Ice Cream week - French Toast Crepes

It's unofficially summer! After a long winter here in New Jersey, I'm happy to be ringing in the warmer weather with some cool treats and bringing you a full week of ice cream!

I'm happy to be showcasing my favorite Western New York ice cream maker - Perry's Ice Cream. As a member of their Inside Scoopers group, I have had the opportunity in the past to get samples of their seasonal flavors, test some of their small batch samples and tour the factory. Over the past few months, Perry's has been introducing their newest creation online - Perry's Escapes.

Since I live in New Jersey, it's become increasingly difficult to access Perry's Ice Cream. Some Wegmans grocery stores sell the brand, but not all of them in my region. I was left to lust after these new flavors online, until Perry's offered to send me a sampling of their newest flavors. Needless to say, I was excited.

Perry's Escapes are small batch ice creams with rich flavors. Several of the flavors are ones that were previously only available at the ice cream stand (like Movie Time and Queen of Hearts). I decided to pick out three of my favorite flavors and create a tasty recipe around them.

First up this week - French Toast Ice Cream!

After tasting the French toast flavor (it takes like maple syrup, cinnamon and vanilla), I knew that I had to keep a hint of breakfast with this dessert. I made up a batch of miniature crepes, cut up a banana and piped on some whipped cream. Just like that, I had a sweet and satisfying dessert, that would totally be appropriate for early morning eating.

Disclaimer: As a member of their Inside Scoopers team, Perry's Ice Cream supplied me with a bunch of their Escapes new flavors. All opinions are my own. I'm only so happy to support this hometown brand because I grew up eating Perry's and they make a damn delicious ice cream!

Two Years Ago: Banana Bread French Toast
Three Years Ago: Spring Penne Pasta

Four Years Ago: Fruit and Yogurt Jars

CTB 2014 - The Complete Magnolia Bakery Cookbook

Chris Parnell and Andy Samberg may have rapped about them in Lazy Sunday, but any New Yorker worth their salt knows to skip Magnolia's cupcakes and head for their dessert case.  The only thing you should even think about picking up from the Magnolia Bakery is their Banana pudding.

Ah-Mazing Banana Walnut Muffins

Hello lovelies and happy holidays!  I hope that you are enjoying a calm and peaceful season and that today brings with in minimal stress and worry.  There are only two days until Christmas (or one, depending on when you're reading this!) and I'm ready for some good food and good company.

Peanut Butter and Banana Cupcakes

It's been four days since BF and I hiked in and out of the Grand Canyon and my calves are still killing me!  I guess that's what happens when you hike a progressively steeper seven miles.  I'm hoping that our crazy hike will help with training us for our upcoming Spartan race.

To help recuperate some of the calories I burned on our hike, I made some cupcakes.  Then proceeded to eat a whole bunch of them.  Okay, three.  Then I sent them to work with BF.  I knew I couldn't be left alone with the remaining nine cupcakes.  The combination of banana and peanut butter chips in these cupcakes reminded me of my favorite breakfast (waffle sandwich!).  You could actually leave off the frosting and have these for breakfast.  Because a cupcake without frosting is a muffin, right?  Totally healthy.

But really, after climbing out of the Grand Canyon I feel like I deserved a few unhealthy treats.  And so do you!  Make yourself some cupcakes, or "healthy" muffins.

Banana Bread French Toast

I can't believe that it's been months since I shared a breakfast recipe!

I know exactly who is to blame, Boyfriend.  Okay, and me.  The guy I live with doesn't really care for breakfast and we usually spend our weekends at the Starbucks downtown.  Or the Panera around the corner.  Or if we're in a hurry, the Dunkin' Donuts two minutes from our apartment.  Rarely do I spend a Saturday morning frying up eggs, flipping pancakes and pouring tall glasses of orange juice.

The one positive with not having a job right now is being able to enjoy a delicious breakfast on a Tuesday morning!  Sure, I ate this French toast by myself while watching Charmed and sitting on the couch in my PJs, but that doesn't bother me!  At some point in the day I managed to take a shower and put on some real pants.  Then I had a second serving of French toast for lunch.

As long as I am unemployed, I think I'll enjoy making myself fancy breakfasts!

Chobani Protein Drink

There is a whole secret world happening behind the scenes (or shelves) of the grocery store.  From Frozen Pizza to Bleach and even delicious bacon, there is an army of people who work to get the products you love on the shelf of your local grocery store - even more work to get you to buy them!

Boyfriends job title is "Food Broker."  In his role as food broker, he plays the middle man between the manufacturers of products and the grocery store buyers. From planning Sunday ads, to fighting for eye level placement on the shelf, it is his job to make sure the brands he represents get into your shopping cart.

I'm sure you also realize we live in a highly digitized world.  Manufacturers, grocery stores and brokers alike use the massive piles of data available to them to help sell to us, the consumer.  Here are some fun facts about how we spend our precious dollars at the grocery store.  I was surprised at quite a few of them!

