Recipe: "Healthier" Bran Muffins

Here's another muffin recipe for you.  Sorry for the lack of real juicy posts lately--I know some of you, or maybe all of you, could care less about the recipes I come up with in my spare time.  I should probably stop baking because all I do is bake and then eat....all of them.  I figured that I won't have homemade baked goods for 6 weeks so why not make as many as I can before leaving.  That includes other items like pizza and gelato, yum!

So I love bran muffins.  Call me a freak or a health snob but I cannot get by without a good bran muffin recipe.  My mom makes the best ones I know--healthier than most places since bran muffins from bakeries, cafes and places like tim hortons, Starbucks and dunkin donuts can pack some serious fat, sugar and calories...yuck.  Why disguise a unhealthy muffin as healthy by tacking on the word bran?  If i'm eating a bran muffin it sure as hell better be a healthy one.

"Healthier" Bran Muffins

half batch. Double if you'd like more!

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1 cup whole wheat pastry flour

3/4 cup brown sugar (or 1 1/2 cup granulated sugar)

1/2 box bran cereal **I used plain bran flakes

2 1/2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

2 cups buttermilk **

I used two cups almond milk and 2 tsp apple cider vinegar

1 egg/ 1 egg white (if using oil use 2 eggs)

3/4 cup vanilla chobani 0% (or 1 cup oil)

Raisins or other dried fruit to taste

Directions:

1. combine dry ingredients in large bowl

2. make a well

3. combine wet ingredients, make sure to whisk egg together with yogurt or oil.

4. pour wet into the dry

5. mix well

Bake: 400 degrees for 20 minutes

**these are a "bit" chewier than other muffins but I really like them.  My mom complained of the lack of sugar but I found them to be quite enjoyable!

Persnickety Desserts

I never used to consider myself a type-A personality or someone who focused on the extremely little details in life but I have come to accept my Type-A-ness and persnickety personality.  That is why I decided to take up the art, the craft if you will, of macaronage.  What is macaronage you may ask? The art of perfecting the french macaron.  No, no please do not confuse french macarons with these:

American Macaroons often dipped in chocolate and are always accompanied with coconut.  These are not the dessert I am talking about at all. 

A distant relative of sorts, still using a meringue (egg whites, sugar, almond paste etc) recipe, is the french macaron, the macaron cookie.

Here we have the motherland of all Macarons, Laudree. Brendan and I stopped here while in Paris last spring break and picked up some Chocolate, Raspberry, Orange and Hazelnut treats.  Needless to say, I instantly fell in love.  Over the last few weeks of this semester I began reading more on the background of macaronage artistry and was scared to death of making them.  Labeled in the baking world as nearly the most "persnickety" dessert and nearly impossible to perfect, I decided to take on the task.  

Who cares if the professional baking industry chefs have difficulty perfecting them? I'm sure they taste the same even if they aren't necessarily "perfect". So I did what I promised myself I would do over this break and got out my new apron (gifted from my mother) and got to work.   And yes, I can agree that they were difficult and unruly but oh so tasty in the end.

After a few hours of macaronage artistry at work with my Kitchenaid (I am a fraud, most people whip the meringue by hand!) I have this to show for a final product:

Chocolate Macaron with Orange Spiced Chocolate Ganche Filling all atop the beautiful parisian plates Brendan got me for Christmas!

I must admit, not bad for my first time!  I may or may not share this recipe right away, part of my persnickety, type-A, secretive personality is telling me that you should hunt it out on your own, another part of me is saying that it takes quite a lot of effort to fully explain (if you're really interested check out Bon Appetit Magazine's recipe, the one I used and it's great!).  My next Adventure will be with Orange jellie filled Macarons, to die for.

Lazy Sundays

So this past weekend was pretty eventful, at least Sunday was.  Well okay friday and saturday night weren't too bad either since I had a girls night & then went out to a Ballet Performance Group (BPG) wine night and then made my way to the frat quad afterwards.

However, the best part of the weekend was (a) being completely overwhelmed by the new Forever 21 and (b) having a cooking/baking extravaganza on sunday with my housemates.  

To begin with Forever 21 I would have to say that the new Eastview location is a ridiculously huge space.  Being as exhausted as I usually am on weekend mornings I ended up lost from the rest of my housemates and wandered amlessely throughout the store.  While it does have some perks of being divided into various sections including "basics" and "club" wear, there are multiple racks strewn in the middle of the walking aisles in which I found myself losing direction and my mind.

I woke up Sunday morning at noon after sleeping on my friends couch on campus and had absolutely no clue what I wanted for breakfast.  To be honest I could have gone with a cup of coffee and have been set for the day but my mother instructed me that I cannot wither away to nothing while living on my own.  I intuitively whipped out my recipe book and grabbed my favorite "dutch pancake" recipe, which has now been dubbed as something similar to flan.  I have never actually had flan so I couldn't tell you.

The recipe itself is quite simple and only requires 4 ingredients:

1 cup flour

1 tbsp sugar

1 1/4 cup milk

2 eggs

(1) Blend ingredients together ( I personally prefer to whisk the eggs prior to adding other ingredients in hopes of creating a fluffy texture).

(2) melt 2 tbsp of butter in pie dish in oven (at 350).

(3) when melted, swirl the dish to coat.

(4) pour batter in dish & bake at 350 for 30 minutes.

Sounds good, right?

Thats not all, my housemates were testing out some recipes of their own, including homemade pasta & perogies.  I do not have the recipe for either but I assume the pasta recipe was found online somewhere and the perogie recipe is some secret recipe from Ukraine.

Pasta making:

I am going to test this out myself once I purchase some semolina flour (used for italian baking, it is a finer more refined flour) and get back to you on a good recipe.

and finally, here is my first homemade pierogie.  The filling is currently sitting in our fridge while the pierogies freeze and wait to be eaten!

Hope everyone has a great week :)

Devils Food.

My dearest friend Carolyn (Cara) celebrated her 20th birthday this past April.  However, on the day we chose to celebrate, she was still practicing lent and was unable to eat any sweets!  Seeming she is a better Catholic than I, since she actually participated in lent, I decided to make it up to her by baking a cake for her return from LeMoyne College in Syracuse, NY!

In recruiting one of my other best friends, Mandy, we came up with a devils food cake with chocolate Ganache filling and a whipped cream frosting decorated with chocolate flakes and Raspberries, YUM!

The Bakers :)