. 

Another change I made was to half the dough between two containers because when it rises, it really rises. The first time I made it, it bubbled completely out of the container and onto the counter.  It was hilarious and the yeasty smell took over the entire kitchen!

I also added rolled 7-Grain mix and some sunflower seeds to the top.  Like I said though, they didn't stay on while I cut the bread.  Not sure why.  I will investigate.

For the coarse salt, I used French Grey Sea Salt.  It was nicely salty without being overly-salted.  I will definitely use that again.

Enjoy with butter or Homemade Strawberry Jam!

English Crumpets Recipe

I was browsing Tastespotting last night, looking for something yummy to make.... anything yummy.  The only thing that caught my eye was lots and lots of chocolate.  I didn't want to make anything chocolate because I would really, really want to eat it.  As I browsed further and turned off my chocolate radar, I found a recipe for English Crumpets.  I didn't realize I could make these at home!  So, I got up early this morning and mixed up a batch.  I changed the recipe a bit from this one I found because I didn't want to wait and hour and a half to add the baking soda.  Below is my new recipe that allows you to make them right away without the 1 1/2 hour wait.   Basically, I used rapid rise yeast instead and threw the baking soda in right away.

This is what they looked like before I sliced them and toasted them....  Notice my homemade jelly in the picture.  It is so good on these!

I will give Sunday Hotpants a pat on the back for both posting the recipe and for her advice!  She tells you to add extra water/milk after the batter sits a while.   She is so right.  Too bad I didn't listen to her.  LOL!  My first maybe 6 or 7 crumpets turned out like crumpets.  Lots of air holes and just right, but the end of the batch started getting less and less large air holes and started turning out like English Muffins instead (heavier, but still with lots of nooks and crannies).  Well, guess what?  I love English Muffins, so I went with it.  Either way, they are awesome!    The other advice I would give, is that you cook these on low and realize they will take over an hour to cook the whole batch because you have to let them cook slowly.  Also, be sure to really butter (or Pam) the cookie cutters because they will stick and you will ruin the bubbles trying to get them out.

Okay, here is how I made them.

I have a set of round cookie cutters which are about 2 1/2 inches high, so I used the two biggest to form the crumpets.  They are about 4 inches and 3 1/2 inches across. 

English Crumpets


(recipe from Bill Granger - Sydney Food)

Makes 14 crumpets depending on your cookie cutter


1 1/2 cups of milk

1 1/2 tsp sugar

2 Tbsp of dried rapid rise yeast

2 1/2 cups flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

6 1/2 fl oz water (or more if needed)

pinch of salt

Pour the milk into a saucepan and heat until just warm. Transfer into a bowl and add the sugar and yeast. Allow to stand for 10 minutes or until the milk starts to bubble.

Measure flour and salt into a bowl. Add the milk/yeast mixture to the flour and beat with an electric mixer until completely smooth. Mix the baking soda with the water and use your electric beater to combine this with the batter.

Heat a heavy  frying pan or griddle over a med/low heat and grease with a little butter.

Grease your crumpet moulds also - grease between each crumpet. Place your moulds on the hot surface and place approximately 1/4 c. of mixture inside the mould. Your first 2-3 crumpets will be a little trial and error to get your desired thickness. Your mixture will rise in the moulds.

Within a short period of time your crumpets should get small bubbles all over the surface that begin to break.

Once the top is somewhat set and the bottom is nicely golden, use an oven mit to remove the mould, gently flip the crumpet to cook the other side until golden. 

Eat hot or cool the crumpets on a cooling rack and refrigerate or freeze until you need them. 

Cut in half and toast the crumpets when you are ready to eat them.  Enjoy!

YUM!

I may just have to get myself some of these.  It would be faster to make them if I had more moulds!

Norpro English Muffin Rings Set of 4

Fox Run Set of Four English Muffin Rings 

Oooo... and how awesome are these with handles?  I think these would be awesome!  Maybe my

next online purchase!

RSVP Egg Ring, Set of 4

     I've linked this post to ....Stop by their blog party to get some budget conscious, healthy recipes!

