Apricot Brandy and Almond Baked French Toast

After a few days spent recovering from graduation festivities, we’re finally ready to post the final component of our goodbye brunch – a delicious and mildly alcoholic baked French toast that we’re proud to have come up with ourselves (mostly!). The inspiration comes from Smitten Kitchen’s boozy baked French toast, but since we already doused our sorbet in kahlua (Smitten Kitchen’s booze of choice), we decided to try ours with almonds and apricot brandy.

You may be unfamiliar with apricot brandy, but we know it from such things as the apricot brandy sour, a drink that’s quite popular among friends. Apricot brandy is actually very tasty and light, perfect for fluffy, soft French toast. Since baked French toast soaks overnight and cooks in the oven in the morning, we just added a bit of the brandy to our soaking mixture and let the flavor seep through. We added layers of almond slivers between the layers of toast, and served it with (your choice of) powdered sugar or berry topping.

Ingredients:
1 loaf Challah, brioche, or thick Italian bread, cut int0 1-inch slices,
3 cups whole milk
3 eggs
3 tbsp apricot brandy
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup almonds
powdered sugar (optional)

(for berry topping)
2 cups frozen berries of your choice (we chose mixed)
1/2 cup granulated sugar (or to taste)

Instructions:
Grease a 9×13-inch baking dish. Arrange one layer of bread tightly in the pan, sprinkle with half of the almonds. Arrange the second layer on top, and sprinkle with remaining almonds.
Whisk together milk, eggs, sugar, salt, brandy and vanilla, and pour over the bread. Wrap the baking dish tightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight. In the morning, bake at 425 for 30 minutes, or until puffed and golden. To make berry topping, combine berries and sugar in a saucepan. Bring to a soft boil, then simmer for an additional 5-10 minutes. You can mash the berries to your desired consistency. Serve toast with powdered sugar, berry topping, or both.

Sticky Buns

Yesterday, Penn sponsored an event for Senior Week called Walnut Walk, an eight-hour bar crawl across Philadelphia. There were 18 stops, and all offered drink specials for those of us graduating (and some offered drink specials for everyone, which made for severe crowding). There are about 2500 seniors in our class, so the event was inevitably a hot, hot mess.

But if there's anything that we've learned from our four years here, it's that days like yesterday go much more smoothly when everyone is stuffed with food before they begin. We'd been meaning to serve one final brunch after we had so much fun cooking for Homecoming, and yesterday gave us the perfect opportunity. It's amazing how much you can do without homework.

We knew that we had to do cinnamon buns, as we've been meaning to do them forever (along with bagels, which we have yet to accomplish). Both of us love the mall-bought variety, but there's an artificialness to them that we thought we could avoid. We chose a recipe from Epicurious for Ultimate Sticky Buns that reviewers raved were easy and out of this world -- our two criteria. We modified it slightly by increasing the filling, so I'll post what we did below. In the end, they turned out ridiculously delicious. The dough was so sweet and thick, and the filling was gooey and sticky and wonderful. It seeped throughout the buns so that every single bite was dreamy.

Don't touch that dial, more brunch recipes to come in the next few days!

Ingredients:
(dough)
1 cup warm water
4 tsp dry yeast
2/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1/2 cup dry nonfat milk powder
1 1/4 tsp salt
2 large eggs
4 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

(glaze)
2 1/2 cups light brown sugar
1 1/4 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1/2 cup honey
1/2 cup dark corn syrup
1/2 cup water
3 cups pecan halves

4 teaspoons sugar
4 teaspoons ground cinnamon

Instructions:
To make dough, mix 1/4 cup warm water, yeast, and pinch of sugar in small bowl. Let rest until foamy, about 8 minutes. Beat remaining sugar, butter, milk powder, and salt in large bowl. Beat in eggs 1 at a time. Mix in remaining 3/4 cup warm water and yeast mixture, then 3 cups flour (1 cup at a time.) Using rubber spatula, mix in 1 cup flour, scraping down sides of bowl frequently (dough will be soft and sticky). Sprinkle 1/4 cup flour onto work surface and knead until smooth and elastic, adding more flour if sticky, about 8 minutes. Butter another large bowl. Add dough; turn to coat. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and let dough rise in warm area until doubled, about 2 1/2 hours.

