I'm starving at 4am!

What do I do when I'm bored and can't fall asleep at 4am? I search for food blogs. Found a few new delightful ones, including "Framed", which has phenomenal salad recipes, and "Honest Fare" has a great recipe for cherry clafouti that I'll change to mixed berries (I have a healthy cherry version from England, to be posted later). 6 Bittersweets is pretty much a cupcake blog (includes vegan recipes) with the most tasty-sounding cupcakes you'll ever see. Like tiramisu cupcake or bananas foster cupcake . "Brownies for Dinner" loves her desserts (could you guess?). Just explore. I'd list everything for you but I'm making myself drool...

I don't call myself hungry girl for nuttin', ya know...

Too many recipes! Too little time and energy!

I made fabulous veg enchiladas and chicken enchiladas for dinner tonight. It's been my dish of all dishes for about more than a year now. Simple in ingredients but full of flavor. I'll post them up soon.

Healthy Cranberry Walnut Muffins

The parents wanted muffins... the siblings wanted breakfast food... so given the usual fare of butter-laden, sugary muffins, I wanted to make a "healthy" muffins. I came across a recipe for Cranberry Walnut Muffins on Ezine @rticles. I made small adjustments.

Here's the thing... I trust my food blogs (see right column) and my usual All Recipes, Simply Recipes, Epicurious, Gourmet, and Food Network websites. But I was curious... and I was a bit disappointed. The muffins were good. Not stellar. The family reviews were mixed. My mother adored them. The younger siblings complained (but mostly because they don't like anything without chocolate?). I think it's a solid (metaphorically speaking), good muffin. I straddle the line and can't tell. On days when I want a pastry without the guilt, I can make this. Tasty enough to satisfy a craving. Healthy to make you feel great!

The muffins are incredibly low in fat. The changes are subtle, though the one thing I would change is the orange-y taste of the muffins. Even when cutting out the orange peel, I felt like the orange flavor was too strong. But that's just me. I don't like orange-y desserts. I'll eat orange chocolate, for example, but I never want or love it. (Sacriligious! I know!) The combo of oats, whole wheat flour, walnuts and applesauce are a delightful combo for a healthy muffin. If you're diabetic or cutting out sugar from your diet, you can use splenda. Also, use no sugar added applesauce!

Pros:

- Healthy, guilt-free!

- Super easy and quick to throw together

- Very moist muffins

- Love the walnuts

Cons:

- Orange-y

- Felt like there were too many cranberries

- Doesn't have butter (I'm starting to sound like Paula Deen now)

- Batter came out very wet... good moist muffins but had to bake longer than expected

Whole Wheat Cranberry Walnut Muffins

• 3/4 cup APF (if you're forgetting my lingo, refer to earlier post)
• 3/4 cup whole wheat flour
• 1/2 cup rolled oats
• 1 TB baking powder
• 1/2 cup sugar (I wonder how brown sugar would change the flavor...)
• 1 tsp cinnamon (I would also consider adding 1/2 - 1 tsp of all spice? I wanted more flavor!)
• 1 egg, lightly beaten
• 1 cup orange juice (I would reduce to a little more than 3/4... 1 cup seemed too much)
• 1/2 cup applesauce
• 1/2 dried cranberries (based on personal preference, I'd reduce to 1/3)
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts

1. Preheat oven to 375 F. Mix both flours, baking powder, sugar and cinnamon.

2. In a separate bowl, beat egg, orange juice, and applesauce until combined. Add mixture to flour mixture. Mix just until moistened. Do NOT overmix the batter. Batter will have a lumpy appearance.

3. Fold in cranberries and walnuts. Fill in your muffin tins.

4. Made about 14 smaller muffins (or 12 big ones) for me, depending on how you fill your tins. Bake at 375 for 25 minutes or until golden brown. I personally preferred that the muffins baked longer, because the batter was very wet and I wanted to make sure everything was cooked all the way through. 25 minutes gave me a nice crunchy top and maintained the very moist inside. These babies were pretty dense muffins!

