New Banana Bread!

Howdy y'all! It's been a while. Like, last published at the end of 2016 kind of while....

To be fair, 2017 was a bit of a busy year for me. Spring was a hectic time for work. Summer I traveled to three different states (California, Arizona, and Illinois). Oh yeah, and then I spent the last six months of the year planning a wedding...(to learn about fun bride-to-be exploits, check out my Engagement Entertainment blog).

But now I've settled in to married life, put away all those bridal shower gifts and registry items in the kitchen, and gotten back into baking...for fun!

I've had a few recipes that I've tried out in 2017 that I hope to post soon, such as a rice cooker birthday cake for my brother, and some breakfast egg dishes while married.

But today is all about going bananas.

I've made a lot of banana breads over the years--lots of banana items in general, and yet I couldn't help experimenting with a new recipe when I saw the video on Facebook from "I am Homesteader"'s Chocolate Chip Banana Bread. I needed something to occupy my mind while recovering from a small medical procedure, and I was desperate to eat real food again. My husband saw me watching the video and asked me if I was going to make banana bread.

"Why not?" I thought, and figured it might be a nice married couple bonding moment, if I could get him to help me out. We really needed to do something with the browning bananas on our counter, and I had recently cleaned our downstairs from top to bottom. I was ready to create something.

While experimenting with recipes can be hit or miss, when I discovered I was missing a few key ingredients for the recipe online I ended up having to substitute. I must admit these substitutions resulted in an extra tasty end result.

Ingredients:

2 cups whole wheat pastry flour (my usual, slightly healthier substitution for all purpose flour)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
5 very ripe bananas
2 teaspoons vanilla
1/2 cup canola oil (I was out of unsalted butter and had already added salt to the recipe)
2 eggs
1 cup granulated sugar
1 Tablespoon molasses (to make up for the brown sugar I didn't have)
1 cup chocolate chips

Directions:

1.) Preheat the oven to 325 degrees and grease a light colored bread loaf pan to set aside. Then in a bowl, sift the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.

2.) In a separate bowl, mash the bananas and then add the oil, sugar, molasses, vanilla, and eggs. Stir until combined but still a little lumpy (my husband begrudgingly did this part while watching anime videos on his iPad). Slowly add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients, and then gently stir in the chocolate chips.

3). Pour the mixture into your prepared loaf pan and bake on the top rack approximately 40-60 minutes until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out mostly clean. This was the hardest part as the top kept browning (even while on the highest rack away from the fire), but the inside was still pretty moist. After about 40 minutes I turned off the oven and let it stay warm inside for about another 10 minutes, then removed from the oven to cool.

4). Cool completely (overnight works best) and carefully remove from pan with a knife run around the edges to loosen the bread. Refrigerate if you're not serving right away (it's also easier to cut when cold) and then serve re-heated with butter for best taste.

This bread came out especially moist, sweet but not too sweet, and tasted amazing heated on the stove with my favorite butter spread. While my husband did help make it (sort of), he was the best help at eating it (I can't finish an entire loaf on my own!). We delivered some slices to my parents and brothers as well, and still had a little left to enjoy days later.

I think I have a new go-to banana bread recipe! And a new motivation to start baking again! Hope to see you soon!

Gingerbread!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas! Facebook posts galore. There's a tree on each profile page, photos of tablescapes. I'll get behind if I don't find decor!

At least, that's how I felt this weekend. I had already planned to hang ornaments on my little Christmas tree when the week finally came to an end, but after seeing how far along my Facebook friends and real-life neighbors were in getting their Christmas spirit on, I felt it was time to do some holiday decorating and spontaneous Christmas activities of my own. I decked out my front yard tree in lights, watched a Yule Log video on Netflix, and decided to bake gingerbread cookies!

Now I've made gingerbread cookies before, but I didn't know if my experimental take on a recipe from childhood was necessarily the best gingerbread cookie recipe out there. Also, I love finding tried and true, tested recipes online. So I did a web search and stumbled onto The Most Wonderful Gingerbread Cookies on Food.com (special thanks to gingerkitten D for the post). I chose this result because the recipe had five stars, and I had all the ingredients.

It's a good thing I gave it a try--these cookies were delicious! Not too hard, not too soft, and the perfect amount of sweetness whether you frost them or eat them straight out of the oven! It fulfilled my craving for gingerbread and for holiday cheer--I even made my first (terrible, tiny) gingerbread house! Now you can make one too!

