I was flipping through all of my cookbooks on Sunday to find a new banana bread recipe and found this recipe by Bakerella in the Home Baked Comfort cookbook. When I was looking on Bakerealla’s website, I didn’t find the exact same recipe but found this Mini Maple Pancake Muffin recipe, which is basically the recipe with chocolate chips instead of banana.

As a side note, I didn’t make these until 9 pm on Monday night and I had them out of the oven cooling and things cleaned up before 10 pm, so if you are looking for a quick and easy breakfast treat… this is it! Also, the recipe calls for buttermilk but I didn’t have any in the house (who does?) so I used whole milk.

1 cup all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup whole milk
1 large egg
2 tablespoons pure maple syrup
2 tablespoons melted butter
1 very ripe, large banana or 2 medium sized

Position a rack in the middle of the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Generously grease 24 mini muffin cups with non stick spray or grease with butter.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. In another bowl, stir together the milk, egg, 2 tablespoons maple syrup, and the butter until just combined. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir until combined. Stir in the mashed banana.

Spoon the batter into the prepared muffin cups. Bake until the muffins are puffed and golden, 10-12 minutes. Let the muffins slightly in the pan on a wire rack, then unmold onto the rack. Serve the day of or the next day.

p.s. add 1/2 cup of chocolate chips to the muffins to make them a bit more interesting.

I didn’t have much time to put today’s post together, so I thought I would do a little “re-posting.” Etsy’s Featured Seller for today is Better Off Wed, which not only showcases really neat cake toppers but also has some great tips for couples and hopeful Etsy sellers. Hope you all are having a lovely hump day!

Guest post by Sue Min, my roommate and friend

Here’s my best attempt at describing this recipe.

White Bean Hummus (adapted from Smallbar’s menu…that I noticed while watching a soccer game)

1 can cannellini beans
1-2 sticks of fresh mint
1 clove garlic
1/2 lemon
feta cheese (preferably cow, but sheep works ok)
salt and pepper (optional and to taste)

Cut off about 1/3 of the block of feta. Cube this section of cheese (it blends more easily in the food processor)
Dice mint leaves.

 
Dice clove of garlic and combine with beans in a food processor.

 
Blend for a moment.

 
Add a bit of the cubed feta and diced mint leaves.

 
Again, after blending this for a moment or two, add the rest of the feta then add lemon juice from the 1/2 lemon (watch out for seeds)

 
Blend a bit more and taste to see if you need more mint and/or salt and pepper (This is really up to a person’s personal tastes. I don’t add any salt or pepper)

**Fresh mint from local vertical farm: 312 Aquaponics

On Sunday I had a coffee and music filled morning which inspired me to make my second batch of oven-roasted cherry tomatoes. Since I’ve made them before I felt a little bit more comfortable with the baking time but I now know that 60 minutes is a bit too long and 45 minutes is a bit too short, so next batch will be 50-55 minutes.

Recipe adapted from 101 Cookbooks

1 pint basket cherry tomatoes, stemmed
1/4 cup of extra-virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon natural cane sugar or maple syrup
Fine-grain sea salt

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees with the rack in the top third of the oven.

Slice each tomato in half and place in a large bowl. In a small bowl, whisk together the olive oil, sugar and a scant 1/2 teaspoon salt. Pour the mixture over the tomatoes and gently toss until everything is well coated and pour onto baking dish or rimmed baking sheet.

Arrange the tomatoes cut-side up roast for 45 to 60 minutes,(similar to cookies I would put a timmer on for half the time and rotate the pan) until the tomatoes shrink a bit and start to caramelize around the edges. Picture above is at the halfway point.

You can use the immediately and toss with pasta or quinoa. If not you need to let the tomatoes cool, then scrape them into a clean glass jar along with any olive oil that was left in the dis and then one more splash for good measure. They will keep for one week in the refrigerator.

This morning I woke up with a craving for banana bread or maybe I didn’t eat them fast enough and now I need to make bread with them. Who knows? So I went to a few different blogs and then I found this great post “My Top 10 Quick Bread Recipes,” from Joy the Baker.

She has shared so many interesting recipes, like Honey Cranberry Cornmeal Quick Bread, that I may need to just throw the bananas in the freezer. Hope you have a nice weekend!

I hope you had a great weekend! For Easter weekend my cousin Liz (the one on the left) made Pip & Ebby‘s cream cheese monkey bread recipe. Below is a picture just after it came out of the oven and even though I didn’t get to taste it then, I ate my piece this morning and it was soooo delicious. It was just what I needed to keep my Easter sugar buzz going.

Did you try any new recipes this weekend? If so please share!

What do you think about wedding favors? I’ve been thinking about them lately and I’m not sold on the idea of spending a chunk of the wedding budget to give everyone a small gift that they may or may not take with them at the end of the night. However, I do like the idea of putting a lot of thought and little money, into something small that guests will certainly want to take with them, like a flower lollipop (pictured above).

Or maybe fill a simple paper bag with with the couple’s favorite cookies, made by their families and wrapped in wax paper.

My favorite idea is making a mixed cd and putting it into a sleeve made by the couple. Think about how easy it would be to put 12 songs together, order a personalized stamp and assemble these all in one evening. You may want to throw a glass of wine or a beer or two in there… to help things along.

Oh, wow. Since last Wednesday I feel like my life has handed me so many beautiful moments with family and friends, I can’t describe how grateful I am for all of it. The latest one was seeing and hosting the wonderful band Bowerbirds, in which my old friend Dan (Yan) is the drummer. They are a wonderful group of musicians and put on such a great show, I would suggest you purchase a ticket to go see them or pick up their new album, The Clearing.

I usually make something, like brownies or cookies for my musician friends when they travel through town, but this time I was just going to make them waffles and share my stash of girl scout cookies; however, time got the best of us and all I could do is send them with the cookies. If your wondering what kind of waffles I was going to make, it is this great recipe from 101 Cookbooks adapted from Art Smith and it’s the perfect excuse to buy a waffle iron or dust yours off. I hope you all have a few great moments this weekend!

Recently a few friends and family members have gone gluten-free and even dairy-free. This is pretty devastating news to the person who loves to feed folks mac and cheese and baked goods that use at least six different types of dairy products and a cup or more of flour. But then I started looking at different websites and recipes for cupcakes and brownies and found what seem like really great recipes, so I think this weekend (if my niece or nephew isn’t born) I will try either Laura Friendly’s Coconut and Lime cupcakes or the Dark Chocolate brownies from Gluten Free Godess

I conducted the tagalong and brownie experiment on Wednesday night and I think they turned out pretty well. I used a 8×8 glass baking dish lined with parchment paper.

I did one layer of brownie batter.

A layer of minimarshmallows. Putting the marshmallow as the second layer made the bottom layer really gooey and looks like hot fudge.

A layer of tagalongs.

Final layer, brownie batter. I baked for the max recommend time and added about 5 minutes.