Though I have been somewhat absent from the blog as of late, I have not been away from the kitchen. I have been attempting to allow myself to ignore the voice in my head that is constantly saying "you should be working", and take some time in the mornings to bake. To accompany me, I have been tuning in to classical music stations on my iPad. Not because I know anything about classical music, but because I imagine that that is what relaxed, stress-free people do. If such people exist. My favourite station has been the Calm Radio Mozart station. For all I know, this admission betrays my "uncultivated tastes". Is Mozart the Katy Perry of classical music? It doesn't matter, I'm into it.
These photos have been sitting on my computer for a few weeks now because, well, they were not successful. The banana bread did not turn out, and the pumpkin muffins, though tasty, were not what I consider to be a "blog worthy" recipe. I decided to post the pictures, a few thoughts on the process, and some round-ups of recipes that might bring you more luck than the ones that I tried.
This whole wheat blueberry banana bread looked delicious, but it would.not.cook.through. I kept checking it and putting in back in the oven - for almost two hours. You can see from the picture below how wet it remained in the middle, even after all that cooking time. I think the problem was that I used an inadequate egg substitute. I was eager to bake something, and make a dent in the growing pile of brown bananas in my freezer, but I had no eggs. This is not normally a problem for me. I have made lots of baked goods without eggs before. However, this time I googled "egg substitute", and found a site that listed plain water as a possible substitute. I tried this thinking it would be the easiest option, but the batter was far too wet and the bread turned into a pile of goopy half-batter half-bread when I cut into it. Sadly, this whole loaf went straight into the garbage.
Given that this banana bread did NOT work out for me, I thought I would include a round-up of banana bread recipes that are likely to prove more successful. I will be trying one of these the next time I tackle the frozen banana pile.
Peanut Butter Banana Bread - Joy the Baker
Brown Butter Bourbon Banana Bread - Food 52
Double Chocolate Banana Bread - Smitten Kitchen
Next I tried baking some chocolate chunk pumpkin spice muffins to use up the extra pumpkin puree I had lying around from the pumpkin spice syrup I made. These were pretty good, but not perfect. They were cooked through, but the texture was more dense than I would like, ideally. I think this was because of all the fruit and vegetables - the recipe called for two bananas and over a cup of pumpkin puree. It is always nice to grab a muffin for a quick breakfast, so we ate them all, but I will keep looking for an amazing pumpkin spice muffin recipe that I feel comfortable recommending to others.
If you came here looking for a pumpkin spice muffin recipe, here is another round-up of recipe options that look promising:
Pumpkin Spice Muffins - Fine Cooking
Mini Whole Wheat Pumpkin Muffins - The Ivory Hut
Pumpkin Spice Muffins with Cream Cheese Frosting - The Pioneer Woman
Caramel Apple Pumpkin Spice Muffins with Salted Caramel Glaze - The Kitchen McCabe
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