Chocolate Banana Muffins

For awhile now I’ve been wanting to have a go at replicating these delicious Chocolate Banana Muffins that I love from a downtown Guelph coffee shop called Capistrano’s.  Now before eating these muffins I wouldn’t have called myself a big fan of banana related baked goods, but these muffins managed to change my mind.

My favourite part about their muffins is the dried banana chips on top, they’re just that little extra that puts them over the top.  I tried replicating the crystal-y sugar they have on top of their with white sugar, not sure I quite got the same effect, but they still turned out pretty awesome.

Makes 12 – 18 muffins

Ingredients

• 3 whole bananas
• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 1/3 cup light brown sugar, packed
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 3 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2/3 cup milk
• 1/2 cup butter, melted and cooled
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten
• 2teaspoon vanilla
• 1 1/2 cups milk chocolate chips
• dried banana chips

Heat the oven to 400F

First start by mashing up the bananas pretty well in a mixing bowl, then mix in the rest of the listed ingredients except the dried banana chips.  Mix until batter is smooth.

Grease the muffin tray, then add the muffin cup to each spot.  Spoon in batter into each cup.  Add 2 or 3 banana chips to the top of each muffin cup, then sprinkle with a bit of white sugar.

Cook for 15-20 minutes or until you can poke a toothpick through and it comes out clean.

Let sit for 5 minutes before removing from tray, then let them cool on a plate

Grilled Cheese Sloppy Joe

I’ve loved making Sloppy Joe’s ever since I was a kid.  My parents always used to let my sister and I cook dinner on Friday nights, which tended to mean either pizza or Sloppy Joe’s, so over time I have developed my own recipe for it.  Since I’ve been making this dish for so long recently I decided I would see if I could figure a way to reinvent it a little bit.

Sloppy Joe Ingredients

• 1 can of brown beans in tomato sauce
• 1 pound of lean ground beef
• 3 tbsp of ketchup (or whatever a decent squirt out of the squeeze bottle would be)
• 2 tbsp of mustard (a little less mustard then ketchup
• 1/2 cup of frozen corn
• 1/2 cup water
• 2 tsp chili powder

Grilled Cheese Ingredients

• Sliced Bread
• cheese slice, or whatever cheese you might have kicking around the house
• Margarine or Butter

Brown the ground beef in a frying pan and drain off the excess fat.  Add the rest of the ingredients and heat at a medium temperature for about 10 – 15 minutes.  If while cooking it gets a little dry add some more water in.

If you happen to have a George Foreman Grill or something similar, get that pre-heated.  While the sloppy joe is cooking get out some slices of bread and butter both sides and add a cheese slice to one half of each pair.  On the other side put some sloppy joe on, then put the slice with the cheese on top.  Slap it together, then throw it onto the the foreman for 5 minutes.  Once that is done, put it on the plate and throw another layer of Sloppy Joe on top and you’re good to go.

Tonight we decided to hang in so I thought I’d give my new Black and Decker Food Processor that I picked up on Boxing Day a whirl.  Quite awhile back my soon to be brother-in-law, who also shares my affinity for cooking, shared a kitchen tip with me.  He always keeps a bowl of bread in the kitchen, which always seemed odd to me until he told me what it was all about.  With bread if you don’t eat it, as most of you know, will go stale and moldy.  But not if you leave it exposed to the air.  It just hardens up and is ready to be used for other cooking purposes.  This is great because it allows you to use up the ends of the loaf and other bread or buns that are past their prime without having to throw it out.

I recently started my own bowl and quickly found it full, since we frequently fail to finish the bread we buy in a timely fashion.  So instead of buying breadcrumbs from the grocery store, from here on out we’ll be making our own.  I like throwing breadcrumbs onto shake and bake style chicken or sometimes fried potatoes to give them a little something extra.  You can also make your own stuffing mix as well which is pretty handy and saves you some pre-prep steps of leaving the bread out to harden beforehand, you’ll already have it ready.

