Christmas Cookies and Cats

One of my favorite Christmas traditions is taking excessive amounts of photos of cats cooking with my mom. We make a very traditional Polish Christmas Eve dinner of borscht and pierogi. The pierogi requires A LOT of work – make the dough, make the filling, roll the dough, stuff with filling, freeze…. Wait patiently… Cook and cover with butter.
 
We also make cookies. This year, for whatever reason, I had a hell of a time with my lemon cookies. We tried and failed a few times to no success whatsoever (although my improv team enjoyed them, they tasted fine) and finally I went home and made them myself.

The photo above is what happened when I showed up at my parent’s house with dozens of unfrosted cookies in tow. My brother and I frosted, sprinkled, and decorated (while a cat ate the ribbon of one of the packages under the tree). If you zoom in you can see the negative snowman and a few other fun things. Kids these days, so emo.

A few other fun things:


The restaurant at the Ace Hotel in NYC - the livestock were decorated for the season

My favorite Christmas ornament, purchased in Poland in 2010

A coffee shop in Albany

A mammoth!

 

(We are now members of the Museum of Science.)

Chocolate Marble Banana Bread aka I need to host brunch soon.

I've had these brown bananas hanging around for a few days and clearly I knew what I was going to do with them. BANANA BREAD.









Again I had my healthy add-ins confused and thought I needed applesauce (what is this, pumpkin bread?) but no, it was plain yogurt which I of course didn't have.



So I went to the grocery store after I bought the cats a laser pointer.
They weren't particularly interested. Well, only a little bit - they didn't go nuts.






(Creaming the butter & sugar)



But while I was searching for healthy banana bread that used applesauce instead of butter/oil (you'll see I didn't find it) I came across this super fantastic AND EASY idea for chocolate marble banana bread.

Recipe:
Combine: 2 c flour, 1 tsp baking powder, 1/2 tsp baking soda, 1/2 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp cinnamon & set aside
Cream: 1/2 c (that's 1 stick) butter and 1 c sugar, then add 2 eggs and 1 tsp vanilla
Then: Mash 3ish soft bananas and add 1/2 c plain yogurt

Add bananas and dry mixture to butter/sugar - alternating wet & dry mixtures.
Then stir in 1/2-3/4 c chocolate chips (I used mini ones) and 1/2 to 3/4 c chopped walnuts to batter.

Now comes the marble part - melt 1/2 c chocolate chips in the microwave, then stir in approx 1 c of the banana bread batter - you've got chocolate banana bread.
Spoon regular and chocolate batters into a pan, then use a knife to cut across (thus marbling) the batter.



(In the oven - I actually had to take out the top rack because it puffed so high.)




Bake in 325 degree oven for 50-60-70-80 minutes... I'm convinced this cooks too low since it always takes FOREVER to bake this bread (such that I've taken it out while still kind of raw a few times) and our new oven cooks hot so it shouldn't have taken as long as it did.

EAT. Deliciousness.