Time for some Banana Muffins...

It can be a little harder to use fresh ingredients in the winter, but bananas are available year round, thankfully.  Try a muffin with your morning coffee to put a smile on your face for the day ahead.  

Banana Muffins:

3 cups flour

2 cups sugar

2 t. baking powder

1 t. baking soda

1/2 t. salt

2 sticks unsalted butter, melted and cooled

2 large eggs

3/4 c. milk

2 t. vanilla

1 cup mashed ripe bananas (2 medium)

1 c. diced banana (1 medium)

1 c. chopped pecans

1 cup granola

1 c. unsweetened coconut flakes

Dried banana chips

Preheat oven to 350 F.  Spray 12 jumbo muffin cups (2 pans) with non-stick spray.   Mix flour, sugar, baking powder, soda, and salt in the bowl of an electric mixer with a paddle attachment.  Add melted butter and blend. Combine eggs, milk, vanilla, and mashed banana and add to flour/butter mixture.  Scrape bowl and make sure the ingredients are combined, but be careful not to overmix.  

Fold in diced bananas, granola, nuts, and coconut into the batter.  Spoon batter into the greased muffin cups.  Top with dried banana chips.  Bake for 25-35 minutes--until tops are slightly brown and a toothpick comes out clean.  Cool 5 minutes and remove from pan.

A couple of notes to help your muffins be the best:  

1.  The worst thing you can do is over mix the batter.  Muffin texture depends on the reaction of the wet ingredients with the rising agent (baking powder and soda in this case).  When you mix the batter too much, the reaction plays out before baking and your muffins will be flatter and heavier--not optimal.  Best to mix the dry ingredients well before adding the wet--the rising agent is activated by moisture.

2.  Be sure to remove the muffins from the pan after the 5 minutes they have cooled.  If you wait a lot longer, the sides will not have the crispy texture you want.  Muffins are crispy on the outside and soft on the inside.  If you leave them in the pan too long, they will have a soggier texture on the bottom--also not optimum.

We are so excited to be on the National Historic Register...

That was a BIG hurdle. Don't worry, I am still cooking, but I haven't posted recipes lately.  I will try to make up for that over the holidays.

Here are some of the recipes we have been testing:

• Plum cake--a definite winner and guest favorite.  This was a great addition to the August menu, when plums are in season.  We managed to keep making it through most of September with a bumper crop of plums to choose from.
• Baked eggs with bacon and hash browns.  Another crowd pleaser, and not really too difficult.  I had to play around with how to get the egg to come out the way I wanted, but I got it figured out.
• Holiday pumpkin cake with apples and cranberries.  This cake is not too sweet and not too pumpkiny, which Lee appreciates.
• Apple cake with cardamom.  This is one of Lee's favorites, along with the baked eggs.

Still to be tested this month:

• Avocado toast.  Yes, it is a food fad, but where would you serve avocado toast if not in Texas?
• Bacon and egg casserole with cream sauce.  It looks promising, but needs a little tweaking.
• Lemon raspberry tea bread.  The first go at this was a little dry.  The flavor was good, so I will adjust the proportions and have another stab at it.
• Upside-down cranberry cake, and that is all I have to say...

As always, when we test, there are some recipes that do not make the cut. Some of the ones that have not made it onto the B&B menu:

• Sausage rolls--the idea was like a savory cinnamon roll with sausage/cheese filling using a biscuit dough.  It was just blah, likewise the sausage apple quiche. Back to the drawing board on both these ideas.
• Beignet muffins--we visited New Orleans this summer and I thought it would be fun to make a muffin that tasted like a beignet and add a coffee glaze.  Not so much.  Here's the thing:  beignets are fried, that's why they are good.  Back to the drawing board on this one, too.