The Banana Problem

I have a banana problem. I excitedly buy green bananas on sale, thinking that they will ripen into a beautiful speckly pieces of fruit. Then, I put them on top of the refrigerator, which I have decided is the optimal spot for them to age, only to find that they are quite mushy a week later when I go back to check on them.

Although I have too many mushy bananas, it has inspired a flurry of banana-themed baking. Continuing my trend of two-ingredient recipes, I thought I'd try this recipe: http://www.theburlapbag.com/2012/07/2-ingredient-cookies-plus-the-mix-ins-of-your-choice/

I was very skeptical about this recipe, but the urgent need to use the mushy bananas pushed me to take the leap and try this recipe. My choice of mix-ins included a heaping amount of cinnamon, following the best rule of baking: add enough cinnamon to your batter to make it brown (this rule extends somewhat to vanilla extract - add the desired amount + a few healthy squirts). Chocolate chips, which enhance nearly every recipe, were my other choice and I added a more than just a handful, for my mental health.

The result was... different. The texture of the cookies is a little rubbery, but the taste is good. Naively, part of me thought that perhaps there would be minimal banana flavor, but since half the recipe is bananas, I should have known. Overall, this recipe is worth a shot, especially in a pinch craving for dessert.

Two-ingredient Nutella cake

Whilst surfing the internet (Facebook), I came across an interesting website featuring two-ingredient recipes. Intriguing, I could be pretty lazy and still have something delicious?! Tell me more! 

Although I love to bake, it's quite amazing how I love to cut corners and omit ingredients. Perhaps it is because I have a poor sense of taste and really cannot tell the difference. Perhaps I am really focused on the goal: a delicious baked good. In any case, I present...Two-Ingredient Nutella Cake! That's correct, only two ingredients in this recipe! Should be super simple and kein Problem to make.

Another reason to chose this recipe: generic chocolate hazelnut spread cannot compete with Nutella. Hurrah for brand loyalty, but I have had a jar of the generic stuff in my kitchen for two month - TWO months! These things tend to last me more like two weeks (see http://thehappyspoons.blogspot.com/2013/08/white-chocolate-biscoff-truffles.html).

http://kirbiecravings.com/2012/03/2-ingredient-flourless-nutella-cake.html

This turned out very well, perfectly moist in the center and very spongy - highly recommended!

Banana Butterscotch Muffins

It has been really hot in the LA area this past week. I have been resistant to turning on the air conditioning, but coming home to very hot apartment in the evening is unpleasant and I have finally turned it on. Because I let it get so hot, the bunch of bananas on top of the refrigerator ripened much more quickly than I expected. What to do with three ripened bananas? Make banana muffins! Butterscotch chips were on sale at the grocery store this week, so why not try to combine butterscotch and banana?

For once, I did not substitute ingredients. Perhaps that is why these turned out much better than my past baking posts. These muffins prove that banana and butterscotch go together. Try them.

http://www.nigella.com/recipes/view/banana-and-butterscotch-muffins-84

Museli Fruit bread

I bought a box of Museli cereal from the store the other week, and I did not like it. Enough that I would not eat it. What to do? I would not have food go to waste, so the obvious solution was: bake it into something!

Conveniently, the side of the box contained a recipe for Museli Fruit&Nut bread. Not liking nuts in my bread, I followed the recipe and substituted the nuts with more Museli to get rid of as much as possible. I also did not have two ripe bananas for smushing, but I did have butter, so I veered away from the path of health to the path of extra tasty. Other adjustments to this recipe are a given. I gave a good two big squirts of vanilla (probably 2 tsps, conservatively) and added enough cinnamon to make the sifted mixture brown, the correct color of any baked good with cinnamon in it.

Half an hour in the oven, and voila! A beautifully browned aromatic loaf of transfigured reject cereal. Of course I burned my mouth tasting it right away. It was...not as flavorful as I would have liked. This is probably because I was in my post-dinner excitement for dessert and this bread was going to be dessert, no matter how much healthy stuff went into it! So, as any normal person with an overactive sweet tooth would do, I made some icing.