Grandma's Strawberry Freezer Jam

My friend Janet MADE me make my own jam.  I've never done it before, nor did I really want to make it.  But SHE made jelly and sent it home with me in the cutest ever little teensy tiny jar with a bow on it.  I had just gotten a loaf of fresh bakery peasant bread and popped the jar open after school so my boys could have an afterschool snack.  I handed them the fluffy bread with the pretty red jelly on it.  One bite and you would have thought I had given them a huge banana split with everything on it!  They LOVED it so much that I had to 'SAVE' the rest for their lunches the next day.  I did lick the knife and I will say, it was awesome. 

Well, Janet picked her strawberries so they were nice and fresh.  I hate to pick strawberries so, on a whim, I had my husband pick up strawberries from a farm stand on his way home.  He also went to the store and bought pectin for me... oh and jars!  What a good husband I have. 

I pulled out my grandmother's recipe and holy cow... I can't believe how easy it was!!!  Seriously, who would have known?  So, now I have this.

Here is the recipe if you'd like to try it.  If you click on the recipe, it should open larger so you can read it better.  I don't know why my grandmother says not to double it and she is no longer with us so I can ask her.

Enjoy!  It is super simple!

Tami

The Homemade Challenge- Bagels

Okay. I'm NEVER going to buy bagels at the store again. I swear! OMG... they are soooo good homemade! Check these out!

Here is where I got the recipe and this recipe is perfect! If you would like a pictoral walkthough of the process, you have to go to Thibeault's Table. Ann's blog is great and has MANY great recipes. Otherwise, the recipe is now posted below.
Thibeault's Table <----------Click here! If you make them, let me know. I really want to hear how they turned out for you!





Bagels
======
Source: Hors d'oeuvres Cook Book and notes from Thibeault's Table...

I have typed it exactly as the recipe is printed in the book. If you have a bread machine or Kitchenaide by all means use it to do most of the kneading. I always like to finish the kneading by hand. You can also make these into normal size bagels. I have used this recipe for over 20 years. I have tried other recipes but this is my favourite one.

2 cups warm water
2 packages active dry yeast
3 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon salt
about 5 3/4 cups all-purpose flour, unsifted
3 quarts water with 1 tablespoon of sugar
cornmeal
1 egg yolk beaten with 1 tablespoon water
about 2 tablespoons poppy or sesame seeds.

Stir together water and yeast in large bowl of electric mixer; let stand 5 minutes to soften yeast. Stir in the sugar and salt. Gradually mix in 4 cups of the flour and beat at medium speed for 5 minutes. With a spoon, stir in about 1 1/4 cups more flour to make a stiff dough. Turn out on a floured board and knead until smooth, elastic, and no longer sticky, (about 15 minutes); add more flour as needed to prevent sticking - dough should be firmer than for most other yeast breads. Place in a greased bowl, cover, and let rise in a warm place until almost doubled ( about 40 minutes to 1 hour).

Punch dough down and divide into thirds.

Set 2/3 of dough aside on a floured board; cover with clear plastic. Form remaining 1/3 dough in a log and cut into 16 equal pieces. To shape, knead each piece into small ball and poke thumbs through centre. With one thumb in hole (hole should be at least 1/2 inch) work fingers around perimeter, shaping ball into a small donut- like shape about 1 1/2 inches in diameter. Place bagels on a floured board or tray and let stand 20 minutes.

Bring water-sugar mixture to a boil in a 4 to 5 quart pan; adjust heat to keep it boiling gently. Lightly grease a baking sheet and sprinkle with cornmeal. Lift bagels carefully and drop into water (about 6 at a time) boil gently for 1 minute turning only once (30 seconds each side). Lift out with slotted spoon and drain very briefly on paper towels, and place on baking sheet. Brush with 1/3 of the egg yolk glaze, sprinkle with seeds and bake in a 400° oven for 20 minutes oruntil richly browned. cool on racks. Repeat with remaining 2/3 dough (you may need to punch it down before shaping,) working with 1/3 at a time. Makes 48 cocktail size bagels, or 12 to 18 larger bagels.

Tami

The Homemade Challenge - Butter and Cornbread

This week I've challenged myself to make some of the things at home that we generally buy at the store. It has been an interesting week so far. Being a stay-at-home-mom, I have the time to do these things, but other people may believe they don't because they work. You might be surprised! I couldn't believe how quickly these things whipped up and how quickly they disappeared from the dishes!

