Tess under the yoga mat.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Friday, July 23, 2010
Cinnamon Pancakes
The best recipes for breakfasty type foods are the recipes that are simple to make. This makes the recipe awesome and usable because breakfast is typically made shortly after waking. Or, if you are like me, breakfast is made at 1:30am when you can't sleep. In both situations, the person making the breakfast is half awake. And half awake people should not be trusted with following complex recipes. Neither should absent minded people. If you happen to be both of those things, just stay out of the kitchen. It is for your own safety.
I recently assembled a cinnamon pancake recipe from various recipes I found online. It is very easy to make. So easy that it hardly requires any instructions. Here is the handwritten recipe as proof:
Everything should be written in purple pen. It just makes whatever is written look more friendly and inviting.
Anyhow, the recipe is basically: mix the dry ingredients, mix the wet ingredients (in a separate bowl), stir the wet and dry things together. I find it convenient to mix the ingredients for pancakes in measuring cups.
After that, you just make the pancakes as normal. If you don't know how to cook pancakes, then you probably shouldn't be making it as a breakfast. Try it for lunch or dinner, when you are fully awake, so you don't catch anything on fire.
My serving suggestion is to lightly butter the pancakes and put chocolate chips on top of each pancake.
This recipe will make 4 large pancakes. For a stronger cinnamon flavor, add more than 1/2 T of cinnamon.
I recently assembled a cinnamon pancake recipe from various recipes I found online. It is very easy to make. So easy that it hardly requires any instructions. Here is the handwritten recipe as proof:
Everything should be written in purple pen. It just makes whatever is written look more friendly and inviting.
Anyhow, the recipe is basically: mix the dry ingredients, mix the wet ingredients (in a separate bowl), stir the wet and dry things together. I find it convenient to mix the ingredients for pancakes in measuring cups.
After that, you just make the pancakes as normal. If you don't know how to cook pancakes, then you probably shouldn't be making it as a breakfast. Try it for lunch or dinner, when you are fully awake, so you don't catch anything on fire.
My serving suggestion is to lightly butter the pancakes and put chocolate chips on top of each pancake.
This recipe will make 4 large pancakes. For a stronger cinnamon flavor, add more than 1/2 T of cinnamon.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Saturday, July 17, 2010
The Evilness of Mini Muffins
I'm not sure if you know this, but mini muffins are evil incarnate. That is a pure and simple fact. If you deny this, you are probably just under their influence. It is not too late to come to your senses, but it is most likely something you will not be willing to do. It is much easier (and perhaps more enjoyable) to just live in corrupted bliss, unaware that the tiny, adorable muffins are dense with mischief. Perhaps it is time for an intervention of sorts...
We will start with an analysis of the evil in question: the mini muffin. This will allow you to see the muffins for what they truly are. To properly do this, we will need to see and experience how it is created. Perhaps we can pinpoint the wickedness that seems to be inherent in the muffin itself. My only hope is, that during this investigation, we don't fall prey to the mini muffin's demonic spell.
First, gather the ingredients necessary to create mini muffins. You may vary from this recipe slightly, but only in regards to flavoring. The base needs to remain the same if we are to investigate in a scientific manner. All ingredients should be in their pure, unadulterated form.
Mini Muffins (Printer-friendly PDF Version)
2 1/2 C self-raising flour
3/4 C brown sugar
1 C milk
1 egg
2 T butter (or margarine), softened or chopped into small pieces
1 t vanilla
2 ripe bananas, mashed (or whatever you want to flavor the muffins with)
I chose to split the batter into two equal parts and flavor one part banana and the other part chocolate chip. If you follow my example, you will need 1 mashed banana and a variable amount of chocolate chips. The amount of chocolate chips you include depends on how you feel about chocolate. If your muffin batter ends up being more chocolate chips than batter, then I think we may need a different topic for our intervention...
To create the base for the muffin batter, place the milk, egg, vanilla, and butter in a medium mixing bowl. Beat on medium speed until it seems well mixed. If you start with cold butter, the batter will be lumpy at this point. Add the flour and brown sugar. Mix in well, at medium speed, until the batter is smooth and creamy.
So far nothing stands out as "evil". It seems to be a normal batter for muffins.
Place half of the batter into a separate mixing bowl. Add the chocolate chips and mix in. I noticed the batter was thick, so I added 2 tablespoons of milk to the chocolate chip muffin batter. Everything is still normal with the batter.
Place the mashed banana in the other half of the muffin batter and mix it in well. (You will notice at this point why I added the milk to the other batter.) You may, optionally, take a picture of the two flavors of batter at this point to enhance your notes (you are taking notes, right?).
Grease a mini muffin pan with vegetable shortening. Alternatively, you may use mini muffin liners. The liners make it more difficult to eat the muffins, so greasing the muffin pan adds to laziness. Perhaps this is the beginning of the evil!
Fill the mini muffin cups approximately 3/4 full. Bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool for a few minutes before removing from the pan. The tops of the muffins won't brown, but the sides touching the pan will.
