Macaron frenzy ends..having cheerios to celebrate.. ;)

I have been busy..crazy busy..with work and with crazy unplanned macaron adventures! Finally after about 6 batches of macarons I can claim that I can make good macarons!! Yippee! :) I set out at the beginning of this month on a macaron learning process, the french ones ..oh yeah! And 15 days later here I am feeling so much confident about it. Here is a sneak preview of it:



I am making them for the upcoming San Diego Bake Sale on April 28th.

So after I reached a point where I felt confident of that the fact that I wont be messing up things at the last minute before the sale, I realized that I really wasn't baking anything else! OMG! So when I found my mind macaron free I baked my heart out.. :D.. first up was a savory dish baked bakarwadi..sadly I cant find which memory chip I put the pictures on, I will find them and post them later on.

But yesterday after going through a periodic pantry clear up process I found that I had few over-ripened bananas and a box full of cheerios cereal! I keep this cereal in my pantry as a backup cereal..yes I am a freak..but it helps to have a couple of choices for cereal. :) So when I realised that this box was moving towards getting too old I had to find alternate options to use it and this experiment just found the right place for it! :) When I googled for cheerios recipes I actually found a lot of recipes on their own website..they looked pretty good and inspired from them I decided to experiment.

We have banana-nut loaf/muffin all too often to feel the need to experiment with it..but I still decided to go ahead and give it another stroke of newness..so here it is..the muffins came out really good..light yet satisfying!

Cheerios banana nut muffins

Ingredients:

1 1/4 cups Honey Nut Cheerios cereal
• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
  2 tbsp packed brown sugar
  1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 ripe banana
  1/2 cup yogurt
  2 tbsp canola oil
  1/2 teaspoon vanilla
  1 egg white
  1/4 cup chopped walnuts
  1 tsp coarse or granulated sugar 

• Heat oven to 400°F. Spray bottoms only of 8 regular-size muffin cups with cooking spray, or line with paper baking cups. Spray bottoms only of paper baking cups with cooking spray. In large resealable food-storage plastic bag, coarsely crush cereal with rolling pin or meat mallet.
• In a bowl, mash the bananas and mix in the yogurt.
• In another bowl, mix crushed cereal, flour, brown sugar, baking soda and salt. In a mixing bowl, beat oil, vanilla and the egg white until blended. Add the yogurt mixture and mix well. Now add the flour mixture followed by the walnuts. Spoon batter into muffin cups. Sprinkle with coarse sugar.
• Bake 15 to 18 minutes or until light golden brown. Remove from pan to cooling rack. Serve warm or cool.

Snap n its spring!

The spring has officially started and its going to be more exciting than ever!
I have been missing for the past month or so..but no I did not forget my blog and neither was I on a break from baking. If anything else I am baking way more than usual but its mainly experimentation. I was postponing to post anything because all my baked goods are currently meant to be for the upcoming Bake Sale in San Diego. Today's recipe is a contender for the bake sale, just that it has gone one rank down in my list. :P



I have had this recipe bookmarked for almost 6 months now. Initially I didn't pursue it because it had ingredients which I usually don't find in my pantry but with my hubby's love for gingersnaps I finally got to this recipe. Its actually a recipe tried and tested by the very famous David Lebovitz. You can find the original recipe here. After I saw the recipe for the first time I was really curious! Fat-free gingersnaps, is that even possible? And to my finding yes it is!

I used the recipe as is, just switched half of the flour with whole wheat flour and used light brown sugar since I had it in my pantry. I did make the candied ginger at home and it was way easier than I thought it would be. I used the recipe suggested by David Lebovitz again and you can find it here.

Now for the fun news. When I moved to San Diego last year, I heard about the bake sale from my friend, but I wasn't really setup to do anything..much rather bake! So it was something I was looking forward to this year. And finally it is this very month that San Diego will have its blogger's bake sale! If you are in the San Diego area then do drop by and enjoy the goodies and have some fun! You could also donate to the charity and join in! More details available here: http://sdbloggersbake.wordpress.com/. Hope to see you all there!