To make glaze, grease one large pizza pan (or two 10-inch round cake pans) Beat brown sugar, 1 cup butter, honey, corn syrup, and 1/4 cup water in medium bowl to blend. Spread half of glaze in bottom the pan. Sprinkle pecans over.

Punch down dough, and divide in half. Roll each dough piece out on floured work surface to 12x9-inch rectangle. Brush any excess flour off dough. Grease dough rectangles with remaining 1/4 cup butter. Mix sugar and cinnamon in small bowl. Sprinkle cinnamon sugar over rectangles. Starting at 1 long side, tightly roll up each rectangle into log. Cut each log into 12 rounds. Place rounds, cut side down, prepared pan, spacing evenly. Cover with plastic wrap. (Can be made 1 day ahead; refrigerate.) Let buns rise in warm area until almost doubled, about 1 hour (or 1 hour 25 minutes if refrigerated).

Preheat oven to 375°F. Bake buns until deep golden brown, about 30 minutes. Run small knife around pan sides to loosen sticky buns. Turn hot buns out onto platter. Cool about 30 minutes and serve.

Zucchini Muffins with Chocolate Chips

On our second day of Spring Fling, we needed to make something delicious for a friend's brunch. We wanted to bake so that we could bring goodies that were still warm from the oven, but didn't have a lot of time in the morning. And since a lot of our friends have tasted many of our brunch recipes, we were reluctant to fall back on old staples. After piddling around recipe sites for a while, I decided to search the Smitten Kitchen archives, where I found a recipe for zucchini bread -- something that I've always loved, but never made myself. Because her recipes have never failed us (or likely, anyone) we decided to go for it. We opted for muffins instead of loaves to make serving easier.

Surprisingly, we were able to throw these muffins together in about 5o minutes total. Our food processor allowed us to grate the zucchini in no time, and the batter was extremely simple to mix after that. As soon as we sampled the raw mixture, we knew that these would be as delicious as we had hoped. It had such a perfect sweet and spicy combination that honestly think I could have eaten the entire batter bowl plain. Once baked, the texture was great and I think that everyone loved the way that they tasted. We added the optional chocolate chips and used apple pie spice because we were out of nutmeg, but I really wouldn't change anything from the original recipe, which I'm posting below.

P.S. We've been making muffins and cupcakes like crazy lately, but they'll be more variety soon!
Ingredients:
3 eggs
1 cup vegetable oil (or olive, but we used vegetable)
1 3/4 cups sugar
2 cups grated zucchini
2 tsp vanilla extract
3 cups all-purpose flour
3 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup chopped walnuts or pecans (optional, we didn't do this)
1 cup chocolate chips (optional)

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 350, and line 24 muffin cups with paper liners. In a large bowl, whisk eggs together, then add oil and sugar, then zucchini and vanilla. In a medium bowl, mix together flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Add chocolate chips or nuts to dry mixture. Pour dry mixture into wet mixture, and stir until just combined. Spoon batter into muffin cups, and bake for about 20-25 minutes, until inserted knife comes out clean. Cool and serve.

Big Apple Muffins

...Because we are moving to New York!

It's strange for me to sometimes write about personal things on a recipe blog. Many people who read this know us, and are therefore aware of our life updates. But we've also made so many friends in the blogopshere with whom we want to share our news. So if you know us, just scroll to the recipe.

Back to the excitement: After graduating in May, we are moving to NYC, where Alex will attend medical school at Mount Sinai, and I will attend law school at Columbia. We're super happy, as both of our first-choice schools are just a few blocks (and two parks) away from each other. The best part is that Two Fat Als will live on -- though we'll have to change the tag line from "cooking in college" to "cooking in graduate school" or "cooking under stress" or something. Suggestions are welcome.

To celebrate, we've baked ourselves some big apple muffins, loosely based on this recipe. We even invested in an extra-large muffin pan for the occasion. These big apple muffins are kind of like the apple cinnamon swirl muffins that we made earlier, but they're bigger and better and have walnuts and a strudel topping. Deliciously moist with a good crunchy topping, these muffins are surely a sign of good things to come.

