Bananas pair surprisingly well with coffee. Even big coffee chains have had banana-flavored coffee drinks over the past couple of years, mixing bananas with espresso, chocolate and/or caramel. I don’t think that these drinks were as popular as some on the menu, but I also bet that not enough people gave them a fair shake. Since I’ve been playing with Starbucks Via lately, I decided to mix the two flavors together in a baked good, a variation on banana bread that incorporates coffee.

I added coffee into the banana bread batter itself. The Via I used incorporated very smoothly and added a ton of coffee flavor, so you can really taste it in the finished bread. Since black coffee isn’t exactly sweet, the coffee ensures that this bread has a mellow, rich taste to it and isn’t too sweet. That said, I did want to add back some sweetness, so I incorporated some milk chocolate chips into the bread. The milk chocolate goes well with the banana and the coffee, and the bread overall had a great mix of flavors and was a nice twist on plainer banana bread. This might not be as popular with the kids as the standard banana bread, but it gets my vote for pairing with a cup of coffee or latte in the morning.

I used disposable, aluminum foil mini loaf pans for these breads so that I could give them out as gifts. The pans measure about 5×3-inches, give or take a little bit. Since they’re not the sturdiest things, I put them on a baking sheet. Bear in mind that, if you use these same little loaf pans, the baking time may be impacted slightly by the type of baking sheet you choose to set them on. An insulated sheet might mean a few extra minutes in the oven. A heavier, darker baking sheet might mean a few minutes less. Test your bread with a toothpick before the timer goes off just to be sure. If you happen to have regular pans of this size, use those and grease them lightly first.
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Bread pudding comes in all different forms, from recipes that can be individually sliced and served very neatly to recipes so pudding-like that the must be scooped and served in a bowl. Recently, Anna from Cookie Madness came across one that is a little more unusual and talked me into trying it out. White Chocolate Challah Bread Pudding she made comes from a cookbook called The Fig’s Table and is unusual because it has an egg rich base that makes the finished bread pudding turn out to be more like a custard than anything else.

In fact, the method of making this bread pudding is a lot like the method of making a custard, since the pudding is baked in a water bath! The water bath keeps the custard that fills the pan cooking at a slow, even pace, so you end up with a dessert that is very rich and very smooth. This method is a great fit for this recipe because there is a lot of custard to cook. The custard is the egg and milk mixture that the bread soaks in, and this one almost has more bread than custard. As it bakes, the bread soaks up a lot of the custard and helps to give the dessert structure, but doesn’t distract you from the soft, richness of the pudding. The white chocolate flavor really came through in the end, so it is well worth using a good quality white chocolate. I used Guittard. Like Anna, I would not recommend using white chocolate chips.

As with other bread puddings, you can really use any kind of bread in this recipe. I would strongly recommend going with challah or another soft, rich bread like brioche because both will blend in very well with the richness of the custard. Plain white bread would be a good fallback, but I wouldn’t use anything with a strong flavor that might detract from the vanilla notes in the white chocolate.

I started with the same recipe Anna posted and cut it down to make about half as many servings, as Anna said that it was very rich and I didn’t really have the need to serve 12 (or more) people with the recipe. I baked it in a loaf pan and the procedure was just the same. If you want to serve more, use the original recipe.

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I originally found this recipe in Demolition Desserts. When I described the cookbook, I noted that it really encourages you to be creative, so while I did make the recipe as written, I also experimented with the size and shape of the cookies in the book. My favorite variation I baked up was for Chocolate Espresso Cookie Cups. These two-bite cookies are baked in mini muffin cups, which gives them a cute look an a fantastic texture. They’re fudgy and soft in the center, not unlike a good brownie, but still retain some of that “crispy on the outside edge” feel when they’re fresh from the oven that ordinary chocolate chip cookies have.

The original recipe called for using a little bit of real coffee grounds in the cookies to give them their espresso flavor. I opted to use instant espresso powder (instant coffee is fine) because I think it it actually lends more flavor to the cookies and I like the way that it fully incorporates without leaving any gritty little bits behind. I actually don’t mind a bit of texture, but I know plenty of people who do. It adds a nice coffee note and makes the cookies seem a little bit darker and richer. The cookies will sink a bit in the center as they cool, so don’t worry if they loose some of their muffin-like dome after taking them out of the oven. It’s just a sign that they’re going to have a nice, moist middle.

