Maple Walnut Banana Bran Muffins

Can we call it an everything muffin? Even Ed thought these were good. That means they're like super awesome. The inspiration came as I was wandering through whole foods after a particularly long and painful run, wondering what I wanted for dinner. That could possibly be the most dangerous thing you can possibly do after running, because you get home and wonder why the heck you bought so many groceries. But I somehow ended up with a giant bag of organic bran flakes, and so I decided to experiment with bran muffins. Contrary to what I had previously thought, bran muffins are good! Especially if you add maple syrup and walnuts, its tough to go wrong. These muffins stayed moist, which I think is due to the applesauce and bananas. Anyway:

2.5C flour
1C bran
1 tbs baking powder
2 tsp salt
1/4C brown sugar
1/2C walnuts
2 mushed up bananas
2/3C applesauce
3/4C unflavored yogurt
1 tbs oil
1 egg
1/4C maple syrup

Mix together all of the dry ingredients. Add the walnuts. In a separate bowl, add the wet ingredients (including bananas). Mix this up well. Then, add the wet stuff to the dry stuff and mix it as little as possible. Bake at 400 F until done.

Strawberry scones

We went strawberry picking the other day, which could possibly be my definition of heaven. After eating more than I ended up paying for in the tupperwares, I came home with oodles of strawberries. What to do? I was too full of fresh strawberries to want to eat any more of them, so strawberry scones it was. Alex and Jackie were over, and between four of us, we devoured the whole recipe in oh, 14 seconds flat.

There was a near disaster when I forgot to add the sugar, but Jackie came up with an ingenious way of coating the tops with sugar and broiling it so that you get this crunchy, sugary, coating on top, and it was awesome. so:

1/2c milk (skim worked fine)
1 egg
2 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2tsp salt
1/2 stick (4 tbs) unsalted butter, frozen
2 Tbs sugar
3/4C strawberries, chopped

Put a cheese grater in the freezer. No, seriously. One with the big holes, if possible. Preheat your oven to 425 F.

In a big bowl, add flour, baking powder, salt, and 2 tbs sugar, and mix really well. Take the frozen butter and using your frozen cheese grater, grate it into the flour. Once you've grated half a stick of butter into the flour, use your fingertips to rub it into the flour, until its sort of crumbly looking. Don't do this too much.

In a separate bowl, mix the egg and milk, and then dump it into the dry ingredients. Mix it in, using the least number of strokes as possible. It'll be pretty dry.

Dump the mixture out on a floured table, knead no more than 12 times if its really not at all together, and form into one or two circles. Cut these up into wedges, and bake for ~10 minutes, until not quite golden. Here is the important part--when the scones are almost golden brown, take them out and sprinkle a thick layer (~1 tsp) of granulated sugar on top of each one. Then set your oven on broil, and broil the scones until the sugar layer on top has melted into a solid caramel-ish layer. Cool them as long as you can possibly wait, and then devour!

Sorry no pictures, we ate them too fast. Then I made two more batches the next day, and again, they disappeared too fast to take a picture. huh.

Nutrigrain Bars!

So I ran out of energy bars, and didn't really have the funds to go buy more of them... so I decided to make some. I like nutrigrain bars, so I thought that might be a good start. I ended up using a muffin recipe for the bottom, jam in the middle, and an oatmeal cookie recipe on top. I wanted these to be relatively healthy, i.e. not all just sugar and butter, as good as that would taste. I did end up with a 27%, 66%, 8% fat, carb, protein ratio, which works pretty darn well for any pre- or during-workout food.
so:

The Bottom:
1/2C white flour
1/2C whole wheat flour
2 tbs granulated sugar
2 tbs brown sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1.5 tsp baking powder
1/4C milk
1 egg
1 tbs unsweetened yogurt
2 tbs oil (you could probably substitute one of these tablespoons for a tbs of yogurt, to make it 2tbs yogurt to 1 tbs oil)
1/2 tsp vanilla

For the Top:
1/4C butter (1/2 a stick)
1/4C brown sugar
1/4C whole wheat flour
1/4C white flour
3/4C oats (although next time I'll definitely add more)
2 tbs applesauce (You could try yogurt here instead if you wanted to increase the protein)

Middle: 1/2C of jam, whatever flavor you like. I like smucker's blackberry jam.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Make the bottom layer first. In a large bowl, mix together all of the dry ingredients. In a 2C measuring cup, mix together the wet ingredients. Add the wet to the dry, stir until just mixed. If its not runny enough, add more milk. Grease a 9x9 inch pan, and pour the thinnest layer you can manage into the bottom of the pan. Bake until the top is just firm enough to spread jam on top.

Spread the jam on the muffin layer. Using your fingers, mush out chunks of the cookie dough into the thinnest layer possible and spread on top of the jam. Bake for 15-20 minutes or until done. I sprinkled mine with oats before baking, and that tasted good.

Repeat as many times as necessary to use up the rest of the batter and dough. Cool as long as you can (About 30 seconds in my case, because I want to eat them so badly). Cut into bars, and eat.