I wish someone would send me a box of cookies!

A couple of posts ago I mentioned my friend Maria, and how she's asked me to make her some cookie favors for her step-daughters wedding. Well, she told me everyone loved the cookies and as a way to thank the vendors for all their great work she wanted to send them each a dozen cookies.

I baked the same 3 types that were made for the wedding, chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin and chocolate, chocolate chip and boxed them up in these great boxes I found by Martha Stewart.

I Dream of Costco

I've been married 2.5 years, crazy!! I still remember our first morning back from our honeymoon, we woke up and my husband turned to me and said he was hungry, lets have eggs. I sat up and thought about it for a minute before I turned to him and said, me too, but I have no idea how to make eggs. The look on his face said it all. See I was never much of a cook, at the time I knew how to make two, maybe three dishes, nothing fancy. Not saying that eggs are fancy, but I had just never made eggs. We ended up at Dunkin Donuts that morning.

As time went on, I started cooking more and more, and somewhere along the way I really began enjoying it. I began planning menus and making trips to the supermarket and even started shopping at Costco. Now, I love Costco, even though its just me and my husband I love shopping there, but with just the two of us living in a one bedroom condo, buying bulk doesn't really make a lot of sense. I would always go in and buy a big bag of bananas, I mean how could you resist the price, about $1.30, for 7 or 8 bananas!! We'd always have a few that would go bad and I would just throw them away, such a waste. One morning I was looking at my very, very ripe bananas and decided to find a recipe to use them up. I came across this recipe from Allrecipes.com for Banana Crumb Muffins and decided to give it a try. I figured I would eventually have to tackle breakfast, especially after the egg episode (which my husband still tells people about to this day!!).
They were delicious, moist and crumbly. Both my husband and I loved them and I've been making them ever since. That was the first time I had ever baked anything from scratch, and it was when I fell in love with baking.

INGREDIENTS

Muffins:
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 ripe bananas, mashed
1/2 cup white sugar
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 egg, lightly beaten
1/3 cup butter, melted

Topping:
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 tablespoon butter

DIRECTIONS
1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Lightly grease 10 muffin cups, or line with muffin papers.
2. In a large bowl, mix together 1 1/2 cups flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. In another bowl, beat together bananas, sugars, egg, vanilla and melted butter. Stir the banana mixture into the flour mixture just until moistened. Spoon batter into prepared muffin cups.
3. In a small bowl, mix together brown sugar, 2 tablespoons flour and cinnamon. Cut in 1 tablespoon butter until mixture resembles coarse cornmeal. Sprinkle topping over muffins.
4. Bake in preheated oven for 18 to 20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into center of a muffin comes out clean.