Chocolate Banana Bread

Found this on The Sisters Cafe and Our Best Bites

Chocolate Swirl Banana Bread

2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup butter, softened
1 1/2 cups mashed ripe banana (about 3 large or 4 medium)
2 extra large eggs
1/3 cup plain low-fat yogurt (or sour cream)
1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350°.

Lightly spoon flour into dry measuring cups, and level with a knife. Combine the flour, baking soda, and salt, stirring with a whisk.

Place sugar and butter in a large bowl; beat with a mixer at medium speed until well blended (about 1 minute). Add banana, eggs, and yogurt; beat until blended. Add flour mixture; beat at low speed just until moist.

Place chocolate chips in a medium microwave-safe bowl, and microwave at HIGH 1 minute or until almost melted, stirring until smooth. Cool slightly. Add 1 cup batter to chocolate, stirring until well combined. Spoon chocolate batter alternately with plain batter into an 8 1/2 x 4 1/2-inch loaf pan coated with cooking spray. Swirl batters together using a knife. Bake at 350° for 1 hour and 15 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes in pan on a wire rack; remove from pan. Cool completely on wire rack.

*If you don't have chocolate chips, you can mix cocoa powder with oil. Just look on the cocoa powder box to find the right increments.

*I have a dark non-stick pan and my oven is really hot so I turned it down to 320 degrees and baked it for about 70 minutes. The only thing I would change is too add chocolate chips, not melted, to the batter to make it that much more chocolaty!

*Also I didn't have sour cream or yogurt so I did the old sour milk trick. I mixed 1 TBSP vinegar with 1 cup half and half and it worked great.

Easy Chocolate Cake

I admit, I am a cake mix snob. Didn't grow up with 'em, still don't use 'em. I think they taste weird. So when a birthday or some occasion rolls around that calls for a cake, this is the one recipe I always use. So simple and easy, turns out perfect every time- it makes me wonder why people even use a cake mix??

2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1 2/3 cups sugar
3/4 cup butter, softened
2/3 cup baking cocoa
1 1/4 cups water
1 1/4 tsps baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp baking powder
2 large eggs

Preheat oven to 350. Grease bottom and sides of pan with shortening. Lightly flour.
*Jan's trick I learned from her - get a huge wad of saran wrap, grab a glob of shortening and smear it all over the pan. Keeps your hands clean!

Beat all ingredients in mixer on low for 30 seconds, scraping the sides constantly. (Let's be honest, its not that easy to do, but that's what the recipe says.)

Beat on high for 3 minutes, scraping bowl occasionally. Pour into pans.

Baking times:
9x13 - 40 to 45 mins
round pans - 30-35 mins
Done when toothpick comes out clean.

Cool for 10 minutes on wire rack, remove cakes from pans to wire rack (I don't when I do a 9x13), cool for an hour. Frost!

I don't like to use dark non-stick pans when I bake, they mess everything up, so I stick with the shiny silver pans for my cakes.

White Chocolate Bark

Courtesy of Food Network (Ina Garten) Adapted Slightly

*Ingredients

White chocolate

Chopped Dried Apriocots

Dried Cranberries (Craisins)

Chopped Almonds

*Directions

Melt white Chocolate and spread into a square on parchment paper.

Sprinkle apricots, craisins and almonds on top and let cool.

Simple Fudge

Now that it has *SNOWED* I guess the only good thing about it is cozy food, and Christmas candy :) So I will try to keep my spirits up, even though it's Freezing outside, by posting a yummy fudge recipe I found on Kelsey Nixon's food blog (Yes the Kelsey Nixon who was on The Next Food Network Challenge, and Yes I found her blog! haha). I love this girl, she was even on a commercial for food storage after conference haha.
I have yet to try this fudge... but it looks Yummy! AND I bet you could substitute the milk chocolate chips for WHITE chocolate, or any other kind of "chip" would be good too. Although I like white chocolate best!
As Kelsey Says , it's "a basic fudge recipe that could act as a blank canvas making it perfect to customize to your liking. Robby would like nuts while I think I would enjoy just a hint of orange zest or crushed peppermint. Stick this one in the holiday file folks."

Servings: 32 bite size servings

INGREDIENTS
1 lb. quality chocolate, chopped
1/2 stick unsalted butter
1 (14 oz.) can sweetened condensed milk
1/2 tsp. salt

DIRECTIONS
Line bottom of an 8 inch baking pan with parchment paper or wax paperHeat all ingredients in a metal bowl set over a pan of barely simmering water, stirring occasionally until smooth.Pour into baking pan and chill, uncovered, until firm, about 3-4 hours. Run a knife around edges of pan and invert fudge onto a work surface. Remove parchment and cut fudge into bite size pieces. Serve chilled.

Sounds easy enough for me! :) YAY!