Mini Banana Bread Loaves

I'm so into the mini thing right now. I'm trying my old, tried & true recipes in mini versions. I was going to make banana bread last week for Mike on his birthday, but the carrot cake was enough. I had the bananas so I made it this weekend. It's just a plain banana bread recipe, nothing special or fancy. Easy & delicious.

Ingredients:

• 1 3/4 cups flour
• 3/4 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 3/4 cups sugar
• Walnuts
• 3 -4 very ripe bananas
• Cinnamon
• 1/4 cup applesauce (I use unsweetened)
• 2 large eggs, beaten
• 3 T butter, melted
• Vanilla

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 and spray 2 small loaf pans or one regular loaf pan.
2. Mash the bananas in a medium bowl. I use a fork to mash bananas against the side of the bowl. The riper they are the easier they are to mash, but even less ripe bananas will mash pretty well this way. Add the eggs, applesauce, butter, & vanilla and mix until well blended.
3. In a large bowl combine flour, baking soda, salt, sugar, cinnamon, and nuts (if you're using them). Fold banana mixture into the flour mixture gently until just combined flour is incorporated fully, it will be lumpy (note below)
4. Pour batter into pan(s) and bake @ 350 for about 45-55 minutes. Keep an eye on the loaves. They're done when the tops are golden brown and a knife inserted in the middle comes out clean.

For some reason I was very antsy to get this out of the oven, maybe because I wanted to eat it or maybe because I expected them to cook quicker than one large loaf would have..

I set the timer for 35 minutes initially, even though my regular recipe usually takes about 50-55 minutes, and started checking at 25. By 35 minutes the tops were starting to look like they'd be done soon, but when I checked with a knife they still had a while. I had to add another 10 minutes to the timer (so by now it was 45 minutes) and kept checking about every four minutes. Even at 55 minutes I think I could have left them in for about 5 more minutes, but I didn't because I wanted to eat it!

the loaves at 25 minutes to 30 minutes

45 minutes 55 minutes

If I made this using small loaf pans again I'd divide them into 3 small pans instead of just 2. I think that pans were so full that they took longer than they should have to cook. I had 3 pans ready to go, but they didn't look full enough, so I ended up dividing them into only 2. They still turned out really good, but next time I'm still going to do 3 pans to see if that's even better.

NOTES:

• I felt as though I had to put the fold gently part in because that's what you're always supposed to do when making breads, but for some reason banana bread is the only bread that it really doesn't matter too much. I basically just stir them together until it looks like batter. I don't go crazy and stir too much, but I'm not careful to gently fold it in either. My batter is still lumpy and the bread doesn't come out rubbery like other breads would.
• The cinnamon, vanilla, & walnuts don't have amounts. I don't ever measure these ingredients in recipes - I just add them by sight until there's enough.
• This bread turns out very moist, but if you want it even more moist you can add up to 6 T of butter and cut back or omit the applesauce.

Mike's Birthday Cake

So my new thing is taking recipes I've been baking for a while and making them much smaller. Earlier this week my first attempt was a small yellow cake with chocolate frosting for Casey's birthday. Alot of that frosting ended up in my stomach and not on the cake, so my new rule is to make the frosting AFTER the cake is done baking, not during, its too tempting.

Mike wanted carrot cake for his birthday and even though Mike's standard like every I time I bake it is "I could eat this everyday for the rest of my life," there is no way that Mike & I could eat a whole carrot cake by ourselves. I was nervous to try to scale this cake down in size because it has alot of ingredients that needed to be recalculated (what is 1/2 or 1/4 of 3 eggs???), but it tasted exactly the same as my regular size carrot cakes.




The other thing I want to start doing is decorating. I never have labored under the impression that something needs to be pretty to taste good, but when I bake for events like birthdays or showers, decoration seems requisite.... hence the RED cream cheese frosting on Mike's cake... the intent was to frost the cake with the regular frosting and dye the extra red to use for decorating. The dying part worked according to plan... the decorating part did not. I got through the "Hap" and the bag ripped open and the red dyed frosting oozed over the entire cake. So I ran with it and just made the whole thing red (which looks kind of freaky on a carrot cake). Now I know to use a thicker bag - you live, you learn. And in an attempt to personalize the cake I tried to make an "M" for Mike in the middle using sprinkles... again, not my best effort.

I originally thought it would make a cake that would have 4 large pieces, but the cake was actually 6 really large pieces or 8 pretty good sized pieces or 12 regular squares.

Now that I'm getting these mini cakes down I need to get some more pans that are small enough... I've been using the same glass baking dish that is definitely intended for baking meats rather than desserts and breads.


Mini Carrot Cake
(serves 6-12 depending on size)
1/2 cup flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
3/4 tsp cinnamon
1/3 cup sugar
2 T vegetable oil
1 large egg + 1 egg white
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup shredded carrots
4 ounces crushed pineapple, drained well

Preheat oven to 350 and grease a small square or round cake pan (I really have no clue on measurements - sorry. I'll figure it out and update this).
In a small bowl mix flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon together and set aside.
Mix sugar and oil until blended, mix in eggs and vanilla. Add dry ingredients, mixing until just combined. Stir in carrots then pineapple.
Pour into prepared cake pan and bake at 350 for 25 -35 minutes. The cake is done when a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean and the cake starts to pull away from the sides of the pan. Cool completely on a wire rack before frosting.
For Frosting: combine 2T cream cheese, 1/2 T butter (softened), 1/4 cup powdered sugar, 1/4 tsp vanilla in a bowl and beat well. To thicken frosting beat in more powdered sugar until it reaches desired consistency. If too thick add milk until desired consistency is reached.

This is a picture of the cake on a regular size plate to give you an idea of how big it is and approximately what size pan you need. It's not too pretty, but it is DELICIOUS!

Reading List

January - May 2009:

• The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted and Other Small Acts of Liberation ~ Elizabeth Berg
• I Was Told There'd Be Cake ~ Sloane Crosley
• Eat Cake ~ Jeanne Ray

June 2009:

• Enlightenment for Idiots ~ Anne Cushman
  
• Diary of An Exercise Addict ~ Peach Friedman
• Cobain Unseen ~ Charles Cross

July 2009:

Welcome to my blog!

I've always loved cooking, but only discovered the fun of baking a few years ago and I haven't stopped since. Baking evokes such strong and incredibly soothing memories of my very happy childhood. It's become like a therapy for me. The smells of cakes, cookies, breads, muffins, pies, ...basically anything baking in an oven brings me back to memories of my Mom's Christmas cookies or summer nights at my grandma's house.

I've learned to create my own recipes to bake as opposed to following someone else's recipes. Since I make it up as I go along and don't really measure things out, I rarely make the same exact thing twice & never keep track of the new recipes. There are few things that I bake alot, like carrot cake and banana bread, that are always (almost) the same each time, but for the most part each time I bake something its different than the time before. I decided to start this blog to keep track of my recipes and baking experiences.

I hope you enjoy it!