Strawberry-Banana Oatmeal Bread

A couple years ago, a friend and I were discussing certain items people just liked buying. Her mom always bought toilet paper, even though there she had a closet full of toilet paper and was unlikely to run out in the next year. I wasn’t sure what my thing was. This week it occurred to me what it was on our second grocery shopping trip of the week: fruit.

Even if we’re only running in for a couple things for dinner and have a fridge full of apples, oranges and other fruits, we’re lured in by the beautiful displays of in-season fruits at Whole Foods or the sale prices at Publix, especially in the summer when berries are in season and plentiful. This becomes an issue when some of the fruits spoil quickly, like strawberries. I’m forced to find creative ways to use the fruits I don’t want to freeze, such as a Peach Blueberry Cake or Berry Vanilla Cake. (I use “forced” loosely. It’s definitely not that much of a hardship to make/eat cake.)

This problem extends to one of our fruit staples as well – bananas. I buy a bunch of bananas each week to use in cereal and as easy lunch snacks, but no matter what I do, they start to brown way too quickly. Although I always intend to use the too-brown bananas for baked goods or banana soft serve, I often run out of time or get distracted by some other beautiful baked good.

Not this week though. With strawberries on the brink of going bad and a couple of brown bananas, I desperately wanted to make a summery banana bread. I threw this together based on two favorite recipes from Joy the Baker. The result? A very moist bread with a subtle banana bread, and the strawberries add a touch of sweetness. I could probably reduce or remove the butter to make this even healthier, as the fruit, buttermilk and eggs will likely keep this bread moist enough.

This bread didn’t last long in my house. Between breakfast, a lunch snack and dessert, this was gone in three days. At least the oats and the fruit make it sort of healthy, right?

Recipe
Adapted from Joy’s Brown Butter Banana Strawberry Bread & Low Fat Oatmeal Banana Bread

Monster Cookies

A couple weeks ago, I wrote that I resigned from my job. My plan was to bake several different things to take into work over my last two weeks since I’ll want to wait a bit before I start bringing in baked goods to my new job. My first item on my list, Peanut Butter Crunch Brownies, went according to plan – incredibly rich and gone in no time. My next item was monster cookies, which I first brought into the office several months ago as part of a Susan G. Komen 3-Day bake sale fundraiser. They were a favorite for a couple of my closest coworkers, so I wanted to make them one last time.

Well, the monster cookies ended up being the last thing I brought in. Last Wednesday I planned to bake chocolate cupcakes with vanilla buttercream and make cupcakes-in-jars for my two closest coworkers. That plan flew out the window when we arrived home from work (after picking up my car from my mechanic, as my alternator had died that morning), and we realized the air conditioning had died – a day when temperatures reached the high 90s. A few hours later, a repair guy told us the problem was worse than originally anticipated, and he couldn’t fix it all until Friday. Can you tell Wednesday was a really fun day?

Obviously I wasn’t going to turn on the oven when it was so warm inside the house, so these monster cookies were my swan song of baking at my (now former) office. And you know, they may not be as cutesy and impressive at cupcakes-in-jars, but man are they friggin’ delicious. Peanut butter + chocolate + oats…. what’s not to love?! The cool thing about monster cookies is that they have no flour and remain so amazingly chewy and soft for several days, and you can add whatever mix-ins you’d like. I stuck to the basics – M&Ms and chocolate chunks, plus I added a small amount of butterscotch chips and raisins. With each bite, you get something different.

I’m almost certain that my coworkers didn’t even miss the cupcakes. Almost.

Recipe
Adapted from Paula Deen’s Monster Cookies

• 3 eggs, room temperature
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 1/4 cup brown sugar, packed (light or dark – I used dark since I was almost out of light)
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 12-oz. jar creamy peanut butter (NOT the natural kind – also pretty sure chunky peanut butter would work)
• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 1/2 cup plain M&Ms (peanut butter ones would also be awesome)
• 1/3 cup raisins
• 1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chunks/chips (dark chocolate chips would be amazing)
• 1/3 cup butterscotch chips (optional)
• 2 tsp baking soda
• 4 1/2 cup quick oats

1. Preheat the oven to 350. Line cookie pans with Silpat or parchment paper.

2. Mix together the eggs and sugars until it’s smooth.

3. Add in the vanilla, peanut butter and butter, and mix well.

4. Stir in the M&Ms, raisins, chocolate chunks, butterscotch chips, baking soda and oats.

5. Drop even spoonfuls of the cookie dough onto the baking sheet. I wanted extra large cookies – befitting of the name of the cookies, so I used a 2 oz. cookie scoop. Bake for 8-10 minutes with smaller cookies. If you go for the larger cookies, bake 10-12 minutes.

