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: Cornmeal Shortbread Cookies

I have not done any baking in months.  Thanks to a very long & tiresome renovation and the fact that my oven refused to work. So I've been impatient to bake again and to also fall back in step with all the BWD bloggers who have been carrying on without me for weeks and weeks.

No baking and no cooking means a neglected blog . . I keep meaning to come back here and at least write about my holiday but I've been immensely busy. Too busy to write & too busy to keep up with all the blogs that I follow. Has it really been a whole month since I got back? But that's another blog post . . and I promise to get to it this week.

For now, I bring you crumbly, buttery, melt-in-the-mouth, lime-scented shortbread cookies with a surprising crunchiness.

Who would have known cornmeal could take shortbread to another level? I absolutely love these cookies! I substituted lime zest for the lemon zest because limes were what I had on hand & made only half the recipe. My kids have been sick all week so I didn't expect them to have much of an appetite. Had I known what a hit these would be with them, I would have made double the batch!

Rivki of Kosher Cooking for Ordinary People is the host this week. Please head over to her blog for the recipe, or to Page 130 of Baking from my home to yours by Dorie Greenspan. Please check the blogroll here to check out everyone else's posts. 

Next up we're baking Quintuple Chocolate Brownies, picked by Shahieda. If you'd like to join our baking challenges please drop me an email at needfulthings at ymail dot com. We'd love to have you bake along with us! 

M&M and Chocolate Chip Cookies

It is my sons' first day at school today. Also his first day in the 1st grade and in a new school.. I felt the same tug at my heart this morning, leaving him in his new class, that I had felt the day I dropped him off at his Kindergarten class for the first time. According to my husband I am quite literally worse than my kids and have more separation-anxiety than they do.

Sigh. Where did my baby boy go? 

That's him, hiding his face with his hand and probably thinking, 'Get a grip Mom'.

 

Okay, I admit - I'm having an emotionally-wrenching kind of day. But lets get over that already.  Let me introduce to you my sons' favorite chocolate chip cookies. The ones he requested as an after-school snack today - with 'a glass of really, really cold milk'. 

The recipe is very slightly adapted from Dorie Greenspans' 'Best Chocolate Chip Cookies'  & is the first recipe of Dories' that I ever tried, a little over two years ago. Much before I owned her book and before starting to Bake With Dorie. I've made these cookies several ways, countless times. My most favorite way to make them is the 'cocoa chocolate' version with peppermint extract - it's like biting into an After Eight chocolate. 

But I didn't make them that way today. I had started by wanting to - but when I was measuring out the dry ingredients, I 'forgot' to add cocoa powder and only realized my mistake when the cookie batter came together and it wasn't brown. Oops.

Too late to turn back, so I threw in M&Ms for fun instead of nuts. From the grin on my boys' face, I can tell they're yummy.

 

M&M and Chocolate Chip Cookies

slightly adapted from Dorie Greenspans' Best Chocolate Chip Cookies, found on Page 68 of Baking: From My Home To Yours

2 cups all purpose flour

1 tsp salt

3/4 tsp baking soda

2 sticks butter, at room temperature

1 cup sugar

2/3 cup packed light brown sugar

1 tsp pure vanilla extract

1 tsp peppermint extract

2 large eggs

12 ounces or 2C chocolate chips

1 cup finely M & Ms

Center a rack in the oven and preheat oven to 375F. Line two baking sheets with parchment. 

Whisk together the flour, baking soda and salt. 

In a stand mixer, fitted with a paddle attachment, beat the butter on medium speed for 1 minute. Add the sugars and beat for 2 more minutes. Beat in the vanilla and then add the eggs, one at a time, beating for 1 minute after each addition. Reduce the speed and add in the dry ingredients in 3 portions, mixing only until each addition is incorporated. Mix in the chocolate chips and M&Ms. 

Scoop tablespoons of dough onto the baking sheets, leaving about 2 inches between each spoonful (these cookies spread a lot). 

Bake for 10 - 12 minutes (rotating the sheet at the midway point) or until they are brown on the edges and golden in the middle. Remove from oven, allow to cool on sheets for 1 minute before removing to wire rack to cool.