Banana Bars with Browned Butter Icing

It's Sunday night and like always, I'm amazed and how quickly the weekend just flew by.   Weekend pedis, restaurant patios open, long puppy walks on the trails....oh welcome spring.  

Banana bars have nothing to do with spring really, but they are so good, I hope you'll easily forgive the lack of  logical transition from one paragraph to the next.  Seriously, these are awesome--think banana cake but with super awesome brown butter flavor.  The bars a little sweet but that hasn't stopped me from making these many, many times since finding the recipe.  It's a little bit addicting actually.  Some addictions are just so right. 

Banana Bars with Browned Butter Icing

adapted from Bake or Break

Ingredients

2 cups flour (plus 1 tbsp if at high altitude)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup softened butter
2/3 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup  light brown sugar, packed
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup greek yogurt
1 3/4 cups mashed ripe bananas (3-4 bananas)

For the icing:
1/2 cup unsalted butter
4 cups confectioners sugar
3 tablespoons milk (more or less to reach desired consistency)
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375°. Grease a 9x13 pan and dust with flour.
2. Whisk together flour, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.
3. Beat butter, sugar, and brown sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs and vanilla, mixing well. Mix in sour cream and bananas.
4. Gradually add flour mixture, mixing just until combined.
5. Pour batter into prepared pan and spread evenly.
6. Bake 225-30 minutes, or until golden brown. Place pan on wire rack to cool slightly while you prepare the icing.

To make the icing:

1. Place butter in a medium pan. Melt butter over medium heat. Continue cooking until butter foams and brown specks begin to form at the bottom of the pan.
2. Remove from heat and allow to cool slightly
3. In a large bowl combine confectioners' sugar, vanilla, and about 1 tablespoon of milk. Add butter and stir well. Add remaining milk little by little to spreadable consistency.  Spread on warm bars and allow to cool

Guinness Cheddar No Knead Bread

So continuing on with the Guinness no knead bread theme from a couple of weeks ago, I made a Guinness cheddar variation for St. Paddy's weekend.  What can I say...sometimes I have a laser-like focus complete obsession and St. Paddy's offered an obvious opportunity to make some more loaves of no knead bread.  I seriously think I could make and eat a loaf of bread every night and never get tired of it.  The French are really on to something here. 

The base recipe is similar to the Guinness cherry pecan bread--minus the sugar.  Throw into that dough a good 1 1/2 cups of chopped and shredded cheddar...only good things happening here. 

Try very, very, very hard to remember that this recipe calls for preheating the pan which makes the pan pretty darned hot.  It's pretty easy to forget when you are just dropping some raw dough into the pan. 

I topped with some parmesan because I love how crispy parmesan gets when baked on a hot and relatively dry surface...like this bread. 

Just 5-10 minutes of effort for a loaf of awesome.  

While this bread is pretty better than okay by itself, I upped the ante by using it to make grilled cheese. That's what blogs are for really...to push you that extra step right?

Guinness cheddar bread with melted gooey cheddar insides.  I am not a grilled cheese purist by any means since I happen to love, love, love onions in mine.  I can't explain it, don't ask.  

Just a few minutes of effort and you have a pretty schmance grilled cheese sandwich with a little St. Patrick's day twist.  This recipe is my heart's true love. 

No Knead Guinness Cheddar Bread

Ingredients:

3 1/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon yeast
1 1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1 3/4 cup Guinness (a can will have enough, if you use an 11 oz bottle, just pour it into a measuring cup and add water to make up the difference--about 1/4 of a cup)
3/4 cup cubed cheddar
3/4 cup shredded cheddar
1/4 cup shredded parmesan for sprinkling on top

Directions:

1. In a large mixing bowl, whisk together flour, yeast, garlic powder and salt. 
2. Add Guinness and mix to combine. 
3. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and set aside for 12-18 hours or overnight.  
4. Heat oven to 450 degrees. When the oven has reached 450 degrees place a cast iron pot with a lid in the oven and heat the pot for 25 minutes. 
5. While the oven and pan is preheating, add shredded and cubed cheddar to dough and stir well.   
6. Dump dough onto a heavily floured surface and shape into a ball.  Let rest until pan is ready.
7. Remove hot pan from the oven and carefully drop dough into ungreased pan. Top with shredded parmesan
8. Cover and return to oven for 30 minutes. 
9. After 30 minutes remove the lid and bake an additional 10-15 minutes or until golden brown. 
10. Remove bread from oven and place on a cooling rack. Let cool before slicing

Snow Day

I think I like snow so much because in Colorado, weather is ever changing and I know that a really good snowstorm doesn't necessarily equate to days of freezing cold or snow on the ground.  Yesterday we woke up to a winter storm and 8-14 inches.  I shoveled 3 times and the snow was piled against my door high enough to come crashing in when I opened the door.  Today by noon there were visible patches of grass all over and snow that hasn't melted is down to a mere few inches.  

Not ones to pass on some good snowball chasing fun, Brooklyn and I headed out to one of the still standing snow patches for a little puppy exercise. 

This pup loves her balls and snowballs. Or anything that can be launched from the Chuckit.  

Snowballs....yeah. 

Sometimes puppies fly so high and so fast they can't be captured by a mere human with a regular camera.

Snowballs are the happiest way to spend a Sunday afternoon. 

