Chocolate chunk banana bread.

I've finally opened a box of cook books!!!  After a lot of organizing, and the first thing I grabbed is my trusty notebook.  I'm sure everyone has a book of handwritten recipes that they go to before anything else.  Here's mine.

Lots of papers sticking out the top but I know exactly where to go to find my favorites.  I've had this for nearly 20 years.

After a great deal on bananas earlier in the week I decided to make a big batch of banana bread.  But not just plain banana bread.  I"ve been craving some kind of chocolate desert so I took some chocolate easter bunnies out of the freezer to add to my recipe.  I picked up about 20 bunnies at one of the local department stores right after Easter...I think I paid 10 cents each and into the freezer they went.  It's a lot less expensive than bags of milk chocolate chips!

No pics of the banana bread, since it's disappearing quicker than I ever thought.  Z wanted it cut right out of the oven and slathered with butter.  H says he doesn't want any but then eats half of my slice with huge bites that a 2 year old should never be able to take.

I'll give credit to my Godmother for this recipe.  I'm not sure that it's hers for sure, or where she got it, but it works out every time and it's yummy.

1/2 C melted butter
2 eggs
2 mashed bananas
2 tsp sour milk (just add a few drops of lemon juice or vinegar to your milk)
2 C flour
1 tsp baking soda
pinch of salt

Combine first 5 ingredients.  In a separate bowl combine remaining ingredients then add to wet ingredients.  Place in a buttered and floured loaf pan.  Bake for 1 hour in a preheated 300degree oven.  Add chocolate chips/chunks or nuts if you like.  Whatever you think would taste good with bananas.

**When C was making her banana bread she would always mash the bananas a few hours or even a day before.  They release a bit more liquid and the bread always seemed to stay really moist.**

And this recipe makes really good muffins too but you have to adjust your baking time.  Maybe 1/2 hour to 40 mins.

Enjoy

Next desert I think will be my mom's recipe for Rhubarb Delight. I'm hoping to try it over the weekend.  It's cookie bottom, custard/rhubarb middle, and merangue top. It's a big recipe so you need a crowd or a big appetite!

What to make now.

I've spent most of my time lately organizing the house and little time devoted to baking, except for bread which Z is getting quite good at these days!  Now I need something easy, quick, and oh so yummy to bake with my babies.  Maybe a batch of granola if I can find a great recipe.

Daddy helped make jam.

We've made jam with fruit picked from our property already!  The rhubarb is gone crazy and if I've learned anything from my parent's huge rhubarb patch it's that picking what's ready will help the new stuff come up sooner.  So I've been picking!

Z wanted to make jam so I went online and found a recipe that we modified a little to suit what we had on hand. 

5 cups rhubarb, washed and cut into chunks
1/2 pineapple, crushed
2 C sugar
1 small package of jelly powder  (we used strawberry kiwi because that's all we had on hand)

That's all you need.  The recipe called for a can of crushed pineapple, but since fresh pineapples are on sale this week I happened to have half of one left in the fridge so we used that.

Mix the first three ingredients and leave it for 2 hours.  I think this is to help get some of the moisture out of the rhubarb.  Then boil it for 12 minutes.  Take it off the heat and add the jelly powder.  Mix well to make sure all the granules have dissolved and put it into containers.  It made 2 regular sized mason jars for us.

The kids all tasted it before it went into jars but I waited until last night and had some on homemade bread with peanut butte.  Yummmmmmmmmmm.  I think I would cut down on the sugar a bit next time (maybe 1/4-1/2 cup) but still really good. 

Pancake Poppers

That's what we're calling them anyway.  Yummmmmmmy!

I got this idea after some online surfing the other day and it seemed so simple.  So this morning I .decided it was time to make mini pancake muffins for the kiddies.  We're all sick of the usual toast, cereal, scrambled eggs.

THe recipe is nothing special, and actually, I didn't even use a recipe.  I just threw a bunch of ingredients into a jar and shook it up.  We've done pancakes enough times to remember flour, baking powder, salt, egg, milk, and something sweet.  I used maple syrup this morning and when I had it all done Z and H put chocolate chips on top.  Into the oven at 350 for 10 mins and they were perfect. 

Unfortunately I still haven't been able to find an actual non-stick mini muffin pan (or any muffin pan for that matter) so I had to be a little creative in getting them out of the pan.  Still so good.

I can't find the charger for my Canon camera battery so I've been suing my Flip Video Camera for everything lately and these are a few still shots I got from this mornings videos.

Adding chocolate chips.

Final product

And breakfast time...shhh don 't tell anyone we're sitting on the living room sofa!

New neighbours bearing cookies....and an offer to mow the jungle.

We were out trying to mow the jungle with our itty bitty mower yesterday evening when our wonderful neighbors came over to say hi.  She brought a plate of very yummy cookies (chocolate chip and coconut.mmmmmmm) and he brought an offer to finish the main lawn with his ride on mower! 

It's nice to know that we've got some friendly people living close by if we ever need anything.  I just hope we can be as helpful to them if they need anything.  And I hope that we can become friends, since we plan on being in this new house for a long time.

I'm Back!

Boy things have really been crazy for our family.  

Exciting news:  We moved into our new house.

Not so exciting:  Our bathroom reno is taking so much longer than we had expected.

I'm still super psyched to be in our house though. We have lots of space, big barn for storage and projects, lots of property for the kids to play in, and we're in the country a little.  I can't wait until I'm all organized in the house and am able to go and explore our new community and meet some people. 

We bought a new stove a few weeks back, since I hated the flat top one we had at our other house, and I like it so far.  We're turning into a Kenmore family.  The kids baked cookies already and last night I baked my first batch of bread since moving in. It's good to get back in a routine even if its a small one.

Not much else to talk about today, although I did find a new web site called BookSneeze that offers free books in exchange for reviews so I'll be signing up for that and giving it a try.  I'll add a Book Review section on the side of the blog and you can check it out whenever I post a review.  I'm hoping they have some good cook/baking books!!!!!

Totally unrelated, but also noteworthy before I sign off, one of my other favorite baking blogs is Bakerella.  For those of you who don't know about Bakerella, she's the lady who makes the awesome cakepops and just published an entire cake pop book.  Check her out here.  She's been sick lately so send her some good vibes and prayers.

cheating

The only thing I've been baking with the kids lately is bread.  Yummy yummy bread!  I did cheat and buy ready made cookies the other day though.  I couldn't believe I was picking up pop in the oven cookies.  But there I was, drawn in by a big fluorescent pink 50% OFF sticker.    They were good though.  PC chocolate pecan caramel bars or something ridiculously yummy like that.