New Appliances And A Banana Zucchini Muffin Recipe

My refrigerator was on it's last leg. The freezer didn't want to defrost and the seal around the fridge was coming off. It was still working, but was probably using a ton of energy. When we went on vacation Hubby fell in love with their side-by-side fridge. Our fridge was the freezer on top variety and we could never find anything in it. It was rather surprising the amount of food I threw away when cleaning that fridge out for the final time. There was 3 year old deer meat, shrimp from who knows when and fish we caught a year ago!

Now, not only is everything fresh, but it's organized... and even better, we can see what we have. With so many shelves, nothing should get shoved to place that it isn't seen for years.

Oh, did I mention it's stainless? Love it! I looked at a lot of refrigerators before I decided I liked this finish the best. I didn't realize how many were faux or a stainless that was horrible about showing fingerprints. This one is real stainless, but brushed fairly well so it doesn't show smudges every time you get in it.

And as for my range, of course it's self-cleaning! I don't manually clean ovens. It also has a flat top. (ceramic) Easy to clean, I just hope nothing get dropped on it and breaks it.

The oven is digital, and the timer works - something that broke on my other oven years ago!

(Ignore the space over the stove --- hubby still has to install the hood fan!)

I couldn't wait to use everything. So I loaded up the fridge and freezer and made dinner on the stove-top and decided to bake something for desert. I had found a Ziploc bag of shredded zucchini in the freezer when I emptied it out and a frozen banana, (Hubby hates that I freeze bananas! They turn black and look nasty, even though they are perfect to use in baking.) and wondered if there was something I could make that would use them both up.

I turned to the Net and searched for zucchini banana bread and then scanned the results for blogs. I like to try recipes that other bloggers recommend - they've been tried and approved by real people, so, in my experience they are generally quite tasty!

I read through a few different recipes before stumbling upon one that not only did I have all the ingredients for, those ingredients sounded like they'd mix up well together. I decided to go with a recipe from What's For Supper Tonight?

The recipe might have sounded good on paper, but it was even better than I had ever imagined it would be! Honestly, these muffins were so good that I might even enter them in the fair year! I'm warning you - these muffins are so good, you might want to eat them all, like I did. I hate to be the cause of you needing diet supplements, but I just have to share the recipe with you anyway. Warning: make them at your own risk!

Ingredients
2 c. grated zucchini
1 c. mashed bananas
3 eggs
1/3 c. sour cream
1 tsp. salt
2 c. sugar
½ c. vegetable oil
3 c. flour
1½ tsp. baking powder
1½ tsp. baking soda
3/4 tsp. cinnamon
½ tsp. nutmeg
¼ tsp allspice
1½ tsp. vanilla
1½ c. raisins, optional
(I also used 1/4 cup butter and 1/4 cup sugar and 1 tsp cinnamon that wasn't in the original recipe as a topping.)

Directions
Shred the zucchini and mash the bananas and set them aside.
In a large mixing bowl, combine eggs, sour cream, salt, sugar and oil.
In a medium bowl, mix flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice.
Stir flour mixture into egg mixture.
Add vanilla and stir.
Add zucchini, bananas and raisins and stir until combined well.

For bread: pour into 2 greased and floured loaf pans and bake in 350 degree oven for 45-55 minutes.

For muffins: grease muffin pan, fill muffin cups 2/3 full of batter and bake in 350 oven for 20-22 minutes.

To put a topping on your muffins (which DS said made them too sweet, so do so at your discretion.) Melt 1/4 butter in a small bowl, in another small bowl mix 1/4 cup sugar with 1 tsp cinnamon. Now pick up one muffin and dip the top of it in the melted butter and then in the cinnamon/sugar mixture.

Enjoy them hot -- they are the best that way! (imo)