Strawberry Muffins [sms]

This week's Sweet Melissa Sundays pick, Orange Blueberry Muffins with Pecan Crumble, was chosen by Chaya of Sweet & Savory. I actually only made strawberry muffins with a sugar topping because two words - FINALS WEEK. Next week is finals so all I've basically been trying to do is sleep, eat, and study.

I made half the recipe and ended up with 8 and used a basket of some farm fresh strawberries from a place near campus for a $1. I also added more butter and cream to make up for the fact that most people found this recipe to be too dry. I also pulled them out at about the 20 minute mark. I have a few left for the next couple of days - NO TIME TO EAT...STUDY STUDY STUDY.

I gave a couple of these to my friend who is also studying lots...like everyone else. So onwards to sleeping and studying!

SORRY for the super short post, but I'm just super tired right now. It's been a crazy day and I just want to sleep and study for the next 4 days for my finals. THEN I'll be [basically] free!

Make sure to check out the rest of the SMS bakers on the blogroll.

PS HAPPY MOTHERS DAY!

November Baking GALS

For this month's Baking GALS, I had decided to bake by myself instead of with Circle K since its been a crazy couple of weeks doing so. In addition, they needed to be sent out by the 14th and last weekend was my crazyyyyy fun FTC weekend and this weekend, well it would be too late. But this weekend is masquerade ball.

So Vetern's Day, day off of class, I decided to take my time and start baking. In the morning, I trekked the mile or so to go and shop at safeway. This was my change to try and bake all day and see if that was possible. I think I started baking around 12pm and didnt finish until about 6pm the same day. Even while baking, I think I may have tried to fall asleep since I was so tired of everything.

So here are the pictures and recipes that I used to bake some of the various yummy things for the soldiers!

Pumpkin Muffins

Pumpkin Pie Bars

Butterscotch Cookies: this one and this one.

sorry I dont have pictures of the rest, but I do have pictures of the filled boxes. well mostly filled!

Apple Cinnamon Muffins

When I normally have this urge to bake, I just find something and bake it. Typically it'll be something easy since I don't have everything onhand. When I bake for a purpose, I get all the materials and I'll have everything ready for myself. This time, I decided to bake with apples. There were a whole bunch of great apple recipes, but just didn't feel right. Then I decided to just look for a super easy one that also had good reviews. I found one!

This one was super easy to just throw together. The batter was a bit thick, so I added some vanilla extract to give it another dimension to it. Super easy, and super yummy!

I've frozen a whole bunch of them for a quick breakfast for the next couple of weeks. Should be fun!

recipe found here

Caramelized Onions, Sage, and Cheddar Muffins [sms]

This week's SMS, Caramelized Onion, Sage and Cheddar Muffins, was chosen by Hanaa of Hanaa's Kitchen. Hanaa always has her final thoughts and tips that always help.

I decided to change the recipe up a little bit. I have yet to go to store in a long while, so I decided to skip the cayanne peppers. I halved the recipe because I kind of don't know how to caramelize onions and burnt them. I also used dried sage instead of regular fresh sage.

More exciting than the muffins (sorry Hanaa) was the walk out that occured on the UC Berkeley campus on Thursday. I guess I never really supported it because my parents are paying for my education albeit, a lot cheaper than the out of states students are paying, but still around $30 per lecture I go to. So today, I had two classes that were not canceled. The only one that was canceled was due to the teacher being in London for a conference and not for the walkout itself.


I know quite a few people did not go to class due to this walkout. Although I feel like it is important that we bring to the forefront that we are getting fee hikes and that there will be cuts, but we should see if from the government's perspective too. The state cannot print money like the Fed does so whatever money and taxes they have is all they can spend. I cannot expect the state government to go into deeper recession due to the outside recession going on. I understand that the education for the future is important, but I also understand the reason why they're doing these cuts and fee hikes. We cannot expect to get the same education if we do not have the money.


The UC system was not the education system that got cut the most. As I was talking to my boyfriend, the CSU system got cut a lot as well. Their teachers decided to take a pay cut by not having 2 classes a month rather than cutting teachers. Although I agree that none of these seem like the best solution, its the best thing we have right now. We cannot expect the economy to pull us out of this and if we want to government to pay for it now, we should expect that our taxes when I become older to increase.


It's just a complete mess right now. I actually did not walk out, but I was debating it. I mean it is a serious issue, but is walking out the best way to do this? I did catch part of the rally next to campus, and it was a huge amount of people, but I just don't find it the best idea. The rally seemed really successful. It's because of this that Berkeley is well known. Protests and what not.


