Next Up---Uhh, Cookies! Peanut Butter Cookies With Oreos and a Good Banana Nut Bread Recipe

I know, you're thinking, "get over the Oreo kick already".  That's just how I work.  A few months back I did many variations of rice crispy treats, I get on different kicks, and right now, I'm using up the Oreos.  And, well, it's all good.

I whipped up one of Anna's (Cookie Madness) Late Summer Top 10 Cookies and with half the dough I added 10 broken up Peanut Butter Creme Oreos.  The other half, I baked as the good ol' One Bowl Criss-Cross Peanut Butter Cookies.  You can get the recipe on the link to Cookie Madness.  I made the recipe exactly as her recipe indicates.  These are a really good peanut butter cookie.  They were slightly crisp and still soft and a little chewy inside, even after one day.  I really liked that they weren't TOO sweet and the peanut butter was the star.  Too many recipes don't seem to have enough peanut butter.  These had twice as much peanut butter as butter.  I really liked them.  Oops, I guess I didn't make them exactly as the recipe says, it says to add 1/2 cup to 1 cup peanut butter chips, which I left out.  I thought they were great without, but it certainly couldn't hurt to put them in!  So here's a couple quick pictures of the criss-crosses and then the Oreos added cookies.  Which, by the way, I thought were pretty good.  I do have to say though, if you're going for peanut butter cookies, just make this great recipe plain and eat your Oreos with a glass of milk.  (I liked my previous post with the chocolate chip cookie dough and Oreos added better, in fact, it's really good!)

Go getcha a glass of milk! ;)

I made those yesterday.  Today I had some really ripe bananas and instead of my usual mini muffins, I turned to an old favorite recipe for Banana Nut Bread that I got from a roommate long ago (Hi, Bonnie!).  Apparently I used to make this recipe a lot, as this is how the old card it's written on looks:

I was all excited to make it just like I always did, until I realized it calls for shortening.  Shortening is just one of those things I'm trying not to use if I don't have to, so of course, I made a few changes to the recipe and it still turned out just as great and moist as ever.  So, here is the recipe as I made it today.

My Bonnie's Banana Nut Bread (She lives near the ocean!)

1 cup sugar (I probably could have cut some of this, but today I didn't)

1/3 cup Dannon Light & Fit Non Fat Vanilla Yogurt (any yogurt would work)

2 tablespoons canola oil

2 large eggs

2 tablespoons skim milk

1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 cup whole wheat pastry flour

1 cup unbleached all purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

3 large bananas, mashed (Mine were only about medium size today)

2/3 cup walnuts, toasted and chopped

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Cream together the sugar, yogurt and oil.  Add eggs, milk and vanilla and mix well.  Add flours, baking soda, salt and baking powder all together and stir to combine.  Stir in mashed banana and nuts.  Pour into bread pan(s) sprayed with cooking spray.  (Today I made four small tin loaves and gave away three of them.)  The recipe could make one large loaf (9x5 pan).  The small loaves baked for 34 minutes.  One large loaf should bake for an hour.  Test after 50 minutes or so with a toothpick inserted in the center, it should come out clean with maybe a crumb or two.

Love this banana bread!  Thanks, Bon!  Next time I'm going to go with Egg Beaters and maybe try using all whole wheat pastry flour.  Would it even be fine without any oil?  Probably, just increase the yogurt to 1/2 cup.