My First Macaroons

I am so sorry it's been a while! In all honesty, I haven't really made anything fun. I've basically been living off of peanut butter sandwiches for the last couple of weeks while I got in the hang of things this semester. That's another reason I didn't have any fun. The school semester started, and I got busy.

Anyway, there's a Mexican bakery near my house in my hometown, and my family and I LOVE their macaroons. Seriously. However many they have that day, we buy them all. We're obsessed. I just love coconut period. (If ONE person comments about how coconut oil is so good for you, I swear... Do not get me started on "healthy" coconut...)

Anyway, I started to have a HUGE craving for them and decided they couldn't be too hard to make, right? Eggs and coconut and I should be set, right?

Turns out, yes!

This was my inspiration recipe. Why? Because it was the first one that popped up for me that wasn't "macaron." There's a difference, Google! Come on! Get it together!

I then had to change the recipe a bit. I didn't have cherries, nor did I want them. So I threw those out. I don't have almond extract, but I do have some kick-ass Mexican vanilla, so I subbed that. Also, I cannot find unsweetened coconut anywhere! So I had to reduce the sugar. Oh, and I didn't have a whole bag of coconut, so I halved the recipe.

So, in summary, here's what I did::

Equipment:
-Oven
-Cookie Sheet
-Moderately sized bowl (sorry for the vagueness)

Ingredients:
-2 large egg whites
-1/4 Cup sugar
-1/8 cup all-purpose flour
-tiny bit of salt
-1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract
-2 cups shaved (sweetened, in my case) coconut

Instructions:
1. heat oven to 325.
2. grease and lightly flour cookie sheet
3. in the bowl, beat the 2 egg whites until foamy.
4. beat in sugar, flour, salt, and vanilla extract until blended.
5. stir in coconut
6. drop dough in scant tablespoon fuls 2 inches apart
7. bake 13-17 minutes until set and lightly browned
8. immediately remove from cookie shets

This is how mine looked:

I cooked mine for 14 minutes because at 13 I didn't think the coconut looked "toasted" enough. 

After I was "finished," I re-examined my macaroons, as well as my pantry, and decided that some dark chocolate would be delicious. So I dipped them in dark chocolate.

Possible Changes:
1. Egg temperature: because I decided to make these completely out of the blue, my eggs were still pretty cold when I started beating them. Next time I will PLAN on making macaroons and get the eggs out well in advance.
2. Chocolate covering: while delicious, I think they don't look very pretty with the covering on top. So next time, I would like to drizzle chocolate on them, or line them bottom of them, so it's as if they have chocolate soles. I think that would look really pretty. My problem with the "chocolate soles" is that I think they might stick to the pan then. If anyone has a way to guarantee they'll come right off, please let me know!
3. Halving the recipe: next time, I want to have 20 million bags of coconut, so I don't have to halve the recipe. I have discovered my roommates like macaroons, which means they're disappearing quickly. So my suggestion is DO NOT HALVE THE RECIPE. You will regret making so little.

Going Bananas for Banana Bread

The story of how I decided to make banana bread is truly inspirational. You ready? Get that hankie ready. Here it comes.

I had a lot of bananas and a lot milk.

What a tearjerker! So moving!

No but really, that is truly how I decided to make banana bread. My roommates are out of town for winter break, and I have taken it upon myself to clean out our food supplies. Throughout the semester, my roommates decided on multiple occasions that they were going to be healthy and eat breakfast every morning in the form of a banana. Days passed, breakfasts were not eaten, bananas became overly ripe. Rather than throw away perfectly good bananas, they were thrown into the freezer. Somewhere over the first semester, we somehow decided our freezer was our unofficial alternate trash can.

Anyway, I have already gone through our pantry and eaten SO MANY ONIONS, so my next task was to tackle the freezer. You know that phrase "she's built like a refrigerator?" Well let me tell you. Refrigerators don't have anything on freezers. I needed an ice pick to get some of the things in there out. After one of my hacks, I found 6 frozen ripe bananas.

To Pinterest!

So because I have bananas and an entire gallon of milk (I got it for free), I decided on a buttermilk recipe.

What supplies you need: 
-8x4 loaf pan
-hand mixer/mixer

Ingredients
-1.5 cups white sugar
-1 stick butter
-3 bananas
-2 eggs
-2 cups all-purpose flour
-0.5 tsp baking soda
-1/3 cup sour milk***
-0.25 tsp salt
-1 tsp vanilla extract
-optional: nuts

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Grease your loaf pan.

Put all the ingredients in a bowl and mix it all up.

Pour the batter into the pan and bake for 60 minutes.

***If you aren't aware of how to sour milk, don't worry! I wasn't either. So basically, it's 1 tbsp of lemon juice to 1 cup of milk. Put the lemon juice in your measuring cup, then fill to the 1 cup line with milk. In this case, since you only need 1/3 cup of milk, it's one teaspoon of lemon juice, and then fill it up to the 1/3 line with milk. Do this about 5 minutes before you're ready to start blending, to give the milk time to sour.

I liked this recipe because it only requires you to make 1 loaf. I had 6 bananas, so I personally made 2. But, if you're one of those people who remembers to half the first couple of ingredients or so and then you forget the rest (speaking from experience here), then this recipe is perfect.

This loaf turned out very moist and the crumb structure is very consistent. I had some with Nutella for a quick snack, and it was delicious.