Banana Oatmeal Gems

The other day I was looking for a new recipe to use up some of my old brown bananas. I was trying to stay clear of my usual, banana bread and banana crumb muffins. Here's a recipe for cookies that use ripened banana. While it only called for one banana, it was a welcomed change from my usual recipes.

1 cup butter or margarine
1 1/4 cup brown sugar
1 egg 1 banana, mashed
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
3/4 cup all purpose flour
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
2/3 cups dates, chopped
3 cups quick oats

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Beat together butter and sugar until light and airy. Beat in egg, banana and vanilla. Combine spices, salt, baking soda and flours. Add to butter mixture. Mix well and stir in dates and oats. Dropped by rounded teaspoons onto greased cookies sheets. Bake 9-10 minutes for a chewier cookie or 11-12 minutes for a crisper cookie. Cool on a wire rack. Store in a covered container.

Here are a few changes that I made to the recipe: I used about 1-1.5 cups of raisins instead of dates. I also added a package of instant banana pudding to the recipe. Jess and I have learned from experience that adding a pudding mix to cookies makes them super soft and chewy...just what a cookie should be. Well, this was just another perfect example of that. They had that slightly crispy outer layer and were chewy and soft on the inside. Perfection. I didn't have enough quick oats for the recipe and so I ended up using a combination of quick cooking and old fashioned oats which worked out just fine. I found no need to grease my cookie sheet. I had no problems with the dough sticking to the pan.

When my husband tried them he said: bananas+oatmeal+raisins=a winning combination. I just loved that you could almost pass this off as a breakfast food. Bananas and oatmeal. Come on. Perfect breakfast on the go. :)

Source: Banana Oatmeal Gems

Bake on!
Michele

Penguin Cake

Boy was I fooled! I thought this cake was going to be easy peasy. Turns out it was probably one of our most frustrating cakes to date. I saw this super-duper cute penguin cake last Friday when I was browsing through the links on I'm Loving it Fridays. And instantly I wanted to make it. Immediately bookmarked the link on my computer and started racking my brain to try and think of any upcoming events that we could make it for.

Even though penguins have absolutely nothing to do with my grandma, we decided to make this cake for her birthday! Zach and I were heading over to her house on Sunday to celebrate her birthday and I had already planned on making her a birthday cake. But it was just going to be a boring throw-it-in-a-9x13-pan type of cake. I know, pretty lame huh? That's why we figured we might as well take it up a notch and add some fondanty goodness to make it all cute and stuff!

Started with just three layers of eight inch banana cake, but soon realized that it was going turn into one short and fat penguin. Ended up making another batch of cake and adding a fourth layer to the top! This was one tall cake! Filled and frosted the cake with cream cheese frosting. Holy yum!

Now for the fun part, or in our case not so fun part, covering the cake with fondant. I think we have covered about four or five round cakes with fondant now and every single time we end up with a nice smooth top but a skirting effect around the bottom. As we smooth our way down the cake we reach a point where the extra fondant starts bunching up and creates a ruffled look. This time we were able to cover up part of our imperfections by adding a little coconut around the bottom of the cake to look like snow. But we seriously need to figure this out. There has got to be some kind of trick that we are missing out on....

Anyways, here is our little guy. Ruffled look and all.

The eyes, nose, tummy, and feet are all made out of fondant as well. Cutting this stuff out was the easy part!

My grandma loved him! And that is all that matters! Don't ya love how grandparents look past the imperfections! I was telling her about our fondant difficulties and her response was "I would have never even noticed!"

Yum, yum, yum! Everyone said it tasted like frosted banana bread! But the cake was definitely more moist that the typical banana bread.

Banana Cake
adapted from recipezaar

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups bananas, mashed, ripe
2 teaspoons lemon juice
3 cups flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup butter, softened
2 1/8 cups sugar
3 large eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 1/2 cups buttermilk

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 300°. Grease and flour three round eight inch cake pans. I also cut out a piece of parchment paper to place in the bottom of the pan.
2. In a small bowl, mix mashed banana with the lemon juice; set aside.
3. In a medium bowl, mix flour, baking soda and salt; set aside.
4. In a large bowl, cream 3/4 cup butter and 2 1/8 cups sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs, one at a time, then stir in 2 tsp vanilla.
5.Beat in the flour mixture alternately with the buttermilk. Stir in banana mixture. I also added in a sprinkle of cinnamon.
6. Divide batter among prepared pans (about 2 1/2 cups per pan) and bake in preheated oven for about fourty-five to fifty minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.
7. Let cake cool for about ten minutes and then remove from pan and immediately wrap in saran wrap. This will help keep the cake moist.

Banana Crumb Muffins

Well in my house it is only my hubby and myself. So, there are times when the bananas go bad. I hate that. I think that my husband secretly refrains from eating them when he wants me to bake. But that's a whole other story. I'm sure that you've had the same issue. Banana boughten and bananas rotten. I was getting sick of making banana bread everytime so I went on the search for some additional recipes a while back. I found this one and wasn't disppointed. You might think that the brown sugary crumb topping would distract from the banana flavor, but it doesn't. They work together really well. What I like most about this recipe is that it really only makes one pan. I usually get an even 12 muffins out of the recipe. 12 muffins can still be too much for a family of 2 but that's why my coworkers love me...always bringing in the treats. So mix together, one quick pan later and you're done. Great for when you are in the mood to bake but just don't have the time.

1 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
3 bananas, mashed
3/4 cups sugar
1 egg, lightly beaten
1/3 cup butter, melted

Topping:
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
2 Tbsp flour
1/8 tsp ground cinnamon
1 Tbsp butter

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Lightly grease your muffin pan or line with paper cups.
2. In a large bowl, mix together flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. In another bowl, beat together bananas, sugar, egg and melted butter. Add this to the flour mixture, stirring just unitl moistened. Spoon batter into prepared cups.
3. In a small bowl, mix together brown sugar, flour and cinnamon. Cutt in the butter until mixture resembles coarse cornmeal. Sprinkle over the muffins.
4. Bake in preheated over for 18-20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into center of a muffin comes out clean.

I tried to put the crumb topping on before baking the first time and I didn't really like the way that it turned out. It was soft instead of crunchy/crumbly like I wanted. So, I wait until the last 5 minutes. I add the crumble mixture to the top of the muffins and finish baking.

Bake on!
M

Banana Chocolate Chip

These cupcakes were nothing too special. They smelt wonderful but I was a little disappointed when I took my first bite. The smell of banana was definitely stronger than the taste. This was my first time making chocolate butter cream frosting and thought that turned out pretty well. My favorite part of the whole day was probably playing with my new pastry bag and tip! Makes me want to do a little online shopping and order a bunch of fun tips.

With Love,
Jess