America's Test Kitchen Banana Bread

Sometimes finding the perfect recipe for those common baked goods can be harder than you'd think. With so many choices, it's hard to know the real winners. I love America's Test Kitchen, and how they explain everything and show how different methods produce different results. This recipe was super easy, and delicious. Want to know something else that's great? I actually forgot to put the butter in mine and it still came out delicious! So, there's the low fat version...hahah =)

Makes 1 loaf

INGREDIENTS

2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
¾ cup sugar
¾ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon table salt
3 very ripe bananas, mashed (about 1½ cups)
¼ cup plain yogurt
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1¼ cup walnuts, toasted and chopped coarse (we left these out)

DIRECTIONS

Adjust a rack to the lower-middle position of the oven and heat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour a 9-by-5-inch loaf pan; set aside.

Whisk together the flour, sugar, baking soda and salt together in a large bowl; set aside.

Mix the mashed bananas, yogurt, eggs, butter, and vanilla together with a wooden spoon in a medium bowl. Lightly fold the banana mixture into the dry ingredients with a rubber spatula until just combined and the batter looks thick and chunky. Fold in the walnuts. Scrape the batter into the prepared loaf pan and smooth the surface with the spatula.

Bake until the loaf is golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 55 minutes. Cool in the pan for 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Cheers to my brother, who was the recipient of this naner bread for fixing my brakes =)

Semi-homemade Momofuku Milk Bar Compost Cookies®

Have you ever been obsessed with a place you've never been to? If so, you can relate to my love for Milk Bar. MB is the bakery branch of the Momofuku chain, started by chef David Chang. As far as baking heroes go, Christina Tosi from Milk Bar is up there pretty high. There are some bakeries you see and you just think, "this is so awesome". During my time in NY I never made it to Milk Bar, but I have the cookbook and follow Christina and David Chang from Momofuku regularly. These compost cookies are one of their biggest sellers, alongside cereal milk™, and crack pie® (yes the trademarks are necessary).

So these cookies are Semi Homemade because they start with a kit (Purchased HERE). While it's a kit, don't be fooled, these puppies take a bit of TLC and time. This ain't no Betty Crocker Mix.

Look at that cookie! Nom nom nom.

So! Once you open your fun box you have all the goodies inside. 

Very fun. In addition to the kit you will need:

• 9 Tbsp Butter
• 1 Egg
• And about a cup and a half of Pretzel and Potato Chip mix ins. 

So there are four packages inside the box, the sugar mix, the cookie mix, the graham cracker mix, and the mix-ins.

Start off by combining the graham cracker and one tablespoon of butter until it turns into small clumps. Put this into the fridge.

Next mix the sugar packet and softened butter on low speed for 2 minutes. Scrape the bowl, add your egg and then beat on medium high speed for about 8-10 minutes, or until fluffy.

Scrape the bowl again, and add in your cookie mix, on medium speed for about 30 seconds, or just until the dough comes together.

Lastly add in the cookie mix-ins and that bowl of graham cracker crumbs you forgot you had in the fridge. Scrape the bowl, and fold in your 1 1/2 cups of lightly crushed pretzels and potato chips. I didn't have potato chips, but I did have plain pretzel crisps and they worked out just fine.

At this point your dough should look like this:

Hello heaven.

Next form the dough into round balls, or use a medium cookie scoop. Place onto a parchment paper'ed sheet pan and refrigerate for an hour, minimum. This dough is very light, and needs the refrigeration to hold it's shape.

Bake at 375, for about 13 minutes, rotating halfway through. The cookies will spread so use two sheet pans.

These cookies are so great, they're sweet, salty, rich, crisp, and chewy. By far, one of my favorite kits I've used. They are also great for pretending you're at Milk Bar, enjoying them with a glass of cereal milk =)

Just in case you want to make them from total scratch, the LA times printed the recipe here!

Spring is here! Time for Iced Tea!

One great part of my job is that we just did a major renovation and I got to help open and manage the new restaurant. That in itself is totally awesome, but one of my favorite parts was picking out new things for the space. I was put in charge of revamping our tea and iced tea program. I'm not a big tea drinker, unless it's a venti iced chai from Starbucks, and I don't think that really counts. So, picking out iced tea was actually kind of hard.

I reached out to two tea companies, and got some awesome swag in the process. We ended up going with a great brand, Harney & Sons, out of New York, but the runner up has a really fun way of making iced tea I wanted to share.

Tea Forte is a company based out of Concord, MA, with as much focus on iced tea as they do on the hot loose leaf. They've come up with a great Tea-Over-Iced process that uses flash-chilling which helps preserve the flavor. I was lucky enough to receive one of the brewers while deciding. The Iced tea brewer has two compartments, one for the tea to brew in, and the second to serve from.

Pre-brew!

I decided to brew White Ginger Pear, which made my apartment smell delicious! TF describes it: "Rarest Pai Mu Tan white tea is plucked in early spring from a special varietal tea bush called “chaicha”. Blended with the sweet taste of juicy orchard fresh pear and the tingle of spicy ginger for a delicate and delighting infusion."

After adding about 24oz of boiling water.

Pour boiling water over the tea bag in the top, wait 3-5 minutes. I love the little leaf that sticks out =) One it's to your preferred strength, pour over the ice.

Ta-da! Add a little agave syrup and you have one delicious pot of iced tea for two!

You can buy your own here!

