oven

I am a fan of banana bread and pumpkin bread. They are almost both impossible to screw up. I have a version that takes sour cream, and a few years ago I found a version that has a crunchier top crust. That has become my favorite because there is a nice juxtaposition of crunchy top with soft insides.

I could hardly wait for this new version to come out of the oven. The smell of cinnamon sugar was wafting through the house. Of course once it came out of the oven it had to cool and I was pooped and ready for bed. I cannot take the credit for this random recipe. It was all Chris. I was working late and he graciously went into the kitchen to make it. Although I guess it is a win-win for him because he gets to enjoy such an amazing loaf of bread.

I would never have thought to put bananas, blueberries, and cinnamon sugar together. It works though.

CINNAMON SUGAR BLUEBERRY BANANA BREAD
Cook time: 45 minutes

INGREDIENTS:

1 cup granulated sugar, divided
1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 overripe bananas
2 large eggs
7 tablespoons sour milk (make sour milk by adding 1 teaspoon vinegar to 6 1/2 tablespoons nonfat milk)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 cups all purpose flour
2 cups fresh or frozen blueberries (if using frozen, be sure to remove any ice crystals)
1 teaspoon cinnamon

DIRECTIONS:

Preheat oven to 375°F. Grease a 9x5x3” loaf pan with butter and coat it with sugar. (You do this like you would grease and flour a pan. Grease it first, then add about 2 tablespoons sugar to the pan and move the pan side to side until the bottom and sides are coated with sugar. Do NOT substitute cooking spray for the butter. You can skip the sugaring and just use cooking spray, if you wish.)
Cream butter and 3/4 cup sugar with a hand mixer. Set aside.
Add bananas, eggs, milk, vanilla, and baking soda to a blender jar and blend until smooth.
Pour half the banana mixture into the butter mixture with 1 cup of flour. Mix with hand mixer until just incorporated, then add the remaining banana mixture and flour. Mix until just incorporated. Stir in blueberries. (Make sure that your frozen berries are not overly wet; pat them dry and/or remove any ice crystals or your batter will be too wet.) Pour into prepared pan.
Combine 1/4 cup sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl. Sprinkle evenly over the top of the batter.
Bake for 45-50 minutes until a toothpick comes out with just a few crumbs. The edges will be a dark brown and there will be a nice crack down the center.
Cool completely before removing loaf from pan, but you can cut slices from the pan after it’s cooled for about 15-20 minutes.

I have already blogged this week about New Year’s resolutions. I do them some years, other years I feel ambivalent about it all. The blog I posted earlier in the week was about goals versus resolutions. For 2015, I decided to not make resolutions but find out what was missing in my world, and find ways to bring them into my life. I know that I want to find more time to be creative, and recently came across a concept called #yearofmaking. The idea is to make something everyday. To me that feels complicated, and yet you could take a photo every day and be “making.” I do not want to “make” just because I have a goal to do so. So instead, what kept coming to me is that I would like to jump-start our meals. I often find new recipes to make and then it will be weeks or months until we actual try them (if ever). I want to have a plethora of dinner ideas (and dessert too) and be excited to make them again if they are hits. Lately we have been having the same things each week.

What am I going to do about it? A goal. We are going to try a new recipe each week and I am then going to share how it went on random olio. Chris and my food adventures. I do not want to carve out more than that as life is busy in all honesty. If it is a dinner option Chris will probably be making it (you do not want me to cook) and if it is a dessert option I will be the one in the kitchen.

The first recipe of the year: Roasted Maple + Goat Cheese Carrots. I am not a fan of cooked carrots. I will eat them in soup or stew, but usually I would rather eat them raw with hummus, or veggie dip, or on a salad. Cooked carrots are not really my thing. Until last year. At a local, freaking amazing restaurant (OX) we had a side dish of carrots. Once I had them, I could not stop talking about them. Over the last year we have tried different versions of trying to recreate this carrot dish, with boring, not even close results.

Until last week. Yes, Chris did it. He figured out the missing ingredient. All the recipes we found were to steam the carrots and he decided to roast them instead. The result: the most amazing carrot dish. I keep asking if he will make it.

Roasted Maple + Goat Cheese Carrots

Ingredients:
7-8 regular sized Carrots, sliced (I love when we use the colorful kind: yellow, orange, purple…)
1/8 cup Maple Syrup
1/8 cup Olive oil
Sprinkle of Kosher Salt

Mix everything together in a cast iron pan, and roast in the oven for 15 minutes at 400 degrees. Once the pan is taken out of the oven, sprinkle desired amount of goat cheese on top of the carrots, and enjoy!

Let me know what you think of each random recipe!