Banana Bread Pancakes

When I was in high school, I was not your typical sleeps-til-noon teenager. Nope, not me. I spent every weekday morning getting out of bed at 5am to be able to get up, shower, beautify, collect my things and be out the door on time to catch the bus. So when the weekend came, sleeping in meant 8am.

Now, being an adult, I seem to have found my love for sleep. I usually wake up no earlier than 10am on my days off (unless certain circumstances arise) and sometimes I can even sleep until noon, depending on how late I stayed up baking the night before.

This newly found adoration for my comfy bed and warm blankie sadly interferes with the other love of my life: pancakes for breakfast.

After staring at the clock in disbelief (and other various distractions), I’m usually ready to decide what to make for breakfast around noon. Then I get distracted some more and I either end up skipping breakfast all together or having pancakes at 1:30pm.

It’s National Pancake Day, don’t be like me: start your day off right, enjoy your pancakes for breakfast 🙂

These pancakes taste like you whipped up banana bread dough and accidentally spilled it in your skillet. It tastes exactly like banana bread; but with the whole wheat flour, small amounts of sugar and butter, you can feel good about piling 4 onto your plate. They are fluffy, thick and full of delicious flavor.

Banana Bread Pancakes
adapted from How Sweet Eats

makes 4 pancakes

Ingredients:

2/3 cups whole wheat pastry flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
pinch of salt
3 tablespoons brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
4 tablespoons milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 large ripe banana, mashed
1 tablespoon butter, melted

Instructions:

In a medium bowl, combine flour, baking powder, sugar, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg, whisking until combined. In a meauring cup, measure out the milk and vanilla extract and give it a quick stir. Add the wet ingredients to the dry and stir with a rubber spatula. At this point, the mixture will still be dry. Add in mashed banana and mix thoroughly. Add melted butter and stir until batter is somewhat smooth.

Heat a skillet over medium heat. When hot, spritz with non-stick cooking spray and using a 1/3 cup measure, spoon batter into rounds and cook until bubbles form on top and the pancake looks set around the edges – about 2-3 minutes. Flip and cook for a minute or two more. Repeat with remaining batter. Serve hot with butter and syrup, or however you wish.

Note: If you don’t have whole wheat pastry flour, you can use 1 cup of regular whole wheat + 1 cup of all purpose. Or 2 cups of all purpose.

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TWD – Chewy, Chunky Blondies

AKA: “What’s a blondie?”
AKA: the holy grail of all things loaded!!

These have everything from nuts to shredded coconut to chocolate chips and even butterscotch chips in them. And a few glugs of bourbon may or may not have found its way into this blondie. I am not available for comment.

Ahem. BOY, were these good! I have 2 handfuls of people who enjoyed them rather thoroughly. And NOOOO it wasn’t because they were boozy. My friends have more class and dignity than that. Or so they lead me to believe.

But it didn’t seem like anyone really knew what a blondie WAS! I always thought that it was a vanilla version of a brownie. Blondie, brownie… it makes sense to me! But everyone was in agreement that it was more of a cross between a brownie and a chocolate chip cookie. Who am I to argue semantics with a handful of boozy friends that were praising my treats? I’m not above that.

As far as prep work goes, there’s a lot of chopping involved (unless you don’t mind hauling out the food processor) but once everything is chopped and ready to go, these are thrown together quite easily. I made these and my go-to brownies (I’ll get the recipe up… eventually) in the same afternoon. They did take a bit longer for them to bake up, probably because of the glugs of bourbon that may or may not have been in the dough, which gave them a more solid, crunchy-esque top rather than the crakled, brownie like tops I imagined seeing.

Overall, I think these were a hit. I enjoyed them as did everyone else. That deserves a repeat in my book 🙂

Please disregard my alien looking, freakishly orange butterscotch chips. I promise they didn’t look like that the night I made them!

A big thanks goes out to Nicole of Cookies on Friday for choosing this recipe. Head on over to her blog for the recipe, its a good’n!

TWD – My Best Chocolate Chip (etc!) Cookies

I think that I have a ‘chocolate chip cookie curse.’

No matter how many different recipes I make, how hard I try, underbake, overbake, mix like crazy, just incorporate, freeze, chill, don’t chill… it doesn’t matter WHAT I do, my cookies never come out the way I want them to. And it ONLY happens with chocolate chip cookies.

The are flat as discs. It seems like all the dough falls to the baking sheet and leaves the chips exposed. If anyone can remedy this problem for me, I’d love you forever. I’d even send you a package of the beautiful cookies, scout’s honor!!

