low fat oatmeal banana muffins

Yesterday, I started my first week on winter break from school. Although I'm continuing to work (Wednesdays and Fridays), I have Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays to do whatever I please! And I actually accomplished a lot yesterday.

I gave my apartment a much-needed cleaning, a kind of deep cleaning that hasn't happened since this summer. I went to the fabric store to get yarn - and began a new knitting project. My boyfriend, James, and I went out to dinner at the new French bakery in our neighborhood called La Boulangerie. Then it was nighttime and I decided to bake some muffins to eat for breakfast the next morning.

Low fat recipes are never really my first choice. The lack of butter always makes me skeptical as butter is singlehandedly the best food to bake with on the planet. But I found a Joy the Baker recipe and I usually like her recipes, so I gave her Low Fat Oatmeal Banana Bread recipe a try. Here's her recipe:

"makes 1 loaf  of  10 slices

- 1 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
- 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
- 1/2 tsp  salt
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1/4 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp cinnamon
- 3 tsp canola or walnut  oil
- 1 large egg, beaten
- 2 medium egg whites, beaten
- 3 large bananas, ripe
- 1 cup uncooked old fashioned oats

Preheat oven to 350°F.  Grease and flour a loaf pan and set aside. In a large bowl, stir together dry ingredients including the oats and cinnamon.

In a smaller bowl, mash bananas with a potato masher or fork. Add oil and whole egg and mix thoroughly.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry and mix well.  Batter will be fairly thick.

In a medium sized bowl, with an electric hand mixer, beat the egg whites until medium stiff peaks form.  Fold the egg whites into the batter in three additions.

Pour batter into pan and bake until top of loaf is firm to touch, 45 to 50 minutes. Remove from oven and allow to cool in pan for 5 minutes. Flip out and cool on a wire rack for another 10 minutes. Slice loaf into 10 equally sized slices."

Obviously, I made muffins, so I just distributed the batter equally into a 12 medium sized muffin pan. I wanted a dessert, so I also added chocolate pieces to a few of them to eat right away. But I saved the rest for breakfast.

To be totally honest, the muffins tasted a little too healthy- very bran-ny. They didn't have the moist semi-greasiness that using real butter will give you but at least they were nutritious. Also, the uncooked oats didn't seem to cook completely and added a tiny crunch to the muffin. This was not necessarily bad but it was unusual.

All in all, it was a fun day and I'm glad I tried the recipe!

teacup & cupcake sugar cookies

Like most students, I get a lot accomplished during finals week. Although the tasks accomplished tend to be anything I picked up while procrastinating. Instead of buckling down and studying or writing a paper before the deadline, I'm shopping for holiday gifts, cleaning up my apartment, and of course- baking!

It just so happens that my work had its holiday party this week, during finals, so I had to bring in a dessert for the potluck party. Because my office is mixed with Jewish and Christian celebrators, I didn't want to make Christmas cookies that were shaped like Santa or trees. So I went to Michaels and picked up some cookie cutters that were cute -teacups, teapots, and cupcake shapes- and decorated them with green and red icing. Here's the allrecipes.com recipe that I found for the sugar cookies:

INGREDIENTS: 

1 1/2 cups butter, softened 

2 cups white sugar 

4 eggs 

1 teaspoon vanilla extract 

5 cups all-purpose flour 

2 teaspoons baking powder 

1 teaspoon salt 

DIRECTIONS: 

1. In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until smooth. Beat in  eggs and vanilla. Stir in the flour, baking powder, and salt. Cover, and  chill dough for at least one hour (or overnight). 

2. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Roll out dough on floured surface 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick. Cut into shapes with any cookie cutter. Place cookies 1 inch apart on ungreased cookie sheets. 

3. Bake 6 to 8 minutes in preheated oven. Cool completely.

This recipe was so easy! I made the dough around 11:00 am, went to a final, and came back home around 5:30 pm and the dough was chilled perfectly. It wouldn't have been very hard to make homemade icing, but I didn't want to buy all the food coloring that I probably wouldn't use again until next year. Therefore, I just bought tubes of icing that you can squeeze right out onto the cookie.

