A Day of Boredom and Baking

A couple days ago my family finished the banana-cherry bread I made the other day, so I decided that I needed to make a new one. This time, though, I used a cup of diced mango instead of the cherries, lime juice instead of lemon juice, and 1/4 c. light brown sugar and 1/4 c. granulated sugar instead of the 1/2 c. granulated sugar. I think it turned out even better than the last attempt!

Later today, though, I decided that what I really wanted for dessert was chocolate chip cookies...so I made some! I used the recipe for Cholesterol-Free Chocolate Chip Cookies from the Mrs. Field's cookie book, which only uses egg whites and 1 stick of butter, as opposed to the usual eggs and 2 sticks of butter in most recipes! It also uses some honey, which I think made the texture really nice! The recipe called for 2 c. of semisweet chocolate chips, but instead I put in about 1 c. milk chocolate chips, 1/2 c. semisweet chunks, and 1/2 c. butterscotch chips, and they were sooooo tasty!

Sorry that there is no recipe, but with the modifications I mentioned, you should be able to transform any chocolate chip cookie recipe into a slightly lower cholesterol version!

Enjoy!

Loaded Oatmeal Cookies

When I was at school and thinking of things I wanted to bake when I got home, I started brainstorming what kind of cookies I wanted to try out and came up with this recipe. It was the first recipe I made when I got home, and I really liked how they turned out!

Cranberry, Almond, White Chocolate, Oatmeal Cookies

yield: around 20 cookies

1/2 c. butter, softened

2/3 c. light brown sugar, packed

1 egg

1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

3/4 c. all-purpose flour

1/2 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon

1/3 tsp. salt

1 1/2 c. rolled oats

3/4 c. dried cranberries

1/3 c. slivered almonds

1/2 c. white chocolate, coarsely chopped

1. Cream butter, brown sugar, egg, and vanilla until smooth.
2. In a medium-sized bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt. Stir into butter mixture.
3. Stir in oats, cranberries, almonds, and chopped white chocolate.
4. Mold dough into a log, wrap in clingfilm, and refrigerate dough 12-36 hours.
5. Preheat oven to 350F
6. Bake for roughly 10 minutes. Cool cookies on the pan for about 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack.

Notes: I experimented with chilling the dough for only 12 hrs., then chilling the rest for 36 hrs. and found that the cookies that were left to chill for 36 hrs. were denser and had a much better texture to them. Chilling the dough for longer also softened up the oats a bit, which I think yielded a better cookie!

xoxo

Banana Bread with a twist

This morning I woke up craving something with bananas in it, and knew exactly what I wanted to make! The other day I saw a recipe for blueberry-banana bread on the blog Fat Free Vegan Kitchen and thought that sounded really good! Since I didn't have any blueberries on hand, but I did have a bunch of cherries, I decided to change the recipe a bit so I could use fresh cherries in it! So...here's my slightly altered version:

Cherry Almond Banana Bread

3 large over-ripe bananas
2 tbsp. lemon juice (juice of 1/2 lemon)
1/3 c. apple sauce
1/2 c. sugar

1 tbsp. honey
2 c. whole wheat flour
3/4 tsp. baking powder
3/4 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 c. cherries, pitted and quartered

1/3 c. slivered almonds

1. Preheat oven to 350F. Spray a 9x5-inch loaf pan with oil.In a large bowl, mash the bananas and add the lemon juice, applesauce, sugar, and honey. Stir well to combine.
2. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, soda, and salt.
3. Add the dry ingredients to the banana mixture, and stir just until the mixture is well-combined. Fold in the cherries and almonds.
4. Spread the mixture evenly in the prepared pan and bake until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean, about 50 minutes. Allow to cool before cutting and serving.

Notes: The bread turned out really well, but next time I think I would use either white whole wheat flour, or 1c. whole wheat flour and 1 c. all-purpose flour. I also think it might taste good to use 1/4 c. granulated sugar and 1/4 c. light brown sugar instead of 1/2 c. granulated sugar.

All in all this bread turned out well, and is a great healthy breakfast bread utilizing fresh summer cherries!