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Muffins get a bad rap, and none more so than bran muffins. See, regular muffins are sugar-and-oil fests, full of empty calories, and most bran muffins are healthy but, well, made of twigs. Can there be a happy medium between these two extremes?
Of course there can be! Enter my breakfast-on-the-go juggernaut, the 150% whole grain banana nut muffin! Now, you may be asking yourself how the hell something can be 150% whole grain, and here's your answer: grains are made up of the germ, the bran, and the endosperm. White flour and other processed grains get poo-pooed (and deservedly so) because the nutritious and tasty germ and bran are removed, leaving behind the starchy endosperm which, while semantically being a complex carbohydrate, is treated by your body just like sugar, a simple carbohydrate. While most muffins are made of only white flour, this recipe is made up of whole-wheat flour (germ, bran, endosperm), oats (again, germ, bran, endosperm), wheat germ, and oat bran. Lots of good-parts-of-the-grain yumminess, see?
An astute reader like yourself may have picked up on the fact that while a couple of those ingredients are the fiber- and nutrient-rich parts of the grain, they do not in fact contain all three parts. So I guess it's not technically whole-grain, but really, when you're only removing the bad stuff and keeping the good stuff it's easy to see that it has way more of the good stuff than the bad stuff, so it's like an endosperm with twice the bran and twice the germ, and hence, 150% whole grain! Don't argue with me on this one, I majored in math and I'll come up with some convoluted argument to prove that It Is So.
So that's enough science geekery, let's stop talking nutrition and start talking yumminess!
This recipe is awesome because it manages to be low-fat without tasting overly low-fat. Yes, when you bite into these muffins you can tell that they are healthy and nutritious, but they are still wonderfully moist and flavorful. That's because applesauce, oil's favorite understudy, has gotten its chance to shine in this recipe, and when it teams up with the bananas you get a moist, remarkably un-twig-like consistency. When you add in things like toasted pecans, flax, raisins, and the grains, you get a complex flavor profile that keeps your tastebuds happy.
These are ideal for early-morning athletes and snooze-button-hitters since they are easy to take with you and eat, ensuring you get those morning calories your metabolism needs to function properly throughout the day. I always eat one on the way to swimming in the morning and if I think there's a chance I won't get to eat my daily oatmeal I always bring along a couple extra to tide me over until lunch. That's another benefit to this muffin's ingredients: in addition to being flavorful, they also keep you full for a long time. So what's not to love? Skip that chemical delight breakfast you were going to grab on your way out the door and eat one of these instead!
Click here for the recipe for "150% whole grain low-fat banana nut muffins" »
There is something about baking a pastry - a real, from-scratch, layered bit of flaky dough - that makes you feel like a total badass.
Let's face it, pastries have a pretty formidable reputation. They're certainly not in the "if you can boil water you can handle this" category. I've always had a huge soft spot for croissants, but there is another indulgence - the humble Danish pastry - that has a special, sentimental significance to me.
If there was ever a recipe for me to cut my pastry chef teeth on, this one had to be it.
See, this is another recipe that is near and dear to my heart. Like beef burgundy, my family has been eating these delicacies around holidays since I can remember. Perhaps even more significant, my Mom has been eating them ever since she can remember. When she was a kid, her next-door neighbor (the eponymous Mrs. B) would bring them over each Christmas Eve so that their family could chow down on them the next day. Before my parents' wedding my Mom had a kitchen shower where the guests brought treasured recipes to give to her. Mrs. B brought this.
So when, as I mentioned earlier, Cory and I were in the midst of forging our own traditions, these little gems were so in. I made my very first batch sans supervision this last Christmas (my previous foray being the year before when my Mom was visiting for Thanksgiving) and on the morning of Cory and I ate like royalty, feasting on the light, fluffy, and delicate (both in flavor and texture) yumminess.
I will warn that this is not the easiest recipe I've ever posted. In fact, if you lack the proper patience it's probably actually the hardest I've shared thus far. So with that in mind, use a light hand when folding the dough - you don't want to tear it. If it happens, don't hesitate to pinch the dough closed and put the dough in the fridge since it will start oozing butter. So take your time, enjoy being a real-life badass pastry chef, and enjoy the end result even more!
Every year since I can remember, my family has eaten beef burgundy on Christmas Eve. The warm wine and beef flavors, served atop noodles, the meat perfectly tender... this is the food that memories are made of. Which is good, because it means that the substantial effort required to put this meal on the table is worth it. I mean, come on, this is a dish three days in the making - you know it has to be good. This recipe is like the poster child of the slow food movement.
Even though this year was the first that I'd ever enjoyed this meal on Christmas itself (it was our tradition to eat this on the Eve), this is the single dish that I associate the most with warm and cozy family dinners around the holidays. We often spent Christmas with extended family, but Christmas Eve was a smaller affair, and beef burgundy, with its warm and sensuous flavor, was the perfect dish for a more intimate setting.
Now that I'm all grown up, having married and struck out on my own, I find that I'm in a fun situation: I get to make my own traditions with Cory now. Not surprisingly, beef burgundy made the cut. We enjoyed our first Christmas as husband and wife huddled over a bowl (or two), eating the food that will tie the years of our lives together.
Every family deserves a beef burgundy of their own.
This recipe is one that's been near and dear to me for nearly my whole life. My Mom originally clipped it out of a newspaper and it's grown up with me, going through different changes as I changed too.
Originally we made these cookies huge and round with little pumpkin stems and lavished icing and sprinkles upon them like festive, sweet, sticky jack-o-lanterns. Needless to say they never lasted long.
Years later as my brother and I grew out of the whole Halloween thing, these cookies stuck around (of course!) Now that having a good smooth icing canvas was no longer necessary, chocolate chips made their way into the cookies. They marred the formerly glasslike (well, for a cookie) surface but dude, it was chocolate. Yum! My parents would send these cookies to me in my care packages at college, and they brought back memories of childhood the way that only really good comfort foods can do.
Now that I'm all old, non-pumpkin-decorating, and out of college, it's up to me to keep this yummy tradition alive. I've made them every year over the last couple autumns, but this year I discovered my favorite addition: The Squash Quad of Power. As in the Turkey Trifecta, this blend of flavors complements the flavors it's enhancing so perfectly that I wouldn't ever consider excluding them. Unsurprisingly, when you add cinnamon, nutmeg, ground ginger, and cloves to the cookies, they're, well, uhm, wow.
They just might be the best cookie ever.