I had added along with these muffins while eating this drink. It's like fizzy soda made by the Japanese. It's so good and interesting. You push the ball into the drink and it fizzes up. I bought it at Ranch 99 a couple weeks ago and it's still fizzy as ever. It has these really good fruit flavors. I had drank the peach on with the muffins.

Personally, I thought the muffins were a little too dry for me, but my roommate had heated them up and it was better that way. It was still really good.

Recipe for the muffins here! Make sure to check out the rest of the SMS bakers on the blogroll.

ps. the pictures of the rally were taken by my friend Dmitriy Shaprio. The other pictures were taken by yours truly.

Fresh Peach Muffins [sms]

This week's SMS, Fresh Peach Muffins, was chosen by JoVonn of The Givens Chronicles. She has wonderful recipes of things every day and it's so wonderful to see someone cook that much.

This week marked the start of school. *whine whine whine* It's not that I don't like school - it just takes too much time to learn everything. My classes this year - if I can get into all of them - are Financial Economics, Intermediate Financial Accounting, Organizational Behavior, Intro to Managerial Accounting, and International Monetary Economics. 5 classes that are going to take quite a bit of work [actually a lot of work]. Thank goodness I have friends in many of my classes. As for right now, I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed with the fact that I have so many classes.

Anyways, back to the muffins, these were pretty easy to make. I had cut the recipe in half since I still had sweet stuff in the house and these seem like they would make great breakfast food in addition to my banana bread muffins from last week.

I had cut the peaches up into tiny little pieces and decreased the amount of milk in the muffin to add more peaches into the muffin since people had mentioned that peach flavor was not very pronounced.

Recipe for the muffins here! Make sure to check out the rest of the SMS bakers on the blogroll.



ps sorry for the quality and lighting of pictures in this post. I had baked these Friday - didn't get to eat them until Saturday night because of a roommate meeting Friday night and Outsidelands Saturday. I had gone to a couple of parties last night - didn't drink, but I hung out with my friends til 3:30 am so I'm not really up to defrosting another muffin to take pictures of.

Mom's Banana Apple Bread and Muffins [sms]

This week's SMS, Mom's Banana Apple Bread, was chosen by Joy of Hot Oven, Warm Heart. This fruit-filled bread was really easy to make and I really enjoyed making it. I had made a dozen muffins and used the rest of the batter for the bread since I ran out of cupcake liners.

I actually made this last week because I was still up in Berkeley and it's just so much easier to bake up there. Back at home in Brea, I have make things that are less sweet and things that are easy to make since I do not have too many supplies at hand.

I had actually made lots of substitutes in this recipe. With the apples, I had used golden brown sugar instead. I also only have fugi apples so I just cut one up since they are so big. I also added more cinnamon and vanilla extract. I just like the smell and taste of cinnamon and vanilla.

For the bread/muffins itself, I subbed 1/8 c of the sugar with cinnamon sugar. I also added more cinnamon and vanilla extract. See a pattern here? I took out the ground cloves since I didnt have any hand, but I added 1/4 teaspoon more of nutmeg. I also added some hazelnuts left over from the hazelnut truffles, 1/2 c of milk chocolate chips, and 1/2 c of semi sweet chocolate chips.

These tasted actually very good. I had a muffin before I left, and I froze the rest for a nice and healthy breakfast for those crazy days that are about to start when school starts. I brought the bread home and everyone really enjoyed it. It was nice and healthy, and not too sweet - unlike most things I bake.

Recipe for the bread here! Make sure to check out the rest of the SMS bakers on the blogroll!

Chocolate Chip Banana Muffins

NOM NOM NOM!
Normally, I bake the sweet, frosting topped cupcakes, but today, I felt like making something a bit different, and well I had a couple of very overly riped bananas so muffins it was.

Using this recipe with some differences, I made some yummy, yummy muffins.
Ingredients:
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 egg
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup soy milk
2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup mashed ripe bananas (I used three bananas)
3/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips

Directions:
In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
In another bowl, combine the egg, oil, milk, and vanilla.
Stir into dry ingredients just until moistened.
Fold in bananas and chocolate chips.
Fill greased or paper-lined muffin cups two-thirds full.
Bake at 350 degrees F for 22-25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.
Cool for 5 minutes before removing from pans to wire racks.

Picture time again!

In the pan
My huge muffin
with guava juice

YAY, awesome success. I'll make sure to bake more soon. =)

<3 Nina