When Life Is Driving You Bananas, Make Banana Bread

Now that I am no longer a graduate student and have had a couple of months to rest my mind from all that reading and writing, I have been contemplating re-entering the blogging world.  Not that I have too much exciting to say, but I did really enjoy reflecting and writing about my life contemplations and experiences.  So here we go… So much has happened, so I may have to do a bit of back tracking with my next post or two to really recount what is going on in our lives. 

So why is life driving me bananas, you ask? Well, because we were supposed to close on a house on Friday and in the 11^th hour we were asked for yet more documentation and that prevented it from happening.  It made for an angst and tear filled Friday, and it has taken both of us most of the weekend to snap out of our funk and frustration.  As I said, lots to fill you in on.  Here is the short version:  we decided to stay in Flagstaff and after a short-lived and horrible rental situation, we were presented with the opportunity to buy a house and it ended up making the most financial sense.  I know.  That makes no sense.

So, I will bring you up to speed on how our life decisions this past spring brought to this point in the next week or so.  But first, a tried and true recipe that worked at high altitude with minimal adjustments.  I reduced the amount of baking powder by about a ¼ teaspoon, but that is it.  I had to go back to Epicurious.com to look this one up as it is a Bon Appetit magazine recipe, and I wasn’t sure where I have a copy stashed.  It was published in 1998!  I have been making this same banana bread since then.  Cuhrazy!  Now I feel old. So, moving on.  I am too lazy for pictures today (it may also be because we are housesitting and would otherwise be homeless and I have no idea where my camera and cord is.  I told you we had lots to catch up on!)

Best Banana Bread Ever

Ingredients

1 ¾ cup of A.P. flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

¾ teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon baking soda

1 cup ripe mashed bananas

½ cup whole milk (I used 2 %)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

½ c. solid vegetable shortening (I typically just use a stick of butter)

1 cup sugar

2 large eggs

1 cup pecans, toasted and chopped (I have my weird textural thing about nuts in baked goods so I left these out)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter and flour 9 1/4 x 5 x 2 1/2-inch loaf pan. Whisk together flour, baking powder, salt and baking soda in medium bowl. In small bowl, mix mashed bananas, milk and vanilla. Using electric mixer, beat shortening (or butter) in large bowl until creamy. Gradually beat in sugar. Add eggs 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat banana mixture and flour mixture alternately into butter mixture in 2 additions each. Stir in pecans (if you so choose). Transfer to prepared pan.

Bake bread until tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 1 hour 10 minutes. Cool 5 minutes. Turn out onto rack and cool completely. (Can be prepared 2 days ahead. Wrap tightly in foil and let stand at room temperature.)

Credit:  Bon Appetit, November 1998, Susan C. Samuel

Sweet Semester Endings and High Altitude Baking

For the end of the semester, I agreed to make some fun desserts for my staff’s last meeting as a thank you for their hard work. I asked for suggestions and got a request for brownies and for dessert pizza. One of my staff, who was transferring to another school, is vegan, so I also decided to experiment and try to make several vegan desserts. As usual, I forgot to take pictures. One of these days I will actually get in the habit of remembering to do so.

With regards to high altitude baking, we really didn’t have any problems with this other than that the sugar cookie crust spread a little more than I anticipated. I actually picked the brownie recipe because someone who commented on it was a high altitude baker and said it worked well. We did treat ourselves to this great cookbook, Pie in the Sky, since we both like baking and wanted some extra guidance. This one is nice because it has tables for different altitudes and has some nice stories about her journey to create all these recipes. We have used it for reference several times already with pretty good success.

Ultimate Vegan Brownies

These brownies were pretty tasty. They were very rich and fudgy, and yes, I really couldn’t tell they were vegan. I had never cooked with coconut oil before, but we had been wanting to try it as we had heard it was a good alternative for butter for some baking. I will warn it is pretty pricey, but we found it on sale so we decided to splurge and try it. I found it made the brownies a little oily or greasy, so I might try a little less. I also discovered that my instant espresso powder was REALLY old and concluded it might be best to not use it.We ended up just grinding up some coffee super fine and letting it sit in hot water. I found the coffee taste to be a bit bitter and strong. In the future I would probably brew the coffee or make sure I had fresh instant espresso. Other than that, we followed the recipe as given. The flax as a substitute for egg worked well, as creepily had the consistency of eggs after it sat as instructed. So they were good, but I would like to give them another go and see what I think with a little less oil and brewed coffee. The recipe follows, but if you click on the title above it will link you to the original recipe.

