The Charm of Home

Browned Butter Sourdough Chocolate Chip Cookies

2026-10-11T14:19:46.196-05:00

I was watching a YouTuber the other day that was talking about making sourdough starter, and her t-shirt said, "currently hyper-focusing on sourdough." I thought, 'yah', that about sums up how it feels when you are trying to learn to make a decent loaf of this bread. I have never been very gifted with making bread anyway, so this is a new frontier in the kitchen. I have got a really active starter after almost a month of tending it everyday, and I also have several successful sourdough discard recipes.

This is one of my favorite, the browned butter sourdough chocolate chip cookies.

I feed my starter, and it goes to the top of the jar. This should be when I bake a loaf with it, but I am just learning that.

Then the next morning the starter has fallen, like this, and it is ready to be fed again. Why would I want to make sourdough anyway? It is really labor-intensive. The last time this country had a crisis we couldn't get yeast anywhere or bread. If I learned this skill, this would solve that problem. Not to mention that the kitchen has turned into a bakery with all of the discard recipes.

I tried several sourdough chocolate chip cookie recipes, and I wasn't convinced they were the cookie I was looking for till I tried this one. This is the Sourdough Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe from Simplicity and a Starter. I am no expert with sourdough at all, but if I can make it, you could make it. This cookie was perfect, but I made the cookie with a normal cookie-size scoop and baked it for 8 minutes instead of what the recipe suggested. The author used a 2-inch scoop and made large bakery-style cookies. In the beginning I did that, but my family likes a normal size cookie better than a giant one.

Have you ever tried baking sourdough bread or baking with the discard? I hope to keep expanding my skills and make some decent food in the process.

In Victory,
Sherry

Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins

2026-10-04T10:34:46.915-05:00

How have you been? I have been on hiatus trying to learn to make sourdough. You can definitely emphasize the "trying to learn." I have been successful with sourdough in the bread maker, but then that is cheating, sort of. So anyway, I will soldier on. I am sure I can master it. Meanwhile, so the family didn't starve, I made a pile of brown bananas into banana chocolate chip muffins. If I put enough chocolate in baked goods, my family will eat it, and I had never posted banana muffins before, so here you go.

Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins

Makes 12 or more muffins (regular muffin tin size)

Ingredients:

3/4 cup softened butter

1/4 cup granulated sugar

1/4 cup brown sugar

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

4 ripe bananas, mashed

1 3/4 cup all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips tossed with a tablespoon flour

extra chocolate chips for tops of muffins

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350°F.

In a large mixing bowl add granulated sugar, brown sugar, and softened butter. Use an electric mixer and cream the butter and the sugar for a minute on medium speed.

Then add to the bowl the vanilla, the 2 large eggs, and combine them with the butter and sugar on medium speed. Now in a separate bowl mash the four ripe bananas. Then add them to the batter bowl. Now add the dry ingredients; all-purpose flour, baking soda, salt and mix them into the batter. Take the chocolate chips in a separate bowl and toss with a tablespoon of flour to prevent them from sinking to the bottom of the muffins while baking. The fold them in with a spatula. Pour the batter into regular muffin tins, lined with parchment cups if you prefer and top with extra chocolate chips. Bake at 350° F for 20-24 minutes, until the toothpick comes out clean of the batter.

Recipe adapted from: simplyhomecooked.com

Enjoy!

In Victory,

Sherry

Moody Fall

2026-09-26T13:59:12.742-05:00

These are actually outtakes from last year. I have been busy baking and practicing my skills in the kitchen, so I found these and thought I would post.

Moody and fall go together. It has also been cloudy so it was perfect.

In Victory,
Sherry