Elvis Fluffernutter Cake

As soon as I saw this cake on Lynn's blog, I saved the recipe thinking I would make it for my stepdad at some point, as he is a big Elvis fan. Plus the cake sounded like something fun and a bit different (banana cake with chocolate chips sprinkled on top, peanut butter marshmallow filling, and peanut butter icing - all sprinkled with chopped peanut butter cups). Well when my stepdad's birthday came around, I asked him what kind of cake he wanted and he said cheesecake with some kind of sauce. Yea I could've made that for him but what about the fluffernutter cake?? I told him about it but he said no I want the cheesecake. But then I sent him the link to Lynn's post and he changed his mind.

I didn't really like this cake, which is odd for me because usually I can find something I like about most things I bake. Everyone else on the other hand, loved it. Really loved it. Some people said it's their favourite cake I've made - even my mom who is against chocolate chips in banana bread and never eats peanut butter cups.

You can see in this picture my typical "stick all the frosting on top!" tactic. I really don't intend to do this but somehow it always happens. Must work on that.

I've started to put the cakes together a day or so before we eat them but the resulting cakes are drier. I know for some cakes (or maybe all cakes?) people say that if you let it sit for a day it will taste better because the flavours meld, but I'm not really convinced.

Other cakes I've made:
Caramel Cake with Caramel Cream Cheese Frosting
Carrot Coconut Cake with Cream Cheese White Chocolate Icing
Perfect Party Cake (Lemon, Raspberry, Coconut)

Elvis Fluffernutter Cake
Originally from All Recipes then adapted by Foodaphilia and adapted again by Cookie Baker Lynn

2 cups all-purpose flour
1-1/2 cups white sugar
1/2 cup butter
1 cup milk
3-1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 eggs
2 mashed bananas, about 1 cup
2/3 cup mini chocolate chips
Chopped up peanut butter cups for sprinkling on top

1. Preheat the oven to 350F. Grease the bottom of two 9-inch round cake pans. Fit the bottoms with rounds of parchment paper. Grease and flour the whole pan.

2. In a small bowl whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt and set aside.

3. In a large bowl, cream together the sugar and butter until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating thoroughly after each addition. Add flour mixture alternately with milk, beating just to combine. Stir in vanilla and mashed bananas.

4. Pour batter evenly between the two cake pans. Sprinkle the mini chips over the top of the batter. Bake for 35 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the cake comes out clean.

5. Let pans cool for 10 minutes on a rack. Carefully invert layers onto a plate, peel off the parchment paper, then carefully put back on the rack to finish cooling. If the cake cracks at all, don't fret as there will be plenty of gooey frosting to fill in the gaps.

Frosting

2 sticks (1 cup) butter, room temperature
1 cup of smooth peanut butter
4 cups of powdered sugar
2 Tbsp milk
1 cup marshmallow fluff

With an electric mixer cream together the butter and peanut butter until it's smooth. Add the powdered sugar a cup at a time. Add as much of the milk as you need to achieve the consistency you want.

Place 1/3 of the frosting into a separate bowl and fold in the marshmallow fluff till completely incorporated.

Frost the top of the first layer with the marshmallow frosting. Top with the second layer. Frost with the rest of the frosting and sprinkle mini chips over the top, pressing them into the frosting slightly.

Banana Nut Shortbread

I love shortbread. Like really love shortbread. Maybe because I grew up with my mom and grandma making it, or maybe because yes it's just that delicious. My mom has always made it at Christmas, and my grandma's shortbread is one everyone fights over (I still need to try out her recipe). Their shortbreads are quite different though, with my mom's being light, extremely crumbly and topped with half of a maraschino cherry, and my grandma's being covered in sugar and more sturdy. Both are yummy.

I was really curious to try out this recipe, wondering if it would be anything like shortbread since there's half of a banana in it. Impressively it was quite like shortbread in texture, but it didn't have a strong banana taste. There was way too much nutmeg, so I recommend halving it which is reflected in the recipe below. And it was easy to roll out (a huge plus in my books).

I really loved trying this recipe out, but I doubt I'll make it again because the flavour just didn't do it for me (maybe it was the extreme nutmeg). So why am I posting it? Well it's worth trying if you're an adventurous shortbread lover, or just looking for something different. And if you're fancy, you can add dried banana chips, walnut halves and/or maple icing to these. The Better Homes & Gardens Christmas Cookies magazine has a few different shortbread recipes, and I can't wait to try out the other ones - carrot cake, peanut butter candy, and strawberry.

Other cookies I've made:
Earl Grey Tea or Matcha Shortbread
Chocolate Oatmeal Coconut Cookies
Russian Tea Cakes (Mexican Wedding Cake Cookies)
Strawberry Shortbread Cookie Bark

Banana Nut Shortbread
Better Homes & Gardens Christmas Cookies 2007

Makes 32 (If you can roll the dough out properly, which apparently I can't so it made 36 for me)

1 cup butter, softened
1/4 cup mashed ripe banana (1/2 medium banana)
1 tsp vanilla
2 1/4 cups whole wheat flour
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg*
2/3 cup finely chopped toasted walnuts

Beat butter, banana, and vanilla in a mixing bowl with an electric mixer until smooth. Cover and chill in the refrigerator for 1 to 2 hours or freeze about 20 minutes until firm.

Preheat the oven to 300F. Combine flour, sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg ni a large bowl. Cut in butter mixture using a pastry blender until mixture resembles fine crumbs and starts to cling together. Add chopped nuts. Knead dough until smooth; form dough into a ball. Divide dough in half.

Roll each dough portion into an 8 inch x 6 inch (20cmx15cm) rectangle on a lightly floured surface. Cut each rectangle into sixteen 2 x 1 1/2-inch rectangles. Place rectangles 1 inch apart on ungreased cookie sheets.

