banana bread {muffins}

This is the Lion House banana bread recipe. It never comes out too dense and is just the perfect amount of sweet. It's a favorite at our house. I may have eaten five of these yesterday...and three today. Yikes!

Ingredients:

1/2 c. butter (I always cut this in half and use 1/4 cup butter and 1/4 cup applesauce)

1 c. sugar

2 eggs

1 c. bananas (about 2)

1/4 c. milk

1 tsp. lemon juice

2 c. flour

1 1/2 tsp. baking soda

1/4 tsp. salt

1 c. mini chocolate chips (optional...but not really. Lol!)

Directions:

*Mash up bananas with whisk attachment on mixer until they are no longer lumpy. Add sugar, milk, lemon juice, and butter (and applesauce if you are subbing for butter). Mix until well combined. Add in dry ingredients and mix until well incorporated. Stir in chocolate chips. 

*Bake at 350 for about 15 minutes or until cooked through.

**Makes 18 muffins

frosted sugar cookie bars

These cookies are so much easier to than traditional sugar cookies, but are just as delicious. They also make enough to feed a crowd! We made these for FHE last week to take to our new neighbors and we had so many cookies that we took cookies to two other family's on our street, froze a bunch for another time, and still had plenty for ourselves.

 I let one of the kids choose the color for the frosting, so it's kind of a wild sea green:-) These are great for any occasion, though. You could do pink frosting/valentine's sprinkles for Valentine's day, yellow/orange for summer, orange/black halloween....

Recipe from ourbestbites.com

Cookies:

1. 2 cups real butter (no substitutions!), softened to room temperature
2. 2 cups sugar
3. 2 large eggs
4. 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
5. 1 tablespoon almond extract
6. 6 cups flour, spooned lightly into the measuring cup and leveled with a knife.
7. 1 tablespoon baking powder
8. 1 teaspoon table salt

Frosting:

1. 1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened to room temperature
2. 3 cups powdered sugar
3. 1 teaspoon almond extract
4. 2-3 tablespoons milk (or more, if needed milk; whole or evaporated if you have it handy)
5. 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly spray a half sheet-sized baking sheet (13x18x1") with non-stick cooking spray and set aside.
2. In a bowl of a heavy-duty mixer or in a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add the eggs and extracts and beat until combined.
3. In a medium-sized mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Add to the creamed butter mixture and mix to combine.
4. Press the dough evenly into the prepared baking sheet. If desired, you can smooth it out with a rolling pin or a smooth drinking glass. Bake for 20-30 minutes (mine was done right at 25 minutes, but every oven is different) or until the top is lightly golden brown. Remove from oven and allow to cool completely.
5. While the cookie bars are cooling, prepare the frosting. In a large mixing bowl, whip together the powdered sugar and softened butter until combined. Very slowly, add a little bit of milk at a time until desired consistency is reached. If desired, add a few drops of food coloring.
6. When the pan of cookies is cool, spread with frosting and sprinkle with colored sprinkles. Cut into squares. The number of bars this makes will depend on how big you cut the squares, but these are VERY rich and you could probably get away with cutting these into 40+ squares.

*NOTE

While I LOVE this recipe, it uses a ton of butter and the cookies are very thick. I am linking to a recipe from the sixsistersstuff blog that I want to try next time and I will do a comparison!

Six Sister's Stuff Sugar Cookie Bars

sprinkles cookie dough cake

 I recently found a cake blog called Cake by Courtney and I couldn't wait to try one of her cakes! Thankfully we have a birthday coming up in our family so I let Natalie choose a cake from the Cake by Courtney blog and she decided on the Sprinkle Cookie Dough Cake. I am super happy with how this turned out and I can't wait to try out more of her cakes.

 Cookie dough in the middle. 

 Our ovens weren't installed correctly so our baked goods come out slanted which poses a bit a problem when you are trying to make a level cake! (We are planning on having this fixed, but it's on our list of 1,000 other things to do....)

To help with the slanted cake problem, I just piled more frosting and cookie dough on the shallow side of the cake.

Ta-da! Perfect for our princess :-) 

SPRINKLES COOKIE DOUGH CAKE

Recipe From: cakebycourtney.com

Ingredients

Vanilla Cake

1 whole egg (large)

3 egg whites (large)

1 cup whole milk, room temperature

2 1/2 teaspoons clear vanilla extract

3 cups, plus 2 tablespoons cake flour, sifted

1 3/4 cups granulated sugar

1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon baking powder

3/4 teaspoon salt

12 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature

Sprinkle Cookie Dough

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature

1 cup granulated sugar

1/2 brown sugar, lightly packed

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

1 cup mini chocolate chips

1/2 cup sprinkles

Vanilla Buttercream

2 cups unsalted butter, room temperature

3 oz. cream cheese, room temperature

6-7 cups powdered sugar

1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract

2 tablespoons heavy cream

Food coloring (optional)

Instructions

For the Vanilla Cake

1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F. Prepare three 8-inch round cake pans by spraying each pan with non-stick spray, covering the bottom of the pan with parchment paper and spraying the parchment paper with the non-stick spray as well. Set aside.

2. In a medium-sized mixing bowl, combine the whole egg, egg whites and clear vanilla extract. Set aside.

3. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine the cake flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Mix on low speed for about 30 seconds.

4. With the mixer on low speed, add the butter and milk. Continue to mix on low until just combined and then increase to medium speed and mix for 1-2 minutes, until light and fluffy.

5. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and add the egg mixture in two additions, beating on medium speed after each addition until just combined and all the ingredients are thoroughly incorporated.

6. Divide the batter into the three prepared cake pans, using a kitchen scale to measure equal parts in each pan. Bake for 20-25 minutes (my cakes took 20 minutes), or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean.

7. Let the cakes cool in the pans for 10 minutes and then invert onto wire racks until completely cool.

For the Sprinkle Cookie Dough

1. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine the butter and sugars until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes.

2. Add the vanilla extract and mix until combined.

3. Slowly add in the flour and salt and mix until the dry ingredients are incorporated.

4. Stir in the mini chocolate chips and sprinkles.

5. Set aside 1/3 of the dough for the cake filling and use the remaining 2/3 to roll into small balls for the topping. 

For the Vanilla Buttercream

1. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine the butter and cream cheese. Beat on medium speed for about 3 minutes, until the mixture is light and fluffy.

2. With the mixer on low speed, slowly add the powdered sugar, followed by the heavy cream and vanilla extract.

3. Continue to beat the frosting on medium speed for an additional 3-5 minutes.