Recipe-in-a-Flash: Chocolate-Hazelnut-Banana Bread

Chocolate + bananas + nuts are always a good combination. When that chocolate-nut pairing is Nutella, well, you've just ramped up the whole banana bread game!

Just look at all that swirly Nutella goodness!

pre-baking

just out of the oven

This recipe, from NYT/Cooking, is easy and delicious. My one change would be to add MORE Nutella (no such thing as too much Nutella, right?). I didn't feel the hazelnut flavor was big enough. I might also add some actual nuts for crunch and texture. 

With those additions, this recipe is a keeper! Add it to your banana bread file and let me know what you think. Happy baking!

Ingredients

1/2 C unsalted butter (1 stick) plus more for greasing the pan

2 C all-purpose flour plus more for flouring the pan

1 t baking soda

3/4 t Kosher salt

1-1/2 C mashed bananas, from about 3 medium bananas

2/3 C granulated sugar

1/4 C plain Greek yogurt

2 eggs

1 t vanilla extract

1/3 C chocolate-hazelnut spread, like Nutella

Directions

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Butter & flour a 9x5x3" loaf pan.
2. Stir the flour, baking soda, & salt together in a bowl.
3. Brown butter: melt butter in a light-colored saucepan over medium heat. Book butter, occasionally scraping the bottom & sides of the pan with a rubber spatula until it turns a deep golden brown and smells nutty. Don't walk away from the pan during this process. The butter will go from browned and nutty to acrid and burnt in moments. Transfer butter to a large heat-safe mixing bowl & let it cool slightly.
4. When the butter has cooled a bit, add the mashed bananas, sugar, yogurt, eggs, and vanilla extract. Stir until well combined, then add the flour mixture & stir until just combined. Do not overmix.
5. Pour half the batter into prepared pan & spread it evenly with a knife or offset spatula. Spoon half the chocolate-hazelnut spread in several dollops over the top & use a toothpick or skewer to swirl it into the batter. Spoon & spread the remaining batter over the top followed by dollops of the remaining spread. Swirl in the spread, then bake the bread for 55-60 minutes, or until golden brown & a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

Recipe from NYT/Cooking

Valentine's Day: Nutella Brownies!

Nutella Brownies

Need a last-minute dessert for your Valentine's Day lunch or dinner? I think these Nutella Brownies from my February 2014 post are the answer! 

Wishing you all a delicious Valentine's Day!

http://www.cookstour.net/2014/02/nutella-brownies.html

Nutella Brownies

I came across this recipe on Leite’s Culinaria who got it from a Gourmet 1998 article detailing the history of gianduia, otherwise known as chocolate with finely ground hazelnuts, in the Piedmont region of Italy. The editors of Gourmet pronounced these “the best brownies you will ever taste.” I may not be the best person to critique, since brownies are not my first dessert of choice, but I gotta tell ya, these are pretty damn good. Besides the obvious ingredient of Nutella, the recipe adds in chopped bittersweet AND milk chocolate, AND a generous helping of toasted hazelnuts.

The icing on the cake here (so to speak) is the utter ease of the recipe. Everything gets combined in one bowl with the melted chocolate, and then loaded into a baking pan. Facilmente!

I served them to dinner guests,
along with coffee and after-dinner drinks, and they were pronounced a hit! They are everything I would want in a brownie: chocolaty (duh), nutty, fudgy, and oh so moist. So if no less an authority than the late, great Gourmet Magazine proclaims these the best brownies ever, who I am to judge? I’m just here to eat.

Print recipe here.

Dinner for a Cold Winter's Night

When I was a child, my aunt Millie made the most delicious Pasta Fagiole. Pasta Fagiole is really nothing but a pasta and bean peasant soup but without just the right seasoning, the end result could be blandly flavored water. Not so with aunt Millie's version. Hers was full of flavor, thick with tiny Ditalini pasta and rich white cannellini beans. A care package of this soup was the perfect antidote to the bone chilling weather outside.


I never got the recipe for her soup and until today never tried to make it. But in the December issue of La Cucina Italiana, in a story titled "In From the Cold," they featured this dish, among other warming selections.  It was blustery today in New Jersey. Just the perfect day for Pasta Fagiole. The La Cucina Italiana recipe is very different in that it contains pancetta and crumbled sausage (not typical).  I wasn't sure how this would affect the soup (and my fond memories), but I really liked these new variations. It made the soup much heartier and I used hot chicken sausage so the addition of a little spice really bolstered the overall flavor. It's a delicious, simple, one pot meal that comes together in about an hour if you use canned beans (which I did). Although the recipe calls for dried beans, none of my local stores carried them; I don't think it diminished the dish at all using canned beans.

I served it with grated Parmigiana Reggiano, a drizzle of olive oil, fresh parsley, and homemade fennel tarralles (old-fashioned Italian savory cookies). This is not my aunt Millie's Pasta Fagiole, but on a cold night it warms me up just like hers used to.


Our dessert tonight also came from La Cucina Italiana, by way of the wonderful pastry chef, Karen DeMasco. I'm sure many of you are fans of Nutella, the chocolate hazelnut spread from Italy. Strangely enough, I had never sampled it but when I read DeMasco's recipe for Nutella Sandwich Cookies, I was more than intrigued. She combines an oatmeal cookie batter with Nutella for a crisp, buttery, nutty cookie that would be fabulous on its own.  But then she sandwiches a tablespoon of Nutella inbetween to make an incredible cookie (move over Oreos!). A sprinkling of Demerara sugar on top before baking adds just a hint of sweet and crunch.

The cookies are a cinch to make, but the batter is very dry so it doesn't roll easily. I also think I would make them much thinner next time as this is alot of cookie in one sitting!  But oh so delicious!