banana

Caramelized Banana Nut Muffins

September 26, 2017

Prepared to have your world rocked by these caramelized banana nut muffins. These are not your ordinary banana nut muffins. No sir-ee. These banana nut muffins blow all others out of the water!

It has to be the caramelized bananas that add a little extra sweetness and a much deeper flavor than a normal banana muffin. It’s not a candy-sweet banana flavor. It’s more of a rich banana flavor, if that makes sense. They are perfectly complimented by the nutty, slighly bitter walnuts that add an extra crunch factor.

But of course, it all starts with caramelized bananas. To caramelize them, I just cut them in half lengthwise, sprinkled a little sugar on top, then set under the broiler for a minute or two, until they are nice and toasted.

To make the muffin batter, I actually varied my normal go-to muffin batter recipe. Well, I should say that I varied the method. Most muffin recipes use a bread making method, where you add all the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and then mix. For these, I used a cake batter method: cream butter and sugar, add eggs (and other fat), then flour and liquids. This helps keep the muffins nice and light.

First, I creamed together the butter and sugars. Then I added the egg, vanilla, and Greek yogurt.

To the butter mixture, I mixed in the half of the flour and then the milk.

As for the nuts in these banana nut muffins, I used walnuts (but pecans would also be good). I crushed them into tiny pieces by placing them in a sandwich bag and smacking them with a rolling pin. It’s a great stress reliever!

Then I dumped the walnuts into the remaining flour and mixed that in with the rest of the batter. By mixing the nuts in with the flour, I ensure that the nuts are evenly dispersed throughout the muffins and don’t sink to the bottom.

Now for the good stuff. I gently mashed up the bananas and then folded them into the batter.

After dividing the batter into the muffin tins I decided to add a little something extra. While these muffins would have been good on their own, who would turn down an extra crumb topping? Not me, that’s who!

To make the crumb topping, I combined some of the extra walnuts, flour, sugar, salt and some cold butter. Then I generously sprinkled the crumb topping on top of the muffins and popped them into the oven to bake.

As these muffins bake they will fill your kitchen with the most wonderful smell! And once they come out of the oven, you will have a hard time waiting for them to cool before jumping in!

I certainly didn’t! I couldn’t help but taste test one before it had a chance to cool. And then to make sure they were still good, I had another. And then the top off of another. Then I forced myself to stop because my coworkers might start to wonder why I was only bringing in 9 muffins and not 12.

I will most certainly be making these muffins again the next time I had some leftover bananas (which is pretty much all the time). They are my new favorite banana recipe, and I am sure they will be yours, too!
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Brown Butter Blueberry Banana Bread

June 22, 2016

This Brown Butter Blueberry Banana Bread post is brought to you by the letter B. Actually, it’s brought to you by gigantic container of blueberries on sale at Trader Joe’s. Last weekend when I was out grocery shopping I picked up 2 lbs of blueberries because they were “a good deal”. Once I got home I realized I had no idea how I was going to use all of them! I could have made blueberry muffins, but I looked around my kitchen and saw 3 brown bananas on my counter, so blueberry banana bread it was.

To make this banana bread even better, I decided to brown some butter to add to this batter. Not only because I love alliteration, but also because brown butter is delicious. It’s even more delicious than regular butter. When butter browns, it gets this toasty, nutty flavor that really adds so much flavor to whatever you put it in or on.

It also helps that browning butter is very easy! All I do to brown butter is melt the butter in a sauce pan on medium heat and then let it simmer until it turns a nice amber color, like you see above. It only takes about 5 minutes to get the it perfectly brown.

So I added the brown butter to the batter and once it was all mixed I folded in the blueberries. To prevent the blueberries from sinking to the bottom, I tossed them in some flour first before mixing them in. Then I poured the batter to a loaf pan lined with parchment so that I could easily remove the loaf from the pan when it was cool.

The bread took about an hour to bake, then I left it out on the counter for another hour to cool before I sliced into it.

I have to admit that I am not really a banana bread person, so maybe I am not the best person to judge this bread. But I did eat the small end slice and was pleasantly surprised! The crust on top was a tad crunchy, and the bread in the center was pillowy soft. The banana flavor was subtle (because I only used partially browned bananas, not completely browned bananas) and was perfectly complimented by the nutty brown butter flavor and the tart blueberries.

The true test for this banana bread was taking it in to work. Between the co-worker whose wife is in culinary school and the other at-home bakers like me, we seem to always have some home-baked goodies in the kitchen. Which means that I have some very spoiled and picky co-workers when it comes to baked goods. I knew that if someone tried this and didn’t like it, word would spread and I would be left throwing half a loaf away at the end of the day.

The good news was the bread was gone by 10 am. Which means I can safely assume that it was a hit. Actually, I don’t have to assume…people came by my desk to tell me they had a piece and loved it.

So if you love banana bread you will love this recipe! If you kinda like banana bread, even you will probably really like this recipe. If it can win over someone like me who it not generally a banana bread fan, it must be pretty stinkin’ good.

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No Churn Strawberry Banana Ice Cream

May 9, 2016

Boy it’s starting to feel like Summer. It got up to almost 90 degrees here this weekend. Perfect ice cream weather! Of course, since I am trying to stick to a Paleo diet right now, real ice cream is out of the question. No diary or sugar allowed for me! But that doesn’t mean my craving for ice cream is going away anytime soon.

Instead of diving head first into a carton of cookie dough ice cream, I decided to McGuyver some frozen bananas into a no churn strawberry banana ice cream (maybe more or a sorbet?) that would satisfy my craving. Being on a Paleo diet means getting really creative with the foods you can eat to make them into the foods you can’t.

In the morning, I chopped up some strawberries and bananas and tossed them in the freezer. When I got home, the fruit was nice and frozen and all I had to do was blend them up with a bit of coconut milk. It’s essentially like making a smoothie, but much thicker and colder. The blender did warm up the mixture a bit, so I poured it into a shallow dish and popped it in the freezer for a couple hours to let it set up.

After that, it was good to go! I scooped out nice big scoops of ice cream and topped it with some shredded coconut. And boy did it hit the spot. Sure, I would have loved a few chocolate chips thrown on top, but this certainly was delicious all on it’s own.

It’s perfect for a warm Summer day since it’s so light and refreshing! And it won’t derail anyone’s plans on getting that bikini body since it’s 95% fruit! I will definitely be making versions of the ice cream all Summer long. I am going to try chocolate next!

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