Chocolate Banana Bread

One of the breads I absolutely love is banana bread. A warm banana bread and a cup of tea always make my day. I should make it more often, but sometimes I get lazy. I almost always will have over-ripped bananas that do not get eaten in time. I usually freeze them until I muster up enough energy to make Ackara (a W. African finger food that I will blog about soon). My kids will eat it all up in one sitting if I let them.

Today I wanted to jazz up the banana bread, so I added chocolate. BTW, most of my recipes I get from the Joy of Baking website. I just love the videos and that the recipes have been tested. Their instructions are precise and easy to follow. However, being the person I am, I almost always change something in it because I sometimes don't like to follow directions. ha ha..

I lessen the sugar from 1cup to 3/4cup and instead of using chocolate chips, I used 3 blocks bakers chocolate that I chopped up. I didn't have chocolate chips and figured this would work. Didn't have any nuts on hand, so I forgo that as well.


Ingredients



I like my bananas a bit lumpy

 

As I was prepping, my DH was watching Master Chef and of-course in true form he starting timing me while using his best British accent. If you know us, you will know that I had to play along. I started using my Afri-Itali accent and he shot this video.

One thing I always worry about is the banana settling in the bottom and it breaking when taking out of the pan. This time I must say it is perfection. I love it.

The finished bread. Looks, smells and tastes delicious. Even DH who doesn't like banana said it is goooood and chocolaty. Exactly what I wanted to hear.

Caramel Macchiato Cheesecake

This is by far my most successful experiment.  We had a graduation cookout and I wanted to try my hand at something no one would think I would try.  I went full force ahead and tried a cheesecake.  Everything I read online made it sound really scary, but I was not to be put off.  Not only did I make the cheesecake, but I also made the caramel! Crazy I know, but that took me less than 10 minutes. Who knew!!!!




The crust

Before going into oven

Final product

 

With caramel

 

I need to learn how to take better pictures because that doesn't look so good.  I've gotten many compliments on the cheesecake and even some request to make more. Yah me!!!!

Here are pictures of the caramel in progress, thanks to DH for his great camera work.


Melting sugar

 

Adding butter

Adding cream

All done, easier than I thought

    

Roundup

This is a quick recap of items I baked but didn't get a chance to blog about.

1. Strawberry Clafouti - Fail
I had strawberries and needed to make something for lunch at church.  It looked great right after it was cooked, but once transported, it was ugly. Will have to try again with Cherries (what the recipe calls for).



2. Round Scone - Fail

Not sure if it's the fact that I tried to bake these early in the morning with two kids crying for my attention, but they were hard.  The taste was so so, but I didn't like that they didn't flake up like I wanted.  What saved the day was the strawberry jelly that I had made after picking twelve pounds of strawberries from the orchard.

 

 

3. Semi Homemade Graduation Cupcake - Success

I wanted to make something unique for my nephew's graduation and came upon a recipe from "Cake Mix Magic" magazine that called for using cake mix to make these cupcakes.  Getting the colors to match his schools' was a bit hard since I had never played with coloring, but it was fun to see how they turned out.  Everyone loved them. I would definitely make them again.

 

 

 

4. Semi Homemade Strawberry Shortcake - Success

Yes I know two successes from cake mix, but it was so easy to work with.  I didn't have my camera, so the phone did the job. Picture does this cake no justice. It was topped with homemade whip cream and fresh picked strawberries. Can you tell it's strawberry season? LOL

Quinoa Whole-Wheat Muffins

About a year ago, I was introduced to quinoa by a friends' of my husband.   Quinoa has a light, fluffy texture when cooked, and its mild, slightly nutty flavor makes it an alternative to white rice or couscous. It's high in iron which is why I decided to try it.

I've cooked it as a rice and also as oatmeal.  The texture is more like oatmeal.

After having a rough day at work, I knew that I had to bake something.  Since I had quinoa at home, I decided to bake something with it and found this great recipe in "The Bread Bible".  Cool book by the way!!!

Rating:
Ease of instructions - 10
Ease of baking - 10
Outcome - 8
Taste - 7 (I will add more sugar next time)

No eggs you say!!

I've been under the weather lately baking was not part of the recuperating strategy.  However, by weeks end of no muffins for breakfast, I was starting to have withdrawal symptoms.   I finally decided I'll bake something, but then PROBLEM.  I was out of eggs and going to the store was not an option.

Sooooo, I put it off and had oatmeal instead.  That didn't cure my longing to bake though.

The next day, I decided to bake eggless. Big undertaking since I had never looked at an eggless recipe before. Did I have the right ingredients or was I stepping myself up for the STOP sign again. 

Off to the cloud I went.  I found a really easy blue berry muffin recipe and I had everything except for lemon (I substituted with cardamon).  I'm getting permission from the site's owner and I'll include the link later.

I was very surprise at the ease of mixing and baking. What was more surprising was the taste. It was DELICIOUS!!!  I never thought that I would like items baked without eggs and butter (oh yeah there was no butter included. I did use vegetable oil).

You be the judge, visually anyway.

yum

Welcome

This blog is being created so that I can document my adventures with different recipes in baking and cooking.  I've always had a love of baking fresh breads and muffins but with that love came my fear of measuring and baking in general.  Cooking is easy for me because I can come up with recipes and not have to worry about making sure that the measurements are correct, baking on the other hand... well you get the point.

It took years of me say "I'm going to learn how to bake bread", for me to get to this point.  My husband loves the scones from Starbucks, however, in our quest to save money I started nagging him about how much he was spending. His response was "well since you want to learn how to bake, why don't you bake some?"  I love a good challenge, so I had to respond with "then I will".

Six months later, here I am creating a blog about my adventures in baking.

Hope you get to enjoy this journey as much as I am and gain inspiration to start something that you've being pondering and putting off for some time now.