The Funky Kitchen

Holy moly! I haven’t been here in a while.

What’s new? Well, the wedding in Toronto was beautiful, even though I had the flu. Congratulations Dan and Sara! Portuguese weddings are my kind of wedding, I’ve learned, there was so much food. I didn’t get to partake in much of it, but it looked great and the Mister and our other tablemates certainly enjoyed their meals. I got hired for two really awesome jobs, being a day nanny for an eleven month old little girl, and being a personal assistant for one of my previous employers. I’ve already started the nannying, it is going swimmingly, but I don’t start personal assistant-ing until Monday.

This means that, with much regret, I left my daycare. Sadly, it didn’t end on a very good note. I cried. A lot. I’m going to miss a lot of things about it, but this next step into the future is going to be a good one. Still, I’m going to miss my coworkers, and of course my kids. I’m going to really really miss them.

These muffins are on the snack schedule at my day care and they are as ridiculously good as they are simple. The recipe doubles and triples really well, which cannot be said for all recipes. A single recipe will make just over a dozen muffins, so depending on how many muffins you are looking to make, multiply accordingly. What I really like, though, is that this muffin recipe only requires half a cup of sugar! So many of the recipes I know for muffins require a full cup. Half the sugar still giving good quality muffins? Awesome.

I’m going to carry with me the memory of these muffins, with little preschoolers sitting around the snack table, excited that today is a muffin day, and happily awaiting their snack.

Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins

(in the style of my daycare, which for privacy reasons will remain nameless)

1 3/4 Cups flour

1/2 Cup sugar

3 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

3/4 Cup chocolate chips

2 spotty bananas

1 egg

1/4 Cup vegetable oil

1/4 Cup milk

• In a bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt.
• Add the chocolate chips into the dry mixture and toss to coat. The thin layer of dry ingredients over the surface of the chocolate chips will help to keep them suspended in the batter, rather than sink to the bottom.
• Mash the bananas in a second bowl. A potato masher works really well, but I couldn’t find ours so I used a pastry cutter.
• Add the egg, vegetable oil and milk to the mashed bananas. Stir to combine.
• Make a well in the dry ingredients, into which the wet ingredients can be poured.

• Mix the dry and wet until just combined, some small clumps are perfectly fine to leave.
• Scoop into a muffin tin, and cook until browned (~20 minutes at 400° F).
• Let cool and enjoy! (They are quite tasty with butter.)

These muffins are quite dense, and if you’re looking to achieve smooth tops, you’re going to need to smooth them with the back of a spoon before you bake them. I kind of like the textured look of the tops, though, so to each their own.

Maybe try these muffins out with your children, the kids at daycare really dig them.

Cheers to muffins!

Granita is the perfect kind of recipe to make on a day like this. No, it isn’t beautiful and sunny out, which would be another good time for granita making. It’s actually pretty rainy in these parts, with storm warnings to boot. Today has been quite a day. Let’s just say that work didn’t go well. After driving home crying, sitting in traffic crying, getting home and crying and then cuddling all my crying out, I need to do some serious thinking.

Granita is perfect for thinking. You boil some blueberries for a few minutes, and while waiting for them to cool you have time to think think think.

Then you puree them and mix them with all of the other ingredients, and question the validity and reasoning behind all of your previous thoughts. Yes, I used my Magic Bullet Blender for the puree step, it was a great Christmas present (thanks Mum!) and pureed quite admirably.

After stirring in the rest of the ingredients you let it sit in the freezer a spell, giving you some time to worry about leaving a job that is mostly perfect for you.  Bring it out of the freezer and break it up with a spoon, wondering what the right thing to do is. Put it back in the freezer and reflect some more.  Repeat the scraping and freezing until you have a sublime frozen treat, like a granular sorbet. Or of course, you could make it on a hot, sunny day where a cooling snack would refresh remarkably. Either way, a person feeling pensive or overheated would enjoy it equally I would think.

Blueberry Granita

(adapted from Oh-So-Blueberry Ice, Vegetarian Times July 2005)

2 C blueberries (thawed if frozen)

1/2 C water

1/4 C sugar

1/4 C lemon juice

1-355 mL can of ginger ale

• In a saucepan, bring blueberries, water and sugar to a boil. Simmer until the blueberries are bursting out of their skins (4 or 5 minutes) and then allow to cool to room temperature.
• Puree the blueberries until, well pureed, and having smooth consistency.
• Pour the blueberry puree into a metal baking pan and add the lemon juice and ginger ale. Stir to combine.
• Pop it in the freezer (hopefully you have a level surface to put it on), and leave for 30 minutes.
• Remove from the freezer and scrape with a spoon to break up the forming ice crystals (make sure to get into the corners! They freeze first!).
• Return it to the freezer, waiting half an hour and then rescraping. Repeat until fully frozen in crystallized granules.
• Spoon into bowls, or leave in the freezer for later use. Hopefully it would get eaten in the next day or so, or else the texture will start to be lost.

The blueberries had fantastic flavor. The lemon juice added an extra sparkle to the granita, while the ginger ale added a lovely hint of effervescence. It’s worth all of the waiting for it to freeze, and it definitely brightened my day.

Thanks to Brian for the last photo in this post. You Sir, are a much more talented photographer than I.