Berry Vanilla Cake

I am definitely my mom’s daughter. The ability to rationalize my Anthropologie shopping, the preference to skip to the end of a book and then read the middle, and most importantly…. our love of cake. Don’t get me wrong, I love all desserts. Brownies? Of course I’m down. Blondies? I may love those more than brownies. Frozen yogurt? One of the main reasons I can’t go vegan. But deep down, I’m a cake kind of girl, and so is my mom. Our gazes skim over the pies and cookies and instead linger on the cakes at bakeries. When I want to throw together a quick dessert one night, it’s often my favorite chocolate cake.

Not surprisingly, my mom loved it when I emailed her two lists of cakes I could bake her for her birthday – lists that included a tuxedo cake, a chocolate overload cake, a hummingbird cake, and a banana cake. She looked at pictures of each, and all she could say was the tuxedo cake sounded good. No excitement, no certainty. Not quite the reaction I wanted from her while choosing a birthday cake. I compiled one final list, and instantly she knew what she wanted – Joy’s Big Berry Birthday Cake. Her eyes lit up as she read through the recipe out loud, and I’m pretty sure she didn’t finish reading through the list.

The cake sounded perfect for summer, when all we want to eat are berries and salads to beat the heat: a light but still dense white cake, a whipped vanilla buttercream rather similar to whipped cream, and lots of berries inside and on top of the cake. And perfect it was. It didn’t last long – only a few days among three people. We’d start off with small slices, then return for another small slice as the icing continued to soften. What an incredible way to enjoy the summer’s berries.

And to my mom – happy belated birthday! I couldn’t be more grateful to be your daughter.

Berry Vanilla Cake Recipe:
Adapted from Joy the Baker’s Big Berry Birthday Cake

• 1 cup butter, room temperature
• 1 3/4 cup sugar
• 4 eggs, room temperature
• 1 cup milk
• 1 Tbsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 tsp vanilla bean paste
• 2 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/3 cup blueberries
• 1/2 cup mixed berries (I used raspberries, blackberries and blueberries – but sliced strawberries would be lovely too) to go between the cake layers

1. Grease and flour two 8″ round cake pans, and preheat your oven to 350.

2. Cream together the butter and sugar until the mixture is fluffy and a pale yellow – about 5 minutes.

3. Add in the eggs one at a time, mixing thoroughly and scraping down the sides of the bowl if necessary.

4. In another bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt.

5. Take 1-2 tsp of the flour mixture and toss with the blueberries in a separate bowl. Set aside.

6. In another bowl, mix the milk, vanilla extract and vanilla bean paste.

7. Alternating with the milk/vanilla mixture, mix the flour mixture with the butter and sugar in three different batches on a low speed.

8. Carefully fold in the blueberries, then divide the batter between two pans.

9. Bake for 35-40 minutes (took 35 in my oven), until the cake is done and springs back lightly.

10. Cool in the pans for 10 minutes, then remove cakes from pans to cool on a wire rack.

Vanilla Buttercream Recipe
Adapted from Joy the Baker’s Big Berry Birthday Cake

• 1 cup butter, softened
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup milk
• 1/4 cup flour, sifted
• 1 1/2 Tbsp vanilla extract
• 1 tsp almond extract (because I had no rose water)

1. Whisk together the milk, flour, and vanilla in a small saucepan over medium heat, making sure to get out all the lumps. Whisk constantly to keep the mixture from forming lumps as it heats up. Bring to a low boil.

2. Just as the mixture begins to boil, reduce the heat to low and continue to whisk as it thickens.

3. When the mixture begins to thicken, remove the pan from heat and cool to room temperature. This is really importantly. Make sure it’s really room temperature. If you’re in a huge hurry, rest the pan on top of some ice or in the freezer.

