Sugar Free Banana Bread / Cake for Baby Birthday

 So, uh, I don't think I ever really mentioned this specifically, but I have a child now.  And to my surprise, trying to keep [processed] sugar out of a baby's diet is not that easy.  Everything has sugar.  Even when you google "baby birthday cake" or "smash cake" or "sugar free baby cake" the options are limited and often have "alternative" sugars like stevia or monkfruit or whatever other nonsense.

With some research, I found a recipe that worked for us and that has since been approved by multiple babies AND adults.  Because I'm very anti-waste when it comes to food, I did not like the idea of giving my baby a huge cake and having a bunch of crumbs / messy food that wouldn't actually get eaten.  So I decided to make the "cake" in a mini muffin tin.  It actually works great, because you can cut off the muffin top and build a tiny little layer cake with "frosting."

This recipe made 24 mini muffins and a little 4 inch round cake (which was actually just me trying to use the extra batter).  It keeps well at room temperature for at least 2 days, but probably longer.  In the fridge, it's great for at least 3 days.  I can't speak beyond that because the cake is all gone now.

You'll find that this recipe is basically a banana bread.  If you double the recipe, it should be enough for at least two 6 inch rounds if you want to make a bigger layer cake (according to the original recipe I edited).

You'll notice that this has a good amount of "flavoring agents," aka lemon, cinnamon and vanilla.  That's because I believe that baby food should be flavorful and tasty, and that exposing our kids to strong flavors early in their life helps develop their palates and hopefully result in less picky eaters.  

You can also just use this recipe as an easy way to use ripe bananas when you have no eggs and want to avoid sugar.

Banana Baby Cake

• 2 very ripe bananas (it doesn't matter what size, baking science is not that exact)
• 3 tablespoons butter*
• 1/4 cup full fat oatmilk (what I used) OR breastmilk, regular milk, etc.
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice
• 1.5 teaspoons vanilla extract
• Full 3/4 cup flour (I did not sift or level, just scooped)
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350F.  Melt your butter in the microwave.  Get a pastry brush and butter your mini muffin tin.  Use the remaining butter for the cake; it should be more than 2 tablespoons.  Alternatively you can use spray oils for your pan and just melt 2.5 tablespoons of butter for your cake.

Combine all the first 5 ingredients in a food processor / blender: peeled bananas, butter, milk, lemon juice, and vanilla.  Blend / puree until it's all smooth.

Pause and add your flour, baking powder, baking soda, and cinnamon.  Take a little spatula and stir gently so that the flour is a little bit incorporated.  This just stops it from exploding / splattering all over the place when you turn on your blender.  You can skip if you don't mind flour particles in the air.

Pulse blend several times until all combined and smooth.  People are overly anxious about overmixing. You won't; it's fine.

Pour into the mini muffin tin.  I recommend using a standard cookie dough scoop for this.  One scoop per well.

Bake at 350 minutes for 10 minutes.  If you're making a 4 or 6 inch cake, bake for 20-25 minutes.

Allow the cake to cool before frosting.

PB Frosting 

Combine 2-4 tsp of natural creamy peanut butter with a roughly equivalent amount of heavy whipping cream, slowly. Once the mixture is smooth, add 1 cup of cold heaving whipping cream and beat on high till stiff peaks form.  Keep refrigerated until use.

I prefer using a no salt, no sugar, no other additives peanut butter, but you can obviously use anything.  You could also just use plain whipped cream as frosting, no PB, but I like using common allergens because exposure helps decrease incidence of allergies.  Also you can easily replace with sunbutter or almond butter.

Amish Friendship Bread

 During high school, this recipe made the rounds with all my friends' moms.  It was called Amish Friendship bread, and it involved this milk, sugar, flour starter that sat on your counter, got fed occasionally, and then got baked into this delicious cinnamon "bread", which really was more of a cake, and inevitably got shared with everyone during whatever events it was that required moms to bake.

Eventually, everyone got tired of feeding their starter and the "bread" disappeared from my life.  But I still remembered it.

Then, magically, during this pandemic, it resurfaced in my Buy Nothing groups (which, if you haven't heard of them, I encourage you to google it and then join your local one).  I got my hands on a starter and I just baked off my first batch this weekend.  It was love all over again.

