Pinterest Project: Muffins!

I love muffins of pretty much any kind. I had some bananas that were blackening rather rapidly, so I decided to hold on to them and find a banana muffin recipe. I looked at several recipes through Pinterest and pretty quickly I found one that seemed simple and didn't require a lot of work so I decided to go with that one.

Here's the recipe.

Unfortunately, I discovered after I already started to mix the ingredients that I had no flour or cinnamon. Fortunately, I live a quarter of a mile from Kroger, so I left the pre-heating oven on and covered my bowl so the cat wouldn't get into it, and went and picked up the remaining ingredients. Now, I tend to like my bananas a little riper than the next person. In fact, I have scolded co-workers upon finding perfectly good-looking bananas in the trash. So the fact that you are supposed to put fairly ripe bananas into banana bread recipes excited me just a little. I only had two bananas left from my recent grocery trip (prior to the emergency Kroger run), so I decided to halve the recipe so I wouldn't risk my muffins not being banana-y enough. That also kept me from eating a dozen muffins in three days. The other half banana I had left made for a nice little pre-baking snack.

Now, I also didn't have any nuts, so I decided to put a sweet little twist on my muffins. While they were still piping hot and just out of the oven, I melted a piece from a Hershey bar I had in my cabinet and drizzled it on the tops of the muffins. Mmmm. Nothing better than chocolate and banana, right?

I have to say, they were quite good. I may use this recipe more often. I mean, it's always nice when I don't make a complete mess or destroy a household appliance while cooking.



Pinterest Project: Epic Foodie Fail

Fall is here, which means all I want to do is cuddle up on the couch, drink hot tea, eat soup, and never leave my house. Out of all the soup recipes I have found on Pinterest lately, the one I thought sounded the simplest to prepare was a roasted cauliflower and white cheddar soup. The recipe I worked with can be found here.

I had to purchase most of the ingredients specifically for the soup, as I don't keep my pantry stocked for occasions like this at all. I went out of my way to travel to Whole Foods for the aged white cheddar (two different Krogers did not have ANY aged cheeses in their deli department). I bought bakery-prepared bread to dip in the soup. Prep started out pretty normal for me. I had slight difficulty with the onion chopping, as always, although I didn't tear up terribly bad. My house did smell like onions until I took out the trash a couple days later, and in fact my cutting board still reeks, but that will eventually dissipate. Also, when it came time to shred the cheese, I basically just had to shave it, as I do not own a grater and wasn't about to buy one just for one recipe.

Everything went fairly smoothly as I began cooking the soup mixture. It smelled amazing.

Now, this is where the project went wrong. I managed to pour the steaming hot soup into my blender without spilling much. Maybe I should have done this blender thing differently. After all, the recipe does mention something about a stick blender (I have no idea what that is.) I turned the blender on and immediately the lid buckled and some liquid escaped. Okay, no big deal. I turned off the blender and readjusted the lid and tried again, this time placing a towel over the lid to absorb any liquid that might get out. I turned the blender on and soup sprayed EVERYWHERE. It wasn't until the blender was off and I had lifted the towel that I realized why. The cap portion of the lid had fallen all the way through the center and into the blender. I unplugged the blender and poured everything back into the pot. This is what the cap looked like when I fished it out of the soup.

I went ahead and added the cheese and milk to the soup mixture and fished out the plastic I could find, but unfortunately, when I tried to eat a small bowl of the soup I still found several shavings. I decided it wasn't worth the digging and just tossed the soup after letting it cool. I was very disappointed in the inability of my blender (which I rarely use) to hold up under pressure. I have yet to decide whether I will try this recipe again. The most disappointing part of this whole thing was the money I spent on the cheese alone. I can always use cheese, I suppose. I just never thought I would spend so much money on a recipe only to have to throw it out. All the ingredients I had to purchase only came out to $7 or $8, but still, I might as well have eaten one meal out instead of pouring four servings worth of soup into the trash.

If you try this recipe, proceed with caution. Might I suggest a food processor for pureeing instead of a standard blender.