Banana-nana Bread

So, I've now made this recipe twice, and am about to make it a third time. The wonders of buying quickly-ripening fruits in large quantities for an uninterested house.

Anyway. This recipe is rather simple, and quite tasty. I've been tripling it, but again, we have a huge house and a mammoth supply of bananas. Or enough bananas to fill a mammoth. Whatever.

Ingredients:

1 cup + 2 tablespoons + 2 teaspoons all-purpose flour

1 cup + 2 tablespoons + 2 teaspoons whole-wheat flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup butter, softened

3/4 cup brown sugar

2 eggs, beaten

2 2/3 cups mashed overripe bananas

2 tablespoons + 2 teaspoons sour cream

Splash vanilla

Butter/Crisco/Fat of choice for greasing

Additional optional goodies: cinnamon/sugar mixture, chopped walnuts, chocolate chips, nutella

----

Basic Banana Bread:

Preheat oven to 350* and lightly grease a loaf pan or muffin tins

In a large bowl, mix the first four ingredients. Create a well in the center.

In a separate bowl, cream the sugar and butter until fluffy, adding the eggs gradually. With the beaters on medium, add in the bananas, sour cream, and vanilla, scraping the sides with a spatula occasionally. Mix until well blended.

Pour the wet mixture into the dry goods, and mix just until incorporated. This is crucial - overmixing will lead to denser, drier bread while undermixing will create surprise flour-clumps of doom.

Once mixed, pour into the greased loaf pan, and pop into the oven for 60 or so minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean. I turn mine around a little more than halfway through baking, but our ovens are not so kind.

Once out of the oven, let cool for 15 minutes, then run a butter knife around the edges, flip onto a cooling rack, and remove pan. Or you can just run the butter knife around, and serve it in the pan to your hungry housemates. Which, to be honest, is what happens for me.

Special Breads:

If adding walnuts, add about a cupful to the dry ingredients.

If adding chocolate chips, coat them in flour, add about a cup-and-a-half once the wet and dry ingredients are mixed. Once poured into the pan, add chocolate chips on top of the batter.

If adding cinnamon, sprinkle some on the greased pan, and add 1 tablespoon to the dry ingredients

If adding Nutella, pour half the batter into the pan, drop teaspoonfuls over the batter, run a knife through it, and then add the rest of the batter.

If adding peanut butter, follow Nutella directions, directly above.

~ The Baker's Apprentice/Chef A

Edit: Pictures added, as well as some additional "special breads!"

Absurdly Easy Chocolate Fudge

Summertime, for me at least, means fudge. It doesn't require baking (and heating up the kitchen), and I prefer it when it is stored in the fridge. I actually made this on the 14th for a friend back home. I sent off most of the fudge, and have reports that it kept wonderfully on its journey, and is now mostly gone. Quick consumption: the mark of a job well done. Yay!

This recipe is for chocolate fudge at it's simplest. Hopefully, when I gain access to more ingredients, I'll do a rocky-road fudge (my personal favorite), or a chocolate-swirl, or a peanut-butter-swirl... The possibilities are endless, which I think is part of the reason I adore fudge so. I made 1.5 times what the recipe called for, but that was only because we ran out of chocolate chips. Tragedy!

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cans (14 oz each) sweetened condensed milk.

6 tablespoons butter, softened

4.5 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips (or any kind of chip, really. The chocolates, peanut butter, butterscotch, etc. It's up to you!)

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

----

Firstly, prepare your mold for the fudge. I used a deep cookie sheet because I like thin fudge and I couldn't find a clean casserole pan. Butter the surface, and cover the sides with a nice large piece of plastic wrap. The butter helps keep the wrap in place while pouring, and the plastic makes fudge extraction easy.

Fix a double boiler, making sure the water doesn't contact the top pan, and that the water just lightly simmers. Combine the condensed milk and butter, stirring until the butter melts. Add in the chocolate chips gradually, mixing until the chips melt. Once liquified and to the softball stage, pour in the vanilla, and just mix until incorporate. Watch that it doesn't seize, but I had no problem with that.

Pour the fudge into the mold, lightly shaking the pan back and forth to evenly spread the fudge. Put in the fridge for at least two hours, until set. After it sets, it should be good if left out at room temperature, but if the weather is particularly warm, just keep it in the fridge.

~The Baker's Apprentice/Chef A

Edit: Picture added, and a Rocky Road fudge recipe might be coming up shortly, since we now have marshmallows and walnuts stocked. Get excited!