Looking for a banana muffin that is moist and full of banana flavor? This recipe (slightly adapted from Cook’s Illustrated) is your answer. It packs FIVE bananas into a single loaf of bread (or batch of 15-18 muffins).

I like bananas, but only if they are on the slightly green side. Once they are completely yellow or start to brown, I won’t touch them. I can push them on the kids for a little longer, but none of us are squishy banana fans. So I regularly have one or two bananas from a bunch that go “bad” before we eat them. So I peel and throw these overripe bananas into my freezer in Ziploc bags. Eventually those bags get to the bursting point, and I know I need to do some banana baking.

This recipe is one of our favorites. The bananas are cooked (in the microwave) until they are liquidy, and then the liquid is reduced to concentrate the banana flavor. You can add chocolate chips and/or chopped nuts to your liking.

The muffins also freeze nicely if you happen to have A LOT of bananas to use up and want to make multiple batches!

RECIPE:

Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins (or Bread)
——————————(adapted from Cook’s Illustrated)

1 3/4 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
5 large very ripe bananas
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly
2 large eggs
3/4 cup light brown sugar
1teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup chocolate chips
1/2 cup walnuts (optional)

Preheat oven to 350°F.  Line muffin tins with 15-18 paper liners, or grease muffin tins.

In a large bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, and salt.

Place bananas in a microwave-safe bowl; cover with waxed paper. Microwave on high power until bananas are soft and have released liquid, about 5 minutes. Pour bananas into a strainer placed over a medium saucepan. Allow to drain, stirring occasionally, for 15 minutes. Set banana pulp aside.

Place the saucepan with the banana liquid over medium-high heat and cook until reduced to ¼ cup, about 5 minutes. Remove pan from heat and stir banana pulp into the reduced liquid. Mash with a potato masher or a fork until fairly smooth. Whisk in butter, eggs, brown sugar and vanilla.

Pour banana mixture into flour mixture and stir until just combined. Gently fold in chocolate chips and walnuts, if using.

Pour batter into the prepared muffin tins. Bake for 15 minutes, or until toothpick comes out clean.

Makes 15-18 muffins

FOR BANANA BREAD: Spray a medium loaf pan with nonstick cooking spray. Pour batter into pan. Bake at 350°F for 55 to 70 minutes, or until toothpick comes out clean. Cool bread in pan on wire rack 15 minutes, then remove loaf from pan and continue to cool on a wire rack.

Sometimes we all need a quick fix dinner that can be on the table in under 30 minutes. But we still want something healthy and delicious. This sautéed chicken and zucchini meal satisfies our entire family: I love that it is quick and healthy, and everyone loves the taste.

Don’t have zucchini? Or have too many zucchini-haters? Use any other vegetable of choice: asparagus is very nice, or green beans. You can even throw in a bag of frozen vegetables if you are short on fresh ones.

Serve on its own, or over cooked rice or pasta. With or without cheese.

Recipe:

Southwest Chicken and Zucchini Sauté

2 Tbs olive oil
4 chicken breasts (about 1 lb), diced
1 onion, chopped
1 tsp chili powder
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp salt
2 cups sliced zucchini (about 2 medium zucchini)
1 can yellow corn (or 2 ears fresh corn)
1 can chili seasoned tomatoes
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
1 cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese, for garnish

Heat oil in a large skillet. Sauté chicken and onion until browned. Sprinkle with chili powder, cumin and salt. Add zucchini to skillet and cook until chicken is cooked through and zucchini is crisp-tender. Stir in corn and tomatoes. Cook, uncovered, for 7-10 minutes. Stir in cilantro. Garnish with shredded cheese, if desired.

Serve alone, or over cooked rice or pasta.

Alyce’s original recipe was a delicious pureed black bean soup. I usually doctor it up a little by adding shredded chicken, corn, olives and pimentos to the pureed bean base, and serving it with fun and delicious toppings. If you are trying to please kids- it is all about the toppings. Crispy tortilla strips are their favorite. They are fast and easy to make (baked in the oven for 5 minutes) and can be made with either flour or corn tortillas. In the soup shown, I used a multi-grain flour tortilla.

The spiciness of the soup is completely up to you. Alyce’s recipe uses Spicy V-8 juice, but I don’t usually have that around here, so I use a can of spicy Rotel tomatoes (tomatoes with onions, garlic and green chilies). If you want a milder soup, just use a can of regular tomatoes and go easy on the cayenne pepper (Ancho chili pepper has a nice flavor without the heat of cayenne).

