Banana oatmeal chocolate chip almond muffins

Can i put more things into these?!?! Anyway, like I said, I am moving Saturday so I was going through my food and realized I had too many bananas and leftover oatmeal and almonds plus a bag of chocolate chips. So I had to figure out how to put them all together and this is what the outcome was! I am SURE these are to be a hit with friends and family!! Great breakfast item!

Recipe:

1.5 cups of oats (toast them in oven at 375* for about 10 min or fragrant)

1 cup all purpose flour

1.5 cups whole wheat pastry flour

1T baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp allspice

1/8 tsp cloves

1 stick of butter melted

3 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

1/4 cup canola oil

3/4 cup milk

3 ripe bananas mashed

1 cup chocolate chips

1 cup chopped almonds

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375*

Combine first 8 ingredients (all dry) (minus choc chips and almonds). Combine butter through bananas (all wet ingredients). Pour wet into dry just until incorporated. Fold in chocolate chips and almonds. Scoop into muffin tins with liners. These don't rise too much so you can fill them full. Bake until golden brown on top...could be 30 minutes. They are delicious directly out of the oven. So warm and fluffy! Happy breakfast eating :)

Chocolate Stout Cake

Sounds interesting huh? That's what I thought. I LOVE dark beer and I thought what a brilliant idea to put beer, chocolate, and a bit of coffee together! I found this recipe in the October 2009 Bon Appetit and thought it was very fitting that 1) it was guinness' 250th bday and 2) it's oktoberfest!!! I didn't use guinness though. I found an Ohio brewed stout called Edmund Fitzgerald from Great Lakes Brewing Co. The description on the bottle was "porter combines a complex, roasty aroma with a bittersweet, chocolate-coffee taste". It was perfect for this recipe, which also uses dark chocolate and coffee. The recipe can be found at epicurious.com, one of my favorite websites! However, I have a problem with not stocking enough ingredients in my house so I had to alter the recipe. Instead of 14 T of butter (198 g) I used about 166 g and the rest vegetable oil. Also, for the frosting I didn't have 1 lb of bittersweet chocolate, so I used about 13 oz of bittersweet, 1 oz unsweetened, and 2 oz milk chocolate. I also didn't have instant espresso so I used 1tsp of coffee extract! The cake seemed to turn out just great, so I don't think my changes made a huge difference. Try it for yourself and I don't think you'll be dissapointed!