Not Having a Kitchen is Making Me Go Bananas

On a whim I decided to go home last night. I was homeworkless, dying to be in a kitchen, and I had a ride, so why not? After pouring over bakerella.com and flipping through websites generated by stumbleupon.com, the "Recipes" folder in my bookmarks tab was being flooded and I needed to give one or two of my latest finds a go.

When I walked in the door 9 bananas were laying on the kitchen counter, all ripened to the point that they were destined for banana bread and nothing else. Just a couple days ago I had come across a recipe for banana bread that involved peanut butter, chocolate chips, and a crumbly topping that made the loaf look more like a coffee cake. The recipe came from a blog called "Oh Baby O," a pretty appropriate name when you take a look at this stuff. It's more like a dessert than a bread, but who's complaining?

Given the number of bananas I had to work with I tripled the recipe (and still managed to work in another batch that I'll show you later...), 2 medium loaves and 20 muffins. I actually made these into muffins purely because I ran out of loaf pans to hold batter, but they were an excellent way to share this awesome recipe with friends back at school :D

Anyway, the recipe is here: http://ohbabyo.wordpress.com/2010/02/27/chocolate-peanut-butter-banana-bread/ But of course, I made some changes... I tripled the recipe but I only used two cups of sugar total, 1 white and 1 light brown. I thought a bit of light brown would lend better to the flavor and give the bread a chewier and denser texture. You can actually cut quite a bit of sugar out of most recipes, sometimes I'm daring enough to take out half and you usually can't tell much of a difference! I also used half whole wheat flour. Because I <3 style="text-align: center;">

As mentioned before, I did make a fourth batch of banana bread, this one much different. I assumed my parents wouldn't be too keen on the peanut butter and chocolate hyped loafs I was planning on cranking out of the oven, so I turned to a tried and true recipe from Smitten Kitchen: http://smittenkitchen.com/2006/11/speckled-for-the-freckled/. Again I used half whole wheat flour just for good measure ;) and my father was more than happy to splash some bourbon in to accompany all of the spices. This makes a really good loaf of banana bread, a little less sweet, but my only complaint is that it tends to fall. It tastes great, but doesn't rise much at all...

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Back on campus now, hopefully my banana bread rendezvous has baking out of my system for a bit. Next week is spring break though! And I'm hoping, of course, to find some time to try out a couple more recipes I have stashed away... we'll see ;)

It's Peanut Butter Jelly Time!

I'm so upset that I nearly forgot to tell you about this recipe, because it really is SO GOOD. So Taylor's birthday is today, but as chance would have it I am in Bloomington and he is in Nashville. Not fair, but that's another story. After Taylor was shipping off to Belmont I found some time in the days before I headed to IU to put together a small package that contained a birthday treat :D.

I saw these once while I was running at the Monon Center and watching the Food Network. Let me just say Ina Garten is frickin brilliant. Peanut Butter Jelly Bars. If you like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, these will shoot you to the moon. If you don't like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, these will shoot you to the moon. They are so delicious that thinking about them is making me wish I had a kitchen on my floor. By the way, I DON'T HAVE A KITCHEN ON MY FLOOR. Now I'm just going to have to bake a ton every time I go home for a weekend!

When I made these for Taylor about half the tray made it into the box I sent him, the other half went straight to my mouth. I actually used to make these all the time, they're one of my favorite recipes, but I stopped when I realized that I could not make them without eating them in large quantities. These bars are the kind of thing you make and keep. Taylor's lucky he got any at all ;)

So the basic idea of these bars, the recipe for which I'll give you in a bit, is a peanut butter shortbread with jelly in the middle and chopped peanuts sprinkled on the top. Sound delicious? That's because IT IS. Shortbreads are pretty simple, this one is the best though because you have to use an entire jar of peanut butter. AN ENTIRE JAR!

That's right, I used that whole thing. And as if that wasn't enough peanut for you, I used all these chopped ones, too.

But we'll get back to that later. So you make this peanut butter shortbread and you spread about two thirds of the dough on the bottom on a 9 by 13 inch baking pan. Then you spread on top of that a jar of jam. Not jelly. Jam. Or preserves, I guess. Just not jelly. In case you were wondering, jelly is thinner than jam and doesn't have the seeds and such, the texture of jam in exponentially better and if you ruin this recipe by using sub-par fruit spread I will find you. So after you spread on the jam that you bought because you refuse to use crappy jelly, you put the rest of the peanut butter short bread dough on top. Now this part is a little difficult, but I believe in you! I like to take chunks of the dough and press it between my palms or the pads of my fingers to flatten it out and then evenly disperse pieces of the flattened dough on top of the jelly, looks something like this...



Then you add all those peanuts you chopped up, pop the whole layered mess in the oven and nearly an hour later you open the oven door and find heaven.



The recipe for heaven, by the way, can be found at the Food Network website: www.foodnetwork.com. Just type "peanut butter jelly bars" in the search bar and it should be the first link. Really, this is one of the best recipes I will share with you, and I promise they aren't too difficult at all.

Well, I have to get back to college now, classes start tomorrow. See you, I don't know when, I'm running out of things to write about. Did I mention my floor has no kitchen?