Chewy Banana Bars

I really like Jiffy recipes. I don't know what it is about Jiffy that makes me like it so much. Possibly that old-fashioned style or the fact that it costs what feels like no money, but I just plain like it. This means that every time I go to the grocery store and there is a Jiffy mix other than the average corn muffin or yellow cake mix, I buy one. Or like 5. (PS, if there is a Jiffy mix you like but cannot find, use this locator to find it near you)

So I recently found this box of banana muffin mix in the back of my baking closet, and figured I would give it a whirl. Another thing I love about Jiffy? There are so many choices within one box. Banana muffin mix could yield pancakes, waffles, muffins, bread, or banana chewy bars, recipes for all of which are found on the box. Visit the website and find 10 additional possibilities. TEN! Since I had everything necessary in the house, the chewy banana bars are what ended up being created.

The box is cute, right?

Ingredients
Finished Product

Chewy Banana Bars

1 package of Jiffy Banana muffin mix

1 cup of oats

1/4 cup of brown sugar

1/4 cup of butter, melted

1/4 cup of honey

1 egg

1 tsp of cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Mix together all of the dry ingredients. Add the wet ingredients and blend well. Spread the batter in the bottom of a greased square pan (recipe said nine inch, mine is 7 3/4). Bake bars for 30 minutes and cut while still warm. Enjoy!

Pineapple Crunch

This weekend I visited a store with a lot of vintage cookbooks. Which is SO FUN. While flipping through a Duncan Hines cookbook (Copyrighted in 1968) I found a recipe for "Pineapple Crunch." I took notes on the recipe (in my mind) and realized it looked extremely similar to a recipe I found on Bakerella a few months ago, so I made some substitutions and made a delicious dessert.

Did I mention it was super easy? And that I am sorry I have not posted a recipe in so long and it probably will be at least a week before there's another one? Bahh.

Pineapples
Butter and Stuff

Finished Product

Pineapple Crunch

2 cans pineapple (20 oz each)

1 box of yellow cake mix

1 stick of butter

1 cup of brown sugar

1/2 cup of walnuts

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Open both cans of pineapples. Drain one of the cans and place on the bottom of a 9 by 13 pan (leaving the juice of the second can in). Spread the cake mix evenly over the pineapple. Cut the butter into sixteen pieces and spread evenly on top of the cake mix. Add the cup of brown sugar evenly across the mixture. Lastly add the walnuts (surprise surprise) evenly across the top.

Bake for forty minutes. Let cool for about 20 minutes, then serve warm. With ice cream.

Food Photography

I know this is not a recipe and I know it has been a long time and I am sorry. BUT. I just read this very interesting and intriguing piece in the New York Times about people who photograph their food and then post the pics online. This is sort of what I do here, except you see and hear more of the process than most of those who take pictures of their meals.

I definitely identified with this article. I love baking, but it is even more fun when I can make the things I bake look beautiful. The part I identified most with is when Nora Sherman explains that her food photography has led her to be more creative. With this blog, I am definitely motivated to be more creative and diverse in the types of recipes I bake and the sources from which they come. Hopefully I am succeeding (and hopefully I will succeed more when I have more time).

Blueberry Muffins in 140 Characters

About a year ago, I read a piece in the New York Times about how Twitter was going to change up the baking world. As a recently obsessed tweeter, I was all about this for about five minutes. Then I forgot.

That is until the other day, when I was thinking about interesting recipes to make for the blog. The woman featured in the article, Maureen Evans, was finding creative ways to fit somewhat complicated recipes into 140 characters (the maximum size of one tweet). These blueberry muffins were made using one of these recipes, and basically, I am ruining all of the fun by giving you specific instructions here. So for those who want a challenge, here is the 140 character recipe:

Blueberry Muffins: mix c oats&buttermilk. Fold+c flour/8T br sug/t bkgpdr/.5t soda&salt/egg/4T mlt butter, +c berries; fill12 22m@375F/180C

I will admit, I had to do some research to be sure of her methods, but I think I decoded well. For less of a challenge, see the recipe below.

Oats, which I have an abundance of.

Brown Suga

These blueberries are beautiful...
and they were on sale.
Lovely.

Blueberry Muffins

1 cup of oats

1 cup of buttermilk

1 cup of flour

8 tablespoons of brown sugar (1/2 cup)

1 teaspoon of baking powder

1/2 teaspoon of baking soda

1/2 teaspoon of salt

1 egg

4 tablespoons of melted butter

1 cup of blueberries

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Grease one muffin pan (12 muffins).

Begin by mixing together the oats and buttermilk. Next, add the flour, brown sugar, baking soda, baking powder and salt and mix until moist. Add the egg and melted butter and mix until combined. Fold in the blueberries.

Distribute batter evenly into twelve muffins, which will be about 1/4 of a cup of batter per muffin. Bake for 20-22 minutes, and let cool in the pan for about 10 minutes. Remove from the pan and let cool on a wire rack. Or enjoy them while they are warm. Because that is good too.

Cookie Monster Cookies

These cookies come from a Baked recipe, as do many of the things I make. They just call them Monster Cookies, and they use all orange M&M's. The logic in my head was like "What colors should I use? Well...these are monster cookies. The cookie monster is blue with brown eyes..." And here we are. Cookie Monster Cookies.

And they are monsters indeed. They have everything you could ever put in a cookie in them. Except fruit because like, who wants fruit in a cookie? (I'm going to eat those words one day when I put fruit in a cookie...) The recipe for these was huge. I halved it and made like 30 cookies, which I personally think is sufficient, so I will give you my half measurements.

