September 19, 2012
Caramel & Cinnamon Banana Oat Bars
I don’t know what it is about bananas but I always feel compelled to buy a huge bunch of them despite the fact that most of the time I eat three or four while the rest sit there and rot. But then I wind up standing in front of the bananas again at the grocery store and telling myself that this time I’ll really eat them all. THIS TIME. I’ll eat two a day! I swear! Yeah, right.
But now, I finally have a good excuse for letting those bananas blacken and it’s all thanks to this recipe. I’d been looking for something with oats that was healthy but still, you know, actually tasted good so when I saw a recipe that had oats and used up all my overripe bananas it seemed perfect. But I still wanted it to be healthier so I did some tests. Can I use whole wheat flour? Can I use less butter? Luckily, the answer to both of those was yes. In fact, it turns out you can completely substitute coconut oil for butter and it tastes just as good while giving you lots more health benefits.
September 12, 2012
Cheesy Broccoli and Corn Chowder
I’ve said here many times that Fall is my favorite season. Summer can never be over fast enough for me. Usually, I’m ready to declare it Fall as of September 1st despite what the actual weather or calendar says. But this year is different. It’s weird. I almost feel like I’m cheating on Fall when I say this, but: I’m not ready for Summer to be over.
It’s not so much that this has been a great summer, in fact it’s been a pretty crappy summer filled with record high temps that chased me back into the safety of my air-conditioned apartment. No, the thing I’m regretting is that I missed out on all of the great produce. Looking back through my archives of last summer, I’m reminded of my Peach Dumplings and Blueberry Donut Muffins and Cantaloupe Pie. Because of the move to Nashville and my blogging hiatus I wasn’t able to cook or bake much at all this summer and I’m sad about that.
September 5, 2012
French Toast Waffles
Has this ever happened to you: you see someone eating something on TV or in the movies and all of sudden you just have a huge craving for what they’re eating? This summer I’ve been rewatching one of my favorite TV shows, Gilmore Girls — Remember? Lauren Graham? Rory? Stars Hallow? The dear, departed WB? — and this has become a major problem for me. If you don’t remember or never watched the show, let me just tell you: those Girls can eat. A lot. But they live in magical TV land where people can eat 20 pounds of junk food a day and not gain weight or have any kind of serious health problems. Sigh. I want to live in that world! Sadly, I don’t so there’s been a lot of watching Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel eating delicious things as my stomach growls grumpily.
But some things you just can’t shake. As I was leafing through a new cookbook these French Toast Waffles jumped right out at me. It’s like the perfect Gilmore Girl breakfast: two of their favorite things (and mine, too, of course) in one! This is …
August 28, 2012
What I did on my Summer Vacation…plus Lemon Mousse with Strawberry Compote
The mousse is very simple mixture of lemon curd (which only takes about 15 minutes to make and can be made up to a week in advance) and whipped cream. So simple! I make a big batch of lemon curd at the beginning of the week, then when dessert time rolls around I whip up a little cream and mix in a few heaping spoonfuls of curd. In 5 minutes you have a smooth-silky-light-fluffy-sweet-tart lemony treat. Bonus: the extra lemon curd is fantastic in yogurt, slathered on cake or muffins or just eaten by the spoonful!
And be sure to try this with Meyer Lemons when they’re in season again next year. I was lucky enough to find Meyer lemons very late in the season and this was one of the first things I made with them.
April 26, 2012
Peanut Butter and Jelly Streusel Muffins
I’ve been making an effort to eat breakfast every morning. This is pretty difficult for several reasons: I’m not a morning person and even pouring a bowl of cereal can be too much to handle some days. Also, I’m just not very hungry in the mornings. A cup of coffee is more than enough to fill me up. For these reasons I have to cheat by making myself a “dessert” in the mornings. Basically, something that’s so good, I can’t pass it up. Since they can be made ahead of time, muffins are usually my go-to treat. I’ve made a lot of muffins in my time and they usually fall under delicious but unhealthy or healthy but dry and/or boring. With these peanut butter muffins I feel like I finally found the perfect compromise of healthy but still delicious.
These muffins are packed to gills with nutritious ingredients. They’re made with whole wheat flour and oats and they don’t have any processed sugar (though if you don’t have maple sugar you can use white sugar instead). The recipe doesn’t contain eggs, so the muffins can be made dairy-free with soy …
April 19, 2012
Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip “Soft Batch” Cookies
If you couldn’t tell from previous posts I have quite a long list of store-bought-food-I-want-to-learn-to-make-at-home. After I cleared off Spaghetti-Os, Soft Batch cookies were next on the list. They’re probably my second favorite kind of store-bought cookie (because nothing is better than Oreos). I like them so that I can only ever buy the small packs that you get from gas stations because I can’t trust myself around an entire package. If you’re unfamiliar with these cookies, they’re basically what they sound like: extremely soft and chewy chocolate chip cookies. It’s sort of like eating cookie dough but without the threat of getting sick since they’re baked.
I bookmarked this recipe for Soft Batch cookies a while back and finally got around to trying it out earlier this month. That’s when I realized that although I love the texture of those cookies, they don’t really have much flavor other than the chocolate chips. So I decided to change the recipe a bit and add one of my favorite ingredients: peanut butter! I had to do several tests (Is Cookie Recipe Tester a real job? Because I …
April 11, 2012
Mini Bean and Corn Tamale Pies
When it comes to dinner, Mexican food is my big weakness. I don’t go out to eat too much anymore, especially compared to five plus years ago when Brandon and I dined out more days than we ate at home, but I can’t give up my Mexican food. I go to my favorite Mexican restaurant at least every other week, sometimes more often. Whenever we move to a new town, finding a Mexican restaurant with a decent chimichanga and good queso blanco is my number one priority. And there have been some places (*cough* Jacksonville) where that meant trying out pretty much every Mexican restaurant in town.
I know I shouldn’t eat at the Mexican restaurant so much, though. It’s probably one of unhealthiest meals you can have. So whenever I see a Mexican-ish recipe in one of my many low fat/light cookbooks I always try it in the hopes of finding something satisfying that’s not totally unhealthy. Most of the time I’m disappointed. I got this recipe from Martha Stewart’s new Light cookbook
