Guest Post - Amber from Quilted Euphoria

Hello all you Addicted to Recipe's readers! My name is Amber and I blog over at Quilted Euphoria. 

 Don't let the name fool you, I've got more on my blog than just quilts. I do crafts, quilting, life, and recipes! Today Dawn is letting me share an awesome recipe with you and I hope you like it! 

I married a southern boy. 

He likes southern food. Grits, greens, chicken...the whole thing. So when this midwestern girl moved down south and hubs requested banana pudding, I thought he meant banana flavored pudding. One box of instant banana pudding and a scowl from hubs later, I realized I had some learning to do on how to cook for a southerner! 

So today I'm going to share a quick easy version of good old fashioned southern banana pudding. The great thing about this recipe is how flexible the proportions are. You can adjust them up or down depending on your likes. I would recommend using both boxes of pudding and all the banana's, because if not there will be none left over! However you can cut this in half for your crowd, or double it if you feel like it! 

I also like that this is something I can whip up in ten minutes, stick it in the fridge for later and forget about it. Then after dinner, I have dessert all ready and didn't have to think about it. Easy Peasy! 

Banana Pudding

You will need: 

1/2 box vanilla wafers

2-4 bananas, cut up

1-2 boxes vanilla flavored instant pudding. 

Whip cream (optional)

 

Place a layer of vanilla wafers in the bottom of a baking dish. 

 

Slice your bananas and place on top

Mix pudding according to package directions

Pour pudding over wafers and bananas. 

Chill in the fridge for at least four hours for the wafers to "Soften up". (trust me!)

Serve with whip cream ontop. (hubs doesn't like whip cream so we just eat it as is, and its delicious!)

Thanks Dawn for letting me share with your readers today! I hope you guys all come over to the blog and say hi! I love getting new friends/visitors/stalkers! 

Peanut Butter Banana Oatmeal Squares

Here is another Pinterest find, this time from Gingerbread Bagels - her blog post spoke to me...healthy, breakfast, EASY.  And not a muffin, are you surprised??!  Ha!  I am searching for good breakfast ideas, particularly for me, so that I DO eat breakfast each morning during the morning mayhem. I need my breakfast to be quick and easy...especially with a baby and a Kindergartener in the house!

This time, we are trying out Peanut Butter Banana Oatmeal Squares.  I think these will be a hit, especially for the grown ups in the house. We shall see!  Here is the recipe:

1 1/2 cups quick oats
1/4 cup brown sugar, packed
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup milk
1 large egg, lightly beaten
1 large mashed banana
1/4 cup creamy peanut butter

Preheat oven to 350F.

In a large bowl, combine the oats, brown sugar, baking powder, salt and cinnamon.

In a smaller bowl, combine the vanilla, milk and egg, whisk together.

Add the liquids to the dry ingredients, mix together.

Add the mashed banana and peanut butter and mix well.

Pour the mixture into a prepared 8x8 baking pan (greased).  Bake for 20-25 minutes, or unti the bars are done.

Allow to cool and cut into squares.  I made mine into 16 squares.

VERDICT:
I feel like I say this a LOT, but these were a HUGE hit, especially with the 5 year old.  I think I have found a way to get him to eat oatmeal for breakfast, and an quick and easy breakfast for me!  Partner these with a smoothie or with some yogurt and fruit, and I think it's a great start to the morning.  Yay!  We shared these with our babysitters too (two teenage girls) and they both really liked them as well.  Double yay! I am inspired to try some new combinations for us.

Banana Blueberry Muffins

Muffins are always a huge hit at our house, and we are always happy to try new muffin reipes.  Or variations of recipes, because sometimes one does have to wonder, how many versions of a muffin can there really be?  Regardless, we bake a new batch of muffins roughly every 10 days.  Here is a great recipe to use up those ripe bananas, and add in some of those plentiful blueberries too!