Ingredients:

3 cups all-purpose flour (I used self-rising flour since I had it)

1/4 teaspoon salt (I put in just slightly less)

1 Tablespoon ground ginger

1 and 3/4 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

6 Tablespoons softened, unsalted butter

3/4 cup brown sugar

1 egg

1/2 cup molasses

2 teaspoons vanilla

Directions:

1.) In a medium-sized bowl, sift together the flour, salt, ginger, cinnamon, and cloves, stirring to combine. In a separate, larger bowl, beat the butter, brown sugar, and egg with an electric mixer on medium speed until the ingredients are thoroughly combined. Add in the molasses and vanilla, and continue to blend.

2.) Slowly add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients in batches, beating with the electric mixer to combine until the flour disappears each time (be careful as the flour and the batter are likely to fly out of the bowl!). Once the flour is all incorporated and no longer visible, make sure the dough is just sticky enough to form into a small lump (I added a couple of Tablespoons of milk to help). Divide the dough in half and wrap each lump in plastic cling wrap to sit out at room temperature for about 2-3 hours.

3.) Place one lump of dough onto a sheet of parchment paper and begin to roll it out with a plastic rolling pin sprayed with nonstick cooking spray. Once the dough is flat and thin (about 1/4-inch thick), you can cut out your cookie shapes with your favorite gingerbread men or other cookie cutters. Place them on a sheet of parchment paper about an inch apart each and then freeze for approximately 15-20 minutes to help keep them from spreading in the oven.

4.) Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Transfer the parchment paper with the cold cookie dough to a baking sheet and bake the cookies for approximately 7 minutes (watch them carefully so they don't burn!). If you want to make a gingerbread house, save the second lump of dough to roll out and cut into squares (dough should keep in the fridge for up to four days if you're too tired to make it all at once, like me). Remove the cookies from the oven and let cool on the baking sheet for 2-5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely. Once the cookies are room temperature, you can frost them with your favorite colored icing.

I should warn you that making gingerbread cookies is pretty time consuming (you have to wait for the dough to sit at room temperature, wait for the cookies to chill, wait for the cookies to bake, and then wait for the cookies to cool to room temperature again so you can frost them without melting the icing). BUT, I will say they're totally worth it. I gave away non-iced but fresh-from-the-oven cookies to friends, went out to watch football, and came home to room temperature cookies I could frost and eat immediately.

Christmas cookies always feel festive, but gingerbread just has that extra special holiday feel. And despite the time it takes to make them, they're actually quite easy to put together. Now, making a gingerbread house--that's a LOT harder than it looks.

Pumpkin Cheesecake!

I wanted to try something new this Thanksgiving. I usually make exactly two pies: pumpkin and pecan. Facebook also cheerfully reminded that five years ago for Thanksgiving I made two pumpkin pies, two pecan pies, cranberry sauce, and a sweet pumpkin dip. This year brought about a stressful week right before Thanksgiving, and I asked my mom if I could be free of pie duty this year. She was happy to take on our pumpkin and pecan pies so that tradition could continue and to help me out.

But I can't stay away from baking for long. I soon found myself wondering if maybe I should try that Pumpkin Cheesecake recipe I'd been saving for weeks from FoodNetwork.com. I'd purchased all the ingredients (twice) and still had yet to make it. I thought maybe Thanksgiving would be the perfect time.  Maybe baking would be the ultimate stress reliever as it had been for me in years past. And so I threw it together, following the Pumpkin Brulee Cheesecake recipe fairly closely but with my own style, and enjoying the whole process.

Ingredients:

8 sheets of graham crackers (honey, not cinnamon)
1 Tablespoon unsalted butter, melted
12 ounces low fat cream cheese
1/2 cup brown sugar (light)
1/3 cup plus 1 Tablespoon white sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup low fat Greek yogurt
2 eggs
2 egg whites
15 ounces (one can) pumpkin puree
2 Tablespoons flour (I used whole wheat pastry flour again)
1 Tablespoon pumpkin pie spice
1 Tablespoon vanilla extract

Directions:

1.) Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Mash your graham crackers into tiny pieces and crumbs (I placed the graham crackers in a plastic baggie and then mashed them with a meat mallet, carefully so as not to hurt the counter). Pour graham cracker crumbs into a bowl and mix in 1 Tablespoon of white sugar, 1 Tablespoon melted butter, and 2 Tablespoons water. Mix until the graham crackers are moistened and can be pressed into the bottom of a pie tin. I like to press mine in with a plastic baggie over my hand lightly sprayed with nonstick cooking spray.

