Banana Coffee Cake Muffins

Cinagro Farm, Family Favorites from the Farm and beyond...
Carol Engan Borrelli
Morris Press Cookbooks (2008)
ISBN 1605851795

This is a book that got raves when it came out. Plastic ring-bound, a bit homemade looking, it's the kind of book I usually like, but someone this one never grabbed me. I will try to give it a chance now.

This is the first recipe I've made from this book, and I wasn't overly pleased. The muffins were so-so, and I found the instructions a bit weak. For example, it says to mix butter, sugar, egg, lemon zest, and milk in a bowl. But it's pretty hard work to mix room temperature butter into so much liquid. Better to cream the butter and sugar first and then add the liquid-y things.

The recipe calls for 1-1/2 tablespoons of baking powder, which seemed like an awful lot to me. A quick look at other muffin recipes showed no more than 1 tablespoon, so I cut this back. The muffins rose plenty high even without the extra baking powder.

Oops, I forgot to add the topping. Sprinkled it on for the last 10 minutes of baking (which doesn't really work that well), but can't say it was missed. But we don't like our sweets over-sweet, so it wasn't a problem. (I've put the topping aside in case an excuse to use it turns up in the next days.)

The muffins were good enough, but probably not a recipe I'll make again.

This post is linked to this week's Cookbook Sundays.

This week in the kitchen

Monday/19-Dec-11: Dinner was falafel in pitas, served with Tahini Dipping Sauce (WofE, p359), some shredded lettuce, and a salad based on Cream Cheese and Cucumber Salad (Roden, p65), using feta and adding tomatoes.

Tuesday/20-Dec-11: At Lesley and Toby's do this afternoon (they run Sophie's cattery/spa), we munched so well for "lunch" that we weren't very hungry for dinner. So I made a big salad, one of those cleaning out the fridge jobs, and that was dinner. So much for menu plans.

Then we nibbled some of the chocolate coated walnuts we bought at the St. Sornin cave, where we'd gone to stock up on our favorite rosé, only to find that it was everybody else's favorite too and it's all gone. Maybe next year will be as good.

Wednesday/21-Dec-11: Shopped today; bought lots of goodies for xmas and new year.

Dinner was West Indian Salmon Patties (MC). Made 6; froze 3 for another time. Quite yummy. Served with leftover Jamaican rice and beans. Finished off the chocolate walnuts for dessert.

Thursday/22-Dec-11: Off-piste again. Had a curried egg thing planned, but decided against that recipe and opted for a half-dose of Curried Creamed Eggs (125Pasta, p230; cookbooker). I poached our eggs in the sauce, rather than stirring in hard-boiled ones, chopped. Think I prefer this.

Friday/23-Dec-11: Ed still sickie, so we didn't go caroling. For dinner I reheated the last of the Jamaican rice and beans (that was good, but the recipe made enough to feed a small army), adding some grilled sausages from the freezer. And a nice salad. Off to bed with us.

Saturday/24-Dec-11: This morning I made some Banana Coffee Cake Muffins (Cinagro, p3; cookbooker). Forgot to add the topping, but can say it was really missed. Neither of us really like that kind of sweet stuff. (Meanwhile, I've saved the stuff on the odd chance I might find a use for it in the next days.) Not bad muffins, but not especially a recipe I'll do again.

For a starter tonight, we each had a foie gras-stuffed fig, that we bought at the marché de noël last weekend. She had only six-packs of these, and when we said we wanted only two, she dug these out of the cooler and told us to put them in the coldest part of the fridge and we had to eat them no later than christmas day. Expect they were slight out of date, but we seem to have survived. The main course was a half recipe of Fusilli in Chick-pea-Walnut Cream, a xerox copy I got from somewhere, from a cookbook I don't have. The book has been on my want list for a long time, but this recipe didn't really up its position on the list. I've been running into lots of recipes using pomegranate molasses/syrup of late, and finally found a bottle, which was inaugurated for this. Can't really say it was noticeable. The recipe involved blending walnuts and chickpeas to make a creamy sauce, then cooking broccoli and tomato in that. Fairly so-so, probably healthy.

Sunday/25-Dec-11: Neither of us feeling very perky this year, we had a kind of low-key xmas. Kept the dinner small and easy, except for dessert, which was a bit of a struggle.

Yogurt on overnight. (Have made yogurt several times this week, it seems, but not recorded it. Oops.)

Progress on goals
This week: #1 VEG/FISH: yes, #2 SOUP:no, #3 MIDDAY:no
This month: #4 PASTA: yes