Recipe: Gluten Free Chocolate Banana Bread

Banana bread is one of my favorite things to bake. I usually have a bunch of super ripe bananas in the freezer that are perfect for making sweet and moist banana bread. I decided to use my usual recipe from Flour bakery but adding healthy raw cacao powder, cacao nibs and making it gluten free with brown rice flour. Keep in mind this is the healthy version and not super sweet or chocolatey. If you want to go that route, I would swirl some melted chocolate chips into the batter. Yum! Check out these other gluten recipes for Citrus Ricotta Mini Cakes, Cardamom Coffee Cake, Carrot Muffins, Spiced Lentil Soup, and Fluffy Buttermilk Pancakes.

+ Full recipe for Gluten Free Chocolate Banana Bread
+ I get my cacao nibs and brown rice flour from Thrive Market. Get 15% off using my referral link.
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Baking with an 8-year old

Have you ever met a kid (not your own) who reminds you of yourself when you were their age? For me, that's my friend Lisa's daughter Zoya because she loves to bake. Remember when I baked with her when she was only 6 years old? Now Zoya is 8 and she still loves to bake as much as she did two years ago. When I was little, I loved to bake all kinds of things, but it was usually from a Betty Crocker or Duncan Hines (whichever was on sale) box where all I did was add eggs and oil to the mix.

A few weeks ago I invited Zoya to come over to bake. She chose to bake a carrot cake and used this recipe from a DIY post I did for Oh Happy Day. It was fun and messy and perfectly imperfect!

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Recipe: Healthy Chocolate Pudding

The word "healthy" in this chocolate pudding recipe refers to a secret ingredient that you'd never guess -- avocado. I first learned about this recipe from Jennifer Tyler Lee of 52 New Foods at the Williams-Sonoma event I attended a while back. One taste and I was hooked! Luckily the recipe is in her book, The 52 New Foods Challenge, which I made one afternoon with the help of Lucas. Scroll down and you'll see Lucas' favorite part about making it!

Enjoy!

Yeah, I let Lucas do this.

And yeah, I let him do this too.

One tip I loved from Jennifer was not to hide any of the ingredients but let your kids make it with you and see everything that goes in it.

+ Click here for a printable pdf
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Recipe: Soft Baked Pretzels (Baking with Kids)

A couple of weeks ago, I volunteered to make homemade soft pretzels with Lucas' preschool class. I made them last year as well and they were such a big hit with the kids and the teachers so I figured I would make them again. Plus, who doesn't love a soft baked pretzel, salty and dripping with melted butter?

Lucas helped me knead the dough in his jammies before heading off to school. He's a great helper in the kitchen -- remember how he peeled those Brussels sprouts? I let the dough rise for an hour while I got the kids ready and dropped off at school. The kids were super excited to make their own pretzels! They used their listening/following instructions skills to roll out their own dough and twist them into a pretzel shape. I dipped them in a baking soda/warm water bath (this gives the pretzels a nice golden-brown color) and then laid them out onto parchment paper on a tray. I used a Sharpie to write kids' initials next to their pretzel. The kids also had to be extra patient as the dough had to rise again for 15 minutes and then bake in the oven. When they were ready, the only complaint I heard was that they all wanted more!

Each pretzel was unique and they kids were so proud. I offered two dipping sauces, ranch and nacho cheese, but most kids wanted them plain with salt.

+ Click here for a printable PDF (Note: This recipe makes 6 pretzels but I quadrupled the recipe for the kids project)
+ Photos taken with my iPhone 5 (excuse the not-so-great quality of the photos -- I had flour and butter all over my hands and surrounded by 20+ preschoolers)
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