No Knead Guinness Cherry Pecan Bread

I've been having quite a bit of fun with the Cast Iron No Knead technique of making bread.  Snowy weather and homemade bread just seem to go hand in hand and this recipe  makes whipping up a loaf of hearty artisan style bread, as easy as stirring and heating up an oven.

Last week I added rosemary and kalamata olives to a loaf that was pretty awesome and this past week I started my pre St. Paddy's Day, throw Guinness into everything, cooking and baking spree. I love any excuse to love on some Guinness.

I used cherries and pecans but you really use any dried fruit and nut.  The Guinness adds a malty rich flavor that is hard to identify as Guinness, but definitely adds a depth that is not present in the non-Guinness version.  I could see myself putting Guinness in quite a few loaves.  I actually  just pulled a cheddar and Guinness loaf out of the oven a few minutes ago...more on that one on a later post.

I added 1/2 of the cherries in the batter before it sat for 18 hours and they ended up being a little soft.  Next time I'd wait and add all of the fruit at the same time as nuts--right before baking.  I wrote the recipe below to add the fruit after the dough sits overnight.

The loaf comes out of the oven with a thick chewy crust and a super soft, almost springy crumb inside.  This is pretty fantastic plain but a bit of honey butter makes everything better. 

No Knead Guinness Cherry Pecan Bread

Ingredients:

3 1/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon yeast
1 1/2 teaspoon salt
1 3/4 cup Guinness (a can will have enough, if you use an 11 oz bottle, just pour it into a measuring cup and add water to make up the difference--about 1/4 of a cup)
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup dried cherries
1/2 cup chopped pecans
Sugar in the raw for sprinkling on top(optional)

Directions:

1. In a large mixing bowl, whisk together flour, sugar, yeast and salt. 
2. Add Guinness and vanilla and mix to combine. 
3. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and set aside for 12-18 hours or overnight.  
4. Heat oven to 450 degrees. When the oven has reached 450 degrees place a cast iron pot with a lid in the oven and heat the pot for 25 minutes. 
5. While the oven and pan is preheating, add cherries and pecans to dough and stir well.   
6. Dump dough onto a heavily floured surface and shape into a ball.  Let rest until pan is ready.
7. Remove hot pan from the oven and carefully drop dough into ungreased pan. If desired, brush with water and sprinkle with Sugar in the Raw or other large sugar crystals.
8. Cover and return to oven for 30 minutes. 
9. After 30 minutes remove the lid and bake an additional 10-15 minutes or until golden brown. 
10. Remove bread from oven and place on a cooling rack. Let cool before slicing

Salted Caramel Apple Crumb Pie

As I perused my many, many, many, many cookbooks looking for a new pie to make for pi day on March 14, I came to realize the following two things: 

1) Pie is not a very popular recipe to include in cookbooks 

2) A surprisingly large percentage of cookbooks have an apple pie recipe

Since I was looking for something new and fun, I was a little frustrated by the numerous and almost identical apple pie recipes I found....I mean apple pie is apple pie.  A classic of course, but really so classic that every cookbook is obligated to include the same apple pie recipe?

So then of course that got me thinking about what we could do if we really wanted to shake up the apple pie arena a bit. There were quite a few somewhat crazy combinations running through my head, but each time I asked myself "but what if it doesn't taste like apple pie anymore?"  I guess a classic is a classic in my mind. 

This is a standard apple pie recipe with a bit of salted caramel thrown in.  Since my salt tooth is about a 100 times stronger than my sweet tooth--the caramely saltiness was perfect while still allowing the pie to retain it's essential "apple pieness."  It's a real thing. 

For the salt caramel, I use this recipe for bourbon salt caramels and only let the caramel cook to 190-200 degrees or until it's a slightly thickened consistency.  I learned awhile back  that our caramel temps at altitude are a bit different than those cooking at sea level so the 190-200 is just a guide (and much less important than when you are making caramel candies).  Really you just want the sauce to be thick like a caramel sauce.  When cool, store in a jar and use to drizzle on brownies, ice cream, and of course, salted caramel apple crumb pie. 

The crumb topping is optional--you can opt to to top your pie with another crust.   I think the oatmeal crumbs add a nice bit of texture to the pie.

The result is an ultra juicy pie with creamy bites of caramel...just a teeny tiny twist on a classic.  Now what to make for Pi day?

Salted Caramel Apple Crumb Pie

Ingredients:
1 pie crust
6 c peeled and sliced granny smith apples
1/3 cup brown sugar
3 tbsp flour
2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
1 tsp vanilla
1 tbsp lemon juice

1/3 cup salted caramel

Crumb topping ingredients:
1/4 c flour

1 c oats
1/2 c brown sugar
2 tsp tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 c butter, melted

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees.  
2. Roll out pie crust and lay into standard pie dish.  Trim edges and crimp to create a fluted edge
3. Place apple slices in a large bowl.  Add flour and spices and stir to coat apple pieces
4. Addvanilla and lemon juice and mix well
5. Fill pie crust with apple filling
6. Drizzle salted caramel over apple slices
7. To prepare crumb topping, combine flour, sugar, spices and oats in a medium bowl.
8. Pour cooled melted butter over flour and oats mixture. Toss and cut until small to medium sized chunks form. 
9. Sprinkle crumb topping over entire pie.
10. Cover pie loosely with foil. Bake at 425 degrees for 20 minutes
11.  Reduce heat to 375, uncover pie and continue baking for an additional 35 minutes.
12. Cool pie before slicing