Easy chocolate chip scones

This recipe is super easy, quick and uses one bowl. I've used chocolate chips in it here, but you can just as easily substitute other stuff like 1/2 cup dried cranberries and 1/2 cup white chocolate chips, or 1/2 cup (or more) raisins, etc.

Ingredients

2 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1/4 cup white sugar

1 tbsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/3 cup margarine or butter

7/8 cups of milk

1/2 cup chocolate chips

Blend dry ingredients in a large bowl.

Cut in margarine with a pastry blender. 

Dump milk all at once into bowl and combine with a fork to form a ball. Turn out on a floured board, need a couple of times. Flatten with a rolling pin to make a circle about one inch thick. Score round into 8 or 10 pieces. Place onto a greased pan or use parchment.

Bake at 400 for 12-15 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean

Buttermilk scones

This started out as a recipe from Ireland. But the original recipe had 9 oz of milk and that was way too little. I had to add another half of a cup of milk last time. So this time I used a total of 2 1/4 cups of buttermilk.

I used to never buy buttermilk, and would always just sour milk with vinegar instead. But I have to say that I now think that buttermilk makes better scones, and of course brown bread.

Many scone recipes tell you to brush milk over the scones. I never do. But I'm thinking it might help them brown better.

15 scones

4 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup butter, melted
2 1/4 cups buttermilk
1/4 cup sugar
1 cup raisins

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C).

In a large mixing bowl, mix together flour, baking powder and salt and sugar. Stir in raisins.

Add butter and buttermilk. Stir with a fork until a soft dough is formed.

Drop by large spoonfuls onto greased baking sheet.

Bake at 425 degrees F for 10 to 15 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean. Mine took about 16 minutes, and it made 15 biscuits.

Very good.

Mom's bran muffins

My mother used to make these muffins when we were young. They were the best.

I still make them all the time, and every time I do they seem to be a bit different.

The recipe below makes about 24 muffins (actually I made 23, and probably could have made 22 as they weren't that big). You could halve the recipe if you only want 12 muffins.

Today when I made them, I wanted to use up some crumbs from some finished bran flakes, and from some mini wheat cereals. Otherwise the crumbs would just go into the garbage. Who wants to eat cereal crumbs with milk? It would just get mushy and mushy makes me want to gag.

So I just poured the crumbs into a measuring cup and I had 1 3/4 cups of the crumbs. I substituted those crumbs for the equivalent amount of bran in the recipe. Mom would be proud. She never wasted anything.

Mix together in medium bowl
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
3 1/2 cups high-fibre bran cereal
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 1/2 cups raisins (Or not if your name is Johanna or Jennifer. Maybe substitute walnuts?)

Mix together in large bowl
1/2 cup canola oil
3/4 cup molasses
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cups buttermilk (I usually just sour milk with vinegar but today I actually had buttermilk)

Fold dry ingredients into wet ingredients just until mixed.

Spoon into 24 paper lined muffin pans.

Bake for about 15 to 20 minutes until toothpick inserted comes out clean.

Raisin Oatmeal Banana Muffins

When we went to Ireland in 2013, one of the restaurants there served a great banana bread with dinner. It was so good. So when I came home I sent them an email asking them for their recipe.

Below is an adaptation of that recipe (sorry I can never leave a recipe alone). The original recipe included cinnamon and raisins, which I had never seen before in a banana bread recipe.

My recipe below maintains those two ingredients, and in this version, I also changed the recipe to include oats. I have to say I have a hard time not including raisins, oats and cinnamon in many of my recipes. I also reduced the amount of fat that was in the original recipe and exchanged some of the white flour for whole wheat.

Mix into medium bowl:
2 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup white flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
2 tsp of cinnamon
1 1/2 cups raisins

Mix into large bowl:
2 cups rolled oats
1 cup of buttermilk or soured milk
1/2 cup canola oil
4 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
1 cup packed brown sugar
2 cups mashed bananas

Pour dry ingredients into wet ingredients and mix just until moistened.

Scoop into lined muffin pans. Bake for 20-25 minutes at 350 until a toothpick comes out clean.

Makes 21 muffins. You could probably make 24 muffins, they would be a bit smaller.

Granola bars, part deux

Put in large bowl and microwave to soften and combine:
3/4 cup honey (use 1/2 cup honey or maybe brown sugar?)
3/4 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup apple sauce (use 1 cup to hold together better)

Incorporate dry ingredients into wet ingredients:
3 cups old fashioned rolled oats
3 cups rice krispies
1/2 cup sunflower seeds
1/2 cup slivered almonds
3/4 cup raisins
1/2 cup chocolate chips

Press into 9 X 13 inch greased pan.

Put in 350 degree oven for 30 minutes.

They were good but too sweet. Next time I'll reduce honey to 1/2 cup and increase applesauce to 1 cup. They also were too crumbly so the additional applesauce should hold them together better.

Peanut butter oatmeal cookies

I made peanut butter oatmeal cookies one day while in Victoria. I can't remember what my motivation was. Anyway they were pretty good.

