Dark Chocolate Marbled Peanut Butter Banana Bread

Hello friends! As I mentioned earlier in the week, I'd have a delicious banana bread recipe to share with you. Well, here it is! I had planned on posting it yesterday but I ended up being way busier than I thought and never found the time to write. That's been happening to me a lot lately!

I made this bread toward the end of last week to bring to NY for my family's road trip out to my cousin's wedding over the weekend. It was the perfect treat for the road! Everyone loved it.

This recipe was a combination of two of my previous banana bread recipes - marbled chocolate banana bread and peanut butter banana bread. I was pretty sure I couldn't go wrong by combining chocolate, banana, AND peanut butter.

Now, both of these original recipes were from Cooking Light, so this new, combined recipe is also kinda sorta from Cooking Light... So, it's a recipe that you can feel less guilty about. You're welcome. ;)

Ingredients:

-2 cups all-purpose flour

-3/4 tsp. baking soda

-1/2 tsp. salt

-1 and 1/2 cups mashed, ripe banana (about 3 medium to large bananas)

-1/3 cup low-fat vanilla yogurt

-1/3 cup creamy peanut butter

-3 Tbsp. melted butter, cooled

-2 eggs (or 1/2 cup egg substitute)

-1/2 cup sugar

-1/2 cup light brown sugar

-1/2 cup dark chocolate chips

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine the flour, baking soda, and salt; set aside. In a large mixing bowl, combine the banana, yogurt, peanut butter, cooled melted butter, and eggs. Mix well until combined. Add both sugars, and continue to mix well. Next, add the flour mixture a little bit at a time and beat on low speed until just moist and combined.

Place the chocolate chips in a medium-sized microwave safe bowl, and microwave on high in 30-second increments, stirring after each time. Continue until the chips are completely melted and smooth; cool slightly. Add 1 cup of the banana bread batter to the melted chocolate, and stir until well combined.

Coat a 9 x 5 inch (or 8.5 x 4.5) loaf pan with cooking spray. Swirl the plain batter and chocolate batter together with a knife in the pan (see the stages of this process below). Bake at 350 for 1 hour to 1 hour and 15 minutes, or until a knife or toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Let cool in the pan for 10 to 15 minutes before removing from pan to cool completely on a cooling rack.

Mmmm, dark chocolate. Good for you!

Here's what the process of mixing together the melted chocolate and 1 cup of batter looks like.

There you go! Chocolate banana bread batter.

And below is the process I used to swirl the batters within the loaf pan before baking. I first put in about 1/3 of the plain batter, followed by 1/2 of the chocolate batter. Then another 1/3 of the plain batter, the second 1/2 of the chocolate, and finally, the remaining 1/3 of the plain. After one layer of both the plain and chocolate was added, I'd swirl the batters together with a knife.

Doesn't it look so fun?! Swirly whirly goodness.

This bread is SO moist.

One of my favorite characteristics of this bread (other than its moistness and awesome flavor) is how each slice looks different!

The top right one looks like it's smiling. :)

You will love this bread. I promise!!

A Quick Cupcake Camp Recap!

Cupcake camp was tonight!! And it was lots of fun. :) I'll write a longer recap within a few days, but I just wanted to share a few pictures here first...

As you all know, I ended up making oreo-stuffed chocolate stout cupcakes with kahlua cream cheese frosting. Phew, what a mouthful to say (and eat, haha)! How could I have forgotten to include the bottle of kahlua in this photo? Oops.

I added some crushed oreos on top of these babies. Mmmmm...

Lots and lots of people attended Cupcake Camp!!

One small snapshot of my table... As you can see, I made both mini and regular-sized cupcakes.

Not a single one of my cupcakes was left at the end of the night!

I'll share the specific recipe for these cupcakes on the blog soon since it's a combination of two previous recipes and not an exact one I've made before.

And also this week, I plan to bring you two other yummy recipes....this awesome caramelized onion and gruyere grilled sandwich....

Annnnd, a dark chocolate marbled peanut butter banana bread. What??!

:)

See ya again soon!

