Tag: cooking
IDGAF Kitchen: Pumpkin Pecan Mexican Wedding Cookies! (vegan!)
/ | 6 Comments on IDGAF Kitchen: Pumpkin Pecan Mexican Wedding Cookies! (vegan!)Ok, we all know that I am NOT a good food/baking blogger, so my photos are of baked goods that are THREE days old. But the food still tastes good! Picture above are pumpkin pecan Mexican wedding cookies. My buddy Elysse (who has a new blog called The Vegan Sweet Beat!) came over on Saturday night for pizza, baking, and rom com (we watched Walk of Shame…. I give it a “meh” although A+++ for big giant hair). We used this recipe from Cookie and Kate. Our cookies did have more powdered sugar on them before, but, you know… THREE DAYS. The recipe calls for whole wheat flour, and we used Earth Balance instead of butter or coconut oil. I LOVE ME SOME PUMPKIN BAKED GOODS (but not the PSL or any pumpkin spice drink…), and these cookies were super yummy! They did not end up quite as dry and crumbly as the Mexican wedding cookies I am accustomed to, but Kate mentioned this would be the case when you sub out the real butter. Regardless: YUM. Elysse toasted the pecans, and my kitchen smelled AMAZE. Elysse also suggested we bake a back-up in case the pumpkin pecan cookies turned out weird. Well, actually, the brownies turned out to be weird!!! (We still ate them.) It was the first time I baked or tasted a brownie with black beans in it. I have always been really curious about them, but Elysse thought this recipe was not the best, and the brownies came out SUPER DUPER DENSE. It was almost like eating …. firm chocolate jello, or I guess, fudge. However, they were better the next day, and even better the day after that, etc etc, so I think that having some time to dry out did them some good. Anyway, I have no idea what recipe we used, but Elysse says she has a better recipe, so if I get around to make those, I will link you! Here’s us on Saturday night getting our PB on. I’m looking serious/dubious about putting on the peanut butter the right way, and Elysse is triumphantly zig-zagging through it all with a knife. I have pumpkin puree left over, so, per Elysse’s suggestion, I am going to try making a pumpkin spice smoothie next!
Read more »IDGAF Kitchen: Makin’ Smoothies
| 13 Comments on IDGAF Kitchen: Makin’ SmoothiesI have been smoothie-curious for a while and keep talking about how I’m gonna make smoothies all the time. I like eating veggies, and I like eating kale. My go-to breakfast is a toasted PB&J sandwich, cuz it’s fast and easy, but eating a PB&J a day is probably not that great for you. I will look at people’s smoothie photos on Instagram and think Hey, that looks healthy and delicious and fresh! BUT …. if you know me at all, or if you have read my blog for some time, you know that I am NO WIZ in the kitchen, and lots of food-prep-related things are really not my forte. There are things I can do, and things I can’t do, and preparing food is kinda on the “can’t do very well” list. Luckily, I’m not a super-picky eater, so even if I make something that’s 75% nasty, I’ll probably still eat it anyway. My mom got me a small/personal blender/smoothie-maker thing for my birthday, and this really sent me over the “you must try to make smoothies” precipice. Part of my anxiety about smoothie-making was Will I get the right consistency? Will I make something that tastes nastier than nasty? Will I break the smoothie-maker? Is it too annoying to wash all those dishes? Here’s what I put into my very first inaugural smoothie: frozen strawberries, rolled oats, half a banana, 1 big kale leaf with the ribs torn out, chia seeds, and vanilla coconut drink. I zapped this concoction around in my blender, playing with low and high speeds and the pulse function, and like, nothing was blending. I went to Instagram to ask for help, and as it turned out, I simply didn’t have enough liquid in there, so I poured in more coconut drink and also like half a cup of plain water. Things really started to whizz around at that point! Ok ok ok. I know it looks like barf. It had sort of a light brown color and LOTS of green bits in it. Further google-searching has led me to believe that my blender may not be high powered or fancy enough to blend green bits perfectly smooth. Luckily, this falls under the “75% nasty” umbrella, and I can handle chewing through my smoothie a little bit. The flavor was fine, but maybe just a smidge too tart because of all the berries and no sweetener aside from the banana and the sweetener in my coconut milk/drink. The smoothie did end up runnier than I imagined in my head, and I repeated the same mistake the next day. Oh well! This was today’s smoothie: some ice cubes, a banana, rolled oats, 2 TSP of PB2, 2 TSP of cocoa powder, chia seeds, a handful of frozen blueberries, coconut drank, and water. As I mentioned above, it ended up runnier than I would want, but maybe this is just what smoothies are like!? I dunno. I’ll try to add less water, but I know if I don’t […]
Read more »Honey, I baked! IDGAF Bunny/Cat Donuts!
