Saturday, February 11, 2012

Catching up {Chocolate Banana Almond Butter Cakelettes}

Hello hello! So sorry for going MIA - this always happens on exam days! Such days always end up with me catching up on sleeping and eating... at very bizarre hours. But here is a quick and pictureful summery! {An exciting recipe awaits you at the bottom of the post!}
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Lunch featured "shi" - fresh cabbage soup (very simple! The vegetable broth is flavored with stewed tomatoes). Second entree included buckwheat kasha, turkey meatball in caramelized onion and tomato sauce, and more of yesterday's zucchini spread! After I napped, I had some coffee with yesterday's pierog. Yum!
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My family looooves horseradish! I'd say it's like Russian wasabi. And today I made fresh horseradish! I puréed the horseradish root, and then added apple cider vinegar, salt and sugar.

Surprisingly, this didn't have the "kick" that we are used to. It was much more mild, but still really good! I decided to replace the usual balsamic vinegar in my salad with horseradish, and it tasted divine! And so, horseradish-topped salad with spinach raviolis and tzatziki were served for dinner!
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I have a very busy and exciting weekend ahead. First I'm visiting M, and then I'm off to DC with friends from school for AMA Lobby Day!

To celebrate Valentine's Day a little early, I decided to bake M a treat. He has a sweet tooth. I love to bake. It works. :)

I had no idea what to make, so I did what I always do during moments of indecision - I looked around to see what I actually had to bake with... Aha! Two very ripe bananas! Check. Almond butter? Check. Chocolate chips!!! Absolutely! With my dear friend, Foodgawker, I stumbled upon Christina's blog, Scientifically Sweet featuring Chocolate Banana Peanut Butter Lava Muffins. [Being a science nerd, it's not surprising that I also love the science of baking and cooking. So naturally, I was so excited to read through Christina's posts. She seems so cool!]. How can I not trust a food scientist's recipe that looks oh so scrumptious?!

With a few minor substitutions, I set out to recreate these beauties!
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Chocolate Banana Almond Butter Cakelettes, adopted from Scientifically Sweet

Ingredients:

  • 1 cup all purpose flour

  • 1/4 cup whole wheat flour

  • 1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

  • 1 1/4 tsp baking powder

  • 1/2 tsp baking soda

  • 1/4 tsp salt

  • 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

  • 1/4 tsp ground clove

  • 1/8 tsp nutmeg

  • 2 large ripe bananas

  • 1/3 cup cottage cheese

  • 1 large egg

  • 1/2 cup packed dark brown sugar

  • 1/4 cup melted coconut oil

  • 1 tsp pure vanilla extract

  • 1/3 cup pure semi-sweet chocolate chips

  • 3-4 tbsp creamy almond butter


Directions:

Preheat over to 350F. Grease and flower the pan.

In a large bowl, sift together both flours, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, clover, and nutmeg. Add back the bran left int he sieve from the whole wheat flour.

In a separate bowl, blend the cottage cheese until smooth (the original recipe called for sour cream, which I didn't have, so this was my solution) and add in the bananas. Blend together. Whisk in the egg, sugar, coconut oil and vanilla until well blended.

Add the flour mixture and fold gently until just combined. A few streaks of flour should still remain. Fold in chocolate chips.

Instead of the traditional 12-muffin pan, I used the William-Sonoma Bouquet Cakelette Pan. It makes 6 but larger cakelettes, I thought would be great for Valentine's Day so that M and I could share our cakelette instead of eating separately :)

Fill each muffin cup about two-thirds full with the batter. Spoon about 3/4 tsp of almond butter into the center of each cup. Evenly divide the remaining batter on top to cover the almond butter.

Bake until the muffin tops spring back when touched gently (about 20 min for normal size muffins... 30 min for my cakelettes!) Let cool slightly before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
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I split one cakelette with my family, and we all agreed that indeed their texture was more cake-like than muffin-like, the banana and the chocolate were very prominent, and overall very very good!
Alrighty! Off I go! I'll try to post a weekend recap of all my eats & treats on Monday! :)
Hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

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