I should warn, I have a problem in that I love to substitute ingredients. If you could not tell from the above experience, I tend to freehand. In this case, I decided not to warm any more butter (and save it for some batches of cookies) and instead substituted extra milk. The result was a thin sweet liquid, which I poured on my bread. It soaked in sweetened milk until it transformed from somewhat healthy bread to dessert bread and I was a very happy camper.

Just out of the oven.

Museli Fruit&Nut Bread (from the box)

Ingredients

2 eggs

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1 tsp. vanilla extract

2 mashed ripe bananas

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp cinnamon

1 cup Museli

1/2 cup nuts

Mix first five ingredients in bowl, set aside. In second mixing bowl, sift flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and cinnamon. Add Museli and nuts, mix well. Combine ingredients together. Mix well and pour into a 9x5x3 inch loaf pan. Bake at 325F for 45 minutes.

Icing

4 Tbsp. milk

1 c. granulated sugar

1 tsp. vanilla extract

Heat on stove while stirring for about a minute. Then pour directly onto top of bread. 

White Chocolate Biscoff Truffles

I have become obsessed with Trader Joe's Cookie Butter (nearly the same as Biscoff Spread). My dessert this past week has been a large spoonful of this delicious cookie-flavored paste. On the internet, I encountered this recipe for Biscoff Truffles:
http://www.tastebook.com/recipes/2995253-Biscoff-Truffles?full_recipe=true

Looking at it, and being a little lazy, I thought to myself, "What if I just took cookie butter and coated it in white chocolate?" Simple and easy! Plus, I like cookie butter and I like white chocolate, so the two combined should be even more delicious.

It was a delicious combination, and very sweet. Having a major sweet tooth, I liked them, but those who do not share my enthusiasm for sugar are now warned.

Ingredients:
1 jar of cookie butter
1 12-oz bag of white chocolate chips (I used one bag and it was not enough for a whole jar of cookie butter, two 12-oz bags of white chocolate chips would most likely be enough to coat all the truffles)

I first placed truffle-sized spoonfuls of cookie butter on a baking sheet with parchment paper. The sheet went into the oven for about 30 minutes.

Next, I melted white chocolate chips on the stove. After the chocolate reached a homogeneous liquid form, I stuck a knife (a toothpick would probably work better) into the first frozen cookie butter blob and dipped. Success! I was worried the cookie butter would melt into the chocolate, but that didn't happen.

I miscalculated the amount of chocolate needed for the truffles. Two 12-oz bags of white chocolate chips would be much better than one. As you can see, there is a decreasing about of chocolate on my truffles.

 

The newly-coated truffles were put back on the cookie sheet and put in the oven for another 30 minutes for the chocolate to harden.

Ta-da! Sweet tooth satisfied.

Eggplant and Acorn Squash: Practically the Same

I have a new cooking strategy that I think might be an awesome fit for me. Instead of looking up cool recipes and then going to go buy the ingredients, I have been implementing the following strategy in my most recent cooking. Buy some ingredient/s and then find some creative way to use it. I find this way more fun and I feel like it sort of makes up for my lack of problem solving that I do at work.

This past weekends trip to Haymarket inspired me to buy two things of note. First and once again, not related to the recipe below, a crate of mangos. I bought four mangos last week and was pretty successfully brainwashing myself that with mangos I never need dessert again. But I only had four mangos... so the end of the week was rough. However, at Haymarket I found a crate of stellar mangos- 9 mangos for $6. This will hopefully get me through the week and I can complete my brainwashing. My plan is flawless. Until I return to Ithaca, then I'll have a problem. But I'm living in the now.

The other purchase of note was an eggplant. It was a dollar and a total impulse buy, sort of like my teal pants that I also bought this weekend... The 12ish year old girl that was manning the station even asked me what I was going to do with the eggplant, probably because I was looking at it strangely/impulsively (if that is possible when looking at an eggplant) and I told her that I had no idea. However as I looked up cool ways to use an eggplant, interesting ideas formulated and I settled on modifying the below recipe.

I think if I wasn't co-blogging with my ex-roommates I would maybe title my blog: The Impatient Cook: Haste still Tastes. But in my defense, I cook for myself and I cook dinner after running and I'm always super hungry. Be warned, I cut corners.

