| Most of my banana muffin and bread recipes call for 3 bananas, so when I found myself with 4 particularly sad looking ones that needed to be used, I turned to this recipe. This turned out to be a very moist muffin with good banana flavour with a hint of espresso.
It uses the quick and easy quickbread mixing method though this recipe does call for the extra steps of mashing the bananas and melting butter.
Though they were a big hit, I thought there were too many chocolate chips in them; I’ll cut back on them next time. This recipe seems to be a good candidate for some substitutions….whole wheat flour instead of white and oil instead of butter. I’ll try that the next time I have 4 bananas on hand.
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| Tender, cheesy, delicious and the best cheese biscuit/scone I've ever made.
The ingredients are basic: all purpose flour, butter, sharp cheddar cheese (I used white), buttermilk......They get an added kick from black pepper and smoky chipotle chile pepper which you can adjust according to your taste.
The dough comes together easily in 1 bowl using the standard method: blend dry ingredients, rub in butter, add cheese, toss with wet ingredients. The dough is wet and sticky so just scoop and drop on the baking sheet - no kneading required.
I recently reviewed the cheddar-scallion scones from Flour and, though they were very good, I only gave them a 4-star rating - these biscuits are 5-star worthy! |
| A perfect summertime dessert and a very pleasant way to consume a healthy dose of antioxidants!
I’ve always thought that melons seem to perfectly complement the flavour of green tea so it was no surprise that this combination of fresh honeydew melon and matcha powder with milk (I used 1% regular milk instead of soy milk) and frozen vanilla yogurt was delicious. I'm not sure how potent my matcha is but the drink tasted a little grassy so I added extra milk and honeydew. By the time I was done with it, the recipe for 2 made 3 generous servings :)!
Very refreshing on a hot summer day. |
| I’ve always found that the flavour of maple syrup in baked goods is so subtle, it often can’t be detected so I was happy to see that this recipe used maple extract to flavour the scones, and saved the precious liquid for a finishing glaze.
As a result, the scones had a good maple flavour, which was nicely balanced with cinnamon and toasted walnuts. As the authors warn, the texture was quite dense and hearty, not light and delicate.
The scone is sprinkled with sugar before baking, then finished with a maple syrup glaze. I thought this might be overkill, but the scones weren’t very sweet and could handle both.
I find I do prefer a lighter, flakier texture in my scones so, though I liked many things about this recipe, I didn’t love the finished product. I’m still giving this a high rating as they did taste very good and my family didn’t mind the texture.
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| Wow, is this cake good! It’s a little bit of a twist on the standard yellow cake/chocolate icing combination with the addition of malted milk powder to the cake and a silky whipped ganache buttercream as frosting.
After my experience with the whiteout cake, I decided to ignore the step that had you whipping egg whites and folding them in at the end. Instead, I beat them into the creamed butter and sugar. The cake didn’t appear to suffer at all….it had a soft, moist, airy crumb that tasted subtly of malt…no one could identify the additional flavour in the cake, they just commented on how different and delicious it was. The recipe made 30 cupcakes.
The buttercream is a chocolate ganache with added butter. Confession: I did not use the high end, quality milk and bittersweet chocolates that are called for; instead, I used the Hershey’s semi-sweet chocolate chips that melted into a congealed mass in my pantry with the first heat wave of the season a few weeks ago. Perhaps the flavour wasn’t as milky as it should have been, but it was still very good.
I decorated the cupcakes with red maple leaf “quins” instead of Maltesers/Whoppers in honour of Canada Day.
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| Very good bar cookie that’s like an upscale Twix candy bar. It's easy to make, especially if you cheat and use store-bought dulce de leche, but involves long chilling times so plan accordingly.
Flavour-wise the recipe deserves 5 stars but it loses 1 for the method of making the shortbread which involves extra and superfluous steps: adding all of the flour to the mixing bowl instead of kneading some in by hand would have resulted in the same cookie texture provided the dough wasn’t over mixed.
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| There’s a lot going on with each bite of this cake and every bit of it is delicious! It’s a moist vanilla cake with a cinnamon-cocoa swirl and a crunchy, nutty streusel topping.
