Banana Muffins

This is a great way to get rid of over ripe bananas.  Who can finish a bunch of bananas before they become overripe?

I usually have everything else in the pantry or fridge anyway, so when I have too many bananas, I either turn it into banana bread or banana muffins.

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3 large bananas, mashed
• 3/4 cup white sugar
• 1 egg
• 1/3 cup butter, melted

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Coat muffin pans with non-stick spray, or use paper liners. Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt; set aside.
2. Combine bananas, sugar, egg, and melted butter in a large bowl. Fold in flour mixture, and mix until smooth. Scoop into muffin pans.
3. Bake in preheated oven. Bake mini muffins for 10 to 15 minutes, and large muffins for 25 to 30 minutes. Muffins will spring back when lightly tapped.

This recipe straight from Allrecipes.com, The only thing I did differently is in a small bowl, I added 3 tablespoons of butter cubed, 3 tablespoons, and 3 tablespoons of Quaker oats.  Mix this with a fork or fingers and sprinkle them over the muffins.  This gives them the sweet crumbly top.

Eileen's Cheesecake

Eileen's pumpkin cheesecake was rated one of the top 3 pumpkin cheesecake during fall of 2011. I absolutely love their cheesecake and always get the plain or strawberry cheesecake. This pumpkin was cheesecake was absolutely DIVINE!!! If you like pumpkin pie, you will love this.  This is like pumpkin pie times ten. 

Green Tea, Earl Grey & French Vanilla Cupcakes

I am not much of a baker so when I feel like baking, I use a little help from Duncan Hines.  This is French Vanilla, I also flavored it with green tea and Earl Grey.

One flavor is so boring...

So I added Earl Grey to 1/3 of the batter.

Since I love green tea, it was added to 1/3 of the batter.

 I made regular muffins and tiny muffins.  By the time I was finished baking, I had muffins all over my counter.

Marshmallows Madness

After discovering Jet-Puffed Strawberry Marshmallows, I wondered if Kraft made any other flavor marshmallows.  I did not looked into this matter until I saw Matt's blog had pictures of different marshmallows in them. After seeing the SwirlMallows, I made it my mission to obtain all the flavors I have never tried.  Thanks to Matt, I bought about 9.6 pounds of marshmallows worth about $40 on ShopFoodEx.com. I did not realize how much I bought until the box came.  I was surprise how heavy my marshmallows were. I really cannot believe that I bought over 9 pounds worth of candies!

Yum, caramel and vanilla!

I love chocolate mint flavors and bought 3 bags of this!

Chocolate, enough said.

Cinnamon buns flavors

Another chocolate flavors, I suppose I will have to compare the two chocolate I have.

So many flavors in one bag. I do not understand why they do not sell these marshmallows in all the stores!

I love coconut!

I got two of these because it is Pina Colada.

Definitely two of the German Chocolate cake!

The stores always have the plain marshmallows but I have never seen all these other flavors.  When I found the strawberry ones, I was over joyed. To find the other flavors was just marshmallows madness.

Coffee Flavored Cookies

Ingredients

• 1 stick of unsalted butter, softened
• 1/2 cup powdered sugar
• 3 tablespoons of 2 in 1 coffee mix
• Pinch salt
• 1 cup all-purpose flour 

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Cream butter, sugar, salt and coffee powder together with a hand mixer for a minute. 
3. Then use a fork to incorporate flour into the butter mixture.
4. Using a measuring tablespoon, scoop it out onto the cookie sheet.
5. Bake for 20 minutes.

Earl Grey Tea Cookies

 

Another Earl Grey Tea recipe! I used the basic cookie recipe but added Earl Grey Tea into the dough. The taste was amazing, buttery flowery goodness.

Ingredients

• 1 stick of unsalted butter, softened
• 1/2 cup powdered sugar
• 1 Earl Grey Teabag
• Pinch salt
• 1 cup all-purpose flour 

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Cream butter, sugar, and salt together with a hand mixer for a minute. 
3. Then use a fork to incorporate flour and Earl Grey Tea leaves into the butter mixture.
4. Use a measuring tablespoon to scoop out dough and place on top of cookie sheet.
5. Bake for 20 minutes.

Strawberry Rice Krispies Treats

I just had to make Strawberry Rice Krispies Treats with the strawberry marshmallow.  It is best to spread it on a parchment paper because this was really sticky.  The strawberry flavor was really faint, if I had strawberry extract, I would definitely add that in to intensify the flavor.  I would add it to the soften strawberry marshmallow before adding the Rice Krispies.

Duncan Hines Carrot Cakes

 I am not crazy about carrot cakes and when I am at a bakery, it is never my choice for carrot cakes because chocolate is my ultimate choice.  When I saw that Duncan Hines have Carrot Cakes flavor, I had to buy it.  The smell of the mix was incredible but the carrot and raisin was kind of odd.  It came in another package and it was dehydrated.  You are suppose to rehydrate it by putting into water.  It was a lucky thing that I did not put the whole packet into the cake mix.  If I were to make it again, I would use fresh grated carrots and the Minute Maid raisin.  The dehydrated mix made the cake chewy.  Or I would just buy it for the cake mix itself because the spices smells and taste wonderful, better than some store bought carrot cakes! 

