Banana Chocolate Bread

I really enjoy reading the book BakeWise by Shirley O. Corriher and there are tons of recipes that I want to try out. Most of the ones that I have tried out so far have been incredible so I was exited to try the banana bread recipe. As always I used coconut sugar instead of white sugar and I added 1 cup of chocolate chips because. The original recipe uses baking powder as well as baking soda, so I substituted the baking powder with more baking soda (not one to one as baking soda is 4 times more powerful).

1 3/4 cups of flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups coconut sugar
1/2 cups canola oil
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs
1/2 cup buttermilk
4 mashed very ripe bananas (about 2 cups)
1 cup dark chocolate chips
1/2 cup whipping cream
Mix together flour, baking soda, salt and sugar.
In a second bowl, mix together canola oil, vanilla extract, eggs, buttermilk and bananas until well combined. Then add chocolate chips and roasted nuts.
Make a mold in the dry ingredients and add the banana mix.
In a third bowl whip the whipping cream until soft peaks form. Then fold the cream into the batter.
Bake in a 8 x 4.5 x 2.5 inch (20 x 11 x 6 cm) loaf pan at 375F / 190C for about 35 minutes until the center springs back when touched and a knife inserted in the center comes out clean.

As I didn't have a loaf pan I used an 8 x 8 inches square baking pan. The result was disastrous. After 35 minutes the batter was still very liquid and after another 30 hour the outside began to burn while a knife inserted in the center still came out smeared with uncooked batter.
So I took it out of the oven, cut it in half and tried saving it by frying it on the stove. The result looked very sad.
On the plus side it did taste quite good and was happily received as a sweet breakfast addition on our camping trip.

Next time I would still use my square baking pan but only make half of the batter. I don't know how all this batter can fit in a loaf pan and not overflow when it rises during baking!

Gluten Free Chocolate Cake

This recipe is another one that I have learned at the community kitchen. The recipe we made at the community kitchen was adapted from this chocolate cake recipe. We used less garbanzo beans and less sugar.
The result was a very light and fluffy chocolate cake that had a little, not altogether unpleasant, garbanzo bean taste.
So I changed the recipe yet again. Instead of garbanzo beans I used lima beans (thanks to Sarah for this idea!) and instead of white sugar I used ...coconut sugar! As coconut sugar has a more distinct taste than white sugar, I hoped it would help mask the taste of beans even more.

1 1/2 cups dark chocolate chips
15 oz cooked baby lima beans
4 eggs
1/2 cup coconut sugar
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp vanilla extract
powdered sugar for dusting
Meld chocolate chips in a double boiler or in the microwave.
Combine beans and eggs in a blender until smooth. Add sugar, baking powder and blend again. Then add melted chocolate.
Make for 40-45 minutes at 350F / 180C until knife or toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.
Dust with powdered sugar after cooling.

Pound Cake

After the muffins from BakeWise turned out so incredibly well, I wanted to try more recipes. One of the first recipes in the book is the Great American Pound Cake. This cake gets so much attention that there are 4 different recipes. The one that caught my attention was the recipe that called for whipped cream to be mixed gently into the dough just before baking. Clearly any cake that gets whipped cream is going to be a good one! One of the important things for this recipe is the bundt cake as the cake will not rise properly in a normal cake pan (or fall back in after baking and look sad). So I got a beautiful bundt cake pan and tried the recipe to bring to game night.

2 cups butter
2 3/4 cups coconut sugar
1 tbsp vanilla extract
6 eggs
2 3/4 cups flour
1/2 cup whipping cream
butter for the bundt pan
Combine butter and coconut sugar until fluffy. Add the vanilla extract and one egg at a time. Add flour bit by bit.
In a separate bowl, whip the whipping cream until soft peaks form. Gently fold the whipped cream into the dough. Pour the batter into a buttered bundt cake pan and bake for 40 min at 350F / 180C.

I was shocked to find that 2 cups of butter are 1 pound of butter and 2 3/4 cups of coconut sugar are 1 pound of coconut sugar! A scary suspicion about the name of the cake crept up on me..
When I took the cake out of the oven and out of the bundt pan, it seemed quite dark and I was afraid it was burned (it turned out not to be the case), so I quickly made a batch of the delicious and quick Apple-Cinnamon-Muffins to bring to game night as well. To my utter surprise the muffins paled next to the pound cake! Everyone loved moist and sweet pound cake and we got the take most of the muffins back home.

It surely wasn't the last time I made this cake but it won't become a regular one for me, the pound of butter and pound of sugar scare me a little bit.

Apple Cinnamon Muffin

Until I found this recipe I have mostly used my muffin pan to bake mini quiches, mini corn bread and other mini things that were not muffins.
Then I stumbled upon the following recipe in the book "BakeWise" by Shirley O. Corriher. It promised that the muffins would be deliciously moist and flavorful and I decided to finally make muffins with my muffin pan!
I mostly stuck to the recipe, although I used baking soda instead of baking powder and dried coconut instead of frozen coconut. And as always, I used coconut sugar instead of white sugar.

