Baking Saturday for a Week of Good Eats

I’ve just started a new job—well, two new jobs, actually.  Both are teaching, and for the next ten weeks, it’s going to be all teaching all the time—well, much of the time.  It’s a bit overwhelming to go from no job to two jobs, but as hard as it is, I can recognize the blessing in it as well.

As a result of all this new work—and anyone who knows a teacher knows there’s so much more work than the time spent in the classroom—I’ve been worried about feeding myself.  When you come home mentally—and sometimes physically—exhausted, the last thing you want to do is cook yourself a meal, which is why last week, I made a noodle dish that would be lunch for a few days, went the The Family Store for some easy lunch and dinner food (Hummus, anyone?), and ordered out.  I can see that making food in quantities that will provide leftovers and going to The Family Store are going to become fixtures in my life, but I want to avoid too much eating outside of the house.

These last few months of being broke have shown me how much cash eating out can eat up.  While I do love eating out when the food is amazing, what tends to happen when you are exhausted is that your standards become lower.  As a result, you end up spending too much money on food that is neither all that tasty nor all that healthy.  Not having the money to do that over the past few months has opened my eyes to what a waste it is on every level.  Though it is more work and though it takes time, cooking at home is a cheaper, healthier, and more delicious option.

To that end, I spent yesterday baking.  I meant to do it last week, but last week was my first with two jobs, and I was too overwhelmed.  Now, anyone who knows me knows how much I loved sweet baked goods.  I sort of cannot live without them, which is why it is lucky that I’m such a good baker.  For my weekly sweets, I made my new go-to, Apple Custardy Squares, as well as banana muffins for a healthy-ish AM snack. 

The Apple Custardy Squares are some Dorrie-Greenspan goodness, and I have made mine the past few times with 2 tbsp. of dark rum and a great mix of apples—Fuji, Mutsu’s Mother, Honeycrisp, and whatever other sweet and juicy apples they have at the farmers market.  When it comes to apples, I’m pretty exclusively a farmers-market girl.  Now, of course, all the apples are apples that have been in storage since last fall, but they have been great so far.  My biggest apple discoveries of late have been the Mutsu’s Mother—a sweet, juicy, almost pear-like apple—and Braeburn—which seems to me the Platonic ideal of apple, a position previously held by the Honeycrisp.  Braeburn has this apply scent that is pretty much what you imagine if some asks you to think of the scent of apples.  It is rocking my world right now.

As for the banana muffins, I followed my own recipe, one I developed after years of using my mom’s shortening-based recipe.  I got tired of the blandness of shortening, but when I used all butter, I found it too overwhelming, so I came up with this happy medium.  However, I am pretty annoyed with myself at the moment.  I’d meant to try browning the ¼ cup of butter I use in the recipe, but I forgot to.  I decided to try this after making Dorrie Greenspan’s Brown-Butter-and-Vanilla-Bean Weekend Cake.  In the batter, the smell and taste of the brown butter was divine, but I’m not totally sure how much of a difference in made in the taste of the finished product.  Still, I meant to give it a try in my master muffin recipe, but in the exhaustion of last night, I totally spaced it.  Oh well!  I guess it just means I’ll have to make muffins again in a week or two.  C’est dommage!  Actually, I plan to try a few ways: first, I’ll just substitute brown butter for the melted butter in the recipe, and if that tastes good, I’ll try again using ½ cup brown butter to replace all the fat.  I’ll let you know how it goes when I do.