White Chocolate. Milk Chocolate. Banana. Best of friends.

I made these muffins to help cheer up my classmates as we all conglomerated for a whole-class-3-hour-marathon-session last thursday. We have these every few months…and while important, it’s exceedingly uncomfortable to be cramped up in a tiny chair in a tiny lecture theatre for 3 hours straight. Brings me back to the undergrad days…which should never be revisited! I would much rather be on the wards.

These muffins got rave reviews all around. A couple of my friends told me they may be the best muffins I’ve made so far…and they’ve had a lot of muffins and cupcakes

I adapted the recipe from an original one for just chocolate chip muffins. I doubled the recipe and made them healthier by decreasing the sugar, substituting half the butter for applesauce, replacing half the eggs with banana, and using 1/2 whole wheat flour. YAY! HEALTHIER MUFFINS!

Chocolate chip Banana muffins
- 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar
- 1/3 cup packed brown sugar
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 2 teaspoons baking soda
- 1 (heaping) teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon salt (unless using salted butter – then you can skip this)
- 2 eggs
- 1 medium banana, mashed
- 1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted & slightly cooled
- 1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
- 1 cup milk
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
- 1 3/4 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips (i used a combination of white, milk, and mini-milk chocolate chips)

Preheat oven to 375°. Lightly grease or line ~24 muffins cups. (I got about 30 medium-sized muffins) In a large bowl, mix flour, sugar, brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt. Set aside.
In a separate bowl, beat the eggs. Then mash the bananas really well and add them in. (I used frozen bananas, so you just defrost them and squeeze them in) Stir in melted butter, applesauce, milk, and vanilla. Add to flour mixture, stirring just until dry ingredients are moistened. Stir in chocolate. Spoon batter into muffin cups, filling each 2/3 full. Sprinkle top with mini-chocolate chips
Bake for 20-22 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into a muffin comes out clean. Serve warm.

What the world needs now…is cookies, sweet cookies.

This past weekend, I was on friday/sunday call. Now, for those people who don’t know what that means…it means that I was working in the hospital, from 8 AM Friday morning, to 11 AM Saturday morning. I got one hour of sleep. And then…back to work Sunday 8 AM to 11 AM Monday morning. Needless to say, I was a little sleep deprived, and a whole lot of grumpy. So to offset the grumpiness, I made cookies after my nap on saturday afternoon. And yum, these cookies were good!!

I brought them to work and shared them with the nurses on sunday, and my team on monday. Unfortunately, the original recipe called for peanut butter chips, which I thought I had…but didn’t actually. So I substituted and put in toffee chips and more chocolate chips! Delicious variation, though I may try to original way with pb chips eventually.

Chewy Brownie Peanut Butter Chip Toffee Chocolate Chip Cookies
2 cups all purpose flour (I substituted for 1 C whole wheat, 1 C all-purpose)
2/3 cup cocoa powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup butter
1 cup sugar (I used about 2/3 cup sugar)
2/3 cup brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups combo of chocolate chips and peanut butter chips*or chopped up peanut butter cups (I used 1/2 cup of toffee chips, and 1 cup of combo of chopped dark chocolate and chocolate chips)

Preheat oven to 350F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
In a medium mixing bowl, whisk together flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt.
In a large mixing bowl, cream together butter and sugars until fluffy. Beat in the eggs and vanilla. With the mixer on low, beat in the flour mixture, scraping the sides of the bowl as necessary, and continue to beat until all of the dry mix has been incorporated. Do this slowly to avoid dusting your kitchen with flour and cocoa. Stir in chocolate/toffee by hand.
Drop dough by rounded tablespoons onto the prepared baking sheet (dough balls were a bit larger than 1 inch in diameter). Leave about 2 to 3-inches between cookies to allow for spread.
Bake for 9-11 minutes, until cookies are set at the edges and tops are slightly cracked looking. Cool on baking sheet for 5-10 minutes, until firm enough to transfer to a cooling rack.
Cool completely before storing in an airtight container.
Makes about 4 dozen. (I got 46 cookies)

DELICIOUS!

Hummingbirds…crushed up.

Oh me oh my, it’s been over a month since I’ve added anything to this blog! Granted, I haven’t been baking very much recently. We started internal medicine 3 weeks ago, and ever since it has been ruling my life. I actually like internal. The problems are challenging, the patients have about 15 other medical conditions complicating the picture, and I feel (and look) like an idiot…daily. But it’s rewarding. My only beef is with being on call. It’s nice to get called about ward issues, to have patients that are “yours” to deal with, and to sort out someone’s admission…

However you no longer feel like it’s nice at 5 AM when you’ve been working almost non-stop since 7:30 AM the day before, have had next to no sleep, and are just starting on another admission. /sigh

Luckily we do get some breaks. Last weekend, one of my friends and fellow Track 1 medicine crew had her birthday party! So cupcakes were in order.

I love these cupcakes. They’re dense, like a carrot cake, but different from your usual fruity cake. Everyone always asks…”what’s a hummingbird cake”? I started to tell people that I crushed up little hummingbirds and put them inside…and that’s why the frosting is pink. This answer didn’t seem to go over well with a lot of people, so I thought I’d look into where the origin was from. However, even wikipedia didn’t have an answer for me! This is what Martha Stewart’s website has to say:

“Some say this Southern layer cake earned its name because each otherworldly bite makes you hum with delight. Another theory is that it’s as sweet as the sugared water used to attract its hovering namesake.”

So the Hummingbird Cupcakes, are basically a cakes with pineapple, pecans, and banana (and sometimes coconut).

Hummingbird Cupcakes
(Adapted from Cupcake Blog)
(Makes 24 cupcakes – I made 1.5 times the amount to get 40 cupcakes)
3 cups flour
2 cups sugar
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon (I was a little more generous with the cinnamon)
1/2 tsp salt
3 eggs
3/4 cup vegetable oil
1-1/2 tsp vanilla
1 8oz can crushed pineapple, with liquid
2 mashed bananas
1 cup coursely chopped pecans

1. Mix flour, sugar, baking soda, cinnamon, salt with a whisk in a good sized bowl.
2. Beat eggs.
3. Add oil and vanilla to beaten eggs and mix until somewhat combined.
4. Add egg/oil/vanilla mixture to flour/sugar/baking soda/cinnamon/salt mixture.
5. Mix together pineapple, bananas, pecans until combined.
6. Add to the rest of ingredients and stir to combine.

Bake at 350 degrees for ~25 minutes until golden and a cake tester comes out clean.

I topped these suckers with a strawberry cream cheese frosting. I never really measure things out with frosting, I think it’s all about beating it to taste. But I took a slab of cream cheese, a small chunk of lard, some spoonfuls of strawberry jam, and icing sugar and beat them together, adding more icing sugar to taste. YUM!

It’s easy to make chocolate words too – just melt your chocolate of choice in a plastic bag in the microwave, cut a teeny hole in the corner, and pipe the words onto a plastic/tin foil/parchment paper covered baking sheet. Stick them in the freezer til they’re nice and solid, and pop them on top! Tada!

Enjoy =)