Chocolate Chip Banana Bars

 

"I'm getting so old, I don't even buy green bananas anymore."

- Chi Chi Rodriguez

If you like bananas, you'll know they're tasty and good for you, but they have a very limited shelf life. Unlike Chi Chi Rodriguez, I'm an optimist, so I buy bananas that are slightly green, knowing they'll be perfectly yellow the next time I need one for my cereal bowl.

My problem isn't that my bananas are too green but that they turn brown way too soon. Fortunately, after dealing with this problem for years, I've found several good recipes that use brown bananas. Today I'll share one with you: Chocolate Chip Banana Bars. 

This recipe is a great one because it's fast, easy and delicious, and everyone loves it. I found it in an old cookbook titled "Cookies." See if you like it, too!

Banana Chocolate Chip Bars

 

1/2 C margarine or butter, room temperature (one stick)

3/4 C firmly packed brown sugar

1 C mashed bananas (about two medium-size)

1/2 tsp. vanilla

1 1/4 C flour

1/2 C wheat germ

1/2 tsp. baking soda

1/4 tsp. salt

3/4 C chocolate chips

3/4 C chopped walnuts or pecans (or more chocolate chips)

Cinnamon sugar for sprinkling on top

 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Beat butter and brown sugar together until creamy. Beat in bananas and vanilla. In a separate bowl, stir together dry ingredients. Add to butter mixture, beating well.

 

Stir in chocolate chips and half of the nuts. Spread mixture in a greased 9” x 13” baking pan. Sprinkle with remaining nuts if you are using nuts. (I omit the nuts and just use a total of 1 1/2 C chocolate chips.)

 

Sprinkle cinnamon sugar all over the top. Bake 18-20 minutes or until toothpick inserted into center comes out clean. Cool and cut into squares. 

 

This recipe is from “Cookies,” 1980.

Dashboard S'mores

Hello again from the Land of Always Summer, aka Dallas, Texas.

This year is turning out to be the second-hottest summer in recorded history, trailing only the unbearable summer of 1980. (I'm glad we didn't live here then!) This month we finally ended our 40-day streak of 100-degree-plus temperatures with a day in the high 90s, meaning we came within two days of tying the 1980 streak of 42 days. Rats!

And now, as we wind up August, we've had 63 days of at least 100 degrees. Right now it's only 95 degrees, which actually feels good by this point. The record of the most 100-degree days in Dallas is 69 days in 1980. So we still have a shot at meeting that record, although I'm not sure I want to.

One of the more interesting things we've done this summer is to try our hands at dashboard cooking in our old Chevy Suburban. We've made quesadillas, garlic bread, grilled-cheese sandwiches, cinnamon toast, hot dogs, bruschetta and beef jerky. As the temperature inside the car can easily hit 120 degrees and above on a hot day, most of our experiments have turned out quite well.

By far the most popular experiment with our kids was the dashboard s'more. Easy and tasty, it came out great! Since then, I found this funny song on YouTube titled "Dashboard S'mores." It takes place -- you guessed it! -- in Texas. Where else?

I've also come across several people who've baked chocolate chip cookies in their cars! You can find out more at Discover Magazine, Baking Bites, SnarkyVegan or Completely Delicious. We'll have to try that sometime as well! I bet the smell inside your car is heavenly. :)

I've also found a surprising number of online articles about solar cookery using cardboard boxes covered in aluminum foil, or funky reflective dishes that look like giant woks. This turns out to work great in hot places such as Africa, where they don't have electricity or Suburbans. And it might be fun for a Scout project.

For now, though, we'll continue trying car cookery and hoping for our heat spell to eventually end. But maybe it would be nice if we could break that 1980 record, for bragging rights anyway.

S'more Car Cookery

Today it was over 100 degrees again (for the 29th day in a row!). Maybe the heat is baking our brains a little, but we thought it would be entertaining to try another experiment in car cookery.

This afternoon we tried cooking s'mores on the car's dashboard. First we assembled the s'mores.



Then we placed them in a cake pan atop the dash.


After about 20 minutes, they were ready to eat! We found out that if you like your chocolate a little less melty, you can start the marshmallow first.

Either way, they were delicious!


And we didn't even need a campfire. :)

Easy as Pie

Happy Independence Day!