A Product Review: Enjoy Life Crunchy Cookies!!

Happy Friday to you all!!

Recently, I received a generous package from Enjoy Life Foods - not one, not two, not three, but four boxes of cookies! You all know how much I love cookies (my favorite baked goodie to make!), so needless to say, I was very excited to find this package at my doorstep.

Inside the package was a box of each of the four flavors of Crunchy Cookies made by Enjoy Life: Vanilla Honey Graham, Chocolate Chip, Double Chocolate, and Sugar Crisp.

When I opened the package, I tried one of each of the four flavors right away. Yes, that's right. I ate four cookies in one sitting. Oops. :) I wasn't too worried though because each cookie only has about 55 - 60 calories. Not too bad at all!

Now I should probably be honest here and say that typically speaking, crunchy cookies are not my favorite. I tend to prefer chewy cookies. However, these crunchy cookies totally took me by surprise. I loved them! Seriously. The flavor of each kind was excellent. And the cookies were certainly crunchy but they were not dry (I think that's why I usually don't love crunchy cookies; they're often dry). These were fabulous!

The vanilla honey graham reminded me of graham crackers, of course, but it had so much flavor with the added hints of vanilla and honey.

The sugar crisp was also excellent! This cookie was a bit thicker and slightly more "hardy" than the vanilla honey graham. A great take on the classic sugar cookie that everyone seems to love!

And you obviously can never go wrong with chocolate. Both the double chocolate and chocolate chip flavors were great. I haven't done this yet, but I could easily see someone enjoying dunking either of these two flavors in a nice, tall, cold glass of milk.  Just sayin'....

If you remember my post about the Enjoy Life chocolate chunks, then you probably remember that Enjoy Life makes all-natural foods that are free of the eight most common allergens (wheat, dairy, peanuts, tree nuts, egg, soy, fish, and shellfish). How awesome is that? That fact makes these cookies enjoyable for most everyone, and that is a fabulous quality in a cookie, I must say.

The next time you're in the store and you see Enjoy Life crunchy cookies on the shelf, I definitely recommend that you buy a box (or two or three...). They're a great treat to have on hand at home, and they're friendly to anyone who may have allergies, which is a huge bonus in my book! As a baker, it can be challenging at times to make cookies to meet everyone's special dietary needs. But with Enjoy Life cookies, that's one less thing I have to worry about because they do the allergen-free baking for me!

It was reeeeally hard for me to decide which flavor was my favorite while taste testing these. And I did my due diligence to try to determine the one I liked best, don't you worry. Since receiving this package a couple weeks ago, I've literally been eating at least one cookie (sometimes two, but shhhh) after lunch at work each day. I think the winner of my favorite contest might be the vanilla honey graham. SO yummy. But then again, maybe I should just do a little more research to be sure of that... ;)

Oh, and by the way, Cupcake Camp is just around the corner!! I'm super excited for the event this coming Monday night. You can read my mini "bio" as an amateur baker here if you'd like. And Boston friends, I look forward to seeing some of you there as we swim in a sea of delicious cupcakes!!!!!

Oreo-stuffed chocolate cupcakes

(I'll be making something similar for Cupcake Camp!)

Eggs and Asparagus: Two Meals!

I had my fill of eggs and asparagus last week (YUM!), so I thought I'd share with you two yummy recipes I made with these two ingredients...

Mike doesn't care for asparagus. But I looooove asparagus. Now some might think this difference in opinions of asparagus could affect our upcoming marriage. And I would agree that it will affect our marriage...but in the best way possible. You see, I'll buy asparagus at the store and have it all to myself! 

Yessss. 

Win win for me! I cannot wait.

On two different evenings last week, Mike had frisbee so I was on my own for dinner. And that's when I cooked asparagus, one of my all-time favorite spring veggies. On the first evening, I made an "egg over toast with asparagus and goat cheese" dish. This could not be easier!!

I toasted a piece of rosemary & olive oil bread from When Pigs Fly for the toast, buttered it lightly, and then topped it with a fried egg, sauteed asparagus, and some herbed goat cheese (the same cheese I used in our smoked salmon and goat cheese quesadillas).