RECIPE:

Spicy Black Bean Soup with Shredded Chicken
——————–(adapted from my friend Alyce)

2 Tbs olive oil
1 onion, chopped
1 carrot, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 jalapeno pepper, minced
1 stalk celery, diced
2 cans beef broth
1 can Rotel tomatoes (or 1 cup Spicy V-8)
1 Tbs dried parsley
1 tsp salt
1 tsp smoked paprika
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp chili powder
½ tsp ground ginger
¼ tsp thyme
¼ tsp pepper
1/8-1/4 tsp cayenne pepper (adjust to taste)
2 cans black beans, drained & rinsed
2 cups cooked and shredded chicken (or 2 cans undrained canned chicken)
1 can corn
1 small can sliced olives
1 small jar diced pimentos

Garnishes:
Sour cream
Shredded cheddar cheese
Chopped fresh cilantro
Crispy Tortilla Strips (see below)

Heat olive oil in large stockpot. Cook onion, carrot, garlic, jalapeno, and celery until onions are soft and tender, about 5 minutes. Add broth, tomatoes, seasonings, and black beans. Cover and simmer for one hour. Puree in blender or with an immersion blender. Stir in chicken, corn, olives and pimentos. Cook 15 minutes longer. Serve with sour cream, shredded cheese, cilantro and crispy tortilla strips.

To cook in crockpot:Sauté vegetables in oil and place in crock pot with broth, tomatoes, seasonings and black beans. Cover and cook on low for 6-8 hours. Puree in blender or with an immersion blender. Stir in chicken, corn, olives and pimentos. Turn crock pot to high and cook 15-30 minutes longer, or until heated through. Serve with sour cream, shredded cheese, cilantro and crispy tortilla strips.

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Crispy Tortilla Strips

about 4 corn or flour tortillas
1-2 Tbs olive oil
Kosher (or other coarse) salt

Spread olive oil onto a rimmed baking sheet. Cut tortillas into thin strips (a pizza cutter works nicely). Place on the baking sheet and use a spatula to toss the strips with the oil to lightly coat. Bake at 350°F for 5-7 minutes or until strips just begin to brown. Sprinkle lightly with coarse salt.

Here are a few tips for keeping large quantities of cookies fresh:

• Refrigerate or freeze uncooked dough. Uncooked dough can be kept in Ziploc bags or wrapped in plastic wrap (especially logs of dough) in the fridge. Take out dough and bake small batches of cookies. Many types of cookies actually taste better after letting the dough sit in the fridge overnight before cooking.  For drop cookies, freezing dough is very helpful. Prepare cookie dough and place scoops of dough on parchment lined baking sheets. Freeze raw dough until solid, then transfer dough balls to Ziploc bags. Pull out just as many cookies as you want to bake.
• Refrigerate or freeze cooked cookies. Baked cookies will also stay fresh longer if stored in the refrigerator or freezer. Store cookies in Ziploc bags or seal-able containers and freeze or refrigerate until ready to serve. Be sure to keep different kinds of cookies in different containers. Mint and gingerbread cookies do not go well together!
• To store cookies at room temperature: You can still keep cookies fresh without freezing all of them. Use containers that are as air-tight as you can find. Place a small piece of BREAD in the container with the cookies. The bread will lose its moisture more quickly than the cookies, allowing the cookies to stay soft longer than they normally would. Replace the bread with a fresh piece as it dries out. This will not keep cookies soft indefinitely, but it will extend their shelf life to more than a week.

Just a note of warning: if you put bread in your cookie jar, every time your kids open the jar, they will ask, “How come there’s bread in the cookies?”  Some may even choose to eat the bread over the cookies, which will prompt you to ask (when you go to sneak another cookie for yourself get a cookie for a starving child), “What happened to the bread I put in the cookie jar?” No one, of course, will admit to eating the mysteriously disappeared stale bread.

P.S. This also works to keep your brown sugar soft. The bread will last much longer in your canister of brown sugar than in the cookie containers. Maybe because it doesn’t get opened quite as many times throughout the day!

Happy Baking!

DAY 1: Christmas Cherry Cookies

DAY 2: Blueberry Crumb Bars

DAY 3: Cherry Shortbread Squares

DAY 4: Chinese Almond Cookies

 DAY 5: Chocolate Covered Pretzels

 DAY 6: Nanaimo Bars

DAY 7:Sugar Cookie Bars

 DAY 8: Maple Cookies

DAY 9: Chocolate Walnut Puddle Cookies (Gluten Free)

DAY 10: Chocolate Peppermint Cookies

  DAY 11: Cranberry Orange Pinwheels

 DAY 12: Candy Cane Kisses Cookies

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Enjoy a wonderful sugar-laden faith-filled Christmas season!