/ | 14 Comments on Honey, I baked! IDGAF Bunny/Cat Donuts!I have a lot of childhood Easter memories, but I don’t have a strong connection to Easter as an adult. The only real reason it’s on my radar still is because it’s Manda’s most favorite holiday of the year. We have both been really busy and stressed, so we kept it low key, and I suggested we have a picnic in the park with friends. For the picnic, I wanted to make kitty donuts, following the instructions from My Paper Crane. I have a mini donut maker that is basically like a waffle iron and makes very cakey donuts, so I decided to use that for my project. I kind of forgot HOW MINI the donuts really are, so my kitties turned into bunnies since the almond-ears were so big compared to the donuts. I used melted chocolate chips, but should have thinned them out with something, because my chocolate was rather thick and difficult to work with, leaving me with some really mutated bunnies. PLUS, I used a store-bought gel icing for the faces, and it was a HOT HOT MESS! WELL, whatever, IDGAF! Maybe I’ll try with regular-sized donuts next time!
Read more »Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies v1.0
/ | 5 Comments on Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies v1.0On Sunday, I thought it would be funny if Manda came over to watch the Superbowl. I am not a sports fan, and I have no idea what is going on in football, but it seemed like a fun excuse for us to get together and eat a bunch of junk food. A few days ago, I had been craving chocolate chip oatmeal cookies from Trader Joe’s. They are bite-sized, and they are crunchy and delightful. I figured I could just try making them at home, so that’s what happened on Superbowl Sunday. I used this recipe from Brown Eyed Baker. Okay, here’s a classic Me Move. The recipe instructs you to make dough balls out of 2 heaping tablespoons, so for my first batch, I plopped on 2 TBS of dough, but didn’t roll it into a ball or anything. For my second batch, I wanted smaller cookies, so I just scooped out what I’ll call a small “bloop” of dough (as pictured above), and then rolled it around in my hands. I was kind of surprised when the baking time seemed to be kind of longer for the small balls than the big plops. About 8 minutes in, I realized, THAT MY OVEN WAS OFF. Because for my first batch, I had apparently turned off the oven when I meant to turn off the timer. GOOD ONE. So don’t even ask me about baking times, cuz I just winged it at that point. Overall, I think this particular recipe was a bit on the sweet side for me. I don’t know anything about baking, and I’m not sure what would happen to the whole recipe if I took out like 1/4 cup of sugar in there somewhere, but that would be my amateur inclination. Also, they were not light and crunchy like the Trader Joe’s ones, but I knew that going in, since the recipe called these thick and chewy. Otherwise, I had a fun time with these cookies, because I felt like there weren’t a lot of steps or ingredients to wrangle. I still need to remember to always make a half recipe, though, because I’m the only one in the house who really eats what I bake, and now I have like 80 million cookies to deal with!
