5 easy baking recipes to try while practicing social distancing

Chocolate+chip+brownies.

Photo by: Chocolate with Grace

Chocolate chip brownies.

Penny Joyce, Staff Writer

During the coronavirus pandemic, students all around Massachusetts have been trying to find something to do to occupy themselves. Other than binge-watching TV shows or movies, me and a couple of my friends have tried baking. Here are 5 easy and delicious recipes to try while stuck inside your house:

1. Blueberry muffins 

These blueberry muffins are delicious whether you love blueberrys a lot or aren’t the biggest fan. Though they may take a little longer than other recipes here, they are well worth the extra effort. It’s also better to use fresh blueberries instead of frozen ones for this recipe to be the best it can be.

https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/double-blueberry-muffins-recipe-1938533

2. Chocolate chip brownies

Brownies are a great comfort food to bake while stuck in your house. The recipe only takes 45 minutes so you’ll have warm brownies under an hour. This recipe also allows you to add chocolate chips or walnuts into your brownies if you want to giving you lots of options. When making this, you can also wrap the brownies in tin foil in order to keep them moist once they are baked.

https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/9599/quick-and-easy-brownies/

3. Vanilla cupcakes

Cupcakes are another great food to try and bake during this time. This recipe is easy and has a delicious buttery taste once cooked. An important part to this recipe is to make sure the cupcakes are cooked all the way through. To test this, you can stick a toothpick in the middle of one to see if the inside still has uncooked batter. This recipe doesn’t include the frosting, so for that, you can use whatever kind you’d like; I like making my own buttercream frosting, or using the market basket brand.

https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/food-network-kitchen/go-to-vanilla-cupcakes-3338835

4. Chocolate chip muffins

Similar to blueberry muffins, these are very delicious muffins. These muffins are extremely easy to make, take very little time and have great results. One batch of these makes 12 medium-sized muffins and make a great morning breakfast. This recipe also has you add a sugar topping to the muffins before you put them in the oven. By adding this, the muffins have more flavor, eventhough they are a little bit messy to eat.

https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/7906/chocolate-chip-muffins/

5. Chocolate Chip cookies

Classic chocolate chip cookies are the best things to bake when stuck in this quarantine. This classic recipe is easy to make and has great results for incredible soft cookies. One key thing to do while baking these is to make sure the butter is soft before adding it to your mixture. This makes it so the cookies aren’t lumpy and so the batter mixes correctly. Another key to this is to make sure you don’t overcook the cookies. To have a nice soft cookie, it’s best to take them out of the oven when they look a little undercooked, of course not too undercooked though. By doing this, the cookie is soft and you don’t risk burning them.

https://www.verybestbaking.com/recipes/18476/original-nestle-toll-house-chocolate-chip-cookies/