With less than a week before reading week (aka "slack week"), that only means one thing: I need to clear out the fridge by Thursday evening! As a busy university student, I don't always have the time to actually spend hours in the kitchen to fix up dinner (how I wish I did though!). The motto for most school nights is simple, easy, fast, healthy, and delicious.
I tend to always have a little bit of everything leftover. It's as if I get to the "almost end" and then it just sits in the fridge until it goes bad. Upon opening the fridge tonight and taking a peak at my shelf, I naturally found a bit of salad, 5 baby carrots, the butt end of a cucumber, some chopped up red pepper, 3 eggs, 1 portabello mushroom and some green onions. Hating to have anything put to waste, I quickly whipped up a salad dressed with a bit of balsamic vinegar, a dash of olive oil and some mandarin juice to add some sweetness. Whisked 2 eggs with some milk, dried chives and chopped green onions and scrambled them with some sautéed portabello mushrooms, and threw in some shredded cheese right at the end. Lastly, toasted some whole wheat english muffins once, spread them with raspberry jam and topped them with slices of brie and poppped them back in the toaster so that the cheese would melt. Simple. Easy. Delicious! This is one my favourite Sunday brunch meals that I often make for myself at school, but who says you can't have brunch for dinner? And who says you can't eat a good meal without breaking your bank?
Anyway, on to my promised account of the banana white chocolate muffins. There never seems to be a shortage of bananas in our house. If there aren’t banana sitting in the banana hammock, then there is bound to be bananas sitting in the freezer. Finding myself with the problem of having too many bananas in the freezer, I thought it would be best to use them up. Rather than rely on my tried-and-true banana walnut muffins, or even (possibly) the best banana bread, I thought I would try something new and something a little more special to serve to my friends.
I recently bought a whole bunch of white chocolate, and I had no clue what to do with it. It seems to be a problem of mine; I always buy more than I really need in fear of not buying enough. Thus, white chocolate in one hand, bananas in the other, I made some banana white chocolate muffins.
During my trip to Hong Kong over the Christmas break, I had bought a whole slew of baking stuff, including a couple of cute mini-cake molds. I thought this would be a great time to take them out and break them in. Sprayed them a little with oil so that no sticking would occur (it didn’t…whew!). However, the shape didn’t really show up on the cakes. Next time, I think I’ll just stick to a denser cake recipe (ie: bundt cake) when I use these molds. Regardless, they were still fun, and atleast now I have 8 muffin tops (from the bottom of the mini-cakes) to munch on!
I’m somewhat disappointed with this recipe. I found the taste to be somewhat…odd. There was too much going on with the banana and the white chocolate AND the cinnamon. I’m a classic banana bread lover. I love my banana breads/muffins to have a distinct banana taste to it, with some walnuts thrown in on occasion, and perhaps even some chocolate chips if I’m in desperate need for a sugar high, but the combination of cinnamon and banana just seemed a little odd to my taste buds. Also doesn’t help that I’m not a big fan of white chocolate to begin with. I also threw in some toasted walnuts that I had lying around in the fridge. They’re not bad…I just think this cake is an acquired taste. Regardless of my own opinions, the roomies and my Italian class seemed to enjoy them well enough. I had 8 mini cakes and 16 muffins Saturday evening; they were all gone by last night!
For the recipe, go here.
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