The Best Banana Bread

I posted a picture of some amazing banana bread that I had made on Instagram and promised to post the recipe. That was.....quite a while ago. My follow-through isn't always the best but the intentions are good!

Anywho, I'll keep this short. This bread is super easy and a definite crowd-pleaser. So get at it! :)

Bananas are mushed, Earth Balance butter is creamed with sugar, and homemade (by my aunt) vanilla joins the party. Then add bananas.

Sifted dry ingredients added, stopping to scrape once or twice. 

Thick batter goes into the prepared pan. I like to use parchment that hangs over the sides for easy removal and clean up. 

And into the oven! That easy. 

And there's the end result! Yummy. I'm about to go eat some, in fact. 

Here's the recipe so you can make your own and resist the urge to eat the whole loaf, slice by divine slice. 

The Best Banana Bread

recipe found in my mom's recipe box, origins unknown

2 large bananas, smushed with a fork

1 stick Earth Balance butter

1 cup granulated sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 cups All-Purpose Flour

1 tsp Baking Soda

1/4 tsp salt

chopped nuts, if desired

Mush your bananas in a bowl. Cream your Earth Balance with sugar until light and fluffy. Add vanilla and bananas. Sift dry ingredients together and add to mixing bowl. Scrape bowl and paddle. Mix only until flour is no longer visible. Do not over mix! Add nuts if desired. Pour/scrape the thick batter into a greased and parchment-lined 9"x5" loaf pan and spread evenly.

Bake at 325F for about an hour, until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool slightly in the pan and then remove and let cool on a cooling rack to avoid sweating. That's what sometimes makes banana bread overly moist on the bottom. Slice and enjoy! I like to eat it with a smear of more Earth Balance. :)

Overnight Orange Sweet Rolls

Sometimes, I am struck with genius. Also mixed with a dash of lazy in the form of wanting to have breakfast almost ready when I wake up. That's how these amazing Orange Rolls came about! I was trolling through my breakfast Pinterest board and saw a recipe for Orange Monkey Bread (which I always thought was a strange name, by the way),  but I had this desire to make it easier as well as using ingredients I already had. And meanwhile making it vegan, of course. :) So here was the result! It's surprisingly easy. In fact, I think the hardest part is zesting the orange and squeezing out the juice. Serious labor, for sure.

So! First comes the prep the night before, which shockingly I didn't think to photograph at 11pm. I'm a hard-core night owl, especially when I don't work the next day. That night consisted of waiting until almost midnight to prep the rolls so I could sleep in somewhat, but not enough to allow the rolls to get CRAZY big and impossible to bake.

ANYWAY.

Midnight, or thereabouts, I took my frozen Rhodes rolls (see? I told you. Easy.), let them defrost slightly and then dipp them in a mixture of orange juice & melted Earth Balance vegan butter followed by orange zest rubbed into granulated sugar. Each of those rolls then went into a greased bundt pan and then hung out on my counter under a towel all night.

The result the next morning:

WHOA, BABY. 

Yeah, I slept in a little but they're not monstrous enough that I'm too worried about baking them. Speaking of which, with my freakishly hot oven, the top (but eventual bottom) of the rolls got a little dark, but gratefully with the glaze and freshness of the roll, they still taste all sorts of incredible. 

BAKED ROLLS. 

I waited a few minutes and then flipped the rolls onto a large plate, pulled off the pan and HALLELUJAH, the heavens rejoiced. 

I whipped up the glaze and drizzled it alllll over that sucker. And then I devoured them. Well...not all, but quite a few of them. ;) Evidence:

The first of many rolls enjoyed. While still warm, of course. 

 LOOK HOW PRETTY:

Heavenly. 

If you choose to make these rolls, just be prepared to use a lot of restraint to not eat the entire pan yourself. 

