Chocolate Banana Nut Bread with Almonds

Nothing says change quite like the autumn. With me back in school and the air being crisply cold, Sarah and I wanted to embark on a new project; baking. We've been pretty good cooks, but baking doesn't reward our willy-nilly style in the same way that cooking does. It's more challenging for us to actually stick to measurements and rules. Time for new challenges, anyway...

To go with our hunger to bake ourselves into autumn, we had a few deliciously over-ripe bananas sitting around, along with a bag of beautiful locally-milled flour. I'm not sure if banana bread spells fall, but whatever...

Taking stock of what we had--bananas, flour, sugar, vanilla extract, eggs, a loaf pan--we knew we had the bare essentials, according to Cook's Illustrated, to make a decent banana bread. But we knew it was only a short leap to make it special. We added unsweetened chocolate to contribute a slightly bitter flavor, and substituted toasted almonds in lieu of toasted walnuts, since we prefer the taste better. Keep in mind sliced almonds are slightly my bulky than crushed walnuts, so we reduced the quantity by 1/4 Cup.

To top it off and make this a well-rounded Chocolate Banana Almond Bread, we whipped up some chocolate whip cream to use as a topping (for EVERYTHING because we're hedonists!). Chocolate whip is an easy way to take some of the edge off the bitter chocolate and the grittiness that can sometimes happen as banana bread gets older and drier.

The result, a gorgeous and scrumptious banana bread with delicious chocolate flavor and toasted almonds (sprinkle some on top and brush with butter for an even better appearance!), along with a heavenly whip topping.

I like it with my morning coffee. Sarah loved it with a cold glass of milk. Whatever is your choice, the smell of this bread while it's baking and the taste of a warm slice will help you embrace the coming chills of autumn.

Spiced Apple Jack

Autumn is in the air here in Ann Arbor which immediately made us think of alcohol and chocolate. So after much consideration, Pete and I decided to make Apple Jack (a spicy concoction of spiced apple cider, Irish whiskey, and a couple of spices) and a chocolatey banana bread with toasted almonds.

You can make applejack pretty quickly just by adding whiskey or bourbon to spiced cider, but, if you want something truly unique, you can spice your liquor like we did. Shoot for a 2:1 ratio of cider per liquor.

To make the cider, we grabbed some Irish whiskey and let it steep with a combination of nutmeg, all spice, cloves and cinnamon sticks. About 3 hours later we took the spicy liquor and put it in our french press.

Its important to use some sort of strainer before adding the whiskey mixture to your cider. If you don't strain it, you'll end up with a chunky mess in the bottom of your cider and you won't be as happy. Our french press was awesome and it worked perfectly!

The whiskey mixture came out to be about 1 1/2 cups so we combined it with 3 cups of cider in a mason jar.

Apple jack tastes like Autumn, and apple pies and the minute the warmth of the whiskey hits your belly, you'll feel like taking winter on.

Next up, we took on banana bread with bit of chocolate and oven roasted almonds on top. We got the recipe off of Cooks Illustrated (which if you've never poked around that website, you really should head over to that site and check it out).