Deliciously Easy Banana Bread

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I love banana bread and when I found that our bananas had gotten a little to ripe to just eat, I knew exactly what I was going to do with them.  I looked up a few banana bread recipes and then came up with my own version.  Here's the recipe!

Banana Bread

1/2 Cup Butter, softened
1 Cup Sugar
2 Eggs
3/4 Cup Ripened Mashed Bananas (approx. 2 bananas)
1/2 tsp. Vanilla
1 tsp. Baking Soda
1/2 tsp. Salt
1 1/4 Cup Flour
Pinch of Cinnamon

Directions

Using an electric mixer, cream the butter and sugar. With the mixer running on medium speed, add the eggs one at a time. Add the vanilla and bananas and mix well. In a separate bowl add baking soda, salt, flour, and cinnamon.  Using a fork or whisk, stir the dry ingredients together.  Add the flour mixture to the mixing bowl.  Mix thoroughly, but do not over mix.  Pour the dough into a greased loaf pan and bake at 350 for 45 - 60 minutes.

Cherry Almond Cake

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We celebrated my brother's birthday yesterday and I made the cake.  We have a dessert that my family loves called cherry bars so I based his cake off of that dessert.  I used  doctored up white cake recipe which is pretty delicious.  It makes a ridiculous amount of batter though and it's a bit dense for my liking.  Does anyone here have a nice fluffy cake recipe?  I'd love for you to share it with me!

The white cake has a bit of almond extract in it which pairs nicely with the cherry pie filling.  I used Wilton's buttercream frosting recipe, but rather than using crisco, I used butter.  I think butter just tastes better!  I'm looking for other buttercream recipes right now as well.  I don't hate that recipe, but I don't want to just stick to that one in case there's a better frosting out there.

Which reminds me - does anyone have a yummy fluffy frosting for cupcakes??  I don't want a super heavy frosting because it just get's to be too much sugar for me.  I usually take off most of the frosting when eating my cupcake haha.

Back to the cake.  With my cake batter recipe, I was able to make 3 layers - if you only have 2 layers - it will be totally fine!  I used the canned cherry pie filling as my center.  I first made a dam with medium consistency frosting to keep the filling from oozing out the sides.  You do this by using tip 12.

 

Go around the outside of your cake layer leaving about 1/2 - 1/4'' around the outside of the cake since the frosting will be pushed out a little bit.  After you have made your dam, put your filling on the cake.  I made a little diagram to show you what it would look like if you were looking straight down on your cake layer.

 

If you have multiple layers, repeat the steps I explained above, if you only have tow, then place your top layer on your filled layer and you're set to frost the outside.  Don't look at my frosting job too closely.  I just started a cake decorating class and as you can see - I need some work haha.  BUT I do recommend that make a white almond cake and have a cherry filling.  It is delicious!!!!

Unbroken

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Remember when I shared a reading list a while back of books I plan to read?  Well I have read a couple of them and thought I'd share my thoughts on some.  Today I'm wanting to tell you about Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand.

I highly recommend this book.  It is a nonfiction book about a POW during WWII.  I am sad to say, that I actually didn't know a ton about the Japanese side of the war, I mostly just knew about all of the things going on in Germany.  This book taught me a ton about the war while sharing an amazing story.  I loved it!  Unbroken, isn't necessarily a quick read, but it's very informative.  If you are considering getting the book on tape, I'm sure it's still good, but I did like looking at the pictures of Louie and others people in the book.

Just a warning, POW life can be difficult and disturbing, so if those types of things bother you, then maybe this book isn't for you, but as for me, it was an inspiring book and I really enjoyed it.

Watermelon Shark

Pin It I saw a watermelon shark on Sun Scholars a while back and thought it was so cool!  I just had to make one, but I didn't really have any reason to make one for just me and my husband.  Yesterday we had a big family gathering so I finally had my chance!  I was a bit disappointed that the store didn't really have any long watermelons, they only had ones that were more round.  It still turned out alright, though I think it probably looks more like a whale since the watermelon was so round.  It was still a big hit.  You should definitely try it out sometime.  And in case you didn't know, it's actually shark week on the Discovery Channel this week - SO go make yourself a watermelon shark to celebrate :)

Before and After Nightstand

Pin It My sister-in-law redid her nightstands that she was given for free - that's right - free.  Look and how gorgeous they turned out!!!!

I have a few things of my own that I am going to paint.  I have a couple small nightstands that I'm going to paint black.  I would like to antique them, but I'm not sure how to go about doing that with the black - so if you have tips PLEASE let me know.  I also bought some little chairs that I'm going to paint and give to my daughter for Christmas along with a little table.

I would love to see your before and after projects so please link up here:

Design Seeds

Pin It I LOVE Design Seeds.  It is a great website with different color swatches.  Whether you need to find colors for a room or to help you figure out what to wear for family pictures, this site will help you immensely!  There are pages and pages of swatches, so there is one that is bound to be calling out your name. 

Freezing Basil

Pin It Earlier this year, I had a basil plant in my house.  It was fantastic to have fresh basil for spaghetti sauces and whatnot and it only cost me $3.  Well on a short trip to Idaho I kind of forgot about the plant.  When I got back he was looking rather sad and I didn't think he would make it.  Well I watered him and he came back!  Yay!  We were only gone for 3 days, but on our trip to California we were going to be gone for over a week so I knew the basil wouldn't make it.  I did some research about how to store fresh basil.  There were several techniques, and I'm not sure if one is better than the other, but I ended up doing a freezing technique.

How to freeze basil cubes

1. Harvest the basil leaves
2. Wash, pick the leaves off the stalk and then use the salad spinner to spin out most of the water
3. Pat dry with kitchen towels
4. Stuff the herbs in ice cube trays
5. Fill the tray with water. Use your fingers to push the leaves down into the water as much as possible as they tend to float. 
6. Place the ice cube tray in the freezer
7. Once the ice cubes are frozen, remove them from the tray and transfer to zip-lock bags
8. These cubes are now ready for use

You can simply add the ice cube to your spaghetti sauce or whatever else you are cooking.  It's wonderful!!!