In Victoria our condo had cable TV service. At home we don't have TV service, we only watch Netflix. We don't feel the need to throw money at Bell or the other cable providers, and Netflix is way better anyway.

The only channel I did watch sometimes was the Food Network. I do like to watch cooking shows. But I would record the shows first so I could fast forward past the commercials, which seem to have increased exponentially since I last watched commercial TV.

Mind you, most of the shows on the food network are fairly useless, like Food Factory. This show tries too hard to be cute. It also shows how some products are made in a factory. I don't really care how they're made. I want to know what the recipe is. Plus, many of the products they showed being produced contained 90% sugar. Gross.

Then there were other shows that showed competitions like Chopped, which wasn't bad, but very stressful to watch. I don't want to get stressed when I watch TV.

Then there were food shows (as opposed to cooking shows) where almost no actual cooking takes place. Like one guy who goes into diners or whatever, and makes all kind of noise as he inhales big greasy gobs of whatever concoction being served. Gross times two.

I want to watch actual cooking shows. You know where someone cooks food and tells you how much of each ingredient is in it?

One show which I liked was the Spice Goddess. Bal Arneson is from India and cooks food using Indian spices. She made a macaroni and cheese recipe that I want to try. I love macaroni and cheese, and I love Indian food. Though it sounds like a weird combination to me, but I will try it.

Anyway back to the Peanut Butter Oatmeal cookies

1 cup flour (whole wheat or all purpose)
1 cup rolled oats
1/2 tsp soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 cup raisins (chocolate chips would be even better but it was lent and I gave up chocolate)

1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 cup natural peanut butter (or regular peanut butter)
1/4 cup white sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1 egg (I would probably increase to 2 eggs as the mixture was very crumbly)

Mix first seven ingredients into a small bowl.

Mix remaining ingredients into a large bowl.

Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients and incorporate. Use your hands if you have to.

Make smallish balls of dough and place on greased cookie sheet. Press down with fingers or a floured fork.

Cook for 10-12 minutes at 350 until the cookies start to brown.

Granola bars for Jesus - the recipe

To see how this recipe came about, see here.

4 1/2 cups quick oats
1/2 cup melted, or liquid honey
1/2 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup natural peanut butter (could use regular)
1/2 cup olive oil
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp salt
1 cup applesauce (mine was made from 1 spartan apple and one royal gala apple and a 1/4 cup water)
1 cup raisins (or nuts if you're Jennifer or Johanna and don't like raisins)

Mix everything together. You many have to use your hands to mix it as it will be very thick.

Grease a cookie sheet. I used a 12 X 16 pan (I'm guessing since I didn't measure it). A smaller cookie sheet would have been better, since the mixture wasn't enough for the whole pan. Just grease the portion of the pan that you use.

Press granola mixture firmly and evenly into pan.

Bake for about 25 minutes at 325, or until the edges start to brown.

Cool. Cut into squares. I made 16 large squares. Cut them smaller if you like.

Store in freezer. Or give them to the homeless.

Oatmeal banana raisin muffins (not muffin cookies)

We're in Victoria, British Columbia. Our escape from the cold that is Ottawa. Which at the moment isn't so cold. I'm glad for Ottawa. But even gladder for us.

We are in a lovely two bedroom condo downtown. Where it's 13 degrees and oh so pleasant. Tons of coffee shops, flowers and sunshine. All gifts straight from God.

Made muffins yesterday. We had eaten a cookie muffin in a coffee shop and it was so yummy, I decided I needed to make some. I'd never heard of "cookie muffins", or maybe it was "muffin cookies", before. They are dense like cookies, but look like muffins.

I googled for a recipe, but couldn't find much, so found a recipe, and modified it. It didn't look or taste like what we'd eaten, but it was still yummy.

I did get a lot of pinterest recipes pop up. But every time I clicked on them, it wanted me to log in or create an account. You know what? I don't want to created an account. I just want the stupid muffin recipe. But no. We can't give it to you if you don't have an account.

I promise you I won't make you log in to get my recipe.

And of course I don't remember the name of the coffee shop we found the muffins, so I doubt it if we could ever find it again. Or maybe we will.

Here's what I made.

2 cups large flake oats
2 cups skim milk
1 cup raisins
1/2 packed brown sugar
1 egg
1/3 cup olive oil
1 cup flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1 mashed banana

Soak oats in milk in a large bowl. Add egg and beat. Add oil (next time I'll try 1/4 cup oil) and brown sugar. Add mashed banana. Mix it all up.

In a small bowl add flour (if I had whole wheat flour I would have used that instead), baking soda, salt and cinnamon and raisins. Stir to incorporate.

Add flour mixture to wet mixture and blend together. Scoop mixture into a greased 12 muffin pan.

Cook at 350 for 20 to 25 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean.

I didn't have muffin liners so had to spray olive oil in the muffin pan which is fine, except now the clean up job was a pain in the butt, since you have to clean out each individual muffin area afterwards. I also didn't have any toothpicks so used a twist tie to test for doneness. It worked.

It just occurred to me. Maybe if I had only used 1 cup of milk instead of 2, maybe I'd have actually made the muffin cookie recipe?

The pictures below are from our balcony. They're not the muffins.