Recipe: Peanut Butter Chocolate Banana Bark

I forgot to take a photo before I cut the bananas in half!

Steve found this recipe on a Crowded Kitchen's Facebook, and he sent me the video knowing this would be right up my alley. We had two over-ripe bananas, so no better time than now to try it out! I just followed the video*, but I couldn't find the written recipe on their blog. I found a similar one from Graciously Nourished, so that is what I have listed here.

Ingredients

• 3 bananas mashed
• ⅓ cup peanut butter
• ½ cup chocolate chips (melted)
• Optional: sea salt or crushed peanuts for sprinkling

Instructions

1. Mash the bananas and spread them out into a ¼-inch thick layer on a sheet pan lined with parchment paper. Freeze for at least 30 minutes so the bananas become slightly set. 
2. If your peanut butter is not a thin consistency (like natural peanut butter often is), warm it in the microwave in 5-10 second increments until it’s slightly drizzly and smooth. Pour and spread on the banana layer. 
3. Freeze the banana and peanut butter for at least an hour so the peanut butter is set. 
4. Microwave chocolate in 10-second increments, stirring in between until the chocolate is melted. Spread the chocolate on top of the banana and peanut butter layers and sprinkle with your desired toppings. Freeze for at least 4 hours or overnight. 
5. Break the banana bark apart into roughly 2-inch pieces. Store in the freezer for up to 3 months in an airtight container and enjoy frozen!

It doesn't really matter how many bananas you have. I would say one banana makes two dessert servings (2-in pieces?! I don't think so!). And you don't have to measure out the other ingredients, either. You just kind of spread/pour peanut butter and chocolate on top of the bananas, sprinkle toppings as needed, and voilà! 

I like the technique of mashing the bananas between two baking sheets, separated by parchment paper. I recommend just pushing down once. I thought mine were still too thick, so I pressed again, and then the bananas got too thin! I was going to microwave the peanut butter, but I guess there was still part of the metallic paper that covers the peanut butter when you first buy it, so my microwave starting sparking immediately (oops!). So instead I just spread it on the bananas; luckily it's a natural peanut butter with plenty of oil, so that was okay.

I froze that first part and then started melting the chocolate. I used a double-boiler method to be fancy, and I had a bunch of little chocolates from a while back, so I thought I would melt those. This was almost a failure. The chocolate got very clumpy, the opposite of melted! But Steve saved the day by looking up how to fix this, and after adding a couple tablespoons of butter (i.e. fat), the chocolate melted enough so we could pour it over the (now frozen) bananas covered in peanut butter. After adding the chocolate and sprinkling a few peanuts on top, we froze them one last time.

We left these in the freezer for about 24 hours before trying them, although I am sure we could have eaten them that same night. But this stuff is GOOD! The banana defrosts quickly, so it does get a little messy/mushy in your hands. But this is a yummy, "healthy" dessert, and it might be my new go-to recipe for over-ripe bananas!

*Here's the quick YouTube short if you want to watch it!

Recipe: Cuban Oregano Mojo Marinade

Looks just like the picture on the website!

Probably a year ago, my friend Hila gave me a cutting of her Cuban oregano plant. For a while it didn't seem to grow much; I wasn't sure if it would survive re-planting. But after some time, it grew. And it grew BIG. It got to the point that I had two huge stalks of it, and one was drooping down under its own weight. So I cut it off and saved the leaves. After googling some recipes, I found this one from the Jerra's Garden blog for a marinade. Even though I don't normally make my own sauces or marinades (it's so easy just to buy a jar!), I had so much of this oregano that I had to do something with it. And this marinade turned out to be really good!

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup fresh Cuban oregano leaves
• 1/4 cup peeled fresh garlic cloves
• 1 sweet yellow onion, peeled and quartered
• 2 cups sour orange juice
• 1/2 cup fresh cilantro
• 1 cup olive oil or avocado oil
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp black pepper
• 2 tbsp powdered chicken boullion

Directions

1. Gather and prepare all the ingredients. Peel and quarter the onions, juice the fruit (if you are using fresh oranges), and dice the cilantro and oregano (does not need to be too fine because it will be blended).