The prettiest pictures always seem
to be of the candy that goes into things

I don't advocate the consumption of raw eggs but... Un-done.

Done.

Cookie Monster Cookies

1/4 cup of flour

1/2 tablespoon of baking soda

pinch of salt

3 cups of oats

3/4 stick of butter

3/4 cup of light brown sugar (well packed)

3/4 cup granulated sugar

3 large eggs

1/8 teaspoon of light corn syrup

1/8 teaspoon of vanilla extract

1 cup creamy peanut butter

1/2 cup chocolate chips

1/2 cup of M&Ms

Whisk together the flour, baking soda, and salt together. Add the oats and then stir until the ingredients are evenly combined. In a separate bowl, cream the butter. Add the sugars and mix on low until just incorporated.

Scrape down the bowl and add the eggs one at a time, beating until smooth after each egg. Add the corn syrup and vanilla and beat until incorporated. Scrape down the bowl and add the peanut butter. Mix on low until combined. Add the oat mixture in three additions, mixing on low until incorporated.

Use a spatula to fold in the chocolate chips and M&Ms. Cover the bowl and refrigerate for 5 hours.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Grease two baking sheets. Drop the dough onto the sheets in tablespoon sized balls. Bake for 12 to 15 minutes, rotating the pan halfway through cooking. Remove from the oven and allow to cool on the pan for 8 to 10 minutes. Remove from the pan and cool completely on a wire rack. Enjoy!

Peanut Butter and Jelly Cookies

Let me tell you about my inspiration for these cookies. Two weeks ago, I saw Bill Murray. I was sitting in Baked, my favorite baked goods establishment, on a Saturday morning and Bill Murray parked illegally outside, walked in, and bought a piece of coffee cake and a cup of coffee and then left a lot of whispers and glances in his wake.

We don't often get celeb sightings in Charleston, so this was a big deal. What, you might ask, does this have to do with peanut butter and jelly cookies? Well, when I saw Bill Murray, I was in the middle of eating a peanut butter and jelly muffin. The muffin was delicious, as is everything from Baked, and I just couldn't stop thinking about it. So, in order to recreate that experience (with a higher jelly to peanut butter ratio) I made these cookies. Surprisingly, googling "Peanut Butter and Jelly Cookies" resulted in a pretty good recipe from Epicurious, with only slight variations necessary.

Any recipe where you roll already sweet

dough in sugar is a good recipe

Pre-baking

Post baking

Peanut Butter and Jelly Cookies

3/4 cup of flour

3/4 tablespoon of salt

1/2 teaspoon of baking soda

1/3 cup of peanut butter (creamy, or I guess chunky if you like)

1/2 stick of butter (softened)

1/3 cup of firmly packed brown sugar

1 large egg

1/2 teaspoon of vanilla

1/3 cup of granulated sugar

1/2 cup of jelly (any flavor you like, but they are wonderful with raspberry)

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Whisk together the flour, salt, and baking soda. In a separate bowl, mix together the peanut butter, butter, and brown sugar until smooth. I did this using a fork, but an electric mixer would probably get it done quicker. Next add the egg and vanilla to the peanut butter mixture and mix well. Add the flour mixture to the peanut butter mixture and stir until well blended.

Form dough into balls about one tablespoon in size and roll them in granulated sugar. Place them about two inches apart on a cookie sheet and place in the oven for 7 minutes.

Remove the cookies from the oven and use a 1/4 tablespoon measure to create an indent in each of the cookies. Fill each indent and place the sheet back in the oven for another 7 minutes. It is fine to overfill the indents (even recommended) as the jelly will bake down a little bit, but beware that you might be cleaning some baked on jelly off of the sheets later.

After removing the cookies from the oven allow them to sit for about 5 minutes then move them to a wire rack to cool. Then enjoy!

Irish Soda Bread

Themed post! You will soon learn that I love themes. This one is St. Patrick's Day. The recipe for this soda bread is a family recipe. I think. It is a family recipe in so much as I emailed my Aunt, who makes it for the family gathering every year, and asked her what she does.

Family gathering you ask questioningly? Yes that is right, St. Patrick's Day is a family gathering for us Farringtons. As a child, I was allowed to not go to school and instead visit Grandma's home and go to the parade and drink a shamrock shake and eat ham and potatoes! It was always a very exciting holiday. Unfortunately those days are long gone. Tomorrow will still be full of school work, work work, and class, but this lovely soda bread (which I am going to try and feed to the elementary-aged children I tutor) will remind me of years past.

The yummy, buttery finished product...

Very Sticky Dough

It was very difficult to get here.

Sliced and Ready to go!

Irish Soda Bread
1 tablespoon of baking soda
4 cups of all purpose flour (plus a few tablespoons)
1 tablespoon of sugar
2 1/2 teaspoons of salt
1/4 teaspoon of cream of tartar
2 cups of buttermilk
1 tablespoon of butter (I used 2)
1 cup of raisins
Caraway Seeds

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Combine soda, flour, sugar, salt and cream of tartar in a large bowl and mix together thoroughly. Add the buttermilk and mix together until moist. Add the raisins and caraway seeds.

Turn onto a lightly floured board and knead until it forms a firm ball. (The original recipe says to knead through one verse of "Mother Machree" but that song is an Irish tradition I do not know). When I kneaded the dough, it was very sticky, so I added a tablespoon of flour from time to time until I eventually got a firm ball.

Shape the dough into a ball and place on a greased cookie sheet. Flatten it a bit and slash the top four time. Place in the over for 45 minutes. Remove the bread from the oven and place it on a wire rack. Brush the butter over the top and allow it to cool. Slice and enjoy!