Showing posts with label muffins. Show all posts
Showing posts with label muffins. Show all posts

Banana Pecan Muffins

Labels: , , , | at 8:49 PM

Last week Gardener Boy's best friend came over to see our new apartment (which I'm loving!), and I felt like baking, so I thought I'd make my new customer happy by asking him what he wanted for dessert.
Gardener Boy stopped me right as I was about to call his friend and made my task that much more interesting: Ask him what dessert he'd like to eat if he was stranded on a desert island...
The response: "I like bananas, pecans, and vanilla if that helps any."
So, I combined all those ingredients and came up with this recipe, which he loved!




As usual, I wasn't able to make these into actual muffins since when I made these I still hadn't found muffin tins (I just found them this week!) but the cupcake size gave them a really cute bite-sized quality that you cant get with muffins.




I added chocolate chips to the recipe which in my opinion added soooo much to the muffin's flavor and texture :)


You will need: 

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
4 overripe bananas
1 cup brown sugar
85 gr (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
2 eggs 1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup pecans, chopped
1/2 cup chocolate chips (optional)
Directions

Preheat oven to 180 C (375 F) and lightly butter the muffin tins.
In a large bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, and salt; set aside. 
Mash 2 of the bananas with a fork in a small bowl so they still have a bit of texture. 
In a larger bowl, with an electric mixer, whip the remaining bananas and sugar together for a 3 minutes.
Add the melted butter, eggs, and vanilla and beat well, scraping down the sides of the bowl once or twice. 
Mix in the dry ingredients until just incorporated. 
Fold in the nuts, choc. chips, and the mashed bananas with a rubber spatula. 
Spoon the batter into the muffin tins, filling them about halfway. Give them a rap on the counter to get any air bubbles out.
Bake until a toothpick stuck in the muffins comes out clean, 18 to 20 minutes. 
Let cool for a few minutes before turning the muffins out. 
Serve warm or at room temperature...warm is better ;)
Should yield 12 muffins, but I made about 22 cupcake sized ones...


Enjoy!

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Doughnut Muffins

Labels: , | at 8:11 PM

I've always wanted to make traditional doughnuts but when I saw these I just couldn't resist!




These muffins really taste like real doughnuts... I think maybe its because of the nutmeg, which gives the muffin a surprising dunkin'-doughnut-like flavor.
I've always enjoyed doughnuts, especially dunkin's Boston Cream (yum!). But what I really LOVE are munchkins.
You get the awesome flavor of doughnuts but in a tiny package of explosive deliciousness... I can't really get through a whole doughnut, because towards the end I begin to feel the sugar overload, but for some reason I don't feel that way when eating munchkins! I can eat a dozen of those babies...I really cant help myself :)
When I bit into one of these, that feeling cam flooding back. I just wanted more!
These are super easy, but read through the directions completely before beginning because the topping needs to be made while the muffins are in the oven, and you'll need to prepare that ahead of time.




You Will Need:
1-3/4 cups all-purpose flour (I used cake flour for lack of anything else and it came out amazing)
1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 egg, lightly beaten
3/4 cup milk or soy milk
Jam

Topping:
1/4 cup butter, melted
1/3 cup sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon


Preheat the oven to 176°C (350°F).
Using a whisk, combine the flour, baking powder, salt, nutmeg and cinnamon in a large bowl. 
In another bowl, combine the sugar, oil, egg, and milk. I used soy milk since I'm sadly lactose intolerant. Although substituting soy milk for milk in cooking can sometimes ruin a dish, for the most part, I've found that its okay in baking. And it was more than okay in this goody.
Stir the dry ingredients into the wet mixture just until combined.
Spray a muffin or cupcake tin with cooking spray, and fill the cups halfway with batter.
Place one teaspoon of jam onto the batter, and then cover the jam with another layer of batter. Pretty much, your making a sandwich... the cups should be 3/4 of the way full.
Bake the muffins for 20-25 mins.
While the muffins are in the oven prepare the topping. Melt the butter in a bowl. 
Then, in a separate bowl, combine the sugar and cinnamon. 
Right after the muffins come out of the oven, dip the tops into the butter and then into the sugar-cinnamon mixture. My mouth was salivating at this point.






Serve warm or room temp.
Enjoy these for all they're worth!



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Molten Muffin Chocolate Chip Cookies

Labels: , , | at 1:27 PM

This dessert is every kid's (and adult's) dream come true. Its a cookie, its a muffin, its got tuns of chocolate, and its mind-bogglingly good!
This recipe came from the new Kosher by Design cookbook Teens and Twenty Somethings. Disregarding the lame name, this cookbook has recipes that not many can resist, especially the one I just made!
Once again, I cut down the recipe in half, which made about 12 little cupcake-sized cookies. It should make less, but its impossible to find deep/big muffin tins in this country! All I can ever find are the little cupcake sizes... which actually made these into really nice bite-sized treats.
The best way to eat these is straight from the oven. Gardner Boy and I put them on a hot plate while we ate lunch so that by the time we got to dessert they were hot and gooey in the inside with the perfect crunch and munch on the outside!




You will need:


1 1/8 cup flour
1/2  tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
113 g (1 stick) butter/margarine, at room temp for 15 mins.
heaping 1/3 cup sugar
heaping 1/3 cup brown sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 large egg
1 cup chocolate chips
1 semi-sweet chocolate bar, broken into squares
muffin/cupcake tins


Preheat the oven to 176°C ( 350°F).
In a Medium bowl whisk the flour, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.
In a larger bowl use a mixer to combine the butter, sugar, brown sugar until light and fluffy.
Add the vanilla and eggs, and mix.
Add half the flour mixture and combine. Add the rest and, when fully mixed, add the chocolate chips.
Spray the tins with cooking spray and fill each tin a quarter of the way with a ping-pong sized ball. Flatten the ball so that it completely fills the bottom of the cup.
Stack 1-2 (I did 1) squares of chocolate onto the cookie mixture. Now cover the chocolate with another ball of cookie dough. Flatten to completely cover.
Bake the cookies until they are golden brown on top, about 20-25 mins, depending on the size of the tin. The tops should be brown, not wet looking.




Enjoy!



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