Banana Bread with a Twist ... of Cinnamon!

My ALL TIME favorite Banana Bread recipe is one I found a year or so ago. It's Emeril Lagase's. It's super banana-y and has a richness from both butter and sour cream. (I saved a few calories using light sour cream!) But trust me when I say you have not had banana bread until you have had this banana bread. The original recipe called for walnuts and I used them but I'm really not a nut person so I left them out of this batch. And I was putting all the ingredients into the mixing bowl, I realized that, gasp, I was out of vanilla. So I decided to add some cinnamon in swirl form to compensate. It was fantastic! 

Ingredients
8 tablespoons/1 stick of butter
1 cup mashed ripe bananas (about 2 large bananas)
1/2 cup sour cream (Plain or Greek yogurt works too)
2 large eggs
1/4 cinnamon sugar, you won't use all by any means

2 cups flour
3/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon baking powder

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
Lightly grease a loaf pan with butter or a non-stick spray

Beat the bananas, sour cream, eggs, butter and sugar in an electric mixer.
Add the flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder and mix well. 

Pour approx 1/3 of the mixture into the loaf pan, and coat well with cinnamon sugar. Repeat in 2 more layers, adding cinnamon sugar each time.
Bake until lightly browned and bread bounces back to the touch, about 55 minutes. 

Remove from the oven and cool for 10 minutes before turning out onto wire rack to cool completely.

Apple Cranberry Loaf with Pumpkin Pie Spiced Sugar

So, you've gone apple picking with the kids -- or friends kids... or the boyfriend or the family dog and you've once again come home with more apples than you know what to do with... Apple pies are good and lovely but you can only make so many... and you can only eat so much without spending every waking hour on the treadmill. And your children's teachers don't have any more room left on their desks for the sweet, crisp apples you have kindly given them...

Yes, you have bowls of apples strategically placed around the house to give a fall-like ambiance to your decor. But if not used they will start to break down... and they must be used within... a certain amount of time. And you have some cranberries because you like to decorate with them too and they are on sale... and you realize that apples and cranberries make the perfect combination. It is fall, after all, and the oven is beckoning you... and there is nothing as soothing or as comforting as the aromas of fresh baking from the oven... especially when the aroma comes from apples and cinnamon and sugar...

Ingredients:

2 apples, peeled, cored and cut into bite sized pieces
2 cups of fresh cranberries
1 cup plus 1 tbs sugar
1/8 cup water
2 cups flour
2 eggs
1/3 cup canola oil
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp baking powder

Directions:

Preheat oven to 325 degrees
In a saucepan place cranberries, water and 1 tbs sugar
Bring to boil and then turn heat off. Let simmer a few minutes. You will hear cranberries start to pop
Meanwhile prep apples
In a large mixing bowl add sugar and oil and beat high until smooth and pale yellow. Add eggs, vanilla and baking powder. Mix well.
Add flour, mix well.
Add apples and cranberries with all the juices.
Mix well. Batter should be moist but not too wet. If too wet add small amounts of flour. If by chance it is too dry add a couple of tablespoons of milk or water.

Place well mixed dough into a well-greased loaf pan and bake for about 1 hour, checking for done-ness with toothpick. (Depending on calibration of your oven you may need a few more minutes.)




My youngest thought the cranberries to be a bit tart. I sprinkled some Pumpkin Pie Spiced Sugar over the warm bread and let it all melt in. It was divine! Pumpkin Pie Spiced Sugar is a wonderful substitute to ordinary Cinnamon Sugar.

Pumpkin Pie Spiced Sugar

1/4 Cup granulated sugar
4 - 5 tbs  Pumpkin Pie Spice
Mix well. Store in airtight jar. If the flavor is too strong or too sweet, adjust either the spices or the sugar.

Banana Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Loaf

This is good. Very good. Second, perhaps, to Emeril's Banana bread! Plus this has the added bonus of oats and instead of a stick of butter this one has a half a cup of yogurt! Chocolate chips (semi sweet) provide anti-oxidants. It's a win-win situation everyone! Or at least I can pretend it is!

Normally I would never consider giving this to my kids for breakfast. I think chocolate chip pancakes are kind of ridiculous. Breakfast is supposed to be a  healthy meal and chocolate chips in pancakes that are sure to be smothered in syrup is not a good breakfast. Rebecca, of course, will beg to differ. She can have her chocolate pancakes and eat them too... at someone else's house!

