Cook. Craft. Enjoy.

Ehh... Muffins

If you've noticed, I've done a little more baking than usual lately -- or I should say my kids have gotten into cooking and they've been doing a little more baking than usual.

This is another recipe from Muffins Galore by Catherine Atkinson that Travis tried out while my mom was here.  The title is "Chocolate Cheesecake Muffins" and use a chocolate muffin batter with a cheesecake-ish filling topped with almonds.

How were they?  Eh .. not memorable.   Amazingly they didn't have much flavor and didn't seem to be worth eating.  (Though refrigerating them seemed to help their texture.)  So, a recipe we won't be making again.  (Makes a great looking photo though!)

What else is happening around here?  Well, our beautiful new pool has not been getting the workout I thought it would -- Liam developed his first ever ear infection so he's been banned until at least Wednesday.  The weather has just been miserably hot (like 108) so we've all been staying inside as much as possible (and to the kids happiness they've been play Warcraft a little more than I would like).  Oh and speaking of Warcraft, Travis got his 2nd character ('toon) to 70 last night with a little help from me and another player so he's a happy camper.

Happy Monday all!

Banana Snack Cake

For lunch every day Liam eats a peanut butter sandwich with bananas, spicy hot cheetos and baked Lay's potato chips.  I'm not quite sure how that ritual started, but that's what's on his menu daily.  Once school starts we'll have to come up with another meal (peanut butter/banana sandwiches don't transport well) but for now I have to make sure to always have bananas in the house.

Always having bananas in the house also means several times a week we have old bananas in the house.  (Liam only likes them when they're yellow with no brown spots -- I think he gets that from me.)  So instead of throwing them away I really like to find good ways to use them.  Last week when my mom was here I assigned Adrienne to bake this cake while I was out running errands.

Looks pretty good, doesn't it?  Adrienne had a few issues with the baking of it (like spilling ingredients on the counter, not reading the recipe all the way through first, forgetting to preheat the oven) but even with the mishaps it came out good and we ate our way through it in a couple of days.

Muffin or Biscuit?

Travis has really started taking an interest in cooking lately.  Saturday it was our dinner (which I'll blog about later) and yesterday it was these muffins.

Last week I got a few new cookbooks from Costco including this one:  Muffins Galore by Catherine Atkinson.  There's several cookbooks in the series including Cookies Galore and Cupcakes Galore both of which I also own.  I like them because they have fabulous photographs and because they're published in the UK give a little different spin to desserts than those we usually find here in the US.

The recipe Travis chose looked simple:  Vanilla Chocolate Chip Muffins.  Just 8 ingredients and 4 steps ... easy, right?  Um, mostly.  The recipe has you cut the butter into the flour like you're making biscuits -- and then combining it all with the wet ingredients.  And yes, they did come out with a biscuity taste to them -- but that's not a bad thing -- just unexpected.  Guess if he makes them again I'll have to go to the garage and find my pastry blender.

Strawberry Bread

Last week I bought blueberries, strawberries and raspberries from Costco and while we've eaten most of them, yesterday the rest of the strawberries were looking a little sad and I knew I needed to do something with them before I had to throw them out.  A quick search online and I came across this recipe on All Recipes for strawberry bread.  Perfect!

I did change the recipe a bit (sub'd applesauce for the oil, cut down on the sugar, added vanilla and sub'd chocolate chips for nuts) but I'm sure without my changes it would be just as good.  Travis liked it so well yesterday he had it for a snack after school and then before bed.

Stamp Camp Yummies

While I'll post the fun cards we did tonight at stamp camp in tomorrow's post, I thought I'd share with you 2 new recipes I tried for our "eats".  The first is from Nigella Lawson's newest book (I think it's her newest at least),  Nigella Express:  Banana Butterscotch Muffins.  The combination of banana and butterscotch was great and the outside had a really nice crispy crust to it.  No more thrown away bananas in this house -- this recipe is the answer.

The second recipe I tried tonight was a chili cheese dip.  I usually try to have some type of warm crockpot dip and fall back to Buffalo Chicken dip or an artichoke spinach dip.  Tonight I wanted to try something different and really it was a mistake.  It tasted very institutionalized (does that make sense?) and didn't get eaten much.   Back to the old standby next time.

(Just so you don't think we had all junk food I also put out a tray of fresh veggies and fruit -- that's usually what gets eaten first.)

Eggs, Anyone?

