Chocolate Chip Banana Bread Squares with Coconut Streusel

I'd been meaning to make use of some old bananas hanging out on my counter for a while now, and I decided to try to adapt this pumpkin bar recipe from Kelly at Meals for Miles (if you are into reading about evidenced-based nutrition and high-volume running, give her blog a read). I've made her recipe several times, and I love it because it's flavorful, pumpkin, dense, and it comes together super easily. Anything I can make in the evening without waking the baby up is a plus. I figured I could easily swap the pumpkin for banana and change some of the spices around and such, and I'd have a similar recipe going on. Except that it wasn't, not really. What I ended up with instead of a dense bar was a soft bread-like baked good, which, in retrospect, shouldn't have been surprising. What I wanted was banana bar, and what I ended up with was banana bread in an 8 x 8 bar pan. 

I was disappointed as I went to taste my first bite, thinking to myself that I'd do better in the next run-through . However, although the texture was not what I'd anticipated, both it and the flavor were excellent. I had a second huge piece just to be extra sure that I wasn't disappointed any longer... The base was almost fluffy and quite moist, and because I liked the addition of the streusel topping so much, it's going to be difficult to stop myself from putting it on everything.Also, although the streusel contains dairy, the bread itself is vegan. I'm going to toy with a streusel topping made with coconut oil in future recipes, so check back if that's something you're interested in. 

I let a friend take some of the bread home (because I'm trying to save myself from myself), and she reported back that it was the best banana bread she's ever had. In short, it may not be a great bar, it is some hella good banana bread. Happy accidents, y'all. Give those old bananas some new life. 

Grapefruit Shortbread Bars

I've relayed to you my penchant for apple cinnamony things. You know what's also up there? Citrus. You know what's also in season pretty much year-round? That's right--pucker up, y'all. I started thinking about doing something with citrus when I was running around our local farmer's market a few weeks ago. Although I really long for the summery days when the stalls are overflowing with zucchini, tomato, and corn, I still go in the winter because I gotta get outta the house every once in a while with this baby, and because the eggs are absolutely ridiculous. Yard eggs, farmed eggs, whatever they are. They're amazing and beautiful, and I love them over easy (whites cooked all the way through fortheloveofallthatisholy!) on some avocado toast. Or some sauteed spinach and mushrooms. Or on, like, just a plate. In any case, if you have the opportunity to support your local farmers and get some delicious eggs that were probably laid yesterday, I highly suggest you do.

Anyway, in addition to the eggs, I also got some citrus--grapefruit. I feel as though grapefruit don't get as much love as the lemon in baking. Or as much as the blood orange, which I see everywhere in blog recipes, but I have yet to find a blood orange in my local area (although if you do happen upon them, lemme know, because I've got plans laid out...). The grapefruit is like the citrus people eat while they're dieting, and it doesn't have to be! Just as it has a place next to the dieter's fat-free cottage cheese and hard-boiled egg breakfast, it has a place in delicious baked goods. Case in point--these grapefruit bars. They're a play on the classic lemon bar, which I love.

 Like lemon bars, these have a basic shortbread crust that comes together easily. The filling is tart, sweet, and rich. When I first tested this recipe and brought it out along with the salted caramel pretzel brownie and king cupcakes, I honestly thought it would be overlooked. I was pleasantly surprised to find that people seemed more eager to try the grapefruit bar than either of the other two. Perhaps they shared my love of citrus, or perhaps they were simply curious--either way, those who tried it definitely seemed to enjoy it. I know I did.

I juiced the grapefruit with this helpful guy I bought at Publix. 

Mardi Gras King Cupcakes

Welcome back! It shouldn't be a secret that I don't know what I'm doing. That is to say I have no formal training in cooking, let alone baking. I actually used to shun baking because it required too much precision and felt a little too much like college-level introductory chemistry lab (which, if I'm being honest, I did not pass the first go-around). I liked stove top cooking where I could just throw mostly whatever I wanted in all willy nilly--amounts, temperature, time--and I was good to go as long as I didn't burn the garlic. Slowly, I began to embrace aspects of baking. The cookie. The quick bread. The crisp. The cupcake. You know what I wasn't prepared for?

A yeast bread. A baking feat that involves caring for a living thing--an organism that requires a particular temperature in its environment and, like, food. Last year, I probably would've shied away from this task, but now that I've got four months of baby-rearing under my belt, I figure I can feed some yeasties. So, after that pep talk, I decided to dive in and make some sort of king cake treat--cupcakes seemed like the way to go. 

After some thorough scouring of the Internet for instructions on how to deal with this dough without a KitchenAid stand mixer, I think I figured it out. So, if you're like me, and you're new enough to this game that you don't yet have a need for such an expensive piece of baking equipment, bust out your hands. According to the folks who know, it's good to start familiarizing yourself with these doughs by hand and then moving to a mixer. #Winning? 

The most important things I took away from this experience were that I needed a kitchen thermometer, I had to be careful not to add too much flour to the dough, and that working with the dough was like trying to put hosiery on an octopus. I'm just not accustomed to it quite yet, but I'll get there. The nice thing about this recipe is that even if you mangle the dough as you're trying to roll it up before slicing it, it doesn't really matter. You end up putting the slices/pieces/jaggedy chunks of dough into muffin tins (I highly recommend silicon liners if you have them), and they come out of the oven golden brown, twisty, cinnamony, and beautiful. 

These festive little cupcakes have a light base that's flavorful yet not too sweet, finished up with a lemon cream cheese frosting and colored sugar. If you're looking to bake a Mardi Gras treat, and you too have been looking to step outside of your cookie-quickbread baking comfort zone, I highly suggest that you give these goodies a go. I've tried to lay out the recipe in such a way that the you can easily see the steps (super photo heavy)--it's definitely one worth attempting. 

Let the Good Times Roll, y'all!