Still need more cookie ideas? Try these:

First Annual Twelve Days of Christmas Cookies(2009)

Second Annual Twelve Days of Christmas Cookies (2010)

Fun little Christmas colored cookies topped with candy cane flavored Hershey’s Kisses. These are great for making with kids. They love rolling the dough balls in colored sugar and pressing the Kisses into the warm cookies. I did find that the white chocolate kisses tend to collapse into themselves (melt) faster than the regular chocolate kisses. If you like this, press the Kisses into the cookies immediately after removing the cookies from the oven. If you want the Kisses to hold their shape, wait about 3 minutes before pressing the Kisses into the cookies. Don’t wait until they are completely cool, however, or the Kisses won’t “stick”.

These cookies are best made very small; they should be just barely bigger than the Kisses (after baking).

–

RECIPE:

Candy Cane Kisses Cookies
——————-(from Hershey’s)

1 bag Hershey’s Candy Cane Kisses
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 egg
2 cups all purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
2 tablespoons milk
Red and Green colored sugar (about 3 Tbs each)

Preheat over to 350°F. Remove wrappers from about 4 dozen Kisses.

Beat butter, sugar, vanilla, and egg in a large bowl until well blended. Stir together flour, baking soda and salt; add alternatively with milk to butter mixture, beating until well blended.

Shape dough into small 1-inch balls. Roll in red and/or green colored sugar. Place on ungreased cookie sheet.

Bake 8 – 10 minutes or until cookies are barely set. Remove from oven; cool for 3 minutes on the baking sheet. Press candy piece into center of each cookie. Remove from cookie sheet to wire rack. Cool completely.

Yield: about 4 dozen very small cookies.

DAY 11: Cranberry Orange Pinwheels

Traditional flavors of Christmas, all swirled into a bite-sized cookie. Buttery orange dough swirled with chopped fresh cranberries and pecans. A delicious cookie for the grown-up cookie plate.

RECIPE:

Cranberry Orange Pinwheels
—————–(from Better Homes & Gardens)

1 cup butter, softened
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 eggs
2 tsp grated orange peel
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup cranberries
1 cup pecans
1/4 cup packed brown sugar

In a large mixing bowl beat butter with an electric mixer on medium to high speed for 30 seconds. Add granulated sugar, baking powder, and salt. Beat until combined, scraping sides of bowl occasionally. Beat in eggs and orange peel until combined. Beat in as much of the flour as you can with the mixer. Stir in any remaining flour. Divide dough in half. Cover and chill dough about 1 hour or until easy to handle.

For filling, in a food processor combine cranberries, pecans, and brown sugar. Cover and blend or process until cranberries and nuts are finely chopped; set filling aside.

Roll half of the dough between pieces of waxed paper (or plastic wrap) into a 10-inch square. Spread half of the filling over dough square to within 1/2 inch of edges; roll up dough. Moisten edges; pinch to seal. Wrap in waxed paper or plastic wrap. Repeat with remaining dough and filling. Chill for 4 to 24 hours.

Cut rolls into 1/4-inch slices . Place slices 2 inches apart on an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake in a 375°F oven for 8 to 10 minutes or until edges are firm and bottoms are lightly browned. Cool on cookie sheet for 3 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack and let cool.

Makes about 60 cookies

These fun cookies are from Martha Stewart. If you dip them in dark chocolate, they taste a lot like Girl Scout Thin Mint Cookies.

Martha’s recipe is quite labor intensive, involving three refrigerator/freezer periods, dough rolling & cutting, dipping the cookies with a fork, and sifting the candy into similar sized pieces.

I simplified the process a lot when I made these. I shaped the dough into logs that I sliced into rounds, instead of rolling out the dough and then cutting them out with a round cookie cutter. I only chilled my dough once. I dipped the cookies with my fingers (coating just the top and sides, instead of the whole cookie), and I definitely did not sort my crushed candy canes into large and small pieces. Mine may not be as perfect as Martha’s, but that didn’t seem to make any difference to the kids eating them.