Bake in preheated oven about 30 minutes or just until bottoms begin to brown. Transfer cookies to wire racks and let cool.

*The original recipe calls for 1/2 tsp, which I used but I thought it was too much so next time I'd recommend 1/4 tsp or even 1/8 tsp unless you are a huge nutmeg lover.

My 100th Post! And Chocolate Walnut Banana Bread

This is my 100th post! I don't have anything exciting to celebrate it with but this banana bread was pretty delicious. I rarely make banana bread because when I was growing up my mom always made it. It was yummy but I guess lost its magical appeal. She never put walnuts or chocolate chips in it though, and this was actually my first time putting chocolate chips in banana bread. I like to maintain this image in my mind of banana bread being healthy and if I put chocolate chips in it, well it just makes it a little more difficult to believe! But I thought if I cut down the sugar a lot (to 2 tablespoons) and only put a small amount of chocolate chips, it wouldn't be a terribly unhealthy snack. And thus begins my love of this chocolate walnut banana bread.

I haven't used my mini loaf pans for a while and forgot how great little loaves are. In the recipe I wrote that you can use either oat flour or whole wheat pastry flour. The oat flour makes it much denser, but I loved it that way. If that's not quite for you, try the whole wheat pastry flour. It will still be a dense muffin but lightens it up a bit.

If this sounds good, you might also like:
Earl Grey White Chocolate Chunk Muffins
Healthy Banana Bran Muffins
Whole Wheat Blueberry Muffins
Pumpkin Pecan Raisin Muffins

Chocolate Walnut Banana Bread
Adapted from How It All Vegan!

Makes 1 loaf, 6 mini loaves, or 12 small-ish muffins

3 ripe bananas, mashed
1/2 cup applesauce
2 tbsp sugar
1 cup chopped walnuts
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour OR oat flour
1/2 cup wheat germ
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/3 cup chocolate chips, optional*

Preheat oven to 375F. In a small bowl, mash the bananas with a fork until very mushy, then add the applesauce, sugar, and walnuts and stir together.

In a separate large bowl, stir together the whole wheat flour, whole wheat pastry flour (or oat flour), salt, baking powder, and baking soda.

Add the banana mixture to the flour mixture and mix together gently until "just mixed". Gently stir in the chocolate chips.

Spoon into a lightly oiled loaf pan (or muffin pan) and bake for 40-50 minutes**. Test with a toothpick or a knife to see if done.

*Use nondairy chocolate chips or omit them to make this vegan.
**The first time I made these, I used mini loaf pans and I can't remember how long it took. I would check them around 25 minutes and see how they are. Maybe even 20 minutes.

Battle of the Healthy Muffins

I think most of us are used to cake like muffins, and I definitely love those ones but I'm on a search for healthy and tasty muffin recipes. (I seem to be on a search for a lot of things recently (perfect red sauce, best peanut butter cookies, really good tofu marinades). Why the healthy muffin search? It's a quick, easy, hopefully filling, and potentially healthy snack. So far there are three contenders: honey banana, oatmeal raisin, and pumpkin banana.

Honey Banana | Oatmeal Raisin | Pumpkin Banana

The honey banana were the first ones that I made and they were okay. Well they tasted good for a healthy muffin, but for a muffin in general just okay. Plus the tops of the muffins became all wet the next day, which is a true muffin pet peeve of mine. I wonder if I had used all oil instead of half oil and half applesauce if the tops would've been wet. I'm guessing they would've been because of all the bananas. I also added some nuts to the honey banana muffins. The oatmeal raisin ones were kind of bland, and drier than the honey banana. I wouldn't bother making these again but I like the idea of an oatmeal raisin muffin. The description said "oatmeal raisin cookie meets muffin", so I was really excited about tasting them. Unfortunately they do not taste as awesome as an oatmeal cookie.

Then we have the muffin that currently reigns supreme (yes I think that's stuck in my head from Iron Chef), the superb pumpkin banana muffins! I doubt I would have thought of putting pumpkin and banana together but it worked well. You don't taste the pumpkin too much (for those people that are pumpkin haters) - it's more about the pumpkin pie spices. These muffins are moist and full of flavour, and the top of the muffin doesn't get wet! There is however 2 cups of sugar in them which doesn't seem healthy to me, but it does make 30 muffins. You're getting about 3.2 teaspoons of sugar in each muffin (that actually does seem high, but I don't know). There's no added fat (oil, butter), and lots of good things (whole wheat flour, oat bran, walnuts). The one thing I forgot to do was add some ground flax to the batter.

For now I will hang on to the honey banana muffin recipe, but if I find better healthy muffins I wouldn't be sad to discard it. The pumpkin banana muffin recipe I will keep and make again. I'll try to add less sugar next time and see how they turn out. And I will keep searching for other healthy muffin recipes so I can have at least a few solid ones in my repertoire.

Healthy Pumpkin Banana Muffins
(from Recipezaar)

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups whole wheat flour
2/3 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup oat bran
4 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 teaspoons cinnamon
2 teaspoons ground ginger
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
3 ripe bananas, mashed
1 cup applesauce
15 ounces canned pumpkin
4 eggs, lightly beaten
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 cup chopped walnuts, toasted

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Grease or line muffin tins with paper liners.
3. Combine flours, bran, oats, baking powder, spices, baking soda and salt in a medium bowl.
4. Using whisk or spoon, stir until well mixed.
5. Combine remaining ingredients (except nuts) in a large mixing bowl; beat until smooth.
6. Gradually beat in flour mixture.
7. Beat just until combined.
8. Spoon into prepared pans or tins (fill cups until just about full).
9. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, until toothpick inserted in the middle of the muffin comes out clean.
10. Remove muffins from pan and cool on wire rack as soon as they come out of the oven.