Banana Bread Mini Muffins

Banana Bread Muffins with Browned Butter Icing

So I work at home. I work for GoDaddy and they are nice enough to allow me to pretty much work from home all the time. I love it. I don’t have to drive 40 minutes away and sit in a desk where I am distracted by everyone around me. I can just wake up, take a shower, slip into my sport shorts (gym shorts?) and a t-shirt and go downstairs and start working. Its great, that is until my wife starts baking something that smells amazing!

Now there’s a disclaimer on this. I know I post a lot of desserts and a lot of breakfast sweets but we, my wife and I, pretty much live a low carb lifestyle. We usually eat low carb during the week then eat whatever, in moderation, on the weekend. I lost about 50 lbs. this way and have kept it off for 4 years. It’s the way to live if you want to feel real good.

Now back to the amazing smell that wafted into my office the other day. At first I was kind of confused that my wife was baking, in the middle of the day, in the middle of the week. What I didn’t realize was that we had a whole slew of kids over playing in the pool. I didn’t go to investigate. Not sure why. It probably had to do with work or some such thing. About an hour later she comes in with this banana bread mini muffin with frosting on the top and pops it in my mouth. It was amazing! It was light but packed with flavor. Don’t go overboard with the bananas otherwise the muffins will be heavy, and we don’t like heavy muffins.

Banana Bread Mini Muffins w/ Browned Butter Icing

Adapted and tweaked from The Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook
Yield: About 24 mini muffins

Muffins Ingredients

  • 1 1/2 C. Flour
  • 1 1/2 t. Baking powder
  • 1/4 t. Baking soda
  • 1/4 t. Ground Cinnamon
  • Pinch of salt
  • 1 Egg
  • 1/2 C. Mashed bananas (1 1/2 medium)
  • 3/4 C. Sugar
  • 1/4 C. Oil
  • 2 t. Lemon Zest (don’t skip this, it makes the muffins)

Browned Butter Icing Ingredients

  • 1/4 C. butter
  • 2 C. Powdered sugar
  • 1/2 t. Vanilla
  • 1 1/2 T. Milk or more for desired consistency

Directions

  1. Mix flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and salt together in a medium bowl.
  2. In another bowl mix together bananas, egg, sugar, lemon zest and oil
  3. Add egg mixture into dry ingredients and mix until just combined.
  4. Spoon batter into mini muffin tin that has been greased.
  5. Bake at 350 degrees for . Let cool in pan for 5 min. then remove them on to cooling rack.
  6. While the muffins are baking, cut the butter into pieces. Place in a medium skillet. Melt the butter over medium heat, swirling it in the pan occasionally. The butter will foam and pop, so be careful. Continue to swirl the pan often. Remove pan from heat once the butter starts to brown and smells nutty. There will be small brown bits on the bottom. The butter should be an amber color.
  7. Take butter off heat and mix in the rest of the icing ingredients right there in the pan. Whisk until combined.
  8. Dip tops of min muffins into icing and let stand for a little while while it sets up. Enjoy!

New York Style Pizza Sauce

New York Pizza Sauce on a tasty pizza

I have an obsession, a pizza obsession. I have a super duper long post in the wings about pizza dough that I need to shrink down but I have a lot of feelings about pizza. That, though, is another post. My pizza obsession needs a sauce. I used to use Prego spaghetti sauce as pizza sauce. It’s something I have done for years since I was a teenager, the best Prego sauce was Roasted Garlic Parmesan, mmmm. I figured after a while, if I take pride in my pizza making, I would need to find a good pizza sauce to accompany my awesome pizza dough. Sidetrack…I love Cooks Illustrated, they always have awesome recipes and some of the best have come from one of their former chefs J. Kenji Lopez-Alt. One of his best recipes was how to make the best shake shack hamburger clone. Long story short, he left Cook’s Illustrated to become the Managing Culinary Director for Serious Eats, which is where I found this recipe. It is now my go to sauce recipe. Its got great tomato flavor and hints of garlic, oregano and fresh basil. It is a really great New York style pizza sauce.

