Bananananananana Bread! April 28, 2009

By popular demand – my new, low fat, low sugar all taste Banana Bread recipe!

It's low fat and high fiber, but I won't tell.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ingredients:

• 3 danged ripe bananas, mashed very well
• 1/4 cup oil (such as canola)
• 5 tbsp vanilla yogurt (I use the fat free, sugar free kind)
• 3/4 cup sugar (or sugar substitute, such as splenda, if you’re diabetic, like my dad)
• 2 tbsp vanilla
• 2 eggs, or 1/4 + 1/8 cup liquid egg whites
• 2 cups whole wheat flour
• 3 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 1/2 tsp cinnamon

Method:

1. Mix together mashed bananas, sugar, vanilla, oil, yogurt, egg whites (or eggs) & vanilla in a bowl
2. Mix together flour, baking powder, cinnamon & salt in another bowl
3. Pour dry ingredients into the wet, all at once, stirring until moistened, but not over-mixing.
4. Pour into a greased loaf pan and bake at 350 for about 60 to 65 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean.
5. Enjoy!

Seriously, this is a deadly simple recipe, takes all of 10 minutes to put together (including mashing the bananas), and is full of fiber and healthy goodness!

I took a standard banana bread recipe, and lowered the fat by using egg whites in place of eggs, replacing half the oil with yogurt, and adding more banana in place of buttermilk. Because the yogurt I use is sweetened, I also reduced the sugar so it wouldn’t be too sweet. However, if you want to use unsweetened Greek yogurt, or you may want to increase the sugar back up to a full cup.

You can also add things to really make this yummy – try a cup of sultana raisins, chopped pecans, or even… peanut butter chips. The thought of peanut butter, cinnamon and banana together is seriously amazing.

Someone make this and stir in a cup of peanut butter chips and let me know how it turns out!

Whole Wheat Pear Lychee Green Tea Muffins January 16, 2009

I like muffins. I really like them. They’re good gifts, they’re tasty, and not too sweet. However, I hate buying muffins because they’re awful for you. So I make my own – that way I can control how much sugar and fat goes in them. I am a crazy lady sometimes.

Anyhow, I thought this recipe up while driving home from the ferry terminal,and thinking, I should make something tasty for Graham. What do I have? Not a lot… But I really like green tea…  

This is adapated from a classic recipe standby – the Five Roses basic muffin mix.

For non-Canadians, or non-old farts such as myself, Five Roses is a brand of flour, and some time in the fifties, they put out their iconic cookbook. It’s filled with great mid-century recipes, so that means including great things like basic cake and muffin recipes that don’t call for a quart of low fat yogurt, it’s also got stuff like “how to prepare squirrel”, and recipes for all our favourite now terribly out of style treats like head cheese and jello molds. It even has a few recipes for things like Spaghetti – listed under the “foreign fare” section. It may be common for us to toss some penne and some fresh basil and tomatoes together now for dinner, and finish it with some olive oil and a bit of parmesan, but in the fifties, that was just not done. And if it was, you got plenty of advanced warning in case you didn’t like this weird food.

ANYHOW – muffins. Here’s my green tea muffins recipe, and then 2 variations. We ate a couple of muffins, and then split two of these in half, and topped each half with whipped cream and blueberries. Green tea and blueberry shortcake!

Supplies:

• 2 Tetley brand Pear Lychee green tea bags
• 1 cup boiling water
• 2 cups whole wheat flour
• 1/4 cup + 1/8 cup  liquid egg whites (or, 2 whole large eggs)
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tbsp baking powder
• 1/4 cup sugar (or splenda)
• 2 tbsp oil
• 2 tsp vanilla extract

Method:

1. Rip open your tea bags, and dump out the tea into a measuring cup. Pour in 1 cup of boiling water and set aside to cool down. Meanwhile, preheat your oven to 400 degrees.
2. Combine flour, salt, sugar, baking powder in a large bowl.
3. In a smaller bowl, mix eggs, vanilla, oil and cool tea. At this point you’re saying “there is loose tea in my mix. There is going to be tea in my muffins! What the hell?! Just go with it.
4. All at once, stir wet ingredients into dry, and now plop into well greased muffin tins.
5. Bake for 15-20 minutes until done. Mine took 16 minutes. You should get either 10 small muffins or 8 bigger ones out of this recipe.

Variation 1: Lindsey’s Ray of Sunshine Fruit and Almond Muffins

• replace whole wheat flour with white flour
• replace tea with 1 cup milk
• skip egg substitute and replace with 2 whole eggs
• increase oil to 1/4 cup
• reduce sugar to 2 tbsp
• add 3 tbsp apricot jam or marmalade to the wet ingredients
• stir in: 2/3 cup slivered almonds and 2/3 cup dried fruit trail mix (the kind with dried cranberries works well – the dried fruit should be chopped into little squares when you buy it) into dry ingredients 
• Follow all the same directions as above, including baking time. This will make 12 muffins no problem.

Strawberry Raspberry Zinger Muffins

• replace green tea bags with 2 herbal raspberry flavoured bags
• add 1 cup chopped frozen strawberries to mix
• flour should be half whole wheat, half regular.

Lunchtime Bliss Muffins

• reduce sugar to 2 tbsp
• add 1 chopped up pear
• increase oil to 1/4 cup
• add 2/3 of a large bar dark chocolate to mixture (I used 85%)

 

Shortcake, but with green tea muffins, whipped cream and blueberries!

Sage and Stilton Scones December 23, 2008

Ah… leftover cheese. I’m sure we’ve all seen this after a big Christmas party – there’s always a bit of cheese left over, and you probably aren’t feeling like just eating the stuff straight. We did a big Christmas BBQ at work, and we had quite a bit of Stilton (which is a blue cheese) left over on the cheese plate. So I took it home and came up with this recipe to use it all up, since it’s not the kind of cheese you can sit around and eat absolute mounds of. 

Ingredients:

• 2/3 cup stilton or other blue cheese, very finely crumbled
• 1 tsp ground sage
• 3 tbsp liquid egg white 
• 1 cup skim milk
• 2 and 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
• 3 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup cold butter/margarine 

Method:

In a large bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder, salt and sage. 

Cut in your butter with a fork or a pastry blender. I used a fork because I was using margarine, but if you’re using butter, cut it into small cubes first. I also recommend you make the investment in the pastry blender if you want to bake a lot with butter – it’s a half moon shaped series of wires (sort of like a very firm wisk) attached to a handle. ANYHOW…

In a separate bowl, stir together the egg whites (which you purchase in a carton! How wasteful!) and skim milk.

Dump the crumbled cheese onto the flour mixture, then pour the mix and egg white mixture in. Stir up with a fork until the whole thing starts to stick together into a ball of ragged looking dough.

Dump the dough out onto your counter, (add a bit of flour to your counter if it seems to be sticking – mine didn’t need any though), and knead the dough 10 times. 

Flatten the dough into a rectangle, about 7 by 10 inches (I eyeballed this, don’t get out a ruler or anything!) and shape the edges so they’re even. 

Get out a good knife, and cut the dough into six squares, then cut each square in half on the diagonal. 

Place your scones onto a cookie sheet lined with aluminum foil, shiny side down, and bake for 20 minutes. The stilton might melt and run out a bit, which is why you put the scones on foil – it keeps clean-up easy!

These are nice because they have a good sharp flavour, but you could really use any kind of leftover cheese to make them. If you were going to use something like swiss or cheddar, I would increase the cheese to one cup though.