Pumpkin goes bananas in the oven

I woke up not in a such good mood yesterday. I mean, is kind of hard to have a good mood when you have something ringing loud at your hears, telling you to get up, and the bed screaming even louder for you to go back in. So I told everybody to shut up and dragged myself in to the kitchen. And there I was, swallowing a glass of light pinnaple yogurt*, and there she was looking at me. The banana.

You see, I'm not that fond of bananas. I like them plenty if they are not that much ripe, just like that, pretty natural, fresh and peeled at the moment. But any other way I pass it out. No bananas in the fruit salada, no bananas in my pizza, no banana pie, no banana flavoured yogurt, not even banana ice cream. Nop, none of that. And that banana was pretty much on the ripe side, and asking me to do something with her. Now I'm struggling between my hate of banana flavoured stuff, and my pledge not to throw out good food.

I went to the computer, tryed to do some work, but that mood I woke up with was not helping, and even there in the living room I could hear that banana calling. Yeah, I'm weird like that. And well, if nothing else works to brighten my mood, cooking and baking always does. Back into the kitchen. A brief look into my recipe notebook... hum... oh... lovely pumpkin standing there on the counter, you're going bananas! Pumpkin biscuits with smashed banana and chocolate chips it is.

By the amount of pumpkin compared with the banana, I was hopping the flavour would be disguised. Anyway, someone (read, the husband) will eat it. The recipe was really easy. My mood changed right away. And the house smelled like christmas. The way I like it!

The smell was great but it tasted better. They are soft, more on the cakey side, but I already knew that, so I was not expecting something crunchy. When warm, they almost melted in the mouth, and no signs of that banana! It turned out better than I anticipated cause I got to impress the husband's granny. Score! The thing is, granny is very picky, like very very picky. When it comes to sweets she only goes for simple sponge cake with no cream, no icing no crunchy bits, no nothing. Plus, she is a non-chocolate lady (I know, how can that be?). I can see your eye brows frowning over the chocolate chips, I'll get there.

The other day she was bragging how about in her young days she would bake a bunch of cookies and fill a box to have at home every other week, and as nowadays no woman does that. The sweet husband told her right away that it was not true because I happen to do that at home. Score for the husband. Sweet, right? Not that much for me, cause I was not really sure she bought that. She made that smile, like... yeah, right, if you say so...

When I started to line up the spoons of batter on the baking sheet, stupid me, noticed the lack of chocolate chips. They were lying quiet over the counter waiting to be added. Ok, I said to myself, this ones are going to granny, lets see what she has to say about it!

There's no need to say that the husband jumped right into the plate with joy when he came home from work. He's easy to please. Thank God for that! And granny? Well, she ate the first one without chocolate and seemed happy but said none and just threw a naughty smile. Then, as we were talking and distracted with the tv I could see, from the corner of the eye, her sneaky hand disappearing on the paper bag and into the mouth went another, and another biscuit. And those had chocolate chips. Double score!

So here's the recipe for you to impress your granny, your lover's granny, someone else's granny, or simply indulge yourself.

Pumpkin biscuits**

2 eggs

1 cup sugar

1/2 pureed banana

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1 cup pureed pumpkin

1 tea spoon vanilla extract

1 1/2 cup all purpose flour

1/2 cup whole wheat flour

1 tea spoon baking soda

1 tea spoon baking powder

1/4 tea spoon salt

1/4 tea spoon cinnamon powder

1 cup chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 350º. Beat the eggs with the sugar, then add banana, oil and punpkin. In another bowl mix the dry ingredients, except for the chocolate, and, carefully, add it to the punkin mix. Do not over beat. When done add the chocolate, and then line tea spoons of batter on a baking sheet with 2 inches between each coockie. Bake it for 10 to 12 minutes. Enjoy!

**

all photos by me

*I'm in a kind of pre-summer-weddings-regime. it sucks... I'll tell you about that later
** I have no idea where this recipe came from, it was just a handwritten scratch on my recipe notebook with no info from where I got it from. If you happen to know the author of it, please let me know!