Caramel Apple Banana Bread

I’ve been out of the loop for a couple weeks, between work and everything going on at home things have been crazy.  A couple weekends ago I had the ever growing issue of the over-ripened bananas.  This was also around when we went apple picking and let’s just say I’m still working through that bag of apples.  I tried looking up recipes for and apple banana bread, but I couldn’t really find any.  So I just went with a traditional banana bread and tweaked it. Adapted from Martha’s Banana Bread.

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, at room temperature, plus more for pan
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1 1/2 cups unbleached plain flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup mashed very ripe bananas (about 3)
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 apple peeled and chopped
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 cup caramel sauce for drizzling

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter a 9-by-5-by-3-inch loaf pan; set aside. In an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs, and beat to incorporate.
2. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt. Add to the butter mixture, and mix until just combined. Add bananas, sour cream, and vanilla; mix to combine. Stir in apples, and pour into prepared pan.
3. Bake until a cake tester inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean, about 1 hour 10 minutes. Let rest in pan for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a rack to cool.  Drizzle with warm caramel sauce and serve.

Homemade Sweet potato fries

Well Halloween has come and gone. I feel like I blinked and black Friday adds were coming out and all the stores were blaring Christmas music. Im sorry didn’t we miss a holiday…you know that one where you eat a lot of turkey…also known as Thanksgiving. Im not quite ready to trade in my pumpkin and apple flavors for peppermint…not just yet. Therefore I am holding out as long as I can. Granted I’ve sorta started my Christmas shopping…but Im not ready to completely accept that Christmas is right around the corner…again.

So until Thanksgiving has come and gone, Im holding onto my fall flavors for as long as I can. I have always wanted to make homemade fries. I found a simple recipe for sweet potato fries from the art of doing stuff. This recipe was so easy that even a person who burns water could do!

Sweet Potato Fries

Ingredients

2 large sweet potatoes

2-3 Tablespoons of cornstarch

Directions

1) Peel and cut sweet potatoes into fries no thicker than 1/2″.  Soak in water for minimum of one hour, but preferably for half a day.

2) Drain water from bowl and lift fries out by the handful.  Give them a good shake.  They should be dry but still have enough moisture on them to allow the cornstarch to stick.

3) Put cornstarch in a plastic bag and drop all of your fries in.  Blow a little air into the bag, twist the top and shake it vigorously.  Lift the fries out onto one or two baking sheets.

4) Coat with Olive Oil.  The more the crispier and less sticking you’ll have, but the less healthy they’ll be.  Use 2 pans if you have to.  You want to make sure the fries aren’t crowded on the pan otherwise they’ll steam as opposed to getting crispy.

5) Bake for 15 minutes then check.  Once bottom of fries are getting crisp, flip them over and cook for another 5-10 minutes

 

If you’ve followed this blog long enough, Dan swears I’m trying to kill him by making him eat healthy. Every once in awhile I will try a recipe that I know isn’t healthy in any form of the imagination. I started to frost the apple upside down cake from Woman Behind the Curtain. Dan walks into the house wondering what Im doing. I told him it was breakfast for this week. He then proceeds to grab his stomach and swears Im trying to make him fat. So I offered to bring it to work. Dan then said “don’t be crazy”. So I decided to leave it at home and have it for breakfast. It was SOOOOOO yummy and SOOOOO easy to make. If you only pick up one fall recipe from this blog I say this is it.

Apple upside down cake

Ingredients

1-1/2 cups apples, chopped and peeled

1 can (12.4 ounce) Pillsbury cinnamon rolls with icing

1/2 cup pecan halves or pieces

2 tablespoons butter, melted

1/3 cup packed brown sugar

2 tablespoons corn syrup

Directions

1) Heat oven to 350 degrees.

2) Spray 9-inch glass pie plate with cooking spray.

3) Spread 1 cup of the apples in pie plate.

4) Separate dough into 8 rolls. Cut each roll into quarters; place in large bowl.