4. Cream the butter on medium speed until it’s soft. Add the sugar, then increase the speed to high. Cream together until the mixture is light and fluffy – a pale yellow, about 5 minutes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed.

5. Reduce the mixer speed to low. Slowly add the room temperature milk/flour mixture to the butter and sugar, then increase the speed to medium. Beat until the mixture is light and whipped – about 5 minutes. Add in the almond extract (or rose water or more vanilla if you’d prefer), then beat for another minute. This won’t be the same texture as most buttercreams – definitely a more whipped buttercream.

When assembling the cake, make sure the layer of frosting between the two cake layers is thick enough to hold the berries.

Peanut Butter Crunch Brownies

Last week I tweeted that I wanted to bake Brown Eyed Baker’s Peanut Butter Cup Crunch Brownies. Not long after, a coworker responded that they sounded like heaven and I needed to share. Obviously that meant I had to bake them, and I had every intention of doing so – in a couple weeks. However, those plans changed when three days later, I gave my boss my two weeks’ notice.

I never anticipated staying in my job forever, but resigning is still such a weird thing to go through. It’s even harder when you’re happy in your job and love your coworkers. I started where I work four years ago and grew from an intern into a part-time employee and finally moved into my first full-time job, and I’ve definitely grown up a lot there. I’m excited about my upcoming opportunities though.

That said, I’m losing some of my best tasters by leaving my job. (Sure, I know I could take in baked goods to my next job, but I think I should wait a bit. I think it would be a little weird to show up on my first day with a bunch of cookies or brownies.) What this means is that I need to bake a lot of things to take into work the next couple of days. The first project? Brown Eyed Baker’s Peanut Butter Cup Crunch Brownies.

These brownies are nothing short of incredible – incredibly rich and decadent. It really is like biting into a giant Reese’s cup, except even better with the crunch from the peanuts and rice krispies!

I started with one of my favorite brownies recipe, King Arthur Flour’s Whole Grain Brownies. Yes. Brownies with whole wheat flour. That makes this recipe sort of healthier, right? Ha! I’m including that recipe here since it’s what I used.

Peanut Butter Crunch Brownies Recipe
Adapted from Brown Eyed Baker

• 1 9″x13″ batch of brownies (I used King Arthur Flour’s Whole Grain Brownies and highly recommend them!)
• 1/2 cup salted peanuts
• 8 Reese’s cups or about 20 bite-size Reese’s cups, chopped (easier if they’re slightly chilled)
• 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 1 1/2 cup creamy peanut butter (NOT natural peanut butter)
• 1 Tbsp butter
• 1 1/2 cup rice krispies cereal

1. Follow your brownies recipe as you normally would, but bake them about 5 minutes less than called for (18 minutes in my oven but yours may be different)

2. Remove the brownies from the oven, then top with the peanuts and chopped Reese’s cups. Return to the oven and finish baking.

3. While the brownies are finishing up, melt the chocolate chips, peanut butter, and butter over low heat. It should melt fairly quickly and be a little runny.

4. Stir in the rice krispies cereal.

5. When the brownies are done, pour the warm chocolate/peanut butter/cereal mixture over the brownies.

6. Cool for 20 minutes, then move to the refrigerator for at least 2-3 hours to finish cooling and setting.

Note: When you cut into the brownies, I suggest a rolling pizza cutter, if you have one. The crunch topping was a little tougher to cut into – though still very possible, but the rolling pizza cutter made slicing the brownies much easier.

Just look at that amazingly thick layer of peanut butter, chocolate and rice krispies on top of the brownies. Seriously.

I’m confident my coworkers will miss me just a little more because of these brownies. Mission accomplished.

Peach Blueberry Cake

I feel lucky to work where I do. It’s a special environment… people always running up and down the hall, yelling, exclusive concerts sometimes, a jock putting out a “vibe” to my coworker every day – it’s a lot of fun. Another perk is that we often get food dropped off by local businesses – frozen yogurt, cakes, barbecue, cupcakes, and most recently… PEACHES!

On Thursday, a farm dropped off a case of peaches to one of the morning shows. When the show was over, a coworker stopped by my office to tell my there were peaches in one of the studios, then challenged me to bake something with them. Free, local peaches right before a holiday weekend?? That’s an easy challenge I was more than happy to accept! I just had to decide what to bake. I considered a peach pie or a cobbler, but neither were calling out to me.