2. Put all of the ingredients into a blender. The marinade should have a pourable, liquid consistency.

3. Pour over your favorite meat and let it marinate for several hours and even overnight. You can keep the remaining sauce in a mason jar in the fridge for three days or freeze it for future use.

As for the ingredients, I didn't have sour oranges, so I did 2/3 cup of each citrus juice (orange, lemon, and lime). I also didn't have cilantro on hand, so I skipped that part (which is okay, since some people don't like cilantro anyway). I'm not sure if I had quite a quarter cup of fresh garlic; I just used one full clove. And for the chicken boullion, I bought little packets. Supposedly each packet is the same as one cube, and each cube is equal to a teaspoon. But this is NOT true! I poured out the packet into a measuring spoon to check, and it is easily at least two teaspoons. So I just used two packets, since I figured it was better to use too little than to overdo it. 

I used the marinade on chicken thighs. They turned out great!

But despite making all those changes, this sauce came out really well! I thought it tasted great on its own, and it made me think of the ways I could use it: dipping sauce for a hot pretzel, pasta sauce... It seems very versatile and could be used in many ways. And this recipe made A LOT of the marinade, so I was able to take some of it to Hila and show her what her plant gave to me!

Recipe: Vegan Vanilla Cake

Over the weekend, my vegan friend and I met up to do some baking. I found this recipe on the Vegan 8 blog, and since Tammy already had a lot of the vegan ingredients (I don't keep vegan yogurt on hand, for example), it was pretty easy to throw this cake together. 

Ingredients

• 2 1/2 cups + 2 tablespoons (336g) regular all-purpose flour
• 1 cup + 5 tablespoons (252g) fine granulated white sugar
• 1 1/2 tablespoons baking powder
• 3/4 teaspoon fine salt
• 3/4 cup + 1 tablespoon (195g) room temperature canned "lite" coconut milk
• 1/2 cup + 2 tablespoons (150g) room temperature dairy-free sweetened vanilla yogurt
• 3 tablespoons (45g) HOT water
• 1 1/2 teaspoons (8g) vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon (5g) apple cider vinegar

Directions

1. Make sure the milk and yogurt are not cold and are room temperature! This is very important because if they are cold from the fridge, your batter will be hard to mix up, making the batter overly thick and cause overmixing to happen, which results in a tough/dense cake. Lighter cakes are the result of room temperature ingredients. 
2. Preheat the oven to 350°F and spray a 9x13 glass pyrex dish with nonstick spray. Wipe off excess oil if too much is sitting on the bottom or in the corners, but be careful not to wipe too much off, otherwise the cake will stick.
3. To a large bowl, add the flour, baking powder, sugar and salt and whisk very well.
4. To a separate bowl, add the coconut milk, yogurt, hot water, vanilla and vinegar. Whisk until smooth.
5. Pour the liquid over the dry ingredients and use a large spoon to gently stir together the batter until moistened and just mixed, making sure to scrape from the bottom. Do not use a whisk, as this will overmix the batter. You want to stir until just mixed and moistened, do not overmix, as this can result in a tough/chewy cake. The batter will be quite thick, this is normal, do not add more liquid. It is okay for the batter to look thick and lumpy, as long as it’s mixed.
6. Pour the batter into the dish and spread out the top evenly into the pan and in the corners. Don’t worry about the top looking perfect, it will magically bake up perfectly and smooth on top. Bake for 20-25 minutes. It is done when a toothpick is clean from the center.
7. Cool completely before frosting. Cover the cake with foil tightly so it stays moist and store the cake at room temperature.

The original recipe really harps on getting a food scale (hence the measurements listed in grams). But neither of us had one (nor do we plan on buying one). Because of this, you have to add some extra tablespoons to some of the ingredients, like the flour and sugar; the way the recipe is written, it seems like you should keep the smaller portions separate for later use, but that is not the case. All the dry ingredients get mixed together, all the wet ingredients get mixed together, and then you put the liquid over the wet (so use a larger bowl for the dry ingredients first!). Very easy to put everything together, and then the baking time is half of what I would normally expect from a cake.

