My trademark banana bread

My roommate and boyfriend know by now that if I'm baking something, about 85 percent of the time, it's a banana bread. This banana bread recipe-- adapted from an old Ukranian cookbook-- is just so good! When I make it, I feel compelled to eat it straight for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks until it has (all too soon) disappeared.

It's a very simple quick bread, flavorful and moist, and I think the combination of a few good shakes of cinnamon and very ripe bananas make it that way. I won't make this bread until the bananas are heavily speckled, or even slightly black. (That's how I like to eat them, too, so maybe it's just my preference.) Other than that, I don't think you can really go wrong here... Even the uncooked batter is amazing!

Banana Bread

1/2 cup melted butter, or oil

1 cup sugar

2 eggs

2 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

3 large bananas, mashed

cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In a large mixing bowl, whisk the eggs, combine sugar and butter (or oil), and stir. Add in the flour and baking soda, and sift the baking soda into the flour first before stirring it all together. Add several shakes of cinnamon.

In a smaller bowl, peel and mash the bananas with a fork. I find that a finer mash creates a more moist and delicious bread. Add the bananas to the other mixture, and stir.

Pour batter into a greased and lightly floured bread pan. Bake for 50-60 minutes.

(Note: I have also added in chocolate chips to the batter in the past; it's good, but only for a dessert bread... It was too sweet and rich for me to carry on my tradition of eating the bread for every single meal!)

Blue Cheese Pastry Bites

Blue cheese?  I'm really much more of a cheddar girl.  Sure, I like blue cheese dressing now and then, but I'd never experimented with blue cheese until I decided to make these pastry bites for some friends.  

Heavily adapted from an Emeril recipe, I was really surprised and pleased by the amount of tasty cheese flavor these small bites contained.  They were the perfect savory appetizer to go along with some drinks.  One of my friends even commented on how good they were before finding out they contained blue cheese-- something he claimed he'd never liked before.  So I'm pretty happy with this dish.

Blue Cheese Pastry Bites

1 cup milk

1/2 stick of unsalted butter

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/8 teaspoon cracked black pepper

a dash of: paprika, garlic powder, onion powder, oregano, and thyme

1 cup flour

4 eggs

1/4 pound creamy blue cheese

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees, and lightly grease a baking sheet.

In a medium-sized saucepan, melt the butter.  Add in the milk and spices at medium-high heat.  Bring to a boil, then remove from the heat.  Add in the flour and stir constantly for about 1 minute (it will get very think, so add in a splash of milk if you need to).  Return to the heat and cook for 1 additional minute before removing from heat entirely.

Put the mixture into a large mixing bowl and add the eggs one at a time, beating well with an electric mixer.  Add in the blue cheese, crumbling it if necessary, and beat thoroughly until soft.

Drop the batter by spoonful onto the baking sheet.  Bake 10 minutes, reduce the heat to 350 degrees without opening the oven door, and bake 20-25 minutes more.  The pastry bites will be puffed and golden brown.

Popovers: A Love Affair

I've made these popovers three times in two weeks, so it must be love.

How on earth did I go so long without a good popover recipe?  I remember my first taste of the light, hollow rolls at Jordan Pond House Restaurant in Bar Harbor, Maine, on a family vacation at least ten years ago.  They serve their famous popovers with tea and a variety of jams, and it was fantastic-- they were buttery and crispy on the outside, and warm and soft inside.

The trouble is, my mom and I have tried them over the years since then with no success-- our popovers just wouldn't pop.  So when they were served, to my great delight, as appetizers at a recent brunch at Pauline's Cafe in Burlington, Vermont, I had renewed interest in seeking out a recipe that actually worked.  I've discovered oven temperature is really important when baking popovers-- open the oven while they're rising, and the dough will just deflate.  (That's probably why our homemade popovers always failed; I always had to take a peek in at them!)

So here is my favorite new recipe of the moment, and it really is quite easy to throw together.  I love to fill them with apricot preserves and eat any time of the day, or make scrambled eggs and bacon to accompany them for breakfast.

