White Chocolate and Cinnamon Chip Island Style Banana Bread Mini Loaves

Mouth watering? These little banana bread loaves are such a treat! Sorry for the ridiculously long title, I'm known for having mile long titles for my recipes. This is my entry for The Banana Bread Bake-off with Not Quite Nigella. There's still time to get your entry in, check it out. I'm always up for a good bake-off!

Also, do check out Phemomenon's blog for her very sweet"Blogging for Babies" Little Wonders Event round up!

I was brainstorming as to what kind of banana bread I wanted to make and I started thinking of some of my favorite ingredients right now. Cinnamon chips, white chocolate and coconut. These little loaves were the perfect combo of my favorites right now and are so tasty. I highly recommend trying them when you see you need to use up those bananas! Who can resist that sweet drizzle? Not me!

Don't those cinnamon chips look yummy inside?!

This is how I prefer it, more drizzle please! Enjoy everyone!

White Chocolate and Cinnamon Chip Island Style Banana Bread Mini Loaves

1 1/2 Sticks softened butter
1 Cups sugar
2 eggs plus ½ egg beaten
½ teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt
½ small box vanilla pudding mix (4 serving size)
1 Cups flour
4 ripe bananas
1 Cup shredded sweetened coconut
1 Cup white chocolate chips
1 Cup cinnamon chips

¼ Cup butter, melter
½ Cup powdered sugar
2-4 Tablespoons hot water
1 Cup shredded sweetened coconut, toasted in oven (350 degrees) until browned.

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Cream the butter and sugar until smooth. Add eggs until smooth. Add cinnamon, baking soda, salt, pudding mix and flour until combined. Stir in bananas, coconut, white chocolate and cinnamon chips.

2. Pour batter into 16 mini greased mini pans. Bake 25-35 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean from center of each loaf. Let cool.

4. Mix melted butter and powdered sugar until combined, it will look separated. Mix in 2-4 Tablespoons of hot water until desired consistency.

5. Drizzle over each loaf and top with toasted coconut shavings.

Daring Bakers Go French, Bread That Is....

Technically it's 11:25pm, so I am 35 minutes early for posting this, but tomorrow is crazy for me, so sorry for cheating by a few minutes!

This month’s Daring Baker’s Challenge was hosted by Mary from The Bread Chick. She chose a lovely French Bread Recipe where you can find HERE. We could choose to make our bread into a number of different ways, like one big loaf, little loaves, round, oval, you name it, we had all sorts of options.

I chose the giant big oval loaf, literally! It turned out much larger than I expected it to. It was almost comical pulling out of the oven because it was so big, but overall, it looked pretty decent considering I’m certainly no bread baker!!

It was nice to slice into this monster loaf, it started to look like “normal” bread. Who doesn’t like a few giant pads of butter to go along with their giant French Bread??!!

A little bread with your butter?

We could also top our bread with whatever we wanted, so after I photographed the "big loaf" I decided to go back to my childhood days in the lunchroom cafeteria. I soooo remember ordering the French Bread Pizza Boat. So, at 10:00pm I was making my pizza boat.

Long live the Pizza Boat!

This was a great challenge. I think I had most fun with the pizza boat, check out other Daring Bakers to see what they did with their French Bread! And who knows, you might be ready for next month’s challenge!! Bonsoir!

The Ultimate Reeces Peanut Butter Banana Bread

Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas. As luck had it, both my boys were coughing, needed breathing treatments and had fevers! They still managed to have fun opening their presents though. Let the clean up and returns begin!

Since I have a few more days before I've got to start eating better, I decided this morning, to use up some of my stocking candy and what better candy to choose than Reeces Peanut Butter Cups! Yummm! I've used one of my favorite banana bread recipes and added peanut butter, chopped up peanut butter cups and a peanut butter sweet drizzle for a knock out bread. I can hardly call it bread, because it is so deliciously sweet! Enjoy!

