"Dated" Brown Sugar Banana Bread

Oh that was bad - but it got your attention - right??!!??

I had planned to make a  new recipe for banana bread today, but I never thought about how important it was to have that cup of coffee first.  Lesson learned - I hope.

I was measuring my dry ingredients and needed 3/8 cup.  No problem. I knew I had a 1/8 cup measure and a 1/4 cup so I was good.  The math worked fine.    Where I failed was in reaching for the measuring cups without checking.  I thought I had the right sizes and moved right along - flour, brown sugar blend, baking soda, salt, cinnamon. I was whisking away and was about to go to the next step when that delayed sip of coffee aka caffeine shot kicked in.  I looked at the measuring cups and literally said out loud "OH NO!!"  My dogs looked at me like I was telling them that they were not going to get breakfast!!
But no -- the gasp was not meant for them.  I realized that I had pulled out a 1/4 cup measure AND a 1/3 cup measure!!  I might have been able to fudge a little had I just used the 1/3 cup - but no - I used both and knew that it was way too much sugar for the recipe.  So that bowl of flour mixture went straight into the trash .  I gulped a few more swigs of coffee and proceeded to remeasure and get the correct amounts into the bowl!!  Good grief!

So what was I making??  Here is the recipe, thanks to another blogger and a great cookbook.  Used a bit of inspiration from both!   And the second time around it turned out perfect!!!

Brown Sugar Banana Bread with Dates!

adapted from Cookies and Cups and  The Back in the Day Bakery Cookbook

2 cups flour

3/8 cup Splenda brown sugar baking blend

1 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 tsp. baking spice (Penzey's Spices)

1/4 c. chopped dates

1 1/2 cups mashed bananas (4 small)

1/4 cup Greek yogurt (I used Trader Joe's vanilla bean)

2 eggs

6 Tbsp. butter, melted

2 tsp. vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350.  Spray a 9x5 loaf pan with cooking spray (I use EverBake from King Arthur Flour - love it and it never fails me!).  Set aside....

In a medium mixing bowl, mix together flour, brown sugar blend, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and baking spice.  Mix in the chopped dates. Whisk til well combined

In a separate large bowl, mash 4 small bananas (that is what it took for me to get 1 1/2 cups -).  Add yogurt (can substitute with sour cream), eggs, melted butter and vanilla.

Fold the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients and combine until just blended.

Pour into the prepared loaf pan.  OPTIONAL:  Sprinkle several tablespoons of the brown sugar blend over the top of the batter. It will form a nice crust as it bakes..

Bake for 45- 50 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.  Allow to cool in the pan for 10 minutes and then remove from the pan after running a knife around the edges to loosen.

Cool completely on a wire rack.

So when you forget to take a picture before it goes in the oven......

Oh I wish you could smell this...

It was SO hard to wait for this to cool!

Look at that crunch brown sugar topping!!!  So Yummy!

Tried a new spotlight feature on this picture - highlights all of the moist ingredients.

A closeup of the bananas and dated scattered throughout!

Ready to eat?  Breakfast anyone?

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When Cooking and Computing Meet......

I felt like I was living under a rock when I first heard about Biscoff.  All of a  sudden bloggers were posting about Biscoff cookies and cupcakes and cakes and..... well...... you name it. And I had NO CLUE what they were talking about.  So of course I had to find it online and order it.  That is the normal response, right?  So Amazon came to my rescue and it a few days I was able to sample this new (to me) taste treat. And those are the perfect words - taste treat.  I tried the cookies first and they were good - naturally good with brown sugar and cinnamon baked into them.  Crispy and yummy.
But then I moved on to the spread and if I had not had a lot of self restraint I could have eaten spoonful after spoonful of the contents of the jar. Good thing I ordered two jars.  For the next few days I made toast for breakfast just so I had a reasonable excuse to pull out that delectable jar and savor it first thing in the morning!!  Pretty pathetic but very satisfying!!!

So next on my list was to actually experience  baking with it .  Trying the Biscoff Banana Bread with Biscoff Cookie Streusel from Two Peas and Their Pod seemed like the perfect candidate for me as it used the spread AND the cookies.  So if one form of Biscoff was good, two HAD to be even better!

The recipe was pretty straightforward and the ingredients were similar to basic banana bread, with the addition of the Biscoff!

Now if you cannot find it locally or do not want to order online, run don't walk to your nearest Trader Joe's and grab their Speculoos Cookie Butter (and it comes in crunchy now)-- it's a great substitution and more economical too.  Here is what you are looking for (and I forgot the brown sugar in the photo above so it was a good excuse for a second photo!)

One  thing I learned (and really should have known) is that when you do a streusel topping that is SO thick on top , you really should press it down into the batter so it stays in place when you turn the bread out of the pan.  I think next time I might try to put half of it in the center of the bread and the rest in top so more bites will be full of that cookie mixture - it was yummy!  But I wasn't too upset when I just HAD to clean up the crumbly topping that fell off,  and of course I sampled it... just a little!!  I knew instantly that this would be  a recipe I would try again.

Just look at that scrumptious topping - Biscoff cookies, brown sugar, butter and flour!

Fresh out of the oven - minus a bit of streusel on top!

Can you see how moist and wonderful it is??  Trust me!

And while I am talking about recipes, I would love to share my new kitchen companion with you.  I have been looking at tablets for a long time. I have the Kindle Fire which I really love and it's great to grab to read books, peruse cookbooks, or even answer email - but I couldn't actually "work" on it - at least not easily. With all of the blog recipes I am saving, I am creating quite a collection!

So to make life so much easier, I am welcoming the Sony Vaio Duo tablet into my life!

Oh how I love this toy!!  Yes I am a techie junkie too!   One of the best things is that I save all of my favorite blog recipes to Microsoft One Note.  And because my computer and tablet are all synced through Office 365, I can instantly pull up the recipe on my tablet and bake or cook to my heart's content!!  I love the ease of use and the convertibility and that I can do all that I need to do on it.  It's a perfect fit for me!

That's it for now! Pin It Now!