Popovers

1 cup flour

2 teaspoons sugar

cinnamon (optional)

1 cup milk

1 egg, plus 1 egg yolk

1 tablespoon melted butter

Preheat your oven to 425 degrees.  Generously butter your popover molds (this recipe usually makes 10-12 popovers), and put the unfilled molds in the oven to heat-- that's important; it helps them pop!

Combine the flour, sugar, and a decent sprinkle of cinnamon in a mixing bowl.  Whisk in all the wet ingredients until the batter is smooth.  

Remove the popover molds from the oven and fill each mold about halfway with batter.  Bake for 15 minutes, then reduce the heat to 350 degrees (without opening the oven door) and bake another 15-20 minutes.  They should be puffed and brown, and you can take a quick peek in towards the end if you need to check on them.  Serve them right away; they are best fresh and hot!

(Note: I have also added orange zest into the batter to give them more flavor, which was very good.  You can personalize your popovers by adding in other zests, as well.)

New Year's Sweet Puffs with Raspberry Cream

Mmm.  Though I had my doubts while mixing up this sticky batter, these sweet puffs came out deliciously light and fresh, and worked perfectly for the New Year's cocktail party my roommate and I threw last week.

After burying myself in recipes in preparation for the party, I decided to try something new and chose a simple sweet puff recipe that seemed easy enough to throw together in the hours before everyone arrived.  I'd completely forgotten I'd ever had sweet puffs before; upon finally biting into the finished dessert, I remembered my grandmother used to make them when I was younger.  And as I was boiling the sweetened fresh raspberries for the fluffy cream, it reminded me of her homemade raspberry syrup, too, which I used to pour all over my pancakes.  The smell of the warm, sugary berries is incredible.

The guests liked these, too.  The recipe below makes about 30 bite-sized sweet puffs, great for munching on in between drinks.  As I said, the batter is extremely sticky!  It was difficult for me to form the dough into perfect balls, like the recipe calls for-- but it didn't much matter.  By the time the puffs were opened and stuffed full with yummy raspberry cream and sprinkled all over with powdered sugar, they looked pretty and presentable.

Miniature Sweet Puffs

1/2 cup water

1/2 stick unsalted butter

2 tablespoons sugar

1/2 cup flour

2 eggs

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.  Add water, butter, and sugar to a medium-sized saucepan and bring to a boil over medium heat.  Pull the pan away from the heat and add all of the flour, stirring vigorously until completely mixed (about 1 minute).  Turn the heat down to medium-low, and stir constantly for another two minutes.  

Transfer the mixture to a mixing bowl.  Beat in one egg at a time.  The dough will be smooth and shiny.

Use a pastry bag (I used a little plastic Ziploc bag with the corner cut off) to squeeze the dough into little balls on a lightly-greased baking sheet.  Shape into balls with fingers.  Bake for 10 minutes, reduce heat to 375 degrees (it's important not to open the oven door during baking), and bake 15 minutes more, until the balls are puffed and lightly golden.  If the puffs are not completely cooked at this time, as mine were, you can poke each with a toothpick and bake another 10 minutes or so to dry out the insides.

Raspberry Cream

1 cup raspberries

3 tablespoons sugar (or to taste)

1/2 cup heavy cream, chilled

1 tablespoon powdered sugar

Mash up the raspberries and sugar in a small saucepan, and bring them to a boil over medium-high heat, stirring often.  Reduce the heat and let the berries simmer for about 5 minutes.  Remove from the heat.  If you'd like to remove the seeds, strain the mix through a fine strainer-- I left the seeds in, and it didn't affect the taste or texture.  Let cool.

In the meantime, beat the heavy cream on its own until it holds a light peak.  Add the powdered sugar, and continue to beat until the cream holds a soft, but firm, peak.  Gently stir in the raspberry sauce until it is well blended.

Cut or open the puffs in half and fill with a generous amount of the raspberry cream.  Dust them with powdered sugar and serve.  (The best part of this recipe, I've decided, may be that you're left with lots of extra raspberry cream to be creative with after the sweet puffs are quickly polished off.)