Mini Banana Bread Loaves: An Exercise in Portion Control

I would consider myself skilled in various things, but portion control is not one of them. Hubby and I are on an Anti-Atkins diet, high carb movement: we go to restaurants and not only finish the bread basket, but ask for more. For kicks, try doing this in Miami where the waitress only looks at you quizzically, not sure whether you're joking and finally asks "you're not from around here, huh?!" Because of our lack of self-restraint, I've come to love my mini loaf pan. You get your own little loaf (since I never want to share my sweets), and after eating one, its at least satisfying enough to hold you out for the rest of the afternoon. Oh, and if anyone else uses a pan like this, please share your wisdom on how to clean it. It's stumped me for years. :)Though I have a file full of banana bread recipes I would like to try out, I must sadly admit my pantry is nearly empty so i went with an old standby from Cooking Light. There's no bells and whistles to this recipe, but its quick and comes out delicious every time. When I can, I would LOVE to try this recipe from delicious days' blog.

But for now, here's the old classic.
*If you're wondering, the red speck above is from a loaf I experimented with blueberries added. I prefer without.

Classic Banana Bread

Ingredients

2 cups all-purpose flour

3/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 /2 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup butter, softened

2 large eggs (I've substituted 2 egg whites and 1 whole egg)

1 1/2 cups mashed ripe banana (about 3 bananas)

1/3 cup plain or vanilla low-fat yogurt

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Cooking spray

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 350°. Lightly spoon flour into dry measuring cups; level with a knife. Combine the flour, baking soda, and salt, stirring with a whisk.
Place sugar and butter in a large bowl, and beat with a mixer at medium speed until well blended (about 1 minute). Add the eggs, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Add banana, yogurt, and vanilla; beat until blended. Add flour mixture; beat at low speed just until moist. Spoon batter into an 8 1/2 x 4 1/2-inch loaf pan coated with cooking spray. Bake at 350° for 1 hour 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.

**Kitchen Note: to make these into mini loaves, I baked at 350 for approximately 30-35 minutes.

Dress Up Your Wine

...literally. How absolutely adorable are these kimono wine holders? I received these as a gift and they instantly made me smile. The little man has a hair braid and his lady friend looks slender in her slim fitting 2 piece kimono. I am not sure where my gift giver purchased these but I did a quick search on google and found a similar (though not quite the same) item here. I can't find any with the man's beanie top, though!

I think these make adorable hostess gifts. imagine getting a bottle of wine in a kimono instead of the boring gift bags they're usually adorned in. I'm in love with his braid so I tried to take another picture. These really don't even do them justice.

Food and Family

How beautiful is this?!

I'm out of town for the week, so I haven't been able to post any recipes that I've made but I thought this would be an appropriate post with the upcoming Chinese New Year's on 2/7 - a celebration of family, new beginnings, and best of all- food.

In my family, serving food (in copious amounts!) has always been a sign of love, caring...and a good host. This has been so ingrained into my thinking that I cannot stand to have someone in my house that does not have a full belly! The photo above was taken during a family visit in Indonesia. Because we were visitors, it was only natural that we would be greeted with food gifts by all those stopping by to say hello. Needless to say, in those few weeks, I sampled more exotic desserts than my stomach could handle. Small desserts such as those in the photo are called "kue." Wikipedia provides more insight on these delightful treats:

the most common flavouring ingredients are coconut cream, grated coconut, pandan leaves and gula melaka or palm sugar.
While those make the flavor of kue, their base and texture are built on a group of starches – rice flour, glutinous rice flour, glutinous rice and tapioca. Two other common ingredients are tapioca flour and green bean (mung bean) flour (sometimes called "green pea flour" in certain recipes). They play a most important part in giving kue their distinctive soft, almost pudding-like, yet firm texture.

There are not too many Indonesian bakeries in the United States, although you can find Thai or Malaysian groceries often carry variations of kue. If you are adventurous, here's a picture of one of my favorite desserts that you can sometimes find in Asian grocery stores that carry fresh foods. Kue Lapis ("layered cake") is traditionally a steamed cake consisting of alternating layers - each layer is steamed separately for about 10 minutes! The green coloring usually comes from a pandan paste (or food coloring). While it's translated as 'cake' kue lapis tastes nothing like what you'd associate cake textures with. Rather, its somehow a cross between jello, pudding and tapioca balls :) As a child, I'd eat these strip by strip!