Rather than buying or making icing, we decided to make an icing glaze, which is just confectioners sugar with really any liquid you want (we used rum, vanilla extract, and some vanilla soy milk). Because the cake itself is just a light vanilla flavor, it really picks up whatever flavor you choose for the icing. For us, this cake tastes like RUM. But it's good! The cake itself is a little dense but not stodgy, and it's quite pleasant in its simplicity. We easily could have added fruit or sprinkles to the top of the cake to add a little something-something. Easy enough for a quick vegan cake!

Recipe: Peach Blueberry Cake

Once again, I was inspired by ingredients in my fridge to make yet another dessert. When one has blueberries and peaches, one should make a cake, no? I found this recipe on the Tastes of Lizzy T blog, and since I had nearly everything I needed (getting the butter was a bit of an adventure, i.e. my husband did not realize that when baking with butter, I need sticks, not a tub of Kerrygold butter, which is the kind he likes). But butter was procured and I was ready to bake!

Ingredients

• ½ cup salted butter softened to room temperature
• 1 ¼ cup granulated sugar divided
• 2 large eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 ⅓ cup all-purpose flour
• 1 ¼ teaspoons baking powder
• ¼ teaspoons salt
• ½ cup full-fat sour cream
• 1 cup blueberries
• 1 cup diced fresh peaches (1-2 peaches)

Here's the batter just before baking. Already looks pretty good!

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350ºF. Spray a 9-inch round cake pan (or springform pan) with cooking spray and set aside. If you'd like to completely remove the whole cake from the pan to serve, line the cake pan with parchment paper before adding the cake batter.)
2. In the bowl of a stand mixer (or with a large bowl and hand mixer), whip together the butter and 1 cup of the sugar (the other ¼ will go on top) until pale and fluffy, about five minutes.  
3. Add the eggs, one at a time, and beat well after each addition. Beat in the vanilla. 
4. In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt. Gradually add the flour mixture to butter mixture alternately with sour cream, beginning and ending with flour mixture, mixing just until combined after each addition.
5. Gently fold in the fresh blueberries and peaches to the cake batter using a rubber spatula. Spread the batter in the prepared baking pan. Sprinkle the remaining ¼ cup of sugar evenly over the top of the cake batter. 1 cup blueberries, 1 cup diced fresh peaches
6. Bake 35-40 minutes, until the top is crackly and lightly browned and the center still jiggles just a bit. A toothpick inserted in the center will have moist crumbs.
7. Let the cake cool completely in the pan and then serve.

I'll start by saying two peaches is MORE than enough! And I didn't use parchment paper because the cake is just for me and Steve, and we'll simply cut our pieces right out of the pan. This recipe was super-easy, and it's quite tasty! I would say it has a bit of a tart/sour taste, but I think that's only because I know it has sour cream in it (if I didn't know, I wouldn't have noticed). This cake is perfect for a small slice when you just want a little treat. Highly recommend when you have fruit in the summer!

Recipe: Triple Berry Pie

Several years ago, when I was visiting my friend Danielle in Wisconsin for the 4th of July, we made a berry pie* that was so good. So now I always associate berry pie with the holiday. BJ's had a good deal on berries, so I bought a bunch; I quickly found this recipe from the Tastes Better from Scratch blog and then got to work.

Ingredients

• Homemade pie crust for a 9'' deep dish pan (you need 2 crusts for this recipe: one for the bottom and one for the top)
• 7 cups fresh or frozen raspberries, blueberries and blackberries, about 2 ⅓ cups of each type
• 1 cup granulated sugar (plus a little extra to sprinkle on top of the pie)
• 1 Tablespoon lemon juice
• 4 Tablespoons cornstarch
• 2 Tablespoons butter
• 1 large egg white, beaten with a fork

Directions

1. Cook berries: Add berries, sugar and lemon juice to a large saucepan over medium heat.

Berries with sugar and lemon juice in a pan. Step #1 complete!

2. Simmer, until warm and juicy, about 5-10 minutes, gently stirring occasionally. (You can taste it at this point and see if it's sweet enough for your liking. If you want it sweeter, you can add ¼ cup more sugar.)

3. Thicken filling: Spoon out about ½ cup of the juice from the pan into a bowl. Stir cornstarch into the juice until smooth.

