Banana Bread with Chocolate and Cinnamon Sugar

Well, it's been a while. A very long while. Another year has gone by and here we are already well into the new one. What does this year hold for you? 

I'm in the middle of completing my dissertation, enjoying the relative freedom from the strict study regime the past years and appreciating the new balance that allows time to enjoy my family, cook, bake and get back to blogging. 

These days I wake to a tiny cold nose pressed to my cheek between 5:00 and 5:30 a.m. and my daughters' little voice whispering, 'Wake up. I'm so, so hungry'. Hoisting myself out of bed and taking her chubby hand in mine, I stagger into the kitchen to fix her breakfast after which we snuggle together on the couch and watch Mickey Mouse Club House before the others wake up and it's time for all of them to start getting ready for school and work respectively. 

Which brings me to my daughters' lunch box. Each night since she started preschool a week ago, before going to sleep, she lists all of the 'so, so, many things' she wants me to pack in there. I think she thinks 'the lunch box' is a portable buffet and must contain infinite choices. When I pick her up from school in the afternoons I'm told how well she eats and how she really seems to enjoy her food. All of this is baffling for me when I consider that the same child has previously never wanted to sit down for a formal meal and would just eat sporadically out of the fridge when hungry. Think 10 mini-meals a day. A trail of half-eaten fruit and small bowls of nuts were left behind in every room of the house. Food always consumed while either bouncing on the chair, running around the dining table in circles, dancing to the tune of Higglytown Heroes, or sitting on the kitchen counter after 'helping' me with whatever I was making. 

Sandwich fillings were licked clean, the bread discarded. Pasta & Veggies consumed, chicken ignored or vice-versa. Curries either devoured or hated. And always a stronger preference for sweet treats. It wasn't possible to predict what she would or wouldn't eat. But as long as she was willing to try new things, I never pushed her. 

So this transition is pleasantly incomprehensible. Maybe it's the fact that she recently turned four. Big enough to be happy to go to school, assert her independence and enjoy things on her own, totally in her element, without me. I miss her boundless energy, her non-ending stream of stories, incessant chatter, our 'tea parties', her 'cooking' experiments in the kitchen and the silly singing. 

Last week my son had a day off from school so we made this banana bread before we picked his sister up. It's an interesting recipe from Orangette that uses no butter or oil and yet resulted in a banana bread that stayed moist for a couple of days and added a delicious sweet element to their lunch boxes. I urge you to try it. 

Banana Bread with Chocolate and Cinnamon Sugar

3 medium to large ripe bananas

2 large eggs

1.5 cups all purpose flour

1 cup granulated sugar

1 tsp baking soda

2 tsp cinnamon, ground

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Topping:

2 tbsp granulated sugar

1/8 tsp ground cinnamon

Preheat oven to 375F. Butter or spray an 8" square pan. 

In a medium bow, mash bananas. Add eggs and stir to combine. Stir in the flour, sugar, baking soda, cinnamon and vanilla. Add 3/4 of the chocolate chips, stir, and reserve remaining chocolate chips. Pour batter into pan. 

Mix together topping ingredients in a small bowl and sprinkle them evenly over the batter, topping with remaining chocolate chips. 

Bake 35-40 mins. Cool on a wire rack for 15 mins before serving. 

Baking With Dorie: Cinnamon Squares

While I love both cinnamon & chocolate and don't mind combining them together in a dessert, this recipe disappointed me a little (Sorry, Dorie!).

I made the Cappuccino version suggested in the book but even with addition of extra espresso, the cinnamon flavor was too over-powering for my family & even myself. I liked the chocolate & crunchy-sugar-cinnamon-y swirl in the middle of the cake as well as the chocolate frosting & the cake was very moist. But overall, this was not my favorite bake from BFMHTY. Which makes me very glad that I cut the recipe in half and baked mini-cakes. Maybe I wold have liked it better had I made the original version so that is something I would like to try out at some point in the future. 

I was aiming to get mini heart-shaped cakes (despite the fact that I'm a Valentine Grinch), but I over-filled my molds and ended up with some mushroom-topped cakes that looked nothing like hearts. Oh well, better luck next time. 

