Tag Archives: baking

Jul31

Banana Trail Mix Muffins

Posted on July 31, 2014 by athaidek

Have you ever used coconut oil before? This was my first time baking with this lovely substance and it added an AMAZING richness to these muffins. It was a Sunday afternoon, my room was messy, and it was raining. My brain was of course focused on baking. My little teeny kitchen is really not prepared for the amount of mix-ins this recipe calls for, but the mix-ins MAKE the recipe. I’m all about a trail-mix cookie, a blondie with a ton of added crunch, and have been waiting for the day when I make a trail mix sandwich.

The other day our intern at work threw out one of those big Kirkland merchandise bags of trail mix and I thought he was crazy (even after finding out the bag was expired :/). I can guarantee the mix-ins in these pics are NOT expired, for the record. So I was lucky enough to have a taste tester come by to verify that in fact, these WERE good.

I’m a huge fan of cookie+kate and lately have turned to her for more than just recipes. She has some great articles on her site about a whole variety of food topics and lately about cooking tools (I’m totally a drooler over that section). I’ve been wanting to make this recipe for awhile but realized I didn’t have a loaf pan at the last minute! Never fear, the muffin tin always saves the day.

Let me give you some very specific instructions on an appropriate occasion to eat these muffins in case hunger isn’t enough of a good reasons. You need to sit on a very comfy couch with a close friend and catch up on life. You may also need some Norah Jones playing in the background, a rainy backdrop and an open afternoon. On the other hand, they’d make a very appropriate snack for a camping trip. Similar, right?

Let’s bake.

Banana Trail Mix muffins, adapted very very slightly from cookie and kate

3/4 white wheat flour

1/2 cup oats

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp table salt

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/8-1/4 tsp nutmeg

3/4 cup unsweetened coconut

1/4 cup dried currants

1/4 cup chopped chocolate (I used a Hershey’s bar with almonds)

1/2 cup almonds and walnuts mixed, chopped

1 cup mashed ripe bananas (this was about 2 bananas for me)

1/2 cup honey

1 large egg, room temperature

1/2 cup melted coconut oil

1. Set the oven to 375 and line your muffin tins with wrappers or grease them.

2. Mix the dry ingredients together in a large bowl: flour, oats, baking powder, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg

3. Then toss in your dried fruit, coconut, choco chips or chopped dark chocolate

4. In a separate bowl, whisk together the honey, melted coconut oil, vanilla, egg, and mashed banana until smooth. Pour the wet mixture into the dry and gently fold them together.

5. Scoop the batter into your muffin tins about 2/3 of the way full. Bake muffins for around 18-25 minutes depending on your oven, until the sides are just browning and the tops look just firm. Test by using a knife or toothpick, inserting it in the center of the muffins. If it comes out dry, they’re ready.

Serve these warm or cold as a sort of trail mix-y mid-day snack. Or five of them make a snack if you are a certain friend of mine who came over to taste test….I am SO excited about this recipe you guys, please make it! These are super moist yet packed with crunch as well. Who has other ideas for fun snacks/desserts turned into muffins??

I’m off to Chicago this weekend friends – any recommendations?

Aug4

BeetsMe goes Bananas for Pie

Posted on August 4, 2013 by athaidek

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Perfect Saturday afternoon bake-out. Sometimes I think cloudy skies are a call to bakers everywhere, saying, “YES! It is okay for you to stay inside and spend the time getting that pie crust right!” Well, in our case it was a vanilla wafer crust, so I mean, didn’t totally take that much to get it right. Which of course means we spent less time trying to perfect and messed up a few of the steps :). Head over to JoytheBaker’s cookbook for this Banana Coconut Cream Pie recipe.

At 5 pm this made a good pre-dinner dessert and was the perfect welcome home present for my Grandma who recently returned from a trip to see my cousins. After a fun dinner catching up on our family and her travels, I felt comfortable taking her home knowing she had a cup of decaf and a slice of pie to decompress. Tomorrow morning, I can’t wait to have another slice for breakfast!!

Watching Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and baking pie with Cessie? What more could I ask for. THANKFUL ❤ CAS.

Mixing the ingredients for the crust. We made the mistake of adding ALL the coconut to the nilla wafers and sugar, wooops. So to fix it, we sifted the coconut to get out the sugar and nilla wafers. Then we crushed up some more wafers to add. Everything turned out ok wheww. See above for the crust pressed into the pan…saw this tip on a blog I think…take the bottom of a glass and use to smooth out a crumb-based pie crust!

This is the weird egg-yolk sugar, cornstarch, salt mix that goes into the custard. Another tip I can’t believe I never tried was separating egg yolks and whites using your hands instead of the shell. WORKS LIKE MAGIC I don’t know why I’ve been using the shell for so long, but it’s seriously foolproof.

Mixing the custard is by far the hardest part. Tempering eggs always makes me nervous (when you add some of the hot cream in the eggs to make sure they don’t curdle when you add into the pan) but it really went okay. This is why it is definitely better to have two people, at least, when you’re working on time-constrained recipes. The only thing that really stinks about this part is the smell of warm milk, no thank you.

Ta-da! Custard cooled in the fridge for a few hours. Folded in bananas and some more of the salvaged toasted coconut.

Home-made cool HHHWHIP

Some more sprinkled coconut on top. PS I used a mix of unsweetened and sweetened coconut and it turned out well.

Pie!

Jun4

Popcorn cookies to share

Posted on June 4, 2013 by athaidek

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**This one goes out to you Coffield**

I’ve been wanting to try this recipe ever since I got the Smitten Kitchen cookbook back in December. After reading Deb’s hysterical writing on how she decided to add popcorn to a cookie recipe, I couldn’t help but feel that maybe I was in on the funny story too? Like I was actually in on the joke with her. So as I’m making this cookies, I was smiling to myself about this joke that I have with Deb Perelman but now that I’m thinking about it, I was just unnaturally happy because Deb and I weren’t laughing back and forth together….in fact, I just made the cookies by myself.

Well I certainly didn’t eat them by myself! I whipped these up for the first summer barbeque back in Atlanta for a reunion of sorts. Though I wanted to make a pie or some sort of fruit dessert to contribute to the pulled pork, buttermilk chicken, and cheese grits dinner, these were the easiest to transport. And you know, since we’re only two months or so out from the Great Cake Toppling of 2013, I’m still recovering. Recap: cookies are easy to drive over to a friend’s house. Or, when you’re sharing a car with my popular sister, they’re easy to carry in the passenger seat when you’re getting dropped off.

These cookies made my house smell so good, from the lingering buttery popcorn smell to that quintessential creamed butter and sugar marriage that brings a smile to my face. There was no wasting in this recipe either. Though my sister decided she didn’t want to join me in baking, the smell of popcorn is sure to lure her out of her room. Those extra popcorn pieces really brought us together!

I think these were recieved quite well, however I would like to add chocolate chunks to the recipe next time. I think they needed some more flavor along with the crunchiness of the popcorn. Let me know what you think if you’ve also tried this recipe! The next day, I made some cracker-jack-salty-peanut-chocolate cookies to remedy my longing for chocolate.