This is a dead simple tip, but I find sometimes the simplest tips often help when cooking in the kitchen.

Homemade Chinese Food

Last year my wife Corina and I started a tradition of making Chinese food on Christmas Eve.  In previous years we bought Chinese take-out and decided we’d have a go at making our favourites at home.

Our meal consisted of sweet and sour chicken balls, soo guy almond chicken, honey sesame chicken, fried rice and an egg roll.  Everything except the egg roll and sweet and sour sauce was homemade.  Maybe we’ll tackle that next year.

Soo Guy Almond Chicken Recipe
I just doubled up the batter ingredients for the Soo Guy to use with the chicken balls.  That recipe calls for baking powder, but I amped it up a bit with some baking soda so the batter would inflate more.  I think my second time around I got better quality batter just by doing that.

Honey Sesame Chicken
This was the first time I tried this recipe.  It turned out well, but it wasn’t quite what I was looking for.  There is a place near my work that has fantastic sesame chicken, which prompted me to want to create this homemade version in the first place.  It was quite the good recipe though.

I just freelanced on the fried rice, making it with basmatti rice, chicken soup base and peas, corn and carrots.

One busy deep fryer

A full stovetop

For a long time I’ve wanted to start another blog awhile back and finally got around to it. I have long wanted to run a food blog. I love to cook and invent new things in the kitchen and never really found that modsuperstar was really the proper avenue with which to share my culinary adventures, necessitating another blog. I registered the domain deelish.ca, installed WordPress, threw on a theme then pimped it accordingly and I was ready to go. It’s still a work in progress, but it is functional and does have a few recipes on it now.

So if you’re into cooking or just like food, add it to your RSS feeds. I can’t guarantee I will update it with absolute frequency as this blog is still my first priority, but I’ll try and keep it interesting when I do blog.
[[image:deelish.jpg:Deelish.ca screenshot:right:0]]

Ultimate Nuts and Bolts

Every year since I was a kid my Mom would make a Nuts and Bolts party mix, which originally started as a recipe from the side of a Crispix box.  Over the years the recipe got adapted and refined to suit our needs.  It was always super popular so it just necessitated larger volumes to be made each year.  It makes a good gift for friends and family and it always disappears real quick too.

Since I moved out on my own I started doing my own mix, which has become a whole different beast then what my Mom used to make.  I’ve started collecting ingredients months in advance to ensure a crazy diverse mix every year.  This year I managed to collect 20 different ingredients to add to my mix, including stuff I picked up on a recent trip to Buffalo, so it makes for a weird hybrid of Canadian and American snack products.

Now the actual contents of the mix you can get pretty creative with.  I typically try to pick up stuff here and there in the months preceeding December.  This mix can get downright costly, so picking up stuff here and there definitely helps in that regard.  The only real requirement for a snack item is that it’s a salty type snack without any over the top flavours.  I find that snacks that feature a cheddar cheese or BBQ flavour work best along with Original or Regular varieties of snacks.  Here’s what I used, though this is by no means gospel as to what to put in.

Required

• Large Turkey Pans x 4

Seasoning Drizzle

• 2/3 cup Margarine or Butter
• 3 tbsp Tabasco Sauce or Frank’s Red Hot Sauce
• 3 tbsp Worcestershire Sauce (Yes I did have to Google how to spell that)
• Onion Powder
• Garlic Powder
• Celery Salt
• Cayenne Pepper
• Chili Powder

The Ingredients

Snack Mix Ingredients

• Cheeze Bits
• Cheeze Nips
• Cheerios or knock off brand Cheerios
• Shreddies
• Corn Chex
• Wheat Chex
• Pretzel Sticks
• Pretzel Nuggets
• Ringolos
• Cheddar Goldfish (I bought the big Goldfish though opted not to use them since I also had the regular sized Goldfish too)
• Dry Chow Mein Noodles
• Corn Nuts
• Corn Chips
• Bagel Chips
• Crispix
• Bugles
• Buttery Puffs (I have no idea, I just bought them in US)
• Pretzel Thins
• Popcorn
• Ritz Minis(Original)
• Dry Roasted Peanuts

Heat oven to 200F.  Add all the snack mix ingredients into a turkey pan.  Make sure you ration your ingredients so there will be every ingredient in each batch.  I managed to get 6 pans full of mix out of the ingredients I had, so I rationed every ingredient 6 ways.

