Chocolate Banana Muffcakes

In an effort to not gain weight, Dan and I have been purchasing limited quantities of dessert. This way, instead of immediately eating cookies from a box, we spend an hour discussing whether to get ice cream or make cupcakes.

This weekend, cupcakes won out.

After foodgawking for 15 minutes, I clicked on a chocolate banana cake/muffin recipe, and immediately decided to make it. We had all of the ingredients, including exactly 0.5c of sour cream that was languishing in our fridge and leftover frozen bananas.

The recipe came together very quickly, especially with some help from Dan.

The end result is tender, moist and equal parts chocolate and banana. The crumb was tight, but had a lot of give. They would make spectacular cupcakes without the chunky fillings, and topped with peanut butter frosting.

----- ----- ----- ----- ----- -----

Chocolate Banana Muffincakes

makes 6 jumbo muffins

1.25c AP flour

0.25c cocoa powder

1t baking soda

0.5t salt

1 stick butter, room temperature

130g sugar

2 eggs

1t vanilla

0.5c sour cream

1.25c mashed bananas (4-5 medium)

0.5c chocolate chips

0.5c slivered almonds

1. Preheat the oven to 325°F.

2. Sift together the first four ingredients.

3. In a stand mixer, beat the butter and sugar until slightly fluffy, then add the eggs one at a time. (It looks kind of like pancake batter at this point.)

4. Add the vanilla, beating to combine.

5. Add the sour cream and dry ingredients alternately, beating until just combined.

6. Fold in the mashed bananas, chocolate chips and almonds.

7. Divide into jumbo muffin tin and bake for 35 minutes, or until center is set. (Test w/ a toothpick). 

For regular muffins, divide into 12 muffin cups, and bake for 18-20 minutes at 350°F.

----- ----- ----- ----- ----- -----

These were good even the next day, and didn't need any warming for consumption. Keep them in an airtight container, preferably out of sight (or you'll eat them faster than you should).

Note: These are in no way good for you, unless you're trying to gain weight. They've got about 500 calories apiece! I think they're delicious for breakfast--I can't handle less than about 600 calories in the mornings.

Let me know what you think by leaving a comment or emailing me at piquantprose [at] gmail [dot] com.

Like what you read? Share it on Facebook, Twitter or GoogleBuzz using the buttons below!

Post-Workout Bars

To help muscles recover after a hard workout, experts recommend consuming calories within 30 minutes of exercise. In particular, they recommend a ratio of 4g of carbs to 1g of protein.

These bars are a little bit high on the fat, thanks to the coconut, but otherwise provide a good ratio of protein to carbs with no funky ingredients. They're a handy, tasty snack to eat with a glass of water post-sweat session.

----- ----- ----- ----- ------
Chocolate-Coconut Energy Bars
makes 16 100-calorie bars
adapted from No Meat Athlete


Ingredients:
1.5c black beans (I made these from scratch, feel free to use canned)
0.75c mashed squishy bananas
.25c honey
0.5 lime (zest and juice)
0.25t salt
1.5 oats or other rolled grains
0.75c cocoa powder
0.25c almond meal (or whole wheat flour)
1c shredded coconut

Directions:
1. Combine beans, bananas, honey, lime zest and juice and salt in a food processor until thoroughly combined.
2. Add the oats, cocoa powder and almond meal. Pulse until combined.
3. Add the coconut and pulse a few more times to combine.
4. Spread the mixture in a greased 9x13 pan. Optionally, sprinkle the top with extra coconut and press it in lightly.
5. Bake for 16-18 minutes at 350°F. Cool, slice and pack in snack baggies.

Approximate nutrition:
1 bar
103 calories, 20 calories from fat

Total fat: 2.5g
    Saturated: 1g
Total Carbohydrates: 18g
    Dietary fiber: 3.5g
Protein: 3.5g
----- ------ ------ ------ -----

Let me know what you think by leaving a comment or emailing me at piquantprose [at] gmail [dot] com.

Like what you read? Share it on Facebook, Twitter or GoogleBuzz using the buttons below!

Low Fat Banana Bread

The other morning, I woke up at 10AM (ah, the life of a college student) with a pile of mushy bananas in my room. I looked at the clock and started some calculating in my head. I need to be at work at 1PM, which left me 3 hours to make banana bread, get dressed, go to brunch and get to work. Definitely enough time.

These bananas were perfect for banana bread.

Well, it turns out I'm not super efficient in the mornings, and 3 hours is really 2 hours when the banana bread takes an hour to bake (and you have to watch it the whole time). Fortunately, everything worked out.

This banana bread is moist, tender and full of banana flavor. Great for when you have a lot of mushy bananas (and who ever has just one brown banana?). Use whole wheat flour for extra nutrition, white flour for extra convenience; spread with Nutella for extra delicious.

----- ----- -----
Low Fat High Banana Bread
makes 1 loaf

Chocolate Coffee Banana Bread

Winter fruit selection is often depressing at best, so imagine my dismay when our dining hall ran out of oranges and decided to make do with mushy bananas. I'm okay with yellow bananas, but mushy is just beyond me.

Except, of course, in banana bread. So I did all of the other eaters a favor, and grabbed as many mushy bananas as I could without seeming too ridiculous. (Honestly, I think the staff are used to me doing ridiculous things at this point, like asking for a veggie omelet without the eggs.)

I made both regular and chocolate coffee banana bread in one morning.

Then, I began the quest for a suitable banana bread recipe. I had my mom's recipe tucked away in my email, but with the amount of butter it called for, it was much closer to cake. I needed something that wouldn't use up D's single dessert quota for the day.