Please check out Chaya's blog Bizzy B. Bakes for the recipe (or pages 210-11 of Baking from my hoome to yours by Dorie Greenspan) and the blogroll here to see everyone else's versions. So far they've all enjoyed this cake better than I have. Next up we're baking Brownie Buttons. If you'd like to be a part of our baking challenge, please email  me at needfulthings at ymail dot com. We'd love to have  you bake along with us!

Baking With Dorie: Lemon Cup Custard

If you've read my previous blog posts about BWD challenges, you'll know that I try to play around with these recipes - taking my cues from the alternative suggestions in the book. So, even though I chose the recipe for this weeks' challenge, I already knew I'd end up making anything but the Lemon Cup custard. 

And how glad I am that I tried other variations. In fact, I tried two: the espresso-cinnamon cup custard and the orange-star anise version. I'll eat anything with cinnamon in it (I even eat fruit with a generous sprinkle of cinnamon), so I knew I was going to love the espresso custard. And I did. 

The most enjoyable part of this challenge was baking these custards. I used espresso cups to bake my espresso-cinnamon custard and halved the recipe because I wanted to try more versions. The custard came out slightly jiggly after 20 minutes and I felt I might have under-baked it just a little.

I had plenty of custard left over but own only 3 espresso cups (don't ask me why). Since I was obsessed with the idea of making it in small cups, I baked the remaining amount in my daughters' tea cups (from Ikea). I loved how cute they looked:

This time I baked for 20 minutes again and it seemed just right. I cooled the custards overnight and dusted with cocoa powder right before taking these photos. I know it looks like specks of chocolate here but it's actually cocoa powder that just turned strangely solid, speck-like as soon as it came in contact with the very cold custard. 

Regardless of how strange it looked, the espresso custard was lovely - the texture was that of a classic baked custard but there was no eggy taste because of the strong flavors from the espresso and cinnamon (I think I may have used a lot of cinnamon - but I did say I love cinnamon, didn't I?)

Since I'd made the Espresso Custard a week back, I still had plenty of time to do another version but it was hard to decide which one. I almost discarded the idea, but then Tina sparked my curiosity by talking about the 'egginess' of the custard and how bakers from TWD had been generally unhappy with this custard because of the eggy factor and the lack of strong lemon flavor. 

I knew then that I had to do another version and find out for myself. I'd been partial towards the idea of Orange and Star Anise quite simply because I've never had a dessert flavored with star anise. Where I come from, star anise is used primarily in meat dishes, and then also, sparingly. The closest I've come to having it in something non-savory is green tea. So I was skeptical but too curious not to try it out. 

Again, I halved the recipe and used the zest of 2 oranges instead of 1. I had a star anise with just 3 points so I threw the whole bud into the milk instead of removing 3 points from it. After the milk came to a boil, I removed it from the heat and then let everything infuse for about 45 minutes (or a little more) instead of 30.

This time, I baked the custard in a bowl instead of ramekins so I wasn't sure about the baking time and may have over-baked it just a little because the center jiggled only slightly. The custard smelled slightly eggy & I couldn't be sure the orange flavor had really come through because once again, I refrigerated the custard overnight before finally tasting it the next morning. 

Let's just say it was simply wonderful! It took a few minutes for my taste-buds to adjust to the idea of star anise in a dessert, and then there was no looking back! It was slightly over-baked, but still very flan-like in texture with a wonderful burst of citrus flavor and the surprising warm undertone from the star anise. This recipe was, for me, a winner in every way and I may never go back to making custard with short-cut instant mixes when it is so simple to make it from scratch, and that too, with so many variations.

Do check out the BWD blogroll here and here to see the other versions of this dessert by my fellow BWD bakers. If you'd like to join us for our next BWD challenge on June 21 (Summer Fruit Galette, chosen by Elizabeth of Gluten-Free Baking 101), drop me an email - we'd love to have you bake along with us.

You can get the recipe right here, after the jump:

Whole-Wheat Cinnamon Rolls

Lately my kids have complained that I am too grumpy & busy and don't do anything remotely fun with them. 