Banana Blueberry Muffins

3 large ripe bananas

¾ cup sugar

1 large egg, slightly beaten

1/3 cup butter, melted

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

1 ½ cups flour 

1 cup blueberries, fresh or frozen

Preheat oven to 375F. 

In a small bowl, combine flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt.  Mix well.

Mash bananas in a large mixing bowl.  Add in the sugar , then egg, then the melted butter.  Add the dry ingredients to the banana mixture.  Do not over mix. 

Toss blueberries with 1 tablespoon of flour to coat.  Fold into the batter. 

Fill lined muffin cups ¾ full.  Bake for 18-20 minutes.

VERDICT:

These are ever-popular at our house.  Bananas, good.  Blueberries, good.  Muffins, good!!

Guest Post - Pamela from Pamela's Heavenly Treats

Hi friends!  If you haven't met Pamela yet, you are in for a treat!  I've been a fan of her blog for quite a while now, she makes some beautiful desserts!  I'm so happy that she is here today at Addicted to Recipes!

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Hi! My name is Pamela the lovely behind Pamela's Heavenly Treats, where I make healthy cupcakes and cookies mainly, I will dabble in other desserts if need be.  I make all my treats with 100% whole wheat flour and I have a few special ingredients that I also add to give my healthy treats that moist, delicious taste.  I am so excited to be over here at Addicted for Recipes with my wonderful friend Dawn.  Today I am going to make Cinnamon Banana Whole Wheat Mini Muffins, these muffins are so moist and delicious, this is a very simple recipe.  You can have these for breakfast or for a snack.

Ingredients

2 bananas (smashed)

2 egg whites

3 packets of Stevia

2 tbsp coconut oil

1/3 cup plain greek yogurt

1 tsp vanilla

1 cup whole wheat flour

1 tsp baking powder

3/4 tsp cinnamon

Directions

Mix all wet ingredients together, stir in your dry ingredients into the wet mixture and mix together well .  Spray muffin pan liners and fill 1/2 way, bake on 350 for 20 minutes.  Cool on wire rack.

I want to thank Dawn for allowing me to guest post on her lovely blog.  Please come and visit me at Pamela's Heavenly Treats and I also have an Etsy Shop where you can get my healthy mixes. 

Banana Oatmeal Muffins

Last month I took part in the Grow.Swap.Share blog swap hosted by My Favorite Finds and White Lights on Wednesday.  It was such a fun experience to swap blogs with another blogger, and to host someone who shared a craft with my readers.  The recipe that I shared as part of the swap was for Banana Oatmeal Muffins.  I wanted to share it with you today, just in case you missed it!
We are huge banana bread eaters in our house.  So much so, that our oldest son knows that it takes 3 bananas to make banana bread.  It's quite funny actually...sometimes he "convinces" us to save the bananas so that we can make bread.  Well this week, once again, those last 3 ripe bananas were staring at me.  But this week I was craving muffins, not banana bread, so off to the trusty cookbooks to search out a recipe.  I found one for Banana Oatmeal Muffins, here is the recipe: (Source: Company's Coming: Muffins & More)

1 1/2 cups flour
1 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt

2 eggs
1/4 cup cooking oil
1/4 cup milk
3 bananas, ripe and mashed

Preheat oven to 400F.

In a large bowl, beat eggs until frothy.  Mix in oil, milk and bananas. 

In a second bowl, mix together the flour, oats, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt.  Slowly add to the wet ingredients, mixing only to moisten.  The batter will be lumpy.  Fill lined or greased muffin cups 3/4 full.  Bake for 18-23 minutes or until muffins are done.

VERDICT:
An easy muffin to make, and very popular with my boys.  The recipe made 12 regular muffins for us and 9 mini muffins for our son - which are the perfect snacking size for him both at home and at preschool.  These didn't last long in our house, that's for sure!  As J would say, this one's a keeper!

PS...I'm also on Facebook and Twitter!

Strawberry Banana Loaf

Many of you will notice that I've commented about this before, and I will probably comment about it again...we love banana bread in our house.  So much so that our oldest son knows that it takes 3 bananas to make banana bread, so when we get down to three in the banana bowl, he often asks if we can save them to make banana bread.
 
