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Banana Coffee Bread

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This might be the best banana bread I have ever made. I actually measured things this time around and watched the oven carefully. I just polished off TWO servings, so. I can attest – this loaf will turn out moist, sweet and delicious.

Dry Ingredients

  • 1 1/2 cups of all purpose flour
  • 1 cup of granulated sugar
  • 1 teaspoon of baking powder
  • 1 teaspoon of baking soda
  • 1/2 teaspoon of salt
  • 1/2 cups of rolled or quick oats
  • Optional: 1 teaspoon of cinnamon and /or nutmeg

You will need a large baking dish for this recipe. I used a deep dish baking pan that I inherited from my mum and it worked very well. Also, one less dish to wash. This dish has handles which makes it easy to grab.

Preheat the oven to 350F. Grease your dish with Pam spray or butter. I use the Pam Coconut Oil spray and it works well. Add the dry ingredients into the bowl and mix well – saving the oats for last. Add in the oats, and gently stir the dry mix with a wooden spoon. For additional flavour, you can add in cinnamon or nutmeg – or both! Set the dry mix aside while you prepare the wet ingredients.

This is an alloy steel baking dish – deep enough for a large cake mix or casserole!

Preparation – Wet Ingredients

  • 2 large eggs
  • 1/2 stick of unsalted butter (cold) (or about 1/2 cup)
  • 3 medium bananas ripe (almost brown)
  • 1/2 cup of brewed coffee (dark is delicious)
  • 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
  • 1 cup of chocolate chips
  • 1 teaspoon of sugar (topping)
  • Optional: walnuts for topping (I did not use this)

I used my stand-up blender (also inherited from my mum) for this part and just mixed everything together in the blender. You could also use an immersion blender in a separate bowl. Use whatever you have!

For this part, you can use a blender or handmixer to mash up the bananas. Add in the rest of the wet ingredients, one ingredient at a time and blend/mix until you have a nice puree like mixture. Make sure not to over blend it – you won’t want it too runny.

Grab the dish with your dry ingredients and pour the wet mixture in. Mix well with a wooden spoon until all the flour is blended in nicely and it looks something like the blurry picture below (sorry about that). Add in the chocolate chips last. Stir with the wooden spoon again.

This next step is where you can let your creativity shine. I didn’t have any nuts on hand, but for the topping you can add walnuts or almonds. I used chocolate chips and 1 teaspoon of sugar.

Baked this massive loaf in the oven at 350F- the nice thing about preheating the oven while you prepare the ingredients is that the oven will be nice and toasty warm. Cooking times will vary. My oven took about 45 minutes. You will want to check the loaf around the 40 minute mark with a toothpick. I wound up putting the loaf back in for a few minutes and it was perfect. I mean, this is the best I’ve ever made – and I’ve made a lot of loaves!

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Searching for the perfect blueberry scone recipe

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Here we are at Monday morning again. The weekend flew by!

Yesterday was a quiet day. It was so cold outside and inside my condo. This morning – it’s PLUS SIX degrees. I refuse to turn my heat on based on principle.

My diet was terrible this weekend. I felt tired and didn’t have much energy yesterday as my insomnia has been bad. But I forced myself to go to bed last night at 11:30 and managed to get up before 9:00 am today. I need to do this for the next two weeks before going back to work.

I had planned on doing some baking yesterday to heat up the place. Having the oven on always helps. I didn’t make dinner until almost 8:00 pm which killed my fasting plan. But I heated up some frozen fish sticks, yam fries (mostly healthy) and boiled some veggies in the rice cooker. Now that part was delicious.

I have to use up all the veggies in my fridge in the next few days – so I’m guessing it will be another homemade soup kind of day. Or a vegetable casserole. I have a mix for scones that I want to get done today. So, I’m on youtube looking for great recipes.

I have TWO pounds of blueberries I need to use. I froze an entire container on the weekend. So, I might make some banana blueberry bread tonight too.

I love Jamie Oliver’s cooking tips. Here’s one for his scones recipe.

Anna Olson also has some great tutorial videos on her channel. She explains things so clearly – and talk about a dream kitchen. Although it’s probably a studio! When I move in the spring, the most important thing will be a gorgeous kitchen with plenty of storage.

I also like Chef Billy Parisi – he comes up with some pretty innovative dishes if you can look past his “hipster”? language – he’s also got a dream kitchen I’d love to get my hands in.

I was also thinking that I need to get a bigger freezer. I love batch cooking and freezing meals but my tiny freezer is packed already with ice for drinks and frozen vegetables. I can’t stock up like I really want to. So, I’m shopping for an affordable compact apartment size freezer that I can use for my weekly meals.

I’m hoping that I can work from home for the winter. It would be great to have meals that I can just pop into the microwave. If I have to return to the office, we’re not allowed to use the kitchen and that will really put a damper on my healthy eating plan. There’s only so many cold foods you can eat on a daily basis.

Anyways, that’s where my mind is today. It’s going to be a busy afternoon baking and hopefully helps to warm this place up! I’ll share some recipes later and some pictures if things turn out well.

I’m not ready for it to be winter yet!

Happy Monday!