Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins and Costco Flowers

According to Blogger, my last published post was February 26, 2014. Huh. I knew it had been a while, but it didn't think it was THAT long ago. Oh, well. Life happens.

RC is in 4th grade (how the hell did THAT happen?) and brings a snack every day. Most of the time this snack consists of granola bars and fruit snacks. I've been trying to think of things for him to take that are easy, tasty (i.e. have chocolate in them) and aren't totally horrible for him. I've made these double fudge banana muffins from Yammie's Noshery and they are fantastic.

I was telling my mom how awesome those fudge banana muffins were and she mentioned the pumpkin chocolate chip ones she made when we were kids. I asked for the recipe last week and finally got around to making them this week. And, they are a hit! Seriously, how can you go wrong with pumpkin AND chocolate chips. It's a match made in heaven.

They are super easy and very tasty.

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins
1 Box Spice Cake Mix
1 C pumpkin puree (not pumpkin pie filling)
2/3 C water
2 eggs
6 oz chocolate chips

Mix cake mix, pumpkin, water and eggs together. Stir in chocolate chips. 

Bake at 350 degrees for 15-20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Makes 12-16 muffins. (I use an ice cream scoop to fill the muffin tins and got 16 out of this batch.)

This was my attempt at food styling. I took a large plate, a cereal bowl turned upside down and a small plate and put them on a beverage stand my sister got for me on clearance at Target. 

On a totally different topic, I love Costco flowers. I'm no Tulipina, but using these flowers makes me happy. (Her arrangements are amazing. Her Instagram feed just makes me happy everyday.)

Our grocery store chain, Hornbacher's does a good job too, but Costco has some fantastic $15 flowers. These are the flowers DH and the kids brought home today. DH was surprised at how full it was. He almost bought two thinking they would make a small arrangement at home. I love them. I think they are perfect. I use a trick I read in my Better Homes and Gardens magazine a couple of years ago. I make a scotch tape grid and fill it in. They always turn out awesome. (And since it's almost Halloween, you have to have Halloween salt and pepper shakers. These guys make me smile.)

Hope everyone is enjoying the cooler weather and beautiful colors this fall. I've also been thinking about the southeast since we have friends and family that are getting a lot of rain and flooding. Stay safe!

Banana Cupcakes with a Nutella Surprise

When it comes to baking I always follow the recipe. To. The. T. I may sub out applesauce for oil or replace regular white flour with whole wheat flour, but that's as far as it goes. So, tonight was a big night for me.  I created my own recipe! I took inspiration from a couple of recipes and made my own.

We had a bunch of bananas that I needed to use up. Typically, I make banana bread, but I didn't have all the ingredients for my usual banana bread. So, I searched Recipe Girl's site and found Nutella Swirled Banana Bread. Um, ok!  But, I had five good sized bananas and no yogurt. Hmmm. Now what?  Then I remembered the Caramel Banana Cake from The Kitchn that I'd made a while back.  It was great and moist and wonderful. And I had all the ingredients for the cake, but not the caramel sauce.

Lightbulb! What about nutella with that super moist wonderful banana cake? Brilliant!

The result, Nutella Filled Banana Cupcakes!

******

Nutella Filled Banana Cupcakes

3/4 cup butter, softened
1 cup white sugar
1 cup brown sugar
3 eggs
3 cups all-purpose flour (mine was actually a mix of whole wheat and regular)
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups milk
2 cups mashed bananas

1 tsp vanilla
¾ c nutella

Heat oven to 325 degrees F.

Cream the butter and sugar until fluffy then add the eggs and vanilla and beat until silky and lightened. Sift the flour with the baking soda and salt. Whisk the milk and mashed bananas in a separate measuring cup and add to the eggs and butter, alternating with the flour. Beat just until smooth.

Fill cupcake liners 1/2 full, then drop ½ to 1 tsp nutella into the batter, add more cake batter until cupcake liners are full.

Bake for 25-30 minutes or until golden brown and a toothpick comes out clean.

Makes 40 cupcakes

*******

I asked RC if they needed frosting and he said no, they were awesome as is. And he loved the chocolate in the center. He had two for his bedtime snack with a great big glass of milk.

But, they would also be great with a little chocolate ganache drizzled on top.

They are super moist and dense. And maybe could've used a bit more flour. But all in all, they were a hit at our house! How often do you change up recipes when baking? What would you do to change this one?

Organized recipes, here I come!

We were snowed in here from December 30th until January 2nd. Like, even if DH had snowblowed the driveway we couldn't have gone anywhere because the drift on our street was as tall as the mailbox.

Needeless to say, the Christmas stuff came down (and actually put away in an organized fashion for once), the house got cleaned, movies got watched and wine got drank.

Come Sunday though, the hall closet was driving me crazy. It had become a dumping ground. So, I took everything out of it, put the garabage in the garbage (novel idea), decided to donate the things I didn't love, didn't use and figured someone else could use, put what was left back in a way that made sense (another novel idea. why not put the things that get used the most on the middle shelf in the front!), and all was right with the world.

Until, I went to put away one of my recipe books. Sigh.

I print a lot of my recipes from online and emails I get. And, to date, they've been getting shoved into this one little book.  There are also quite a few written on scraps of paper that I've grabbed from either my mom's or my grandma's.  Everytime I need to find something I have to shuffle through the whole stack.

Well, on Sunday I'd finally had enough. I sat down and sorted all of the recipes into categories and threw out the crap that I'll never make. I had a vision of a lovely binder with all of my recipes organized by category.

Where would I find such a thing?

First stop? Target. They did have some lovely binders. But, they were over $5 and didn't come with any plastic sleeves. But, right next them were the plain jane binders. Aha! I'll make my own! Into my cart went a plain white binder ($1.84), 50  plastic sleeves ($3.84), and dividers ($.97).

(They joined the two 4 foot pre-lit Christmas trees that were $3.50 a piece. $3.50! I couldn't pass them up. Anywho, back to the binder.)

JoAnn's is right across the street from Target, so that was my next stop. Pretty paper, here we come! ($1.20 for two sheets.)

I broke out my Fiskars paper cutter and some scrapbook letters and went to work.

This was my final result!

Isn't it pretty? And all for $7.85. I sat and gazed adoringly at it for a bit.  The DH even thought it turned out nice.

(Please forgive me for the picture quality. As I mentioned in my 2011 goals post, I'm trying to figure out my camera. I'm extremely frustrated at the moment, but I'm hoping it will get better as the year goes on!)