CB’s Spiced Banana Bread

Posted on September 30, 2007 by christa

This recipe is such a good one! It’s highly modifiable, easy and you can substitute anything you want, or need to, in a pinch. I make this on average of about once a month. Sometimes, if I’m in the mood, I put about 4 ounces of chopped dark chocolate in it and serve it heated with vanilla spiked whipped cream as a dessert! Can you say YUM?? I know you can

The scent of this wafting through my house on a cold day warms the cockles of my heart. Fresh from the oven, waiting only the amount of time it takes to grab the knife, I cut a fat slice and eat it slowly with a cup of strong, milky tea. I love eating it the day it’s baked when the top is crispy and lovely. Once you store it in an airtight container, it gets soft. But, it’s still delicious!

I don’t know about you, but when I eat banana bread, I like it to taste warm as well as feel warm. The cinnamon combined with nutmeg and cloves is enough to warm me all over, even on a cold day. Another secret to my bread is that I use Italian 00 flour, which is lighter than all purpose, but not as light as cake flour. It’s just right for making a loaf bread with some substance. I got the original basic recipe for this online, as I have done with quite a few, but I just had to change it and make it my own. It was quite boring before and lacked ANY of the spices and vanilla. That said, here is my bananariffic creation!

Ingredients:
- 1 1/2 cups Italian 00 Flour *
- 1 tsp. Baking Soda
- 1 tsp. Ground Cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp. Ground Cloves
- Dusting of freshly grated Nutmeg
- 1/2 tsp. Salt (I use kosher, always)
- 1 cup Granulated Sugar *
- 2 Eggs, beaten
- 1 tsp. Vanilla, slightly overflowed
- 1/4 cup Unsalted Butter, melted
- 3 medium to large very ripe Bananas, mashed

Method:
- Grease and flour a 9 x 5 inch loaf pan, or line with parchment for an easy-to-get-out-of-pan bread. Pre-heat oven to 350 F.
- In one bowl, combine the flour, salt, baking soda, sugar and spices. Whisk it through to combine all ingredients. Set aside.
- In the bowl of an electric mixer, fitted with the paddle attachment, or with a fork, mash the bananas until smooth. I just break them into the bowl with my hands to save using a knife. Add the eggs, melted and cooled butter, and the vanilla. Mix to incorporate. Then, add the dry ingredients slowly to the wet until just incorporated scraping the bowl down to make sure everything is properly mixed. Pour into prepared loaf pan and bake in pre-heated oven for 50 minutes to an hour, or until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Definitely check at 50 minutes! Serve warm from the pan with a steaming cup of tea. Now, where’s my robe and slippers?

**Cook’s Notes**
+ If you wanted to add any nuts, feel free. That’s another reason I started making my own. I don’t like it with the nuts.
+ If you can’t find 00 Flour, you can substitute with Cake Flour. Or, you could do a 50/50 mix of Cake Flour and All Purpose Flour or just all All Purpose Flour. It’s not a big deal, but the texture will be slightly different.
+ When I use Granulated Sugar, I use Organic brands that aren’t processed as much as regular brands. It is darker in colour, but the flavour is so much better. Nothing wrong with that!
+ Once in a great while, one of my bananas will be too far gone to use. If you’ve already started the bread and have no more bananas, you can substitute a half cup of yogurt, cream, soy milk or regular milk for the missing banana. I found vanilla fat free yogurt was an EXCELLENT substitute and made the bread even more moist! I may even make a new bread out of that discovery

Faux Banana Tartlet

Posted on September 24, 2007 by christa

Faux Banana Tartlet

I wouldn’t really call this a “recipe”, per se. Just an idea with some ingredients. I came up with this idea originally with strawberries and it was just as fabulous, if not more so! But, today I had bananas, so that’s what I used. The crumbly texture of the digestives against the creaminess of the hazelnut spread provides the perfect bed for the soft, supple bananas to settle into.

If you don’t have access to digestives (a wholemeal cookie type thing from the British Isles), you can easily use graham crackers. It won’t have the same melting texture, but it will still be good.

So, here’s what I used:

- 1 ripe banana, cut into slices
- 2 Tbsp. Nocciolata hazelnut spread +
- 3 Digestive biscuits, or more if you like

Pretty much spread the spread onto the biscuits, add the bananas and enjoy! I didn’t use the entire banana on these, so I just ate the rest. Good way to get some fruit into my daily allowance, yeah?

**Cook’s Notes**

+ I advise you have this treat with a hot cuppa tea. I chose Assam, with milk, and sat back and enjoyed every bite with my kitty on my lap! Take time to savor and really appreciate treats in life. Oh, and eat these over a plate. The digestives tend to break in random areas, so you could end up with a choco-banana schmere on your lap! Also, you WILL need a napkin!

+ Nocciolata is another brand of chocolate hazelnut spread. Most of you may be familiar with Nutella, but I think Nocciolata is MUCH better, less sweet and more natural. No hydrogenated anything in it! I found this gem in the natural section of my local market. You can always sub Nutella, especially if that’s what you’re used to.

By mine own hand, I cut thee!