Read more »IDGAF Easy Pumpkin Muffins
/ | 5 Comments on IDGAF Easy Pumpkin MuffinsWhen you guys left me recipes during my November blog giveaway, one caught my eye in particular because it contained TWO INGREDIENTS. Dear Renee: Thank you!!!! All you need is one box of yellow cake mix and one can of pumpkin. I did tempt fate by adding a few things, like, cinnamon, ground ginger, ground nutmeg, and ground cloves, but you can do whatever the heck you want! Just dump all two of your ingredients into a big bowl and stir it up. Follow the directions on your cake mix for baking. “YOU’RE DONE, SON,” (as Manda would say). The texture is light, fluffy, and smooth, very cake-like. I kind of craved frosting with it, like chocolate, or cream cheese. I have no idea if anybody else liked them. Odds are: low. But whatever. I HAD FUN. p.s. I brought these to Thanksgiving, and I have to admit, I still have problems with proper bake time in my oven. The quoted bake time is NEVER enough, and then I just have to wing it from there! This first batch turned out a bit under-baked and sticky, so, yeah, just avoid that when you make them…..
Read more »My new favorite thing to bake: Gingerbread Men!
| 10 Comments on My new favorite thing to bake: Gingerbread Men!So I discovered something about myself around Christmas: I LOVE BAKING GINGERBREAD MEN. I have baked a lot of ginger snaps in my time, but there was something about smushing out the dough and using the cookie-cutters that I found really satisfying! I used this recipe from Martha Stewart via Java Cupcake. Next time I would try to make the dough even more spicy, like maybe with some grated fresh ginger as well as black pepper. Making big dough balls made me feel like Dr. Sattler going elbow-deep in a pile of dino droppings. (fast forward to 2:15 if you don’t remember this scene!) This made me giggle a lot to myself because I’m five years old. You chill the dough before you roll out, and you also chill the men before you bake them. They don’t spread very much at all, and they come out perfectly shaped! If you roll them out thick at 1/4 inch, you will have chewy cookies. If you roll them out thinner, you will have crispy cookies. I did both and still can’t decide which I prefer….! I didn’t have time before my parents’ Christmas shindig to decorate the cookies with icing, but icing is usually not my favorite to eat anyway. So my little ginger dudes were not as cute or charismatic…. but they were still yummy, which is great, because, I’m also LAZY. I’m already craving them again. I just have to buy more flour!
Read more »I cooked! IDGAF Tater Tot Casserole
| 7 Comments on I cooked! IDGAF Tater Tot CasseroleHelloooooo! I cooked again! Thank you so much for leaving me links and recipes. There is lots I definitely want to try to make! However, I became obsessed with the idea of making a tater tot casserole for the “Pre-Thanksgiving Dinner” that Manda and I went to, and HERE SHE IS! (That photo is pre-oven-ating. And I forgot to take a photo of post-oven-ating, since were kinda in a rush to leave.) I googled around for some recipes, and a lot of them included BEEF, which I didn’t want to cook. So I found and used THIS recipe from The Village Cook. I have a slight fascination with super kitschy “American” casserole hot dish type things. I was really excited to make my first one. Hairy made a face like this was going to be the grossest adventure ever, espesh after I said, “ranch dressing.” The recipe that I used does not call for french cut green beans, but I wanted to add, you know, “NUTRITION” to my casserole, cuz IDGAF. So I layered my tots on the bottom, then poured over the liquids, then packed on about 3/4 can of green beans, and then a good handful of fried onions, and then I packed on way more than 1/2 cup cheese, cuz, CHEESE. I started this project with about an hour to work with before Manda was swinging by the house, so I didn’t have time to defrost my tater tots. I just put them in there frozen. I’ve seen other recipes which say to just leave the casserole in for 20 more minutes more if your tots are frozen, but I didn’t have an extra 20 minutes either. It will remain a mystery to me, whether my casserole actually cooked in the middle, because someone actually took the rest home, CUZ IT WAS SO DURN GOOD!!!! People were like, “WHAT’S THE STORY BEHIND THIS TATER TOT CASSEROLE!?” I was like, “If it’s gross, I had nothing to do with it.” But they thought it was the greatest thing ever. They thought it was so great, that it had a story, like, a history. So if you have a T-Day pot luck to go to (or any pot luck, really), I think you could be the star by making this bad boy. It was easy and yummy! The most work you have to put in it is chopping up parsley and chives. I decided, I do not like chopping, as it is time-consuming and I might lose a finger, but, hey, anything for you, tater tot casserole! The pre-Thanksgiving party was fun and mostly populated by people we didn’t know. I tried birthday cake or cupcake vodka for the first time. I also got into a small fight with someone over whether Chicken in a Biskit exists (it exists, OBVIOUSLY, don’t argue with me about SNACKS), but other than that, thumbs up!