In order to find recipes that I wanted to make, I pulled out my old Cook's Illustrated Magazines. I just love them and reference them all the time. You really should pick one up if you haven't. They have them at WalMart now and although they seem thin and they don't have a lot of color photos, you will find them invaluable as a reference...even for a more experienced cook.... but especially for those just beginning. The best part is that they do experiments and try to figure out the best way to make the recipe turn out so that you don't have to! And there are tons of great tips.

Monday the kids and I sat down with the Cook's Mags and started looking through them. I let the kids pick something they would like to make (not necessarily something you would buy at the store). Surprisingly, V. chose frozen yogurt. I thought that was a great "something you would buy", so we chose to make that on Tuesday. We actually had all of the ingredients for chocolate and we decided that on Wednesday we'd make strawberry frozen yogurt since we could pick up the strawberries on Tuesday. Graham picked Gnocchi. I made that Monday night with some Tuscan Bean Soup and baked whole wheat bread. {Lots of stuff to blog about!}

Today (Wednesday) we chose to make homemade butter and buttermilk. I looked up a recipe to try on Epicurious.com. Since I would have buttermilk, I decided to get the other stuff to make cornbread and found that I actually had everything on-hand.

I'm going to post the recipes for the frozen yogurt later. I just made the butter, buttermilk and cornbread and while it is still in our tummies and on our tongues, I thought I'd post about that right now. Besides, it seems more interesting.

This is the recipe I used for the butter (Epicurious, April 2008)

Butter and Buttermilk

6 cups heavy cream, preferably organic (I used regular)
1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt (I didn't have fine sea salt, so I used regular tablesalt)

Special equipment: Special equipment: 5-quart stand mixer (or larger)

Transfer cream to bowl of 5-quart electric stand mixer fitted with whisk attachment. Tightly cover top of bowl and mixer with plastic wrap. Beat cream at moderately high speed until it holds soft peaks, 10 to 12 minutes. Increase speed to high and beat until mixture separates into thick, pale-yellow butter and thin, liquid buttermilk, about 5 minutes more.

Strain mixture through colander into large bowl. Using hands, vigorously knead butter in colander, squeezing out remaining buttermilk, until dense and creamy, about 5 minutes. Transfer butter to large bowl, reserving buttermilk. Using hands, knead salt into butter. Roll into logs and wrap in plastic wrap or transfer to airtight container and refrigerate. (Butter will keep up to 1 week refrigerated or 1 month frozen.) Strain buttermilk through fine-mesh sieve, then cover and refrigerate up to 1 week.

It was SOOO easy. I have never made it before and it was not a problem at all. Once the buttermilk and the butter separated, it did start splashing, but the splash guard you make out of plastic wrap, helps with this. So, make sure you do that step or you may have a mess on your hands. I took two pieces of plastic wrap and put one on each side of the whisk. Like this.

This is how it looked after about 10 minutes. You can tell the whipping cream is starting to clump and it doesn't look like whipped cream anymore.

After about 15 minutes (5 minutes at level 1o on the mixer)

It looks a little like scrambled eggs.

After 20 minutes of mixing the butter separated and stuck in the whisk (below) and the buttermilk started splashing. This is when you stop it.

Look how pretty that yellow butter is! And this is the buttermilk in my Grandmother's Tang pitcher. Plenty for several batches of pancakes or cornbread.

This is what it looked like before I squeezed the buttermilk out of it.

And here it is in a crock that I had on-hand, beside some maple syrup we used for the cornbread. YUM!

Now that I had fresh buttermilk, I wanted to make some cornbread. I pulled the recipe from Cook's and we made it up. The boys both ate seconds (which is rare for them. They are only- eat-when-you-are-hungry kids).

Click on the picture for a close-up of the recipe.

I used a 8-in round springform pan to make this and it worked out just fine. I also cooked it on convect at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes. It was done already, so be sure to check it after 18 minutes or so.

Very tasty with the fresh butter and real maple syrup!

Thursday we're going to make homemade pretzels. We buy those frozen ones for convenience, but how hard can it be? We'll see and I'm sure I'll blog about it. I'm not sure what Friday will bring, but I will be sure to give the details of the frozen yogurt tomorrow.

Tami