Banana Nut Bread

Hi,
It's been a very long time and i know i have been a very bad blogger :(. But with a little one who is entering the Terrible Two phase , i hardly have time to sit in front of a laptop !!!! My daughter loves saying "close" and shutting down the laptop :P. By the time she goes to bed , i am totally drained out to sit and do anything *sigh* !!!!


But now I am back and this time with a recipe for Banana Bread. I do have one in my blog already but this time i had a whole load of ripe bananas sitting at home and so wanted something different. So went on a hunt for a good recipe and found this one by the Neelys ( Pat & Gina Neely of Food Network fame) !!!!! It was a super duper hit with my little one and from then whenever i have overripe Bananas this is what i make at home :).

Recipe Source :

Adapted from The Neelys

Ingredients :

1.5 cups All purpose flour

1 stick butter ( at room temp)

2 eggs ( at room temp )

1/2 cup Sour cream ( at room temp )

1 tsp Baking Powder

1 tsp Baking Soda

1 tsp Salt

1 cup Sugar

3 ripe bananas ( the riper the better )

2 tsps Vanilla extract

1/2 cup chopped Walnuts 

How to go about it :

Butter a loaf pan , preheat the oven to 350F.

Sieve all the dry ingredients in a bowl ( flour , baking powder , baking soda and salt ). Mash the bananas in another bowl.

In the meantime beat together the butter and sugar till it is fluffy !!! To this add eggs one at a time.

Now add the vanilla extract . To this add bananas and sour cream.

Once its all mixed together add the flour mixture.

Now add in the walnuts and gently mix it in with a spatula.

Pour the mixture into a loaf pan and bake it for 1hr 30 mins ( my oven got it done in 70 mins ). Check the center with a tooth pick. If it comes out clean the bread is done !!!!!

Hmmm the smell of the baking bread was enough to wake up my little one from her sleep. Hardly was it out of the oven that she wanted a piece !!!!! 

Enjoi it in the morning or in the evening as a snack !!!!

Have fun Baking !!!!!

Easy Sponge cake !!!

Hi All,


It's been a real long break for me. We were moving again , then had friends visiting and staying with us. Then the bigger surprise was my Dad who had not seen his granddaughter from her birth decided to make a trip to see her (not to see his daughter but his granddaughter.. poor me). So 2010 came to an end with Dad leaving back to India :(. Hmmm i really do miss my parents ..... the downfall of living in the USofA i guess !!!!!


So let me begin this post wishing everyone a very Happy New Year (though a month late)!!!! The New Year brought a never before seen snowstorm in Atlanta and it was a nightmare having to sit at home for 5 days as the roads were not cleared ..... !!!! After having lived in New Jersey this was a new experience for us ... to stay cooped at home !!! 


Here i was ..sitting at home , with nothing to do ...as in could not go out. And my daughter hated being cooped up continuously .  My daughter loves it when the oven light goes on and stays close to it for the entire duration that something is being baked in the oven. So i decided to bake something that would go with the evening coffee.


The sponge cake recipe was given to me by a good friend Ramya of http://ramyaacooks.blogspot.com/ even before my daughter was born and its always turned out excellent. Every time my Hubby feels like having cake this is his first choice. It is also a hit with my DD :). But this time for a change instead of using a normal square or round baking pan i decided to put to use my brand new Bundt pan. And boy did it turn out good !!!! Or rather should i say great ;).

The above photo if you notice has been cracked on one end :(. This is because i did not allow the cake to cool once i removed it from the oven and in a mad rush turned it over. As they say i think i have to practice patience when it comes to a cake cooling down..... :).

The photo above is after cutting off the part where it was cracked ;).. and such a big piece went into the tummies of me and my DD !!!!!


Coming to the recipe ...


Ingredients :


1 stick  unsalted butter( room temperature)

1 3/4 cups cake flour 
2 teaspoons baking powder 
1/2 teaspoon salt 
1 cup sugar 
3 large eggs( room temperature )
2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract 
2/3 cup buttermilk( room temperature )


To make the cake :


Grease a square or round or in my case a bundt pan with butter and flour and keep it aside.
Also preheat the oven to 350F.


Now sieve the flour , baking powder and salt and keep it aside.


In a bowl beat together butter and sugar till its all fluffy. To this add eggs one at a time and beat each egg till its all well mixed. Now add the vanilla extract and mix it together with the butter and eggs.


Now add the flour (3 parts) and buttermilk ( bm , 2 parts)  in parts to the wet ingredients starting with flour and ending up with flour ( flour + bm + flour + bm + flour ).


Remember to scrape the sides of the bowl as you beat the mixture.


Pour the mixture into the cake pan and bake for 40 mins . 


Normally it takes me 40 mins but when i baked it in a bundt pan it was all done in 30 mins.
To check if the cake is done insert a toothpick into the cake and if it comes out clean you are all set !!!!


Cool the cake for 10 to 15 mins , invert , slice and enjoy !!!!!!


It goes well as a coffee time cake and my family loves to eat it with ice-cream and strawberries as a after dinner dessert !!!!


Let me know if you like it too :)

Banana Almond Cake

Hey to all my friends out there !!!!!

So this is going to be my first post on a recipe i just tried out. I wanted to post another recipe but then this turned out awesome that i wanted to post this :)

There were 2 reasons that i wanted to bake a cake. One was that my daughter is completing 8 months tomorrow and the other reason was that i had too many ripe bananas sitting at home. I knew that if i did not put it into proper use it would end in the trash can. I do not have a multitude of recipes in hand as i am still an amateur cook and so i went blog hunting. I wanted something simple so that i could also surprise my hubby. The reason behind it is that every time i bake i make sure my hubby is nearby so that he can help me out for every small thing :) and he keeps telling me " if i do all the things , i think i can bake the cake myself" :)

The original recipe was from the blog Mahanandi and the link is here . I made a whole lot of changes and the end result was the Banana Almond Cake :).

To all the other fellow bloggers  - i am still an amateur and please excuse any errors on my side. The photo that i took is not that excellent , but i guess for a first attempt it is not too bad :). So do bear with me.

Ingredients :

1 cup all purpose flour

1/4 cup sugar

1/2 cup chopped almonds ( or any nuts that u have at home)

1/2 cup milk

1 ripe banana - mashed

1 tsp Vanilla extract

1 tsp baking powder

2 tsps ghee or oil

1/2 tsp salt

How to go about it :

 Preheat the oven at 350F

 In a bowl mix all the dry ingredients together ( flour , sugar , nuts , baking powder)

 In another bowl add the bananas , vanilla extract , ghee / oil . Whisk them all together ( i used an electric mixer on medium speed). To this add half of the dry ingredient mixture along with the milk. Beat again on medium speed. Add the balance of the dry ingredients and beat the whole mixture on medium speed.

Remember not to beat the mixture too much as then it would start to crack when you bake.

Grease a baking pan and pour the batter into the pan. Bake at 350F for anywhere between 30 to 40 mins. 

To know if you the cake is baked and ready , insert a toothpick in the cake. If the toothpick comes out clean , your cake is ready.

I had it with a dollop of ice -cream and chocolate sauce and loved it :). Iam sure this will also go well with kids .

Enjoy the cake and do let me know how well it turned out :)

Also let me know your opinion on my blog.