Each pan will require its own batch of seasoning drizzle.  Start by microwaving the margarine until melted, then add the other seasonings and sauces.  At this point try and taste the mixture, it should have a little zip to it, but nothing too over the top.  Adjust to your own tastes accordingly.

Drizzle the seasoning mix over the pan and mix thoroughly.  Once it is well mixed put it in the oven for an hour, stirring the mix every 15 minutes.  It will be done once the mix is no longer moist.  I typically do 2 batches at a time in the oven.  Let cool before removing from the turkey pan.  I suggest have 4 turkey pans if you’re making a large amount like I do, since you can prep the next round before they go into the oven.

Homemade Ice Cream Cake

It was my sisters birthday this weekend and I decided to do something nice and make her an ice cream cake.  What a kind and generous brother I am.  Now if there is one thing I know that people love on their birthdays, whether you’re 6 or 60, it’s ice cream cake.   Screw going to Dairy Queen.  I had attempted this once before a couple of years ago and it turned out quite well, so I thought I’d give it another go.  Now basically your options are wide open for what flavours you’d like to put together.  I went with Mocha Chocolate Almond and French Vanilla, as they were among the flavours that happened to be on sale at the grocery store.

Homemade Ice Cream Cake

• A silicone jello mould (I suppose any mould would work, but that’s what I’ve got)
• 2 different varieties of ice cream
• 2 cups of graham crumbs
• 4 tbsp semi-sweet cocoa
• chocolate syrup

This is something that take like a day to do, so definitely don’t wait to the last minute to start making your cake.  It’s best to leave the ice cream flavour you’re starting with out for at least a half hour before you start, just so the ice cream will be nice and soft.  Scoop out your first layer into the jello mould, filling it about 1/3 of the way.  Smooth out the layer of ice cream to be flat.  Mix up your graham crumbs and cocoa and spread a nice layer onto the ice cream, pressing it into the ice cream.  Then throw it into the freezer and leave it for 3 hours, or until the ice cream becomes a little more sturdy again.  Repeat the first few steps, only this time use the second ice cream flavour.  Then repeat a third time with the original ice cream flavour, though skip the graham part.  Once the mould is full, leave it set overnight to make sure it is good and solid before removing it from the mould.  Once you carefully remove it from the mould, coat with the graham mix and press it into the cake, then artistically cover the cake with some chocolate syrup.  Thow it back into the freezer to let the chocolate harden and then it will be ready to serve.

I saw this idea on Charmain’s Blog and decided to do up a list of my own.  Basically the premise to my list is food that either brings back a fond memory or was just so good I’ve never forgotten about it.  I managed to come up with 50 and have left myself rather hungry afterwards.