- The average monthly budget for groceries is $311
- 37% of U.S. Shoppers use technology for grocery shopping
- Half of shoppers decide what to have for dinner the same day

Do you make a shopping list before going to the store, here's how the average U.S. shopper writes it:
- 45% write the product type
- 6% write the Brand name of the product
- 1% write the Brand name and specific type
- 29% write a combination of the above
- 19% don't typically write a shopping list

When you go to the grocery store, do you go alone?
- 46% Shop alone
- 32% Shop with their Spouse/Partner
-10% Kids under 5
- 8% Kids 6-12
- 6% Kids 13-17
- 5% Adult children
- 3% Other relatives
- 2% Friends
- 1% Roommate
- 1% Someone else

Next time you go to the grocery store and stand in front of that shelf of yogurt, you will have a new found understanding of all the work involved to get it there!

Help show your support of BF's job campaign by tweeting Chobani:

Let @pitchCHObani sell me @Chobani yogurt so @WildeKitchen keeps posting delicious Chobani inspired recipes #InterviewOverYogurt

Why Bother? 2012 - Granola Bars

Yes, the Why Bother challenge has spilled over into the new year!  I'm finally over a long bout of bronchitis and have drained nearly all of the congestion from my head.  Nobody is happier than I am, except maybe the hundred or so people I share my train car with.  No more loud coughing from me!  So many of my friends and family have been battling with some virus, bacterium or other, this season.  And after a month of being sick, I'm happy to count myself among the healthy again.

With the bronchitis I was battling, I had to push of the last few challenges of the Why Bother? challenge.  This January we will complete the challenges with granola bars, crackers and soft cheeses.  I'm excited to finish all of the challenges that you gave me over a year ago, so let's get started with snacks!

Most foodie friends that I know are highly unlikely to venture down the cereal bar aisle in the grocery store.  You bakers out there probably have your own go to recipe for granola bars, perfected after many tries in the kitchen with different grains, nuts and dried fruits. 

I want everyone else out there to have a go at the bar.  Or in this case, the cup!  I love making granola bars at home.  They change every time I make them, depending on what I have in my kitchen.  Sometimes they are heavy on the nuts, sometimes I have an odd assortment of dried fruits.  You should feel free to adapt each granola bar recipe in the same way.

Today I bring you a baked granola bar recipe (Saturday we'll have a no-bake variant) that combines some of my favorite flavors.  Peanut butter, cherry and oats.  It's like a PB&J sandwich!  Don't have any dried cherries in the house?  Substitute the dried fruits for whatever you have lying around!

Granola Bar Muffins
Adapted from Snack Girl

This recipe was given to me (via my mom) from a fitness fanatic.  She loved that these bars are low in calories, high in protein and packs major flavor.  With no added sugar, these bars are great to feed your kiddos or yourself!

1/2 cup peanut butter
2 very ripe bananas, mashed with a fork
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
1/2 cup dried cherries
1/2 cup golden raisins
1/2 cup mixed dried berries (mine included raspberry, cherry, cranberry & blueberry)
1 cup rolled oats
1 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 350 F and lightly coat a 12-cup muffin pan with cooking spray.

Mix peanut butter and mashed bananas with a fork.  Add nuts, dried fruits, oats and vanilla.  Stir until it all comes together.  Scoop 1/4 cup of the mixture into each muffin cup and lightly press into the pan.

Bake for 15 minutes.  Remove from the oven and let cool for 5 minutes on a wire rack.  Remove granola cups from the pan and let cool completely on the rack.  Store in an airtight container in the fridge for up to a week.

Banana Bread Donuts

I want to thank you all for sharing your stories of your days in braces.  While I'm not looking forward to the next year and a half, I know that it will be all worth it in the end.  Sure, I'll spend some time sipping on smoothies and spooning up risotto, but I'll come out of it all with the smile I've always wanted.  I'm thinking that we'll have to start  monthly smoothie and monthly risotto posts!  I'm going to get so good at stirring!

After my orthodontia appointment Wednesday night, I was feeling fine.  It wasn't until the next afternoon that I was starting to feel the difference and, as strange as this may sound, I was completely aware of my teeth.  Every last one of them.  There wasn't pain, just the sensation that I had a whole bunch of teeth in my mouth and that they were trying to move around.  After reading a bit about the actual process that occurs during braces, I was happy to know that the worst of it would be over after three days. 

Sure enough, come the weekend I was ready to have some (soft) solid foods!  I spent the weekend cooking and baking, filling the house with sweet and savory smells.  If you were following my crazy series of tweets this weekend, you got a sneak preview of Thursdays bagels.  Boyfriend got a cheesey and meaty dinner Sunday night.  And I got to break in my new donut pan.

I waited and waited, until I had a good idea of what I wanted to make, before buying a donut pan.  I figured that if I didn't have any recipes in mind for the pan, it would just sit in the cupboard and gather dust.  Once I collected a bunch of ideas on scraps of papers, boyfriend and I picked up a pan while shopping at Michael's.  You can look forward to many donut recipes to come and I'll enjoy eating them all year long, even with my new braces.

