Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Muffins

I have a lot of posts to catch up on so most of them are going to be pretty short. I stole the recipe for these muffins from Tracey's Culinary Adventures and you can find the recipe there if you are so inclined to make these. They were pretty delicious as far as peanut butter baked goods are concerned, but as a muffin I thought they were too dense. I was having a crazy day when I made them though so maybe I didn't achieve the optimal result. In fact, if you go to Tracey's website you can see that her muffins look fluffier and a whole lot less like peanut butter bricks.

Back with Banana Muffins and Apple-Pumpkin Kuchen!

Look at those babies! Those are banana muffins my friends! They were baked with love and swiftness last night while Favorite was bringing my computer back from the dead. Apparently I had unwittingly happened into the dreaded virut virus which is a particularly nasty one that likes to find windows exe files and eat them up until your computer can't even boot in safe mode...


So, the muffins came from the banana bread recipe in my handy Better Homes and Gardens cookbook.

Banana Bread

2 c. flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/8 tsp nutmeg
2 eggs, beaten
1 1/2 cup mashed banana
1 c. sugar
1/2 cup cooking oil
optional nuts or crumbly topping

1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. Grease your vessel.
3. Mix all ingredients up to nutmeg in large bowl.
4. Mix remaining ingredients in small bowl.
5. Stir wet into dry all at once until just moistened. Fold in any extras.
6. Fill your baking vessel and bake until done (15 to 20 for muffins, 30 to 75 for loaf pans, depending on size)

This recipe was super easy as you only need two bowls and about 5 minutes to prep your ingredients. I only had two bananas which made a little more than 3/4 c when mashed, so I halved the recipe and cut the oil down to two tablespoons (because of the extra banana). This made 4 decent sized muffins in my "Giant" muffin pan. Question for my readers: anyone know how to get real muffin tops? I am talking about the kind of muffin that has a top that has a greater diameter than its stump. I filled each well within a half inch of the top and got NO shoulder on my muffin. Any hints would be greatly appreciated.

I also recently made(and captured) my first ever attempt at a yeast leavened pastry! The hardcore German tastiness known as kuchen (pronounce koo-ken, apparently). I bought a small sugar pumpkin with designs on making some sort of pumpkin dessert with the real thing, and not the Libby's can. This was partially just for curiosity's sake and partly because, as some of you know, there was a horrendous shortage of canned pumpkin earlier this year. I didn't want to do something traditional where you end up boiling and mashing the pumpkin because I had a beautiful SOLID pumpkin and I wanted to take advantage of that fact. I finally had the idea to make an apple-pumpkin crisp with equal portions tasty apples and soft sweet cubes of pumpkin all dripping with sweet cinnamon goodness and topped with enough brown sugar to make Favorite proud (that is a LOT let me tell you...) Well I scrapped the idea of the crisp when I saw the Apple Kuchen in the Better Homes and Gardens magazine "Holiday Baking". I will literally be baking my way through this entire magazine! There has never been a periodic publication with so many deliciously sweet recipes to try! Anyhow, I took the Apple Kuchen and added my Pumpkin Twist.

Apple (Pumpkin) Kuchen

2 1/4 c. flour
1 package active dry yeast
1/2 c. milk
1/2 c. sugar
1/4 c. butter
1/2 tsp salt
2 eggs
4 c. apples (about 4 apples, or 2 apples and half a small pumpkin, par boiled)
1/3 c. packed brown sugar
1 tbsp quick cooking tapioca, crushed (I substituted with mochi rice flour because I had it)
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tsp apple pie spice (or pumpkin pie spice)
Crumb Topping

1. Grease 13X9X2 pan.
2. Mix 1 c. of flour and package of yeast.
3. Heat milk, sugar, butter, and salt until butter is almost melted.
4. Add milk mixture, along with eggs, to flour and yeast. Beat on low 30 seconds, scraping sides of bowl, and high for 2 minutes or until smooth. Beat in remaining flour.
5. Spread mixture in prepared pan.
6. Mix apples (and pumpkin), brown sugar, tapioca, lemon juice, and spices together in large bowl. Spread mixture over batter in pan.
7. Sprinkle with crumb topping (1/2 c. flour, 1/2 c. brown sugar, 3 tbsp butter, cut in to pea sized crumbs) and allow to sit in a warm place for an hour.
8. After dough has risen, bake in preheated 375 degree oven for 30 minutes or until top is browned and apples are tender.

