Banana Butterscotch Bread

So I know that I normally have quite a few pictures, but sorry, I was not able to take pictures of the bread myself since I brought it to a "banana" breakfast. It was super fun to eat with my friends in the morning after a couple hours of class. I love these guys. The bread was delicious and a great addition to the breakfast. It was great to sit there and talk and hang out. The banana bread had a great banana flavor, but also, the butterscotch added a great flavor to it without overpowering it or anything.

We also made some banana pancakes with some chocolate chips - they were super delish!

Banana Butterscotch Bread [adapted from allrecipes]

Ingredients:

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 cup butter
3/4 cup white sugar
1 large egg
4 ripe bananas, mashed
3/4 cup butterscotch chips

Directions
Preheat an oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).

Grease a 9x5-inch loaf pans. Set aside.

Sift the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg together in a bowl. Set aside.
Beat the butter and sugar with an electric mixer in a large bowl until light and fluffy. The mixture should be noticeably lighter in color.

Beat in the egg, then stir in the mashed bananas.

Pour in the flour mixture, mixing until just incorporated.

Fold in the butterscotch chips; mixing just enough to evenly combine. Pour the batter evenly into the prepared pans.
Bake in the preheated oven until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, 50-60 minutes. Cool in the pans for 10 minutes before removing to cool completely on a wire rack.

Apple Banana Crumble Pie

This pie was really delicious. It was super easy to make as well.

I brought this with me when I went to a Life Beyond Ramen. This time around we made Japanese curry. It was really delicious as well.

Recipe:

Ingredients:
3 md Apples; cut in chunks
2 md Bananas; cut into chunks
2 tb Lemon juice
1 c All purpose flour
1/2 c Sugar
1/2 c Brown sugar; packed
1/2 ts Cinnamon
1/2 ts Nutmeg
1/2 c Butter or margarine; soften
1 9" pastry shell; unbaked

Directions:

Combine fruits and lemon juice; let stand 10 minutes. Combine flour, sugar and spices; cut in butter till crumbly. Arrange fruit in pastry shell. Sprinkle with crumb mixture. Bake at 400F for 35-40 minutes. Cover top lossely with foil if crumb mixture browns too quickly. Cut in wedges to serve.

Banana Chocolate Chip Cookies

Recipe two for my Secret Baker! This cookie was based off of Martha Stewart's Banana-Walnut Chocolate Chunk Cookies. Mine were different mainly because I left out the walnuts and substituted the semisweet chocolate chunks for milk chocolate chips!

These cookies were surprisingly very good. I couldn't stop myself from taking occasional tastes out of the batter bowl. It was just so good!

Sorry about the lack of details and writing! Finals are next week so between studying and baking, there has been little time to anything else.

Raised Waffles with Warm Brown Sugar Bananas and Pear Cranberry Muffins [sms]

This week's SMS, Raised Waffles with Warm Brown Sugar Bananas, was chosen Lauren of Fried Pickles and Ice Cream. And from two weeks ago, Pear Cranberry Muffins with Gingersnap Crumble, was chosen Jennifer of Maple N’ Cornbread.

Sorry for the lack of pictures. I was trying to take pictures during my brunch. I had a couple of my closest friends over for a mini potluck brunch. It was fun and yummy!

For the explanation on why I've been super duper busy is almost a whole post about it. Busy weekends = no time to bake!

Recipe for the waffles here and recipe for the muffins here!! Make sure to check out the rest of the SMS bakers on the blogroll.

Hummingbird Cupcakes

These Hummingbird Cupcakes were made for a friend of mine, Kevin. Kevin and I have an interesting relationship. We make fun of each other, but we truly deeply like each other. He's a pretty close friend of mine, but I dont get to see him really often because he goes to school in Long Beach while I'm up here in Berkeley. We are friends, though, through Circle K so I get to see him quite often at various district events.

He had chosen these cupcakes - why? I have no idea, and I dont think he knew what he was getting into either. These fruit and nut filled cupcakes were a burst of flavor.