4. Bring pot of berries back to a simmer and slowly pour in the cornstarch. Gently stir mixture (being careful not to mash the berries), until thickened, about 2-5 minutes.

All cooked up! Started to taste like jam at this point.

5. Cool and add to pie shell. Remove from heat and stir in the butter. Allow to cool for 15 minutes. Pour mixture into unbaked pie shell (in a 9-inch deep dish pan).

6. Add lattice top or a whole top with holes pricked on top for steam to escape.

7. Pinch the edges of the top and bottom pie crusts together and crimp the edge, if you like. Brush a thin layer of beaten egg white over the top of the pie and sprinkle lightly with sugar. 

8. Bake at 400°F for 40-45 minutes. Check it after about 25 minutes and place a piece of tinfoil over it if the top crust is getting too brown.

9. Remove to a wire cooling rack and allow to cool for several hours. Once cooled completely, you can cut into it or cover it and refrigerate it overnight to serve the next day.

First of all, I find it very strange that the recipe's first step is not to preheat the oven. That's Baking 101! But I digress. Let's start with the ingredients. You know I'm not going to make my own pie crust; ain't nobody got time for that, and Aldi sells them in a two-pack, so voilà. And I just beat the whole egg together rather than separate the yolk from the white. Then I could microwave the remaining egg and have a scrambled egg for the next day's breakfast!

The rest of the directions are pretty straight forward. I did pour the juice into the corn starch as opposed to the other way around, but I think that was okay. I also might have baked the berries into their jammy filling a little too long; the filling barely filled the pie plate! I used my Williams Sonoma pie crust mold for the first time for the lattice top. This part might work better with a homemade crust, or at least a thicker crust (as I pressed the pre-made dough into the mold, it was so thin that it started to tear in some places). Maybe next time I would fold the pie crust over to give it double-thickness. But it was still fun trying this tool for my pie's decorative top. I might not have crimped the edges enough (you can see the spillage in the top photo), but no biggie.

In the end, this pie tasted very good, but maybe next time I would not add blackberries. I like blackberries, don't get me wrong. But their seeds are a little crunchy, while the rest of the pie filling is very soft. So it's a bit jarring to be crunching on these tiny seeds while trying to enjoy the dessert. But otherwise, I would definitely make this recipe again!

*Here is the recipe for the "Fruit of the Forest" pie Danielle and I made. When looking for that recipe in my long list of blog posts, I also found this one; I forgot about adding chocolate into the pie! 🤤🤤🤤

Visit to Tarpon Springs

Here are said sponges!

Last weekend, Steve took me up to Tarpon Springs, which is about a half-hour north of Clearwater. We had never been before, but we knew it was the "Greek Town" of Tampa. I also heard from colleagues that Tarpon Springs is known for their sponge docks (?), so we wanted to check that out. And there happened to be a crafts fair that weekend as well, so we got to enjoy that, too!

The highlights:

Eating lunch at Hellas

Of course we had to eat Greek food for lunch. Hellas is famous up there, and we had to try it. While the restaurant is popular, it's huge, and you don't have to wait too long once your name is on the list. The restaurant has multiple dining rooms and is heavily decorated; it made me think it was the Greek version of Columbia, the Cuban restaurant in Ybor City. Our waiter, Demetrios, was Greek (obviously), and he was very friendly; we are visiting Greece in the fall, so he was giving us tips about where to go (or mostly just confirming that we're planning the right things!). 

I ordered the combo of spanakopita and tiropita. The first is spinach, while the other is several kinds of cheese. Yummy! 

Tasting at Tarpon Springs Distillery

After lunch, we walked to Tarpon Springs Distillery. We love trying different spirits, and they had A LOT to choose from. The place wasn't very busy, so we actually got a one-on-one tasting with their master distiller, Barry Butler. They offer several kinds of whiskeys, two gins, a rum, and several interestingly flavored spirits like Claresso (coffee but not a liqueur), Guaco Loco (liquid taco), and Aquavit (liquid Reuben sandwich). We skipped the ouzo, since neither of us like black licorice. It was fun trying things we had never tasted before, and it inspired us to get creative with our cocktails at home!