One of the happiest holidays in the United States of America is the Fourth of July, and it's one of my favorites because of its cheerful color scheme and because I hardly have to do anything! Unlike Christmas, I don't have to "shop till I drop," and it's one of the few holidays where the kids don't get candy! (Thank goodness!)

For Independence Day, I made a pretty cookie pizza with strawberries and blueberries. It was so cute, and tasty too! You can find the easy recipe at Pillsbury.com.

This Fourth of July, I finally got my husband to install a flag holder, and I was pleased to hang our Stars and Stripes out front.



We made pretty little cupcakes for all the kids we had over before we all drove to watch the nearest fireworks a couple of miles away.



We all had a wonderful time watching the airshow with old World War II-era warplanes; the fireworks in sparkling sprays of silver, blue and red; and the children playing on their scooters and running on the grass with glow-in-the-dark bracelets and necklaces, the boys brandishing little glowing swords.

This week, my teenage daughter learned how to make another American tradition: lattice-topped blueberry pie! It really was as easy as pie, and it was absolutely delicious! I'm so happy she's learning some great skills for the future! I mean, algebra and social studies are great, but you can't eat them!



For the filling, my daughter used this easy recipe at All Recipes.com. For the crust, she used this simple but scrumptious recipe handed down from my Granny Howard:

For one crust, sift together: 1 C flour and 1/2 tsp. salt. Then cut in 1/3 Cup Crisco. Stir this into a ball with 2-4 T. cold water. For a top and bottom crust, double the recipe.

Believe me when I say this pie just looks and tastes like summer. Yum!

I hope you are having a great summer too and enjoy the festive times of these long, warm evenings. Three cheers for the red, white and ... blueberry!

Valentine's Day Cookies

Did you have a nice Valentine's Day?

My daughter and I celebrated the holiday by making homemade sugar cookies using our best family recipe. Sugar cookies are fun to make because you can cut them out in almost any design. Cookie cutters are available these days to mark just about any occasion, and I admit I have dozens of cookie cutters stored by theme so I'm ready for just about anything!

Giving homemade cookies is a special, personal way to show you care about someone. They are much more thoughtful and tasty than storebought, and who doesn't like homemade cookies? And they're even better with frosting!

Why don't you try baking up a batch for those special people tonight?

Adventures in Cake Decorating

As the mother of three growing kids, I've made a lot of "mom" cakes. You know, the ones with sprinkles covering the spots where the kids poked their fingers in the frosting, the ones with mismatched birthday candles and the ones with plastic dinosaurs drowning in red frosting lava (oh, you never made one like that?).




One of the pleasurable duties of a mom is the chance to make a new cake each year to mark the fact that your child (and you) have again made it to the next birthday. (Sometimes you wonder how you did it!)

As each new year rolls around, I find it gets boring making the same old cakes. So I've started branching out and trying new ideas in keeping with our birthday party themes. I find store-bought cakes are often expensive and taste awful, so I prefer to make my own. While saving money, I get to express some creativity and make a yummier cake too.

One year my son had a creepy-crawly party and got a big Bundt-pan snake cake.




Another year I tried making the Mach 5 racecar from the old "Speed Racer" cartoons, using a real plastic windshield. (I know it's not perfect, but my son loved it.)




I made some memorable cakes, but I never knew how to decorate like a pro.

For years I've wanted to learn how to make the elaborate designs of sugar art on those fancy, professional cakes. I love watching "Ace of Cakes" and those cake-decorating contests on the Food Network. So this summer I started taking some cake-decorating courses at my local Hobby Lobby store. The classes are fun, and our instructor is encouraging even when our cakes end up looking more like mistakes than masterpieces. The point is to enjoy yourself and not worry too much about how they turn out. After all, she says, you can always eat your mistakes! And anyone who critiques too loudly doesn't get a piece of cake.

So after two courses, I've learned how to make icing stars, rainbows, roses, daffodils, leaves, daisies, violets, pansies and chrysanthemums. My best cake so far is this one with all the icing flowers and a bluebird on the side. It has a basketweave design around the outside, and you know what? It was made from scratch and quite tasty.




So I'm learning more each time, and I'm already looking forward to my next class.

I'll let you know how it goes!