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Tuesday 17 April 2012

Muffin anyone?

I have been going in to my internship for the past two weeks and it came to my attention that I have been lacking in the breakfast department. I have been told I am a champion sleeper, my roommates can confirm this title, I could quite happily sleep my days away but sadly I know that this just isn't the way the world works. Getting up at the crack of dawn to ensure that I get to my internship in a timely manner (I am always worried I'll be late so I end up arriving 15 minutes early) leaves me with little time to make a filling breakfast in the morning. If only I had something I could quickly grab on the way out of the house in the morning that I could munch on in the car...

MUFFINS!

I made banana muffins just over a week ago and they were gone in an instant. We are a big banana family so we often have some that are overly ripe and perfect for making banana muffins. So I whipped up another batch knowing they would make the perfect breakfast this week.

My mom has had this recipe in her recipe box for as long as I can remember. She got it from one of her friends and it has been our go to banana bread/muffin recipe. I have tried many different banana breads, both homemade and store bought, and none of them even come close to being as delicious as this recipe is.

You can easily turn this batter into muffins or delicious banana bread. You can add different extra ingredients to it, such as sprinkling in a few chocolate chips. This is my favourite thing to add and I have perfected how to properly add them.

If you mix the chocolate chips in with the batter they all end up sinking to the bottom which is not ideal in a muffin. If you sprinkle them on top before you put them in the oven you run into the same problem. So how can we solve this dilemma? If you take the muffins out of the oven 10 minutes before they are done and sprinkle the chocolate chips on top then, not only do they sink down just enough to stick into the batter so they do not roll off while eating, they do not all sink to the bottom of the muffin!

So I hope you try out the recipe and enjoy as much as I do!

Recipe.


Friday 13 April 2012

Back to Baking

First I want to apologize for being absent for so long, you know how it is when you are in school and you have all your final assignments due and exams. You get busy and you never have time for anything you really like to do, such as baking. I know! I almost succumbed and bought store bought cookies, I was craving something sweet, but I refrained. I knew that things would die down and I would have time to make something really good on the long weekend.

So what did I make? Well first I made cinnamon buns, but I deemed that not good enough for you all yet. Then I made banana muffins so that my family and I would have something for breakfast this week... the muffins were gone in 2 days. Kind of defeats the purpose family, just saying that maybe you shouldn't eat them so fast. Although I made these delicious creation I still felt that you deserved something better, something more exciting, something more colourful!

In comes sugar cookies frosted with purple and yellow royal icing! Sweet and delicious without being overwhelmingly sweet. They were a lot of effort I am not going to lie, and really I could have spent wayyyyy more time icing them to perfection, but they were mainly for me and well I don't care how pretty the cookies look so long as they are yummy!!!
At the end you will be able to print the recipe but here are my tips for baking this recipe:

  1. Chill the cookies after you have rolled and cut out your shapes before baking. This short time in the fridge will prevent them from spreading so much while they bake that they lose their shape.
  2. When icing your cookies have some stiffer icing first to pipe along the borders of your cookie to provide a border. Then you can water down the icing so that it is runnier and spreads nicely and makes that nice shiny smooth cookie! Here is a video tutorial I found for all of you that explains and shows it a bit better! Plus it shows some more ideas on how to your ice cookies! 

To print the recipe click here.
For my written tips on how to ice cookies by flooding click here.