Homemade Cocoa Walnut meal saves the day!

Hey all,
Forgive me for this short post. I'm in the process of wrapping things up here in sunny California before I move to New York (exciting!) for the next four years of grueling education in medical school (equally exciting, but daunting as well). So to speed up the cleaning process I'm trying to use up as many ingredients as I can before I move. Especially the ingredients that will spoil in the shipping process - nuts, frozen goods, produce, the usual stuff.

A few weeks ago, I had made those delicious pancakes with the strawberry sauce and the main ingredient in the pancakes was hazelnut meal. That is posted here. Trust me, they are fantastic. In fact, I've made them religiously for the past several weeks, because they are cheap, delicious, and easy to make. When I ran out of hazelnut meal, I turned to the bag of almond meal in my fridge.

So imagine my reaction when I got up this morning only to find that the almond meal was all gone. I smacked my head in frustration. I wondered why the universe was plotting against me. Now what would I use as a dry ingredient that would be tasty (flour is not tasty by itself). The clock said that it was 7 am. Do I really want to wait for an hour for Trader Joe's to open to make pancakes? The answer was an emphatic NO.

Almond and Chocolate chip muffins (my second minor disaster)

Hey all,
So if you look through this entire blog, then you will notice one thing that is missing. All right, well several things, but one thing is muffins. Where are the quintessential little bite size munchies? How can I call myself a baking blog without muffins?!!

That little detail had to be rectified right away. So I went to the store and got myself a muffin pan and a box of paper liners. Proud of my step forward, I started planning what muffin recipe to make and usually I go to my go-to-guides - Joy of baking and 101 cookbooks to get some ideas. Usually all the recipes I'd seen thus far involved way too much sugar than I wanted in my diet.

Then I found THE recipe. Simple, straightforward and not too much sugar. I adapted it considerably and made the Almond and Chocolate chip muffins.

Little did I know about the trouble I was about to have....