Read more »Giveaway! Cupcakes! Bake And Destroy’s New Cookbook!
| 53 Comments on Giveaway! Cupcakes! Bake And Destroy’s New Cookbook!I have one copy of an awesome new cookbook to giveaway! Are you ready? It’s my buddy Natalie Slater’s Bake And Destroy: Good Food for Bad Vegans. I’ve seen her on TV as a judge on Cupcake Wars, so I think that means she’s pretty legit. I’m totally not vegan, but I guess I am a curious and somewhat guilty omnivore. I also have vegan friends, so it will be nice to have some tasty recipes in my back pocket for get-togethers. I had already pre-ordered this book before Natalie contacted me to check out a free copy, but when someone asks if you’ll post a recipe for Banana Bread French Toast Cupcakes … YOU SAY YES. What Natalie may not know… is that … I AM THE WORST BAKER EVER. But I always give it my best! I’m optimistically terrible. And what I like about the recipes as I’m flipping through them is that a lot of them fit on one page. This tricks amateurs like me into thinking that the recipes will be really easy, which I like very much, and it keeps me optimistic. Some morsels that catch my eye are: Totchos (tater tot nachos), Spaghetti Cake with Grandma Sharon’s Hater-Proof Sauce, and Whole Wheat Choco-Coconut Donuts! PLUS, the photography is gorgeous AND there are bad-ass illustrations by the one and only Betty Turbo. And now for your viewing pleasure: Banana Bread French Toast Cupcakes. (My cooking confessions and video summary are below the recipe.) ********** Makes 12 cupcakes Ingredients CUPCAKES: ½ cup (113 g) mashed overripe banana 1 ¼ cups (156 g) all-purpose flour ¼ teaspoon baking soda 1 teaspoon baking powder 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon ½ teaspoon salt ¾ cup (150 g) sugar 1/3 cup (80 ml) canola oil 2⁄3 cup (160 ml) rice or soy milk 1 teaspoon vanilla extract ½ teaspoon almond extract ½ cup (60 g) chopped, toasted walnuts VEGAN MAPLE BUTTERCREAM FROSTING: 2 cups (250 g) confectioners’ sugar 6 tablespoons (85 g) nonhydrogenated vegetable shortening 6 tablespoons (85 g) vegan margarine 2 tablespoons (40 g) pure maple syrup ½ teaspoon maple flavoring Pinch of salt Directions Preheat your oven to 350°F (180°C) and line a twelve-cup muffin pan with paper liners. Throw your mashed banana in a blender or just smash it with a fork. Sift the flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, salt and sugar into a large bowl and mix well. In a smaller bowl, whisk together the oil, rice milk, vanilla, almond extract and mashed banana. Stir or fold the wet ingredients into the dry. Small lumps are fine. Finally, add the walnuts, folding gently. Fill the liners two-thirds full. Bake for 20 to 22 minutes, or until the tops spring back when lightly touched. Let cool in the pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes, then remove from the pan and let cool completely before frosting. To make the vegan maple buttercream frosting, beat all the ingredients together in a bowl until they’re light and fluffy. […]
Read more »How to Make IDGAF Cheese Crackers, by Twinkie Chan
| 16 Comments on How to Make IDGAF Cheese Crackers, by Twinkie ChanSooooo Christmas of 2011, I decided to buy a cookie press and make some spritz cookies. I was like, “OMG THIS IS SO FUN! I WILL USE MY COOKIE PRESS EVERYDAY! EVERY EVERY DAY!!!” I never used it ever again. But tonight. Oh, tonight. I resurrected the cookie press and finally attempted to make some home made CHEESE CRACKERS!!!! AWWW YEAH CHEESE YEAH! I love Cheezits so much, that I literally make myself sick. My buddy Pickle once asked me, “What do you like most? The Cheez? Or the Its?” WHO CAN CHOOSE!? Needless to say, this was like my most humongous kitchen debacle. My cheese crackers look like cat chow and they smell like Bibi’s feet. Let’s go on this journey together. I used the recipe from the Wilton website, Wilton being