New York Style Pizza Sauce

New York Style Pizza Sauce

New York Style Pizza Sauce

New York Style Pizza Sauce

Adapted from Serious Eat and J. Kenji López-Alt, who is a food science god.

Ingredients

  • 1 28 oz. Can whole peeled tomatoes
  • 1 T. Extra-virgin olive oil
  • 1 T. Unsalted butter
  • 2 medium cloves garlic, grated on microplane grater (about 2 teaspoons)
  • 1 t. dried oregano
  • pinch red pepper flakes
  • Kosher salt
  • 2 six-inch sprigs fresh basil with leaves attached
  • 1 medium yellow onion, peeled and split in half
  • 1 t. sugar

Directions

  1. Process tomatoes and their juice through food mill, pulse in food processor until pureed, or puree with hand blender. Puree should not be completely smooth, but should have no chunks larger than 1/16 of an inch. Set tomatoes aside.
  2. Combine butter and oil in medium saucepan and heat over medium-low heat until butter is melted. Add garlic, oregano, pepper flakes, and large pinch salt and cook, stirring frequently, until fragrant but not browned, about 3 minutes. Add tomatoes, basil sprigs, onion halves, and sugar. Bring to a simmer, reduce heat to lowest setting (bubbles should barely be breaking the surface), and cook, stirring occasionally, until reduced by 1/2, about . Season to taste with salt.
  3. Now this is what I do after its finished cooking.. Remove stems of basil, I pull the leaves off the stems and add them back to the sauce, then I blend the sauce in a blender with 1 half of the onion that was cooked in the sauce.
  4. Allow to cool and store in covered container in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks.

The Best Lemon Bars Evar!

Lemon Bars

I know, I know, he’s posting another lemon recipe, but this is the best of the best. The piece of resistance. The cream of the crop! Jonna over at Just Get Off Your Butt and Bake has created the best lemon bars ever! The best part of the lemon bars is they have a shortbread crust. The crust gets all of its flavor from brown sugar and some lemon zest, oh and butter, lots of butter. These are a hit every time I take them to family dinner, people even request them for their birthday dessert.

Lemon Bars

Best Lemon Bars Evar!

Adapted from Just Get Off Your Butt and Bake

Crust Ingredients (The best part)

  • 1 cup unsalted butter, cold (2 sticks)
  • 2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1/4 cup sugar
  • 1/4 cup packed light brown sugar
  • 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
  • 1 lemon, zested

Lemon Filling

  • 4 extra-large eggs
  • 1 1/2 cups sugar
  • 3/4 cup fresh lemon juice (about 3 large lemons)
  • 1/3 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1 lemon, zested
  • Confectioners’ sugar

Crust Directions

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F.
  2. Cut the butter into 1/2-inch pieces and in a food processor or using a hand-held pastry cutter, process all the shortbread ingredients until the mixture begins to form small pea-shaped lumps.
  3. Sprinkle the dough into a 13x9x2-inch baking pan and press dough firmly and evenly onto the bottom and 1/2 inch up the sides of the pan to form a 1/2-inch layer of shortbread.
  4. Prick all over with a fork.
  5. Bake the shortbread in the middle of the oven until golden, about . Remove it to a cooling rack. (Cover with foil to keep warm if necessary.)

Filling Directions

  1. While crust is baking, in a large metal bowl, whisk the eggs and sugar together until well combined and a light yellow color.
  2. Stir in the lemon juice, flour, and zest.
  3. When the shortbread crust is ready and still hot, pour the lemon mixture evenly over it.
  4. Lower the oven temperature to 300°F. When it has reached the lower temperature, bake the bars in the middle of the oven until set, about .
  5. Let the bars cool completely in the pan on a cooling rack. Lightly sift confectioners’ sugar over the cool bars right before serving.