March Recipe! Double Chocolate Banana Muffins

I saw this recipe for Double Chocolate Banana Bread on Smitten Kitchen and immediately ran to the kitchen to make some. I obviously love Deb's recipes since my January new recipe was hers as well. Anyway, it turns out I am running way low on a lot of my baking ingredients, so I'm lucky that I had just enough of everything to pull this one together.

I threw in an extra fourth banana for good measure and included the optional cinnamon. I also only added about a half cup of semisweet chocolate chips because that was all I had on hand. I think it turned out chocolate-y enough anyway, so I may just use half in the future when I make these again. Here is a picture of the glistening, fudgy batter:

I don't have loaf pans in my apartment currently, so I opted to make them into muffins (12 count)! Using Deb's suggestion from the comments, I kept the oven at 350 degrees and baked for 20 minutes. I did fill them up almost all the way instead of 2/3, but they turned out great anyway! I did fill them pretty unevenly as well, oops! It was getting a bit late..

I think that these hit the right balance of being indulgent (with the chocolate-y goodness) without getting overboard. Love it!

As you can see from the picture above, I left some chunks of banana. Mmmm. 

A warm muffin with a nice cold, glass of milk in my favorite mustachioed mug made for a perfect after dinner treat :)

-jennkay

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Inspiration! I'll take my cupcake in a jar, please!

One of my friends has gotten addicted to the show Shark Tank. I've never watched it myself, but it sounds like a reality competition for entrepreneurs. Anyway, one of the businesses on the show has a cupcake stall in Quincy Market, right here in Boston! When she asked me to go with her, how could I say no? On the way there, my friend explained that they bake cupcakes in jars! I love jars, and I love baking, so it sounds perfect. Here are a couple of pics we snapped at the stall.

The girl working at the stall was super sweet and suggested some flavors that we might like. As you can tell from that last picture of the shelf, many flavors were sold out or getting close to it. I ended up buying chocolate for my roommate and salted caramel for myself. We ended up going upstairs in Quincy Market to sit and enjoy these cupcakes.

The tea was from another stall in Quincy Market. The salted caramel was suuper sweet and not very salty. I think American baked goods are in general a bit too sweet for my tastes. I had to leave most of it for a later snack, but it wasn't too shabby. Plus, everything tastes better coming straight out of a jar! This experience inspired me to want to do something similar in the future. Perhaps as a gift for friends or something along those lines.

On an unrelated note, the Body Worlds Vital exhibition was in Quincy Market. We saw the posters and the line while we were munching on our cupcakes and decided to go ourselves. It was a pretty cool experience, especially because my friend recently went through med school and had a lot to say about the displays. I think that the exhibition travels around to big cities, so if there's one near you, I recommend going! There are student discounts for tickets and I overheard something about a Groupon deal as well.

-jennkay

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Inspiration! Tea Parties Everywhere!

Ok, so maybe the title is a bit of an exaggeration, but I have had a couple of tea party inspirations recently. Let me first say that I am obsessed with tea. No, but really. In the past year, I have bought three teapots, a tea tumbler, and over a hundred different teas (mostly sample sizes, but still a lot!). If you love tea, I suggest checking out Steepster, where my addiction became full blown (my cupboard here). 

I also occasionally browse the tea subreddit on Reddit. This one user posted pictures of her own birthday tea party and it was amazing (link to album). Mini sandwiches and pastries galore! And amazing teas to pick from. I just couldn't believe that she did it all herself. Because I already love baking and I love tea, hosting a tea party seems like a perfect combo of my two most current obsessions. 

Secondly, I went to my first proper afternoon tea at a restaurant inside the Boston Public Library. There were finger sandwiches, scones, pastries, and of course, TEA! I always wanted to try Harney & Sons tea, and they served it there, so it was perfect. Here are a few pics I awkwardly snapped of the room while others weren't looking.

There was a lovely statue in the courtyard directly outside. It started to snow lightly, and it created this wonderful little winter wonderland for our viewing pleasure. Next up, the tea! I ordered the Japanese Sencha (pictured below) and my mother (who was visiting from sunny California) ordered Dragon Pearl Jasmine. The little white teapots they had were the same as the green one that I have at home! Instead of using the infuser inside the teapot, they had strainers for our cups. As a result, my sencha became a little too bitter, so I shared some of the jasmine tea. 

If the tea didn't get so bitter toward the end, I would love to use those strainers at home. They just added that classy feeling toward the whole experience. As we were enjoying our teas, the finger sandwiches and pastries came out!

Even though many of the pastries and finger sandwiches didn't taste all that great, it still inspired me to someday hold a little tea party with perhaps 3-5 different little pastries or sandwiches. Unfortunately, one of my tea-loving friends moved out of the country today, so I'll have to recruit/convert some more tea lovers to do this with me! Anyone want to join? ;)

-jennkay

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A Very Belated January Recipe Post

I am ever the procrastinator, and I guess that's already well apparent on this blog. Oops! Well, as I mentioned in my intro post, I wanted to learn a new recipe every month this year. I will kick off with my January creations: homemade pizza & roasted brussel sprouts on the side. 

While I have always loved baking, I was (and still am) intimidated by yeast. The only successful yeast-containing recipe I've ever dabbled with was soft baked pretzels (yuuuum). Anyway, I wanted to make the dough for the pizza myself, so I looked for a simple, no-knead recipe. Enter Smitten Kitchen. I love Deb and have gifted her cookbook to many of my foodie friends. I used her aptly named "lazy pizza dough" recipe (link). 

I added a couple cloves of minced garlic to the overnight version, and it worked like a charm! I split up the dough into quarters (for personal sized pizzas), wrapped three of them in plastic wrap for the freezer, and hand-stretched one of them out into a crude circle. Instead of continuing with Deb's margherita pizza recipe, I added some sliced tomatoes, mozzarella, parmesan, and slightly sauteed mushrooms. After sticking it into an oven for ~12-13 minutes, I pulled out this creation:

I was actually quite pleased with how it turned out. The dough was chewy enough, yet the crust had that nice outer crunch that I love. I will definitely be playing around with different toppings. I'm thinking a white pizza with spinach? 

So I was being ambitious about this whole new recipe thing and decided to prepare brussel sprouts for the first time on the same night! I was inspired by a salad I had at a BBQ joint that had the most delicious roasted brussel sprouts (not to mention the wonderful nuts in it, too). The very next day, I bought brussel sprouts from the store. After a quick Googling session, I picked Ina Garten's recipe to work off of (link).

A couple of notes and tweaks. First, I halved the brussel sprouts before drizzling olive oil and sea salt. I also prepared them in my toaster oven since my real oven was busy making pizza. Not sure if that is why, but the brussel sprouts were done waay earlier than 35-40 minutes. More like 20 minutes? Here is a close-up of the result!

Yum! As you can see, a couple bits were a bit burnt, but that's because I neglected to toss them around halfway through. 

Anyway, I declare January a success! Unfortunately, February flew by so quickly and with guests staying over and a plethora of other excuses, I didn't get to try out a new recipe. I did, however, try two of them in January and will try to do two more in March to make up for it! I've already got plenty of recipes bookmarked to pick from, I will just have to be more persistent about making the time for these adventures. 

-jennkay

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