Banana and Peanut Butter Muffins

OMG I'M BACK!!

I think I officially win the worst-blogger-ever award. It took a LONG time to move and finally get somewhat settled in, and while there are still a few boxes to unpack and pictures to hang, I am happy to say that my house is definitely coming along nicely. And as you can see, I have an amazing new kitchen.

Complete with a busted pipe and hole in the ceiling.

The joys of home ownership! (This has since been fixed, and my shockingly handy boyfriend has already patched the hole! But needless to say, it caused some mild headaches.)

So for the first time in a long time, I had a little bit of time to bake! I decided to try the most delicious sounding banana and peanut butter muffins. For this you need:

2 and 1/3 cups flour
1 and 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/3 cup butter
1/4 cup peanut butter
1/2 cups sugar
2 large eggs
1 cup milk
2 ripe bananas, mashed

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees and line your muffin pan with cupcake liners and set aside. This recipe makes about 18 muffins, so if you have a 12 cup muffin pan like I do, you will have to make a couple batches.

Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl, and then set aside.

Beat the butter (which I microwaved for a few seconds first to make softer - lesson learned from the coconut meltaways), with the peanut butter (which, by the way, is impossible to know if you have 1/4 a cup of, since it sticks to the measuring cup and you have to just spoon a bunch in, although I guess there's no real fear of too much peanut butter, ever) in a large bowl with an electric mixer until smooth. Already delicious. Add sugar and beat until light and fluffy and even more delicious. Beat in eggs, then alternately beat in flour mixture, milk, and bananas with mixer on low speed until blended.

Evenly spoon the batter into the prepared pan(s) to make 18 muffins, and carefully fill the empty cups with water.

Bake for 20 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes and then remove from pan to cool completely.

A couple things about these muffins - first of all, I think if I make them again, I will use more peanut butter. They were good but kind of had a generic muffin flavor and the peanut butter was a little more subtle than I wanted it to be. Second, for some reason they were like 90% better the next day than they were that night. So if you make them, I recommend waiting until the next day to eat or serve them. Maybe the flavors need time to settle in. Or something.

Anyway I'm happy to be back to blogging and hope to start updating once a week again. Hope everyone is enjoying the last few days of summer!

Cheeseburger Pie and Brownies

This past week, I decided to make dinner AND dessert - a grammy double whammy!

For the meal, I made cheeseburger pie. For this, you need:

1 pound ground beef (I used ground chicken)
1 cup chopped onion
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
2 eggs
1/2 cup pancake mix
1 cup milk

First heat the oven to 400 degrees and grease a 9 inch pie plate. Then cook the beef (or turkey or chicken) and the onion until the meat is brown(ish, for the chicken its more of a light tan). Drain, and then spread in a pie plate. The sprinkle the salt and the cheese on top.

In a bowl, mix the rest of the ingredients until blended. Pour this mixture into the pie pan.

Bake for 25 minutes. When I took it out of the oven I was surprised it was very much like a pie - I had expected it to have to kind of be scooped out with a spoon, but you cut it into pieces and served it. It had a kind of quiche like consistency, and it tasted very breakfast-y. It was delicious!

For dessert, I made walnut brownies. For these, you need:

1 cup butter
2 cups sugar
2 cups flour
2/3 cup cocoa
1 tspn vanilla
4 eggs
2 cups walnuts

First put the butter into a 13x9 inch pan and melt it in the oven (which should be set at 300 degrees). At the same time, mix the sugar, flour, and cocoa. Take the butter out of the oven and pour it into the mixture, and also add the vanilla and eggs.

Mix well, and then stir in the walnuts.

Pour into the already buttered pan and bake for 30 minutes. Then allow to cool before eating.

These were so simple and amazing. We ate them warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top, which I highly recommend.

Next weekend I will be away at Penn State for vacation, where I will be eating some macaroni and cheese and grilled stickies, and other foods that I'm sure Grammy would approve of. Look out for another recipe when I return!

Coconut Meltaways

Well I was going to make brownies, but then when I turned the brownie recipe over, there was one for coconut meltaways, which seemed way more interesting. We will save the brownies for another time!

You need:

1 stick of butter
1/2 cup vegetable oil
3 tbspns sugar
2 cups flour
1 cup angel flake coconut

Combine all the ingredients except for the coconut.



This seemed more difficult than it should have been, because everything was so dry. It didn't really mix, it just formed little clumps. Maybe I should have melted the butter beforehand? But you wouldn't think that would make this big of a difference. In any case, afterwards you add the coconut and mix well, and then roll into balls and place on a cookie sheet. When you actually picked up the mixture and squished it in your hand, that's when it finally all mixed together. Flatten the balls with a fork.



Bake the cookies at 350 degrees for 15-20 minutes.



I did 20 minutes, and the bottom rack came out a little burnt, but not too bad. When you take them out of the oven, sift powdered sugar onto the tops of the warm cookies.

The taste was complicated. At first they seem bland, unless you get a good chunk of coconut and then it's delicious. The aftertaste though is excellent. I feel like the recipe was missing something but I don't know what. I mean, I will still totally eat them.




Next week maybe we will take a shot at those brownies!

Why Worry?

My mom gave me a bunch of new recipes she found in a photo album. One of them is for my most favorite dessert - rainbow cookies - so I am pretty super pumped about that one (although it looks really complicated). I was looking through them all tonight, and saw that hiding in there with all the cookies and cobblers was a clipping from an old newspaper. Kind of like a poem, and it was called: Why Worry?

