Banana Chocolate Chip Pancakes: A Week Long Devotion

Do you ever build something up in your head to be this great, wonderful thing, only to find that when you've finally achieved that item, that its just an utter disappointment? And not because the thing sucks or anything. Rather, it can be pretty great objectively. But nothing can compete with the nonsense if your imagination. Except for yourself. When you just ~let it go~.

Well, yea, I kinda did that with pancakes this week. Banana chocolate chip pancakes to be exact. It all started with some depressingly cold weather, that ended up being only mildly cold later this week. The cold weather, plus, absolutely no desire to really think about my meals this week resulted in a very narrow mindset- pancakes, pancakes, pancakes.

So when I finally did get around to making these pancakes, needless to say there was a lot riding on them. I mean, I was eating american cheese. Yea, that plastic wrapped, floppy goodness thats really only good like once every 4 years when a wave of nostalgia hits for wonderbread and plastic cheese. And I didn't even have wonderbread! But thats another story.

After thinking about it, I believe this may have been the first time I've made pancakes from scratch. We usually have a very large, costco-sized bag of Krusteaz mix at home, so it delighted me to see the bubbles and rise that came out of these pancakes. I did substitute half the flour for whole wheat though, so my pancakes seemed to deflate quite a bit when I flipped.

And if you're noticing the rather er, burnt, tinge on these pancakes? Well, lets just say my stove has basically a very hot setting, and an off setting most of the time. Banana chocolate chip-flavor wise, the banana didn't really come through. Not sure if thats because I used frozen bananas or what. The pancakes did taste better the next day when I had them for breakfast. Anyways, pancake experimentation will continue the next time I harbor a week-long desire for ~pancakes~.

Recipe from All Recipes.

Pumpkin Sugar Cookies: Timely Halloween Post

The stars have aligned. Not only was I on top of the whole seasonal baking thing, but Halloween has fortuitously fallen on the day of my blog entry. So firstly, Happy Halloween and here have a foodie related-themed-tumblr photo.

ANYWAYS. While this post really should stop after that wonderful advice from Ina Garten, we'll continue on with cookies while not store-bought, also not summoned directly from the gates of cookie-doom. Unless you count my tiny little apartment kitchen as a doomsday scenario.

It's a little tragic (yet totally understandable) why as one gets older trick-o-treating no longer becomes a thing you participate in. Or rather, the role should transition from trick-o-treater to treat-giver. But there's that thing called college dorm living that seems to take a sharp turn into the lands of night club Halloween, which is significantly less sweet or cute. But I suppose has it's own charms. Mainly when it comes to punny costumes. Like 50 shades of gray. Or black mail. Or a fork in the road. Half of these were taken from my sister's current struggle to find 4 different Halloween costumes to be honest.



Since I don't exactly live in suburbia (yet), or an apartment full of small families, decorating Halloween-themed cookie is probably the closest I'll get to doing something juvenile for Halloween. The ~awesome~ thing about these cookies is that they aren't just normal sugar cookies with a sprinkle of vanilla and a dash of lemon zest. Rather, in the name of Fall spirit, they're ~pumpkin~ flavored.

And not just pumpkin spiced flavored, but pumpkin spiced AND pumpkin butter flavored. So yes, there is some real pumpkins in there. Pretty meta for those pumpkin decorated cookies. I actually didn't like the few pumpkin flavored sugar cookie recipes I found online, so I ended up modifying the same sugar cookie recipe I used for the Doctor Who cookies for these. Luckily, the cookies worked out really well, and I'm probably way more proud of these cookies than I really should be.

Bonus points if anyone can spot the nerdy/fandom-related cookies amongst the midst of normal Halloween cookies and anatomically inaccurate skeletons.

 

Sugar Cookies via The Kitchn with the following modifications:

-substitute almond and lemon zest for 2 teaspoons of pumpkin spice.

-add about 1 tablespoon of pumpkin butter to softened cream cheese.

Royal Icing via Bake at 350.

Orange Creamscicle Frozen Yogurt

When it comes to having bad weeks or being sad, I think its always useful to have some ice cream around. Not like an entire freezer full of emergency Ben and Jerry flavors (though you're certainly welcome to that lifestyle if you would like), but like one or two solid ice creams you can grab a scoop or two as you mope through it all.