the maker of my cookie press. I know I should have done a little more research, but …. say it all together…. IDGAF! Actually, I do, but I’m also lazy. Here are your ingredients: 1 pound sharp cheddar or aged swiss finely shredded 1/2 cup unsalted butter softened 2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce Dash hot red pepper sauce 1 1/2 cups flour 1/2 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon paprika I am a very serious chef, and I only use VERY SERIOUSLY SHARP CHEDDAR. As should you. I wanted to get yellow cheddar because cheddar is supposed to be yellow in my book. But Hairy is a food snob and insisted on white cheddar. Plus, he got all cheesenerdy with some dude at Andronico’s, and they were like, “Good sir, you must select a cheese from Vermont.” “Right-o, good sir, I shall!” 1. I attacked the aerobic portion of the recipe first: grating 1 lb of cheese. I gave up after .5 lb, which ended up being the best decision of the whole night. You may think this was due to laziness, but the real reason was my plate was overflowing with cheese, and I didn’t think I had enough large bowls for mixing everything together. SO MUCH CHEESE. So I cut the whole recipe in half. 2. Preheat oven to 375°F. In a medium bowl, cream the cheese, butter, Worcestershire sauce and hot red pepper sauce until smooth. So, what exactly does it mean to cream something, because I attempted to do this, but it was basically like trying to turn the cheese powder from your pizza delivery into a liquid. Like, it’s not gonna happen! It was like 80 million parts cheese to 1 part worcester sauce and butter. I already knew this was a terrible, terrible sign. “Cream” was not what I had. I had superstiff cheeze playdough. 3. In separate bowl, toss flour and seasonings with fork. Gradually add to cheese mixture. I added my cheese playdough by small chunks. What appeared in my mixing bowl was first like a pile of pebbles and then later like a bucket of sand. Great dough, right!? 4. Mix until dough holds together and shape into small logs. Sand is just […]
Read more »“Cooking” for Lazy People: Overnight Oatmeal
/ | 12 Comments on “Cooking” for Lazy People: Overnight OatmealSo pretty much everyone has heard of this already, but I only just discovered it online recently: overnight oats. I’m addicted!!! You know I don’t like “cooking,” and when I do, it doesn’t usually turn out that well. I keep trying, though. And this recipe is more like mixing than cooking. Hey, I can mix! I followed the instructions from The Yummy Life. These are ingredients I have never before purchased in my life: real oats, chia seeds, and PB2. If you click on the Yummy Life link, you can read all about chia seeds and all the goodness inside of them. PB2 is apparently peanut butter with a good percentage of the fat squeezed out of it so it becomes a powder with lots of peanut butter flavor. Again, the link has 8 fun recipes for you, but the basics are you throw oats, nonfat greek yogurt, skim milk, chia seeds, honey (or whatever sweetener you like), and then other fruits and flavors like the PB2 or cocoa powder or vanilla extract, and real fruit pieces or coconut shreds, shake em up, and leave em in the fridge overnight. Done. I also like that you make this the night before so that the chia seeds and oats have time to soak, so if you are in a rush in the morning, you can just grab your jar and go. Some people on Instagram remarked that their oats turned out runny, but mine turned out pretty thick, almost too thick, maybe from the PB2. Hairy liked the consistency of his, though. I give this breakfast two thumbs up! Success! The only thing I would add, though, is that I would want bigger jars. 8oz jars are recommended, but this left very little room for my fruit. I don’t need more oatmeal, but I’d love to cram more fruits up in there!!! I’ll be looking for some 12 oz jars!
