Spiced Banana Bread with Chocolate Bits
Sadly no photo of my banana bread, forgot to take one :(!
It was 9PM on a workday and was just feeling restless and so decided to bake! I had two bananas that had ripened and needed to be eaten up rather soon, so banana bread it was.
I started with a recipe and soon realized that I completely decided not to follow it! This time my mission was to make a version that was relatively healthy and with a bit of extra spice and of course some dark chocolate! 🙂 To add nutritional value, I decided to use soya flour and be stingy with my use of sugar and butter.
I recently learned that soya flour can be used in baking for extra protein by simply replacing about a 1/5 of flour ingredient with soya flour for non-yeast raised products. Because baked products containing soy flour tend to brown more quickly, I had to the lower the temperature just slightly.
This healthy baking experiment was a success as it was enjoyed by all my work colleagues! 🙂
Total Time: 1 hour 10 minutes
Ingredients:
2/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp of cinnamon
2 bananas, mashed
1 cup plain/all-purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup soya flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup small chunks of dark chocolate (80% cocoa)
1. In a mixing bowl, cream sugar and butter until light and fluffy. Next beat in eggs, vanilla, cinnamon and bananas until well blended.
2. Combine the flours, baking soda and salt and add to creamed mixture and stir just until combined. Fold in chocolate bits.
3. Spoon into a greased loaf pan. Bake at 170C/ 340F for about 55-60 minutes. Cool in pan for 10 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.
Bite-size Desserts!
Soon after I announced my launch of my blog, I received a phone call from Sunil’s Uncle to create dessert delights for his daughter’s wedding party of 200 guests! I was awe-struck!!! With the bride on board, I was thrilled to have this opportunity and couldn’t believe she was trusting me to provide treats on her special day! It was the first time that I would be baking on such a big scale in my teeny-tiny kitchen…..I was up for the challenge! 🙂
As they were already bringing in the main wedding cake and other fruit desserts, I decided to complement the selection by creating mainly chocolate items! I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to make one item, two, or many! After brainstorming, a discussion with my husband and much contemplation (as we wanted to do it all!!), we opted for five different varieties; each with its own distinct flavour, texture, and wow factor! At first, I thought it was not possible to do it all on my own, but with the support of my husband, no mission is ‘mission impossible’ 🙂
Planning Stage:
To keep myself organized and to be sure I had accounted for everything I needed on the day of baking, I created a spreadsheet! Surprise, Surprise…those who know me really me, know how much I love my spreadsheets and for everything I do, I have a spreadsheet! I can’t help it!! 🙂 I cannot say enough how organized they keep you and they are a great medium to get ALL your thoughts down together: including ingredients to buy, any advance preparation, timings, storage and transport considerations. It was the one single thing that cleverly restricted me from being lost at any point during this process!
Execution:
So you are probably still wondering what the five selections were: chocolate-mocha hazelnut macaroons, chocolate brownie bites, lemon-ginger meringue mini cupcakes, chocolate-oreo truffles, and chocolate tuxedo strawberries.
Our biggest limitation was the size of our oven, come micro come grill! With only small oven shelf, we had to make sure there was not any idle time. Thus, I started with the items that required the oven and in between each oven change, I prepared the mix and made sure the next batch was ready to go. I would be lying if I said everything went smoothly: there was a batch of italian meringue that flopped, a reject batch of macaroons and brownie bite crumbling from over-handling! In the end, we made close to 400 pieces of intense pleasure. Overall it was a great learning curve for me across all aspects of this gastronomic project!
At the event:
When it was time for the desserts to come out, we displayed them all on a perfectly decorated table. It was the moment of truth…did it live up to the expectations in terms of presentation and taste? After speaking with many, many of the guests, the hard work had paid off!! It was rewarding to see all those great smiles and people really enjoying the sweet delights! I couldn’t have asked for more!! I was glad to see those empty trays 🙂 It was my first big event and I hope to spread more smiles with more opportunities!
Chocolate-Oreo Truffles
Chocolate-covered Tuxedo Strawberries
These are the same lemon meringue cupcakes made using a recipe by Eric Lanlard, whom I met at the “Taste of London”. The bit that we changed was that we used stem ginger instead of candied lemon.
The beautiful batch of hazelnut macaroons….mmmmm! You can find this delicious here. In the ganache filling, I added cinnamon powder (one of my favourite spice) to give it another dimention.
