Banana Streusel Muffins

I have a love-hate relationship with bananas. I love the taste of them, love how well they go with peanut butter, and I love that they are a healthy, easy to grab snack. The thing I don't love so much about them is that when I eat them raw, they give me a stomach ache. It's tragic really. Now, despite this, I keep buying them. I must be a glutton for punishment. I keep finding myself with a small bunch of them in my grocery cart, or sitting next to me in the car on my way to work, just willing me to eat them. So I will get about two bananas into my purchase and then tell myself not to eat any more so as to avoid the stomach ache, which results in those poor bananas going bad on my counter.

What to do you ask? I have discovered a solution. If I cook the bananas prior to eating them, no stomach ache. Unfortunately, this will probably negate the health benefits, because all I want to put them in is cake and banana bread and muffins, which all have mucho amounts of butter and sugar, but at least those poor things don't go to waste. I am really just trying to look out for the bananas, you know?

These muffins provided the perfect vessel for my abundance of bananas. They are no ordinary banana muffin though. I topped them with a banana chip walnut streusel to take them up an extra notch. With the hint of cinnamon and slightly crunchy topping, these have provided me with delightful breakfasts this week. They are both filling and easy to grab on the go, but the best part is that they are so incredibly quick to make.

Banana Walnut Muffins with Banana Chip Streusel
makes 12 muffins
adapted from Jenny Steffins

Streusel:

1/2 cup flour
1/3 cup brown sugar
2 tablespoons melted butter
2 tablespoons banana chips, chopped finely
2 tablespoons walnuts, chopped finely
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
pinch salt

Muffins:

2 large very ripe bananas
1/2 cup sugar
6 tablespoons butter, melted
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line a 12-cup muffin pan with paper liners.

Make the topping. Mix the flour, sugar, walnuts, banana chips, cinnamon, and salt together in a small bowl. Add the melted butter and mix until well combined. Set aside.

Peel the bananas and place them in the bowl of  stand mixer fitter with the whisk attachment. Mix at low speed until bananas are mashed. Add the sugar and mix on medium-high speed for a few minutes until a bit frothy and sugar beings to dissolve.

Mix in the butter, egg, and vanilla, and mix until well incorporated, scraping down the sides a few times. Add the flour, baking soda, and salt and mix just until incorporated. Remove bowl from mixer and add the walnuts, folding them in with a spatula. Divide between 12 muffin cups and top with 1-2 tablespoons of streusel.

Bake for 18-20 minutes, until muffins spring back with pressed gently with your finger and are golden brown.

Let cool in pan for a few minutes, then remove and cool completely on a wire rack. Store in an airtight container at room temp for a few days, or freeze.

Tough Decisions & Tender Biscuits

I have been sitting in front of a blank post form for about 30 minutes now. I think I have started a first sentence at least ten times and promptly deleted the boring, meaningless words. Maybe it's the day-quil giving me serious writing block or, it could be all the butter I have consumed in the last few days.

The writers block and lack of posting in the past few weeks is more likely due to the slightly drastic changes my life has taken in 2011. It is almost February and all of the sudden I find myself once again with one job. I officially quit my design job (you know the one that I was laid off from, and was rehired to, all in the past 15 months) after a lot of pushing for some commitment and security, which turns out was all in vain. Hard decisions had to be made. What was best for my soul, my sanity, and my career? Was it better to take a part time job in a environment that wasn't healthy but where I was using my degree, or is it better to keep my job as a food server where my managers care about my well being and my sense of job security?

This dilemma was something I had been struggling with for about 3-4 months, but the issue was pushed front and center when I decided to enroll in a baking and pastry certificate program here in Chicago. This is something I have wanted to do for a long long time, and I finally decided to take the plunge and go for it. I am three weeks in, and besides a long and boring weekend sanitation class, it is everything I hoped it would be and more. We have made scones and biscuits, focaccia, challah, french baguettes, and other goodies. I have learned so much in the little time I have been in school and can hardly wait for what the rest of the year will bring.

I have come to feel really good about the tough choice I felt I had to make, and cannot wait to be able to put all my positive energy into school and the many baking jobs I have lined up for the spring. So, let's kick off what will probably be a long string of baked goods here on the blog with some delicious buttermilk biscuits. I have never made biscuits before, and for some reason had gotten it in my head that they were a difficult thing to make. I don't know what I was thinking, they are incredibly easy, and so fast. Most importantly though, they are buttery and flaky and taste amazing.

