"chocolate chips" news and stories

So it was a lazy Sunday afternoon and I had one rotten banana in the cupboard. I'd been staring at the banana for a few days, watching it grow from spotted to brown to nearly black. I could have thrown it away, but for some reason I felt that that 15 cents worth of fruit had a nobler destiny. But one mushy banana isn't enough for banana bread or cake or muffins. What to do?

Googling "what to do with one rotten banana," I discovered a message board on the topic of leftover bananas, where, scrolling down, I discovered this recipe for banana biscotti. I didn't have any nuts so I smashed a dark chocolate bar with a hammer and tossed the fragments into the dough. These unusual biscotti came out very nicely indeed - they remind me of Banana Nut Crunch cereal. Next time I'll give them an egg wash and sprinkle them with coarse sugar, then serve them with coffee and vanilla ice cream.

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I'm a chronic muffin baker, and I love adding whatever I have in the kitchen into the mix -- chocolate chips, white chocolate chips, nuts, dried fruits, seeds, marshmallows, oats, really anything. The problem with adding extra ingredients to muffins, however, is that they frequently sink. It's not so bad with seeds and other light additions, but it become very annoying with chocolate chips and heavier ingredients.

There are tons of suggestions about preventing chocolate chips from sinking, but some are definitely more useful than others. Firstly, you can try coating chocolate chips in flour before folding them into your mixture. I've found this to be moderately helpful, but I've read accounts of people who call it completely useless. You can also make sure that your batter is thick enough to suspend chocolate chips -- the thinner the batter, the more likely they are to sink. If you stand by your thin batter however, try using smaller, lighter chips, or reserving half of the chips to sprinkle on top after you've spooned the batter into the muffin cups.

The problem isn't limited to muffins, so feel free to try these tips with anything that you are baking. And though these are some of my favorite methods for suspending chips and other ingredients, I'm sure there are others out there, so please share any that work for you!

I like recipes that are "light" but still manage to get chocolate in them three different ways.

These Light Chocolate Chunk Brownies from Everyday Food have chocolate and cocoa powder inside and chocolate chips outside, so they'll make chocolate lovers happy (the readers at the Everyday Food site say these are more cake than brownie). They also utilize unsweetened applesauce and low fat sour cream, so I'm itching to try these. I've been craving brownies all week for some reason. I hope I'm not pregnant.

Last Thursday, while I was still out in Portland for the holidays, I had the opportunity to see my dad and sister perform at a benefit concert for peace. A couple of days before the concert, my dad asked me if I wouldn't mind baking some cookies for the concert's intermission. I took his request seriously and ended up making over 16 dozen Oatmeal Macadamia Nut Chocolate Chip cookies to take to the concert.

I was a little late to the concert and then got roped into staffing the merchandise table for the entire concert, so I didn't get to see how my cookies did during the refreshment time. However, during the second set, I snuck away from my post for a little while to get a drink and reclaim the roasting pan I had used to transport my cookies. Much to my surprise and pleasure, the pan was nearly empty. There was a six year old boy standing near my cookies, and when I reached in to finally taste one, he announced to me with great enthusiasm, "Those are the best cookies in the galaxy!" He gave a his head a firm nod on the word 'galaxy' as if to give it even further weight and emphasis. I smiled and said, "I'm glad you like them! I actually made them." When I said that, his eyes grew huge and he reached out to touch my arm, almost like I was a rock star or something. And then he asked if he could take a few of the leftovers home. How could I say no to that?

I heard from my mom after the concert was over that he stood next to my cookies throughout the entire intermission, announcing to everyone who came to peruse the snack table that they were "the best cookies in the galaxy." If you want to make a batch of the best cookies in the galaxy (because now I will call them that forever) you are in luck, as the recipe is after the jump.

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