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.