Aside from my displeasure at the appearance of these, they tasted great. I made 4 different versions (posted above, respectively): regular ole chocolate chip cookies, CCC with walnuts, CCC with coconut and raisins, and Chocolate CCC. I also used bittersweet, semi-sweet and milk chocolate chips/chunks for variety.

The coconut raisin variation was dubbed “the best cookies I’ve ever had” by a coworker. None of the cookies lasted very long, which is a good sign. So I’ll be making these again, nipping and tucking until they look like they do in the book. I’m OCD like that. 😀

Thanks to Kait of Kait’s Plate for picking these. Head on over to her blog for the recipe and the the TWD blogroll to see the different variations of a classic.

TWD – Cafe Volcano Cookies

I promise you that I have never photographed anything as ugly as this. I mean these are uuuuuuugly.  Then again, I don’t think I’ve ever MADE anything as ugly as this.

I mean, suuuure cakes have fallen. Bundt cakes exploded (don’t ask). Soggy cheesecakes. Burnt-beyond-recognition cookies.

But this, this is in a class of its own.

They look like… like…. gosh I can hardly bring myself to type it and send it out into cyberspace. Fecal matter. There, I said it. And I will never say it again. Scout’s honor.

They taste, well… they weren’t MY favorite (least favorite Dorie recipe actually) but my nutty lovin’ mom liked em so they couldn’t have been THAT bad.

I think it would be fun to get pictures from all my readers of all the things gone awry in their kitchens. I see far too many perfectly photographed pictures of food and IIII knoooow that I’m not the only one in the kitchen who has those flops. These cookies gave me an idea for a monthly (or heck even weekly) spot on my blog: Ugliest Baked Goods Contest. There are no prizes (yet?) except for the satisfaction that you are not alone in this. SO, if you’re interested in being showcased for a few laughs (I’ll be posting mine as well) send me an email (flamegoddess65@aol.com) with a picture or however many you deem necessary. How often I post depends on how many pictures I get. 🙂 Bake on and photograph those flops!!

Visit The Lonely Sidecar for the recipe and a cute post about her tie to these cookies.

Not that you WANT to see, but more pics are here.

Silver Palate Banana Bread

Have you ever popped into a bakery or a cafe and been teased and tantilized by what appeared to be a delicious, promising banana nut muffin or bread? And it turned out to be nothing short of… synthetically flavored and over sugared? Don’t feel bad, I fell for it everytime until one day I was just plain grossed out by them. I shunned them and they’ve mocked me eversince.

But no more!! I’d just make it at home… erm… someday!!

And someday has finally arrived! I was tired of waiting and I finally had an excuse to make it. From that moment of clarity I decided then and there that I would choose the recipe carefully, methodically. It had to be perfect: easy on the sugar, gracious amount of banana (not flavoring or extract), dense crumb but still slightly fluffy. I found a winner and I went to work… excitement in tow.

This cake is heaven on a plate! I slightly overbaked it and it was still fluffy and delicious. It wasn’t overloaded with sugar and butter and had a banana flavor to die for!!

The recipe is really simple to bring together and I bet you have most of the ingredients on hand! So what are you waiting for? Grab those ripe bananas and put em to some delicious, good use!

Silver Palate Cookbook Banana Bread: (makes 1 loaf)

8 Tbsp (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temp**
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup all purpose flour
3 large ripe bananas, mashed (1 1/4 cups – 1 1/2 cups)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup walnuts or pecans, coarsely chopped

1. Adjust an oven rack to the center position and reheat oven to 350. Grease 9 x 5 x 3 inch loaf pan. (or generously spray Pam for baking in every crevise of your bundt pan/muffin tin.)
2. Spread the nuts on a baking sheet and toast until fragrant, 5 to 10 minutes. Set aside to cool. Chop them coursely when cooled.
3. Sift flour, baking soda, and salt together in a small bowl.
4. Mash bananas with a fork, add vanilla to the banana mixture. Set aside.
5. Cream butter and sugar together until fluffy (in a large bowl, this will be the main mixing bowl). Add eggs, one at a time and beat.
6. Add flour mixture to butter mixture, making sure to mix well.
7. Fold in banana mixture and nuts until combined.
8. Pour into pan. Bake 50-60 min, or until cake tester comes out clean (it took roughly 40 mins in a bundt pan). Cool in pan 10 min, then on rack.

**alternatively, you could melt the butter and go from there to make muffins or a muffin textured banana treat.

Angelic, no?

For more pics click here.