This morning, I baked a batch of banana-oat cookies. Unfortunately, I used eight times as much accoutrements as called for in the recipe (about 2 c. of butterscotch chips instead of 1/4 c. walnuts) - oops. Well, they're just very chippy cookies, I guess. Just a little cookie batter holding together the butterscotch chips, essentially. Next time, I'll remember the proper proportions for the bananas, oats, and additional ingredient (the nuts in the original recipe). The original recipe reads:
- 2 ripe bananas
- 1 c. oats
- 1/4 c. walnuts
Preheat oven to 350 deg. F.
Mash bananas thoroughly. Add oats and mix thoroughly. stir in chopped walnuts.
Drop onto greased or lined baking sheets and bake 15 minutes. Cool on baking sheets, then keep in air-tight container for storage.
I don't even remember where that original recipe came from; it was something Kat had found online somewhere and decided to try, making a batch some months ago when we had a lot of ripe bananas and not much else. She'd substituted chocolate chips for the walnuts, and the results were good. The version I made this morning is:
- 4 ripe bananas, mashed roughly
- 1 c. oat bran
- 1/2 c. flour
- 1/2 c. soy protein granules (I used a brand called Nutrela)
- 2 t. vanilla extract
- 1 pkg. butterscotch chips (really much more than needed; about half the bag would suffice, I'm sure)
Preheat oven to 350 deg. F. Make sure bananas are mashed. Blend in vanilla extract. Add flour and oat bran, and mix thoroughly. Stir in protein granules and butterscotch chips. Drop by tablespoonfuls on silicone mat on baking sheet, spacing cookies closely as they don't spread too much (though they can "fall" and the butterscotch chips melt and run into each other).
Bake 15 minutes. Cool on cookie sheets about 20 minutes. Remove to an airtight container.
These came out very sweet. The butterscotch chips could easily be reduced by half, but since I'd have to find something else to do with the chips before Tuesday morning, I figured I'd just use the whole package instead of having a partial bag opened to pack.
I talked to some folks at last night's game night at Ralph's about the melting chocolate for forming candies, and Mark suggested that I add confectioners' wax to help firm up the candies. I'll look for it at the grocery store, then, next time I go looking for baker's chocolate for a future recipe. Right now, the already-formed hazelnut clusters are in the fridge, layered in wax paper in a Ziploc bag (I used a pretty big Ziploc to keep the layers of wax paper, with the chocolates on them, intact so that the chocolates don't touch).
If I'd thought about it, I would have included some of the cake flour that's been sitting in the pantry for a long time now. I'd originally bought it for - as you can guess, I'm sure - cakes, but since the recipe did not use the entire box, I had the leftover flour. I suppose if I wanted, I could add to it the remainder of my package of Bob's Red Mill vital wheat gluten, and try to use it like regular flour, though then it might come out pretty gluten-heavy, as I think the normal ratio of gluten to flour is much lower than what it would be if I combined the (approximately) 3/4 c. of gluten with the (I think) 2 c. of cake flour. I might ask Jake, the teacher for Pastries and Desserts, about it this week (if I remember when I see him in class on Wednesday).
My computer is playing tracks from my sound collection as I'm writing. Some of the tracks are Mandarin Chinese lessons from when I took Beginning Mandarin through San Diego Continuing Education with Lloyd about thee years ago now...
Wow. I've been in San Diego for five and a half years now; so much has happened in that time, including Kat's growth spurt, the development of my friendships through Meetup.com, the re-establishment of my friendship with Liz, and this (I hope final) instance of falling in love...
Of course, one likes to think of "this time" as being the "final time" for falling in love, especially when it happens infrequently (as it has for me). Both Peter and I realize that the future is uncertain, and therefore we remind each other irregularly (but also constantly) that we love each other. It feels wonderful to hear and to say. It's comfortable and exciting at the same.
Right now I'm listening to the end of "Bicycle Race" by Queen. Seems to be a string of Queen songs right now, but I think that might be because the entire album was saved as a single track file and therefore will play the entire thing without pause. Which is fine with me; I like Jazz.
I've packed up the dive computer and it's ready to ship. I'll bring it to the post office tomorrow and mail it registered and get a receipt with tacking number so that I can submit that for my eBay refund. I'm disappointed that the computer doesn't work, but what pisses me off is that the seller did it without thinking about it (or responding to my emails when I told him it was not functional).
Grumble, grumble...
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