Banana Bread

I was recently over at my sister Paula's house for dinner with my family and she was baking banana bread and gave us one to take home - it was delicious! I can't even remember the last time I made banana bread. I know it's so simple to make but it's just one of those things I never made. If I used bananas for anything it was muffins. This morning I had some bananas that were overly ripe and looked perfect for baking, so I got the recipe that she used and made it while my toddlers were still eating breakfast so they could watch. Paula said she loves this recipe because it's easy and simple and you can make it plain like she did and eat it with cream cheese, or add nuts or chocolate chips or whatever you like to it. She added 1 teaspoon of cinnamon to the recipe which I thought tasted good, so I included it below.

I love recipes that you can just mix with a spoon - quick to make and easy to cleanup. I baked this in my small Breville oven and thought that the outside looked a bit overdone, but the inside was perfect. Next time I will bake it in my regular oven and see how it comes out.

If you like banana bread or just need to use up some ripe bananas, give this simple recipe a try! My kids and my husband really enjoyed it so I'm sure I will be making it a lot.

Banana Bread

Recipe Courtesy Williams-Sonoma

 

Use very ripe bananas to make this easy banana bread. This is a great recipe to make with kids!

 

 

1 2/3 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon cinnamon (optional)

3 medium very ripe bananas, peeled

2/3 cup sugar

1/3 cup vegetable oil

2 eggs

1½ teaspoons vanilla extract

 

 

Preheat an oven to 350°. Grease an 8½”x4½” metal loaf pan with butter or Crisco.

In a bowl, using a wooden spoon, stir together the flour, baking powder, salt, baking soda, and cinnamon.

In a large bowl, smash the bananas with a fork. Add the sugar, oil, eggs and vanilla and beat with the wooden spoon until well blended.

Add the flour mixture to the banana mixture and stir just until blended.

Scrape the batter into the prepared pan, spreading it evenly with the wooden spoon. Put the pan in the oven and bake until a toothpick inserted into the center of the bread comes out with just a few crumbs clinging to it, about 45 minutes.

Using oven mitts, remove the pan from the oven, set it on a wire cooling rack and let cool for 20 minutes.

Gently run a table knife along the inside edge of the pan to loosen the bread from the sides.

Using oven mitts, turn the pan on its side and slip the loaf out onto the wire rack. Let the loaf cool for 15 minutes before serving.

 

Makes 1 loaf.

Blueberry Muffins

I love muffins, and blueberry muffins are my absolute favorite. Add in some lemon zest and I'm in heaven. I have been craving blueberry muffins the past few days but I haven't made them in so long that I couldn't remember which recipe I like the best, so yesterday I asked my sister Maria what recipe she is using these days. She bakes a lot and muffins are one of her specialties. She sent me an easy Blueberry Muffin recipe that has simple ingredients and doesn't require using a mixer. Since we are in the middle of the Coronavirus pandemic and avoiding going anywhere that is not completely necessary, I haven't been to Costco or the grocery store in a while. I've been using Peapod but they've been out of frozen blueberries. Last night my husband had to make a quick trip to the grocery store to get some bread and a few other things we were running low on, and picked up a small package of blueberries - just enough for this recipe. I'm glad I got the chance to try this recipe today. Not only was it super easy to make, but these muffins are incredibly delicious and they were exactly what I was craving!

Blueberry Muffins

Recipe courtesy “Beneath the Crust” Blog

1¾ cup flour

2/3 cup sugar

1 Tablespoon baking powder

¾ teaspoon salt

6 Tablespoons butter (¾ stick)

½ cup milk

1 egg

1 teaspoon grated lemon peel (I never measure — just grab a lemon & zest rigorously. No way you’ll ever get too much zest from just one lemon) or 2 Tablespoons lemon juice

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup fresh or frozen blueberries (if frozen, don’t thaw)
 

Preheat oven to 400°. Prep your muffin tin, either greasing each cup or lining with paper muffin cups.

In a medium bowl, mix together flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Cut in butter until the mixture is pebbly with some larger chunks of butter the size of torn bread chunks. Not working the butter in too finely is key for making these more crumbly and scone-like. (I prefer to cut the butter into small cubes, dump it in, then use my hands to smoosh it into the flour mixture, but two knives, a pastry cutter, or even a stand mixer would work just fine).

In a liquid measuring cup, measure out the milk. Add the egg, lemon zest, and vanilla. Blend well (I use a fork).