Ingredients:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 1/4 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cups shredded apple
1/2 cup chopped apples
1 tsp cinnamon
3/4 cups walnuts

(strudel topping)
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
1 tbsp all-purpose flour
1/8 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tablespoon butter

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 375. Line muffin pan with muffin cups. Combine flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon and salt in a medium-sized bowl. In a large bowl, beat together butter and sugar. Beat in eggs, one at a time, and then vanilla. Stir in apples and walnuts. Slowly stir in flour mixture until just combined. To make strudel topping, use your fingers to mix the ingredients until it feels coarse. Spoon batter into muffin cups, and sprinkle strudel on top. Cook for about 18 minutes for regular-sized muffins, or about 20-25 minutes for larger muffins.

Jacqui Muffins

Holy mother of muffins, we've truly outdone ourselves. I'd call them gems, but they are more like diamonds -- big, beautiful, shining diamond muffins. I'm so proud!

So sometimes clothing designers do this thing where they name pieces after people who inspire them, like "Emily dress" or "Sara tee," and I thought why not do the same for food. These are Jacqui muffins, inspired my roommate. Since a "Jacqui dress" would be high-fashion but classic, with tons of awesome elements that come together perfectly, I tried to achieve the same composition in this muffin. Besides, Jacqui loves to order muffins at overpriced coffee shops, especially when they come in pretty wrappings like the ones we used. But if you feel awk calling a muffin after someone you don't know, you could just call these Everything muffins, because it is essentially what they are. And when Everything is assembled with careful proportion, it's a wonderful thing.

I started out with a modified batter (I made it half whole wheat) from our carrot cake muffins, and added from there, adjusting the wet ingredients to compensate. I threw in anything that I thought would taste good, including nuts, seeds, oats, raisins and orange zest. The result was a super intense, moist, scrumptious muffin that is perfect for anytime. Have fun baking them for the red-headed Canadian Whartonite roomie in your life.

Ingredients:
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup whole-wheat pastry flour
1 1/4 cups granulated sugar
3/4 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp orange zest
3/4 tsp baking soda
4 eggs
1 cup canola oil
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup coconut
1/2 cup walnuts, toasted and coarsely shopped
1/3 cup pumpkin seeds
1/2 cup rolled oats
1/3 cup golden raisins
2 cups raw carrot, grated
1 large apple, peeled and grated

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 350, line muffin pan with cups. In a large bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, salt and cinnamon. Stir in orange zest, walnuts, coconut, rolled oats, raisins and pumpkin seeds. In a separate bowl, lightly beat eggs, and whisk in vanilla and oil. Add wet ingredients into dry ingredients and stir until just combined. Add carrot and apple, and mix. Spoon batter into muffin cups. Bake until an inserted knife comes out clean. For normal-sized muffins, this should be about 20 minutes, but cooking time will vary.

Cinnamon Swirl Bread

This is the bread that we always dreamed we would bake.

The dough was beautiful from the start -- elastic and soft. It rose like a beast, and sprang back after we punched it down. It hardly clung to the counter, folding easily into a roll. In the oven, it rounded out into a tall and golden loaf. The slices were evenly swirled, fluffy and chewy, and unbelievably delicious. The bread is sweet enough alone, but when you get to the heavily swirled, gooey bits in the middle, it's something quite special.

We've found that it's best to bake breads when there are several unimportant things to do, but nothing pressing. Today's bread took about four hours total, but we were able to fit the steps in between loads of laundry and watching Rock of Love II with Brett Michaels. We found the recipe on Cooks Illustrated this morning, and adjusted it for our standing-mixer-less kitchen. It requires some patience and steps, but we'd recommend it in a second.

Given our trouble getting doughs to rise, this (and challah) absolutely mark our most successful bread recipes yet. Like we mentioned, it's a dream loaf come true.

