The Joy of Baking - Part 2

I like to watch this T.V. show called "The Take Home Chef". The premise is the following: blond Australian "chef" finds an unassuming woman in a grocery store (usually Whole Foods), asks her if she will allow him to make dinner for her and whomever she is cooking for that night, the woman is flattered and says yes, he buys the groceries, they stop by Sur la Table for some must have kitchen items for that night's menu, he cooks, tells her to go change, boyfriend/husband comes home to find gf/wife at home with camera crew and tall blond dude in his home. Surprise!

Anyways, one day he made a peanut butter chocolate chunk cookie that looked fairly easy and delicious. I had accidentally bought a jar of Trader Joe's Creamy Almond Butter, and it had been sitting in my pantry for awhile, so I decided to sub that in for peanut butter and made the cookies from his recipe. The cookie was savory in a way, but also sweet. I would probably use chunky almond/peanut butter next time. I also used two bars of Hershey's Special Dark chocolate for the recipe.

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunk Cookie

Ingredients:
1 tsp baking soda
1 cup of brown sugar
1 stick of butter
1 egg
1 cup of peanut butter (he used chunky, but creamy would be fine)
1/4 cup of honey
1 1/2 cup of all purpose flour
1 bar of chocolate (about 1-2 cups of broken chocolate pieces)

Directions:
Mix the baking soda, brown sugar, and butter together. Add the egg. Then add peanut butter and honey. Then add flour and chocolate and fold the wet and dry ingredients together.

Roll into small/medium sized dough balls, 6 to a tray.

Then bake at 350 for 12-15 minutes.

Yield: About 28 cookies

And the result!

The Joy of Baking

Today I baked. I just woke up this morning and decided that that was what I wanted to do. I had some over ripened bananas and some left over strawberries and sought out something that I could bake them into. Muffins are usually pretty easy to make, so I found a pretty decent recipe on the internet. The recipe is below; the only substitution that I made was whole wheat flour for all purpose flour. They turned out really well; next time I will probably add some walnuts for some crunch. I'm going to have to freeze some of them to eat later.

Strawberry-Banana Muffins

Ingredients:
1/2 cup (1 stick) (113 grams) unsalted butter, melted
3/4 cup (160 grams) light brown sugar
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
1 teaspoon (4 grams) pure vanilla extract
2 large ripe bananas, mashed (about 1 cup)
1 cup (240 ml) fresh or frozen blueberries or strawberries (cut into small pieces)
2 1/4 cups (315 grams) all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon (4 grams) ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon (2.5 grams) salt

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (177 degrees C). Position rack in center of oven. Line the muffin pan with paper liners or grease with butter or a vegetable spray. Set aside.

In a small saucepan melt the butter. Set aside.

In a medium sized bowl whisk together the brown sugar, eggs, vanilla extract and mashed banana. Add the melted butter to the brown sugar mixture and stir to combine.

In another large bowl combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt. Gently fold in the berries, making sure they are coated with flour. This helps to prevent the berries from sinking during baking. Do not over mix or the blueberries will end up coloring the batter blue. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir only until the ingredients are just combined. Do not over mix the batter or tough muffins will result.

Fill each muffin cup about two thirds full of batter, using two spoons or an ice cream scoop. Fill any unused muffin cups halfway with water to prevent warping of the pan and/or over browning of the muffins. Place in the oven and bake until a tester inserted in the center of a muffin comes out clean, 20 to 25 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.

Makes 12 regular sized muffins.

And here they are!