When it comes to birthdays, light, fluffy cakes seem to be the accepted treat of choice.  This can take the form of a massive, multi-tiered production with elaborate fondant decorations or a simple selection of cupcakes with a delicate frosting swirl on top.  That's what I thought I was going to do when I offered to bake a friend something for her birthday.  However, after flipping through pictures from recipe books, she settled on a muffin, specifically a banana, oatmeal muffin.  These dense, breakfast muffins are a healthier, and just as tasty alternative to the sugar coma inducing alternative.  

Almost every banana baked good starts off with a bunch of overripe bananas that are then mushed into oblivion.  While there are many ways to do this, fork, spoon, food processor, I prefer to use my hands.  For one, it's way more fun.  Who doesn't love squishing things?  Anyway, here's the recipe:


Banana, Almond, Oatmeal Breakfast Muffins
(Modified from AllRecipes.com)

INGREDIENTS:

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup white sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 t cinnemon
1 egg
3/4 cup milk
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup mashed bananas
Slivered Almonds (optional)

DIRECTIONS:
Preheat oven to 350FCombine Dry Ingredients
Wisk egg.  Add milk, oil, vanilla.
Add Bananas
Add Dry ingredients to wet ingredients.  
Spoon into greased or lined muffin tin.  Add almonds on top (optional)
Bake for 15-20 min
Cool.  

Because this was a birthday treat, I decided to add some degree of sugar on top.  The frosting is just a chocolate, cream cheese frosting.  

This recipe is pretty good.  However, I did somethings not in the recipe that I would advise against.  For example, don't even think about adding the almonds or anything else for that matter inside the muffins.  They are hearty enough as they are.  Also, while everything is better with sugar, they don't really need the chocolate frosting on top.

In the dorms, there's no kitchen so these beauties were made at my brother's apartment.  This is how I got them home.  An additional piece of advice: don't frost the muffins and then transport them; transport them and then frost them.  By the time I got up to my room, there was a chocolate massacre inside the 9x13 pan.  They never looked this good again.  

Have you ever just really had the urge to make something sweet?  I know my sweet tooth is unhealthy sometimes, but it is very capable of putting up an excellent argument.  Tonight was one of those nights where my sweet tooth was particularly persuasive.  I got a text from my brother to go over to a friend's house and make muffins, and "something tasty."  After about 45 min, of "I don't know, what do you want to make?"  We finally settled on ice cream cake.  I wish I could credit the blog from where we got the recipe, but I can't seem to remember the name.  No worries though, I do remember the recipe.

Cake
2 sticks of butter
2 cups sugar

4 eggs
1 1/4 cup cocoa powder
1 t baking powder
1 t salt
1 t espresso powder
1 t vanilla

1 1/2 c flour
2 c chocolate chips

1 Quart of Ice Cream
We were lazy and just bought Snickers Ice cream from the store but I imagine any chocolaty, caramel-y, or coffee-y ice cream would be good.

Fudge Sauce
1 1/2 cup chocolate Chips
2 T butter
1 t espresso powder

Toppings
Nuts, Caramel Sauce, Powder Sugar

Directions:

Cake

Preheat oven to 350F

In sauce pan over low heat or microwave, melt butter.  Remove from heat and add sugar. Turn burner back to low or put back in microwave and stir until butter/sugar mixture looks shiny and smooth.

In separate bowl, mix together eggs, coco powder, baking powder, salt, espresso powder, and vanilla.  Add butter to mixture.  Stir until well combined.  Add flour and chocolate chips.

Spread batter into 2 lightly greased 9 in round pan.  Try to make the pans close to even.  Bake for about 20 min.  After cake is done, allow to cool, loosen from edges, then move to cooling racks.  If time allows, cover and refrigerate.

While cakes are cooling, trace one of the 9 in pans onto wax/parchment paper and cut out circle.  Place wax paper into pan and scoop 1 quart of ice cream into pan, smooth, cover, and freeze until hard.

Fudge:

Melt all ingredients over low heat in sauce pan or in microwave safe bowl.  Make sure not to burn.

When Ice Cream is hard and cake is cool stack cake, then ice cream, then cake.  Depending on how long you let the fudge sit, you may need to reheat it.  Drizzle over Ice Cream Cake and add toppings.  

Warning: This cake is very rich.  Cut very small slices when ready to serve.

I recently got a new camera, so I had to practice taking some pictures.  My friend made Mango, Apricot, Lemon, Poppy Seed muffins and Carrot, Apricot Muffins.  Here are some fun, food, practice, pics.

With the end of August came the end of summer and thus the end of my summer living arrangement.  I moved out of my apartment and back into the wonderful dorms at the University of Minnesota.  With this transition meant the loss free time to create new dishes and the kitchen in which to cook them.  As can be expected, after just over three months of having home cooked meals, dorm pizza, burgers, and pasta dishes are not exactly healthy nor particularly tasty alternatives.  On the plus side, during the summer, creating salads was cumbersome and expensive.  Whenever I purchased spinach at the farmers market or grocery store, it would go bad before I could eat it all.  In the dorms, there is a salad bar everyday.  Although they seem to be the only healthy choice the dining halls offer consistently, a girl gets tired of salads rather quickly.  

After a couple weeks of classes and the monotony of salads, I had a craving for a good curry puff.  I just needed something to spice up my diet.  Finally, after an almost 4 week break, I decided that we were going to have the first _ND of the school year.  The menu: Curry Puffs, Eggplant Beef, and Banana Fritters.


Curry Puffs and Banana Fritters are both Malaysian specialties.  The last time I went to my mother's home in the "Food Capital of the World," Penang, Malaysia, I remember buying a couple of each of these guys off a street vendor.  When you bite into a curry puff, the crunch of your teeth breaking through the delicate layers of puff pastry is the perfect introduction to the smooth taste of coconut accented with the gentle heat of the curry.  The pork, or in the case of last week's dinner, beef, and potatoes provides a rich, succulent flavor and soft texture juxtaposed against the flaky, buttery outer shell.  Just writing about them makes my mouth water.  


These curry puffs are a family recipe so I feel bad giving it away. Hopefully for those interested, the pictures provided will give you enough information to try to make them yourself.  (The puff pastry used for the shells is Peperidge Farm prepared Puff Pastry found in the freezer aisle at the local grocery store).  


I'm still waiting on pictures from the camera I borrowed, but since we're going into October, I'm just going to publish this now and update it with pictures later.