I don't know about you - but I just can't take it when they pull at my heart-strings like that! The weather has been completely uncooperative lately. It has been either too wet or too warm to do anything outdoors. So I did what I always do: got both the kids in the kitchen, presented them with lumps of cinnamon-roll dough and told them to take a go at it. 

Now there's no way to make a cinnamon roll healthy. I've tried & failed. The best I could do was to try and find a recipe using whole-wheat flour so I could feel all virtuous & dupe myself into believing that I came up with a 'healthy' version of this sinful treat. 

I stumbled across a great blog that had a recipe for Whole-Wheat Cinnamon Rolls. It was just what I wanted, except I tweaked the frosting a little bit because I just could not resist. Can you blame me? These are Cinnamon Rolls we are talking about: what's the point of being cautious or counting carbs and calories when you've gone as far enough as making them?

This recipe makes many, many cinnamon rolls. I didn't count but I can safely say I made at least 3-dozen and had to send 3/4th of those to my husbands workplace the next day because there was no way I was going to let them sit around and be tempted to scarf down a few every couple of hours.

Because they were that good. 

For the purpose of taking these photos, I thickened the frosting a little by adding more confectioners sugar but, otherwise, I made it thinner and when I drizzled it over the warm rolls it melted into them and made the rolls gooey and sticky & deliciously soft (but not pretty!). 

Here's the recipe: 

Whole-Wheat Cinnamon Rolls

adapted from Heavenly Homemakers

For the rolls:

1 cup warm water

2 tablespoons yeast

2 teaspoons honey

2.5 cups milk

1/2 cup butter

1/2 cup honey

4 teaspoons fleur de sel

8 cups whole wheat flour

For the filling:

1/2 cup butter, melted

3/4 cup granulated white sugar +1.5 tbsp ground cinnamon

For the frosting: 

approx. 3-4 ounces cream cheese, softened

1/4 cup butter

1 cup confectioners sugar

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1 tbsp milk

1/8 tsp salt

To make the dough:

Mix 1 cup warm water and 2tbsp yeast & 2 tsp honey in a large bowl. Stir and let sit for 5 mins. 

Melt a stick of butter in a large saucepan and add the 1/2 cup of honey, fleur de seul and 2.5 cups of milk. Bring to about 120F and then remove from heat and pour over the yeast mixture and stir. 

Stir in the flour, 2 cups at a time. Turn everything out on a floured surface and knead well for 10 minutes. I divided the dough in two & let the kids punch the heck out of their respective balls of dough before covering them and leaving them to rise for 1.5 hours. 

After 1.5 hours, take 1 ball of dough and roll it out into a rectangle on a floured surface. I got a pretty large rectangle and I may have also rolled it out very thin. 

Use a pastry brush to spread half of the melted butter all over the rectangle. My 2 yr old used her pudgy hands to do this & my son sprinkled on  half of the cinnamon and sugar mixture. It was great fun & I only wish I could have taken photos - dark, dungeon kitchen or not. 

Roll up the rectangle - I read somewhere once that the thinner you roll out the dough and the tighter you roll it, the more swirls you get - and so you get  lots more of the cinnamon filling - which is what we were trying to get. Once it is rolled up, pinch sides and cut into 1/2" thick slices. 

Place all the rolls in a lightly greased 9 x 13" pan. Cover with clingfilm and allow to rise for about 1/2 hour while you repeat the process with the remaining dough. 

Bake at 350 for 25 minutes. 

Let the rolls cool for 5 mins while you beat together the ingredients for the frosting & then drizzle the frosting all over the warm rolls.

I am also submitting this post to Yeastspotting, a weekly bread showcase at  the Wildyeast blog.
 .

Cinnamon Danish Toast with Yogurt Cheese

Yogurt is one of my favorite foods. I can eat it for breakfast or as a snack at any time during the day.

Some time back I came across a book called 101 Things to do with Yogurt. I had to buy it knowing what a versatile food yogurt is and was eager to learn how to use it as a base for or as a healthy substitute in recipes. 

It was hard to decide what to make first out of the book; Cinnamon Danish Toast sounded like a good start. It required me to make Yogurt Cheese to begin with and so I made a small batch over the weekend. And I made the Cinnamon Danish Toast for breakfast this morning. 

I'll let the pictures do most of the talking: