It has been over a week since I last posted! Don't worry, I've been keeping myself plenty busy. Last week was spring break for most of the students here in Pittsburgh, so I made an attempt to spend time with friends I don't usually get to see. I also took an extra day off work last week and thoroughly enjoyed my time off; Mike, Paul and I went to Baldinger's Market (an awesome penny candy store) and afterwards we all went hiking through the woods for an hour or two. It was all well and good until Paul accidentally locked his keys in the car and we spent over an hour trying to break into his car, but that's a story for another day.
With all that free time on my hands you can bet I spent some of it baking. I ended up using the overly-ripe bananas mentioned in my last post to make a delicious Chocolate Chip Banana Loaf. (I used an extra banana and butter instead of shortening.) The loaf was dense but moist, with a light crunchy crust and it disappeared much quicker than I expected; I brought a few slices into work with me and shared the rest with a group of friends at a little get-together we had last week, topped with some Nutella.
I also baked up some Anzac cookies using this recipe, although I omitted the orange zest and orange blossom water. They were very tasty, but definitely not photogenic; I don't have a fancy mold so I just dropped them by the tablespoon-full onto a parchment lined cookie sheet, which resulted in what I'll call 'plop' cookies, because that's pretty much what they looked like. I'm sure they would have held together a little better had I used golden syrup instead of honey and had I taken the time to finely shred my coconut. However, they taste amazing! I love the oat and coconut combination, and the 'plop' cookies are actually fun to eat because it only takes one or two bites to finish them.

My next endeavor: making a successful chocolate chocolate chip cookie; they are surprisingly hard to master.

Labels: banana, chocolate chips