I think we're just about back to normal around here.  While I love having the kids home, our schedule gets so screwy during the day it seems like nothing gets done.  (Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but weeks of it runs me in circles sometimes.)  Today I got a few things on my "to do" list finished and looks like the rest of the week will be productive as well.  (Yeah!)

While tonight's dinner is nothing to brag about (sandwiches -- mine was jalapeno muenster, tomato and basil), I need to give last night's a day in the spotlight.

It may not look like much, but the votes were in -- a 5 for Travis, and 4.5s from Don and myself.  Adrienne and Liam abstained and ate chicken, pasta, corn and carrots instead so my final rating on this will be a 4.5.  What is it?  An oven omelet (in other words, a frittata).  The recipe is a variation of a recipe in an old Donna Hay magazine.  My recipe uses Andouille, zucchini, Manchego and ham and theirs Chorizo, zucchini, Haloumi and ham.  I've got enough leftover meat and cheese that we'll probably have it again later in the week and that NEVER happens in this house.  The spicing was on target and reminded me a lot of quiche without the crust (which I don't eat anyway).

Banana Bread

There are only so many things you can do with overripe bananas and it just happens that banana bread is the easiest.  Well, okay, smoothies are a little easier but when it's 40 degrees outside I really don't want a smoothie.

I decided to try a new recipe this morning from my go-to recipe site, All Recipes.  This one is just as simple as can be though I opted to add some pumpkin pie spice (the reviews said it was a little blah) and some chopped pecans.  It looks great, smells fantastic and tastes yummy.  Perfect!

Lemon Curd Muffins

I think changing the clocks for daylight savings time is the hardest on the kids.  I really miss those days when we lived in Tucson and we didn't have to deal with it.  (Okay, I miss Tucson for more than just that reason, but we won't get into that.)  This morning Liam was up at 5:00 ready to face the day.  Me?  Not so much but that's okay.  I'm a morning person for the most part except I like my mornings to start about 7am.

As I was sitting at my desk watching Liam play Puzzle Quest I decided it was a perfect morning to make some muffins.  I remembered I had a jar of lemon curd in the refrigerator and started my search from there.  Here's the recipe I came across ... it's from Better Homes and Gardens and came together fairly quickly.

They were some of the best muffins I've had in a long time... I loved the tartness of the lemon curd and the cake part of it wasn't too sweet.

Baklava Muffins

Do you ever browse food blogs and find something that you know you absolutely have to make?  This was the case this past weekend with the Baklava muffins I saw on Ruth's blog Once Upon a Feast.   Her post from Saturday showed just how easy it is to put together a great meal in little time even while babysitting.  Those muffins she served as dessert, however, called to me.  Big time.

Ruth's post links to the recipe on Group Recipes and the recipe on Group Recipes links to the one on Recipezaar which lists Nigella Lawson as the creator of this extraordinary muffin.  I think I'll have to check out the library for more Nigella cookbooks.  I own one and I'd like to see how many more I like and need to buy.

While I wouldn't say these taste like baklava, they are very tasty and Don proclaimed them "the best muffins ever".  Now, I wouldn't go so far as that, but they're going in the "make again, make again" pile.

I used paper liners to keep things a little neater but they were easy to fill and get the filling in.  One of the other things I like about them is that they only make 12.  I hate those recipes that make a TON and I end up throwing out a bunch because I don't like to freeze baked goods.  Delicious looking, huh?

Mini Cinnamoni

Every Sunday since school started I've been making pepperoni rolls for the kids to take to school.  The last few weekends I've been trying new recipes but honestly the one I like the best is the one I started with that I posted about here.  It's just sweet enough that it balances with the slightly spicy pepperoni perfectly.

If you're a food blog browser, you'll notice that this (last?) month's Daring Bakers challenge was cinnamon rolls.  I'm not daring enough to try to join them (though mostly because of time restraints, truth be told), but all those cinnamon rolls early Sunday morning left me craving them.  I opted to take the dough that was already made for pepperoni rolls and turn one of the pieces (I usually get 16 out of a batch of dough) into 5 mini cinnamon rolls.

For the pepperoni rolls I'll place slices of pepperoni (and sometimes cheese) on the rolled out dough and then roll it up.  The cinnamon rolls I spread the dough with a little butter and sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar.  When they came out I glazed them with some powdered sugar glaze and they were just the right size for a tiny treat.  Aren't they cute?