Then I remembered all the blueberries in the freezer. A few weeks ago, Whole Foods had a one-day sale on organic blueberries – $1.99/pint. We picked up eight pints originally but were convinced to buy a case to bring down the cost-per-pint, so now our freezer is overflowing with blueberries. What better summer fruit to pair with peaches?

A quick search yielded Food Gal’s Peach Blueberry Cake. It looked absolutely perfect for a 4th of July dessert.

Peach-Blueberry Cake
Adapted from Food Gal

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 cup butter (2 sticks) – COLD, cut into 1/2″-1″ pieces
• 2 eggs
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 4 pounds peaches (7-8 large peaches), cut into 8 slices each
• 1 1/2 cups blueberries
• 1 1/2 Tbsp lemon juice
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 3 Tbsp flour
• 2 Tbsp quick-cooking tapioca

1.Preheat oven to 375 degrees if using a light-colored pan or 350 degrees if using a dark colored pan. Lightly butter and flour a 9″ or 9 1/2″ spring-form pan. (Note: Food Gal’s recipe doesn’t include buttering/flouring the pan, but I did this to ensure nothing stuck, despite the amount of butter in the dough.)

2. Mix together the 3 cups flour, 1 cup sugar, baking powder and salt. Transfer to a food processor.

3. Add in the cold butter and pulse until the mixture is mostly pea-sized lumps.

4. Add in the eggs and vanilla and pulse until the dough begins to form a ball.

5. Press the dough into the spring-form pan – on the bottom and up the sides. This may require that you flour your hands since the dough is really sticky. Chill for 10 in the freezer to firm up.

6. Grind up tapioca until it’s a fine powder. This would work best with a spice grinder, but I used a coffee grinder. Mix with 3 Tbsp flour and 3/4 cup sugar.

7. Lightly toss together blueberries, peaches, lemon juice and tapioca/flour/sugar mixture, and place the mixture into the spring-form pan.

8. Cover the pan lightly and place on a cookie sheet.

9. Bake for 1 hour 45 minutes or until the edges are lightly brown and cooked through, and the filling is bubbling lightly. My oven took about 1 hour 35 minutes.

10. Cool in pan for 15-20 minutes, then remove the outside of the pan.

I would make a few adjustments next time. First, I would make to this recipe would be to reduce the amount of the pastry dough. Food Gal doubled the amount of dough in the original recipe from Gourmet because there wasn’t enough dough to cover the pan. Although the crust was delicious, I would like a little less of it around the edge so the fruit stands out even more.

I would also like to use a little less sugar in the filling next time – maybe try just a 1/2 cup in the filling? It wasn’t overly sweet, but I think it would be improved with less sugar. The filling also needs a little more tapioca next time if I use frozen blueberries again. As you can see in the photos, the filling became way too runny and didn’t hold its shape the way I hoped.

All that said, this cake was a lovely summer dessert, which would be even better served with fresh whipped cream, vanilla ice cream or hard sauce. I can’t wait to try this recipe again!

My Favorite Chocolate Cake

Although I loved baking a decadent cake for Father’s Day, sometimes simple is best. I had some extra white chocolate buttercream from the Father’s Day cake and needed to bake something for a coworker’s birthday. I went with my favorite chocolate cake. Oh, how I love this cake.

1. It requires ONE  bowl. One bowl recipes are always a selling point to me. Who wants to dirty up two or three bowls for one cake?
2. It uses ingredients I almost always keep on hand. This means it’s perfect when you need an easy cake at the last minute… or when you get a desperate craving for chocolate cake at 9PM.
3. Preparation is fast! I swear, it takes maybe three more minutes of preparation than a boxed mix, and it yields a much, MUCH better cake (not hating on the boxed cake mix at all!).
4. The result is a light and incredibly moist cake – perfect to pair with a very rich frosting such as the white chocolate buttercream I had leftover. I’ve also topped the cake with a layer of ganache and eaten it without any kind of frosting. Trust me – this cake is perfect any way! I’m sure it would be perfect served warm with a drizzle of chocolate or peanut butter syrup.

