Spinach Cheddar Muffins

Hello,

This is a recipe I first discovered in 2013 here. I made it a couple of times since, and yesterday made it for the first time of the year (2016). They're ok, not exceptional, but make a good plug. Sometimes we eat them with pastas. It's good. Unfortunately, I forgot the changes I had done to the recipe (and had not write them down previously), so the muffins didn't end up that great. I put 2 tsp of baking powder, but 1 is clearly enough. I believe my muffins' weird taste is due to too much baking powder.

The previous link gives you the original recipe, but here is the version altered by me. The comments left by users are also great ideas to improve the muffins' taste.

qt.	ingredients
1 ½ cup	all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp	baking soda
1 tsp	baking powder
1 pinch	salt
1/8 tsp	garlic powder (cuz my mom doesn't really like garlic)
6 tbsp	melted butter
1	egg
1 cup	milk
1/2 cup	spinach
1 cup	grated cheddar cheese

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Lightly grease 12 cup muffin cups.
2. In a pan, lightly cook the spinach (so they become like sauteed, but not too much.)
3. In a bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt together.
4. Melt the butter. (this time, I only used 1 tbsp instead of 6.)
5. In another bowl, stir the melted butter, egg, milk, spinach, and Cheddar cheese together until evenly blended. Slowly stir in the flour mixture to form a batter. Spoon about 2 tablespoons into each muffin cup.
6. Bake in preheated oven until a toothpick inserted into the center of a muffin comes out clean, about 35 minutes. (for me, I baked 15 minutes and added another 5 minutes. I had 12 muffins in total.)

Enjoy!

Making coconut oil at home

My first try on making coconut oil at home, for my hair. I have been using Moroccanoil since 2013, but I've been wanting to try a cheaper alternative for my hair that I can make at home. (ಠ⌣ಠ)
I chose coconut oil because I see a lot of people on Youtube and the internet praising the benefits of this oil, not only for the body, but also for its effects on the hair, skin burns, itchiness, and more.

I did use in 2013 a coconut hair treatment, but didn't notice big difference; my hair was still falling (from heat and dye overuse) and they didn't look that much healthier.. for the price paid.
I'm not saying you shouldn't try it though, only for me it was not worth it. There are however other people who really like the product, such as Beautyklove on Youtube. She does talk about it here.

Ok first of all the main mistake I made is I based most of my steps on this video. Not that it was bad, but I should have looked at other videos too.

The video is great.

But because I relied on this video and the outcome of each steps did not look exactly like what was in the video, it brought a lot of uncertainty and clumsiness during the process. I just looked at what I saw and figured out because mine didn't look like in the video, I had screwed up. For example at the end, when they boil the coconut oil, there are clear and small coconut remains in the video and it tells me to cook for 1 hour (or until it becomes brown); in my case, the coconut paste/remains was sticking to the pot. And it turned brown only after cooking 2 minutes on the stove. I had so many questions like should I set the fire to medium or high? Is the burning smell normal? Why do the coconut remains look like this?

So I went on the internet to check all this while my oil continued to cook (or burn) and ended up.. roasted. And now it smells like burnt coconut oil. Though I'll still use it on my hair lol.

Pretty useless video to watch, but I'll definitely change certain things when I'll make it again next time (I hope it will be an "improved version" of the first try.)

I used 5 coconuts. Based on the picture you saw at the beginning of this blogpost, you can guess the quantity of coconut oil it gave me...

So there you have it, my (first) attempt at making coconut oil at home.

Bye!