After applying the icing, I put all the cookies on a cookie sheet, uncovered, into the oven overnight. Don't turn on the oven! Just keep them there. By the morning, the icing had hardened just enough where it wouldn't get messed up during the transportation of the cookies. And let me just say, they were absolutely delicious! Perfect sugar cookies! Many thanks to my awesome KitchenAide Mr. Mixer!

Just a picture of me and mr. mixer!

This is me baking!

ovaltine chocolate chip banana muffins (and cake!)

My muffins and cake!

My friends and family kept asking me why I haven't been posting lately, and my excuse has been that I've been totally bogged down in midterms, work, and more work. But tonight when I came home at 8:30 pm, I decided I was going to bake some muffins and blog about it!

I came across a "mocha chocolate chip muffin" recipe on All Recipes. The recipe looked amazing, but I didn't have instant coffee- which is what makes the muffins mocha. So I decided to swap the instant coffee with Ovaltine. Also... I forgot to add the egg but guess what? It didn't matter! The results were amazing!

Again, the recipe is based on one I found on All Recipes, but here is what I did with my modifications.

The dough!

1 cup margarine 1 1/4 cups white sugar 1 egg 3 ripe bananas 1 tablespoon Ovaltine The muffin, half way into consumption!

1 teaspoon vanilla extract 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour 1/4 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon baking powder 1 teaspoon baking soda 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips minis

1.	Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
2.	Blend butter or margarine, sugar, banana, ovaltine, and vanilla in your mixer for 2 minutes. Add flour, salt, baking powder, and soda, and mix thoroughly. Add chocolate chips and mix in with a spoon. Spoon mixture into 12 muffin spaces and pour the rest into a pie pan.
3.	Bake for 25 minutes. Cool on wire racks. Admitedly, I would have made all muffins if I didn't run out of muffin papers. But I'm so glad that I ran out because now I have an awesome pie pan full of one giant muffin. I will probably bring it to work tomorrow to share!

raspberry breakfast bars with lemon juice galore

I was looking online for a granola bar recipe to make so that me and my boyfriend, James, had a homemade snack to bring to work. To me, work is always better with a delicious meal packed from home. The Smitten Kitchen had a raspberry breakfast bar recipe so I gave it a shot!

Here's how my bars turned out!

Here is the Smitten Kitchen's recipe:

For the crust and crumb:
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
1 1/4 cups rolled oats
3/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, cut into 1-inch pieces

For the raspberry filling:
1/4 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
1 tablespoon grated lemon zest
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 pound raspberries, fresh or frozen
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled

Make the crust and crumb: Preheat the oven to 350°F. Butter the bottom and sides of a 9-by-13-inch glass or light-colored metal baking pan. Put a long piece of parchment paper in the bottom of the pan, letting the parchment extend up the two short sides of the pan and overhang slightly on both ends. (This will make it easy to remove the bars from the pan after they have baked.) Butter the parchment.

Put the flour, brown sugar, oats, salt, baking powder, baking soda, and cinnamon in a food processor. Pulse in short bursts until combined. Add the butter and pulse until loose crumbs form.

Pulsed the crust in my KitchenAid

Reserve 1 1/2 cup of the mixture and set aside. (Note: The book suggests you reserve one cup only. My gut told me that was too little, and I upped it. I wanted to make sure the top of the raspberries were mostly covered, at least for packing purposes, and was glad I had changed it.) Pour the rest of the mixture into the prepared pan and use your hans or the back of a large wooden spoon to push the crust into an even layer at the bottom of the pan. The crust should touch the sides of the pan. Bake until golden brown, 12 to 15 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack and let the crust cool. Keep the oven on while you make the raspberry filling.

Remember to set aside some crust dough for later

Make the raspberry filling: In a medium bowl, whisk the sugar, lemon zest, cinnamon and flour together. Add the raspberries, lemon juice and butter and use your hands to toss gently until the raspberries are evenly coated.

Assemble and bake the bars: Spread the raspberry filling evenly on top of the cooled crust. Sprinkle the reserved crust mixture evenly on top of the filling.