Spot Dessert Bar

There is a place in St. Marks at NYC called "Spot Dessert Bar."  Since I was with four other people, we got a bunch of desserts to share.  The desserts are amazing, some of the desserts were deconstructed.  The Soft Cheesecake was amazing, there was a small bit of foam on the cheesecake part and the flavor explodes in your mouth.  My other favorite was the Yuzu Eskimo, the ice cream was frozen solid and combined with everything on the plate made it very tasty. My absolute favorite was the Ginger Lime Sorbet.  I did not think that I would like it because I do not like Ginger desserts but this sorbet was amazing.  There is more lime in it then ginger and after all the desserts, this cleanses your pallet with an explosive ending.  I am definitely going back to get the sorbet on the go!

Yuzu Eskimo

Soft Cheesecake

Chocolate Green Tea Truffle Cake with a big scoop of green tea ice cream.

Jackfruit Cake

Steamed Passion Fruit Souffle

Pineapple Tiramisu

Raspberry Tea and Ginger Lime Sorbet

Green Tea Cookies

This is my first batch of green tea cookies.

I love anything green tea: ice cream, waffles, cookies and mochi! Green tea cookies are expensive so I decided to make them myself. It is so simple and the outcome is exactly like those store bought ones. The Green Tea Matcha powder may seem expensive at first, but it is worth it and you do not need a lot for the recipes depending on the quality of the powder you buy. If you put too much into a recipe, it will turn bitter so play around with what you have because some matcha powder are stronger than the others.

Ingredients

• 1 stick of unsalted butter, softened
• 1/2 cup powdered sugar
• 1 tablespoon Green Tea Matcha Powder
• Pinch salt
• 1 cup all-purpose flour 

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Cream butter, sugar, salt and Matcha powder together with a hand mixer for a minute. 
3. Then use a fork to incorporate flour into the butter mixture.
4. Just as I scoop my Doubly Chocolate Cookies, scoop out the green tea mixture with a measuring tablespoon. Unlike the chocolate cookies, these cookies will spread out a bit so place them 1 1/2 inch apart.
5. Bake for 20 minutes.

I made green tea cookies again, this time I used a different brand of green tea matcha powder.  As you can see the color is much greener than the previous.  I do not have much experience with green tea matcha powder and did not realize that there is a big difference in them.

The trick to getting the dough not to stick is the saran wrap! Or I suppose you can use a melon baller, which I do not own.

I love the vibrant green color and the smell is amazing.

My friends love these cookies!

Crumbly Double Chocolate Cookies

These cookies are really crumbly because it does not any wet ingredients in them such as eggs or milk.  They are so easy to make and using the basic recipe you can add anything to it to make any flavor cookies you want.  

Ingredients

• 1 stick of unsalted butter, softened
• 1/2 cup powdered sugar
• 1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• Pinch salt
• 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup semisweet chocolate chunks or chips 

Directions

1. In a large bowl, cream butter, sugar, cocoa powder, salt and vanilla extract together with a hand mixer for about a minute.   
2. Then use a fork to mix the flour and chocolate chips into the butter mixture until everything in incorporated.
3. Since the dough is so soft and sticky and I did not own a melon baller, you can put plastic wrap around a measuring 1 tablespoon so the dough would not stick to the spoon. Just as the pictures above.
4. Bake on a baking sheets in a 335 F preheated oven for 20 minutes.

Rice Krispies Treats

I was bored and had the munchies.  I wanted something sweet and looked through all my chocolate stash and nothing appealed to me.  When I realized I had mini marshmallow and a box of opened Rice Krispies, I had to make rice krispies treats.  I ate most of it in just 3 hours.  It was gone by the next day, I don't think I will make this again any time soon because it was just too good.

Red Bean Tapioca Dessert

This Chinese dessert can be served hot or cold.  My grandmother added dried orange peels to it in hers and my mother added tapioca in hers.  I love the one mom's made.  Here is the recipe for mine:


Ingredients

• 1/2 cup Azuki beans
•  3 cups water
•  1/4 cup sugar
•  1/5 cup tapioca pearls

Boil everything together until the red beans starts to break apart. Serve hot or cold!

Duncan Hines Red Velvet Cupcakes

I like red velvet cake but I have to admit I am certainly not a baker when it comes to making a cake.  So I would never try to make cakes from scratch.  So when Duncan Hines Red Velvet first came out, I had to have it.  To make it more chocolaty, I add about two tablespoon of cocoa powder to the mix.  It is so much cleaner if you put the batter into a bag and snip one corner to push the batter out since I am making such small cupcakes.