Chocolate Chip Banana-Wheat Bread

Last night I went into the freezer for some ice cubes, and saw that I had a few frozen bananas hanging out in there. Whenever fresh bananas get a little too ripe in our house, I stick them in the freezer, to use them in the future for a delicious treat. Well, I save them up until I have enough for a recipe, and it just so happened I had 4 in there. Since I couldn't do my laundry tonight (the dryer's broken!) Banana Bread it is!

Chocolate Chip Banana-Wheat Bread
(adapted from the "Banana-Wheat Quick Bread" recipe in The Pillsbury Best of the Bake-Off Cookbook, published in 1996)


Ingredients
1 c. All-Purpose Flour
3/4 c. Whole Wheat Flour
1 c. Granulated Sugar
1 tsp. Baking Soda
1 tsp. Salt
1 1/2 c. Mashed Ripe Bananas
1/4 c. Butter, softened
2 tbsp. Orange Juice
1/4 tsp. lemon juice (I didn't have any so I just used lime juice)
1 egg
3/4 c. Chocolate Chips (supposed to be raisins, but I conveniently didn't have any on hand!)

Directions

Preheat your oven to 350°. Grease and flour the bottom of your loaf pan(s). I used two, because we have a mismatched pair, but use as few or as many as you want!

In a big bowl, mix together the flours, sugar, baking soda, salt, bananas, butter, orange juice, lemon juice, and egg.

(now doesn't that just look yummy?)

Mix everything at medium speed for about 3 minutes. Lower to the lowest speed setting, and add the chocolate chips. Stir just until they're evenly dispersed.

Pour batter into your pan(s) and put them in the oven for 55 minutes. Mine only took 40 minutes, but that's also because it was in two pans. So just keep an eye on it!

Once your bread's baked, let it cool in the pan(s) for about 5 minutes, and then remove it from the pan and let it continue cooling. (Or, follow my mom's lead and eat it as soon as it cools enough to hold in your hand without burning yourself!)

Delicious! 

Bon appétit!

Apple Cinnamon Muffins!

So this past weekend I was feeling antsy - it had snowed (!) before Halloween (!!) in Philadelphia (!!!) so I had a bit of cabin fever and decided I wanted to bake something. I carved my pumpkin, hoping to use its guts to make something delicious, until Martha Stewart luckily told me that would be a bad idea.

Thanks Martha!

Since I couldn't use my pumpkin, I looked around for something else to use, and discovered a pair of Crispin apples that hadn't been used yet, along with a red delicious that had seen better days. I googled "Apple Muffin", et voila! This delicious recipe from King Arthur Flour!

Now, my mama is a big fan of King Arthur. In fact, she refuses to use any flour BUT King Arthur in her kitchen. And every time we get one of their catalogs in, I sit and drool at all of their fun little tools and delicious-looking recipes. So it was only appropriate that I should use one of their recipes to scratch my baking itch!

Nom nom nom...

Apple Cinnamon Muffins

(adapted from King Arthur Flour recipe)

makes 24 full muffins

Ingredients

2 c. 100% Whole Wheat Flour 

2 c. 100% White Whole Wheat Flour (King Arthur calls for 100% WHITE whole wheat flour, and then all-purpose flour. Since we only ever buy white whole wheat, and use it as all-purpose, these muffins have extra fiber. They still taste delish though, so I'm making that part of the recipe! But all-purpose works fine here!)

2 tsp. Baking Soda

2 tsp. Baking Powder

1/2 tsp. Salt

3 tbsp. Cinnamon (more than King Arthur calls for, but I'm a big fan of cinnamon, so use to taste!)

1 c. Butter (2 sticks) room temperature

1 c. Granulated Sugar

1 c. Dark Brown Sugar

2 Large Eggs, lightly beaten (I pretty much just broke the yolks and stirred a little until the yellow leaked out.)

2 c. Buttermilk (I just used sour milk - pour 1/8 c. white vinegar into 1 7/8 c. 2% milk, and let it sit for 5 minutes -- it works the same!)

3 Large Apples, peeled, cored, and chopped (haphazardly, if you're me!)

Instructions

Preheat your oven to 450°F. Prep your muffin tins -- you can just throw some cupcake liners in them, but if you're out of them, or just lazy (like me!) you can grease and flour them. (And, if you're SUPER lazy like me, just buy a "baking" spray that has the flour and grease all in the one can for you. Easy Peasy!)

In a medium bowl, mix together your 2 flours, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon. Make sure you stir them super well so the cinnamon get evenly dispersed throughout!

In a large bowl, cream the butter with an electric mixer. Add the white sugar, and 1/2 cup of the dark brown sugar. Set the rest of the brown sugar aside for the end. Beat the butter and sugars until they're nice and fluffy. Mine didn't get fluffy, exactly, it more like finally just mixed together, which I figured was good enough.

Add the eggs, and mix until semi-combined. (You can mix all day and that butter and eggs still won't blend totally.) Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a spatula, and give it one more quick mix to incorporate the scraped additions.

Add the buttermilk (sour milk) slowly, on the lowest possible setting. According to King Arthur (whom I will continue to refer to as if he were a real person) if you over-mix in this step, you run the risk of curdling your mixture. I didn't really see any curdling with my sour milk, so maybe just buttermilk curdles. Anyway, if that kind of stuff makes you nervous, you can mix equal parts of the buttermilk and flour mixture in, alternating between the two.