5) Add remaining 1/2 cup apples and pecans.

6) In small bowl, mix butter, brown sugar and corn syrup until well blended. Add brown sugar mixture to dough mixture; toss gently to combine. Spoon mixture over apples in pan.

7) Bake 28 to 38 minutes or until deep golden brown. Cool 5 minutes. Invert onto serving platter.

8) Remove lid from icing. Microwave icing on high 10 to 15 seconds or until drizzling consistency.

9) Drizzle over warm coffee cake. Serve warm.

 

Well folks another weekend has come and gone. Dan declared it was time to watch his yearly Halloween movie. I bet you can never guess which movie he just HAS to watch every year…Elvira…and I bet you can’t guess why…I think it had something to do with her 80’s sense of style…(Yeah right). So now that we got this out of the way I guess that means we can now officially celebrate Halloween next weekend. With that being said, I decided to make Pumpkin beer bread from Real house moms.

It was a huge hit in the office, there was none left. Ill take that as a win. Who doesn’t love beer bread. Next time I made this recipe though, I think I would add in some pumpkin puree.

Pumpkin Beer Bread

Ingredients

3 cups all purpose flour

3 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

¼ cup sugar

¼ tsp pumpkin pie spice

12 oz pumpkin beer

½ cup butter, melted, divided

Directions

1) Preheat oven to 375 degrees F

2) In a large mixing bowl whisk together flour, baking powder, salt, sugar and pumpkin pie spice pour in beer and ¼ cup melted butter and stir until just combined

3) Pour into greased loaf pan pour remaining butter over the top bake in the oven for 1 hour remove and allow to cool

 

Pumpkin Sco-ffin

When I went looking for pumpkin muffin recipes I noticed there was a lot of scone recipes. I decided to make a pumpkin scone muffin…maybe more of a sco-ffin? Yeah we’ll go with a pumpkin sco-ffin.

If you’ve followed this blog long enough, you know about my addition to scones. So why not combine a muffin and a scone together. I hope you enjoyed this recipe as much as I did.

Pumpkin Sco-ffin

Ingredients

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp ground nutmeg

1/4 tsp ground ginger

1/8 tsp ground cloves

1/4 cup packed light-brown sugar

3 Tbsp granulated sugar

1/2 cup unsalted butter, cold and diced into 1/2-inch pieces

1/2 cup + 1 Tbsp canned pumpkin puree, chilled (don’t chill in can)

3 1/2 Tbsp buttermilk

1 large egg

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 Tbsp honey

1 Tbsp half and half

Vanilla Glaze

1 cup powdered sugar

2 Tbsp half and half, then more as needed

1 tsp vanilla extract

Directions

1) Preheat oven to 425 degrees. In a food processor pulse together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, cloves, brown sugar and granulated sugar until well blended (if you don’t have a food processor you can whisk by hand in a large mixing bowl, then cut in butter with a pastry cutter).

2) Add butter and pulse mixture several times to cut butter into mixture (large pieces of butter should no longer be visible). Pour mixture into a large mixing bowl and create a well in center.

3) In a bowl whisk together chilled pumpkin puree, buttermilk, egg, vanilla extract and honey. Pour mixture into well in flour/butter mixture. Stir mixture with a wooden spoon to incorporate, then knead in bowl (or on work surface) by hand several times to bring mixture together.

4) Spoon into muffin pan lined with wrappers.

5) Brush tops with 1 Tbsp half and half then bake in preheated oven 13 – 15 minutes until tops are golden brown and toothpick inserted into center comes out clean. Transfer to a wire rack and cool 10 minutes (no longer) before spreading with glaze.

6) For the glaze: In a mixing bowl whisk together powdered sugar, extract and half and half, adding more half and half as needed to reach desired consistency (it should be fairly thick not runny). Spoon and spread mixture scones to evenly coat tops (use all of it). Let glaze set at room temperature