Chocolate Chip Cookies a la Olive Oil

From today onward, Chocolate Chip Cookies shall henceforth be called CCC. One of my favorite (nerdy) classes in college was physics, and while the inner scientist in me has never manifested herself, I do love myself a good read through Scientific American and Science Magazine. Maybe I loved physics so much because the professor used CCC analogies for everything. Yes, CCC = explanation of life.

I've baked a lot of different recipes. The differences are typically subtle, unpronounced, and delicious regardless (I mean, how can you really mess up sugar, eggs, butter, chocolate?!... okay don't answer. I just jinxed myself.)

I found a recipe for CCC made with olive oil from The Crepes of Wrath, whose author was inspired by Slice of Feist. I love how small the cooking world is now that everything's online. Olive oil?! Really?! Yeah... I was curious.

Here are my thoughts:

- The cookies are much fluffier and lighter than I expected.

- Baking cookies with olive oil still smells great... but when my brother came downstairs his first response was "it smells like pasta". I disagree, but whatevs.

- If you can, beat/mix by machine not by hand. It's a lot of hard work! But I think that goes for baking in general... I was too lazy to use the machine. (Yeah yeah, I know it doesn't make sense since machines are supposed to make your life easier but don't judge me).

-I found the batter very sticky... so I personally would not use my hands to roll balls. I just took a spoon and dropped them by a giant, heaping spoonful.

I feel healthier eating these (compared to eating regular CCC made from butter, of course). Cookies are cookies. But made with olive oil, I feel like I've cut down on my saturated and trans fat, mom! Whenever I cook healthier, I like to change the fat contents a bit (either using a butter+oliveoil mixture for dishes or using half applesauce for baked dishes)... but I'm not a big fan of baking with fake sugar. Splenda in my coffee? Sure, but in moderation. I'd take 2 TB of real sugar over 10 lbs of fake sugar anytime. I say enjoy life at its fullest.... just eat well and live well.

BUT, at the end of the day, taste-wise I still prefer traditional butter with my CCC. These cookies are fluffy and delicious, but you can definitely taste a hint of olive oil. I wonder what would happen to the flavors if I did 1/8 c EVOO and 1/8 c apple sauce? Okay, getting too complicated. Anyway, if you want something tasty and "healthier", give this a try. It's good... but I'll be experimenting with more CCC recipes. Coming up!

UPDATE: These cookies are even better the next day! No one would ever know that you used Olive Oil. No hint at all. They are still soft, chewy, and delicious. IGNORE my last comment above.

Chocolate Chip Cookies w/ Olive Oil

• 2 1/4 cups APF (All purpose flour)
  
• 1 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 cups EVOO (Extra virgin olive oil)
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 or 2 TB of milk
• 1 cup chocolate chips (I like the big chocolate chunks from Nestle)

1. Preheat oven to 375 F. Mix flour, baking soda, and salt.

2. In a separate bowl, mix sugars, vanilla, and oil. Beat in eggs one at a time. Slowly mix in the flour mixture, making sure it's well incorporated.

3. Add a TB of milk to make the dough a bit softer... if you think it's still too dry, add another teaspoon to tablespoon if necessary. In my personal experience, the dough was still a bit sticky when I added a grand total of 2 TB of milk, but no worries. The cookies still came out great.

4. You can roll dough balls with your hands, but I just used a big spoon. The dough balls don't need to be perfectly round. They flatten out nicely anyway.

5. Bake for 10-12 minutes. I ended up with about 12-14 big cookies, so I baked the full 12-12 1/2 minutes to make sure they were baked all the way through.

6. Allow them to cool before you indulge. I greedily tried to pick up a cookie while it was still piping hot, and ripped out its innards as it was soft and therefore stuck on the lined baking sheet. =)