Overnight Orange Sweet Rolls

Adapted from Six Sister's Stuff

1 1/4 cups granulated sugar

1 Tablespoon grated fresh orange zest

1/3 cup orange juice

1/4 cup Earth Balance butter, melted

18 Rhodes frozen dinner rolls, left out for about 10 minutes

 

Glaze:

1/4 cup Earth Balance butter, melted

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 Tablespoon almond milk (more or less depending on desired consistency)

1 cup powdered sugar 

Grease a 10-inch bundt pan with nonstick cooking spray.  In a small bowl, combine sugar and orange zest by rubbing it in with your fingers.  In a separate bowl, combine orange juice and melted butter.  Dip each roll in the orange juice mixture, roll in sugar mixture and place in prepared pan.  Pour remaining orange juice mixture over the rolls. 

Cover pan with a clean kitchen towel and allow rolls to rise overnight, but no more than 8 or 9 hours depending on how warm your kitchen gets. In the morning, preheat the oven to 375F and then possible go back to bed for 10 minutes while it heats up, but maybe that's just me. 

Bake rolls for 25-30 minutes, or until golden brown. Cool rolls in pan for about 5 minutes and then invert pan onto a large plate or platter. Remove bundt pan.  To make glaze, whisk melted butter, vanilla, almond milk and powdered sugar together until combined.  Top with glaze and enjoy!! 

The Best Vegan Biscuits

You know when you want something bread-y and warm and comforting, but making actual bread sounds like way too much work? Welp. Here you go. Buttermilk biscuits! Vegan, of course. I make these biscuits every couple weeks and crave them basically all the time in-between. : ) They go really well with my Throw-together Chili, which is a post I've been meaning to do but it's not so much a recipe as "Let's-see-if-I-have-enough-stuff-in-my-cupboard-and-fridge-to-make-it-yummy", meaning it changes every time.   ; )

But the biscuits! Those do indeed have a recipe. 6 ingredients, 1 bowl, 30 minutes, DONE. Slather them with Earth Balance butter and Agave and just devour. Or with chili. You really can't lose either way. Here we go!

These babies are golden and gorgeous! 

I love how simple biscuits are. Cut in the butter (or Earth Balance) until crumbly, add liquid, mix, and just press it into a good thickness on a floured surface and cut circles. Easy peasy. The only real trick is not the over handle the dough. And I've been told to NEVER use a rolling pin. That's a no-no. If you can't work it with just your hands, then something ain't right. 

Here's that chili I was talking about with some biscuits. Beautiful. 

The Best Vegan Biscuits

from Minimalist Baker

• 2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
• 1 Tbsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 3/4 tsp sea salt
• 4 Tbsp non-dairy, unsalted butter (I use Earth Balance)
• 1 cup unsweetened PLAIN almond milk + 1 Tbsp fresh lemon juice

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees F.
2. Whisk dry ingredients together in a large bowl.
3. Add cold butter and use fingers or a pastry cutter to cut the butter into small pieces. Make sure your butter is cold. 
4. Make a well in the dry ingredients and, using a wooden spoon, stir gently while pouring in the almond milk mixture. Still until just combined. Dough will be sticky. 
5. Turn onto a lightly floured surface, dust the top with a bit of flour and then very gently turn the dough over on itself 5-6 times - hardly kneading.
6. Form into a 1-inch thick disc, handling as little as possible.
7. Use a 1-inch thick dough cutter or any round cutter ( honestly, I just used a cup.) Press it straight down and twist. Repeat and place biscuits on a baking sheet in two rows, making sure they just touch - this will help them rise uniformly. Gently reform the dough and cut out one or two more biscuits - you should have 7-8.
8. Next brush the tops with a bit more of melted non-dairy butter and gently press a small divot in the center using two fingers. This will also help them rise evenly, so the middle won't form a dome.
9. Bake in a 450 degree oven for 10-15 minutes or until fluffy and slightly golden brown. Serve immediately. Let remaining biscuits cool completely before storing them in an airtight container or bag.

And that's it! So just make it happen. Leftovers are a beautiful thing, too. I like to get creative, like so:

That is some Chickpea "Tuna" Salad on those amazing biscuits. Dang. That was GOOD. 

