Banana Bars

When life gives you rotten bananas...


make these!


This recipe is a family favorite. We love banana bars. They're kind of like banana bread, but they eat like a brownie and they're covered in a caramel-like icing. My description doesn't do them justice. Just try em'. I know that you'll be hooked.

They're super easy to throw together. Just start with eggs, butter, sour cream, and sugar. Mix well with an electric mixer.


Now mash up 1-1/2 cups of bananas. It usually takes about 3 or 4 bananas. I like to mash mine with a pastry cutter. A fork or potato ricer will work nicely too.



Add the bananas and vanilla to the butter mixture.


Next, combine the dry ingredients.


Add to the batter.


Mix until just combined.


Pour the batter into a buttered jelly roll pan.



Bake this for 20-25 minutes at 375 degrees.


When the banana bars are just about finished baking, start the icing. Melt 1/2 stick of butter in a skillet.


Cook the butter until it gets a little brown. But not too brown. Think "golden".


Now, turn off the heat and stir in 2 cups of sifted powdered sugar, vanilla, and milk.



Pour the icing over the warm banana bars and spread evenly over the surface.


I like to sprinkle mine with some more finely chopped pecans.


Feel free to eat them warm. Mmmm. Or cut them up and serve them to anyone that you love. These also freeze well. So eat a few (if you can stop yourself from devouring the whole pan) and save the rest for a rainy day.


Banana Bars

1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup softened butter
1 cup sour cream
2 eggs

Beat for 1 minute.

1 1/2 cup mashed bananas
2 teaspoons vanilla

Stir in.

2 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup finely chopped pecans

Mix dry ingredients together and add to wet mixture. Mix until combined. Pour into a buttered jelly roll pan and bake at 375 degrees for 20-25 minutes.

Icing:

1/4 cup browned butter
2 cups sifted powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 tablespoons milk

Brown butter. Stir in powdered sugar, vanilla, and milk until smooth. Spread over warm banana bars. Sprinkle with chopped pecans.

One More Week...

This blog is based on the meals that I plan and then cook. For just one more week, there is no meal plan. After arriving home from our family vacation last night and celebrating the Easter holiday today, I'm doing laundry and re-packing our suitcases. I need to head "back home" for a week. It's my daughter's spring break, so we'll be leaving my husband behind to fend for himself (Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, no doubt) and spending time with grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. At the end of the week I am throwing a baby shower for my friend of nearly 20 years. So this week, no meal plan. But stay tuned...I've still got a couple of posts to share this week and next Sunday, I promise...a meal plan!

Happy Easter Malted Mousse Cake

This cake turned out beautifully! It really was pretty and festive and perfect for the holiday. The texture was amazing. The recipe description that this dessert is a cross between panna cotta and tiramisu was right on. However, my praise ends here. You'd think with a shortbread and hazelnut crust and with a filling that incorporated cream cheese, white chocolate, and whipped cream that this dessert would be decadent and heavenly and irresistible. At best, it was passable. Like I said, the texture was there. The flavor was missing. I was disappointed.

Below, I'm including the step by step pics in case any of you are curious about how it came together, but I'm not writing the play by play. Not yet. This recipe is a work in progress. I'm going to experiment with it a little. Here are a couple of my ideas. First, I think that this needs a generous drizzle of chocolate ganache. Second, instead of coloring it a pretty pink with a few drops of food coloring, I'll use maraschino cherry juice. I've also thought about adding amaretto. And I think I'll do away with the shortbread crust and make it with Oreos. It needs some chocolate!














Here's the link to this recipe again: Malted Mousse Cake from Better Homes and Gardens. Maybe you'd like to put your own spin on it!

Easter Dinner

Usually Easter is a big affair on both sides of our family. Fancy pastel dresses and bonnets and suits with ties for church. Big family dinners. Kids hunting for eggs. Last year our Easter was a quiet change. We lived about 8-10 hours from our family. My husband had to work in the days before and after the holiday, so we needed to stay home, rather than travel. My oldest ended up with 104 degree fever (and a trip to urgent care) the night before Easter. The baby was only 3 months old and consumed a strictly liquid diet. No need to cook for a crowd. As it turned out, the baby and I were the only ones who donned our Sunday best that day. I returned home to prepare an Easter dinner for 3. I served ham, scalloped potatoes, green beans, our favorite Bob Evans rolls, and deviled eggs.


This is one good looking Easter ham. In college I worked in a deli. We sold a deli baked ham, prepared in the big industrial ovens in the kitchen behind those cases loaded with salads and pimento loaf.I loved that ham! I love those delicious HoneyBaked Hams too, but at $52 for 7 lbs, this was certainly an economical approach. I found an inexpensive ham at the grocery and dressed it up, just like the deli ham I enjoyed so much in college. I sliced it diagonally and stuck cloves in every diamond sliced into the ham. Then I mixed pineapple juice with brown sugar and poured it over the ham as a glaze. Finally, I topped the whole thing with pineapple slices before baking the ham according to the package directions. It was delicious!


Deviled eggs are an Easter tradition with us. We used up the eggs that had been colored earlier in the week. My 4 year old, then 3, rallied from her double ear infection just in time to make this recipe her own.


Until yesterday, I had no idea what I'd prepare for Easter dinner. We rolled in from our Spring Break Adventure just hours before this Easter dawns. A good friend has generously invited us to join her family tomorrow, so I'm going to take a dessert that I've been planning to make for Easter since last Spring. I found the recipe for this Malted Mousse Cake in Better Homes and Gardens March 2008. I'll post about my dessert tomorrow.

Until then, here's my favorite scalloped potato recipe.

Spring Break Sneak Peek

We made it home!

I usually save pictures of my children for our family blog, but this shot is so cute I just had to share. Here are my little sweeties exploring the beach together.