Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins

I used to only grudgingly eat bananas when my dad told me I needed to eat them before playing soccer.  Something about being told to do it made this otherwise delicious fruit not taste good.  Now that I decide for myself what to eat, I love bananas.  Sometimes I buy too many though (as many of you may have done as well), and they start to get brown and soft.  Even though they aren't so perfect anymore for peeling and eating, they are perfect for baking. I found this recipe in its original form in Food & Wine.  Like I do, I changed out the white flour for whole grain and the sugar for honey.  The only things you need to change when making this substitution are to lower your oven temp a little and use about 25% less honey since it's sweeter than sugar.  The honey caramelizes more than sugar so the final product will be darker in color but not at all burnt so don't worry.  I also used dark chocolate because I like how the delicate bitterness tones down the sweetness of the rest of the ingredients. 

Makes 36 muffins:
2 cups mashed overripe bananas (about 6)
1 cup honey
1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, melted
3 large eggs
2 3/4 cups whole wheat flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cup dark chocolate chips (10 oz or almost a full bag)

Mix the dry ingredients (besides the chocolate) in a bowl and set aside.

Mash the bananas in a mixing bowl until smooth.

 Mix in the butter, honey, and eggs.

 Then slowly add the dry mix until smooth.  You may need to scrape down the sides from time to time.

Add the chocolate chips and hand mix until thoroughly incorporated.  

Fill your muffin cups almost to the top since these don't rise much.

 Bake at 325 degrees for about 25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Josh and I both have a bad habit of eating these before they're cooled properly.  We have the burns to prove it.  It's just so hard to resist chocolate chips all melty and fresh out of the oven!

Josh loves these muffins for breakfast.  This particular batch only lasted 3 days just between the two of us because he took about half of them out to a multi-day field job and barely ate anything else.  I can't really blame him.  All the guys at the site ever buy for the crews is pizza and fried crap.  Even still, these muffins are amazing and if he hadn't taken them away, I would have scarfed them up for myself.  It's dog-eat-dog in our house with my cooking.  If it's yummy, you'd better eat it before someone else does.  Maybe that's why we can't seem to lose weight...oh well.  I don't make the muffins every day so they're a nice treat.  They're whole grain and use honey and bananas instead of sugar so there are way worse things you could snack on.  Enjoy!

Chocolate Butterscotch Bird Nests

Mmmm, this is another one of my few dessert recipes that is just too good for words.  My mom makes these cookies every holiday season along with the sugar cookies and snickerdoodles.  What makes them so dangerous, though is that they're ridiculously easy to make.  This means I can have a craving for them and before I can muster any self-control, I can have a batch made.  Tragic, really.  Oh well, now you can share my "pain".

This makes 24 cookies:
11oz bag of butterscotch morsels
11oz bag of milk chocolate morsels
1 cup unsalted dry roasted peanuts
2 cups of chow mein noodles

Start by melting the butterscotch and chocolate morsels together in a large bowl.  You can use a double boiler, but the lazy way is to put it in the microwave for 2 1/2 minutes and stir it every 30 seconds.  It works just as well.

Then you end up with this.  Refrain from sticking your fingers in the bowl and just having this be the dessert.  It gets better, have patience.

Add the peanuts to the bowl.

Then the chow mein noodles.

Stir gently until the noodles and peanuts are evenly coated.  It takes a couple minutes so don't rush.  Just keep folding it over so as to not break it all up.

Line 2 cookie sheets with some parchment or wax paper.  Use a fork to scoop out clumps just a little bigger than a golf ball.  You should be able to get 12 on each sheet.

You may lick your fingers and the bowl after scooping.  No sense letting the excess go to waste.

Refrigerate for at least an hour until the chocolate is hard.

Store them in the refrigerator so that they don't get all melty...unless that's your intention, in which case it sounds like the most delicious mess ever.