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07 Jan 2007
Banana Chocolate Chunk Muffins

Ingredients

  • 1 egg
  • 2 bananas
  • 1/2 C vegetable/canola/corn oil
  • 1/3 C milk
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 1 3/4 C all-purpose flour
  • 1/4 C whole wheat flour
  • 1/2 C sugar
  • 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
  • 1 tbsp baking powder
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1 C chocolate chunks


Directions

  1. Preheat your oven to 350º F.

  2. Mix the dry ingredients (except for the chocolate) together.

  3. Mix the wet ingredients together in a separate bowl.

  4. Mix the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients just until it is basically no longer lumpy.

  5. Fold in the chocolate chunks.

  6. Just use paper muffin wrappers, don’t bother to grease/flour your tin. You’ll be happier that way. Anyays, fill them about 2/3 full.

  7. Bake for about 20 minutes, or until a toothpick poked in the center of a muffin comes out clean.


Notes

This is Dave’s ancestral recipe for banana chocolate chunk muffins, slightly updated for the modern age. (By which I mean, I think we maybe doubled the chocolate? Anyways it’s definitely not too much.)

17 Dec 2006
Salty Oat Cookies

Ingredients

  • 3/4 C unsalted butter
  • 1 C packed dark brown sugar
  • 1/2 C granulated sugar
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 1/4 tsp baking soda
  • 1/2 tsp cinnamon
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 1 3/4 C all purpose flour
  • 2 C rolled organic oats
  • 1/2 C raisins(or dried cranberries)
  • Kosher salt


Directions

  1. Preheat the oven to 375º F.

  2. Set the raisins in a bowl with just enough boiling water (or hot port, even) to cover and leave them to plump up while you put together the dough.

  3. In a stand mixer, whip the butter out of shape. Add the sugars, baking powder, baking soda, and cinnamon, and beat together until the mixture is fairly homogenous. Beat in the eggs and vanilla. Add the flour with the mixer at low speed and, scraping down the sides as necessary, mix just until it is fully incorporated.

  4. Drain the raisins, then add them to the dough along with the oats and mix until combined.

  5. Chill the dough for at least an hour before baking. The longer you chill the dough, the thicker and chewier these cookies end up, so if you have the patience to wait a few hours before baking, do.

  6. Set up a few baking sheets and line them with parchment paper. Place heaping tablespoons of dough on the sheets, about 2″ apart.

  7. Sprinkle kosher salt on top of the cookies. Don’t be stingy – you want them to actually taste of salt, as an active presence rather than just a flavor enhancer. Sprinkle the salt on as you would sugar.

  8. Bake for 12-15 minutes, or until the edges are golden brown and done. Carefully transfer the still-soft cookies with a spatula onto racks to cool.


Notes

Teaism is a wonderful chain of cafes in DC, and I was obsessed with trying to recreate their Salty Oat Cookies for years until they posted their recipe. This is mostly theirs, just slightly tweaked to add more raisins and sometimes booze.

17 Mar 2006
Cocoa Nib Currant Rugelach

Ingredients

for the pastry

  • 2 1/2 C all-purpose flour
  • 2 tbsp sugar
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 1/2 lb. (2 sticks) cold unsalted butter (cut into pieces)
  • One 8 oz. package cream cheese (chilled and cut into pieces)

for the filling

  • 2 tbsp sugar
  • 1/2 C packed dark brown sugar
  • 1 tsp ground cinnamon
  • 1/2 C roasted cocoa nibs
  • 1/2 C dried currants (soaked briefly in boiling water, and then drained and patted dry)


Directions

  1. Combine the flour, sugar and salt in a food processor and pulse a few times to mix.

  2. Add the butter and pulse until the butter pieces are about the size of bread crumbs.

  3. Add the cream cheese and process until the dough begins to clump together, about 30 seconds. (I sometimes cheat and just make this in my stand mixer. Doesn’t seem to do any harm.)

  4. Turn the dough out onto a work surface and slam it to get out the air bubbles, then divide it into 4 pieces. Press each piece into a flat patty about 4″ in diameter, wrap in plastic wrap, and refrigerate until firm, about 4 hours. You can leave it in the fridge overnight if you like.

  5. When the dough has chilled and you’re ready to procede, preheat the oven to 350° F. Line two baking sheets with parchment or silpat.

  6. Stir all filling ingredients together in a bowl.

Working with one dough patty at a time:

  1. Roll it out between two pieces of wax paper into a 12″ diameter circle that’s about 1/8″ thick (erring on the side of too thin). I find that it helps to peel the dough off the wax paper and flip it over from time to time when rolling it out.

  2. When it’s ready, peel off the top sheet of wax paper and place the paper on a counter or cutting board. Flip the dough onto the paper and peel off the second sheet (to loosen the dough’s attachment to the wax paper).

  3. Sprinkle a quarter of the filling over the dough. Place a fresh, non-sticky piece of wax paper over it, and gently roll over the filling with a rolling pin to press it into the dough. Remove the top layer of wax paper.

  4. Cut the dough into 12 equal wedges like a pie. Roll up each wedge, starting at the wide end and working towards the narrow point, and place them on the cookie sheets with the point underneath to keep it from unrolling. They don’t need to be too far apart, as they won’t expand much.

  5. Bake, rotating the sheets from top to bottom and front to back halfway through the baking time, for about 25 minutes, or until light golden brown at the edges. Cool on wire racks.


Notes

From Bittersweet: Recipes and Tales from a Life in Chocolate by Alice Medrich.