Do you know the muffin chick?

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It's funny; I used to always have my blog set to the WYSIWYG editor, but lately I've been firing it up using the HTML editor. Technically, the Blogger interface should be called the "kinda-sorta-html-editor", as you don't have to format text or paragraphs or anything, but it's the HTML editor. And I sound damn cool saying I'm using the HTML editor. (My mom is still trying to figure out what I'm talking about ... it's cool, mom, just skip to paragraph four.)

At my job, a switch from sending Outlook-based emails to sending them via an email marketing service means that I've had to gradually learn basic HTML coding. And I'm starting to realize that I'm more comfortable producing documents in HTML and doing most of my own coding, than I am trying to make the email marketing interface do what I want. So I created templates in Sharepoint Designer (the software formerly known as FrontPage), since that lets you switch between the WYSIWYG and HTML editing seamlessly, and then I tweak all the coding I need daily.

It's cool, because, really? Who doesn't want to know a bit more about how things work? And when you're a closet control freak like I am, well, that extra degree of "ha! I am the lord of all I survey! Or, at least all that I survey and know how to do!" is just icing on the cake.

And that's how I lost my virginity.

See what I did there? I told my mom to skip to paragraph four and ... nevermind. It was funny as hell to me.

So I'm on post three out of the five I should have done by now for NaBloPoMo, but I think that's officially two more posts than I did in all of October, so go me. I have banana chocolate chip muffins hot from the oven, Parmesan bread rising in the bread maker and my windows wide open, so it must be fall in Texas. I also have all of the accompanying detritus in the sink, and I am not at all looking forward to cleaning up after myself.

But I will share my muffin recipe :) I've kinda bastardized a couple recipes and used spelt flour in place of regular flour.

Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins

Preheat oven to 350*

Wet ingredients
3 Tablespoons butter
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg
3/4 cup mashed banana
1/2 cup
1 teaspoon vanilla

Dry ingredients
2 cups spelt flour
3 teaspoons baking power
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 - 1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips

(You can do a cup of banana and 1/4 cup of milk, if you want. I just use whatever bananas I have and beat the crap out of them with the mixer, then use milk to reach 1 1/4 cups of banana + milk.) Cream the butter and sugar with a mixer. Add eggs and mix well. Add the already mixed up bananas (I did them first and measured so I knew how much milk to use) and the milk and mix it all until smooth.

Put the flour, baking power and salt in a bowl, and make a little well in the middle. Pour the liquid in and, using a spatula or big old spoon, fold, rather than stin, everything together. Mix thoroughly, but no longer than necessary, and then fold in the chips.

Spoon into greased muffin pan, bake at 350 degrees for 18-25 minutes. Makes 8-12 muffins, depending on how much you fill the cups in the pan :) Eat them right out of the oven for best results; you can also cool and freeze.

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