Peanut Butter Banana Bread with Chocolate Chips

I seem to be stuck on banana bread (see Marbled Nutella Banana Bread and Boozy Banana Bread, but I do have ripening bananas in my kitchen on a weekly basis, and there are so many recipes for so many variations.

Marbled Nutella Banana Bread

I have been a follower of Emily, aka Sugar Plum, since she made a comment on my blog about Oklahoma in 2008. Emily creates original recipes, and she is Food Network-famous. She is cute and funny, her blog is a fun read with gorgeous photos, and she is gifted in the kitchen - I just love her to pieces!

I had never tried Nutella and didn't quite "get" what all the fuss was about. When Emily posted a recipe for Marbled Nutella Banana Bread, I finally decided to buy a jar and try it out. I'm glad I did - it's delicious! Her recipe makes a perfectly moist, not-too-sweet bread, and the addition of Nutella to half of the batter adds just the right amount of chocolate to enhance the banana flavor and not overwhelm it. I could have eaten the entire loaf, but fortunately I was giving it away.

Boozy Banana Bread

I recently purchased Eva's Kitchen by Eva Longoria, and I've read it cover to cover. Usually when I get a cookbook I mainly look at the pictures, read the recipes that look appealing to me, bookmark a few to try, and give a cursory glance at the others. This cookbook captured my attention, because I like the way Eva writes, and I want to try nearly every recipe. She includes the stories and traditional recipes of her family, what is was like growing up on a Texas ranch, and some of the recipes she has developed from her travels as well as from her restaurant, Beso. Her cookbook is not pretentious in any way and is written as you might imagine she is talking to you while you watch her cook. Her recipes are simple with uncomplicated directions, emphasizing fresh, local, and in-season ingredients.

Blueberry Streusel Jumbo Muffins

So far this year it has been my pleasure to bake 65 dozen (yes that is nearly 800!) jumbo muffins. The coffeeshop for which I provide baked goods most often requests blueberry, cranberry orange, and banana pecan. Finding the perfect recipe was a trial and error process, with the kind coffeeshop owner patiently providing feedback after each batch. The first time I tried this recipe, I knew I had a winner. With some minor adjustments to the ingredients, this is the base recipe I use for nearly all muffin requests.

Jumbo Muffins
2-1/2 cups sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
4 eggs
3/4 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup sour cream
5-1/2 cups flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups frozen blueberries

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Place muffin liners in a 12-cup large muffin pan.

In a large bowl, blend sugar with oil and vanilla. Lightly whisk eggs, then add sour cream and buttermilk and mix together. Add to sugar/oil mixture.

In another large bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Add frozen blueberries and toss until berries are coated. Add all at once to liquid mixture. Fold and blend very lightly, until most of liquid is incorporated but flour is still showing.

With a large ice cream scoop, fill muffin liners with batter, distributing evenly and mounding up. Sprinkle generously with your favorite streusel recipe.


Bake for 10 minutes at 425; lower oven to 400 degrees for 5 minutes; then lower oven to 350 degrees and bake until golden brown or cake tester comes out clean, approximately 15 more minutes, depending on oven. Cool in pan for 10 minutes, then carefully remove to wire rack.

Christmas Gifts Bread

What to do with Christmas food gifts--a welcome dilemma I face every year.

Pecans are an annual gift, this year from Holdenville, Oklahoma--small, crisp, delicately sweet--those that aren't popped into my mouth go into pies and cookies.

My mother always orders my perennial favorite: Harry & David pears, with a texture so buttery a knife literally slides through a slice--impossibly juicy, ambrosially sweet--and those that aren't eaten out of hand (over the sink, with juice running down to my elbow) go into breads or cakes.


This year, an unusual gift of artisanal Maytag blue cheese--creamy, pungent, exquisitely marbled with blue veins--I savored a small bite as soon as I received it in the mail--sharp on the tongue but mellowing to moist, velvety, tangy goodness.


With a recipe for pear bread in hand, I properly paired the cheese, pears, and pecans to create a fragrant, moist bread; baking transformed the diced pears into little pockets of melted sweetness and the cheese from sharp-flavored to mild.

Blue Cheese Pecan Pear Bread

3 cups flour
1-1/2 cups white sugar
1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 eggs
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 stick butter, melted
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon freshly grated lemon peel
2 very ripe pears, peeled, cored, and finely diced (approximately 2 cups)
1/4 cup blue cheese, crumbled
1/2 cup chopped pecans

Prepare two 9 inch X 5 inch loaf pans, either with baking spray, oil, shortening, or parchment paper. Preheat oven to 350 F.

Combine flour, sugars, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in large mixing bowl. In a separate bowl, lightly whisk eggs;, add oil, butter, vanilla, and lemon peel. Add to flour/sugar mixture and stir just until dry ingredients are moistened. Fold in pears, cheese, and pecans. Evenly spoon batter into prepared pans, lightly smoothing out top. Bake 55-60 minutes or until cake tester inserted into middle of bread comes out clean. Let cool in pans for 10-15 minutes, then turn onto wire rack to cool.

Cream Sherry Pumpkin Bread

Beth Hensperger's Bread Bible is one of those books that inspires me to use an entire box of Post-It flags. Each turn of the page brings a new recipe to challenge or an old recipe with a different twist.

One such recipe is her version of pumpkin bread made with cream sherry. There are so many recipes for pumpkin bread that I usually skip past one listed in a cookbook. But the words Cream and Sherry made this one sound decadent, and I knew I must make it. For research purposes. For my bakery. OK, for myself!

I had to sub dry sherry, but the resulting bread was so good that I ran out and bought a bottle of cream sherry so I can try the recipe with the correct liquid ingredient. I actually stood in the liquor store calculating how many loaves I could make with a 1.5L bottle.


Just as sherry enhances the flavor of savory foods, the sweet earthiness of the pumpkin was intensified so that it was more than just a "pumpkin plus sugar" bread. I selfishly changed up the spices, which include cinnamon, cloves, and coriander, to suit my own palate. I dusted the loaf pan with granulated sugar to make a sugar-crunchy crust.

Although the recipe is copyrighted, you can find a list of the ingredients here on RecipeZaar.