We're down to the last few days before Christmas and that means last minute gift giving to friends, neighbors and co-workers who are special to you. Since so few people bake these days I think giving homemade goodies is a special treat.
This year I baked
Chocolate Chip Banana Bread. I found a nice mini bundt cake pan at Cost Plus World Market for less than $10. It's got three different shapes of muffins.
I used my favorite banana bread recipe with the addition of about a half cup of chocolate chips and reduced the baking time to about 18 minutes. I found that the batter for one loaf was enough to make 18 cupcakes. To have enough to give two muffins per person I made two recipes. The second recipe I used is from
Molly Wizenburg's blog
orangette.blogspot.com. Both her blog and her book
A Homemade Life are must reads for any foodie. The recipe for
Chocolate Chip, Banana Bread with Candied Ginger is heavenly!
I thought the mini bundts would look nice with a chocolate ganache glaze that would intensify the flavor of the banana bread. But the first batch of melted chocolate seized. (I melted 1/2 cup of chocolate chips with 1 teaspoon of butter...but I actually used low fat butter spread. The extra water in the butter spread caused the chocolate to seize...duh - what was I thinking!)
The second batch used chocolate chips and shortening...perfect, shiny
ganache. But it looked horribly thick on the bundts. So I ended up
spooning just a dollop of ganache to the center of each bundt.
Now the bundt designs are still visible and the chocolate is an accent. After a light dusting of powdered sugar they were packaged up in holiday cellophane bags and labeled for each recipient.
My mailman tooted his approval when he found the goodie bag we left for him in our mailbox.
Ho, Ho Holidays...only five days left.
No comments:
Post a Comment