Unfortunately, I have a severe case of burnout. The good news: I have a week off during which I can do whatever I want. The bad news: when I’m really tired and or stressed (aka burnt out) I find most foods extremely unappetizing and even nauseating (to make matters worse I take medication that can often act as an appetite suppressant). Long story short is that Sprouts double chocoalte muffins are a food I can always eat, so I tried to make them at home and ended up making this recipe for chocolate muffins. And I was really not a fan.
Things to take into account: I didn’t have chocolate chips (very sad), I used a regular size muffin tin (not jumbo as in the recipe), I halved the recipe (because I didn’t want to have 24 muffins if I didn’t like them), cakes and muffins are not my baking strong suit, and my appetite is extremely fickle at the moment (unintentional bias).
I found the flavor rather lack-luster and my partner and I agreed that they have a weirdly gummy texture. If I were to try and make double chocolate muffins again, I would for sure try another recipe.
My vanilla is extremely dark and it has only been one week! The vanilla I bought was a “red type” of vanilla bean which means it has lower moisture content and essentially it just doesn’t look like the thick juicy vanilla beans that one might imagine when they think of a typical vanilla bean. Despite the beans being dried up little guys they are obviously packed full of vanilla goodness because my extract has darkened so quickly and it has only been about 10% of the recommended extraction time.
For reference this is what they looked like right after jarring.
Tonight I finally got around to making the S’Mores Chocolate Chunk Cookies that have been on my mind for the past week. I bought marshmallows to make a marshmallow coffee syrup which by the way went so horribly wrong. I made the syrup and then put it in a jar in the fridge and the next day it had solidified into a gloopy sugary slime monster and I instantly threw it away. Thanks to that syrup failure, I now had marshmallows in the house which meant I was one step closer to having the ingredients needed to make the next cookie on my list. After acquiring graham crackers I was all set to get baking. All I had to do was find a day where I had the energy and time to bake amidst job hunting, quitting a job, and working out the details of a new job offer. The hardest days are when I want cookies the most and yet they are also the days I struggle to rally myself off the couch.
Tonight, thanks to a splitting headache due to stress and lack of water, I was unable to scroll on tiktok any longer and it was finally cookie time.
These cookies came together really easily and quickly and overall they went pretty well. Of course, as I was sliding the tray of cookies into the oven, I saw a note on the recipe that said they used dehydrated marshmallows and specifically: “Do not use regular miniature marshmallows in this recipe. They will melt and burn”. Well joke’s on them because I didn’t use regular miniature marshmallows, I used regular full sized marshmallows cut up into small pieces. Because OF COURSE I used regular ones, who would think otherwise?! They should really put that note in bold at the top of the recipe if they want anyone to read it.
Notes:
The recipe says to use dehydrated mini marshmallows (like the ones found in hot chocolate packets) but if you use regular ones they actually turn out ok. Some of the marshmallow chunks did melt but they sort of caramelized and I didn’t mind it.
This cookie might be more s’mores flavored if you increased the graham cracker crumbs and decreased the chocolate (by a quarter or maybe even half).
Overall, this is a good cookie but it just tastes like a good chocolate chip cookie. If I was blindfolded I’m not sure I ever would have guessed that the intended flavor was s’mores. If you already have marshmallows and graham crackers, go for it, but I wouldn’t venture out of my way to get the necessary ingredients in order to make them.
This was the highlight of my week, maybe even the highlight of my month. I never would have guessed that making my own vanilla would make me so happy.
I recently ran out of my generic target brand bottle of vanilla and I looked into the Nielsen-Massey brand that I see so many content creators using in their baking and coffee syrup making videos. It is $20 for 4oz of this brand of vanilla extract. I’ve been seeing a lot of vanilla paste being used on the internet, but I’ve always been an extract person and I’d have to learn more about why a person would use paste over extract… anyway time for some math.
I bought loose cut vanilla from Slo Food Group, which was $25 for 4oz of beans. Their website has a vanilla extract recipe that suggests .8oz of beans per cup of alcohol. This means that if I rounded up, I could make 4 cups of vanilla (32 oz).
As we know, few things go according to plan and I ended up standing in Sprouts for longer than I would like to admit overthinking which size jar to buy. I wanted to get 2 2 cup mason jars, but of course they only had 1.5 cup jars and 3 cup jars. Obviously the right answer was to panic and buy 3 of the 1.5 cup mason jars. Why was that the answer? I’m still not sure.
In the end my vanilla math looked like this: 3 jars each got 1.3 oz of vanilla (4oz/3jars= 1.33oz) and 1.5 cups of alcohol. This calculates out to .86oz of vanilla beans per cup of alcohol (1.3oz/1.5cups). I did a lot of thinking and planning but in the end I also did a lot of panicking and guessing and really I just got lucky that my ratio ended up being almost exactly what Slo Food Group recommended.
The worst part about having 3 jars is that I bought vodka and bourbon and so I had to decide how to split that up. I now have 2 jars extracting in vodka and one in bourbon. Again this decision was made simply because I could not spend another second debating over which alcohol would get 2 jars.
If you’ve made it this far congratulations! The final calculation, and the main reason I wanted to make my own vanilla was this:
$25(vanilla beans)+$13 (half a bottle of Bluff Springs bourbon)+$21(one full bottle of Summum vodka) = $59
$59 is a lot more than the $20 extract I mentioned at the beginning, but its a lot more appealing to look at the ounces.
$20/4oz = $5/oz for the trendy Neilsen-Massey vanilla extract
$59/37oz = $1.59/oz for home made vanilla extract.
I will be saving a lot of money, but not for about 3 months which is how long they suggest you let your vanilla age/develop. I’ll be back with many updates about my little vanilla babies.
My love and gratitude forever is being channeled towards Claire Saffitz, but especially on bagel day. I first tried bagels because I recall Claire saying something about how if you tried sourdough bread during the pandemic and it was challenging, then bagels might be an easier and more fun place to start. My bagels have improved immensely over the past couple of years. I went from making delicious but extremely flat UFOs to making something that more closely resembles the classic NY bagel everyone loves.
These were brown sugar cinnamon bagels with dried tart cherries. They turned out pretty good, but next time I would add more cinnamon (we ran out so I couldn’t add much to begin with) and I would cut the dried cherries smaller. Also, given the sugar content I would for sure use parchment paper next time.