Place the mini muffins in a large bowl to cool. Once cooled, you may place them into bags that zip closed or food storage containers.
The creation process of the mini muffins didn't show any extreme signs of evil, nor does it show how the evil enters the muffin. Perhaps your research showed something different. If so, please share your findings.
After the research on the baking process concluded, I was determined to find more evidence that the muffins are, in fact, evil incarnate. Some number crunching helped me determine that 13.875 batches of muffin batter will produce 666 muffins. I also used a fancy and extremely expensive photo-filter to analyze the pictures that I took of the muffin making process. Nothing surprising showed up in the analysis until the final photo. Here are the images side by side, one before the filter was used and one after.
By now you should see the pure diabolical evil that mini muffins are. They pose as cute and adorable food, but this is a facade. Underneath their soft and moist exterior lies a source of evil that can only lead to gluttony. During the typing of this post, I was willed into eating no less than 8 mini muffins. The ease of eating the muffins paired with the delicious taste make them so tempting... so wrong.
Just remember that people care for you. They care if you gain 20 pounds by eating nothing but mini muffins for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. There are people who want to help you. They are not just trying to steal the delectable muffins that you are hoarding on your desk, by your computer. They want you to know that there is more to life than mini muffins. Please let them help you.
We will start with an analysis of the evil in question: the mini muffin. This will allow you to see the muffins for what they truly are. To properly do this, we will need to see and experience how it is created. Perhaps we can pinpoint the wickedness that seems to be inherent in the muffin itself. My only hope is, that during this investigation, we don't fall prey to the mini muffin's demonic spell.
First, gather the ingredients necessary to create mini muffins. You may vary from this recipe slightly, but only in regards to flavoring. The base needs to remain the same if we are to investigate in a scientific manner. All ingredients should be in their pure, unadulterated form.
Mini Muffins (Printer-friendly PDF Version)
2 1/2 C self-raising flour
3/4 C brown sugar
1 C milk
1 egg
2 T butter (or margarine), softened or chopped into small pieces
1 t vanilla
2 ripe bananas, mashed (or whatever you want to flavor the muffins with)
I chose to split the batter into two equal parts and flavor one part banana and the other part chocolate chip. If you follow my example, you will need 1 mashed banana and a variable amount of chocolate chips. The amount of chocolate chips you include depends on how you feel about chocolate. If your muffin batter ends up being more chocolate chips than batter, then I think we may need a different topic for our intervention...
To create the base for the muffin batter, place the milk, egg, vanilla, and butter in a medium mixing bowl. Beat on medium speed until it seems well mixed. If you start with cold butter, the batter will be lumpy at this point. Add the flour and brown sugar. Mix in well, at medium speed, until the batter is smooth and creamy.
So far nothing stands out as "evil". It seems to be a normal batter for muffins.
Place half of the batter into a separate mixing bowl. Add the chocolate chips and mix in. I noticed the batter was thick, so I added 2 tablespoons of milk to the chocolate chip muffin batter. Everything is still normal with the batter.
Place the mashed banana in the other half of the muffin batter and mix it in well. (You will notice at this point why I added the milk to the other batter.) You may, optionally, take a picture of the two flavors of batter at this point to enhance your notes (you are taking notes, right?).
Grease a mini muffin pan with vegetable shortening. Alternatively, you may use mini muffin liners. The liners make it more difficult to eat the muffins, so greasing the muffin pan adds to laziness. Perhaps this is the beginning of the evil!
Fill the mini muffin cups approximately 3/4 full. Bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool for a few minutes before removing from the pan. The tops of the muffins won't brown, but the sides touching the pan will.
Place the mini muffins in a large bowl to cool. Once cooled, you may place them into bags that zip closed or food storage containers.
The creation process of the mini muffins didn't show any extreme signs of evil, nor does it show how the evil enters the muffin. Perhaps your research showed something different. If so, please share your findings.
After the research on the baking process concluded, I was determined to find more evidence that the muffins are, in fact, evil incarnate. Some number crunching helped me determine that 13.875 batches of muffin batter will produce 666 muffins. I also used a fancy and extremely expensive photo-filter to analyze the pictures that I took of the muffin making process. Nothing surprising showed up in the analysis until the final photo. Here are the images side by side, one before the filter was used and one after.
By now you should see the pure diabolical evil that mini muffins are. They pose as cute and adorable food, but this is a facade. Underneath their soft and moist exterior lies a source of evil that can only lead to gluttony. During the typing of this post, I was willed into eating no less than 8 mini muffins. The ease of eating the muffins paired with the delicious taste make them so tempting... so wrong.
Just remember that people care for you. They care if you gain 20 pounds by eating nothing but mini muffins for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. There are people who want to help you. They are not just trying to steal the delectable muffins that you are hoarding on your desk, by your computer. They want you to know that there is more to life than mini muffins. Please let them help you.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Things Neniell Made by Barbara Miller is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.