First I cut my eggplant in half (funny enough I managed to do this incorrectly, more on this later)

Half an eggplant- Don't cut it like this

I literally poured oil on my hand and slathered my eggplant. Very elegant.  I then threw the eggplant in the oven so that I could take my shower. After my shower, I cut up TJ's sweet apple chicken sausage and onions. The recipe calls for way more sausage but, as with bacon, I ration my sausage so I filled with onions. Which turned out to be an excellent call as the sausage is amazingly flavored and flavored the onions.

Before

After!

At this point, I cut up a slice of sandwich bread and threw this in the oven with the eggplant to make the bread crumbs. After everything cooked, I put everything everything in a bowl: sausage, onions, breadcrumbs, added approx 1/3 cup marinera sause, and a handful of cheese. After I had eaten some of the filling and the eggplant had cooled I added an egg.

When I had taken the eggplant out, I realized my mistake. It would have been smarter to cut the eggplant lengthwise instead of in half... I was in an acorn squash mindset. However I rallied, scooped out the insides of my bowl with less volume. I filled my eggplant bowl, overflowing with filling and precariously placed some more cheese on top before placing it in the over.

Before...

After!!

Despite my blunder which hindered food presentation, this stuffed eggplant was phenomenal. I'm super excited that I have another half an eggplant. I was planning on making eggplant pizzas, but realistically, I'm probably just make this again. Maybe I put some mushrooms in place of some of the onions, because then that would totally count as a whole new recipe.  But really, try this.

This picture does not do this dish justice

INGREDIENTS:

1 (1 1/2 pound) eggplant, halved lengthwise 1 tablespoon olive oil 1/2 pound bulk Italian sausage 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder 1/4 teaspoon dried Italian seasoning

1/8 teaspoon black pepper 2 tablespoons dry bread crumbs 2 cups spaghetti sauce, divided 1 cup mozzarella cheese, divided 1 egg, beaten

DIRECTIONS:

1.	Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C).
2.	Brush cut sides of eggplant with olive oil and place, cut-side up onto a baking sheet. Roast in preheated oven for 30 minutes, then remove and allow to cool slightly.
3.	Meanwhile, brown the Italian sausage in a skillet over medium-high heat; drain off the grease. Place into a mixing bowl, and season with garlic powder, Italian seasoning, and pepper. Stir in bread crumbs, 1/2 cup of spaghetti sauce, 1/2 cup of mozzarella cheese, and the beaten egg; mix well.
4.	Once the roasted eggplant has cooled enough to handle, scoop out the flesh to within 1/2-inch of the skin to create a shell. Roughly chop the eggplant meat, and fold into the sausage mixture. Divide evenly among the two eggplant shells, and sprinkle with remaining mozzarella cheese.
5.	Bake in preheated oven until the filling has set, and the cheese is bubbly and golden-brown, about 30 minutes. While the eggplant is baking, warm the remaining spaghetti sauce in a saucepan over medium-low heat to serve with the eggplant.

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe-Tools/Print/Recipe.aspx?recipeID=133722&origin=detail&servings=2&metric=false

Kale and Beets with a side of Bacon

Amanda, I can not believe that you have already posted three times before I even posted once, I haven't even started and am already slaking. Though the intimidation of the first blog post had a great deal to do with my delay.

As much as I have fun blaming a certain someone, who knows who he is, for my lack of baking drive, spoons can stir lots of things so that excuse for not posting is moot, though this has started a self analysis of why I'm questioning my identity as an awesome baker. Some of my thoughts; I left a lot of my baking stuff at school and am too cheap/lazy to replenish my supply during the summer. I would also like to think that the fact that it is super humid and hot and my apartment is without air conditioning would be a reasonable deterrent from turning on the over to bake but since I regularly turn on the oven to cook pizza bagels or baked peaches, that claim is also invalid... So although I still am not sure why I haven't gone into a baking frenzy this summer, I will do my best to supply other recipes to this blog. I figure Amanda can document all the delicious dessert and I'll go for main dishes. It's flawless. And diversifying.

