Makin' a mess

Ah. I love long, holiday weekends. Anytime away from work is good for me. Friday night I was to meet up with a friend and her husband and son. I never go anywhere empty-handed, so I made brownies and experimental muffins. The experimental muffins were the brainchild of my friend, Maggie. She gets complete credit for them (or else she might hurt me). It's a loaded muffin: bananas, strawberries, walnuts and chocolate chips. I believe she named them "Chocoberrynananut Muffins." I'm not for sure on that, though, so I will just call them "Loaded Muffins." The base recipe is from The Joy of Vegan Baking. It's the chocolate chip banana muffins. I reduced the sugar to half a cup, put in a half cup of chocolate chips, a half cup chopped strawberries and one cup chopped walnuts. I also used soy milk instead of water. There was a lot of batter for just 12 muffins, so I filled the cups completely full and they came out with big, domed tops. They were beautiful.

Juicy top-shot:

My kitchen lighting is terrible, my apologies. While I pulled these off with no trouble, I had no such luck with my brownies. I used my usual go to brownie from DEOTS, and doubled it for a 9"x13" pan. I melted one and a half cups of chocolate chips and half a cup of Earth Balance margarine, and proceeded to out it in the fridge to cool down. I made a half-ass attempt to clear some space for the bowl, put it on a shelf only for it to promptly fall right off and spill into the kitchen floor. I think I have mentioned I have 6 kittens in the house, yes? I have spilled chocolate and six kittens headed straight for it. I was tossing cats left and right just trying to get them out of the way long enough to clean up the mess, all the while putting sailors and pirates across the world to shame with the colorful variety of swear words spitting forth from my mouth. It was not pretty. It didn't help that my phone was ringing every two minutes either. I was out of chocolate chips at this point, so I chopped up a Ritter Sport Extra Fine Dark Chocolate bar and two Lindt 70% Cocoa bars, and tried one more time. I ever so carefully placed the chocolate in the fridge and continued on without any more trouble. They better have been some damn good brownies.

Such innocent looking brownies. Who would know they gave me hell?

Apple Zucchini Muffins and Bonus Cookies

I love apples. I mean, love. I would take apples intravenously if possible. There is nothing better than a crisp, tart Granny Smith. I get a little weak in the knees for a Pink Lady. I recently got "Don't Eat Off the Sidewalk," a 'Zine created by a PPK alum. After flipping through it, I decided that I must make the Apple Zucchini Muffins before all else. Firstly, because I am an obsessive when it comes to muffins. Secondly, because I had never thought to combine the two. Why had it never occured to me?! I tweaked it a bit to my liking. I used half all purpose unbleached white flour and half whole wheat spelt flour. I put applesauce in place of oil, for an extra special apple-y treat, I cut back the sugar and added raisins. They are super amazing.

I made cookies too, and since there is no way on earth all this good stuff is staying in my house for me to eat it all, I am taking them to work tomorrow. I don't even think that my co-workers realize that they are eating vegan. They have no complaints though. I made Sour Cream Chocolate Chippy Chunky Cookies. I got the original recipe from here. I added the chunks myself. I had half a bar of Lindt 70% Cacoa Dark Chocolate bar laying around and a partial bag of Ghiradelli Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips. So I threw them both in. I used Toffutti Better Than Sour Cream, Earth Balance margarine and Ener-G for the egg. Well, half an egg in this case, though I probably would have been alright without it. I halfed the recipe, but only got 11 cookies. I made them too big, I guess, but who cares. They taste like you are chewing on a chocolate cloud of dreams and sugar...they kind of look like clouds too...