Iced Latte

July 25, 2012July 25, 2012 ~ Lynn ~ 13 Comments

I am a coffee addict.

I’ve tried to quit. I’ve suffered through the withdrawal headaches and general fooginess. I’ve gone months without. But the aroma of a fresh pot brewing always pulls me back in. I’m sure all the other coffee addicts out there will understand.

Although I need my coffee, it’s a little tougher to drink a hot cup in the summer, especially on those days where the humidity makes it feel like I’m walking through water. I’ve tried different ways of making a cold coffee, but this is the one that works best for me. Depending on how strong I feel like having my latte I’ll add one or two shots of espresso. If you want to sweeten the drink, I suggest adding sugar to the espresso before adding it to the cold milk so that it dissolves.

Iced Latte

1 – 2 shots espresso
cold milk
ice

Fill a tall glass with ice. Pour milk to till the glass is 2/3 full then add the espresso. Stir.

Enjoy!

Mini Banana Loaves

July 9, 2012 ~ Lynn ~ 9 Comments

I wasn’t planning on posting these mini loaves. I made them on a whim last weekend, thinking they’d make a good snack to take to work. It turns out this is the greatest banana bread ever. Seriously.

I used the Olive & Gourmando recipe from The Art of Living According to Joe Beef. I’ve had the book since Christmas and have been eyeing this recipe ever since. I hesitated to make it because it seemed a little too involved for banana bread. I mean, it’s supposed to be a “quick” bread, right? Turns out the extra steps were totally worth it. Unlike a typical banana bread, where baking powder is added to dry ingredients, this recipe calls for adding baking soda to sour cream before mixing it into the batter. On top of this unusual step, the recipe also called for microwaving the bananas to extract the juices and then reduce the juice by half. I don’t have a microwave so I heated the bananas over a double boiler, which worked very well.

The flavour was rich, the texture light and moist at the same time. Even days later these mini loaves tasted incredible. So I snapped a quick to prove to you that although this banana bread must be tried.

O & G’s Banana Bread

1/2 cup sour cream (room temperature)
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
4 ripe bananas
1/2 cup unsalted butter (room temperature)
1 cup packed dark brown sugar
2 eggs (room temperature)
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 cup all purpose flour
1 tsp cardamom
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp salt

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Grease 8 mini loaf molds, set aside.
Mix the sour cream and the baking soda together, set aside.
Over a double boiler, gently heat the banana for 5 minutes. Place the bananas in a fine mesh sieve and strain out the juices, you should get 1/4 to 1/2 cup of juice. In a small sauce pan over medium reduce the juice by half, then return the juice to the banana and mash the bananas (don’t puree).
In a large bowl beat the butter and sugar together with an electric mixer. Add the eggs one at a time, then add the vanilla. Stir in the bananas with a spatula, then the sour cream mixture.
In a separate bowl, mix the flour, spices and salt together. Fold the flour into the banana/butter mixture.
Pour the batter into the prepared loaf molds. Bake for 30 minutes, until a tester comes out clean. Let cool in the molds for 15 minutes, then turn out onto a rack to cool completely.

Enjoy!

Strawberry Lime Ice Pops

July 3, 2012 ~ Lynn ~ 5 Comments

I know many of you have moved on to other summer fruits, but I’m still stuck on strawberries. I was away for a week and felt that I needed to eat an extra weeks worth in order to “catch up”. I went out and bought a ton of Quebec strawberries all at once. Unfortunately, eating them all before they went bad turned out to be impossible. That’s ok though, I was planning on preserving some anyway.
Every year I make a few bottles of strawberry jam. Although I like to dream of giving up my job and selling jam, anyone who has seen that episode of Friends where Monica attempts this knows that’s it’s almost impossible to make a living selling jam. My reasons for making it are more ethereal; in the dead of winter, when the ice and cold have me feeling like I couldn’t possibly go on, the smell of homemade strawberry jam revitalizes me. It’s like sunshine in jar.

I still had a few strawberries left after making my jam, so I decided to have a little fun with them. We were kids, Mom would often make strawberry juice. It’s just strawberries pureed with sugar, but the taste is incredibly fresh and rich. Sometimes we’d freeze the strawberry juice and save it for the winter too. It’s a lot of work, but once you scrape up a bowl full you get the fresh summer flavour in the middle of winter. But on this day I didn’t feel like waiting for my frozen treat, so I decided to make myself some ice pops. I added a little lime juice to give them a little extra kick. They’re perfectly refreshing on a hot summers day.

Strawberry Lime Ice Pops