I had a heck of a hard time finding consistent recipes, so here's me using this blog again for my own record keeping.

Day 1: Do nothing. This is the date that you receive the bag of starter (or the date that you make your own batch of starter / Day 10). Squish the bag.
Day 2: Squish the bag.
Day 3: Squish the bag.
Day 4: Squish the bag.
Day 5: Squish the bag.
Day 6: Add to the bag – 1 cup flour, 1 cup sugar, 1 cup milk.  Squish the bag.
Day 7: Squish the bag.
Day 8: Squish the bag.
Day 9: Squish the bag.
Day 10: Baking/Feeding Day.  Pour the entire contents of the starter bag into a non-metal bowl and add: *1½ cups of flour, 1½ cups of sugar, 1½ cups of milk.  Set aside any starter you will bake with.  Divide the remaining starter into 1 cup portions in separate ziplock bags.


Amish Bread Recipe (Day 10 Baking Instructions)
1 cup starter
3 eggs
½ neutral oil
1 cup sugar
1 cup milk
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
2 cups flour
Optional: 1 large (5 ounce) box vanilla instant pudding mix (just the dry mix)
Topping: 1/4 cup of sugar + 1 teaspoon cinnamon

Combine the ingredients in the ways normal people combine ingredients for baking.
Top with sugar mix.
Bake at 350F for 50 minutes.

This made two not very tall loaves for me, so next time I will put all of this batter into one loaf pan.  Also this tastes great with berries baked into the middle!

*Note about Day 10: This is what I read online and it seemed like too much stuff.  So I experimented with only giving it 1 cup of each.  Now I'm waiting to see if I've messed up.

Plum Torte Cake Buckle Heavenly Thing

Write this recipe down on a little sheet of paper and put it on your fridge.  That's what I did.  After I had already made it twice.  Now, that I've made it five times in the span of about two weeks, I can pat myself on the back and say, smart girl, you are.  This is one for the books.

This recipe - which I didn't even know was famous, but apparently, it is - is worth the hype, even if you didn't know it had any hype.  The plums (or peaches, or nectarines... really this is the easiest recipe ever to alter) bake up into these delicious sweet/tart pockets of jam that perfectly complement the light, fragrant, moist crumb of this cake.  Torte.  Buckle.  Heavenly thing, whatever you want to call it.

I can't say much more about this because I have already rambled on too much, but it's so easy to make, you might as well make two, because you're turning on your oven anyway, and you'll regret it if you don't.  Slice the extra one and store the slices in little ziplock baggies in the freezer.  Pull out anytime you need a snack or want to add an extra treat to someone's (aka your own, if you live alone, like I do) lunch.

Bring this to any birthday party, baby shower, picnic, or dinner party and it'll be a hit.  It's easy, elegant, and requires no additional side servings of whipped cream, coffee, or ice cream to be a hit.  But what the heck, it doesn't hurt to add them if you want.

As if typical of me, I took no pictures of this cake any of the times I made it, and now I am sitting in my apartment without enough eggs to make another cake in order to take a picture of it, so the lovely illustration above was done by yours truly for the benefit of whoever is reading this.  I hope you appreciate my artist representation.  If you want pretty pictures of this torte, go here, which the blog where I actually got the idea to make this recipe.

Heavenly Plum Thing

barely adapted from Marian Burro's recipe

½ cup salted butter, softened

¾ cup sugar

2 large eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract (optional, but why leave it out?)

1 cup unbleached all purpose flour, sifted

1 teaspoon baking powder

Pinch of salt  (not optional)

3-5 large plums or peaches, or 8-12 small plums (really just use your judgement here, this isn't hard)

1-2 teaspoons raw sugar (optional)

1 teaspoon cinnamon

Preheat your oven to 350F.

Cream the sugar and butter in a bowl.

Add the salt, eggs, and vanilla and beat well.  Let it all get very fluffy.

Add the flour and baking powder, and mix well.

Spoon the batter into a spring form of 8 or 9 inches.

Place the plum halves skin side up on top of the batter. Sprinkle lightly with cinnamon and raw sugar.

Bake one hour, approximately.

