I’m not sure where I came across this, but if you’re worried about the number of calories (or gluten) in typical pancakes and you like bananas, this recipe is for you. Make banana pancakes by mashing a ripe banana and mixing with two eggs. Add your favorite pancake spices, like cinnamon and vanilla, and then cook like a pancake. Serve with your favorite toppings. I’ve been using honey from our bee hive, my homemade applesauce, and/or strawberry jam. I really enjoy them!
This week I tried making some strange food. Last week I encountered a recipe for Caramelized Peanut Butter Banana Quesadillas posted to the Craftzine blog. Bananas, marshmallows, and Peanut Butter – some of my favorite foods from when I was 12.
We just happened to have some left over tortillas and a looming bike ride so I decided to try this for breakfast. However, my adult self decided the marshmallows and butter would be too much. I took a single tortilla, covered it in a thin layer of peanut butter, sprinkled on some brown sugar and added a layer of banana slices on half of the tortilla. I folded it in half and toasted in in a frying pan. It came out quite tasty this way. Next time I won’t bother with the brown sugar, it just made a mess and didn’t add anything.
The second random food I made this week was a blueberry dessert. We had some blueberries that weren’t all that exciting to eat so I decided to try to make them into a blueberry crumble dessert. I made the mistake of just winging the topping. I used oats, flour, yogurt, and honey. I accidentally poured too much flour in and the mixture got too doughy and didn’t turn out so great. Next time I’ll make more of a dry topping because the blueberries were tasty underneath.
I got to do some more baking recently for a coworkers birthday. This baking was special because the celebration had to be at 9:30 am. So instead of a dessert cake, I came across this Cinnamon Apple Cake recipe from Cooking Light that is perfect for breakfast! Also, I was amazed by the insane number of outstanding reviews it had, so I knew I just had to try it. An added bonus is the fact that the cake is relatively low in calories.
My husband bought the largest organic Fuji apples I have ever seen so I ended up chopping up just two of them and still had way more than the 3 cups called for. To make apple chopping easy, I used my peeler / slicer / corer contraption from Williams Sonoma, given to me a few years back by my mother-in-law. That thing rocks if you bake with apples often!
So many apples…
Dry ingredients combined:
(P.S. My apple corer contraption is the same red as my Kitchen Aid mixer, another awesome baking gift from my mother-in-law)
Mmmm… apples all cinnamon’d up and ready for use!
Folded into the dough – I noticed this recipe seemed to have more apples than dough, which of course makes it delicious. Also, I used extra apples. I spread some on top too because I had so many. And maybe I ate a few of the chunks.
The cake was baked in my 9” springform pan and that worked out just fine. I think next time I will bake it for a bit longer because I don’t think it was quite cooked all the way. I subtracted the 5 minutes for my larger pan as the recipe suggested but I think that was too many.
It earned rave reviews from my coworkers (and myself). Definitely worth making again.
Laura Makes 