The Ultimate Reeces Peanut Butter Banana Bread

3 Sticks softened butter
2 Cups sugar
5 eggs
½ Cup peanut butter
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt
1 small box vanilla pudding mix (4 serving size)
2 Cups flour
5-6 ripe bananas

20-30 recees peanut butter minis

½ Cup powdered sugar
1 Tablespoon peanut butter
2-3 Tablespoons milk

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Cream the butter and sugar until smooth. Add eggs until smooth. Add peanut butter, cinnamon, baking soda, salt, pudding mix and flour until combined. Stir in bananas and Reeces.

2. Pour batter into 3 greased bread pans. Bake 45-60 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean from center of each loaf. Let cool.

4. Place powdered sugar, milk and peanut butter in a bowl. Whisk until smooth and drizzling consistency.

5. Drizzle over each loaf.

Homemade Rolls

I finally had some time this morning to make Stacy's delicious rolls. Sheesh, first brownies last night, now rolls this morning. My house smells so good! I used whole wheat flour today and let me tell you, these were exactly what I pictured them to taste like. My youngest little guy is riding his bike around the house with a roll in his mouth, as I type. He loves them! Thanks for the great recipe Stacy!

Homemade Rolls, courtesy of my friend Stacy

2 c. milk
1 c. sugar
1 c. oil (I use vegetable)
2 tsp. salt
2 eggs
2 pkgs (2 T.) yeast with 1 tsp. sugar
8 c. flour

Step 1- warm milk in microwave for 1 minute - add sugar, oil and salt to Bosch with the warmed milk
Step 2 - dissolve yeast in 1/2 c. warm water with the tsp. of sugar - set aside
Step 3 - add 2 c. flour to Bosch
Step 4 - beat in 2 eggs
Step 5 - add yeast mixture
Step 6 - mix in 3 c. flour
Step 7 - mix in 3 c. flour

Let rise for 3 hours
Divide into 4 balls

Roll out into a pie shape and cut into long triangles. Roll the dough from the widest to the narrowest

Let rise for 1 hour

Bake at 325 fro 15-20 minutes.
Brush with butter

Chicken Corn Chowder with Cornbread Bites

I LOVE Soup Season. This is one of my favorite soups to make. It is great all week long for lunches. These little cornbread bites are the perfect size to dip in your soup and are easy too. Soup takes a little prep chopping veggis, but it's so worth it, because you'll enjoy it through the week. Once I start making soup, I don't stop. Bring on the soup!

Chicken Corn Chowder (I highly recommend doubling this recipe to have leftovers)

2 Tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

2 stalks of celery, finely chopped

1 medium bell pepper, color of choice, finely chopped

1 medium onion, finely chopped

1 jalapeno, finely chopped, seeds and membrane removed

1/4 Cup thinly sliced or chopped ham or canadian bacon

3 cloves garlic, minced

2 14 oz cans chicken broth

3 Tablespoons flour

3 ears of fresh corn kernels

2 large chicken breasts, cooked and shredded

4 oz softened cream cheese

1 Cup milk

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon pepper

1 Cup shredded cheddar cheese

1. Place olive oil in a large pot over medium heat. Saute celery, bell pepper, onion and jalapeno until softened. Stir in garlic and ham; cook for another 3 minutes. Whisk the broth with the flour in a large bowl then stir into soup. Stir in corn and chicken. Bring to a low boil and reduce heat. Whisk together the cream cheese and milk in a large bowl until smooth. Stir into soup along with the salt, pepper and cheddar cheese. Simmer until ready to serve.

Cornbread Bites (Southern Living Magazine)

2/3 Cup flour

1/2 Cup yellow cornmeal

1 Tablespoon sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 Cup shredded cheddar cheese

1/2 Cup sour cream

1/4 Cup thinly sliced green onions

1 8 3/4oz can cream style corn

Dash of hot sauce (Tabasco)

1 large egg, beaten

1. Preheat oven to 375. Mix all ingredients together in a large bowl. With a medium cookie scoop, scoop into 2 mini cupcake pans that have been sprayed with cooking spray. Bake for 10 minutes or until golden brown. Cool and serve with soup.