Muffinth!

It's been a while, yes.

I've been working literally non-stop on my apartment, so cut me some slack, yo. I've been installing shelving, installing flooring, painting walls, repainting walls, measuring twice, cutting once (or in a few instances, two or three times), organizing, assembling, drilling, nailing, spackling, screwing (in the home-improvement sense), cleaning cleaning cleaning, and occassionally honking for Shirley when I've had to get the heck out of this apartment and out of town.

I feel like I'm coming to a good place to slow down the frantic renovation efforts and re-focus on baking, knitting, and other fun fall festivities. So on that note, I decided to make some muffins yesterday morning. Nothing fancy. A few weeks ago, I got the cookbook from Baked, my absolute favorite bakery in New York City, and I've been so eager to start using it. They use adult flavors like salted caramel and dark chocolate, and nothing I've tried is ever overly-sweet. They really do things the way I like (although their cashiers and baristas are often not too friendly).

I decided to make something quick and easy this morning since I had a busy morning before going to work. I used the recipe for "Banana Chocolate Espresso Muffins." I had all of the ingredients on hand, so I whipped 'em up in my mixer. They were embarrassingly easy.

After beating some mushy bananas to a liquidy pulp, I added melted butter, white and brown sugar, and an egg. The I sifted and added in the flour, salt, baking soda, and espresso powder. After folding in the chocolate chips and baking at 350 for 20 minutes, I got...

These.


They were extremely moist, presumably due to the bananas. I ate a few of these warm. Two friends gave me two different critiques: one said there was to much chocolate, and the other said they were too moist. I agreed.



But after sitting for a day, I tried one this morning. Once cooled, they firmed up very nicely, weren't overly-moist, and the excessive chocolate taste seemed gone. The texture was still moist, the chocolate morsels had a nice "chew" to them, and the crumb was very nice.



I'm thoroughly enjoying these muffins this morning.

I'm also enjoying some Neko Case:


I was recently introduced to this amazing album from the Watson Twins, thought the album is not new. It's a really well-harmonized, low-key, sunny-fall-day-sounding country-esque album. I think it's pretty perfect.


Thanks for checking in. More to come!

Christian