There are only two things to worry about -
Either you are well, or you are sick.
If you are well, then there is nothing to worry about.
But if you are sick, there are two things to worry about -
Either you will get well, or you will die.
If you get well, then there is nothing to worry about.
But if you die, there are only two things to worry about.
Either you go to heaven or to hell.
If you go to heaven, there is nothing to worry about.
If you go to hell, you'll be so darn busy shaking hands with old friends,
You won't have time to worry.

It made me smile to think she liked that little poem so much, she cut it out and put it in this photo album, who knows how many years ago.

This weekend, I am going to try a brownie recipe from the album!

Biscuit Calzone

You will need:

1 package (tube) of refrigerated biscuits
1 egg
1/2 cup cottage cheese
1/2 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
1/2 cup cooked ham (I used pepperoni instead)
Crushed red pepper to taste (I used a real chopped up red pepper)
1 egg yolk beaten with 1 tablespoon milk

The directions say to separate the biscuits and roll them out, and I think the idea was to make 8 separate mini calzones. Instead, I mashed half of them together and rolled it out flat to make the bottom of the calzone, and did the same with the other half to make the top. So instead of 8 tiny ones, we made 1 giant one.

Rolling the biscuits out was way hard. It was kind of elastic-y, and when you rolled it flat it would just bounce back to its smaller size. But after I had them both a decent size, I beat the egg slightly in a medium sized bowl, and then stirred in the cottage cheese and mozzarella.

Then, I coated the bottom biscuit with the pepperoni, then this cheese mixture, and then the red pepper that I had cut up. I put the other biscuit layer on top, and pulled the bottom edges over and folded them together. It looked just like a pie.

Before you put it in the oven (oh, which by the way should be preheated to 425 degrees), you brush the top with the egg yolk and milk mixture, and then cut small x shapes in the top to allow steam to escape (and then it looks even more like a pie). I put it in a pan that I had lined with foil, and baked it for 15 minutes.



It was life changing. So delicious and easy, and I realized you could put absolutely anything inside and make a meal out of it (or more like four meals).



I actually just made another one today that had tomato, basil, and mozzarella (picture below), and I plan to make another one this weekend with chicken, broccoli, and cheese. The biscuits are so sweet and flaky and amazing. This was definitely one of my favorites so far.



Next week, I haven't decided yet, so it'll be a surprise!

Chicken and Broccoli Casserole

It’s been a busy couple of weeks; I work at a college and it was graduation time so that pretty much consumed my entire life for a little while there. I did manage to cook one dinner, but I tried to find the easiest one I could, and I came across this chicken and broccoli casserole (similar to the crab and broccoli one I did a little while back, with a few small differences). This recipe came from someone named Linda Reilly.

You need: 1 lb chicken cutlets, 1 box of broccoli spears, 1 can of cream of mushroom soup, 8 slices of American cheese, 1 large sliced onion, salt, pepper, and paprika.

First, line the pan with the sliced broccoli spears, and place the chicken on top, and then the onions on top of that.

Then, cover with cheese, and pour the soup over top. Sprinkle with salt, pepper, and paprika (no amount was given, so just do it to flavor).

Now it says to bake it for 30 minutes, but it doesn't say what temperature. I tried it at 350, and when I took it out the chicken wasn't cooked all the way through yet, even though I had spiced it up into cubes. So I would recommend 45 minutes to an hour.

It tasted great, with a comfort food kind of feeling to it. And it was so simple, I could definitely imagine making this again many times in the future.

We are also in the process of buying a home, which is exciting and anxiety producing all at once. The one we are looking at right now has an enormous kitchen, which would allow for all sorts of new cooking adventures.

I’ve also been having to deal with my grammy’s house being sold this past month. It is painful to think of it not being in my family anymore, not spending holidays eating shrimp cocktail in the kitchen, taking walks through the woods, or feeding deer off of the front porch. My pop pop built the house, and it felt like home the minute you walked in, even if you were a stranger.

This has been especially difficult for my mom, who has held up quite well under the pressure. A death in the family is always sure to cause conflict and tears, and she has been graceful through it all. I wish I could do more to help. But the most I can do is bake her a cake and offer her an ear when she needs it.

And maybe in my new house, I will put cushions on the dining room chairs and then immediately rip them off and throw them on the floor, a favorite activity of mine when I was a child at my grammy’s house for who knows what reason, in memory of the house. At least we have these memories. And maybe another family will get to create some of their own in that house.

Next week - biscuit calzone!

Cherry Bread

Still no spaces, ugh. For cherry bread, you need: 2 1/2 cups flour, 1/2 cup sugar, 3 tsp baking powder, 1 tsp salt (I completely forgot to include this), 1/2 tsp baking soda, 1 cup chopped nuts (I used pecans and walnuts), 2 eggs, 1/4 cup oil, 1/2 cup brown sugar, 1 cup buttermilk (I used 2 percent milk, because I had some for something else I was making), 1/4 cup cherry juice, 1/2 cup marashino cherries. First heat the oven to 350 degrees and grease and flour a loaf pan. Mix all the ingredients except for the cherries together.

Thank god for this mixer. Then you fold in the cherries, and then pour into the loaf pan.

Recently my uncle told me a story about my dad always eating all of the marashino cherries they would have in the house. My grandmother (my dad's mom, not my grammy) said she always forgot they had gotten then, and just thought they were out. When they got a new jar, my dad would eat the entire thing right away. I ate a couple right out of the jar myself while baking this. It's in my genes.

Cook for an hour, and then remove from the pan immediately, and place on rack to cool.

The loaf should then be wrapped in foil and stored in the fridge. First I had a slice, and it was delicious. A fun, different option instead of banana bread. The only thing now is that I have all this cherry juice - I had to buy a giant container when I only needed a quarter cup. Better get some vodka. Next time - chicken and broccoli casserole!