Remove and cool.

Eat.  Enjoy.

Repeat as many times as necessary.

Ken's Artisan Bakery and Portland

If there's anything you surely must know about me, it's that I am a dessert person.  Above all else (except, maybe, sleep), I love sweets.
So when I started looking up places to eat in Portland and I heard about Ken's Artisan Bakery and the croissants, macarons, and other pastries that come out of their ovens, I knew that I had to go.
In fact, on my first day in Portland, this was the first place I went to start my morning.  It was a great decision.  Friendly service, yummy pastries, good food, and reasonable prices.  I had no complaints!

I walked in at around 10ish on a Friday morning, and many of the tables were taken. I took that as a good sign. I lingered near the cash register for a while, debating what to drink and what goodies to try. I apologized for not being able to make up my mind, but the man behind the counter was really patient with me.  I ended up ordering an Oregon croissant, a blood orange macaron, and a cafe latte (as per the suggestion of the man behind the counter).

I settled down at one of the empty tables I managed to snag to enjoy my breakfast. The coffee wasn't that strong and wasn't that hot, so I didn't really enjoy it much, but that might also be because lattes aren't normally my thing and this place obviously isn't a coffeeshop. On to the sweet stuff!
The Oregon croissant has marionberries baked into the flakey pastry, and its flecked with sugar crystals, which add a nice combination of soft tartness and sweet crunch. I polished this off quickly, and I liked it so much, I ended up coming back to the bakery before I left the city to buy two more to keep me company on my travels home. The croissant is the perfect breakfast since it isn't too sweet.

The blood orange macaron I ordered was also delicious. The candied kumquat on top added a perfect little bit of acidity to offset the sweetness, and the texture of both the macaron itself and the filling were perfect.

I also decided to eat lunch here with my friend G, who lives in the city.  We both went with their lunch deal, which is either a half soup or half salad with a half sandwich combo.  G. went with salad and sandwich while I went with soup and sandwich.  For a mere $8, I had an egg salad sandwich and white bean soup. Both were delicious. The soup was warm, hearty, and perfectly seasoned. It was great for a drizzly day. The egg salad sandwich was well balanced - egg wasn't chopped too small, there wasn't an overwhelming amount of mayo, and there was just a slight bite from the mustard. The bread they used was sturdy but not heavy, and I liked their plating with the edible violet.
If I lived in the area, I think this would be my go-to spot for sweets and lazy day lunches.

Custard-Filled Corn Bread

A good recipe for both Thanksgiving and Christmas — or really anytime of the year when it's cold outside and you want comfort food — is corn bread.  I love corn bread.  It is filling, sweet, savory, and cornmeal gives the bread a lovely texture that is both crumbly and cake-y.

This cornbread is everything you're looking for. When it comes out of the oven, it has beautifully crispy edges and a soft and delicate crumb.  What sets this apart from other corn bread recipes though is the moist interior... the creamy and luscious custard layer.  When it is cold, from the fridge, the creamy custard layer is like a savory icing, inside of a corn bread cake.  I wish I could describe it better.  I only know that after Thanksgiving, when I went Black Friday shopping with my mom and my sister, I kept thinking about how I wanted to go home and eat this cornbread for lunch.  It's that good.

The Best Banana Bread You'll Ever Taste

This is the stuff, my friends.  Look at it.  Moist, dark, full of flavor.  Well, you can't tell the last thing just by looking at the picture, but I assure you it is true.  This banana bread has rum, dark chocolate, caramelized sugar, and deep vanilla and warm spice tones.  What more could you ask for?
It is delicious sliced cold with a glass of milk for breakfast.  It tastes good fresh out of the oven, and it tastes even better on the second day, once the flavors have really melded together in the fridge.  This is breakfast, lunch, afternoon snack, dessert... heck, you can have this for dinner.

One-quarter cup of rum and one full tablespoon of vanilla extract go towards making this the most flavorful banana bread I've ever eaten.  The salt also rounds out the flavor of the banana and the dark chocolate chips that are studded throughout the bread elevate this to the status of heavenly.

