Having some brown banana’s to me comes with two implications. One baking something or the other winging them at passers by. To do this you slightly open the banana and toss not quite at a unknowing person but near them. So it splatters near them. Considering I know longer live in a high rise I decided to go with the baking option. Slightly modifying my banana bread recipe and mixing in some Black Oak Nutcracker Porter my dark chocolate banana muffins turned out quite well. The beer was a nice addition to change the taste a little bit. Once I get baking I tend to do a few things at once.

As the mess is already happening and will not be much bigger with two types of muffins rather than one. My next muffin was a bit more of an experiment. I’ve never made carrot anything so spent grain carrot muffins was a bit of an adventure. Which I then complicated by deciding they needed caramel in them. The Caramel was made with the remainder of the nutcracker porter from the banana muffins. Making a dark rich caramel that fully complimented the carrot muffins with the fluffy soft body and long stands of carrot throughout.

My friends at Black Oak Brewing co. gave me a a bag of spent grain culled from brewing their fantastic beer. I took this and adapted an Oatmeal Chocolate chip cookie recipe. Which turned out really well and was fun to play with. Figuring out baking times and just how they should be. The first few batches were undercooked so that they were almost cake like. The spent grain still has moisture in it unlike the oats the recipe called for. Some people proffered these ones to the later batches that were darker and more cookie like. Either way a fun way to recycle the grain and some delicious cookies.