I used raw apples in this recipe, but I par boiled the pumpkin because I figured it wouldn't cook as fast and I didn't want raw pumpkin. It worked well as the pumpkin got soft enough without being overly mushy. The recipe in the magazine also suggests topping with a cream cheese frosting, but I decided to nix it as I had no cream cheese and don't care much for frosting anyhow. The kuchen is definitely tasty. The base is more substantial than I thought it would be. I was expecting something like a coffee cake,but it was definitely more bread or biscuit like (though admittedly I DID overcook it a tad). If I were to make this recipe again with the pumpkin, however, I would have more pumpkin and less apple as the empire apples I used overwhelmed the more subtle flavor of the pumpkin. More pumpkin, more spice, and vanilla ice cream on top!

Pumpkin Oat Muffins and a Scarf

Hazzah!

I have not only BAKED Pumpkin Oat Muffins, but I have also remembered to take pictures of them!
They look quite glorious really, but I found them to be pretty dense. I used a vegan recipe for these, not because I am vegan but because I was without eggs! They are pretty good hot with some butter though. Ha, I would make poor vegan.

Also! I have finished a scarf that I started so long ago I can't remember (hyperbole: I think it was sometime last year). It was going to be the first quasi plain yet nice-looking-enough-to-be-a-real-scarf scarf and it was going to be mine! That was until I ran out of the yarn I was using...

So I had to make one half the opposite mirror image of the other half. Oh well... Favorite insists I keep it as it came out nice enough, but I am thinking the Salvation Army might need to keep some people warm.

The pattern is quite easy and the density of it is very nice; springy and elastic with some dimension without taking too much time or too much yarn. My friend Cheryl shared this pattern with me:

R1: K4, *P3, K3, repeat from *, end with K4
R2: P2, *K1, P1, repeat from *, end with P2

Easy peazy lemon squeezy! Now I'm working on some shrug-like thing. We will see how this turns out. Hopefully I have enough yarn this time. Probably not.

Successes and Failures

Despite my lack of postings I have made a number of forays into the battlefield of baking since last we met. Some battles have been victorious while others left a good number of casualties.

The first recipe I tried after the squash buns was another recipe from my new book The Ultimate Cookie book. This was the first dud from this publication. The recipe was for Spiced Chocolate Tea Cakes. I know it says cake and not cookie, which should have warned me, but the texture was just all wrong! In making the batter I realized that the dough was VERY stiff.The recipe wanted me to pipe the cookies into shell shapes using a 1/2 inch star tip. The star tip I have was too small and the dough was just too thick so I ended up just using my trusty cookie scoop and smooshing them flat with a wet finger. Favorite thought the turned out ok, but I thought they were dry and flavorless. I will NOT be making these again.
Next up was squashy cakes. I took the leftover squash paste from the buns and added some egg so they would set up. I tried pan frying them but they were too dense with no leavening so I tried steaming them and they just turned into gummy goops. Another failure in the kitchen.
Next up is a winner!! Well, I KINDA made these. Over the Christmas holiday my mom and I made an excess of gingerbread dough and ended up freezing an entire batch. The dough kept very well and I was able to make a really good amount of cookies. Some were nice and big, but I also made a bunch of tiny ones using pie crust cutters in case someone just wanted a nibble.Above you can see my dough rolled out on a pastry cloth with my assorted cookie cutters and my pastry cloth covered rolling pin. Pastry cloth is brilliant by the way. If you've never tried it for rolling cookies or pie crusts you really must. The only downside is when you don't put quite enough flour and then you have to wash the cloth after the dough gets stuck. But here are the glorious cookies!!


I also managed to make a chocolate banana tart after completely destroying some caramel that was meant for a caramel custard. I have no pictures of the tart however. It wasn't very pretty but it tasted ok. It was a pretty simple recipe for a cocoa tart crust (that did not come out too well) and basically milk, eggs, and chocolate poured in the crust with sliced up bananas and baked until set. Not exactly glamorous, but we had company and I needed to make SOMETHING for dessert!

I have also been secretly working on a hat. I got some absolutely splendid alpaca yarn from Favorite's mom for Christmas last year and I finally decided I wanted to turn it into a sweet stocking cap. I did the large bulk of it in about 3 days and then got tired of it and left it for weeks. I finally picked it up again this past weekend with a vengeance. I needed to finish it and so I did. Here it is:I think the grey looks fantastic with Favorite's blue eyes! Since I made him pose for this picture I did him a favor too. He woke up asking for muffins; any muffins. So I provided him with Oatmeal Cinnamon Chip muffins!!It is not super great picture, I know, but the tops had just a little chewy crunch and the insides were moist and pillowy and probably the best muffin texture I had ever achieved. I actually got this recipe from another blogger at Cookie Madness. She has a much better photo of the muffins here. The muffins look a little different however because I have a secret in where I get my cinnamon chips (they are the same ones they use in bakery scones, tiny little delicious cinnamon bursts) and it looks like Anna had to use the big waxy Hershey bits. Eiher way they are just fantastic muffins great for breakfast.