*This post is in no way endorsed by Tea Forte, I just loved the blends =)

Cookie Cutters are the best!

I am a kitchen gadget junkie. Foods on a stick maker? Have it. Martha Stewart Banana slicer? Got it. Split decision pie pan? Check yes! I love it all. Even though I have no kitchen space my collection is ever growing. Last week my BFFJenna came to visit me in Chicago and I made her go to a Kitchen Gadget store I'd been dying to go to (this was after putting her into a food coma from Little Goat and Glazed&Infused).

Leave it to Jenna to find that one thing in the store I HAD to have, a unicorn cookie cutter!

I had a bag of gingerbread cookie mix, so I whipped up a bunch of fun shapes for the day =)

Before being baked

After baking! I adding some sprinkles =)

Since I had extra dough I used my Ginger-Dead Men Cookie Cutter too!

Date Nut Pinwheels

I collect a lot of cookbooks, and hands down one of the best, is the Betty Crocker Cooky Book. It was a blow to learn at a young age, that Betty Crocker did not exist. Apparently, General Mills (before it was General Mills) used to receive a lot of baking questions. To answer them they decided to have a "Dear Abby" type of response with a face to relate to: Betty. Either way, the Cooky Book was published in 1963 and the recipes have the old mother made feel to them, which I love. The cookies in this book take some love and care, unlike todays 5 minute mix and bakes.

My family used this book for every Christmas up until last year when my dad accidentally lost it at the grocery store while picking up supplies (not bitter). Luckily at the CIA we had a copy in the library and I copied down my favorites. 

The Cooky we make every year without fail are Caramel Refrigerator Cookies (Date Nut Pinwheels)- which was the best Cooky of 1940-1945.

For the dough :

1 cup shortening (or butter)2 cup brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla (not part of original recipe, I added, because I like the vanilla flavor)
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
4 cup flour
3 eggs ( well beaten)

Cream together shortening, brown sugar, vanilla, then add salt, baking soda and flour, add well beaten eggs, and mix well. You may need to add more flour.

For the filling:

2 1/4 cup chopped dates1 cup water1 cup sugar1 cup pecans chopped

Add all ingredients to pan and cook the dates have softened. You'll smell the delicious caramel smell when it's about right. If you over cook the sugar will burn, so be sure to stir often. Cool before using.

Chill dough well. Overnight or so at least. divide dough, And on a lightly floured surface or if you prefer , which I do , roll between 2 layers of wax paper or plastic wrap, maybe 1/4" thick. Roll out one part at a time keep the other part chilling . Spread a thin to moderate layer of filling on dough then roll up in a log. Put the log in wax paper or plastic wrap and refrigerate. Repeat this process until all used up.

Slice thin and bake at 350 until done about 15 minutes, when the cookie is a light golden brown. Depending on your oven you may have to adjust your temperature up or down.

makes around 10 dozen

The rolls can be stored in the refrigerate for up to a week. You can also wrap them up and store in freezer. 

YUM!

Cake Pops!

I am really late on this trend, but I finally made some cake pops! My favorite lil' baby Harper was turning one and was having a Very Hungry Caterpillar  party so I needed to make a caterpillar for the cake. Thanks always to Pinterest, I saw someone had make one of cake pops and it looked so cute I had to try. 

Making cake pops is a lot easier than I thought it was, I just kind of winged it but figured out a lot about making them in the process.

So all you need is 

1 Box cake mix - any flavor

1 Box icing

Sticks

Candy Coating or melted Chocolate

 First and easily enough, bake your cake. It doesn't have to be pretty. I chose vanilla for both flavors since Harper had never had cake before. Once it's baked take the cake and crumble it up. If you have any hard edges cut them off, I found the don't crumble and will be weird in the cake ball later.

Once it looks like this

Start adding icing! Add enough until you can clump it together with your fist.

this is what mine looked like at that point. Once you have it to hat point you can start to mold them! If you have a nice cookie/melon-baller that works best. they also sell cake pop molds you can use like cookie cutters. Once you've rounded them, put them in the fridge or freezer to set their shape.  During this time you can start to melt your chocolates. I used red and green for the body. I saw a "Babycakes" chocolate melter later that would work really well for the dipping, but I just melted as directed on the back in a small bowl. I found that swirling them works better than trying to submerge the whole pop. 

Once they were dipped I added eyes with a small piping bag filled with extra melted chocolate.

Once my cake was finished I added these guys to the top =) the antennae are Mike and Ikes!

The smash cake! The caterpillar was made with marshmallow fondant 

The Easiest Cookies Ever

Sometimes as a baker people assume you are bringing desserts to the party. It just happens, and I don't normally mind, but sometimes it's a little late in the game for a dessert that takes more than a half hour. These cookies are perfect for the holiday season when you're maybe volunteered to bring cookies and forgotten, or just need something nummy NOW!

Two ingredients, fifteen minutes, one happy Maggie.

Ingredients:

1 Bag Gingerbread Cookie Mix (plus one egg, one stick of butter)

1 Bag Heath Bar Bits

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees. Mix up the cookies and form them into 1 inch rounds.

Fill a small bowl with Heath bits. Push the tops of each cookie into the bits, flattening the cookie a bit as you do so.

Pop into the oven for about 12 minutes. Be careful to get any extra toffee bits off the parchment - those will burn up

I love these cookies because once the toffee bits are gooey when warm and then chewy when cooled. 

So easy, so yummy.