ABC - Brown Butter Banana Bread

This is a super late blog post but as they say, better late than never :) It will also be super short. Things have been hectic lately but in a fun way (long overseas vacation, mom currently visiting me).

Moist brown butter banana bread

Our ABC recipe for the month of May, Brown Butter Banana Bread, was made a while ago. Having baked numerous banana breads, I was intrigued by the brown butter aspect in this recipe. The process of making browned butter (or beurre noisette as it's called in Fancy Land), is mesmerizing. I have to admit that the browned butter flavor was lost in the end, overwhelmed by the chocolate and banana. It was still a lovely banana bread though, moist and not too dense.

I like to use mini chocolate chips for better chocolate flavor distribution

Moist and airy

Don't forget to check out the other ABC bakers' results.

If you'd like to join the ABC bakers in their monthly baking adventures, please go to the ABC blog for more information.

ABC - Double Chocolate Chip Banana Muffins

It's a new year, so it's a new recipe source for the ABC bakers. We'll be baking from the Scientifically Sweet blog by Christina Marsigliese. I've been following her blog for a couple years now and really enjoy her scientific approach to baking. What else would you expect from a food scientist? So let's "get our geek on" :o)

Before I move on to this month's challenge, I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the ABC bakers (past and present) for their active and enthusiastic participation in 2014. I enjoyed reading your posts, seeing your pictures, and learning from your experiences. Thank you for making the ABC baking group successful. I'm sending you all a virtual hug :o)

This month's challenge, Double Chocolate Chip Banana Muffins, is one of my favorite things to bake anytime I have ripe bananas. And when I don't have time to bake while the bananas are ripe, I mash and measure them, put them in a ziplock bag and freeze them. That way they're ready to go whenever the baking mood strikes!

Yummy chocolatey goodness with a hint of banana!

I've baked these at least a dozen times, got my sister addicted to them and now I'm trying to do the same to you (mwuaaah haa haa) :o) 

If you'd like to join the ABC bakers in their monthly baking adventures, please go to the ABC blog for more information.

ABC - Nut-Crusted Chocolate-Banana Swirl Cake

To all my readers, I wish you a very happy New Year with lots of love, happiness, and good health! And lots of baking pleasure, of course :o)

The ABC bakers are starting 2012 with the first recipe from the new book we're baking from: The Weekend Baker by Abby Dodge. When I emailed Abby about that, she was very excited. I also asked her to pick our first recipe for us and she happily did: Nut-Crusted Chocolate-Banana Swirl Cake. What a great recipe selection that was.

Chocolate-Banana Swirl Cake with Chocolate Glaze

To find out more information on how to join the ABC bakers, please click here.

HCB - Many-Splendored Quick Bread

This week's challenge for the Heavenly Cake Bakers was extra special. Not only did I make this week's Many-Splendored Quick Bread, I got to bake it with Marie, in her kitchen. Cool huh?! It was a lot of fun and Marie is just as funny in person as she is in her posts.

Left to right: Jim, Marie, and Woody

Jim is such a nice guy. He was switching between taking picture for Marie and myself, and at the same time, trying to stay out of our way :o) Woody (you can find his picture on page xii), also joined us, just as we were about to put our loaves into the oven. I very much enjoyed his stories about working with Rose. What a lucky guy he is!! You can find Marie's description of this bread and more pictures of our "bake-event" on Marie's blog.

Splendid indeed!

This quick bread intrigued me. I've had banana bread before, carrot bread and zucchini bread. But I've never had a quick bread that combined all three elements. I was very curious how that would taste.

HCB - Chocolate Banana Stud Cake

The Heavenly Cake Bakers baked the Chocolate Banana Stud Cake this week. This is a delicious chocolate butter cake with a small amount of mashed banana in the batter. The "stud" part in the name comes from the chocolate chips that adorn the cake. Studding the cake all over with chocolate chips is an easy but time consuming process, so I cheated a little bit and used REALLY big chocolate chips.

Droste milk chocolate pastilles

Ok, they're not chocolate chips. They're "pastilles" or chocolate disks, about 1" in diameter, and they're made by Droste (you might know Droste cocoa powder). I brought these delicious chocolates with me from Holland. These particular ones were milk chocolate with 35% cocoa content. Yum!

Delicious Chocolate Banana Stud Cake... but what's inside?