Ingredients:
(dough)
1/2 cup milk
4 tbsp unsalted butter, cut into 1/2 inch pieces
1 package dry active yeast (2 1/4 tsp)
1/2 cup warm water
1/3 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 1/2 tsp salt
3 1/4 cups all-purpose flour, plus extra

(filling and glaze)
1/4 cup sugar
5 tsp ground cinnamon
milk for brushing
1 large egg
2 tsp milk

Instructions:
Begin with the dough. Heat milk and butter together in a small saucepan until butter melts. Cool to lukewarm. Meanwhile, sprinkle yeast over warm water in a large bowl. Using a wooden spoon, stir slowly in a circular motion while adding sugar, eggs, salt and lukewarm milk mixture. Continue stirring a bit more quickly, and add 2 cups of flour until mixed thoroughly, then add remaining 1 1/4 cups flour until mixed through. Add more flour if dough seems extremely sticky. Remove dough from bowl, and knead on a floured surface for about 10 minutes, adding more flour as necessary, until dough is smooth and elastic. Place in covered, greased bowl to rise for 2 to 2 1/2 hours, until doubled in size. Once risen, punch dough down once in the center, and let rest for 10 minutes. Meanwhile, mix cinnamon and sugar together for filling, and grease 9x5 inch loaf pan. Roll dough into an 8x18 inch rectangle, with the 8 inch side facing toward you. Brush milk over dough, and sprinkle cinnamon and sugar over it, leaving a 1/2 inch edge on the side farthest away. Beginning with the side closest to you, roll dough into a log shape, pressing ends together to make sure that it does not become more than 8 inches. Pinch dough ends together to form a tight seam, and push ends of dough toward the center. Pinch outside dough edges together to form a seal. Place the dough seam-side down into the loaf pan, and press down evenly. Let the dough rise more until it is about 1 inch above the edge of the pan (30-60 minutes). Preheat oven to 350, and combine milk with egg. Before baking, brush this mixture over the top of the loaf. Bake for 30-35 minutes until golden brown, and let cool for 45 minutes before serving.

A Tale of Two (Oat Bran) Breads

It was the best of doughs, it was the worst of doughs. Actually, it was two doughs. For the first one, we decided not to activate the yeast before mixing it into the flour. When its growth seemed stunted after two hours, we decided to start a second loaf, this time activating the yeast first. After an additional two hours, both loafs were about the same size, but the second dough was much more elastic than the first one, which was lumpy and heavy. After baking the loaves, we didn't notice difference in taste, though the second looked a bit fluffier. The lesson: Activate yeast first, or prepare to wait longer for dough to rise.

In retrospect, we're glad that we baked two loaves -- considering that the first was gone after breakfast this morning. Because of the slightly honeyed taste in the bread, we used slices for paninis last night with honey-roasted turkey, mustard and roasted vegetables. For breakfast, toasted with a touch of butter. This bread was easy, delicious-smelling and tasting, and even healthy. Perfect for sandwiches or anything, we've already planned to remake recipe (which comes courtesy, of course, of Mark Bittman).

Ingredients:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup oat bran
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp yeast
1/4 cup warm water
1 tsp sugar
1/4 cup honey
2 tbsp butter, slightly melted
1 cup milk
3/4 cup rolled oats

Instructions:
Add yeast and sugar to warm water, stir and let sit 15 minutes. Combine all-purpose flour, whole-wheat flour, oat bran and salt in a food processor. Pulse for 5 seconds. Through a tube, add butter, milk and honey. Pulse for about 30 seconds, until the mixture comes together. Knead in rolled oats by hand. Form dough into a ball, place in a greased bowl, and cover for about 2 hours, until the dough approximately doubles in size. Punch the dough down, and let it rise for another 15 minutes in a loaf pan, while you preheat the oven to 350. Bake for 45 minutes, until well-risen.

Carrot Cake Muffins with Cream Cheese Frosting

Oops -- Two days ago, we completed our 100th post and we didn't even notice or bake ourselves something to celebrate! We originally planned to do a cake for the occasion, and though we forgot, we did coincidentally make some amazing carrot cake muffins, complete with a delectable cream cheese frosting.

As we've become something of muffin experts over the past few months (at the very least, we're obsessed and deluded amateurs), we can officially write that these are the best muffins in existence. Perhaps this is because we followed our recipe perfectly, but we'd like to think that our ever-improving baking skills had something to do with it, too. The frosting, after all, was our own. Adding apple to the batter along with coconut and carrots ensures an unbelievably moist and soft texture. They are perfect without frosting, but if added, they become sublime.

