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!

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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.

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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.

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