1 cup coconut oil
4 oz. (or 112 grams) bittersweet chocolate or to be even more strict just use unsweetened chocolate with 70% (or more) cocoa solids.
1 tsp vanilla
2 tsp instant coffee or espresso powder
1/2 cup hot water
2 cups sugar
1 cup cake or pastry flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
3/4 cup dutch process cocoa
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 Tbsp flax seeds (ground)
6 Tbsp hot water

Preheat oven to 350°F and grease an 8 x 8 pan.

• In a double boiler or a bowl set atop a pot of gently simmering water, melt the coconut oil, chocolate squares and vanilla together.
• Mix the coffee (or espresso) powder with the 1/2 cup of hot water and stir into the coconut/chocolate mixture. Add sugar and remove from heat. The sugars will dissolve a bit but you don’t need to completely dissolve it.
• In another bowl, sift together the flours, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Whisk to combine.
• In yet another bowl (small one), mix the flax seeds and 6 Tbsp of hot water, allow to sit for 2-3 minutes.
• Combine the chocolate/coconut oil mixture with the flour mixture and stir to incorporate. Add the thickened flax and stir that in as well.
• Pour the batter into the greased baking pan and bake for 30-40 minutes. Start checking the brownies after the first 30 minutes to ensure it is baking evenly.
• When finished, remove the brownies from the oven, set atop a cooling rack and get busy somewhere else. These babies need to be utterly cooled before consuming. If you attempt to eat them before they are properly cooled, they will crumble. When they are properly cooled, you can’t even tell they are eggless, I promise!

Banana Bread French Toast Cupcakes

These you MUST try. Robert tried these on a whim for us to take to a friend’s house for dinner one night, and they disappeared in minutes. Since then, they have made multiple appearances. They go together ridiculously easy and are addictive. The first time, we made them with cow milk, but then decided to experiment making them vegan. We both dislike soy milk, so we decided to try almond milk. We leave out the almond extract because we do not like it, however that is why we decided to try using almond milk. I don’t like nuts in baked goods, so we also left those out. We found the almond milk worked well. They seemed a little stickier than the first time with cow milk, but we really didn’t notice the difference, otherwise. We like to use our mini-muffin pan along with couple of muffin tops. Again, click on the recipe title to follow a link to the original recipe. What follows is our adaptations.

1/2 cup mashed over ripe banana

1 & 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1/4 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp salt

3/4 cup granulated sugar

1/3 cup canola oil

2/3 cup milk (dairy or non-dairy)

1 tsp vanilla extract

Then you:

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line pan with paper liners (or spray with baking spray).
• Throw your mashed banana in a blender or or just smash it with a fork.
• Sift the flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, salt and sugar into a large bowl, mix well. In a smaller bowl, whisk together the oil, soy or rice milk, vanilla, almond and mashed banana. Stir or fold the wet ingredients into the dry. Small lumps are fine.
• Fill liners 2/3 full (we didn't use liners, and just sprayed the muffin tins with cooking spray). Bake 20-22 minutes or until tops spring back when lightly touched. Cool in pan on wire rack for 10 minutes, then remove from pan and cool completely.

Really Yummy Oat Bars

The inspiration for these is this amazing strawberry cookie bar that I had at Macy’s Coffeehouse. My friend came across this recipe in a macrobiotic cookbook she has, so she passed it on to me since the ingredients sounded very similar to what we had assessed as we ate one of the bars. It is not quite the same, but they are still really yummy as the recipe title promises! With the pan that I used, I decided to put all the oat mixture down and make a second half batch of the oat mixture to put on top of the preserves. I didn’t measure it, but I know I also used more strawberry preserves than it called for. I just spread it out until it made a full layer across the full pan.

• ½ c. whole wheat flour
• 1 ½ c. rolled oats
• 1 t. cinnamon
• ½ t. nutmeg
• ½ t. baking soda
• ¼ t. sea salt
• 1/3 c. maple syrup
• 1/3 c. oil
• ½ t. vanilla
• 1/3 c. fruit spread

Preheat oven to 350 F. In a bowl, mix the dry ingredients. Add maple syrup, corn oil, and vanilla mixing thoroughly. In a small baking pan or Pyrex dish, press half the mixture like a thick pie crust. Spread the fruit jam onto it and cover with the rest of the oat mixture. Bake for 25 minutes. Let cool before cutting into squares.

Dessert Pizza

For as common a dessert recipe as this one is, I had actually never made one. After researching lots of recipes I went with this one. I let the cookie bake for about 25 minutes. I found I really had to whip the cream cheese and whipped topping for a long time, and it still had a somewhat lumpy texture. Next time, I think I would whip the cream cheese with the milk first before adding whipped topping in hopes of getting an overall smoother texture. For fruit, I used a can of mandarin oranges, kiwis, red raspberries, and blueberries. I think this was my staff’s favorite. There were no leftovers!