Read more »My Beautiful Pound Cake
/ | 21 Comments on My Beautiful Pound CakeI have learned a few things about myself and baking: 1) I might over-mix batter because I am afraid of lumps and under-mixing 2) I might over-bake things because I am afraid of under-baking 3) I break a spoon every time Let’s see if I can avoid doing these things while making…. POUND CAKE!!! I had leftover buttermilk from making blue velvet cookies and googled recipes using buttermilk. There were 3 possibilities: pancakes, fried chicken, pound cake. I don’t ever cook meat and I wasn’t feeling the pancakes, so … pound cake! I have a lot of fond memories of pound cake. My mom would buy the frozen Sara Lee ones. I always thought they were called pound cakes because they were heavy like bricks that weighed a million pounds, but it turns out they are called that because in the old days you used a pound every ingredient: a pound of butter, a pound of flour, a pound of eggs, a pound of sugar. These days, we don’t make such humongous pound cakes, but that’s a pretty cool recipe if you ask me. The Sarah Lee pound cakes were dense but soft and delicious and just kind of perfect-looking. This was my goal. I used Ina Garten’s recipe. Here we go! Here are most of my ingredients. I didn’t have a loaf pan, so I greased and floured up my bundt pan. I hunted around on the internets, and it seemed to tell me that my bundt would have the same cooking time and temp. as the loaf, so I was set! And, bearing in mind #3 on my list of Bad Baking Habits, I decided to use a giant metal spoon for all my spoon-related needs. No spoon-breaking this time! The magic begins when you cream together the butter and the sugar. I want to smell like butter and sugar all day. I have tried to purchase various cake/vanilla/buttercream fragrances, but I have yet to find one that I think actually smells good. After mixing up all the ingredients, I found another great use for my giant spoon: EATING BATTER. I had to stop eating the batter so I’d have enough to put in the bundt. And then, I crossed my fingers. I set the timer for an hour and started eating Cheez-Its cuz I hadn’t eaten dinner yet. Yes, it was about 9:20 pm, but I was waiting for Hairy to get home from the art gallery, since I didn’t know if were going to eat dinner or not before seeing “Mama” that night. As it turned out, we didn’t have time to eat dinner, and we ate hot dogs at the movie theater…. Anyway, I checked in on my pound cake when it was close to one hour, and I was a little scared to see LIQUID batter bubbling at the surface, cracking through the cake, seeping out like hot delicious buttery lava. There were still about 5 minutes left on the timer, so I figured that […]
Read more »Hairy’s Blue-Green Alien Cow Patty Cookies – A Cautionary Tale
/ | 15 Comments on Hairy’s Blue-Green Alien Cow Patty Cookies – A Cautionary TaleSo Hairy’s bday is today. I have a few, fun presents for him, but I also wanted to try baking something he would like. He is a big fan of red-velvet-anything. Red velvet is not my fave, so I wouldn’t know a good one from a bad one ….. but I do know this: my cookies ended up looking like alien cow patties. Sorry about taking photos with the flash, but this was at 7 in the morning so there’s not a lot of natural night! Yesterday, I was rushing to shoot photos and send samples to Michaels, and then I had a 2 hour time window to sneaky-bake before we headed down to Manda’s birthday dinner. I used this recipe for red velvet cookies from Joy the Baker (which is actually a Rachel Ray recipe) and this recipe for cream cheese frosting also from Joy the Baker. I was surprised that the amount of food coloring called for in the cookie recipe equaled a whole little squeezie-tube of food coloring. So. Much. Food. Coloring. But what I really liked about the recipe is that it’s supposed to be for 10 cookies, which is not a humongous amount of cookies to have to get rid of at the end of the day. I am pretty sure I made my cookies too big by trying to use a 1/4-cup measuring cup as a scoop. Then I started using my hands, and, well, I wish I had three hands at the time, cuz I