This is Barry. He gave us a private tour of where all the spirits are made and walked us through the process. The tasting and the tour were free (!), so we made sure to buy a bottle. We chose the Gramling Woods Rye Malt Whiskey: it was so good, and seeing as it won a double gold medal, other people like it, too! We'' definitely bring it out during our next bourbon party!

Visiting Breweries

After the distillery, we drove just a couple minutes to East Tarpon Avenue, which feels like the main street of the little downtown area. We visited Two Frogs Brewing Company, which had a large selection of beers, including several sours that don't taste like beer at all (which is how I like it!). We befriended the British man sitting next to us at the bar. He was a beer aficionado, and he had SO many recommendations for breweries in the area. We were driving, so we couldn't go to all of them, but we stopped by a few!

The two pink ones were fruity beers (not sour at all), and the dark one was a Christmas stout (tastes like coffee and chocolate). 

After our visit to Tarpon Springs, we drove south to Dunedin. We had gone there a few months ago and did tastings at Cotherman Distilling Co., the Dunedin Brewery, and HOB Brewing Co. But there were even more places to check out! This time we hit up 7venth Sun Brewing Company (and I had a grilled cheese from the Hop Scotch Cafe next door), and Woodwright Brewing Company. That's not even all the breweries in town, so we'll definitely go back. We might event visit Woodwright again, which had live band music trivia, which is pretty cool!

We have lived in Florida nearly two years now, and we love exploring our new home. There are so many more places to see and things to do! But our next adventure is St. Louis, MO. Stay tuned for that blog post!

Recipe: Easy Pineapple Upside-Down Cake

I had a ripe pineapple at home, and I had planned to make fruit salad with it. But the rings came out so perfectly with this coring tool Steve bought me, and he said, "You could make pineapple upside down cake!" I had never made one before, but I found this recipe from Betty Crocker, and I whipped it together just before dinner the other night. Easy is right!

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup butter
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 can (20 oz) pineapple slices in juice, drained, juice reserved
• 1 jar (6 oz) maraschino cherries without stems, drained (about 18 cherries)
• 1 box yellow cake mix
• Vegetable oil and eggs called for on cake mix box

Directions

1. Heat oven to 350°F (325°F for dark or nonstick pan).
2. As the oven is preheating, place the butter in a 13x9-inch pan and set it on the middle oven rack to melt. Set a timer for 5 to 7 minutes to remind yourself to check when the butter is fully melted.
3. Sprinkle brown sugar evenly over melted butter. Arrange pineapple slices on brown sugar. Place a cherry in the center of each pineapple slice, then arrange remaining cherries around slices; press gently into brown sugar.
4. Add enough water to reserved pineapple juice to measure 1 cup. Make cake batter as directed on box, substituting pineapple juice mixture for the water.
5. Pour batter over pineapple and cherries.
6. Bake 40 to 46 minutes (44 to 53 minutes for dark or nonstick pan) or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Immediately run knife around side of pan to loosen cake.
7. Place heatproof serving plate upside down on top the pan; turn plate and pan over. Leave pan over cake for 5 minutes so brown sugar topping can drizzle over cake; remove pan.
8. Cool 30 minutes. Serve warm or cool. Store covered in refrigerator.

Like I said, I used fresh pineapple, but I did use a can of pineapple juice for step 4. I used the correct size pan, but the cake was rather small; I only had enough room for 6 full pineapple rings. So I didn't need a whole jar of cherries, either. And while I didn't have boxed yellow cake mix, I did have Funfetti, which worked out just as well. 

As for the directions, I had to make a few changes. The butter took MUCH longer to melt than 5-7 minutes. For me, it took at least 10 minutes, so I might recommend just microwaving the butter and then putting it in the pan once the oven has come up to temperature. Then I followed the rest of the instructions until it came to removing the cake to make it, well, upside down. Both the glass dish the cake was baked in as well as the platter I was using for the transfer were very heavy. So I just quickly turned the cake over onto the new plate as neatly as I could, and luckily there was no disaster. But in doing it this well, I did not let the drippings of the brown sugar drizzle onto the cake. But that really wasn't a necessary step. The cake came out SO well! This recipe is so easy to make, plus the dessert is a real show-stopper to look at. I will definitely make this again (next time for more than just me and Steve!).