Whole Wheat Banana Bread

I know, I know. Another banana bread recipe. 

I'm sorry. It's just that lately I'm a woman obsessed. I wake up dreaming about fresh pineapples and banana bread.  And not necessarily in that order. I've tried to appease my cravings for the latter but so far it hadn't worked as far as finding a whole-wheat version was concerned. So I've been compiling a list of recipes to try out and, needless to say, we are going through plenty of loaves of banana bread at my house. Isn't there something so comforting about waking up to the homey fragrance of baked bananas on a winter morning? 

I think I have finally found a one-bowl recipe that is moist & delicious enough that you might want to leave your bananas to blacken on the kitchen counter just so you can try it out. I've made a couple of minor adjustments to this  recipe that I stumbled across on the King Arthur Flour website. Also, I baked mine as muffins instead of a loaf quite simply because its a less crumbly option for the kids' lunch boxes. The chopped dates are a last-minute addition because I wanted to sneak in some extra iron and fiber and also because I have at least a few kilos on hand and quite simply have no idea what to do with them. Any suggestions?

(Note: I've made this recipe several times over with great success substituting both canola oil and coconut oil for the butter. It works very well with both & I no longer make it with butter).

Whole Wheat Banana Bread

(adapted from King Arthur Flour)

Serves 18

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter

1/2 cup packed light brown sugar

3/4 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp cinnamon, ground

a pinch of nutmeg

1 tsp vanilla extract

1.5 cups mashed, very ripe bananas (I used 3 large)

1/4 cup honey

2 large eggs

2 cups whole wheat flour

1/2 cup roughly chopped toasted almonds

1/2 cup chopped dates

Preheat the oven to 350F. Line a muffin tin with 2.5" baking cups. 

Beat together the butter and sugar till smooth. Add in the vanilla, baking soda, salt, nutmeg, cinnamon and bananas. Beat till smooth. 

Beat in the honey and eggs. Stir in the flour, nuts and dates (I dusted my dates with half a tsp of flour so they wouldn't clump together). Spoon into lined muffin tray and let rest at room temperature, uncovered, for 10 minutes. Bake 30 minutes. 

Remove from oven and allow to cool for 5 minutes before turning muffins on to a rack to cool completely before serving. 

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: Lots-Of-Ways-Banana-Cake

One of the very first kinds of cake that I ever made, years and years ago, was Banana Cake. 

It was out of a book that my best friend and I co-owned. Or she owned it and I borrowed it so often, that I began to think of it as my own. To cut a long story short, I was bitten by the baking bug back then and so, feeling over-confident and using my newly acquired 'skill', I made banana cake to take to school.

Everyone seemed to love it. Except a smart-mouth who said, 'You couldn't have made this. And it surely doesn't contain any real bananas: it's just banana extract'. How mean!

In the years between then and now, I've made banana cakes and banana bread dozens of times. But never without thinking of that smart-ass comment.

And I thought of it today as well, while I assembled the ingredients for this weeks Baking With Dorie challenge. 

I chose this weeks' challenge as well and I am so glad that I picked this recipe. Let me just say I love the dense sweetness of this cake.

I halved the recipe and made a single layer, dusted with icing sugar. 

The moment I smelled this cake baking, I regretted not making the whole recipe and smothering it with chocolate whipped cream as I had originally planned. 

It is wonderful on its own but begs for a scoop of ice cream.

It does seem a bit lonely out there on its own, don't you think? 

This cake is really good. 

Contains real bananas. 


Toasted coconut too ;-)

Lots-Of-Ways-Banana-Cake

(Pages 205 & 206, Baking from my home to yours by Dorie Greenspan)

2 2/3 cups all purpose flour

1 1/4 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1.5 sticks butter

1 cup light brown sugar

3/4 cup sugar

2 eggs

1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

2 ripe bananas

1/2 cup coconut milk

1 cup sweetened , shredded coconut. preferably toasted.

Whisk the flour, baking soda, salt and nutmeg in a medium bowl. 

In a large bowl, beat the butter till creamy. Add the sugars and beat for a few minutes. 

Add the eggs and vanilla. The mixture will be silky smooth - add banana and lower speed. 

Mix in the flour and coconut milk alternatively, beginning and ending with the flour. Stir in toasted coconut. 

Pour into two 9" pans and bake for 45 mins. Cool for 5 minutes in pan before inverting on wire rack to cool. 

Dorie suggests lots of ways to serve this cake. I chose the simplest possible & dusted with confectioners sugar. 

The next challenge will be posted on April 26th, and fellow blogger Elizabeth has picked The Most Extraordinary French Lemon Cream Tart (pages 331 & 332) for the next recipe. 

If you'd like to join the challenge, please drop me an email. 

Banana Peanut Butter Smoothie

Did I mention that I'm moving? 

I've been knee-deep in chaos the past several days; telling myself off for my pack-rat tendencies. I used to be able to justify it, but there's nothing like a move to make you face your shortcomings.

While I try to sort, minimize, containerize and finally move; I'll keep up with blogging by posting simple recipes that don't require a lot of time to fix. I don't have time for any serious cooking or baking till at least the end of this month, but I do want to keep blogging so as not to break the momentum or get sidetracked. 

I thought I'd catch a break today and made myself a Banana Smoothie. I never did actually get to it because our cookie-monster-in-residence a.k.a my daughter got to it first. All I had time for was a few quick photos:  (yes, the child with the chocolate-smeared face and shirt belongs to me)

 

 
 

  

Banana Smoothie

(all ingredients are approximate since I didn't measure)

2 medium bananas, sliced

1 cup milk

1/4 cup low-fat yogurt 

1 tbsp peanut butter

1 tbsp honey

1 tbsp wheatgerm

1/4 tsp cinnamon

Place everything in a blender and process till smooth and frothy. 

 

Monkey Cupcakes

These were requested by my son today. 

He would never actually eat them, but thinks they're cute enough to take along to a friends' place. I've made these a couple of times before; for parties at his school and a bake sale. Kids always find these super moist cupcakes irresistible. 

Me? I love the cinnamon cream cheese frosting. It's completely delicious.

I got both the recipe and the idea for decorating these cupcakes out of the 'Cupcakes from the Cake Doctor' book. This book has so many ideas for cupcakes but I've only managed to try very few. All of that will change, of course, and I might stop browsing through the book and actually try out more fantastic ideas at some point this year. 

Ok, back to the recipe.

I-scream

My toddler woke up this morning and the first thing she said was: "I want ice-cweam".

I told her I didn't have any and my suggestion "Let's have cereal first and then we'll go down to the store and buy ice cream, ok?" was met with a full-blown  interminably long mother-of-meltdowns (yeah, welcome to terrible 2's).

However, she managed to calm down long enough to make it through breakfast. I really didn't want to go to the store till later in the evening but I try not to say things to my kids that I don't mean or make promises I won't follow through on. I had figured, I would just get the kids in the kitchen after breakfast and we'd make our own ice cream. 

Think again: no cream, not enough milk, no oreos (for their favorite cookies & cream ice cream). There was still no way I was going to go to the store. We just had to make do with whatever we had on hand. Which was basically nothing. And then it hit me: I could make banana ice cream. 

All I need for that is bananas. And this is also something I have known forever but never bothered to try: after all, why make banana ice cream when there are far more exciting (and possibly more palatable) things to make. Such as Nutella ice cream, for e.g. I'm still sulking over my inability to make Nutella ice cream the day before  by the way :( 

Beggars can't be choosers. Banana ice cream it would have to be.