After opening about 30 tabs worth of lowfat banana bread recipes in Safari, almost all of which called for margarine or applesauce, I finally found one. Ok, the original calls for applesauce, but I just used milk. 

Now, this is an incredible banana bread recipe, perfect just on its own. But when you run out of chocolate chips, and chocolate, the only solution is to take perfectly good banana bread, and add cocoa powder... and then eat said chocolate banana bread for breakfast the next day. And what is better than chocolate? Chocolate and coffee.. so I did it.

Once reinforcements arrived in the form of a care package, I realized I had to make this again, but with chocolate chips and cappuccino chips. Yes, I still ate it for breakfast.

----- ----- -----

Chocolate Coffee Banana Bread

makes 1 large loaf

Equipment

loaf pan

2 mixing bowls + mixing instrument(s)

kitchen scale (optional)

measuring cups

butter melting device

oven

A Breakfast Treat

If you happen to have cinnamon swirl bread on hand, this is a great way to get rid of bananas. (You shouldn't need help getting rid of your cinnamon swirl bread.) It's also a great way to surprise a sleepy cinnamon-loving man in bed.

----- ----- -----
Broiled Bananas on Toast

Equipment:
Baking tray
Broiler
Knife
Tongs OR heat-proof finger skin

Ingredients:
slices of cinnamon swirl bread
banana (sliced lengthwise)
cinnamon sugar

(Almost Vegan) Banana Bread

I was so excited for this to be vegan.. but then I used honey. Oops. I have some ideas for future honey replacement, so expect to see an updated, actually vegan version of this in the future.

For now, if you're an ok-with-honey vegan, give it a shot. (Or replace the honey with either agave or malt syrup! Although honey works as an emulsifier, which you need if you're leaving out the eggs, so this may not work very well. If you do this, you may want to consider using egg replacer instead of flaxseed meal.)

Also, coconut in banana bread is a great idea. Do it.

----- ----- -----
Almost Vegan Banana Bread
makes one loaf

Equipment
kitchen scale (although I've included approximate measurements!)
measuring cups
bowl
loaf pan (or muffin tins)
fork/spoon

Ingredients

2T flaxseed meal

3.8oz soy milk (7T + 2t)

3.2 oz vegetable oil (6T)
3.75 oz brown sugar (0.5c)
1t vanilla extract
0.75t baking soda
0.5t salt
3 super ripe bananas (about 15 ounces without peels)
3oz. honey (6T)
8oz whole wheat flour (about 1.75c)
2oz chopped nuts (about 0.5c)
handful of unsweetened, shredded coconut (optional)

Energy Bars Take Two

Last week, I went on a training trip with my team to Austin, Texas.

Training trip = (Sleep + Eat + Row + Eat + Sleep + Eat + Row + Eat) * (Numbers of days in trip)

It was exhausting, but really, really fun. We also made a lot of great strides as a team, both physically and technically. While I'm glad to be back home with D, I'm also really glad we took the trip.

As you can see, I ate a lot during my training. Most mornings before practice, I ate a bar, because they were easy to eat, kept me going through practice, and were light enough that I could do the warmup run without getting cramps.

For a while I've been trying to find bars that give me energy and make me feel good. I tried a lot of different bars, from the FiberOne bars, to Clif bars to Nutrigrain. Finally I settled on Larabars. I really like that they only have a few relatively simple ingredients, they fill me up, and I can exercise right after eating them.

Wholesome, delicious ingredients.

I don't like how expensive they are, how difficult they are to find, or that I didn't make them myself! So I started to look for recipes. There were a lot of recipes for homemade Larabars, but lack of food processor basically took all of those out of the equations.

Before we left on our training trip, I tried to make a batch of energy bars. The recipe I used claimed to not taste as healthy as the input ingredients. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case--they tasted awful. I rarely throw away food, but these were that bad. Granted, I think I burned them a little bit, but there wasn't much goodness to begin with.

Over the course of the trip, I looked for more recipes, and found two that I liked. One of them is called "oatmeal crispies" and is basically oats, flour, butter and sugar baked into bar shape. I may try these in the future, but the other recipe sounded more like what I wanted: oats, nut butter and honey, with a whole bunch of yummy add ins.

It was really, really snowy here.

So today, D and I ventured through the snow in search of missing ingredients. We came home, mixed these up, and immediately devoured way too many of them. They're incredible!!! The rest I have wrapped up in my fridge ready to take to practice or as an afternoon snack. I'd also like to try making different versions of these.

Below, I have the general version of the recipe, which you can customize to taste however you want. I've also included our version at the very bottom (because it's that delicious) and the version I'd like to try next!

We both had these for dessert, that's how good they are.

----- ----- -----
Customizable Energy Bars
adapted from (never_home)maker
makes approximately 20 bars


Ingredients:

1.5c nut butter

1c honey (or other liquid sweetener, like sugar syrup or agave)

1t vanilla

0.75c water 

2.5c quick cooking grains
0.5c powder (e.g. protein/cocoa/milk)
1c coconut flakes (you could probably replace this with more grains)
1.5c nuts (chopped) and seeds
1.5c dried fruit, chocolate chips, etc.
2c fresh fruit, chopped into small pieces
1c crunchy, salty stuff

Playing with Food

In honor of our new props, D and I had a photo shoot. The subject: a banana. The new gear: a rectangular plate and a square plate.

This was our original shot. It was ok, but it was a little bit lackluster. It didn't really pop.

The original shot.

So we tried something new. We played with our light, bringing it more to the side to make the shot a bit more dramatic. We also rotated the shot, zoomed in, and left more of the banana trailing out of focus. There was still something missing, though. It needed an accent of some sort.

We tried adding a cookie and then a pear to the shot. The pear was simply too big. The cookie was close, but just not quite right... or relevant.