not that I am panicking

or standing in front of said window unit when holding the heater the baby.  Who has decided that from 1-2pm (at least) the only things she wants is to be held by mama! STANDING MOVING MAMA!  I totally count doing the baby sway for over an hour as a work-out.

So in preparation for he continued increase in temperature – I am fighting back with yummies!  Soothing both the soul and cooling off all in one. And it’s fairly good for you too – SCORE (ok good for you might be a stretch, but not so bad for you? i donno, it’s delicious and only 4 of those damn weight watcher new-fangled points) (yes, I don’t even want to talk about it)

I am going to e picky here and say YES you have to use good chocolate chips.  I used Ghiradelli chips, both milk and semi-sweet.  over a double boiler.  DO THIS! or better chocolate.  The cheap stuff just does not melt well.  That, or I have no idea what I am doing and somehow these chips overcome that issue.  Highly possible!

Once the chocolate is melted and smoooooth, add the oats and stir them in.  Actually, here you could add whatever you want – more oats, walnuts, chopped dried fruit, whatever floats your boat.

Now the fun part – covering the banana chunks! It’s a bit tricky… but just try to get a decent coating of whatever thickness you think will be delicious and plop them on the cookie sheet and toss them in the freezer.  UPDATE:  if you want your teeth, thaw in the fridge first or just store them there and eat within a couple of days.  your jaw and teeth will thank you!

DONE!

Ok not really, after they are solid and frozen, at least an hour, you have to EAT one!

Honestly, I know they are ugly – but trust me – they taste AMAZING!  My husband saw one and was like ‘hey, what is that? Can I have a bite?’ of course I gave him a bite and even HE was impresed.  Then about 10 minutes later we had the following exchange:

Him:  um so what was that?  what was the white stuff?

Me:  What white stuff, the stuff in the chocolate?  Oats

Him:  NO no no…

Me:  you mean THE BANANA??

Him:  THAT was banana?!  wow, I thought it was icecream

Needless to say, I then snuck off to the freezer to hide the rest under the frozen broccoli.

Ingredients:

• 2 Bananas
• 2 Cups of chocolate chips (I used 1/2 milk and 1/2 semi-sweet)
• 3/4 Cup of Old Fashioned Oats

Directions:

Prepare a cookie sheet with wax or parchment paper to fit and make some space in your freezer that will accommodate it laying flat.  Melt chocolate chips over a double boiler (if you can do it in the microwave, more power to YOU – that never works for me), stirring until smooth.  Remove from heat and add oats, stirring until completely incorporated.  Cut the bananas into 16 1 inch rounds (you know, approximately).  Coat bananas with chocolate mixture and place on prepared cookie sheet.  Once all are coated, pop into the freezer for at least one hour or the refrigerator for 2 hours before enjoying or moving to a plastic freezer bag.

Any other suggestions for stuff to add to the chocolate?  IDEAS PLEASE

Since they keep talking about how blueberries have all these anti-oxidants and healthy things, I decided I needed to find a way to eat more.  So, naturally, I decided to make…

BLUEBERRY MUFFINS!

You know how most people say cooking is easy and you can change things out with out much damage but baking, baking is a SCIENCE and exact and if you don’t respect that you end up with a mess? yeah, I kinda throw that out the window.  I can tweak a baking recipe on the fly, but for some reason I cannot throw together a pasta salad.  So, um, if you have a delicious recipe please send it along because I have a GIANT bowl of blah pasta salad in my fridge that is in serious need of flavor.

Anyway, my point with that tirade is that to make the blueberry muffins I not only combined two recipes but then I messed them all up – DELICIOUSLY!

The basic recipe is from King Aurthur Flour (ooh yes I am a flour snob, only KAF for me!!) whose recipes I have always had great success. And then I changed it up.

Yeah – doesn’t that look awesome? haha!  well this is all he wet ingredients, including the blueberry yogurt instead of say, lemon, or vanilla – it looks gross but tastes yummy!

There, MUCH better – once you add the dry ingredents and the blueberries.   I used a combo of regular AP Flour and White Whole Wheat flour.  You can use whatever combo you like.  My husband scarfed these down and I mentioned later that they had WWW flour and he had no idea.  I also used frozen blueberries – of course you could use fresh.  But then it wont be pretty and blue pffft who wants white muffin and blue berries? heh.

The batter is super thick, like cookie dough.  This actually makes it much easier to fill the muffin cups as you can use a cookie scoop!

