Honey Cornbread Muffins

I promised a while ago to experiment more with corn bread recipes, but didn’t really follow through on it. This… isn’t much of a switch to be honest. It’s a similar recipe to the Moosewood Corn Bread, but less healthy. Sorry. But once you taste these suckers, I promise you won’t mind the extra addition of sugar and butter. And if you make 12 each one comes out to be around 160 calories – not terrible in the grand scheme of things.

The major change was mostly baking it in muffin tins instead of an 8x8 pan. Whoops! Creativity fail. Sorry guys, one day I’ll follow through. But when you have a winning recipe, there’s a lot of incentive to keep going back to it.

I’ve been eating these along with my Spicy Red Lentil with Rice Soup. One is perfect crumbled alongside the rice, lentils, and spice. I think it’d also be amazing with Navajo Stew or Beef and Bean Chili, but then few things in life aren’t actually improved with cornbread.

Bailey's Brownies

No, these brownies do not belong to someone named Bailey, but you do owe the drink quite a bit for making these amazing. I brought them to work yesterday to make sure I wasn’t crazy and they actually tasted good; they disappeared within a couple hours, which is a great sign. As are meeting new co-workers who have heard there are baked treats in the vicinity and came over to check them out.

Boozy Oreo Cheesecake Cupcakes - 2 ways!

I am always that idiot who gets pinched on St. Patrick's day. Every year I remind myself to wear green and yet the morning comes around and I'm happy enough to be dressed and have my hair free of snarls that I tend to forget my lofty sartorial goals.

This year I'm not going to bother with the clothes debate, instead I'm just going to bake stuff with Bailey's in it. Think that will get me a freebie from would-be pinchers? I mean really, if someone offered me a cupcake in exchange for not pinching them I think it's pretty clear what the answer should be.

Hope you enjoy these cupcakes!

Mudslide Oreo Cheesecake Cupcake or White Russian Oreo Cheesecake Cupcakes
Adapted from my Oreo Cheesecake Cupcake Recipe

With the right Oreos, the White Russian version of this recipe is gluten free; sadly Bailey's is distilled from wheat and as such contains some gluten (though apparently some celiac experts disagree about what happens to the gluten proteins during distallation. In any case, try the Bailey's at your own risk if you are gluten intolerant).

Ingredients

Cupcakes

8 Oreos, whole

1 8-ounce package cream cheese

1/4 cup sugar

1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 large egg, room temperature and lightly beaten

1/4 cup sour cream

Pinch of salt

For White Russian Cupcakes

1-ounce Vodka

For Mudslide Cupcakes

1-ounce Baileys

Frosting

2 ounces semisweet chocolate (about half a small bag of chocolate chips)

1/2 tablespoons light corn syrup

2 tablespoons half-and-half

1-ounce Kahlua (for either Mudslide or White Russian cupcakes)

Equipment:

Muffin tin, cupcake liners, hand-mixer, mixing bowl, pot

Make the cupcakes: Preheat oven to 275° F.  Line standard muffin tins with paper liners.  Place 1 whole Oreo cookie in the bottom of each lined muffin cup.

Beat cream cheese on medium-high speed until smooth, scraping down sides of the bowl as needed.  Gradually add the sugar, and beat until combined.  Beat in the vanilla.

Drizzle in egg a little at a time, beating to combine and scraping down sides of bowl as needed. Add in sour cream and salt, beat to combine.  Pour in 1-ounce either Bailey's or Vodka and mix until incorporated. Divide batter evenly among the cookie-filled muffin cups, fill each cup almost to the top. 

Bake, rotating muffin tins halfway through, until the filling is set, about 22 to 28 minutes.

Transfer the muffins tins to a wire rack to cool completely.  

Make the frosting:  Set a bowl (heat resistant) over a pot of simmering water to create your own double boiler. Combined chocolate and corn syrup and whisk mixture often. Cook until mixture is smooth. Remove from heat, add the half-and-half and 1-ounce Kahlua, and whisk mixture until smooth.