would have loved to have taken a picture of my hands covered in dark blue sludge. So I figured if I made my cookies too gigantic, that they should stay in the oven longer, but this was a bad move, as my cookies ended up with an odd crispy crust on the bottom, with the tops of the cookies remaining fluffy and cake-like. Oops. I have never made frosting before, so that was pretty fun. It actually tasted pretty good, even though I didn’t have time to sift the powdered sugar. After hiding the frosting in the fridge overnight with a sign on it that said, “Top Secret. Eat and Die,” I feel like I can taste the grainy-ness of the sugar. Boo. I hid the cookies in the craft room under a poncho. While wrapping Manda’s presents, I opened every window in the house to try to get rid of any cookie-baking smells or suspicious heat from the oven. It was actually pretty lucky that we had dinner with Manda, because Hairy had not much reason to poke around in the fridge, where there was a carton of BUTTERMILK <– very suspicious. At 7am, I frosted them and set them out by the coffee maker, only to realize, how truly hideous my cookies ended up. Here is my friend Angel’s take on the matter: AHAHA! I love her. Well, now you can see why I don’t cook. *salute*
Read more »How To Make IDGAF Banana Nut Bread, by Twinkie Chan
/ | 19 Comments on How To Make IDGAF Banana Nut Bread, by Twinkie ChanSometimes I feel like I’m gonna get really healthy and eat a bunch of fruit n stuff, so I’ll buy some bananas and eat like ONE. Fast forward a week, and I have two really nasty looking bananas. Instead of throwing them away, I decide to make Renee’s banana nut bread. When I lived with Renee, she would make one loaf with nuts and one with chocolate chips to satisfy the needs of the household. In 2008, I asked her for the recipe. This is the first time I ever tried to use it. I decide to go crazy and make one with chocolate chips AND NUTS. So I wait until my bananas are REEAAALLLY RIPE. Like fully 100% brown on the outside. And then I get crazybusy with my art show deadline. Then Lisa Fulmer tells me to freeze them nanners, so I do. Then I defrost them in the fridge, and they leak out their BANANA ESSENCE all over the fridge, which looks like maple syrup and which I clean up and don’t tell Hairy about. I wonder if my bananas have begun to ferment, because they are really slimy, like so slimy it almost makes me want to barf when I free them from their blackened skins. But I still use them. So what if they are fermenting? That will just make banana bread FOR GROWN UPS, and I am one of those! I am not a chef. I am not a baker. I want some banana nut bread, I don’t know what I’m doing, I make some stuff up, and IDGAF. Search your email from 2008 for Renee’s sour cream banana bread recipe. Discover that Renee’s delicious bread is from this recipe at AllRecipes.com. What! SIX BANANAS? WHAT ABOUT TWO!? Renee has made notes for a 2/3 recipe, so all you have to do is 1/2 that one (maths!). Your ingredients look like this: 1/4 cup Earth Balance fake butter stuff (cuz that’s what’s in the fridge) 1 cup white sugar 1 egg 2 crazy ripe banana slime aliens that require no further mashing as they are nearly liquid form a little more than 1/2 of an 8 oz container of sour cream 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon 1/6 teaspoon salt which means a SMIDGEful 1 teaspoons baking soda – which you don’t have. So you put in 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder, which you do have, and seem to recall that baking powder contains baking soda, so it can’t be THAT wrong……right?…. IDGAF 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour 1/2 cup chocolate chips 1/2 cup …. wait for it …. HAZELNUTS! AW YEAH! GO CRAZY, HAZELNUTS! YOU LOVE HAZELNUTS! They are your favorite nut. Nobody else is eating this banana nut bread except you, cuz everybody hates banana bread, so you get to pick whatever nuts you want! First things first. Preheat the oven to 300 degrees. Grease and sprinkle a sugar/cinnamon mixture onto your loaf pans. You’re using mini loaf pans cuz […]
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