Fudgier Muffins

I made that recipe from the other day again. The Sorta Chocolatey Muffins?

That is to say, I kimodified it again. And this time I had cocoa. Yay Cocoa. If I'd gone the extra mile to have vegan chocolate chips (which aren't bad. Just please please please don't use carob and say Kim said to. ::shudders::) these even could've been a vegan treat. But as it stands, they're vegetarian. There's milk products in the chocolate chips, you know.

Anyhoo. They were so chocolately and moist. Fudgy. I'm pretty sure breakfast shouldn't be so fudgy. But since I also successfully switched from added oil/butter to ground flax, eliminated eggs, and greatly reduced sugar, I figure they should count for breakfast after all. Only 2 tsp sugar per muffin (plus the natural sugars in the banana, of course) isn't bad, is it? I was very pleased with the results. And the ground flax adds a little healthy oil (if you believe in that) and some good fiber, too!

So ... from Sorta Chocolately to Fudgy, I present:

Fudgy Muffins:

relatively healthy, for a muffin, moist and fudgy too

Fudgy Muffins

ingredients
3 cups White Whole Wheat flour
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips (use vegan chocolate chips to make this vegan)

3 bananas, smooshed
1 cup white sugar (you could substitute a natural sugar)
2 cups water or rice milk
1 T. flax seed, ground
1-1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease 9x13 pan (see note, below) or 24 muffin tins.

In medium bowl, Mix together flour, cocoa, chocolate chips, baking powder, baking soda and salt.

In mixing bowl blend together in bananas and sugar, then add water (or rice milk), ground flax, and vanilla.

Add dry ingredients to large bowl; Mix well

spread in a 9x13 pan - I use a Silpat liner for the bottom and just lightly grease the edges. Bake ~30 minutes until toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cut into 24 square muffins. If using muffin pans bake 18-25 minutes.

Proof they're not too bad for you:
Calories per muffin: 125 cal
fat (g): 3
carbohydrate (g): 26 (less than half of which comes from the chocolate chips and sugar!)
protein (g): 3
sodium (mg): 191
dietary fiber (g): 3

Sorta Chocolatey Chip Muffins

MMmmmmmm nothing like sorta chocolatey muffins for breakfast!

Step one: Pick a recipe
Step two: assume you have all the ingredients
Step three: find out too late that you're pretty much out of cocoa, a necessary ingredient for chocolatey muffins.
Step four: press on! The kids didn't know what kind you were making anyway!

All in all, they turned out quite well, if not the prettiest muffins. They're not brown enough to be clearly chocolate, so they look suspicious, like maybe they're bran and whole wheat. But fortunately, the kids don't know any better on that, either, they're used to whole wheat and flax instead of eggs and flat topped unrounded muffins that don't look picture perfect.

Sorta Chocolatey Chip Muffins

Ingredients:
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups while whole wheat flour
1 cup unsweetened cocoa* -- sadly, I had a scant quarter cup, which was somewhat spilled by a helper. So that's what I used. But I'd recommend the whole cup. You might want to check first, see if you've got it
3 cups white sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon and 1 teaspoon
baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cups semisweet chocolate chips

1/4 cup water + 2 Tbsp. flax seed, ground (substituted for two eggs)
1 banana
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2-1/2 cups milk (I used rice milk)

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease muffin cups or line with paper muffin liners. - I used silicone muffin cups
2. In medium bowl, Sift together flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and chocolate chips. In large bowl, blend banana with sugar. Then stir in milk, flax and water, and vanilla. Mix dry ingredients to large bowl; beat well.
3. Fill muffin cups 3/4 full.
4. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

For me, this recipe actually made not ONLY 24 muffins, but also an 8" heart shaped pan. When I first saw the original recipe (which has been quite kimodified to this one) I thought I should only multiply it by 1.5 but then threw caution to the wind and doubled it anyway. Whoops. Oh well, now we have plenty more for lunch and snacks.

These are quite sweet, and not too chocolatey as made. I can't vouch for them as written yet, but I suspect they'd be very good made correctly, too. Maybe I'll have another.

A Little Bit Creepy

Got this in the mail today. Of all the little packages, this one seemed just a little ... wrong.

But ... they seem happy enough.

Breakfast, Not for the Faint of Heart

Sometimes, as a mother of a small herd of boys, the *boy thing* is more apparent than other times.

Take this morning, for example. It started out innocently enough. A friend of mine had recently made "Monkey Tail Bread" - which I should note is named for the County Fair Treat of frozen bananas, dipped in chocolate, rolled in peanuts. The name is much less creepy if you know that. She gave it good reviews, so I thought I would make it.

Well, you know me, I really hate to be bound by recipes and details. Plus the children had eaten one more banana than I realized, so I had to kimodify. Of course.