There are 3 components to prepare, so a few dishes get dirtied in the process, but they are easy to make and each one comes together fairly quickly. The most time consuming part of the cake is the assembly: the batter, which is added to the pan in 3rds alternating with a sprinkling of the dry swirl mix, is very thick and difficult to spread. I used the suggested offset spatula to help with this and wet it frequently so the cake batter wouldn’t stick to it.
I cut it into 24 (it bakes in a 9”x13” pan) but could have easily cut 30, and possibly even 35 pieces as the cake holds together very well and not much of the streusel topping is lost during slicing. Excellent for feeding a crowd.
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| This cake is one of the signature cakes of the Baked bakery in Brooklyn, NY. A combination of moist chocolate cake, salted caramel and rich caramel ganache frosting, it is not for the chocolate faint of heart.
It’s rather labour intensive as it’s composed of several elements. The cake portion is a sturdy cocoa-based cake with good chocolate flavour made by the usual creaming method. I was pleased with how high and level the layers baked - they made for a very tall cake.
Caramel is another of the components, one which must be made twice! The first is the salted caramel that is used to syrup each layer. Unfortunately, it wasn’t absorbed by the cake as the authors indicate even though I poked holes in the cake. I ended up using half as much, but leftovers of this stuff are welcome here…it’s delicious.
The second batch of caramel is used to make the ganache frosting; it’s poured over chocolate to melt it. Once cooled, butter is beaten in. This frosting is only as good as the chocolate used and has a silky, melt-in-your mouth quality.
Assembly of the cake was frustrating…..the ganache frosting is extremely temperature sensitive and 70F, the temp. of my kitchen, was too warm. The cake and frosting required frequent refrigeration between steps (filling, crumb coating, frosting and decorating) - I was thrown off by this and forgot to sprinkle salt between each layer so though my cake was sweet, it wasn’t quite so salty : )
Frustration aside, the finished cake, made for my husband’s birthday, was really delicious and was a huge hit with birthday boy and guests. I don’t think I’ll make it again though, as I’m a big fan of the Sweet and Salty Brownies that appear in the authors’ 2nd book and offer the same flavour profile for a fraction of the work (and cost!).
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| One of the sweets that helped put the Brooklyn bakery on the map. It’s dense, a little fudgy, very chocolate-y and absolutely delicious - definitely worthy of all of the accolades!
It’s an easy saucepan brownie that can be assembled quite quickly: sugar, eggs and dry ingredients are added to a mixture of melted butter and chocolate (make sure you use a good quality chocolate), spread in a pan and baked. The authors caution against both over-mixing and over-baking in order to achieve their trademark moist, fudgy texture.
I made these to take to a barbecue, and after chilling, was able to cut them into small squares. My yield was 63 from a 9”x13” pan. They were a huge hit – the first item to disappear from the sweet table.
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| A vanilla butter cake with a whipped, white chocolate buttercream.
I decided to bake this recipe as confetti cupcakes, adding multi-coloured jimmies to the batter. A sidebar in the recipe suggests adding an extra egg yolk to give the cupcakes more structure so I did that. The method used is the standard creaming of fat and sugar with the addition of dry alternating with wet ingredients after the eggs are beaten in. But there is one big difference with this recipe and I don’t quite understand the science/purpose of it: the egg whites are whipped separately with cream of tartar and folded into the batter at the end. The batter is so thick, that whatever air has been beaten into the whites is lost during folding. I’m not sure this step is necessary, especially since there is leavening included in the recipe.
The finished cake had good vanilla flavour and a nice, fine crumb but was a little dry and crumbly. There was no baking time given for cupcakes so I may have over baked by a minute or 2. The recipe made 24 cupcakes and baked in 22 minutes.
The buttercream is a cooked frosting made with flour, sugar, milk and cream with butter and melted white chocolate beaten in. The texture is light, airy and creamy and not as buttery as Swiss or Italian meringue type buttercreams. With the addition of white chocolate, I found it to be a little too sweet – I would reduce the sugar by ~1/3 cup next time – but it did work well with the cake.
Though the cupcakes were a resounding success with the under-8 set, I’m not sure I’ll make this white cake again as I prefer Rose Levy Beranbaum’s white velvet cake, but the frosting is definitely a keeper.
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