Add milk mixture to dry ingredients. Mix (using a wooden spoon, sturdy spatula, or stand mixer) just until the flour is moistened.*

Stir in blueberries. Gently.

Dollop batter into muffin tin using two spoons. The batter will be stiff and should fill each cup about ½ to ¾ full.

Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until fragrant and a delicious golden brown. Enjoy!

Yield: 12 muffins.

NOTE: *I find muffins do better without over mixing. A little bit of flour mixture at the bottom of the bowl is okay. The blueberries help bring everything together, and you can just distribute the leftover sugar mixture as you’re filling your muffin tin. It incorporates into the muffins just fine.

Fresh out of the oven!

Updated photos from August 2021:

Chiffon Cake

It's been quite a while since I've posted a new recipe. This is actually my first post in 2013 (yikes!). So I knew it had to be a good one. This year for Easter my mom sent out an email sign-up for everyone to pick what they were making for Easter dinner. Of course, I signed up for dessert. I usually make cheesecake for Easter dessert but wanted to try something different this year. My sister Paula gave me the idea of a Chiffon cake and serving it with berries. I've never made a Chiffon cake so I decided to give it a try. She emailed me a recipe from America's Test Kitchen, and then realized it was missing a flavor that she remembered being in the recipe that she made. She gave me a photocopy of the recipe that she made and that's the one below that I used, but I'm not sure where she found this recipe. It looked like it came from a cookbook. I searched online to try to see if I could figure out where it came from so I could properly credit it, but had no luck. It was very easy to make. I decided not to put the glaze on the cake to eliminate the butter and extra sugar and make it a little healthier, and the cake was still delicious without it. My sister Caterina was making a bunny cake and a chocolate dessert for the adults so this was just be a little something lighter with strawberries for the adults to enjoy.

A few helpful hints: Separate the eggs while they're cold and then let them reach room temperature. Use a footed removable bottom tube pan if you have one. An important thing to remember when making Chiffon cake is not to grease the pan. The batter needs to cling to the pan to rise while baking. You need to invert the pan to let the cake cool for a few hours afterwards, and you don't want the cake to fall out! This blog has a few helpful hints as well. Also, I didn't have cake flour but I made my own. If you don't have any, but you have corn starch, here is an easy way to make it yourself.

Everyone seemed to like the cake, and I thought it was delicious too. I've never made angel food cake or sponge cake, but I love my aunt's pound cake recipe, and now this Chiffon Cake recipe will be another that I will make often.

Chiffon Cake

In the original recipes for chiffon cake published by General Mills, the directions for beating the egg whites read, “WHIP until whites form very stiff peaks. They should be much stiffer than for angel food or meringue. DO NOT OVERBEAT.” These instructions, with their anxiety-inducing capitalized words, are well taken. If the whites are not very stiff, the cake will not rise properly, and the bottom will be heavy, dense, wet, and custard-like. Better to overbeat than to underbeat. After all, if you overbeat the egg whites and they end up dry and “blocky,” you can smudge and smear the recalcitrant clumps with the flat side of the spatula to break them up.

CAKE:

1½ cups sugar

1 1/3 cups plain cake flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

7 large eggs, 2 whole, 5 separated, at room temperature

¾ cup cold water

½ cup vegetable oil

1 Tablespoon vanilla extract

½ teaspoon almond extract

½ teaspoon cream of tartar

GLAZE:

4 Tablespoons (½ stick) unsalted butter, melted

4-5 Tablespoons orange juice, lemon juice, milk, or coffee (for date-spice or mocha-nut variations)

2 cups sifted confectioners’ sugar

FOR THE CAKE: Adjust an oven rack to the lower-middle position and heat the oven to 325°. Whisk the sugar, flour, baking powder, and salt together in a large bowl. Whisk in the 2 whole eggs, 5 egg yolks (reserve the whites), water, oil, and extracts until the batter is just smooth.

Pour the reserved egg whites into the bowl of a standing mixer; beat at a lower speed until foamy, about 1 minute. Add the cream of tartar, gradually increase the speed to medium-high, and beat the whites until very thick and stiff, just short of dry (as little as 7 minutes in a standing mixer and as long as 10 minutes with a handheld mixer). With a large rubber spatula, fold the whites into the batter, smearing in any blobs of white that resist blending with the flat side of the

Spatula.

