Soft Chocolatey Chocolate & Peanut Butter Chip Cookies

Now that I've proclaimed my non-baker status, here I am baking all the time for some reason.  I have a theory that pregnancy hormones make one want to bake, because our friend Kerrie Anne (due in 1 month & 1 day!) has been baking too.  And she is not normally a baker either.  I'll have to find out if our friend Nevena has been a baking machine (she's due NOW!).  It's a sound theory, don't you think?  Anyways...I made these soft, chewy cookies last night for the first time and I can't stop eating them.  They are so delicious!

Ingredients:

2 ¼ cups flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 cup butter, softened

¾ cup packed brown sugar

¼ cup white sugar

1 (3.4 oz) package instant chocolate pudding mix

2 eggs

1 ½ tsp vanilla extract

1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

1 cup peanut butter chips

Instructions:

1)  Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees F.  Sift together flour and baking soda, set aside.

2)  In large bowl, cream together butter and sugars.  Beat in pudding mix until blended.  Stir in the eggs and vanilla.  Blend in flour mixture.  Stir in chocolate and peanut butter chips.  Drop cookies by rounded spoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets.

3)  Bake for 10 – 12 minutes.

enjoy!

 ~ j

Cranapanana Bread

I am not a baker.  Not at all.  I've never been very good at it, and to complicate matters I now live at ~5,300' elevation.  But I had a bunch of super ripe bananas that I needed to use, so I baked up a storm last weekend (more recipes from banana baking storm to follow).  This bread was so fantastic that one of my dogs ate half of it fresh out of the oven (note:  I wanted to throttle said dog).  I combined a couple different recipes I found online to come up with what I decided to call Cranapanana Bread.  Note:  Step #5 is critical.

Ingredients:

3 large ripe bananas
3/4 cup white sugar

1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 egg
4 tbsp butter, melted and cooled
1 1/2 cup flour *
1 tsp salt 

1 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp cinnamon

1/8 tsp nutmeg
2 Granny Smith apples, chopped into small pieces

1/2 cup dried cranberries
1/2 cup chopped pecans

Cinnamon Topping:

1/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1 tbsp all purpose flour
1 tbsp softened butter
2 tsp ground cinnamon

In a bowl, stir together brown sugar, flour, softened butter and cinnamon.

Instructions:

1) Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.  Lightly grease a 9 x 5" inch loaf pan; set aside.

2) In a large bowl mash bananas.  Beat in sugars, followed by egg and butter.

3) In another bowl, stir together flour, salt, baking soda, cinnamon and nutmeg; add to banana mixture and stir just until all flour is moistened.

4) Add cranberries, apples and nuts; stir just until well mixed.  Pour batter into prepared pan.  Sprinkle cinnamon topping evenly over batter.  Bake for 55 to 60 minutes.

5) To cool, place away from edge of counter where tall dogs can reach it.

* I always use a 50/50 mixture of unbleached flour and wheat flour.  Until I moved out west, I used all wheat flour by itself, but I quickly discovered that only made baking at elevation that much more of a challenge for me.

enjoy!

~ j

yummy muffins!

7/4/11 -- I baked some cranapanana muffins tonight, and they turned out great!  I baked them for 45 minutes.  But I did use 4 bananas (rather than 3) making them more moist, so I'm not sure how that might have affected the baking time.  Here's a pic...


enjoy!
 ~ j