<pretend there is a picture here of the muffins in the pan before being baked>

Then you add this delicious topping!  The topping, from the queen herself, Martha Stewart and her Baking Handbook.  Though, I should say ‘inspired by’ since i read it last week, then when I went to make it today i couldn’t find the book and so I just made up the proportion.  yeahhh found the book after and wow was I off!  But I must say, it was one tasty laps of memory.  I didn’t use it all… it keeps in the fridge for about 2 weeks (according to Martha, but then, hers was merely ‘inspiration’ ha)

Ingredients:

Muffins:

• 1 cup All-Purpose Flour
• 1 cup All-Purpose White Whole Wheat Flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 cup (4 tablespoons) unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 2 extra-large eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup yogurt (ok i used one serving of chobani greek blueberry yogurt – lemon or vanilla would be delicious too!)
• 1 1/2 cups blueberries, fresh or frozen

Topping:

• 1 stick of unsalted butter
• 1 cup of flour
• 1 cup of brown sugar
• 1 tsp salt (i used kosher)

The How To:

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line a muffin pan with papers, and grease the papers (this way you dont leave 1/2 the muffin in the paper, i just use PAM)
2. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flours, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
3. In a large mixing bowl, beat the butter and sugar together until light in color and down right fluffy!
4. Beat in the eggs one at a time; then the vanilla extract and yogurt
5. Add the flour mixture slowly, mixing till everything is evenly moistened. It will be THICK, like a cookie dough.
6. Stir in the blueberries by hand, like when you add chocolate chips to cookies (skimmers, there are no chocolate chips in these muffins, but hmm that might be a tasty addition!)
7. Scoop the batter into the muffin cups. i used a large cookie scoop and it took about a scoop and a half to 2 scoops to fill.
8. Now you could stop here and they would be lovely, or as KAF suggests, just add some sparkling sugar to the top.  But if you want extra yum, now just grab a bunch of that topping mixture and pile it on top.  kinda squeeze it on there and use more than you think is necessary.  you will thank me later!

Bake the muffins for 25 minutes. Use a toothpick to make sure they are done.  Remove them from the muffin pan as soon as you can handle so that they don’t get all steamy and yucky.  Hold off as long as possible then dive into to one just to make sure they taste right. It might take two to decide.

now, seriously, pasta salad help!

I don’t know why it never occurred to me to make it when we went home.  It wasn’t until years later and after I was married that I wised up and asked for the recipe.  And even then, I only made it for the first time about 2 weeks ago!

Of course, then I just had to change it up!  It will never match the pumpkin bread made in my grandmother’s kitchen, so I am excited to experiment a little and create a version that suites me and my family.

SO – instead of a loaf  (or two) I made them into muffins, added some cranberries, and used whole wheat flour – and man are they tasty!!  The list of ingredients looks long, this is likely part of why I put making this off for so long… but really, it’s EASY!  I promise!  it’s just a lot of spices, but you dump it all into one bowl and use your mixer.

mmmmmm, muffins…

Pumpkin Muffins with Cranberries and Walnuts

Makes 12 muffins (plus a little extra)

2 Cups of Whole Wheat Flour
1 1/2 Cups of Sugar
1 tsp Baking Soda
3/4 tsp Salt
1/2 tsp Baking Powder
1/2 tsp Cinnamon
1/2 tsp Nutmeg
1/4 tsp Allspice
1/4 tsp Cloves
1/8 tsp Ginger
1/4 Cup of Vegetable Oil
1 Can (or 15oz) of Pumpkin Puree
1/3 cup Water
2 Eggs
1/2 Cup of chopped walnuts
1/2 dried cranberries
Sparkling Sugar (aka decorator sugar, completely optional but PRETTY and adds crunch)

Preheat Oven to 350F

1. Sift together the first 10 ingredients into the mixing bowl
2. Make a well and add gthe vegetable oil, pumpkin, and cold water
3. Blend on medium until incorporated
4. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each
5. Fold in walnuts and cranberries

Let batter rest while you prepare the muffin pan!  (This allows the baking powder/soda to work it’s magic!)

• Start by lining the pans with muffin papers sprayed lightly with cooking spray.  Or you can skip the papers and just spray with cooking spray and coat each of the muffin cups with cinnamon sugar!  YUM!
• Fill the muffin cups to nearly the top of the paper/edge.
• Bake for 30-35 minutes, turning half way through baking time. Muffins are done when a tooth pick in the middle comes out clean or with a few crumbs.  Remove from the oven and transfer to a cooking rack as soon as you can possibly handle them!

I used a mini muffin pan for my left over batter and made minis!  they cooked up in about 20 minutes – gotta watch them closely because the bottoms tend to burn.  let’s just say they are good to taste so you can save the big muffins for sharing!

I started with a recipe from my very favorite, King Arthur Flour, for Lemon Squares.

Since I didn’t actually have any lemons, I decided the sensible solutions was to use the limes.  And then blueberries.  Fruit is good for you!  This should count for a fruit serving, don’t you think?

Lime and Blueberry Squares (adapted from KAF)

Crust
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
1 cup All-Purpose Flour
1/4 cup confectioners’ sugar
zest of 1 lime (or two, or lemon!)

Topping
4eggs
2 cups granulated sugar
4 tablespoons lemon juice (approximate, I used the juice of 2 limes)
4 tablespoons All-Purpose Flour
a pinch of salt

Preheat oven to 350°F

Make the crust!

Cut the butter into the flour and confectioners’ sugar and press into a 9-inch square pan. Bake 25 minutes or until light brown.

Make the yummy topping!

While the crust is baking, combine all the topping ingredients into a bowl and mix well.  When the crust comes out of the oven and is still hot, pour the topping over it and put it back in the oven to bake for about 30-35 minutes.

Let it cool and then cut into squares, dust with confectioners sugar and devour!