For the asparagus, I sauteed it in olive oil over medium heat for about 8 to 10 minutes with some minced garlic and salt & pepper.

The only slight disappointment with this dish was that I accidentally overcooked my egg. Bummer. I prefer a slightly runny yolk but this one was just overcooked. Oh well! Next time the dish will be even better with a runny yolk. And there will be a next time for this one. :)

On the second night, I made this delicious egg and asparagus garden salad. Again, this could not be easier! A couple nights before I had cooked a few hard boiled eggs, so I cut one up for the salad. I also added a couple other veggies that I had on hand in addition to the asparagus - tomatoes and carrots. I left the tomatoes and carrot raw but the asparagus was cooked (same method as with the previous dish - sauteed), and I let it cool before adding it to the salad. And I still had some of that fantastic herbed goat cheese, so I sprinkled some on the salad as well. Personally, I like to keep my salad dressing simple, so I dressed this delightful, fresh salad with just a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil and a dash of salt and pepper. Seriously delicious.

Aren't the colors in this salad so pretty? Love it! And it's clearly a very healthy meal too. Gotta love that as well.

This is definitely another dish I will plan to make again. It takes no time at all! Perfect for a busy night when you don't want to spend too much time in the kitchen and are looking for a light and healthy meal. And you could really add any veggies you'd like to it.

:)

Happy mid-week to you all! Woohoo for Wednesday!

Chocolates and Mother's Day!

Chocolate and Mother's Day practically go hand in hand! And that's why I thought I'd use today to 1) Wish all the mothers out there a wonderful Mother's Day - most especially my own amazing mother!! and 2) Highlight a local event I recently went to that had the most divine chocolates...

Last week I attended a great chocolate and wine event hosted by the Sustainable Business Network of Greater Boston. The event was held in South Boston at a great business, the Blue Tierra Chocolate Cafe. Before this event I had never heard of this cafe, but boy am I glad that I know about it now! It was awesome!!

As part of the event, we were lucky enough to sample two delicious chocolates of our choice. My, was it hard to decide! There were so many chocolates to choose from. I spent so long deciding on my two! 

Check out some of the descriptions of the different chocolates/truffles in the pictures below...

(You can click on the picture to enlarge it too so it's easier to read the descriptions that way)

How unique are all these flavors?!

And also, how beautiful are these? I just couldn't get over the artistry in these chocolates! The names were super unique too. :)

After quite some time, I finally chose the Irish Eyes and Green With Envy. The Irish Eyes, pictured above, was a Bailey's Irish cream infused ganache, enrobed in dark chocolate. What can I say? I'm an Irish gal and just couldn't resist the option with Bailey's.

And the Green With Envy was a pistachio gianduja layered with a vanilla bean ganache, enrobed in dark chocolate. Pistachio is one of my favorite flavors, and this truffle did not disappoint. Holy cow!

I actually had beer, not wine, even though it was a chocolate and wine event. Go figure. You know me and my love for beer!! They were offering some so I couldn't pass it up. :)

Decadent.

Amazingly delicious!

I loved both chocolates that I got.

Now, I couldn't very well leave empty handed and not bring home a couple truffles for Mike, now could I? Lucky for him, I remembered him :) and brought home two, the Citrus Kiss and Beanie. He loves grand marnier and coffee (not necessarily together ;)) so I thought these two flavors were perfect. And he loved 'em!

They are just so pretty!

For those of you living in/near Boston, I highly recommend you check out Blue Tierra. It is a fabulous find! It'd be a perfect place to get unique, delicious chocolates for a special occasion or event. And who doesn't love supporting a local business that's "doing good" for the environment and community?

To my own wonderful mother, grandmother, and future mother-in-law, as well as all my other family and friends who are mothers, I wish you all a restful, enjoyable, special Mother's Day! You all deserve nothing but the best!!!

Oh, and I'm sending all of you some virtual chocolates for Mother's Day, okay? :)

♥ ♥ ♥