I used a combination of chocolate chips here. If you don’t want to mix them all up, I would probably lean towards milk chocolate chips for this recipe because they add some extra sweetness to a fairly dark chocolaty cookie, but dark chocolate chips would provide a little bit more of an intense chocolate flavor if that’s what you prefer.
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The folks at Betty Crocker invited me to try and come up with a spooky Halloween recipe using some of the General Mills cereals this year. At first, I wasn’t sure that I could do it. Cereals? What can you do with those besides make rice krispie treats and similar marshmallow bars? But I accepted the challenge and set about trying to come up with a more unusual way to use cereal in some kind of Halloween treat.

What I settled on was these Spooky Peanut Butter Puff Truffles. The centers of these peanut butter and chocolate truffles are made with a surprise ingredient: Reese’s Puffs cereal! The truffle balls are dipped into white chocolate and decorated with semisweet chocolate features to give them a very ghostly appearance. Spooky on the outside, sweet on the inside!

If you’ve ever had Peanut Butter Puffs cereal, or seen it in the store, you’ll know that it’s inspired by Reese’s Peanut Butter Puffs candies. They also taste pretty much just like candy, so I wanted to keep that peanut butter candy flavor going. The centers are made with the peanut butter cereal, cream cheese and peanut butter. The two softer ingredients help to hold the crushed up cereal together, but have mild enough flavors that you can still taste the peanut butter candy flavor of the cereal itself. Obviously, the peanut butter boosts the flavor and the candy shell just makes it that much more of a Halloween treat.

I hand-dipped the truffles, since I felt it gave the truffles a better look than trying to give them a smooth outer coating. Use a toothpick to draw on the eyes and mouths of the ghosts. It’s actually a very easy way to decorate the ghosts, plus you don’t need to be extremely precise since you want the ghosts to look spooky.

If you want to play with some cereal yourself, or try this recipe, you can submit photos to Betty Crocker’s Spooktackular Gallery where they’ll showcase your results!

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It’s just not fall without some kind of pumpkin dessert. How can you not think of pumpkins when the stores are filled with them and people put them out on their porches as decorations? Getting in the spirit of pumpkin desserts, as well as the Halloween season that prompts their presence, I used pumpkin in this beautiful orange and black Pumpkin and Chocolate Layer Cake. The cake is moist and satisfying, as well as spicy and chocolaty. I topped it off with a cream cheese frosting that blends in well with all of the flavor in the dessert. As if the flavor weren’t enough, this cake looks very dramatic and makes a great centerpiece for a seasonal party.

The cake has four layers, two each of pumpkin and chocolate. These layers come from two cakes that are split and stacked. Both the pumpkin and the chocolate cake start with the same basic recipe and both use pumpkin puree. The difference between them is that one includes a bunch of pumpkin-friendly spices, such as cinnamon and nutmeg, with the other has cocoa powder and bittersweet chocolate mixed in. Both types of cake have very different flavors, but they have just about the exact same texture and consistency, so they work together in the finished cake perfectly.

I recommend mixing up the batter for these two cakes at the same time so that they can be baked side by side in the oven. This way, the cakes are done at the same time and you can assemble the finished cake that much more quickly. Otherwise, prepare the second cake while the first is in the oven. You won’t have that much of a time difference when cooling the cakes and the oven will already be preheated and ready to go. The cakes, for the record, can be made a day in advance and wrapped in plastic wrap before slicing and frosting.

I kept the top of my cake plain, but if you want to dress up the presentation, you could garnish it with some pumpkin-shaped candy corn (a.k.a. mellowcremes) to give people a hint as to what is inside of the cake before you cut into it.
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I am a big fan of the Halloween M&Ms this year. They’re not just black and orange, but black, orange, neon green and purple. The combination of colors looks fun, bold and a bit spooky. I honestly love the look of them. I wanted to showcase their bright seasonal colors in something other than my candy dish, so I incorporated them into a batch of chewy, chocolate cookies. The dark color of the cookie really lets to bright colors of the candies stand out, making the cookies appear a little more exotic and in keeping with the Halloween season than your ordinary chocolate chip cookies.

Don’t let the not look of the cookies in the photo fool you, because these cookies are darker in person than they appear. They have a lot of cocoa powder in them than gives them their color, not to mention their deep chocolate flavor. These cookies are rich tasting and chocolaty, with a hint of fudginess that comes from their chewy texture. The fact that there are some miniature chocolate chips thrown in to add a little bit of extra chocolate doesn’t hurt, either. The M&Ms are, of course, both crunchy and chocolaty. If you get a cookie when its warm from the oven, you’ll get a nice bite of melted chocolate inside the M&M shell. for  The cookies look a little more Halloween-ish than plain chocolate chip cookies would with M&Ms added.

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