The first time I made this recipe I actually forgot to count how many cups of flour I had put into the batter so I wasn't sure if it was 2 cups or 3 cups.  The batter seemed liquidy in the pan, but when it finished baking, it had a lovely bread-pudding texture that I absolutely adored.  The second time I made this, I actually used the right amount of flour and I got a true banana bread.  I actually prefer the bread-pudding results, but it's a personal preference thing, so both ratios are included below.

Monkey Bread

When I bake or cook with my friends, I have a tendency to keep things simple.  Even though it is, most of the time, me just cooking with my friends around me watching, I don't like making things unnecessarily complicated, should someone want to help out.  Hence, our desserts together are often from cake mix, which I spice up a little bit with espresso powder, cocoa powder, cinnamon, or rum (among other things).  This time, I decided to go with an incredibly easy childhood classic: monkey bread.

For those of you that never had monkey bread growing up, it's like cinnamon buns, but easier.  In other words, this stuff is sweet, addictive, unhealthy, and will make your house (or apartment) smell like heaven.  It is everything you shouldn't eat, combined together, and baked to form a gooey, buttery, fluffy mess.

I learned this recipe from my cousin, who got it from her school, which was the only school in our county that still taught Home Ec. when we were growing up.  We used to make it during sleepovers.  Eating it the other night brought back great memories of my middle school days.

Warm monkey bread, a glass of cold milk, and a couple great friends: happiness can be so simple.

Buttermilk Biscuits with Rosemary and Thyme

I love how the name of this recipe just rolls off the tongue: buttermilk biscuits.

I probably sound like a broken record now, always calling my recipes versatile and easy to make, but this one definitely is.

Why do I keep stressing this idea of simplicity? Because I recognize that the reason why a lot of people don't develop a love of cooking is because of this idea that cooking is a long and complicated process that involves special kitchenware or tools. This isn't true though.

I bake all the time, and yet I don't keep yeast in my kitchen, ever, and I don't own biscuit cutters. I try to only buy things that I use often. My kitchen has one kind of flour: all purpose flour. I have a food processor and a mixer and that's about as fancy as I get with my kitchen gadgets. I love to cook, but I never see any reason to go out and buy special ingredients or tools/gadgets. So I try to keep things simple. For my sake and yours.

These biscuits are great free form biscuits. meaning they require no rolling out of the dough, and you don't need to run out and purchase biscuits cutters. The recipe is also very novice-friendly and forgiving.

It's great to make if you have friends over, and especially good for children. One key thing that I think helps make this recipe fairly difficult to mess up is this: freezing the butter. I know that sounds weird, but really if you take your butter and cut it into fairly small chunks you can handle the dough for a long period of time without worrying about any negative consequences (e.g. cakey or tough biscuits). Freezing butter when making biscuits and pie doughs is important because it keeps the butter cold and the cold pieces of butter distributed throughout your biscuit dough are what helps to make your biscuit flaky during baking.

This biscuit recipe is also a great recipe for anyone who wants biscuits but doesn't want to have to plan a special trip to the grocery store just to make some biscuits.

You don't even need to have buttermilk on hand! (I've actually never bought buttermilk) Just get some milk and some lemon juice (or lime juice) following the ratio below, combine, and allow to sit at room temperature and you've got beautiful buttermilk. And yes, don't worry, there are suppose to be those curds forming.

As for flavoring of the biscuits, you can really mix things up. I used rosemary and thyme, but you could make oregano biscuits, tarragon biscuits, cheese biscuits (although you'll want to decrease the salt in the recipe then), ham biscuits, onion and sage biscuits, whatever floats your boat.

So, without further ado, a biscuit recipe from me to you.

Buttermilk Biscuits with Rosemary and Thyme
adapted from Dot’s Diner

275g all purpose flour (scant 3 cups)
2 tsp sugar
4 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
¾ cup (1½ sticks) chilled unsalted butter, cut into small chunks
½ tsp thyme
1 tsp rosemary
1 cup buttermilk (scant cup milk + juice from ½ lemon)
2 tbsp melted butter (optional)

Mix flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and baking soda in large bowl. Finely chop rosemary and thyme and mix to combine.

Preheat oven to 425°F.

Using fingertips, rub the chilled butter into dry ingredients until mixture resembles coarse meal. Add buttermilk and stir until evenly moistened.