The recipe is from the Joy of Baking, and since it's so good that even people who are too lazy to click a link deserve to try it, I'm re-writing the instructions below. Happy 101st post anniversary to us! Please, celebrate with a muffin.

Ingredients:
(muffins)
1/2 cup pecans or walnuts, toasted and coarsely shopped
2 cups raw carrot, grated
1 large apple, peeled and grated
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/4 cups granulated sugar
3/4 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 cup coconut
3 eggs
3/4 cup canola oil
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
(frosting)
8 oz. cream cheese, softened
1/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
2 cups powdered sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 cup crushed walnuts (for topping)

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 350. Line 18 muffin cups with paper liners. In a large bowl, whisk together flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, salt and cinnamon. Stir in nuts and coconuts, and set aside. In a separate bowl, whisk together eggs, oil and vanilla. Fold wet ingredients, apples and carrots into the flour mixture. Stir until just moistened. Spoon batter into muffin cups and bake 20-25 minutes, until inserted toothpick comes out clean. Let cool. Meanwhile, make the frosting by combining the butter, sugar, cream cheese and vanilla in a bowl, and mixing them together (preferably with a mixer) until smooth. Once the cupcakes are cool, frost and sprinkle the crushed walnuts on top. Serve, or if not serving immediately, refrigerate.

Gingerbread

Two days of exams remain, and it's getting to us. You know your brain is shot when you can watch the three-hour season finale of Survivor without realizing it. That happened. But some good came out of our study lapse as well -- in the form of a sweetly moist and richly-flavored gingerbread loaf.

We were all set to bake ourselves a cake, but the second we found this recipe we knew it had to be. Like when you walk into a party with one person, but fall in love at first sight with another and ditch the first. It's not that you didn't like them, it's just that the alternative looked SO much better. Gingerbread recipe: You had us at ... something. Butter? The best part was that at the end of the night, we knew we made the right choice. Our mouths watered at the aroma, and it tasted perfectly spiced and festive.

The recipe is from 101 Cookbooks, which posts amazingly-adapted recipes from a vast cookbook collection. We love it. We wish we had that many cookbooks. We modified the recipe again slightly, owing to what we had around the kitchen. I'm posting exactly what we did below, but check out the original recipe here.

Ingredients:
1 cup unsalted butter
1/2 cup water
3/4 cup dark molasses
3/4 cup honey
1 cup dark brown sugar
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp ground ginger
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground allspice (we ground ours with the mortar and pestle!)
3 large eggs,
1/2 cup milk (1 percent)
1 tbsp fresh ginger root, grated

Instructions:
Preheat the oven to 325. Lightly grease 9 x 9 baking pan and line the bottom with a piece of parchment paper, cut to hang over two opposite edges. Combine butter, water, molasses, honey and brown sugar in a medium saucepan and place over low heat. Stir until the butter is melted and ingredients are combined, then pour into a large bowl and set aside. Combine flour, baking soda, salt, ginger, cinnamon and all-spice and set aside. When the molasses mixture feels warm to the touch, add the eggs one at a time and beating well. Add the milk and stir to combine. Fold the dry ingredients into the batter a bit at a time. Stir in the grated ginger. Pour the batter into the pan and bake in the centre of the oven for 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 hours, or a knife inserted into the center comes out clean. Cool for 15 minutes, remove from the pan using the parchment. Cool entirely before cutting.

Cranberry Walnut Bread

Bread scares us, it relies too heavily on conditions beyond our control. Is the room too hot? Too cold? Is the yeast still active? And even if the dough seems stringy and flexible and it's risen considerably -- is there any way to really know whether the lump of wet flour will become into a fluffy and beautiful loaf?

We suffered a fright yesterday. Our recipe said that the dough would rise in two to three hours, but it didn't. With no clue what to do, we guessed, kneading it down and then letting continue to rise for another four hours after that, until it had sufficiently doubled in size. Miraculously, it turned out. This always happens to us; disaster looms until the last minute and then somehow it all works. How? To quote a favorite movie: I don't know, it's a mystery.