Banana Coconut Muffins

I'm out.  Yesterday I said goodbye to the hallowed halls of academia, my wonderful labmates, my brilliant undergrad and my faithful hood.  I made the trek to my new home sweet home, New Jersey.  This morning I woke up realizing that I wouldn't ever again be working seven day weeks.  I wouldn't see the sun rise and set while working at my bench.  No more would I lose days and weeks, only to realize that summer had passed me by.  It's time to revel in it, I'm a grown up!

It sounds strange to be excited about being a grown up, but I've been in the ranks of higher education for eleven and a half years.  And this isn't even a long time for someone with my degree.  I graduated undergrad in four years, even with taking a year to be a photography major.  I completed my PhD in exactly five years, defending my thesis on the exact day that I joined UW - Madison, five years later.  I worked as a Postdoc in a fabulous lab and completed a couple of natural projects. 

In the end I obtained the goal I set forth as a graduate student.  Most people make 30 before 30 goals.  I made just one goal and I made it, with a few months to spare.  Get a real job, before hitting the big three-O.  Now I'm making big plans of what to do with my weekends, how to spend my vacations and trying to figure out what real people do with three-day weekends.  At least I'll have help to fill my time. 

For eight years boyfriend and I have been a long distance couple, both of us moving around the country for jobs and school.  I'm very happy to tell you that I'm sitting in OUR apartment, writing this post.  Together at last, I hope I don't annoy him too much.  Better go make him some cookies to soften the transition.

Banana Mallow Cups

In the words of Rachel Zoe, these mallow cups are totally bananas. I mean, I die.


I’ve been having a ball making candies this year during my Candy Challenge. Originally I started off with simple things, taffy, truffles, marshmallows. After several successful batches of candy I’ve gotten the confidence to try more and more complicated things. These mallow cups are pretty complicated, but worth the time you put into them.

The original mallow cup is something that I don’t see everywhere. It’s a milk chocolate cup, filled with creamy marshmallow and a slightly crunchy top. I’m not really sure what that crunchy top comes from, but it’s delicious. When I decided to take on the mallow cup I wanted to do something a little different, hence the bananas!

I brought these bad boys into work and put them in our break room without a note. Before I could send out an e-mail, a good portion of them were already gone and my coworkers were confused. “What was in those chocolate things?” They asked me. My answer? “Bananas! Or Bananas and peanut butter.” I had decided to take half of the batch and fill them with banana fluff and creamy peanut butter, but I neglected to label them differently. Two coworkers, who got two different fillings, were arguing about what was in the cups. Both of them were right.

Either way, these mallow cups were bananas. In such a good way! Whether you decide to keep them simple and fill them with just banana fluff, or you take a hint from Elvis and add in some peanut butter, they won’t last long. Personally, I ate at least a quarter of the batch.

Banana Whoopie Pies

It would seem that I’ve been making a lot of cookies recently! I suppose that it’s that time of year! This year I wasn’t in the mood for the regular old boring cookies. I didn’t want to make raspberry thumbprints and chocolate mint cookies, I wanted to break out of the mold. Go cookie crazy! Throw tradition to the wind and have some fun. So I started out with the dark chocolate hearts, wonderful. Then I thought, let’s get nuts! It’s whoopie pie time!

The whoopie pie. If you haven’t heard, it’s the cupcake of 2010. They’re getting more hits on Google than “What to buy my husband for Christmas.” That’s pretty popular! If you’ve never had one, then apparently you’ve been hiding under a house all year long. Now is your time to embrace the whoopie pie.

Wikipedia describes them as “made of two round mound-shaped pieces of chocolate cake, sometimes pumpkin cake, with a sweet, creamy filling or frosting sandwiched between them.” Cake mounds? Cream filling? Sounds right up my alley! How about you?

Best Banana Bread

I seem to have made a lot of fruit breads recently. Apple cake Wednesday, banana bread today! Some people like apples, and some like bananas, gotta try to make everyone happy! Personally, I am a big banana fan. I start my morning, everyday, with a banana. It could be with cereal, a muffin, pancakes or just milk. The main dish is ever changing, but the banana remains. Unlike some picky people, I will eat a banana at most stages of ripeness. From once it turns mostly yellow (green around the edges is okay) until it is almost overwhelmed with brown spots, I’m going to eat it. There is a line that I just won’t cross, that last banana inevitably turns completely brown. I won’t touch it and into the freezer it goes.

I have several single bananas in the freezer, waiting to be baked into tasty treats. I find that freezing the bananas leads to a creamy texture in the final bread. Freezing them slightly breaks down their cellular structure and makes them easy to mash (just be sure to let them thaw in a bowl). You could even buy some bananas just for the purpose of baking them! Toss them in the freezer once they turn yellow and a few days later they are ready for baking!

This particular recipe has its healthy quotient bulked up with its use of whole wheat flour and Greek yogurt. I also love to bake them in mini loaf pans, that way your serving looks so much bigger! And if you can’t stop yourself from eating the whole thing, you only had three servings… Excuse me now, I have to go eat a loaf of banana bread.