Lemon-y Banana Bread

 

If you're anything like me you always buy too many bananas! I mean, don't get me wrong, my kids do love the things but for some reason there's always 2 or 3 left on my counter attracting fruit flies. Also, as soon as my kids see the slightest bit of black on it they think it's yucky.
   So, I'm constantly looking for ways to use up those poor soldiers while avoiding the same-old same-old Banana Bread.
   This one turned out great! The tangy-ness of the lemon andbthe sweetness of the banana went well together, and I also added walnuts for that added crunch!


{Recipe}
Lemon-y Banana Bread

-Crumb Topping
1/2 cup cold butter, cubed
1/2 cup brown sugar

-Loaf
3 large ripe bananas
1/4 cup soft butter or margarine
1 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
2 large eggs, beaten.
1/2 cup crushed walnuts

- Lemon Sauce
Juice of half a lemon
1/4 cup sugar
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Preheat your oven to 350 C and grease your bundt pan well. Cube cold butter and add to bottom of pan. Crumble brown sugar on top of butter.
In a medium sized bowl mash bananas with a fork. In seperate bowl cream butter and sugar well. Add in mashed banana and eggs and beat together again.
Sift togther flour, baking soda, and salt. Add in banana mixture and combine with a wooden spoon. Add in walnuts.
Pour in prepared bundt pan and bake 50 mins to 1 hour. Remove from oven and check with a cake tester or toothpick, it should come out clean.
{Meanwhile in a small saucepan, heat the lemon juice and sugar over medium heat and bring to a boil}
Use your toothpick to puncture holes all over your cake and pour lemon sauce over cake and let seep into holes.
Set on cooling rack for about a half hour until cool enough to handle. Turn upside down onto platter and tap gently to release cake.
Voila!! Not so 'same-old' :) Enjoy!!

Celebrate Chinese New Year with VH Sauces {Giveaway @ My Organized Chaos}]

Enter Here

Ends Feb 10/2012

What We Made Today.

Lately while at the grocery store, my kids have been asking for bananas. I don't know if it's because they're drawn into the big huge display of nice bunches of yellow bananas or what but they NEVER eat them. Little sister A used to eat them when she was a baby a lot, so much so that she would become constipated. But now, they sit on my counter and turn black; and every time I'm left wondering why in the heck I bought bananas again!

So what do you do when  your bananas are going bad? - Make banana bread of course!
I know I could have let them get a little blacker but I was craving banana bread so bad I had to make them!

We found the recipe here from food.com {formally recipezaar}

The loafs turned out very well and VERY moist! I can never make a recipe without changing something so here are my personal variations.

• I added half the amount of sugar {probably could of even used none}
• used half the amount of canola oil
• added 1 tsp pumpkin pie spice {could of put 2}
• used milk/vinegar instead of buttermilk
• forgot to put in nuts

I was going to freeze one of these loafs so I wouldn't eat so much but my hunnie said "don't worry I'll take one to the shop, I'll have no problem getting rid of it!" So that was that, I don't have to worry about the extra carbs. :)

Happy baking,

Home-made Laundry Soap.

The other day I was blog hopping and came across Home Sweet Farm's blog and she had an awesome recipe for home-made laundry soap that I knew I had to try. Living in the middle of no-where, groceries are expensive. Especially the big cleaning products like laundry soap. So how could I pass on an awesome recipe like this one? It's very basic which I like and very inexpensive, most people will have all the ingredients in their house.

The ingredients are:

1 bar soap.

1 cup borax.
1 cup baking soda.


I bought the Sunlight pure soap so I would have that "lemony laundry" scent. But you can use whatever you want. Or you could be extemely crafty and use home-made soap ;)








Basically all I did was grab my grater (you could also use a food processor) and grate away until the soap was all finely grated. I figured I should try to grate as fine as possible to avoid any chunks not dissolving in the wash.

Finally I had big sister dump in a cup each of baking soda and borax and she stirred away until it resembled powder laundry soap!

I am so in love with this! You can use 1 or 2 tbsp(s) depending on how big/dirty your load is. I kept the soap in it the bowl I made it in and just put an air-tight lid on it. I had an extra 1/8 cup (2 tbsps)  measure that I threw in there and it's works great and is incredibly easy to use. I recommend trying this recipe for sure, it'll be worth your while! :)

                                              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Wednesday Blog Hops

Happy Wednesday Everyone! Have a great day :) :) :)

What We Made Today.





It was a baking kind of day today. I had been thinking about it for a few days now, and I finally got around to making some yummy desserts.


The Nanaimo Bars were calling me! 

And of course, big sister needed Chocolate Chip Cookies.

We had a lot of fun and the kids really enjoyed "helping" Mommy. :)

They even helped with the washing up!



Also, today I found a really cool recipe for home-made laundry soap that I'm going to be trying out. You can find it at Home Sweet Farm's blog here.

I'll let ya'll now how it goes, I'm really excited about maybe not having to spend so much on laundry detergent. Ugh, that stuff can get expensive.

'Till tomorrow, Happy Monday! :)