Buttermilk Biscuits
adapted from Professional Baking by Wayne Gisslen


2 lbs. 8 oz. all purpose flour (if you have them available, use half bread flour and half pastry flour for better results, but for the everyday home cook, AP still produces an excellent biscuit)
.75 oz. salt
2 ounces sugar
1.5 oz baking powder
.4 oz baking soda
14 oz. unsalted butter, cold and cubed into 1/2 inch pieces (plus some extra melted for brushing)
1 lb 10 oz buttermilk

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, salt, sugar, baking powder, and baking soda. Sprinkle the cold butter over the dry mixture and with your fingers, break up the butter into smaller pieces to evenly distribute throughout flour (you can also use a pastry cutter, but using your fingers is way more fun). For flakier biscuits, do this until you have chickpea sized pieces, in other words, leave fairly big chunks of butter in your mixture. Just walk away, stop touching the butter (I know it's hard). For more mealy textured biscuits, you can break up the butter until it is in very teeny pieces, but I recommend the layered flaky goodness.

Add the buttermilk to your flour and butter mixture and mix with a spoon until dough starts to come together, then get in their with your hands and form the dough into a rough ball. Turn out onto a clean, lightly floured surface, and knead just a few times until you form a cohesive dough.

Gently press into a rectangular shape, and roll out with a rolling pin until about 3/4 inch thick, being sure to keep your surface underneath the dough floured to prevent sticking. Cut into 12-16 rectangles, depending on how big you would like your biscuits, and place on a parchment or silicone lined baking sheet. You can either keep them together in a tight rectangle for soft interior sides, or spread them out for a evenly baked, crispier biscuit. Brush tops lightly with a bit of melted butter. Bake for 15-20 minutes, until biscuits are golden brown and have puffed up.

Cashew - Zucchini Bread

Fall is starting to settle in. I know that mostly because I spent most of my three day weekend cooking and baking. To me there is nothing better on a chilly Saturday afternoon than to listen to A Prairie Home Companion on NPR, pour myself a glass of wine, and cook something delicious.

One of my recent cooking goals has been to utilize all the cookbooks I have and the magazines I am subscribed to more often. I usually go straight for the Internet, whether it be Food Network or Epicurious, but I have so many untapped resources at my disposal, I felt like I was wasting them.

So this weekend I went into the latest issue of Food & Wine Magazine with a mission, and found a yummy looking zucchini-yogurt bread recipe. I happened to have a zucchini in the fridge and some leftover plain yogurt from curry night last week. I realized I had every single ingredient except for the walnuts that it called for. Since I really did not want to go to the store and spend 7 bucks on a tub of walnuts, I took a gander into my pantry. Lo and behold, I had almost an entire jar of cashews. Ah, a sigh of relief. A nut substitution never hurt anything. Plus reading a recipe and knowing you have such a well stocked pantry that you don't have to brave the rain and cold weather to run to the store, is an AMAZING feeling. Trust me on this.

So here it is:

Cashew-Yogurt-Zucchini Bread

adapted (barely) from Food & Wine Magazine

Makes one 9-inch loaf, this would probably be enough batter for 12 muffins, but I haven't attempted that yet. If anyone tries it that way, please let me know how it turned out!

1 cup cashews - coarsely chopped

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 medium zucchini, coarsely grated (about 1 cup)

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar

2 large eggs

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1/2 cup plain yogurt

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Butter and flour a 9 X 5 loaf pan. (do this very well, when I turned my loaf out to cool, the bottom stuck a little and only the top half came out. Luckily, it was still really really hot. I quickly stuck them back together and they seemed to almost bake back into a cohesive loaf).

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, the baking powder, the baking soda, and the salt.

In another bowl, whisk together the eggs, sugar, vegetable oil, and yogurt.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry and whisk lightly just until incorporated. Add the grated zucchini and cashews, and mix until evenly dispersed.

Pour batter into loaf pan, and bake for about 1 hour and 15 minutes. Mine ended up taking about an hour and a half, just make sure to do the toothpick test. I use bamboo skewers since they are really long, and I have less chance of burning myself. Stick a skewer or toothpick into the center of the loaf, and if it comes out clean, it is done.

Let the bread rest in the pan on a rack for at least 30 minutes before trying to take it out of the pan. This was my mistake, I got impatient, it just smelled so good.

This bread was really good, if not a bit bland. I suppose that's what you get for making a semi-healthy quick bread, with no butter and just a small amount of sugar. Next time I would probably add a citrus component, maybe some lemon or orange zest to give it that little extra something. It was great with some butter or homemade jam spread on top.