Ingredients:
3 1/2 cups all purpose flour
2 tsp salt
1 tsp instant or rapid-rise yeast
1 1/2 cups water
1/2 cup cranberries
1/2 cup walnuts

Instructions:
Pulse flour and yeast together in the food processor for 5 seconds. Add water and pulse again until the dough forms a shaggy, sticky ball. Remove from the food processor, and add the nuts and cranberries. Place the dough ball in a bowl and cover lightly with plastic wrap or a towel. Let sit for 2-3 hours, until the ball has doubled in size. If yours doesn't seem to be rising well, consider punching down or kneading it (requires more flour) and letting it continue to rise -- don't rush it into the oven. 30 minutes before baking, preheat the oven to 450. Bake for 20 minutes, turn the oven to 350 and bake for an additional 25 minutes, till the crust has lightly browned. Remove, cool, slice, serve.

Apple Cinnamon Swirl Muffins

Alex accuses me of turning this into a stew and muffin blog, and I'd like to publicly offer some defensive arguments:

1) He loves stew.
2) Fall demands stew for warmth.
3) Stews are cheap, healthy and perfect for college students because they freeze beautifully.
4) I have no defense for muffins. I just love them.
5) I nearly forgot, muffins are photogenic.

Moving on, or not ... muffins muffins muffins! Baking muffins is decidedly among my favorite stress-relieving activities, second maybe only to listening to Harry Potter on the iPod. The process is simple and instinctual. Liquids and solids combine, mix and bake. And because the steps are basic, there are oodles of opportunities to invent.

Tonight, we wanted to use up extra apples, so we simply chopped them up and added them to a basic cinnamon swirl muffin. It resulted in a great tartness that complimented the sweetness of the batter, and gave it a healthy, fresh taste.

Ingredients (makes 12 muffins):
1 1/2 cups self-rising flour
1 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
1/2 cup superfine sugar
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 cup skim milk
7 tbsp smart balance
1/4 tsp vanilla
3 apples, chopped
2 tsp ground cinnamon (for the cinnamon sugar)
6 tbsp granulated sugar (for the cinnamon sugar)

Instructions:
Preheat the oven to 375, and fill a muffin pan with muffin cups. In a large bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder, salt and superfine sugar. In a separate bowl, mix together the egg, milk, smart balance and vanilla. Mix the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients, and mix in the apples. Spoon batter into each muffin cup until it is about 1/4 filled, then add a layer of cinnamon sugar and repeat twice. Using a toothpick or tip of a sharp knife, swirl the mixture in each up to achieve the swirl effect. Bake for 18-20 minutes, let cool and serve.

Vanilla and Chocolate Chip Muffins

Please don't shoot, but we don't really understand the cupcake craze. They're cute, yes, and there's the portion control factor, but we still don't think they merit the obsessive blogging and photographing and selling for $6 each, etc. Perusing the cookbook section of Penn's bookstore yesterday, we found like 5 books on cupcake decorating alone.

Muffins, however, are the underrated, modest back-up singers to the attention-mongering cupcake divas. Though they are frequently just as sweet and much tastier than cupcakes, they're not showing off about it. They're also healthier, and more versatile -- there's a whole galaxy of savory and fruity muffin-making that doesn't involve buttercream frosting or German chocolate anything (note: we are not opposed to buttercream or German chocolate generally, just in cupcake excess).

So I guess now would be a good time to disclose after making fun of all of the cupcake books at the bookstore yesterday, we purchased a muffin one. It's called Muffins Galore, and I love it. We decided to start with a simple recipe for chocolate chip muffins to bring for breakfast for our team members participating in Philadelphia's Race for Hope this morning, which raises money for the Brain Tumor Society. I've eaten two already today, and they are perfectly spongy with a great vanilla flavor. Completely simple and so yummers.


Ingredients (makes 12 muffins):
2 cups self-rising flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 cup butter
1/3 cup superfine sugar
1 cup milk or semi-sweet chocolate chips
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 cup milk (skim works)
1 tsp vanilla extract

Instructions:
Preheat the oven to 400. Line your muffin pan with paper muffin cups. Mix the flour and baking powder together in a large bowl, add the butter and rub it into the mixture. Stir in sugar and chocolate chips. In a separate bowl, combine the eggs, milk and vanilla, then pour this mixture over the dry one. Mix until combined, and spoon batter into the muffin cups. Bake for about 20 minutes, until well-risen and golden. Cool for about 10 minutes, and serve.