1. My mom’s turkey gravy
2. Kitchen’s Mom’s Pumpkin Pie
3. Hot maple syrup poured onto snow, then rolled onto a popsicle stick
4. Beaver Tails on the Rideau Canal
5. My nuts and bots recipe
6. Freshly squeezed lemonade
7. My mashed potato recipe
8. Breakfast from Vienna Restaurant
9. Homemade Rhubarb Pie
10. Homemade potato bacon perogies
11. Tart lemon meringue pie
12. Crockpot meatloaf
13. Burnt marshmallow s’mores from the campfire
14. Greasy pan pizza from Pizza Hut, I had this on my wedding day for lunch
15. Birthday tacos
16. Cheese straws
17. Homemade Chinese food on Christmas Eve
18. Toronto street meat with loads of condiments
19. My sisters Apple Pie made with macintosh apples
20. slow-cooked BBQ ribs
21. Rhawb and my moose steak BBQ
22. Christmas morning tea biscuits
23. Fresh baked bread
24. Homemade apple butter BBQ sauce
25. Potato cakes
26. Homemade iced tea (the only kind I like)
27. Homemade thin crust pizza
28. Corina’s Mom’s Sloppy Joe
29. Sheppard’s Pie
30. Fried Chicken
31. Hot dog and popcorn at an Ottawa Lynx game
32. A good rare steak
33. Yorkshire pudding
34. Homemade hamburgers on good fresh buns
35. Foil wrapped baked potatoes done in a firepit
36. Asian salad with sesame dressing and crispy noodles
37. Corn on the cob slathered with warm butter
38. Corn dogs with ketchup
39. Moose Winooski’s chicken wings
40. Crepes with strawberry and whipped cream
41. Southern style biscuits and gravy
42. bacon, not too crispy
43. Homemade sausages
44. Beer battered fish and fresh cut fries
45. A fresh baked chocolate dip donut from Tim Horton’s at 3am
46. Teriyaki chicken
47. Cinnamon roll, with no raisins
48. Uncle Alvis’ Spice
49. Garlic
50. Sour Patch Kids, got a sour tooth

Feel free to add any of your favourites in the comments that would make your personal list.

Homemade Tortillas and Salsa

This has become one of my favourite things to do up for parties mainly because it tends to blow people’s minds that you can make your own tortilla chips.  Now I haven’t gone to the point of grinding corn, but this definitely does take it back a step from cracking open a bag of Tostitos and calling it a day.

Tortillas

• 10 pack of tortilla wraps, any variety
• salt
• deep fryer
• pizza slicer

I normally pick up 2 different types of tortilla wrap, just to mix it up.  They come in all sorts of varieties nowadays, like sundried tomato, multigrain or roasted red pepper, so your options for diversity are pretty wide open.  Turn on your deep fryer to heat up, then begin to slice your wraps into somewhat uniform triangles.  I typically cut 3 wraps at a time with the slicer.  Once the deep fryer is ready, throw your little triangles in and cook until they are crispy and and darken up a bit.  Remove from deep fryer and onto a plate covered with paper towels.  De-oil them as best as possible, then add a little bit of salt.

This was my first go at making a salsa and I was quite pleasantly surprised with the results.  Most of the people I tend to cook for aren’t fond of hot stuff, so I kept this one tame, though I plan on experimenting a bit later.

Salsa

• 2 red tomatoes
• 1 sweet red pepper
• 1 sweet green pepper
• 1 sweet yellow pepper
• 1 whole bulb of garlic
• 1 lime
• 1 lemon
• 1/2 cup of red wine
• 3 tbsp Cumin
• Salt and Pepper to taste
• 2 tbsp Oregano
• 3 tbsp chili powder

Chop up the tomatoes, peppers(de-seed those) and garlic and chop them up using a food processor or chopper.  If you like chunky salsa, leave the pieces large, if you like smoother salsa, pulverize at will.  Once you’re done you’ll want to toss them into a pot.  Squeeze the juice from the lemon and lime and add the rest of the ingredients into the pot as well.  Cook on medium for about 10 minutes until things start bubbling, then reduce to low and let it simmer for about an hour, stirring periodically.

Every blog’s gotta start somewhere, and I guess this is where this one starts.  I’m James, you might know me from my other blog, modsuperstar dot ca.  I’ve started this blog with the intent of posting pretty much exclusively about food.  I’ve long found that even though I can blog about food if I want to, it never quite had a proper place on modsuperstar.  I really like to cook and over time I think I’ve become reasonably good at it, to the point I feel I actually have enough recipes and insight that it might be worthwhile to share with the rest of the world.  I can’t make any guarantees of how prolific this blog will be given it is my secondary blog, but I’ll see how it goes.

I was quite happy that I was able to score this domain name, as it was about the 3rd thing I searched for, so honestly I’m amazed it was even available.