Lumpy Primate Muffins

I really like ice cream and my favorite flavor is made by those guys from Vermont. This muffin recipe mimics that flavor. It is a banana muffin with walnuts and chocolate chips and it is awesome. I ate two of them fresh from the oven and then another one once they cooled. I think this is my favorite recipe so far. So enjoy it and drop me a line if you try it or any of my other recipes and let me know how you like them.

4 very ripe bananas

1/2 cup of chopped walnuts

1/2 cup of chocolate chips

1/2 a cup of granulated sugar

5 tbsps of butter softened

1 egg lightly beaten

1 1/2 cup of flour

1 tsp each of baking powder and baking soda

1/2 tsp of salt 

 

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees (my oven runs a little hot so I usually back off from the heat. If your oven is a little cold you might wanna go for 375) grease 10 muffin cups or line them with paper. Mash the bananas really well with a fork. It should look almost like a peanut butter consistency. Thoroughly mix the banana mash, egg, butter and sugar. Mix it until it is really well combined. Next combine all of the dry ingredients together and mix them well. Add the dry to the wet and mix it just until it is combined. Toss in the chocolate chips and nuts and mix it just enough to get them incorporated. It makes a thick batter that is almost like a wet dough. Now put an even amount of the batter in the cups and bake for about 20 minutes. Baking time will vary but you will know it is done when you put a toothpick in the center and it comes out clean. Yields 10 muffins.

Creepy Cloth

I've seen a lot of this stuff lately and its ridiculously priced. When you think about it that stuff at the store for 6$ a bag is basically just ripped up cheese cloth that has been dyed to look dirty. So I got some cheese cloth at my local Dollar General store and dyed it myself. All you need is some cheese cloth, left over coffee, and a pair of scissors. (A cat assistant is helpful too but not needed.) 

So you start off by opening up the package of cheese cloth. For those who don't know what it is you can find it either in the food gadget area of most stores or sometimes in the craft area. It will come on a roll or wrapped around a piece of cardboard. It kind of looks like medical gauze.

To dye it to make it look dirty you just need to soak it in either tea or coffee. Coffee is my husbands favorite drink so I made a pot for him before he went to work to get the left overs. I opened up the cheese cloth and dunked it down into a bowl of coffee and let it soak for about an hour. Then I took it out and hung it up on the shower curtain rod in my bathroom so it could dry. 

Once it was dry I took it down and unfolded it to its full width (about 3 feet across.) I hung it up in the door way to my library and went after it with a pair of scissors to shred it. I'll be using it as a back drop curtain kind of thing on my porch but you could use this technique to make a ghost, or a mummy or even a costume. My project is finished but you could take this idea and use it as a starting point for many other projects.

Cinnamon Raisin Muffins

It's official, I love muffins. This is my third muffin recipe and I'm hooked. I now look for things to try out new recipes with because I love em so much. I would rather have a muffin that pretty much any other sweet. Well maybe not chocolate chip cookies but I make those from scratch too. These are really good. They remind me a lot of cinnamon raisin bread but they are really moist. Raisin bread is always dry. I think maybe if I were being a little bad I might add a glaze to them but they don't really need it, they are plenty sweet on their own. They would also be good for breakfast or maybe even a snack.


1 17oz jar of apple butter
1 6oz package of raisins

1/2 a cup of granulated sugar

5 tbsps of butter softened

1 tsp of vanilla extract

1 egg lightly beaten

1/2 tbsp cinnamon

1 1/2 cup of flour

1 tsp each of baking powder and baking soda

1/2 tsp of salt 

 

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees (my oven runs a little hot so I usually back off from the heat. If your oven is a little cold you might wanna go for 375) grease 12 muffin cups or line them with paper. Start off by thoroughly mixing the apple butter, vanilla, egg, butter and sugar. Mix it until it is really well combined. Next combine all of the dry ingredients together and mix them well. Add the dry to the wet and mix it just until it is combined. Toss in the raisins and mix it just enough to get them incorporated. It makes a thick batter that is almost like a wet dough. Now put an even amount of the batter in the cups and bake for about 25 minutes. Baking time will vary but you will know it is done when you put a toothpick in the center and it comes out clean. Yields 12 muffins.

Apple Cinnamon Muffins

They say necessity is the mother of invention and it has led me to invent another muffin recipe. I had a jar of unsweetened apple sauce that none of us were eating. I swear they take sugar out of that stuff because it was actually a little sour. I tried putting cinnamon and sugar into the sauce and eating it that way but it was still icky. I decided tonight to do a muffin with it to see how that turned out. I really like it. It isn't terribly sweet but it is good. They are pretty sensible so they would make a good breakfast. They would also be good to give to teachers so that it is something that isn't a dust catcher but fits with the whole apple for teacher thing. Where did that get started anyway?


1 1/2 cup of apple sauce

1/2 a cup of granulated sugar

5 tbsps of butter softened

1 tsp of vanilla extract

1 egg lightly beaten

1 tbsp cinnamon

1 1/2 cup of flour

1 tsp each of baking powder and baking soda

1/2 tsp of salt

Cinnamon sugar (optional)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees (my oven runs a little hot so I usually back off from the heat. If your oven is a little cold you might wanna go for 375) grease 12 muffin cups or line them with paper. Start off by thoroughly mixing the apple sauce, vanilla, egg, butter and sugar. Mix it until it is really well combined. Next combine all of the dry ingredients together and mix them well. Add the dry to the wet and mix it just until it is combined. It makes a thick batter. Now put an even amount of the batter in the cups and bake for about 20 minutes. Baking time will vary but you will know it is done when you put a toothpick in the center and it comes out clean. Sprinkle with cinnamon sugar while they are still hot. Yields 12 muffins.

Jar o' Lanterns

I dunno about anyone else but I hate carving pumpkins into Jack o' Lanterns. They feel and smell gross and they start to mold faster than the failed science experiments in the back of my fridge. I like the tradition of a Jack o' Lantern though, so I decided that I would make some faux ones to decorate my porch with this Halloween. I started by gathering up an assortment of glass jars about a month ago. I even bought things in a glass jar that I would normally have bought in a plastic jars or cans to get the jars for this project. BTW buying the glass jar is actually cheaper sometimes... who knew. Anyway the other materials needed for the project are contact paper, scissors, marker or pen, votive candles and orange spray paint .

First you need clean all the jars and scrape off the labels.  I found that if I soaked the jars in really hot water with a little soap in it that I could easily scrape off the labels with a scrubber. Let them dry thoroughly before you try to paint them. Next you need to make faces with the contact paper. I held the paper up to the jar to get an idea of how much space I had to work with then I free handed a Jack o' Lantern face onto the contact paper and cut it out. Peel and stick the face onto the jar in the arrangement that you like. 

Next you need to spray paint it. The paint I got is fast drying which is awesome. For it you only had to wait 1 minute between coats but for regular paint (which I couldn't find in orange) you would wait ten minutes between coats. Spray an even coat all around the jar then repeat until you have it completely coated. 

When the paint is dry, mine took ten minutes but most take one hour, peel off the contact paper and look at your lovely Jar o' Lantern. I couldn't get a good "night time" shot of these but you put votive candle inside of them so that they glow like a real Jack o' Lantern.