Of course, I might only be saying this because it gives me an excuse/reason to justify my continuous ice cream making. Not that you need an excuse to make ice cream, please. Though, orange creamsicle isn't exactly the type of ice cream or frozen yogurt one usually draws to for moping. And if you're going to froyo as your moping food, you're probably doing something wrong.



Orange creamsicle needs to have a renaissance. As a kid, we'd literally buy these huge bulk sized bags of creamsicle popsicles. They were the best. Icy, sweet orange juice on the outside. Soft creamy vanilla on the inside. And when it all starts slowly melting and mixing in that way only popsicles determined to drip all over the driveway do? Perfection.

My recent foray into the world of frozen yogurt may be related to my growing laziness at the worst possible time in terms of things I need to focus on in my life and work. That aside, frozen yogurt is literally the easiest thing ever. Just some sugar, yogurt, juice, whisk it all together. Add a dash of lemon and salt for tartness. Chill for like 10 minutes. Then churn churn churn. It definitely suits my minimal work style at the moment.
My frozen yogurt ended up with semi-large chunks of grated orange peel. Mainly because I don't actually have a grater or microzester but rather just a vegetable peeler and a knife. But I kinda like the bitterness you get from a small chunk of orange zest in this ice cream.

Bonus notinthekitchenoronatable photo because #naturallight is a thing people are into. I might have to stop making fun of people to set up absurd food photo shots on old crates because you know, I'm becoming one of them.

Recipe via the one and only Serious Eats.

White Wine Frozen Yogurt: Not Cersei

This is literally the opposite of Cersei. The opposite of that red wine berry sorbet I made a few months ago. Aside from the whole white wine thing, the fact that this is frozen yogurt means Cersei probably detests it with a burning passion. Probably reminds her too much of snow.

Being the well groomed adult I am, the only wine/beer/whatever glass I have is this fantastic Game of Thrones one. Not that I'm having large dinner parties where this is a problem or anything given my n=1 lifestyle at the moment.

This frozen yogurt is great. The white wine flavor is pretty strong at first, but it matches well with the tangy yogurt base. Plus, there's no egg tempering, and custard making, so it takes all of 5 minutes to mix it all together and start churning it.

It being October, it seems inevitable that seem form of pumpkin should leak into one of my posts (or be entirely dedicated to it), so lo and behold here we have it. Pumpkin butter and pumpkin macarons. Courtesy of our favorite trader name Joe. The macarons were decently good given that they are from a grocery store freezer aisle. The pumpkin butter is a perennial classic. There are many online who discuss their "I bought 10 jars of this stuff!" adventures, but I honestly have a hard time thinking what to put it on aside from yogurt and weird grilled cheese or peanut butter sandwiches, so I think I'm good with 1 jar to happily last me through my "ahhh must succumb to pumpkin phase."

Recipe via Serious Eats

Chocolate Lavender Ice Cream: Flower Power

I've slowly become increasingly resentful of my dedication to the world of food blogging. The part where you take pictures that is. The thing about working in research is that 5 PM is not a set in stone end of the work day hour. So sometimes its a bit later, which combined with fall/winter means darkness by the time I get around to actually taking pictures. The great thing about research is that I could theoretically just leave whenever, like at 3 PM. But I don't like the thought of myself with that much power.

That being said, even with questionable lighting, its not like I'm trying to make it onto foodgawker or get named one of Saveur's top food blogs of the year, so even with unpleasant shadows and bright yellow lights, its still fun. Though its so easy to get carried away into wanting to be ~food blog famous~. But I have other goals and aspirations I can aim to excel in. Food photography? Not so much.

As you can tell, my obsession with incorporating lavender into literally everything continues. I swear I'm going to have enough lavender to last for the next 20 years even if I do add lavender to every single recipe. If you're wondering, those flecks of green are pistachios, but chocolate lavender pistachio ice cream seems like a mouthful, but the pistachios are definitely a nice touch and a nice distraction if you're honestly getting sick of lavender like a certain someone typing this.

