Banana Bread

Last night I baked a couple of loaves of Banana Bread which were not only gluten-free but also did not contain any milk which I fear Henry is allergic to.  I buy organic bananas when I see them at the grocery or pick them up when I goto Jungle Jim's.  However we can not eat a whole bunch before they go bad so I simply drop them in a ziploc bag and freeze them until I have enough for Banana Bread.  When I am ready to use them I just get them out and let them thaw on the counter for an hour or two.  This makes them really easy to squeeze out of the skin and no additional mashing is needed, I just add it to my mixture and stir.

I use the recipe below but last night I doubled it to make 2 loaves.  Feel free to substitute the Xanthan Gum and GF All-purpose Blend for regular AP flour if you don't have any Gluten allergies or you're baking for friends.  There are no nuts in this recipe so it is a relatively allergen friendly recipe; however adding a cup of chopped nuts or raisins in it is entirely optional and according to your own needs.

Enjoy!

Easy Gluten-Free Banana Bread Recipe

1/3 cup Oil
2/3 cup Brown sugar, packed
2 large Eggs
1 teaspoon Vanilla extract
1 3/4 cups All-purpose gluten-free flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/4 teaspoons Cinnamon
1 teaspoon Xanthan gum
1/2 teaspoon Salt
1 1/2 cups Mashed ripe bananas

Preheat oven to 350. Grease 9x5-inch non-stick loaf pan.

Cream together oil, sugar, eggs, and vanilla in large bowl. Add flour, xanthan gum, salt, baking powder and cinnamon to egg mixture, alternating with bananas.

Beat until smooth. Batter will be somewhat soft. Transfer to pan.

Bake 9x5" loaf for 1 hour

Kids are OUT!!!

So you know what that means. Mommy's job is to entertain for the next 3 months!! It's wierd because before when I was working he would just goto daycare and they would entertain him. Well now it is MY job to entertain and keep them busy.

I have planned on a few things like swimming a couple of times a week, the Zoo, park, PKI etc... I also want to do crafts and cooking/baking with him. The child has an innate ability, DH swears up and down he gets the genes from me ;)

I've resortesd to to making huge batches of cookie dough and freezing half. That way when they want cookies I have some ready! Ingenious. I made a huge cheesecake last weekend for a friend. Her son was habving a party and she loves cheesecake so I baked a 13x9 New York Cheesecake and topped it with cherries. It was delicious!!

Reminder to self : Rememeber to take pictures more this summer...