The Start of Something

What a month.

Insanely busy but I have been making a pant-load of good food and now have a back log of photos and recipes to share. So while I am supposed to be writing a technology project grand (read: boring), I am here instead. Besides I figured writing here might help me wax more poetic about why we need new phone lines. It could, right?

This little recipe has been sitting my desk in our newly designed and furnished office for a couple of weeks. It is on the back of a stuff on my cat desk calendar page and has a few tea rings from when it was used as a coaster. I haven't been treating it very well and that is shame, because dear reader, this is the first recipe I crafted by myself.

I am, in general, a ruler follower to a fault. I am often heard in the grocery store lamenting when the ingredients called for in the recipe I am making cannot be found. I wander aimlessly hoping that somehow they will magically appear at the end of my aisle on the fourth pass by, only to concede with an alternate ingredient.

In the interest of full disclosure this is a recipe adapted from two books, The GI Diet and Eat, Shrink and Be Merry and in fact there are some rules in baking that were the same in both recipes and I imagine are the same in all recipes of the same ilk.

Regardless, here is my recipe for Chocolate Chip Banana Bread. I had three tasters and all of them liked it. I hope you make it soon.

Chocolate Chip Banana Bread
Makes 1 Loaf

1/2 cup of whole wheat flour
1/2 cup of all purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 cup milled flax seed
1 cup mashed banana
1/4 cup Splenda Brown Sugar
3/4 cup of buttermilk (or soured milk see below)
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1/3 cup chocolate chips

1. Preheat oven to 350. Spray an 8x5 inch loaf pan with cooking spray.
2. Mix flours, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, salt and milled flax seed together in a large bowl.
3. Whisk banana, Splenda, buttermilk, eggs and vanilla together in a medium bowl.
4. Add wet ingredients to dry mixing until combined. Fold in chocolate chips.
5. Pour bread dough into the prepared loaf pan. Bake for 45 - 50 minutes.
6. Test bread to make sure a tooth pick comes out clean, remove from loaf pan and let cool on a wire rack.

*Can be stored in plastic wrap for 3 days at room temperature.

Note: If you don't have buttermilk, you can make soured milk by adding 1 tablespoon of vinegar or lemon juice to a cup of skim milk. After combining let sit for about 10 minutes and then use.