• 1 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cup cocoa powder (I use non-Dutch processed)
• 1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 cups sugar
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 2 eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 1 cup strong coffee

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour two 9″ pans. (Or if you’re lazy like me, coat the pans with Baking Joy.)

2. Sift together all the dry ingredients.

3. Add in the buttermilk, vegetable oil, eggs and vanilla. Beat for 2 minutes on medium-high.

4. Stir in the coffee and divide batter between two pans.

5. Bake for 30-35 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean and the cakes spring back lightly.

There are plenty of tasty chocolate cake recipes out there, but this remains my go-to. The cake is so chocolately – perfect to enjoy with a cup of coffee or a glass of milk, and it couldn’t be easier to make.

This is all that was left at the end of the day – a pretty good sign that I did OK, in my opinion!

Happy Father’s Day!

I’m a lucky girl. I have a dad who will watch my dog for and walk him when I accompany my mom to the gym. He’ll check the oil in my car weekly to make sure nothing’s leaking. He tries to fix what he can in my car to save me some money, and when I do need to take it to our mechanic, he handles all the discussions. When I want to feed him a vegetarian meal, despite being a very meat-and-potatoes kind of guy, he’ll eat it without complaint and always try to find something positive to say. He spends one weekend each year cheering me on at every cheering station during the Susan G. Komen 3-Day walk. When he was a stay-at-home dad for many years, he happily played Pretty, Pretty Princess with me, painted my nails, tried to fix my hair and would occasionally surprise my brothers and me with brownies after school.

I have the kind of dad any kid could dream of. He has always put his family first, and I feel very blessed to have him in my life. I was more than happy to bake any cake he requested and emailed him a long list of suggestions.

Initially, he selected a carrot cake, much to my surprise. My dad has a history of choosing things like orange cake with orange cream cheese icing or Boston cream pie, rather than carrot cake or chocolate cake. Carrot cake seemed so… typical. He revealed he didn’t want to choose anything that would require me to do a lot of work. Um…. hello?? This is your daughter who loves baking and wouldn’t consider it work. It’s not like I get a lot of opportunities to make layer cakes. He quickly changed his mind to Evil Shenanigans’ Raspberry and Chocolate Ganache Cake with White Chocolate Buttercream.

What. a. disaster.

Baking the cake went very smoothly. The recipe yielded a very moist cake, although I still lightly brushed the cakes with a simple syrup before wrapping freezing them. It was after that when the problems started occurring – all due to my inexperience.

I’ve never torted a cake. Usually when I want a few extra layers, I just bake the right number of layers, rather than having to cut the layers. It’s easier for me, but since I baked the cake Friday night when I was exhausted, I chose to bake the two layers so I could be finished earlier, and I decided this weekend would be the time I learn to torte a cake.

Well, so much for learning how. I froze the layers, assuming it would be easier to torte the cakes when they were frozen. Maybe it normally is, but as soon as I began cutting into the cake, the knife kept going through the bottom. I was not going to get three layers out of the first cake. I decided to try for two layers instead. Same problem. Clearly my knife and cake-torting skills leave a lot to be desired, so I gave up before I complete destroyed the cake and put the first layer on the cake plate, with a few chunks falling from the bottom of the layer.

I managed to slice the other cake into two layers, choosing to not even attempt three layers. I began assembling the cake and topped the first cake with a thick layer of the ganache. I waited just a hare too long to follow up with the next cake layer though, and when I returned to the kitchen, the ganache had fully hardened. By this time, I was ready to accept that my Father’s Day cake wasn’t going to be like Evil Shenanigans’ beautiful cake and just rolled with it. I topped the ganache with a layer of raspberry curd, added the next cake layer, more ganache (which I let harden), another layer of raspberry curd, then the top cake layer. It wasn’t pretty, but it was assembled. I wish I had taken a picture of the disaster.

The obvious solution to covering up the messy looking cake was to make extra icing. Believe me, my dad was in favor of that!

My cake decorating skills obviously need a lot of work too.

So it may not be the prettiest cake, and I may not have followed the recipe exactly, but I know some more things I need to work on. More importantly, my dad LOVED the cake and is looking forward to having a special dessert over the next several days. And on Father’s Day, what more can you ask for than making your dad happy?