Posted on September 16, 2007 by christa

Well, that’s rude! What did I cut? That would be Saturation. By this I mean the saturation of colour in the following photographs. If you know me at all, you know I am a true Black & White Photography person. I love to look at it, shoot it, develop it and manipulate it. I would be very sad without B&W pictures in my life.

When I shoot with my Fujifilm (essentially Nikon) Finepix S1 Pro, I always shoot in the colour mode. Why, you may ask? Well, because there’s more to a black and white print than just black and white. Lots of tone hides in the colour and it’s a shame to just strip it out all the way from the get go. So, I play, tweak, lift and separate! I thought it might be interesting to take you through a couple of photos and show you what I did to manipulate them to be what I wanted them to be. I am by NO means a professional at anything I talk about, but I feel it’s informative to show others how to get a cool effect. Plus, this one is so simple I claim nothing great in this accomplishment! I just really like the outcome and thought you may as well. So, that said, here we go!

Monster Stone colour

This is the original colour picture unadjusted. As you can see the yellows and greens really compete for attention. I also thought they added a certain “fluffiness” to the lovely grain of the stone, therefore making it not truly representative of what my eyes could see. So, I cut it! As is it’s not a bad picture, but it’s not what I was going for. That’s one reason why I never delete a photo from my camera until I take it home and see what’s it’s truly like on screen, full size. Viewfinders just give you an idea. So, don’t delete until you know for sure At least, that’s my advice. Anyway, about the cutting of colour…

This is the result. Quite different, huh? I absolutely adore this photo and plan to go back and do a series in a more complete way. But I digress…the details. This was shot with a Nikon 28-80mm zoom lens at 28mm. The aperture was set at 6.0, ISO of 320 and I honestly forgot what shutter speed. Oops! I used no flash. Then, I began the manipulation in Aperture. For overall saturation, I cut it down to 48% with the contrast up by 7%, brightness down by 3% and the shadows lifted by about 75%. I wanted to keep some shadows intact, to keep the air of mystery, but didn’t want to go overboard and expose everything under her lovely hood. Yes, beneath the deformed-esque figure, it is a woman. For individual hues, I upped the leftover saturation of the green channel and it’s luminance just so you could “feel” the greenness and it didn’t appear flat. I took the remaining channels of blue and yellow and turned them down all the way. I didn’t touch the red and magenta channels, as they seemed unaffected when I moved them. I had to play a lot with the brightness and shadows to get them to this point. I feel it still needs a bit more darkness in the tree area, so I may play with that in Photoshop with masks and the like. But, I love the stage it is at right now. It’s slightly disturbing, warm yet cool and evokes a sense of October completely. Also, the main focus was on the tree. She’s slightly out of focus, which adds a little bit of depth, and movement, in my opinion.

Then, we move on to the Lion. There are two Lions, but this one was my favourite. I loved how one of his eyes was white and the other black with stain and mold. The Lions are the guards to what I named “The Lady”. You can see the Lady in the background, but she deserves a more complete shoot before I feature her here.

This is the original shot of the Lion, unadjusted. Again, those yellows just ruin what I saw with my eyes. Yellow, I cut you! Also, it has a haziness of blue-green that I just didn’t care for at all. I felt it ruined the integrity of the Lion and what he stood for. I wish I had him for my back garden!

Then, the cutting and moving around of sliders began. These were shot with the same camera and settings as the first picture. That was easy! So, I did an overall saturation cut to 48%, brightness down by 20% and contrast up by 6%. In this one I completely lifted all highlights and lifted the shadow by 62%. I left the green again, but only added more luminance and left the saturation where it was. There is a bit of blue peeking through the sky and I upped the luminance of that. I left the red and magenta alone again and totally cut the yellow. After all, he is not a cowardly Lion! Sleepy, maybe. Cowardly, never

As you can see, this one got a little “pixely” when I saved it as a jpg. But, this is just the nature of the beast. It looks so much better as a big, fat, huge tiff. It’s a 20 Mega Biter, in fact! Oh matron!

So, you may be wondering where I shot these lovely photos. If you are wondering, I shot them in a cemetery! Hee hee. No, but seriously. This day was spent at Spring Grove Cemetery here in the Cincinnati, OH area. Located in Northside, near the Tavern, this cemetery draws people in to her magnificently beautiful surroundings all seasons of the year. I have spent many a day here taking photos, reading, writing and just “being”. I love it when I see others that are there for the beauty of it. They set out picnics with their children, have family photos taken, feed the ducks, swans, geese and other birds and just admire the nature that surrounds the souls in the air. I have never considered cemeteries a bad place. My Mother always took us as children to feed the ducks in the Lexington Cemetery. We’d go and visit the graves of our family, tend to the flowers we had planted on their graves and spend the day outdoors together. I have always associated it with good memories. You can learn so much walking through a cemetery! If you never have, go give it a try. You’ll start to notice so many details you never saw before. Plus, all the stone figures are waiting to meet you!

Here are a few other shots I took. I’ll just put them up and let you admire them as they are. I could tell so many stories for each one!! But, I’ll spare you the grief

Mister Reif