Even with my waning interest in lavender though, this was still a really great ice cream. Especially if you're looking to serve something esoteric. If you're not, this chocolate ice cream itself is super rich. It tasted more like fudge ice cream than chocolate ice cream. I'm personally very picky about chocolate in that the richer it is the better. So this chocolate ice cream was right up my alley. If you're not so into rich, dense, dark chocolate, I would suggest another recipe.

Chocolate lavender ice cream recipe from The Wholesome Pursuit, with ~1/4 cup of chopped, lightly roasted pistachios mixed in. Original chocolate ice cream recipe from David Lebovitz's The Perfect Scoop. Also, if anyone wants to buy me a present at some point, hint hint.

Green Tea, Cherries, and Galettes: A Bad Venn Diagram

This post has been sitting as an -emergency post-. And the emergency has arrived. Well, mainly a self imposed emergency since I failed to take pictures of either the snickerdoodles or lavender rose ice cream I recently made. I'm starting to build a little idea in my head that I should rent a go-pro camera to just take pictures automatically (hands free!) pictures for me. With you know, perfect lighting and everything that I can never accomplish at 9 PM under the icky yellow light of my kitchen.
So we're gonna get a little mathematical and discuss 2 types of desserts that I have had a n=2 failure in making- green tea and cherry flavors and galettes.



On one side, green tea and cherry combinations in baked goods and I seem to have a bad history together. Take these green tea cherry cupcakes I made once upon a time while my life was in a bit of a slump. I figured that baking would cheer me up, but I think that x famous cook was right when they said that you can taste the love and emotions that go into a work of food.
While I was not in a terrible mood while baking the galette version of this flavor, it does seem that green tea/cherries seem to not like me. Granted they are perfectly amiable to me and my attempts to bake/cook separately. But together they seem to become a sinister evil superhero villain. Ok, so that was kinda exaggerated.



On the other side, my two attempts at baking galettes this summer have both also ended in less than stellar ways, and I will blame my inexperience with pie crusts for that one. I might have been a little ambitious when my first galette attempt was a cherry galette with a green tea crust (like come on Helen). But then I tried a second time using, you know, normal-ish pie crust and some of the last sweet summer peaches I had left lying around. Alas, ear wax, was indeed probably something more delightful that whatever happened to that pie crust.



Unsavory image side, I might have to stick to less rustic or esoteric desserts for a little while. I would hate to have to make more venn diagrams of foods Helen can't bake related posts. I was going to insert a little venn diagram here, but pixlr just crashed on me so no venn diagrams for you. You'll just have to wait for more baking failures to crop for that!

Biscoff Stuffed Chocolate Cookies: Jetlag Cookies

Despite my ridiculously easy schedule that I have given myself for maintaining this blog, I forgot to take pictures of the most recent thing I have made that may deserve a post. So I'm stuck in a conundrum to either post a short and nonsubstantial post about chocolate cookies that lack any particularly good photos, or post a long winded introspection revolving around my bad luck with galettes and the cherry/green tea flavor combo. Currently I am chillaxing at an airport in front of a women who I witnessed consume several small bottles of Wild Turkey, and am now mildly worried about her. On a side note, there's the usual jetlag and trying to keep myself from falling asleep too early.

So instead of writing about a failure in baking, I'll keep this short with two questionable pictures of something I think all of us want/need when we're just a little bit tired and just want to take things a little easy. Mainly- soft baked cookies. Especially those that are warm, rich and with just a little bit ginger and cinnamon thanks to biscoff spread stuffed and melty in the center. No one wants a hard crunchy cookie when they seek a comfort food cookie. Well, at least I don't. Hard, crunchy cookies are for festive moments and tea. Or maybe I'm just getting cookie textures mixed up with actual emotions. Go figure.



Recipe adapted from Sally's Baking Addiction. The only different was rather than caramel candies in the center, I used biscoff spread. Chilling the biscoff in the fridge made it much easier to work with. You can easily substitute biscoff for peanut butter if you're into the whole dark chocolate peanut butter combo. And face it, who isn't?
Side note: the women across from me is now either taking odd pictures of the general airport, or more likely, selfies.