So I did some of my standard changes. I used butter instead of shortening, but used a little less. If I had had more bananas, I would've used even less or omitted it entirely. My children don't like nuts *in* things, so I substituted 1/2 cup peanut butter for the 1/2 cup chopped peanuts. I didn't substitute white whole wheat flour or flax for eggs this time, but I think I will next time. Because this was really a great recipe. I also decided I was too impatient to wait for a loaf pan to cook, so I spread the batter into a 9x13 pan and baked for only 30 minutes, and cut them into "muffin squares" - another common kimodification.

But the most significant change was the frosting. The recipe calls for 2 T. chocolate frosting with 1 T. peanut butter. Having just recently made a birthday cake requiring some black frosting, I had some chocolate-almond frosting, very black, left over in the fridge. I mixed that with 1 T. pb and drizzled it all loopy and crazy over the top of the finished pan. It was still quite black.

My oldest son, a Marvel Comic fan, decided my frosting looked like Venom Goo.

Wait, I stand corrected, the term is Venom Symbiote. You know, the space creature that crawled up SpiderMan and created Black Spider Man and then later Venom?

So ... I didn't make Monkey Tail Muffins.

I made Venom Cake for breakfast.

Cool, huh?

And, I must say, that -- for a SuperVillian -- it tasted VERY good.

Venom Breakfast Cake:

6 T. butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
2 bananas, mashed (only because I only HAD two :( )
1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips
2 tablespoons chocolate frosting (I used some black chocolate-almond I'd made for a cake)
1 tablespoon creamy peanut butter

mix pb in with wet ingredients.

1. Heat oven to 350°F. Grease bottom only of 9x13 pan (I use reusable silicone liners).
2. Beat butter and the sugar in large bowl with electric mixer on medium speed until fluffy. Beat in eggs and bananas until smooth, add peanut butter and again beat until smooth. Beat in flour, baking powder, baking soda, chocolate chips and salt just until mixed. Spread into into pan.
3. Bake 30 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool in pan 5 minutes; remove from pan to wire rack.
4. Place frosting in small plastic food-storage bag. Microwave on High 6 to 10 seconds or until pourable. Add peanut butter to bag; gently squeeze bag until peanut butter and frosting are well blended. Cut off tiny corner of bag. Squeeze bag to drizzle chocolate mixture over bread.

if you don't have leftover black frosting, I suspect melting dark chocolate chips and peanut butter would make a good dark and tasty drizzle. If you don't require it to be Venom Symbiote colored, peanut butter, cocoa powder, and sugar should work, if you don't have frosting on hand.

Options for making it healthier: (use some or all of these)

- add 2 more bananas and omit butter/shortening entirely
- replace 2 eggs with 2 T. flax seed, ground, and 1/4 c. water
- replace AP flour with white whole wheat
- omit frosting :( - or maybe the aforementioned 'frosting' of warm pb and powdered sugar and unsweetened cocoa powder would be a little healthier than regular frosting ...

Imaginary Decorating - Take Two

Alright internet peeps, I need your help.

I'm sure you'll recall I have no decorating sense.

Here's the long wall of my living room. Pardon the barrel-and-stitching distortion, my floor and ceiling aren't really curved. Here's what I've got to work with: A very long wall, two couches along it, the lamp in the middle is the one controlled by the lightswitch to the room. If you wanted, we could move it to the end of the left (flowered) couch and put another one at the far end of the right (blue futon) couch. You can imagine the left couch without the *stuff* on it - I was taking down and moving around the pix FOR these pictures and left it on the couch when I took the pic. Silly me.

Anyway. The wall is actually WHITE. The room is pretty bright and airy, but only gets indirect light from outside, the windows (far right) face North. The North wall has big windows on the left (see small pix at end) and the TV armoire in the middle. The East wall (opposite this one) has bookcases at each end, and a long fireplace/mantle wall in between with family pix on it (see small pic at end) - the south end of this room has the navy loveseat recliner and then a space to walk through between the front hall and family room, and behind that is the piano alcove and kitchen.

Still with me?

So here's a picture of that wall with no pix on it:

I had some pictures in other places, and then I bought these cute 6 little shadow boxes in a rainbow of colors. I don't know what I'll put in them. (Ideas welcome!) So I was going to move around some pictures and try to place the shadow boxes.

here's my first attempt at driving the pictures around and arranging them.

But I'm pretty sure you could do better. So ... where would you put stuff?

if you are really into this and have something that will open Photoshop files, you can grab the layered file here and drive the layers around, which is always fun. Each piece of wall art is in it's own layer. Or you can write out instructions and I'll try to do what you said. :)

http://www.andfam.net/kimblog/blogpix/lr_upload/r_whole_layers_ps.psd

Other random rambles related to trying to decorate this room ...

the other couch in here is a navy blue loveseat recliner, coming out at a right angle from the left end of the left flowery couch. The floor is wood. The room is all painted white, other than the brick fireplace across from this wall.

I tried to find a recent picture of the LR but I can't find one. I can take a few if you need to see the whole room. I don't know how this decorating works.

