Cornmeal Pancakes

It’s a cool Sunday morning and I’ve been up for hours (early to bed, early to rise) so it seemed like the perfect time to linger over a cup of coffee and create something new in the kitchen. I pulled out my favorite cookbook, the Joy of Cooking, and settled on cornmeal pancakes. On any other day I would have added fruit to them, but alas, the lack of fresh produce kept them simple today. If you want some really good banana cornmeal pancakes I’d highly recommend Café Heaven in P-Town... but I suppose that isn’t a very helpful suggestion. So in the meantime, I recommend, getting out one bowl and a few easy ingredients and whipping up your own.

Happy Pancaking!

Apple Muffins

I was really in the mood for a muffin yesterday but never got around to getting one… so, of course I made some today. I don’t know about you, but whenever I make muffins they come out kind of wimpy. I decided I really wanted to try to go for that bakery-like dome shape. I tried googling a bit to see what I could come up with. Here are my thoughts…

The most prevalent comment I could find was that it’s important to fill the muffin tins, like really fill them, maybe even over-fill them. Why do recipes always say to fill the tins two-thirds of the way? Silly. Go for it. Fill those babies up.

Low Fat Banana Muffins

Over-ripe bananas? Not sure what to do? Here is a low-fat banana muffin recipe that puts those brown bananas to good use. I grew up eating traditional banana bread which was extra delicious because we’d eat it sliced, toasted and buttered, what could be bad? But, now that I’m a bit more calorie conscious I’d rather eat low-fat banana bread and devour high-calorie chocolate with slightly less guilt.

I experimented on my own substituting applesauce in my banana bread recipe and the result was a gummy mess. So I went on a search for recipes using yogurt or some other substitute and found one using buttermilk. (See below for how to make your own buttermilk!) This low-fat recipe calls for 1 tbls. oil and 1/3 buttermilk compared to my old version which used ½ cup butter and 1 tbls. milk – while I’m no chemist, I know that is significantly lower in fat! Unfortunately after finding the recipe online, I copied it into my cookbook and can’t seem to find it again… my apologies to the original chef for lack of credit for this recipe.

Happy Baking!