Form biscuits using approximately 1/4 cup dough for each. Biscuits don’t spread too much in the oven, so 1-2 inches of space between biscuits should be fine.

Optional: decorate with a small bunch of rosemary. Brush with butter.

Bake until biscuits are golden, about 15 minutes. Serve warm.

Makes 12-13 biscuits.

Note: If freezing your butter, you only need to toss it in the freezer about 15-20 minutes ahead of time.

Chocolate Chip Banana Bread

I think that by the time you reach your mid twenties, if you're a baker, you must have a banana bread recipe. It's just one of those things, kind of like how everyone has a way in which they like their salad.

Well, here's how I like my banana bread: nut-free, fat-free (you read that right), moist, filled with chocolate chips, and covered with a beautiful cinnamon sugar crust. In fact, now that I've got this recipe, I no longer feel the need to try any other banana bread recipes, because this one is the one. It's like they say: sometimes, you just know.

And the great thing about this recipe is that it is very forgiving. I appreciate forgiving recipes. This is not because I am a klutz in the kitchen, but because no one wants cooking or baking to be a stressful activity. It's supposed to be relaxing. Forgiving recipes help you relax.

This recipe is especially nice because it is flexible in terms of the star ingredient: the banana. I have made this many times, and it seems that this bread works just as well with two bananas as it does with three bananas, or five; just scale up or down. The ripeness of your banana also doesn't seem to be a huge factor in the quality of the final product, so if you're a little impatient and can't wait for your bananas to get that spotted black, really ripe look (the paper bag trick never seems to work as quickly as I'd like it to), that's okay. A plain yellow banana should work just fine. Just remember to really mash the fruit up.

Lastly, because I've always liked the "crusts" of bread (I've never been particularly fond of the slightly boring texture in the middle of breads, cupcakes, or muffins), I tend to spread my batter out of a little thinner in pans. So while this recipe can be made in a loaf pan, I like to make it in an 8x8 pan, simply because I like edges and crusts more (especially this cinnamon-sugar crust). If you know you like more substance to your bread though, and you want more of a bread shape than a cake shape, bake in the appropriate sized pan.

This recipes makes two pans, which may seem like a lot, but then you should remember that it's incredibly healthy and can be easily frozen and defrosted or given away to friends. So, make the whole recipe. Don't scale it down. I actually scaled it up from the original recipe, since one little pan was never enough.

Banana Bread with Chocolate and Cinnamon Sugar

Adapted from Orangette’s recipe

5 ripe bananas (any size will do)
3 large eggs
1½ cup granulated sugar
3 tsp ground cinnamon
1½ tsp vanilla extract (or vanilla sugar)
2 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
1½ tsp baking soda
1 ½ cups semisweet/bittersweet/dark chocolate chips

For topping:
4 Tbsp granulated sugar
1 Tbsp demerara sugar (if you have it)
½ tsp ground cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 375 °F. Butter two 8-inch square pans.

In a medium mixing bowl, mash the bananas with a fork or potato masher (this can also be done in a food processor). Add the eggs, and mix well to combine. Add the sugar, vanilla, and cinnamon, and mix till smooth. Add the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and mix until just combined (don’t worry too much though; I’ve never had a problem with overmixing). Add 1 cup of the chocolate chips, and stir. Distribute the batter into the buttered pans.

In a small bowl, combine the topping ingredients. Sprinkle evenly over the batter in the pans, and then top with the remaining ½ cup chocolate chips.

Bake for 35-40 minutes in the middle rack, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

This banana bread is delicious out of of the oven, delicious after it has cooled on the kitchen counter, delicious after sliced and toasted in a pan with a little pat of butter, delicious out of the fridge, and delicious out of freezer. (Yes, I've tried it all of these ways.) And really, I have to say, if you've never tried baked goods fresh out of the freezer, do it. It is amazing what a difference it can make. Sometimes I'll freeze my chocolate chip cookies or my cupcakes (sans frosting) and then eat them like that. The crumb texture doesn't change, but somehow the flavors are different. Certain flavors become muted when cold, and then when they hit the warmth of your tongue, they just explode; the difference is astounding.

Happy baking!