Anyway, can you drive around - verbally or with photoshop - those things on the wall and tell me where you would place them, if you were decorating my living room?

What else would you do to the room (here's where the seeing the whole room might help, eh?) I guess there's these pics from before we started the OrgoWork:

but we've moved furniture around since then to be more useful. The white wicker is gone. The two black chairs are still in there, they move around depending on whether we're watching videos or playing the wii. The navy loveseat recliner is in the same place as in these pictures. Some of the excess clutter is gone. :) Does that help any?

Oh, but anyway. Short of buying new furniture, what else would you do for the room? I like light, bright colors and am leaning towards a little "rainbow" focus (like the 6 shadow boxes) to try to tie in some of the warm hues in the room without *decorating* in warm browns and golds and oranges. Does that make sense? I have no real sense of how to decorate, though, so if I'm just going in the wrong direction, tell me. The worst i can do is continue to blunder and reject your advice, right? :-)

I'll quit rambling and let you get to work.

Violet Jelly

Eminoodle and Moogie saw great potential in our yard-of-not-grass. Each spring our yard turns into a violet field. Moogie mentioned to Eminoodle that they should make violet jelly with all those violets, and Noodle was off to surf up a recipe and pick a heap of violets.

Here are the results of our first small batch.

We don't know how it tastes yet, but it sure looks pretty!

There's a few more artsy fartsy jelly pix at my Flickr photostream if you want to see more.

Cabin in the Woods Dream

For the record, I started a post the other day, but forgot to finish it. So I haven't entirely forgotten to post here, just haven't had much closure.

Last night I had another of my typical "Kim Dreams" ~ no obvious meaning, just bizarre.

I dreamed we had bought a cabin in the woods. It was a two-story cabin with a walk-out back (basement) towards the road and woods, and the upstairs where the dining room was had big windows looking out towards the front where there was, perhaps, a big field or lake (I think it was a lake)... There was a HUGE snowstorm/blizzard with high winds and astounding drifts. My friend Peggy (hi Peggy!) had said she was moving back to the Pacific Northwest (in my dream) because she missed snow, and I stared out the window towards where the lake would have been, only it was so snowy blowy hazy that you couldn't see the lake. It was more like an alien landscape of deep purple hazy sky filled with driving snow and Seuss-like snow drifts and thought, "Peggy should come to Michigan!" ... it was such a wild and unusual scene, and I remember thinking I had never seen anything like it in all my years in Michigan.

M children ran out to play in the snowy woods as the storm ended, but the drifts were so high and strangely sculpted that I was concerned there would be an avalanche. Buzz was climbing up the back of a steep cliff between huge trees, and sliding down the drift on the other side, and it seemed so unsafe. So I corralled the children inside, and we said goodbye to my sister and her husband who had been, apparently, visiting. They still had his Big Tall Truck, so they could drive out of the snowy wilderness.

I had planned to go out shopping, because I'd used up all the sugar in the cabin (we had just bought it and everything in it was from the previous owners) but remembered the local store closed at 8 pm. The Grand Lunar was outside waving good bye to my sister and her husband when an SUV drove up. He stepped back near the cabin, while I was inside, and we both watched to see who it was and why they were there.

It turned out to be relatives of the former owners who had planned to stay the night, not knowing it was sold. They had come a long way and simply came in, there was no turning them away. The woman had with her about twelve children, none of whom were her own children, they belonged to other relatives. They were all between 6 and 15 or so, and didn't seem to care at all that the cabin was sold, and just made themselves at home, demanding ice cream. The boys in the bunch were immensely demanding and rude, and I told them so. One boy, who looked to be about 12, rejected his bowl of ice cream as too small, and then was amazed and upset when I didn't give him more, just gave his bowl to someone else.

The lady with them seemed polite and somewhat apologetic, as if maybe she hadn't realized until that day that the children were poorly behaved. She tried to help by setting the table with these fancy dark dark brown table settings from a dark dark brown hutch. Full table settings, like you see in decorating magazines, with the several plates, too much silverware, too many glasses, etc ... The style of the fancy place settings was not me at all, and it was making it hard to finish the children's ice cream because the new fancy place settings were just in the way. But the girls in the bunch ended up being polite and helpful and washing dishes for us, so that there were enough spoons for everyone (except the particularly rude boy!) to have ice cream.

And then ... somewhere after the ice cream, I woke up.

Turning Three

Today my youngest child turned three.
I've never been able to say that before!

We had a wonderful day with chocolate chip peanut butter muffins for breakfast, pizza for lunch, and McDonalds with the PlayPlace for dinner. Buzz had never been there as a mobile old-enough-to-play child (deprived, I know) so he was thrilled. I think he might have been intimidated, were it not for four very enthusiastic older siblings.

We wrapped up the day with gifts and ... what else? ... monkey cake for my monkey boy. Well, one of my monkey boys, they're all monkeys, really.

Happy 3rd Birthday, Buzz! We love you!