Click on the "read more" link below to read about the changes I made to the recipe.

HCB - Banana Refrigerator Cake

This week's recipe for the Heavenly Cake Bakers is the Banana Refrigerator Cake, chosen by Saira of Baked and Caked. This cake was very easy and quick to put together. Although the recipes states to use a food processor and a mixer, I was stubborn and used the mixer only. I like my bananas to have a little bit of texture so I always mash them with a fork only. Other than substituting orange zest for the lemon zest, I pretty much stuck to the recipe. Since I'll be taking this cake to a potluck at work, I thought it would be easier to cut into bars if I baked it in a 8" square pan. I have no doubt this cake would be wonderful and delicious with the prescribed White Chocolate and Cream Cheese Frosting, however, I will be frosting mine with Caramel Whipped Cream instead because that's what I have in my fridge already. Besides, who doesn't like caramel + anything banana? :o)

 8" square cake + 1 cupcake (for quality control purpose only!)

Final thoughts/tips:

• Hubby and I shared the cupcake/muffin. It's very moist and tender with a wonderful banana flavor. The orange zest worked very well with the banana. Hubby's rating for this one: 8 out of 10.
• Although I was a bit skeptical about the lack of spices in the recipe, I went ahead and made as-is, sans the usual spices. I have to admit it was a nice change from the usual.

1-yr blogaversary

It's been exactly 1 year since I started this blog. Baking has been a passion of mine for a few years now. I really enjoy reading other people's blog and learning new things. By creating my own blog, I was hoping I could do the same for others; share recipes, tips, and techniques.

A big thanks goes to a couple blogging gals who were a big inspiration to me: Deeba of Passionate About Baking and Vera of Baking Obsession. I love their creativity and passion.

Last but not last, I would like to thank Lorelei of Mermaid Sweets for setting up the Sweet Melissa Baking Club, and all the SMS bakers. I'm so glad I joined this group. It has encouraged me to blog much more often. I also very much enjoy baking in a group setting and sharing baking experiences.

Over the weekend, I baked a banana cake and filled it with the peach jam I recently made. To keep things simple, I dusted it with powdered sugar. This banana cake is another great recipe from The Cake Bible; moist, soft, tender, and banana-ey. I highly recommend it. You can find the recipe HERE. My changes: omitted zest, added 1 tsp cinnamon.

Happy 1st blogaversary :o)

SMS - Mom's Banana Apple Bread

This week's SMS recipe, Mom's Banana Apple Bread, was chosen by my friend, the lovely Joy, of Hot Oven, Warm Heart. She couldn't have picked a better recipe (especially for those of us short on time). The batter came together quickly and it tasted delicious.

The batter is ready for baking (hey, what's that small piece of brown parchment paper in the upper left corner doing there?)

Moist and tender banana bread with small chunks of caramelized apple, with just the right amount of warm spices. Check out Joy's always-fun-to-read blog for the recipe (click here to go straight to it).

That piece of parchment was supposed to go inside these pans. Doh! (did I go through this all this trouble just so I can eat the bread straight out of the pan?)

Please, please release from the pan in one piece when I turn you over. Yay!!

Although I'm very pressed for time, after having turned in 14 baked items at the State Fair this morning and only sleeping 6.5 hours on Saturday, I just couldn't sit this week's SMS challenge out and disappoint Joy. She raved about this bread so I had to make it. Thanks for picking such a great recipe, Joy!! It's definitely a keeper.

Yum! Excellent banana goodness emerged!

Final thoughts/tips:

• Hubby hasn't tried it yet so will try to update this post in the next couple days with his input. I liked the bread a lot. My only critique would be that it's a tad too sweet for me. I'm thinking it's from the sugar in the bread + the sugar added to the apples. Next time, I'll cut the sugar a bit.
• I cut the recipe in half (which was easy to do) and baked the batter in two mini-loaf pans. Baked these for about 38-40 minutes. One loaf is for taste testing and the other I wrapped in plastic wrap and foil and froze.
  
• My changes: doubled the amount of cinnamon, used half white sugar and half brown sugar to better match the caramel flavor in the apples, and used 1 tsp of fresh lemon juice.
• Used Joy's tip on cubing half the apple amount and grating the other half. That was an excellent tip. I highly recommend it.
  
• Don't forget to check out the other SMS bakers.