Over the weekend we had company and the bananas didn't get eaten.  We were so busy, we just seemed to forget they were there.  Imagine how pleased my son was to discover over breakfast today that there were 3 very ripe bananas sitting in the banana bowl (it sits on our kitchen table).  "Mommy, can we make banana bread today?"  "You bet!" was my happy answer.  I love baking with my son, it's great bonding time :-)

Well, for whatever reason, I started flipping through one of my cookbooks, looking at banana recipes.  I came across one for Strawberry Banana Loaf, so I asked my son if he would be interested in trying a new kind of banana bread, and his response was quite positive...with one request, that we add some chocolate to the bread too, so away we went, making our Strawberry Banana Loaf!

Here is the recipe: (Adapted from Company's Coming: Muffins & More)

2 eggs
1/4 cup cooking oil
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup strawberries, sliced
2 ripe bananas, mashed

1 3/4 cup flour
1/2 cup rolled oats
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 350F.

In a large mixing bowl, beat eggs until frothy.  Mix in oil, sugar, bananas and strawberries.  I added the strawberries last to make sure they didn't get too mashed up in the mixer.

In a separate bowl, combine flour, oats, baking powder, baking soda and salt.  Mix thoroughly.  Slowly add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients, stirring only to moisten.  Pour into a greased loaf pan (9x5x3).

Bake for approximately 55 minutes or until toothpick inserted in centre comes out clean.  Cool slightly then remove from pan to a wire rack.

The original recipe stated to wrap well and allow to ripen for one day.  We couldn't wait that long, we waited a few hours until after dinner.  So we'll have to see tomorrow how the flavour changes!

VERDICT:
We all agreed that this was a nice change to banana bread.  A nice blend of complementary flavours (strawberry and banana - yum!) and I love the addition of the oats.  I did add some chocolate chips along to top on 1/4 of the loaf for our oldest son, and he was a big fan of that addition too.  This one is a keeper, we will be making it again, especially with strawberry season upon us!

Green Monster Smoothie - Crazy Cooking Challenge

It's that time again, time for the Crazy Cooking Challenge!  This month, our task was to make a smoothie...any smoothie we wanted, we just had to find it from another blog.  After some thinking about what I wanted to try in a smoothie, and a little bit of searching, I finally found a new recipe to try - the Green Monster Smoothie, courtesy of Two Peas & Their Pod.  I did amend the recipe slightly from the original.  Here is how I prepared the recipe:

Green Monster Smoothie
1 large orange, peeled and segmented
1/2 large banana, broken into chunks
6 large strawberries, sliced
1 cup spinach
1/2 cup plain Greek yogurt
1/2 cup 1% milk
6 ice cubes


I used our Bullet as our blender died and we haven't yet replaced it.  So, I prepared all of the ingredients, and divided them equally between two bullet cups.  I blended each drink, garnished with some orange and strawberry, and served.  Easy breezy!

VERDICT:
We enjoyed this smoothie, and I must admit, I think it perked me up more that my usual morning cup of coffee.  All the fresh fruit and the spinach, tasted great together.  The Bullet did leave som orange chunks in the smoothie which was about the only down side to this challenge!

Banana Peanut Butter Chocolate Crunch Bread

Banana bread is a hot commodity in our house.  We all love it, we all fight over that first slice (the chef gets the first slice)...and one of the submissions to this week`s Scrumptious Sunday left me inspired to try something new with our banana bread.  Thanks Like Mother, Like Daughter for inspiring me to try something new!  I probably would have tried their banana blueberry bread if blueberries were in season (I will try the recipe later this year!), but instead I went to my trusty piles of recipes to see what I could find.  I found one that is full of all sorts of goodness - bananas (of course!), coconut, chocolate, and then I added in some extra goodness, peanut butter chips and walnuts.  Here is my recipe:

Topping:
1/2 cup flaked unsweetened coconut
1/4 cup brown sugar, packed
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon flour

Combine all the topping ingredients in a small bowl and set aside.

