Christmas Baking: Apple Butter Banana Bread!

As most of my friends should have gotten their packages today (or will be tomorrow), I can share with you my Apple Butter Banana Bread and how you can use it as gifts! The recipe is super simple, and you could make the recipe as one large 9x5 loaf, or you can make it as three mini-loaves (3x5 pans). If you're making the one loaf, just add 10 minutes to the baking time.

For all the loaves I was making, I made five batches of the recipe, and after doing it twice, I didn't even have to keep looking at the recipe since I pretty much had it memorized at that point!

Start by combining 1.5 cups of flour, 1.5 teaspoons baking powder, half a teaspoon cinnamon, 1/4 teaspoon baking soda, 1/4 teaspoon salt, and 1/8 teaspoon nutmeg in a large bowl. Once it's mixed well together, make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients and set the bowl aside.

Then in a medium-sized bowl, mash two bananas until they're smooth, yet slightly lumpy.

Then you add two eggs (slightly beaten), 3/4 cup sugar, 1/4 cup canola oil, and 1/2 cup apple butter. I love WhiteHouse, but any kind you want to use will be good (if I had time, I would have gone to the farmers market because fresh homemade apple butter is amazing!).

After mixing all these ingredients together (without over mixing), then you pour the wet ingredients into the well of the dry ingredients.

Obviously it overflows past the well, but by doing the well, it makes it a little easier to mix together. I used a wooden spoon this whole time, there is no need to use a hand mixer or anything for this. You'll want to mix the wet ingredients with the dry just until everything is combined. You definitely don't want to over mix!

Then, after spraying my mini loaf pans with Baker's Joy (the best baking spray to make sure things don't stick!), I poured in the batter, about half to two-thirds full.

I baked the loaves for 35 minutes at 350 degrees. This was the perfect amount of baking time, but always check your loaves before taking them out by sticking a knife or toothpick in them and making sure it comes out clean.

After letting the loaves cool on an wire rack in the pans for 10 minutes, I popped them out of the pan and let them finish cooling all the way.

One tip I would give, is even though this recipe makes three mini loaves, if you have any intention of making more than one batch, have six pans. That way, as soon as you take one batch out, you can put another batch in, rather than waiting for the breads to cool and then reusing those pans. It'll save you a lot of unnecessary oven time!

I finished off the Christmas packages by wrapping each cooled loaf in clear plastic wrap, and then tied a Christmas-themed ribbon around the loaf!

It's nothing fancy, but I like the festivity of it!

I love my new tradition of sending my friends baked goods for Christmas (last year I sent different types of cookies) and mixing up what I send them! 

Thanksgiving Baking

Yesterday was one of the biggest eating holidays there is. With all the turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, macaroni and cheese, rolls, and deviled eggs, you end the day pretty stuffed. BUT you can't forget about dessert!

The classic Thanksgiving dessert is pumpkin pie. This year, I decided to do a different take on it, and made apple butter pumpkin pie! Everyone knows how much I love apple butter, and that plus pumpkin? How can you go wrong? You can't! I've made this recipe in the past, so I was looking forward to making it again.

Now, I suck at making pie crusts, and until I get a food processor, I refuse to try again. So instead, I did cheat and used pre-made pie crusts. I used a 9inch pie pan, and laid the crust into the pan, and attempted to crimp the edges. It didn't work too well, but it's good enough.

Then, in a bowl, I combined one can of pumpkin, half a cup of apple butter, half a cup of brown sugar, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, 1/4 teaspoon salt, and 1/8 teaspoon ground cloves.

I then slightly beat 2 eggs and another egg yolk to add into the bowl of ingredients.

After the eggs are combined into the other ingredients, I stirred in half a cup of whipping cream.

Once the cream was completely combined, I poured the filling into the crust. I then used strips of aluminum foil to cover the crust for the first half of baking so that it wouldn't burn.

I baked the pie for 20 minutes at 375 degrees, and then took the aluminum foil off, and baked for another 35 minutes.

The apple butter gave the pie a deeper color, which I loved. And it also mutes the pumpkin so it's not overly pumpkin and makes it a tad sweeter, and adds in an extra spice flavor. I loved it!

I also made my usual sugar cookies! These cookies are great because they're not overly sugary.

First you combine four cups of flour with two teaspoons of baking powder and set aside.

Then in your mixer, cream 3/4 cup butter that's been softened to room temperature with 1.5 cups of sugar.

You want to have it mix for a couple minutes until it's light and fluffy. Then add 2 eggs and 2 teaspoons vanilla.

Once that's all mixed together, you add in the flour mixture in thirds to create the dough!

Now, once again, I had dry dough on my hands. There was no way in it's current state I'd be able to form the dough, roll it out, and cut it into shapes. So I used my handy water trick and added in about half a cup of water. This helped bring it to the perfect consistency! Once the dough was formed, I rolled it out in sections (making sure to flour the counter and my rolling pin so that it wouldn't stick), and cut out some cookies! I decided to go with the leaf cookie cutter seeing as how it is the fall.

You don't have to spread the cookies very far from each other on the cookie sheet, because they don't spread out or get much bigger in the oven.

I baked each batch for about 10 minutes at 350 degrees until they were a perfect light golden on the bottom. It's been pretty exact baking every time I make them, so I don't even really have to check them.

The frosting is super simple, I just use confectioner's sugar and water. I don't have any exact measurements for this, I just add more confectioner's sugar to make it thicker, or more water to thin it out. I just used a spoon to frost the cookies, and I did leave some without frosting in case that's what people preferred.

It was some long baking but definitely worth it. There was something very calming about rolling out cookie dough (totally strange, but I think it's a good sign that I picked the right hobby if it makes me feel that way). And the leftover pie in my fridge is totally worth it!