Pour the batter into an ungreased large tube pan (9-inch diameter, 16-cup capacity). Rap the pan against the countertop 5 times to rupture any large air pockets. If using a pan with a removable bottom, grasp both sides with your hands while firmly pressing down on the tube with your thumbs to keep the batter from seeping from the pan during the rapping process. Wipe off any batter that may have dripped or splashed onto the inside walls of the pan with a paper towel.

Bake the cake until a toothpick or thin skewer inserted in the center comes out clean, 55-65 minutes. Immediately turn the cake upside down to cool. If the pan does not have prongs around the rim for elevating the cake, invert the pan onto the neck of a bottle or funnel. Let the cake cool completely, 2 to 3 hours.

To unmold, turn the pan upright. Run a thin knife around the pan’s circumference between the cake and the pan wall, always pressing against the pan. Use a skewer to loosen the cake from the tube. For a one-piece pan, bang it on the counter several times, then invert it over a serving plate. For a two-piece pan, grasp the tube and lift the cake out of the pan. If glazing the cake, use a fork or paring knife to gently scrape all the crust off the cake. Loosen the cake from the pan bottom with a spatula or knife, then invert the cake onto a serving plate. (The cake can be wrapped in plastic and stored at room temperature for up to 2 days or refrigerated for up to 4 days.)

FOR THE GLAZE: Beat the butter, 4 tablespoons of the liquid, and the confectioners’ sugar in a medium bowl until smooth. Let the glaze stand 1 minute, then try spreading a little on the cake. If the cake starts to tear, thin the glaze with up to 1 tablespoon more liquid. A little at a time, spread the glaze over the cake top, letting any excess dribble down the sides. Let the cake stand until the glaze dries, about 30 minutes. If you like, spread the dribbles (before they have a chance to harden) to make a thin, smooth coat. Serve.

Serves 12.

Whisk dry ingredients together

Whisk in 2 whole eggs

Add 5 egg yolks

Add the cold water

Add the oil

Add the almond & vanilla extracts and whisk until smooth

Beat egg whites until foamy, about 1 minute

Add the cream of tartar and beat until thick & stiff

Fold egg whites into the batter

Pour batter into ungreased tube pan

Bake for 55-65 minutes

Immediately turn cake upside down to cool completely

Invert cake onto a serving plate

Photos by JoJo

Monkey Bread

This morning I made one of the easiest "breads", Monkey Bread! I bought a value pack of Grands buttermilk biscuits from Giant for this recipe and used walnuts in it too. The value pack is four 7.5-ounce cans of biscuits (40 smaller biscuits) that are bundled together rather than two 16.3 cans of biscuits. This pack had the Monkey Bread recipe on the package and the ingredient quantities varied a little from the recipe below. The recipe was 3/4 cup granulated sugar, 2 teaspoons cinnamon, 1/2 cup chopped walnuts, 3/4 cup packed brown sugar and 1/2 cup butter and it said to bake it for 40-45 minutes, which would have been way too long. 28 minutes was perfect, so I am glad I looked at both recipes! Using the smaller cans does require more cutting since there are more biscuits so if you are in a hurry I would get the larger cans. I was not so I didn't mind! Other than that the two are pretty much the same. This is a great, simple recipe to make when you want a warm breakfast treat on a cold winter day!

Grands!®  Monkey Bread

½ cup granulated sugar

1 teaspoon cinnamon

2 cans (16.3 ounces each) Pillsbury® Grands!® Homestyle refrigerated buttermilk biscuits

½ cup chopped walnuts, if desired

1 cup firmly packed brown sugar

¾ cup butter or margarine, melted

Heat oven to 350°F. Lightly grease a 12-cup fluted tube pan with shortening or cooking spray. In a large storage plastic food bag, mix granulated sugar and cinnamon.

Separate dough into 16 biscuits; cut each into quarters. Shake in bag with sugar and cinnamon to coat. Arrange in pan, adding walnuts among the biscuit pieces.

In small bowl, mix brown sugar and butter; pour over biscuit pieces.

Bake 28 to 32 minutes or until golden brown and no longer doughy in center. Cool in pan 10 minutes. Turn upside down onto serving plate; pull apart to serve. Serve warm.

Makes 12 servings.

Buttermilk biscuits

Cut biscuits into quarters & coat with cinnamon & sugar

Place coated biscuits & walnuts in a greased bundt pan

Pour butter/brown sugar mixture over coated biscuits & chopped walnuts

Bake for 28-30 minutes

Cool in pan for 10 minutes

Turn upside down onto a serving plate & enjoy!

Photos by JoJo