Vegan-Banana-Brownie-Rum Raisin-Lava Loaf (or something like that)
It all started with bananas.
Baby James has been eating bananas for the past couple weeks (which is the subject of a whole different post about how anguished I am that my *baby* is eating *solids* and how much I tried for but STILL couldn't last a whole six months to feed him breastmilk alone!) and the basic routine goes like this:
Baby is hungry for more than just mama milk and makes wailing noises and gnashes his gums. The Daddy decides that he needs some solids and reaches for a banana to peel. Baby happily eats 1/5 of said banana, and the rest (still in the peel) gets stored in the fridge for "later". Except "later" means that there were two or three partially eaten bananas languishing in my fridge.
So I decided enough was enough and I was going to use UP those banana pieces after church today. Somehow.
In the car on the drive home, I mentally pictured what else was "leftover" in my kitchen and fridge.
There were the few tablespoons of cinnamon sugar left over from baking snickerdoodles for our cookie party yesterday.
There were approximately seven butterscotch chips left over from said cookie party.
That was enough to go on, I decided. When the bigger boys went down for a nap, I conned Jake into holding the baby while I got to work on creating this recipe.
So here it goes:
1) Dump in the three tablespoons of cinnamon sugar, decide that's not enough sugar, and add another half cup or so.
2) Think... "usually when I'm baking, there's some sort of fat that goes in... We've had enough butter recently, so..." and dump in half a cup of vegetable oil
3) Get eggs and all the leftover banana pieces out of the fridge.
4) Mush up bananas and add to the bowl. Stir vigorously.
5) Decide to make the recipe "cinnamon banana" somethings, and grab cinnamon, vanilla, baking soda, and baking powder from the spice cupboard.
6) Add in 1 teaspoon of each of the above. Then some salt. Stir vigorously again. Dump in half a cup of coffee from the pot.
7) Hmmm... Doesn't look quite right. Add in 1/2 cup cocoa powder. Now we're talking mocha!
8) Ok, things are looking up! Add in 1 cup of whole wheat flour. Decide at the last second that we're going to sift this for no apparent reason other than to dirty another kitchen tool.
9) Add in a cup of regular AP flour, stir to mix. Things are looking a little wet still, not quite the consistency of batter I was hoping for.
10) Search through cupboards again. Add in 1 teaspoon (ish) of a maple syrup sample that's been hanging around forever, a handful or two of shredded coconut and, oh what the heck-- the rest of the bag of butterscotch chips from the cookie party!
11) Nope, way too wet. Add in 1/2 cup of wheat germ. Because-- we're going for healthy here, you know
12) Now it's way too heavy. Reach in fridge for Irish Cream and add, oh I don't know, a good couple tablespoons. Mix together and it looks pretty good! For kicks and giggles, grab the leftover "rum raisin" applesauce that Karen made for Thanksgiving and toss ALL of that in too.
Oh hey, we're making something vegan even though we didn't prepare for this! Put eggs back into fridge.
13) Coat a couple loaf pans with cooking spray and add the "whatever this junk is" mixture to pans. Slide into the 250 degree oven where Jake has placed the pot roast for tonight's dinner and set the timer for 30 minutes, just to start
14) After 30 minutes, rotate and put pans back into the oven. There's no way they're done yet!
15) After 60 minutes, check again. Still way too wiggly.
16) Jake turns the oven to 275 (woo hoo!) and let the pans cook for another 20 minutes. Almost there!
17) After about 90 minutes, finally give up and pull the pans out. Let loaves cool.
18) Test the "whatever" loaf a couple times while waiting for pot roast to cook. And waiting and waiting. Turns out, 250 degrees was not hot enough to cook the whole pot roast in a reasonable time frame, so the oven kept getting hotter and hotter.
I joked that I was going to call this a "garbage" loaf because it was full of random bits and bobs leftover from various cooking experiences. Jake gave me a funny look, so I made up a hybrid name above.
The loaves turned out pretty well, subtly sweet and not spicy enough. They have a good "crumb" and are somewhere between a brownie and a cake.