Homemade Chocolate Truffles
It was my first Christmas in London and wanted to make edible gifts for my new family and friends. I love chocolate and so I reasoned so does everyone else (if they didn’t like my truffles, I would get to eat them all! :P) They were a great hit during Christmas, so we decided to make 500 of them for our wedding reception as favours. It was a full days work, but a lot of fun!
Truffles are easy peasy and you can experiment by adding all sorts of flavours and can give them different textures as explained below. I did not use any liquor in the version I made. I have had some truffles with liquor and didn’t like them as much. Though that does not mean I won’t experiment with it in the future 🙂
This batch makes about 24-30 truffles(medium size- 12mm):
250ml/9fl oz whipping cream/double cream
225g/8oz dark chocolate (80-85% cocoa)
55g/2oz unsalted butter, cut into cubes and left to soften
1. Chop the chocolate roughly into large chunks and melt it by putting them into a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of gently simmering water. (Be sure that the bottom of the bowl does not touch the water as it will get too hot and burn the chocolate)
As the chocolate is melting, add a pinch of salt (optional, but it works well) and add the butter bit by bit. Don’t over stir the mix (tempting!) but stir until just incorporated. Now you can also add any flavoring you like (cinnamon powder, chili powder, coffee liqueur, vanilla extract, coffee granules).
2.Add the chocolate mix to the cold whipping cream and stir until smooth. The mix will still be runny and will only set once cooled.
3.Leave to cool for about 15-30 minutes in the fridge. When it has set to the consistency of hard butter icing, spoon into truffle sized bites and roll in your (cool) hands to form little balls.
If you spoon out a ball of mix and it is crumbly, it has overset so just leave it to soften for a while before trying again to reform into balls. Equally if the mix is too soft and still moist, leave it in the fridge for some extra time.
3. Once you are happy with your balls, roll them in whatever you like (hazelnuts, cocoa powder, dried grated coconut). Those that you have not eaten already are now ready to be gifted! 🙂
Best Chocolate Brownie Cake!
Baking!!! I never really baked until few months ago. My idea of baking a cake was getting a cake mix, adding the basics and popping it in the oven. My husband considered it to be a sin to buy a cake mix. 🙂 After a few sessions of real baking (of course with a lot of help from my husband), I was hooked! It brought a lot of joy knowing I had baked (and hopefully can continue baking :)) treats from scratch. Though at times it was fraught with frustrations as it was difficult for me to follow a recipe. However, I have come to realize that baking is a science 🙂 and that you kind of have to follow the recipe. Still, I look for every opportunity to experiment.
Below is a recipe I found from the Good Food website. It was a good recipe, but I wanted a few more elements to it. Next to the ingredients and directions below, I have indicated in the brackets my variations to make it a great recipe! Â I made it for a birthday celebration and it turned out to be a great hit (unless it was all lies!!!…hehe)!!!
Recipe by Good Food with my twist! (Serves 10)
Preparation and cooking times
Prep 15 – 20 mins
Cook 45 mins
- 175g unsalted butter , plus extra for greasing
- 225g dark chocolate , broken into pieces (I only used 150g)
- 200g caster sugar (I used 160g sugar)
- 3 medium eggs, separated
- 65g plain flour
- 50g chopped pecan nuts (I also added 50g broken pieces of dark chocolate and 50g of white chocolate chunks)
- (150ml of double cream, whipped, optional)
- Heat oven to 180C/fan 160C/gas 4. Butter a 20-25cm cake tin and line with greaseproof paper. (or you can divide the mixture into two tins for a double layer cake (as photographed))
- Place 175g/6oz of the chocolate, plus the butter and sugar in a heavy-based pan and heat gently until melted, stirring occasionally. Leave to cool.
- Whisk the egg yolks into the chocolate mixture, then add the flour, nuts and the remaining chocolate.
- Whisk the egg whites until they form soft peaks, then gently, but thoroughly, fold into the chocolate mixture.
- Pour into the prepared tin and bake in the centre of the oven for about 35-40 mins until crusty on top. Leave to cool, then run a knife around the sides and remove from the tin. Dust with icing sugar and serve warm with custard or ice cream or cold with cream. ( I was taking this for a birthday celebration and wanted to avoid additional preparation.When assembling the cake, I piped the fresh whipped cream between my two chocolate brownie layers. No additional work when ready to eat!)
VegDelights 