Whew. So go make some vegan biscuits! : )

 

Butternut Squash Gnocchi with Cheezy Alfredo Sauce

This meal was totally last minute, but turned out to be AWESOME. My awesome mom gave me half of a baked butternut squash when I was there one day and I am so grateful! I was able to use that instead of roasting chunks of squash, which is what the recipe calls for. In fact, I'll give you the recipe but I honestly just glanced at it. I didn't really follow it. Oops. ; ) I just mixed the squash in a bowl with some AP flour and salt & pepper and then rolled it into ropes on a floured counter. It was still sticky, so I think I'll try a different method next time. I worked in a restaurant where we had butternut squash gnocchi and I watched the line cooks make it many times. They mixed the squash and flour with seasoning and then scooped it into a pastry bag. Over a pot of water, they would squeeze the bag and snip chunks of gnocchi off using kitchen scissors. The gnocchi floats to the top of the pot when done. I really should've tried this first, but sometimes you have to get it wrong before you can get it right. : ) 

So for the Alfredo sauce, I did actually use a recipe. It does call for a few ingredients that may be unusual, but they're totally worth picking up and having in stock. Like nutritional yeast (weird name, totally awesome stuff), raw cashews (which can be pricey, but worth it), tahini (which is paste made from toasted sesame seeds) and tamari ( I just used Shoyu brand soy sauce). I always have Earth Balance vegan butter on hand, too, cause it's great stuff. You can use it for basically anything you would use butter for. And now that I discovered this sauce I will be using all these items A LOT more. I actually made a half batch of the sauce and I had enough for 3 meals (2 with gnocchi and 1 with pasta. Yum!)

So here you go!

Vegan Butternut Squash Gnocchi    (I just used this as a loose guideline)

from One Taste Rule! 

1 large butternut squash, seeded, peeled and cut into even-sized pieces

salt

fresh black pepper

about 2/3 cup all-purpose flour

about 1/3 cup cake flour

Pre-heat the oven to 400 degrees. Spread the squash out on a sheet pan and bake until soft (25-45 minutes, depending on the size of your pieces).

Mix the two flours.

Puree the squash in the food processor (you might have to do it in 2 batches). Add salt and pepper to taste.

Flour your work surface and place the squash on it. Using a bench scraper, start to work the flour into the squash (this ensures that you don't over-mix). You might not need all of the flour. Your dough should be sticky, but workable.

Divide the dough into 6 portions. Roll each one into a rope, about 1/2 inch thick. Cut into 1/2 inch pieces.

And now for the sauce:

Hurry Up Alfredo

from Epicurean Vegan

Sauce:
1 C soy milk ( I used almond milk)
1/3 rounded raw, unsalted cashews
1/4 C nutritional yeast
3 Tbs tamari (or soy sauce)
2 Tbs Earth Balance vegan butter
1 Tbs tahini
1 Tbs lemon juice
2 tsp Dijon mustard
1/2 tsp paprika
1 pinch nutmeg
1 pinch salt
Black pepper, to taste
2-4 garlic cloves
I added 1/2C Tofutti Sour Cream and used SMOKED paprika and WOW! It was so creamy and flavorful!

DIRECTIONS:

To make sauce, mix all sauce ingredients in a food processor or blender until smooth. (What I did is transfer the sauce to a small saucepan and heat–this is also when I added the Tofutti sour cream. Then I just ladled the sauce on a serving of pasta or gnocchi). 

Note: for leftovers, I don’t recommend microwaving them. Keep sauce separate from pasta leftovers and reheat sauce in a pan over the stove and nuke the noodles or gnocchi. Sauce gets too dried out otherwise.

This meal is now one of my absolute favorites and I'm glad I can share it! (once I got around to it. ha.)  I had a side of roasted cauliflower with my gnocchi and it really hit the spot. For the cauliflower, I just chopped a head of cauliflower into bite-sized pieces, tossed them in olive oil, sprinkled salt & pepper, and then roasted on a sheet pan at 400F until slightly blackened in places and crispy, stirring every 10 minutes or so. I used to hate cauliflower, but then I just discovered I didn't like steamed, mushy cauliflower. Roasted is amazing. Give it a try, if you've sworn you don't like it, like me. Enjoy!! : )