Bread:
1/3 cup oil (vegetable, coconut, etc)
3/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 eggs
3 ripe, mashed bananas
1 3/4 cups flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup walnuts
3/4 cup mixed white chocolate chips, peanut butter chips and chocolate chips (use whatever ratio you wish -  I used mostly white chocolate and peanut butter chips)

Preheat oven to 325F.

In a small bowl, combine flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt.  Set aside.

In a large bowl, mix together oil, sugar, vanilla and eggs.  Add in bananas and stir until well mixed.  Add flour mixture.  Add 1/2 cup of the white chocolate/peanut butter/chocolate chips.  Pour intogreased bread pan (8" x 4"). Top with remaining 1/4 cup of chips and cover with coconut topping.

Bake in centre of oven for about 70 minutes, or until toothpick comes out clean.  Cool in the pan, on a rack.  Enjoy!

VERDICT:
Everyone enjoyed this bread, it was a nice change to our usual, everyday banana bread.  Though my husband said there could be less chocolate (my chip ratio was about 1/2 peanut butter chips, 1/4 white/chocolate chips)...but then again, he claims to not like chocolate ;-)  My oldest son said that he didn't like the walnuts.  But they both keep eating the bread, so I'm taking that sign as one that they do like it!  I found the coconut topping too messy for my preference, and will probably reduce the coconut to 1/4 cup for the topping and would consider mixing some coconut into the bread to see how that tastes!  Next time!

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Banana Caramel Cream Pie

I thought it was about time I posted a dessert recipe!  This afternoon I thought I would whip up a little pie for tonight's dessert.  I had bananas on hand, and my husband loves banana anything.  He also loves caramel, so I decided to throw together a little pie that had both banana and caramel.  Really easy, really light and of course, tasty.  There are a few parts to the recipe, and it might seem like a lot when you read it, but there is nothing too hard and the pie really took very little time at all to whip together.  Here is the recipe:

Graham Cracker Crust

1 1/4 cup  graham cracker crumbs
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1/4 cup melted butter

Combine crumbs, brown sugar and butter in a pie plate. Press firmly into plate.  Bake in 350F oven for 8 minutes.  Cool before adding fillings.

Caramel Sauce
1/4 cup butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup whipping cream

In a small saucepan, melt butter over medium heat.  Reduce to low and add brown sugar.  Simmer on low for 5 minutes, stirring constantly, until sugar and butter are completely incorporated.

Add the whipping cream and let cook (on low), for another 5 minutes. Stirring constantly.  Once done, turn off heat and allow the caramel sauce to start to thicken.

Vanilla Pudding
Feel free to use whatever version of vanilla pudding that you prefer.  Because I was doing this on the fly, I only had Jello Instant Vanilla Pudding in the cupboard, so that's what I used!

Whipping Cream
I don't use any measurements when I make whipping cream, just a little of this, a lot of that.
Whipping cream
Vanilla (to taste)
Sugar (to taste)

Pour whipping cream into deep metal bowl.  Whip with electric mixer on high until the cream starts to thicken.  Add a little vanilla and sugar.  Continue whipping until you attain your desired consistency. 

Note: Be sure to put your deep metal bowl and beaters into the fridge or freezer for at least 15 minutes prior to whipping the cream.  Just makes the job that much easier! 

And finally, put it all together!!

Banana Caramel Cream Pie

2 bananas

Line cooled pie crust with cut bananas (you'll probably use 1.5-2 bananas, depending on the size of your pie plate).  Drizzle the cooling caramel sauce over the bananas.  Pour/spoon the vanilla pudding on top of the bananas and caramel sauce.  Top with whipped cream.  Store in fridge.  Enjoy!

VERDICT:
Hubby had two pieces for dessert, that's always a good sign! It was a nice, light dessert and easy to make!

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