2.) Bake the pie crusts 10 minutes and set aside to cool completely. Then in a large bowl, combine the cream cheese, brown sugar, 1/3 cup white sugar, and salt. Beat in the yogurt, egg, and egg whites. This can all be about medium speed. Lower the speed and add pumpkin, flour, vanilla, and pumpkin pie spice. Keep the speed low, then stir with a spatula to fully combine.

3.) Pour the batter over the cooled crusts and bake in the center rack for about an hour (check about five minutes before to make sure it's not burning too much). Place on a trivet to cool to room temperature. Refrigerate overnight.

4.) Top with whipped cream or other toppings of your choice. I skipped the actual "brulee" part of the original recipe (lacking a torch) and went for a whipped cream border instead!

Thanksgiving was a great success with the immense help of my mom, the help of my brother, and my small pie contribution. It held together, didn't taste overdone (despite the browning on top) and was a delicious dessert to enjoy with family!

Biko Rice Cakes!

Another one I made back in February but only just had time to post:

You may have seen some of my previous posts on various Filipino desserts (kutsinta, halo-halo, and bibingka)--they're so delicious. But I'd never attempted to make one of my other favorites that I've had at many a party before: Biko Kalamay

Basically a sweet rice cake, biko is a delightful mixture of coconut, rice, and syrup flavors, held together in a rectangular package.

All the recipes I've found online sounded a little intimidating, but this one for Biko with Latik syrup from Russian Filipino Kitchen was exactly what I needed.

Ingredients:
1 and 1/2 cups uncooked rice
1 and 1/4 cups water (for cooking the rice halfway)
1 and 1/2 cups brown sugar (1/2 cup for the latik syrup, the rest for the biko cake)
4 cups coconut milk (1 cup for the latik syrup, the rest for the biko cake)

Directions:

1.) After rinsing your uncooked rice in a pot (until the water turns clear), drain the sink water, place the pot on the stove, add the 1 and 1/4 cups cooking water, and bring the pot to a boil.

2.) Once the water has boiled, lower the heat to medium low and cook until the water mostly evaporates. Remove from heat and set aside. The rice should only be cooked halfway at this point.



3.) Make the latik syrup by mixing 1 cup coconut milk and 1/2 cup brown sugar in a separate pan. Bring the pan to a boil and then adjust the heat to medium low as well. Cook for 10 minutes, constantly stirring until the syrup thickens (mine didn't get super thick, but it still worked in the end and tasted great!). Remove from heat and set aside.

4.) Finish the biko cake by mixing 3 cups of coconut milk and 1 cup of brown sugar in a separate pot and bringing to a boil. Add the rice to the milk/sugar, and then mix again. Cook on medium heat for about 30 minutes, stirring constantly until thick.

5.) Remove from heat and transfer to a rectangular or square baking dish (glass or aluminum works well). Flatten the mixture and drizzle with the syrup as a topping. Cool to room temperature (the longer the better) before you cut the cake into squares and serve. Top with toasted coconut.






My first attempt at toasting coconut flakes was not the best (see below), so I'll leave you to find your own recipe for that one!



You'll fall in love with this unique treat--though my version is still not nearly as good as authentic biko made by Filipino chefs!

Rice Pudding

I can't remember the exact date of this attempt, but I do remember how delicious it was! Catching up with unposted recipes, I give you, Rice Pudding!

Ingredients:

1 and 1/2 cups cooked rice
2 cups milk (I used Lactose-free 1% and fat free--Lactaid brand)
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 egg (beaten)
1/3 cup white sugar
1 Tablespoon butter
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:


1.) Combine the rice, 1 and 1/2 cups milk, and salt in a saucepan over medium heat, stirring until thick, about 15-20 minutes.

2.) Add in the last 1/2 cup of milk, egg, and sugar into the mix, stirring constantly. Cook another 2-3 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in butter and vanilla.

3.) Top with cinnamon and garnish with a cinnamon stick. Refrigerate 6-8 hours to serve cold.