Either way, stir the dry ingredients in on low, and then turn off the mixer. Using a spatula, gently fold the apples into the batter. (This is done exactly like it sounds. Fauna actually did it right - but DEFINITELY use the spatula!)

Using a spoon, scoop batter into each of the 24 cups, and then sprinkle the rest of the dark brown sugar on top. Bake for 10 minutes, then lower oven temperature to 400 and bake for another 10.

Let them cool, and then dig in!

Bon appétit!

Next up: Chocolate Chip Banana-Wheat Bread

well, hallo, cupcake!

So first, let me gush about how much I am loving this background!! Cupcakes are quickly becoming my favorite thing to make. Think about it. You've got a perfectly proportioned piece of cake, with the perfect amount of icing, and no messy cutting involved! ANNNND, it comes in its own handy-dandy wrapper! Hellooooooooo, cupcake!!

But this post isn't about cupcakes. Well, a little, but it's mainly about cake.

I don't know about you, but every year I get so excited about Fall. I like that the weather gets a little cooler, reminding me that Winter is on its way, and of course the leaves changing color are awesome, but mostly, I like

pumpkin.

Yup, pumpkin. Pies, especially. And bread. Pumpkin bread is deeeeelish. What could be better than both of them put together???

A pumpkin spice cake that looks like a pumpkin. I mean, duh.

(Doesn't L's table look super cute??)

So BLT had a Oktoberfest/Halloween party this past weekend, and I (por su puesto) offered to make dessert! I had this perfect little ditty in mind and couldn't wait to make it.

First, I got out my new favorite baking cookbook, Cake Mix Creations by Taste of Home. Now, most of you probably won't ever buy a baking cookbook (most normal people don't) but if you ever do, BUY THIS ONE. It's the perfect kind of book for a lazy baker. You want your cake to taste amazing, but don't feel like spending 3 hours prepping, mixing, and baking? Shockingly,
neither do I! I'd rather spend my time on more important things, like decorating! And eating!

So, here it is, my (slightly modified) version of the Pumpkin Spice Cake.

PUMPKIN SPICE CAKE

2 18 1/4 oz boxes of spice cake mix (I used Betty Crocker, but only because she was on sale. I'm not picky.)

6 eggs

1 15 oz can of solid-pack pumpkin (I think that means use real pumpkin, not pre-made pie filling.)

2/3 cup canola oil

2/3 cup evaporated milk (They didn't specify a fat content, so I used low fat. Turned out FINE.)

1 12 oz bag of vanilla chips (I used chocolate, because they taste better. Simple.)

2 cans vanilla icing (I used buttercream, again, because I think it tastes better. Also, Betty, but also because it was on sale.)

1 cup flaked coconut

food coloring

In a large bowl (AKA the bigger bowl on my mom's awesome stand mixer) I mixed the 2 cake mixes, the pumpkin, the milk, the eggs, and the oil, in no particular order. I beat them for about

30 seconds on low, then bumped it up to medium for around 2 minutes. (J asked what would happen if I threw it up to 10. I told him I'll show him in his kitchen sometime - where he can deal with the mess.) Then I mixed in the chocolate chips (a few mysteriously disappeared...) on low.
Next up, baking. First, two very greasy muffin cups each got some cakey love. Then, this lovely heirloom from Grandmom Lulu

got greased up and loaded with some batter. (I could only bake one half of the cake at a time, because I didn't have a matching bundt. It took FOREVERRRRRR)

Pop 'em all in the oven at 350 for around 20 minutes for the cuppies, and 40-45 for the bundt.

Then have a dance break.

When the baking is finished, take everyone back out and let them cool. I let them cool overnight because I am incredibly impatient and knew that I would try to start icing while one or all were still warm. So I restrained myself. (Barely)

The next morning, I leveled off my cakes (which is much harder than it sounds) and smeared some buttercream on the top of one. I plopped the other bundt on top, and make sure they were sturdily held together. They were. Phew. Then, came the coloring!

On the box of the food coloring, the mixture for orange is supposed to be 12 drops of yellow to 4 drops of red. For one can of frosting. I used about 1 and 2/3, and still had to use 42 drops of yellow and 14 drops of red. So, as long as you keep the right ratio, you'll get there eventually. Once it was nice and orangey, I began icing. Toooootally harder than I originally thought, mainly because the bundt I used has many little ridges, and I had to make sure the icing got in all the
little crevices. When I was done though, it looked GOOOOOOOD. Then, I leveled off my cuppies, and plopped one of them right-side-up into the middle of the bundt, to act as a plug. I threw a little icing on there, and smooshed the other one upside-down on top of it. Perfect!

Next up: The Secret!

I love Betty Crocker. She invented this awesome little doohickey

which makes it impossibly easy to do icing. I just pumped a little of the icing out of the hair-mousse-like can, and smeared it all over the top cuppie for the stem. Then, I used the round tip to just make squiggly vines all around the pumpkin, growing from both the stem and the base. And then came my favorite part.
This thing has 4 different tips to use, one of which happens to be the leaf tips. Leaves are super easy and super fun to make. I'm pretty sure I had at least 3 times as many leaves on the vines as was necessary, but I couldn't help myself! Look how cute they were!

(I hate that you can see a little of the white icing peeking out the top, but hopefully you will be distracted by the adorable leaves....)

Last step was to dye a little coconut green and sprinkle around the base as grass!

Bon Ape Tit!

(As Sean Connery would say...)

Next post:
12 Layer Cake!