1 cup pecans
1 tbsp butter
salt
2 cups flour
1/2 tsp baking soda or 2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp cinnamon
1 cup coconut sugar
3 eggs
1 cup canola oil
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 cored and peeled apple, cut into chunks
2 carrots, peeled and shredded
1/2 cup golden raisins
1/2 cup coconut shreds
Roast pecans in the oven, add some butter and salt.
Mix flour and baking soda (make sure that the baking soda is well distributed), add cinnamon and coconut sugar.
In a second bowl mis eggs, canola oil and vanilla extract. Slowly pour the egg mixture into the flour mixture and combine well.
Add apples, carrots, raisins and coconut shreds.
Bake for 18 min at 400F / 200C, then cool an a cooling rack.

The muffins were indeed deliciously moist and very yummy! I made them a couple of times since the first try. Once, I ran out of coconut and made the muffins without it. Surprisingly that had a huge influence on the taste, they are much better with the coconut shreds!

Tiramisu

I first encountered this tasty and easy recipe when a friend brought it as a dessert dip to a dip party. I recently tried it out myself and was delighted how quick it is, just a couple of minutes and you have a wonderful dessert!

Tiramisu:
1-2 egg yolks per person, I use fresh organic eggs
1 tbsp coconut sugar per person
1/2 tub of Mascarpone
rum
cocoa powder for decoration
Beat the egg yolks for at least 1 minute, until they form a light and fluffy cream. Add the sugar and continue whisking. Add Mascarpone, try the mix and add more if needed, but you don't want it to be too cheesy. Add as much rum as you like (for 6 egg yolks I used 1/4 cup of spiced rum). Use a sift to decorate the Tiramisu with cocoa powder.
Very tasty with strawberries!

Cakes in Jars - or in a Muffin Pan

After seeing this video of how to bake cakes in jars I thought, I could do the same in my beloved muffin pan. I am also a big fan of recipes with few ingredients and this recipe has only five: berries, flour, sugar, butter and a pinch of salt.

So I distributed 2 1/2 cups frozen (instead of fresh) berries among the 12 muffin molds, mixed 1/2 cup of flour with 1/2 cup of coconut sugar and some salt and poured it on the fruit. At the end I added about 1/8 stick of butter (1/2 oz or 15 g) to each mold.

It tasted chewy and very good especially topped with ice cream!

But the mini cakes did not hold their form and it was only possible to eat it out of the muffin pan or spooned into another dish (hence the jars would be much more convenient) and for my taste it was too much butter. I thought that the butter would not seep through all the flour sugar mixture resulting in pockets of dry flour. But that was not the case at all.

I next time I want to try using half the amount of butter.

Eggnog - second try

I tried making the eggnog again.

Again I had to sift the eggnog so that it was smooth. I think it was the cinnamon that clotted in/with the milk during the heating process. But I am also wondering if it could be because I used coconut sugar instead of white sugar although I don't see why that would happen.

Next time (for New Year's Eve!) I want to try starting to heat the milk up after I have already started to whisk the egg yolks and sugar, I hope to better control the heating process that way. Also, I want to try adding the cinnamon to the egg mixture so that it is not heated up with the milk. Just in case I bought a proper sieve, though :)

Smoothie (banana, berries, mint, almond milk)

Since I got an immersion blender (last week), I have been making smoothies as often as I could.

Yesterday a special person showed me a recipe and I was keen on trying it out today. As I didn't have all the ingredients I changed it up a little bit and it turned into a fresh minty smoothie. Perfect to start my late morning after sleeping in :)

Banana-Berry-Mind-Almond Smoothie
1/2 banana
1 cup frozen blue berry and raspberry mix
1/2 avocado
leaves of 3-4 stems of fresh mint
1 cup  almond milk
1 tbsp coconut sugar
Blend all the ingredients. Sweeten to taste.

Turkey stock, turkey yoghurt soup and crunch bars with sour cream chocolate frosting

After Thanksgiving we had a lot of left overs and I got to try out some new turkey recipes.

I was especially exited about the recipes I could make with the turkey stock.
The stock recipe I used was a mixture of this turkey stock recipe I found online and what I found in my newly acquired book "Julia's Kitchen Wisdom" by Julia Child.

My turkey stock:
I cooked the turkey carcass with carrots, celery and onions and also added a bouquet of herbs (dill, rosemary and thyme). After bringing everything to a boil I let it simmer for about 2 hours.
The stock turned out a bit cloudy so I guess I didn't skim enough in the beginning but I think that's ok.

Now, today is the day I got to make my first soup and I chose this spicy turkey yogurt soup with chickpeas, rice and mint. The recipe sounded like a Turkish yogurt soup I tasted in Berlin and I'm pretty happy the way this recipe turned out. I might make it again, I still have about 2 liters of stock in the freezer!


In other news, this week is the week we got a hand mixer! Let the baking begin!

The first "cake" I made (while waiting for the laundry) were crunch bars.
I did change the recipe a little bit and used coconut sugar instead of brown and white sugar. That gave the crunch bars a taste of caramel which turned out very well!
I also changed the frosting because I wanted to try out chocolate frosting with sour cream! The result was not very sweet (which I like) with a nice light tartly taste. I probably wouldn't put it on just any cake but luckily was delicious on the crunch bars!

My sour cream chocolate frosting:
100g (3.5oz) 60% dark chocolate
2 tsp vanilla extract
2/3 cup of sour cream
1 cup of coconut sugar
Melt the chocolate in a bowl above hot water. Add the vanilla extract and instantly whisk in half of the coconut sugar. Then add the sour cream and the rest of the coconut sugar and whisk until smooth.