–

RECIPE:

Chocolate Peppermint Cookies
——————(adapted from Martha Stewart)

2 cups flour
1 cup unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
10 Tbs butter, softened
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 large eggs
2 large egg yolks
1 1/2 tsp pure peppermint extract
12 large candy canes or 30 peppermint candies, crushed
about 2 pounds chocolate, coarsely chopped (dark or white chocolate)

Preheat oven to 325°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone mat.

Whisk flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in a bowl. In another bowl, beat butter and sugar with a mixer on medium-high speed for 1 minute. Reduce speed to medium-low, and add eggs and peppermint extract. Slowly add flour mixture, and beat until just incorporated.

Divide dough in half and place on two large pieces of plastic wrap. Using plastic wrap, shape dough into 2 logs about 2″ in diameter. Wrap logs securely in the plastic wrap and refrigerate until firm, at least 1-2 hours, or several days.

When ready to bake, unroll plastic wrap from dough logs. Use a sharp knife to cut dough into 1/4” disks. Gently reshape edges into circles, if necessary. Place cookies on lined baking sheet, keeping unused dough in the refrigerator until ready to slice. Bake cookies for 10 minutes, or until dry to the touch. Cool 2 minutes on baking sheet before transferring cookies to wire racks to cool.

Melt chocolate in a heatproof bowl in the microwave or in a double boiler (melt chocolate slowly). Dunk cookies into melted chocolate. Use a fork to turn the cookie over in the chocolate. Pick up the cookie with the fork, let excess chocolate drip off, and gently scrape bottom against edge of bowl. Place on parchment (or waxed paper)-lined baking sheets, and while the chocolate is still wet, sprinkle tops of cookies with the crushed candy canes. Let chocolate harden before storing. (TIME SAVING NOTE: You can also just use your fingers to hold the cookie and only dunk the top and sides of the cookie, gently scraping the excess chocolate off of the top of the cookie before placing it on the parchment paper)

Makes 4-6 dozen, depending on the size of your cookies

DAY 9: Chocolate Walnut Puddle Cookies

Gluten-free. Butter-free. Sugar? OK, not exactly sugar-free. But with only 6 easy-to-find ingredients that can be mixed in one bowl without a mixer, cookies don’t get much easier than this!

Made with chopped toasted nuts, egg whites, powdered sugar, cocoa, salt and vanilla, these cookies turn out soft and chewy on the inside with a crackly top, like the top of a great batch of brownies. In fact, every bite is like the best part of a pan of brownies (those chewy edge pieces).

I made these with walnuts and we really enjoyed them. They were rich, chewy and chock full of nuts. Next time I want to try them with chopped roasted almonds.

RECIPE:

Chocolate Walnut Puddle Cookies
——————-(adapted from Dinner with Julie)

3 cups walnuts, pecans, almonds or hazelnuts
1 lb (about 4 cups) powdered sugar
2/3 cup cocoa
1/2 tsp salt (fine ground sea salt, if you have it)
4 large egg whites
1 Tbs vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350°F.

Spread nuts in a single layer on a baking sheet. Toast nuts in the oven for 5-10 minutes. Remove from oven and let nuts cool completely. Chop into coarse pieces (don’t chop too fine).

In a large bowl, use a whisk to stir together the powdered sugar, cocoa and salt. With a large spoon, stir in the cooled nuts. Stir in the egg whites and vanilla until well combined.

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone mat. Drop the batter in small mounds on the baking sheet, leaving about 1” of space between cookies (no more than 12 cookies on a normal sized baking sheet). Bake for 11-13 minutes. The cookies will spread, puff slightly, crack on top, get glossy and then turn matte. Slide the entire sheet of parchment paper or mat off of the baking sheet onto a cooling rack and let the cookies cool completely. Use a metal spatula to remove cookies from parchment paper or mat.

Makes about 3 dozen cookies

DAY 8: Maple Cookies

A simple maple flavored cookie. No frills; just a quiet, unassuming cookie.

–

RECIPE:

Maple Cookies
———-(from AllRecipes)

1 cup butter, softened
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 egg
1 cup real maple syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 tsp maple extract (optional)
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 cups all-purpose flour
Granulated or raw sugar for rolling

Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease cookie sheet or use silicon baking mat.

In a large bowl, cream the butter and brown sugar. Add the egg, syrup, vanilla and maple extract (if using). Mix until well blended. Stir together the flour, salt and baking soda. Stir into mixture until well blended. Shape into 1 inch balls and roll in sugar. Place on cookie sheets about 2 inches apart and flatten slightly.

Bake for 8 to 10 minutes.

Makes about 60 small cookies.