And once again I digress. I was all about to make them eat a bowl of cereal but the banana loaf was staring at me from it's lovely, shiny aluminum pan... it was calling to me. It had to be tried. And I was just the person to to try it. So I sliced it. Lovely. Dense and thick and rich, and oh the semi sweet chocolate morsels danced around on my taste buds this morning. They mingled with the banana and the oats. The flavor was a perfect accompaniment to my morning cappuccino. I could have downed the entire loaf right then and there. But I stopped at a half a slice. See, I do have willpower!

And then a little person resembling myself came down. I really couldn't say no. So I decided to indulged them all. To make me feel better as a mother this was the only sweet of the day. Afternoon snacks were popcorn and whole wheat pretzels. I'm pretty sure the kids all thought it worth it. (We don't really do dessert at dinner.)

Ingredients:

2 eggs
3/4 (slightly less) cup sugar
1/4 cup canola oil
1/3 cup yogurt
2 ripe bananas, mashed
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp baking powder
2 cups of unbleached flour
1 cup of oats (not instant or fast cooking)
1 cup of semi sweet chocolate chips

Mix together eggs, sugar, vanilla, yogurt and canola oil. Add mashed bananas and mix well. Add baking powder, flour, oats and chocolate chips and mix until well blended.

Heat oven to 350 degrees.

Grease a loaf pan with Pam or butter. Pour batter in to pan and bake for 1 hour.
Let cool about 20 minutes before removing from pan and slicing.

Snowy Days and Banana Muffins Never Get Me Down!

a snowy day calls for the fresh smell of banana bread baking in the oven... but we are too impatient to wait the hour it takes to bake a loaf... so we take our favorite recipe and modify it to make muffins that take only 20 minutes to bake in 350 degree oven...

Makes 18 muffins... that's 9 for me and 9 for you ;)

Emeril's (Bam!) Banana Bread

With 4 rotting bananas that I couldn't toss into the garbage I decided to make a banana bread but I wanted to try a new recipe. So I headed over to the Food Network and found Emeril's recipe. It was unlike me not to alter this and that, and except for two minor things -- I used 2tbs less of butter and used Light Sour Cream because that was what I had in the fridge. Because this recipe uses cake flour I found the bread to be lighter than many others. This Banana bread should not be messed with!

Ingredients
10 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon butter (I used 8 Tbs. -- 1 stick)
1 cup mashed ripe bananas (about 2 large bananas)
1/2 cup sour cream (Plain or Greek yogurt works too)
2 large eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
2 cups cake flour
3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup toasted, chopped walnuts

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
Lightly grease a 9 1/4 by 5 1/4 by 2 1/2-inch loaf pan with 1 teaspoon of the butter. (I used Pam)

Puree the bananas, sour cream, eggs and vanilla in a food processor. (I mashed by hand)
Sift the cake flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder and salt into the bowl of an electric mixer fixed with a whisk attachment. Add the remaining 10 tablespoons butter and mix on medium-low speed until blended, about 30 seconds. Add the banana mixture in 3 batches, scraping the sides of the bowl and mixing on medium speed between each addition. (I did not add it in 3 batches) Fold in the nuts.

Pour into the loaf pan. Bake until lightly browned and bread bounces back to the touch, about 1 hour 10 minutes. Remove from the oven and cool for 10 minutes before turning out onto wire rack to cool completely.

For muffins line 18 muffin tins with muffin/cupcake wrappers and bake for 20 minutes.

Strawberry Banana Bread

Because Rebecca can't stand nuts and I also had a batch over overripe strawberries I decided I would also make a batch of strawberry banana bread. I followed Emeril's recipe substituting 3/4 cup of chopped strawberries for the nuts. I used unbleached enriched flour instead of the cake four and found no visible difference. I love the tartness that the strawberries added to the bread.

Fanny Farmer's Banana Bread muffins (with chocolate sprinkles!)

These muffins were dense, yet light and tender and required no additional fat. They disappeared pretty quickly too. Our only addition was the jar of chocolate sprinkles that Alexander (aka my Sprinkle Fiend!) wanted to add. They actually added a nice little flavor without downgrading the nutritional value of the muffin!

Ingredients:

3 ripe bananas
2 eggs, well beaten
2 cups of flour
3/4 cup of sugar
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp vanilla
1/8 cup of chocolate sprinkles, (Jimmies for those of you in Mass!) Optional

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Line muffin tin with 12 cupcake liners
Mash bananas well in a large mixing bowl
Add eggs and vanilla and mash well
Stir in flour, sugar, and baking soda.
Pour into muffin tin and bake for about 25 minutes, testing for doneness.
Serve Warm or Cool

Recipe adapted from The Fanny Farmer Cookbook, Banana Nut Bread