SO to preface this recipe, I have been in Boston for a month and a half now and the expensive or lack of close grocery stores had me find the Haymarket farmers market quite quickly.

Haymarket in Boston

 SO cheap, I'm worried that it had spoiled me for produce prices when I return to school. The first few weeks I developed a rut of getting an assortment of berries and mushrooms. But then, I went with my roommate who inspired me to get kale, beets and mangos in addition to my traditional fare. This blog recipe has nothing to do with mangos, but I will have anyone who reads this know that I am currently enjoying the best mango eating of my life.

As for my other new food items, a quick internet search produced the recipe below and my first new cooking endeavor in like a month had begun. Quick side note for the record, I do, in fact cook a lot but so far this summer its been a variation of quesidilla, pizza bagels, pasta or omelets.

Upon stumbling across the below recipe, I started to read way too much into it. Sort of like how, this summer, I have started analyzing my social life through the lens of Grey's Anatomy... But anyways, I have decided that this Kale with Roasted Beet Salad is a symbol of our house last semester. Amanda is the kale, Camy the beets and I'm the bacon!! And together we make an awesome salad that an individual ingredient couldn't achieve by itself. Super corney, but this is the stuff you come up with when you are without you best friends/roommates in a large city.

When I made this, I didn't have chicken stock or foil and was super hungry, so I cut corners like crazy but I will describe what I did, though the real recipe is below.

I had 5 small beets and literally did nothing with them but throw them in the oven before I ran off to take a shower (I didn't have foil...). After my shower, I cut up 5 slices of bacon. It calls for 6, but bacon is a precious commodity and I wasn't exactly measuring any of the other ingredients either.... plus omitting an entire slice of bacon practically makes this healthy. To make this recipe even more exciting, I set off the fire alarm while frying the bacon... But in my defense, the fire alarm is super sensitive.

5 slices of bacon

While the bacon was frying, I cut the kale. Since I didn't put any salt and pepper on the beets, I added it to the kale. I also didn't cover the kale since I couldn't find the corresponding lid to the pan. I have zero measuring devices here in Boston (another excuse for my leave from baking) so I eyeballed some water in place of the chicken stock and apple cider vinegar as per the directions.

Kale!

At this point I was incessantly stabbing the beets to see if they were done. Once they were done, I didn't exactly have a peeler so sort of squelched the beet insides out of its skin... it was very elegant. I then mixed everything together and the resulting salad appeared!

Finished salad!!

I definitely ate more then half and, don't worry, the amount of bacon in the salad was not lost on me and since I ate the remaining salad for lunch the next day, I did in fact eat 5 slices of bacon in less then 24 hours... Despite my lose interpretation of the recipe, the salad was quite wonderful, though I feel that it would have taken a bit of skill to mess up... 5 strips of bacon is a lot of bacon. 

Ingredients
2 beets (about 14 ounces)
1 tablespoon olive oil
Kosher salt and freshly cracked black pepper
6 thick-cut applewood-smoked bacon slices (8 ounces), diced
1 large bunch kale (about 1 1/2 pounds), washed, stemmed and cut into 1-inch pieces
1/3 cup low-sodium chicken stock
4 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
Directions
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.

Wash and trim the beets, removing both ends. Place them on a 12-inch square sheet of heavy-duty aluminum foil. Drizzle with the olive oil and season generously with salt and pepper. Seal up the foil packet and roast until the beets are fork-tender, about 1 hour.

In a large skillet over medium heat, cook the bacon until medium-crisp (or however you prefer your bacon). Transfer the bacon to a paper towel-lined plate. Increase the heat to high and add the kale, stirring to coat in the rendered bacon grease. Cover and cook for a few minutes, and then add the chicken stock and 2 tablespoons of the vinegar. Stir to combine, cover and allow to wilt for 6 to 8 minutes.

Peel and cut the beets into chunks and add them to the kale. Stir in the remaining 2 tablespoons vinegar. Add the bacon, stir to combine and season with salt and pepper. Serve immediately.

Read more at: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/guy-fieri/kale-with-roasted-beets-and-bacon-recipe/index.html?oc=linkback