Refrigerate cupcakes and frosting (in the muffin tins) at least 4 hours (or overnight). Remove from tins just before serving.

Makes 8 (serves 1)

Szechuan Spicy Eggplant with Ground Turkey

I’ll be completely honest – I don’t seem to follow the trend of most food bloggers who have extensive lists of things they’re planning on cooking next. I do have a massive, extremely organized bundle of recipes that look tasty, but when it comes down to it on Saturday mornings I tend to cook whatever shiny thing has caught my fancy at the moment.

Call me the magpie chef if you well.

In any case, I saw this gorgeous graffiti eggplant at the supermarket one Saturday morning and figured I’d buy it and figure out what to make with it when I got home. I vaguely remember my mother making a dish with ground pork, eggplant, and tofu so I picked up some ground turkey before I left (no, I don’t know why either. It made sense at the time). I figured I could probably make something tasty from the veggies in my fridge and the new ingredients I just picked up.

I was correct. This is a great recipe. The ingredient list may look a little ridiculously long, but I had pretty much all of it in my cupboard already. And it keeps really well – I ate it for lunch everyday for a week.

Hope you enjoy!

Healthy Peanut Butter Banana Muffins

I love muffins, but I get confused where the line is between muffin and cupcake. The chocolate-chip muffins with frosting? How isn’t that cake?

Personally, I prefer a heartier muffin because I like to eat them for breakfast. While I’ve also never had a problem eating cake for breakfast, I first tried this recipe back in January aka the month of good intentions. While I’ve clearly fallen off the healthy eating wagon once or twice since then, these have been a great find. Crunchy peanut butter + banana + no added sugar? And they actually taste good?

I tend to make a batch of these, keep ‘em in the fridge for the week, and bring them in for a mid-morning snack at work. Does anyone else have the problem where no matter what they eat for breakfast, or even if they skip breakfast, ten o’clock rolls in and your stomach is rumbling so loudly people two cubicles over can hear it?

Just me then? Oh well, these muffins definitely hit the spot right around them. I hope you enjoy them too!

Spicy Peanut and Sweet Potato Soup

I’ve been wanting to make a sweet potato and peanut soup for a while now, but for some reason hadn’t gotten around to it until I saw this recipe and bam! I needed that in my belly yesterday.

Let think about this – sweet potatos are awesome, peanut butter is awesome, spiciness is awesome, and lentils are tasty. How could this recipe go wrong? Easy, it didn’t.

It’s a very thick soup, so feel free to stir in some extra water after you blend everything together. But make sure you top with peanut – they really add an extra dimension!

Baked Chicken Gyros

I studied abroad in Athens during college. Oh it was a real hardship – historical monuments, museums, bank holidays, island hopping – I’m surprised they managed to squeeze class in there!

At the time I was living with other students from my university in a small apartment building.  There was a small plaza down the street from us which had the world’s best bakery as well as a great Gyro shop. We ate there so often we began to measure prices in units of gyros – that bag costs 10 gyros! That hostel is only 6 gyros, what a steal!

I miss that place – it used to pile fresh French fries to top off an already perfect sandwich.  Seriously, if you’ve never had an authentic gyro, you don’t know what you’re missing. The meat is slowly roasted on a split, and thin slivers are cut off to order. No sitting around and getting tough for this meat. I honestly don’t even know what meat I was eating at the time; I just pointed to whichever spit had the least amount on it (on the theory that the locals had probably been eating it the most, so clearly it was awesome) and hoped for the best.

You’d be surprised how often this method works, just make sure not to think too hard about what you could be eating. That way leads to madness and possibly upset stomachs.

In any case, when I found this recipe I had to give it a try. It was a good choice. Chicken marinated in yogurt plus tzatziki and onion? Pretty delicious, but you’ll definitely want to make sure to brush your teeth after eating!