Bake for 35 to 45 minutes, rotating the pan every 15 minutes, until the top is golden brown and the filling starts to bubble around the edges.

The delicious raspberry lemon-y filling

Transfer to a wire rack to cool completely, then cut into squares and serve. The bars can be stored in the refrigerator in an airtight container for up to two days.

The only thing I did differently is that I used my KitchenAid mixer instead of a food processor and I doubled the amount of lemon juice. Worked for me!

Delightful when served with milk or coffee!

sunday night homemade pizza

Although I am a Chicagoan and deep dish pizza is always my pizza of choice, it's nice to relax at home and make homemade pizza. Sundays are a big day of baking in my house, so why not add some pizza dough to the mixings?

Around 4:00 pm, my boyfriend, James, and I started making pizza dough:

1.25-2 cups bread flour

1/2 tsp sugar

1/2 envelope of instant dry yeast

1 tsp kosher salt

3/4 cup water, warm

2 tsp olive oil

1. Combine the yeast, sugar, and water and stir. Let sit for at least 10 minutes on a warm space (windowsill on a sunny day or on top of an oven on 200 degrees) while the yeast activates.

2. Combine bread floor, salt, and 1 tsp olive oil in the mixer bowl. Using the dough hook mixer attachment on your KitchenAid mixer, keep on speed 2, and mix. Slowly add the yeast mixture. Add a little bit of flour if your dough is too sticky. Add a little bit of water if dough it too dry.

3. Rub the other 1 tsp of olive oil around in a medium bowl. Put the dough into the bowl, knead out any air, then let sit for at least an hour. When the dough has doubled in size, it's ready to bake!

The pizza dough recipe above makes one 14 inch pizza. For 1 pizza, you will need:

1 ball of pizza dough

2-3 cups of crushed tomatoes (more if you like)

1 tbs oregano

1 pinch salt

1 large bag of mozzarella shredded cheese

Toppings optional:

1/4 onion, chopped fine

3/4 cup sausage cut into fourths

1. Optional: Sautée the onion in a fry pan in a little bit of olive oil- just enough to coat the bottom of the pan. After 3-4 minutes, add the sausage. Cook on medium heat for 5-7 minutes.

2. Spread a little bit of cornmeal or olive oil onto the 14 inch baking sheet so that the pizza won't stick too much. Spread the pizza dough onto the baking sheet so that it is even all around.

3. Spread the crushed tomatoes evenly on top of the dough. Sprinkle oregano evenly on the tomato sauce. Spread 3/4 of the mozzarella cheese on top the sauce. 

4. Optional: Add the sausage and onion onto 1/2 of the pizza. Then sprinkle more cheese on top.

5. Cook at 400 degrees fahrenheit for 15-20 minutes until the crust is golden brown.

6. Let cool for at least 5 minutes before cutting the pizza. Then, enjoy!

I like to cut my pizza into big squares and enjoy it with a beer. I found it to be the perfect dinner to wrap up my weekend!

monday morning blueberry banana bread

Blueberry banana bread, cooling in the pan

I like to make banana bread once a week when my bananas are nice and ripe. There's not many people in my office who like to cook or bake, so I like to bring in a treat on Monday mornings that we can all enjoy. And of course, I always make a little extra for me and my boyfriend!

The recipe that I used was very easy, so long as you have a KitchenAid mixer! I found this particular recipe on allrecipes.com. Here it is:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup shortening
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 medium ripe bananas, mashed
• 1 cup fresh blueberries
• 
  

• Directions

  1. In a bowl, combine the flour, baking soda and salt. In a large mixing bowl, cream the shortening and sugar. Add eggs and vanilla; mix well. Beat in bananas. Gradually add the dry ingredients, beating just until combined. Fold in blueberries.
  2. Pour into three greased 5-3/4-in. x 3-in. x 2-in. loaf pans. Bake at 350 degrees F for 30-35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes before removing from pans to wire racks.

  
  

  The recipe said that it would make 3 loafs but I made one very full loaf and 4 medium sized muffins. The muffins I ate for breakfast with my boyfriend, James. And loaf came to work with me. Everyone loved it!

  
  

  

  Blueberry Banana Muffins