Found on Allrecipes.com under Old Fashioned Creamy Rice Pudding.

Cranberry Scones

After some time off for a summer staycation, I returned to work refreshed and also ready for a coworker's surprise bridal shower! I had volunteered to make heart-shaped scones, perfect to get in the mood for wedded bliss. Allrecipes.com came to my rescue again with a recipe for simple scones. I needed a recipe with sour cream instead of buttermilk since I couldn't find it in any of my go-to grocery stores this time of year (June--I guess buttermilk tends to be holiday seasonal). I also attempted self-rising flour once again, though you can definitely make them with all purpose or whole wheat pastry flour. Finally, I substituted Craisins (dried cranberries) for the raisins or currants, since I've had them in scones before and the bright red color is another great symbol of love. Thus, my Cranberry Scones were born!

Ingredients:

2 cups all-purpose flour (or self-rising flour)

1/3 cup sugar

1 teaspoon of baking powder (omit if using self-rising flour)

1/4 teaspoon baking soda (omit if using self-rising flour)

1/2 teaspoon of salt (cut back to about 1/4 teaspoon if using self-rising flour)

8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter (the original recipe recommends it being frozen, but just keeping it at the back of my fridge worked fine for me)

1/2 cup dried cranberries

1/2 cup sour cream (I used lowfat Tillamook brand)

1 egg

1/2 teaspoon almond extract

Directions:

1.) Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. In a bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder and soda if using, and salt. Use a cheese grater to grate the butter into flakes, then slowly add it in with your hands. Stir in the cranberries.

2.) In a separate bowl, combine the sour cream and egg with a fork until smooth. At this point, you can also add in the almond extract for extra flavor. Then slowly add the sour cream mixture to the flour mixture until the dough starts to form. Use your hands to get the dough fully formed and shaped into a ball (if too sticky, add a little more flour).

3.) Shape the dough into hearts (I made two elongated lumps and squished them together in a "V" to make a heart shape) and place them on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Bake approximately 15-17 minutes or until golden but not too brown. Cool slightly (about 5 minutes), then remove from the sheet and serve warm.

The directions on Allrecipes.com give options for making Cranberry-Orange Scones, Lemon-Blueberry Scones, or even Cherry-Almond Scones, which gave me the inspiration to add almond extract--and I think that's what really makes these scones pop! The bride-to-be loved the treat and took the extras home to her groom, who ate about six in a row. I'd say that's a success!

Banana Donuts

While I admit I'm a bit behind on my baking blog posts, I certainly haven't been behind on my baking. I made these delicious Banana Donuts on June 27, during my summer staycation off from work. I can't remember the exact motivation for donuts--perhaps I had browning bananas at the time, perhaps I just wanted to make something delicious to deliver to my mom. Either way it was a fun endeavor with a pleasing result.

In attempting to make my banana donuts, I knew I wanted to find a recipe where I could use self-rising flour. I still had some leftover that my mom had given me after making Jamie Oliver's deliciously easy pancakes for Valentine's Day, and I wanted to put it to good use. A quick search found me a great recipe from King Arthur Flour with directions on how to adapt it for self-rising flour. I cut the baking soda, lowered the amount of salt, and included the cinnamon since I was using bananas and they pair well together. I then borrowed a quick cinnamon-sugar recipe from the website Kitchn, and had the donuts ready in no time.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup vegetable oil
3 eggs
1 and 1/4 cups white sugar
1 and 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 and 1/2 cups mashed bananas
2 cups self-rising flour

For the topping:

1/4 cup white sugar
1 Tablespoon cinnamon

Directions:

1.) Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Beat together the oil, eggs, sugar, vanilla, cinnamon, and salt. Stir in the bananas.

2.) Slowly stir in the self-rising flour until the batter is smooth but still has some lumps of banana. Pour the batter into a donut pan (sprayed liberally with nonstick cooking spray) until nearly full.

3.) Bake approximately 18 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center of the donut comes out clean or with a tiny bit of crumbs attached. Remove from oven and loosen the edges with a plastic knife. Wait 5 minutes, and then transfer the donuts to a wire rack.

4.) While the donuts are warm, dip them into a bowl filled with the cinnamon-sugar mixture topping. Coat thoroughly, then turn over and coat the other side. Serve while warm, if possible, though the donuts taste good at room temperature as well.