I feel like they were very good, but the banana in the cupcake was not very obvious. The pineapple and pecans were very obvious, but less so the banana. Maybe because I had browned them in the oven and not naturally. Who knows?

Recipe is from here. I only took 1/3 of the recipe because that was easiest for me! So yummy!

Banana Pecan Cupcakes [bonus msc]

When I had gotten the post on my google reader about a BONUS ROUND for the cupcake club, I knew that I wanted to participate. I had to think what the perfect occasion to actually make these cupcakes, and my friend's housewarming party was it. I had made the root beer float cupcakes, but there just weren't enough for the 50 people expected at the party. I decided to make more cupcakes. That's how I tend to solve all problems. Cupcakes are the answer.

So I decided to mix all the ingredients together, but I ran into a problem - minor of course. I know that I was supposed to put the pecans in the batter itself, but I didn't feel like mixing anymore and I had already started to fill the cupcake liners up, so I ended up just adding the pecans in afterwards towards the middle of the cupcake hoping that it'll somehow end up in the center of the cupcake.

That, of course, didn't exactly work out as planned, but the pecans were there.

For the frosting, I decided to halve the caramel buttercream recipe because that would have been quite a lot of butter and eggs to work with, but it was the right amount for me. I somehow ended up with 50something cupcakes and I just piped a little bit of frosting on each cupcake and I used it all up.

This was quite a fun recipe to do and I really enjoyed it. They tasted super good too. It was like creamy frosting with some nuts and some good banana cupcakes. It was just a really good recipe and I enjoyed it.

The recipe for this month's bonus round is found on pages 40-41 of Martha Stewart's Cupcake book.

Mom's Banana Apple Bread and Muffins [sms]

This week's SMS, Mom's Banana Apple Bread, was chosen by Joy of Hot Oven, Warm Heart. This fruit-filled bread was really easy to make and I really enjoyed making it. I had made a dozen muffins and used the rest of the batter for the bread since I ran out of cupcake liners.

I actually made this last week because I was still up in Berkeley and it's just so much easier to bake up there. Back at home in Brea, I have make things that are less sweet and things that are easy to make since I do not have too many supplies at hand.

I had actually made lots of substitutes in this recipe. With the apples, I had used golden brown sugar instead. I also only have fugi apples so I just cut one up since they are so big. I also added more cinnamon and vanilla extract. I just like the smell and taste of cinnamon and vanilla.

For the bread/muffins itself, I subbed 1/8 c of the sugar with cinnamon sugar. I also added more cinnamon and vanilla extract. See a pattern here? I took out the ground cloves since I didnt have any hand, but I added 1/4 teaspoon more of nutmeg. I also added some hazelnuts left over from the hazelnut truffles, 1/2 c of milk chocolate chips, and 1/2 c of semi sweet chocolate chips.

These tasted actually very good. I had a muffin before I left, and I froze the rest for a nice and healthy breakfast for those crazy days that are about to start when school starts. I brought the bread home and everyone really enjoyed it. It was nice and healthy, and not too sweet - unlike most things I bake.

Recipe for the bread here! Make sure to check out the rest of the SMS bakers on the blogroll!

Chocolate Chip Banana Muffins

NOM NOM NOM!
Normally, I bake the sweet, frosting topped cupcakes, but today, I felt like making something a bit different, and well I had a couple of very overly riped bananas so muffins it was.

Using this recipe with some differences, I made some yummy, yummy muffins.
Ingredients:
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 egg
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup soy milk
2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup mashed ripe bananas (I used three bananas)
3/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips

Directions:
In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
In another bowl, combine the egg, oil, milk, and vanilla.
Stir into dry ingredients just until moistened.
Fold in bananas and chocolate chips.
Fill greased or paper-lined muffin cups two-thirds full.
Bake at 350 degrees F for 22-25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.
Cool for 5 minutes before removing from pans to wire racks.

Picture time again!

In the pan
My huge muffin
with guava juice

YAY, awesome success. I'll make sure to bake more soon. =)

<3 Nina