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Archives for October 2019

Banana Bread Recipe Comparison

October 26, 2019 by Kristen Henninger Leave a Comment

Let me tell you about one of my favorite snacks. Growing up, my mom would make all sorts of quick breads: banana, zucchini, pumpkin… All super moist and usually loaded with chocolate chips. Banana bread was the first bread I learned to make in my first out of college job in my tiny New York apartment while comfort baking during long weekends by myself. (Not to make it sound too cool… I was definitely not in New York City, just in a tiny suburb about 1 hour north of Manhattan!)

While I still have yet to try my mom’s recipe (I know! I know! I’ll get to it!), I have several favorites that I’ve made for years and one that I made today and immediately loved.

My Go-To Recipes

  1. The Kitchn: This was the first banana bread recipe that I made repeatedly. I loved it because it was so immediately flexible. Not enough eggs? No problem. No electric mixer? Just whisk it with a fork! It is not the most complex tasting recipe, but it is easy and a great place to start.
  2. Cookie & Kate: Up until today, this has been my go-to for several years. Katherine’s recipe feels healthier than other banana breads. I like that it uses whole wheat flour and natural sweetener. For oil, I use olive instead of coconut because I don’t like to melt the coconut oil in the microwave. I honestly don’t think you can tell a difference. I use maple syrup instead of honey because maple adds a much more complex flavor to such a simple bread. It is also a very easy recipe in that it requires no electric mixer to create. The recipe probably is just as flexible as The Kitchn’s recipe, though I haven’t really tested the limits of it.
  3. Stella Parks (aka Bravetart) on Serious Eats: This is my new favorite, which I made today! I had extra oat flour and 4 ripe bananas, so this morning, this banana bread was meant to be. The recipe provides ingredient weights. I like that I can use my kitchen scale instead of getting out a bunch of measuring cups. The spicing of it is perfect. The cloves and nutmeg seem to bring out a more pronounced banana flavor, more so than other recipes. The banana has definite impact instead of just being what makes the bread so moist. I did not add pecans or chocolate chips because I didn’t have any. Though I may try it next time, I really like the simplicity of plain banana bread. The recipe used coconut oil in its solid form, which I appreciated. The only downside is that you seem to need an electric mixer for this recipe. Plus, if you don’t keep oat flour around, you’d need to invest in the commercial oat flour as an ingredient. The bread also uses all purpose flour and traditional sugar, so it’s definitely not salable as a truly healthy snack!

A side note… I switched to making the banana bread recipes in a muffin tin. Muffins are much more portable than having to slice bread every day. They also bake much quicker than a full loaf!

I hope the above recipes inspire you to use up your leftover bananas this week. Let me know if you make anything!!

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: banana, banana bread, bravetart, cookie and kate, recipe roundup, recipes, serious eats, Stella parks

Recipe Roundup #01

October 6, 2019 by Kristen Henninger Leave a Comment

I am recapping a bunch of new recipes that I made over the last couple weeks/months for you guys! I will review and let you know what changes we made for each recipe.

New blog author favorite: The Defined Dish

I love following the Alex from The Defined Dish! The recipes are all very approachable, healthy, and delicious. Plus, she lives in Dallas TX, so her seasons are the same as mine… which is helpful when all the other bloggers I am following are posting soups and chilis right now but it’s still 90+ degrees in Texas.

These are the recipes I have tried so far from her website:

  1. Paleo Sweet and Sour Chicken Stir Fry (5/5) — Trey and I love this one and have made it several times since first discovering it! We are not following a paleo diet, so we use regular rice and the “normal” versions of some ingredients. For example, we use soy sauce instead of coconut aminos. The amount of sauce is great for just the chicken, but when you add rice, I think we prefer a bit more sauce so I would 1.5x the sauce recipe if you are similar-minded. (If you are worried it would not be enough sauce, I’d go ahead and 1.5x the recipe.)
  2. Easy Chicken and Vegetable Curry (4/5) — I really like this one, but I feel like I prefer the vegetables in it to the chicken. I think that is a personal preference though because Trey likes the chicken a lot in this meal. I usually have made it with regular potatoes, not sweet potatoes, because that is what I’ve had around to use. We serve this with regular rice as well, not cauliflower rice.
  3. Ginger-Scallion Chicken Fried Cauliflower Rice (3/5) — This one was OK but we didn’t use cauliflower rice, which was probably a mistake! We tried to use regular rice but the volumes of cauliflower rice to regular rice do not equate… so we ended up with a huge volume of rice to chicken. What I would do next time, I would probably just make the ginger-scallion chicken with the sauce and serve it over the rice instead of doing it as a fried rice. I would also add more scallions than it calls for!
  4. Sizzling Shrimp Fajitas (2/5) — We liked the concept of this but found our shrimp to turn out way too watery for some reason. I think it may have been something to do with the brand that we bought, but I’m not 100% certain. We didn’t buy the tail-on shrimp and ours were a lot smaller than hers appear to be in the picture. I would maybe try this again, but I’m not dying to do it again.

Besides Alex’s blog, we have also made the recipes below.

  1. Pesto Mac & Cheese (5/5) — This is such an easy recipe, and the addition of the basil pesto makes this meal feel more elevated than a normal mac & cheese recipe. The only change we made was just using normal sharp cheddar (tillamook brand!) cheese because we didn’t want to splurge on Havarti.
  2. Chocolate Olive Oil Cake (5/5) — I was looking for a good potluck cake, and I didn’t want to head to the store… so this is what I ended up on. It is very delicious and extremely fudgy! Plus, it is very simple. I think you could make this honestly with any sort of oil because the taste does not come through at all.

Hope you all find something you enjoy! Let me know if you try any of these recipes!

Enjoy this photo of our delicious chocolate olive oil cake.

Chocolate Olive Oil Cake
Chocolate Olive Oil Cake from the Smitten Kitchen

Filed Under: Recipe Roundups Tagged With: chicken, chocolate cake, recipe, recipe roundup, rice, roundup, texas, the defined dish, vegetable

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