No-Guilt Chocolate Banana Bread

I know this blog is for drink recipes, but I couldn't resist sharing a great recipe I came up with several years ago for a low-fat, low-cholesterol, and low-processed-sugar recipe for chocolate banana bread. It is so moist and delicious - tastes more like brownies! For the recipe below, I incorporated some whole wheat flour. If you'd rather do all white or unbleached white flour, that is OK too.

Lindsay Steele's
No- Guilt Chocolate Banana Bread 

1 cup wheat flour and 1/2 cup white flour (or 1-1/2 cups 1/2 & 1/2 wheat/white flour)
2/3 cup sugar
6 tablespoons cocoa
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
4 egg whites
1/4 cup oil vegetable oil
4 bananas, thoroughly ripe and mashed

   Heat oven to 350F. Combine flour, cocoa, salt, baking powder, baking soda, and cinnamon. With an electric mixer, cream eggs, oil and sugar until silky smooth, then add mashed bananas. Add egg-banana mixture to the flour mixture. Blend well on medium speed about 2 minutes.  Pour into well greased and floured
9" x 5" inch loaf pan (you can use a bit of the flour mixture). Bake 45 minutes and test for doneness.  Set
on wire rack to cool for 15-20 minutes. Turn out and cool completely.

What would Downton Abbey drink?

I recently saw some links on Pinterest for drinks inspired by Downton Abbey characters. The recipes were a bit too highfalutin for a midwest girl like me. So I wondered: if the Downton girls went to a martini bar here in the States in the modern day, what would they order? Here's what I think.

Lady Mary - Traditional Martini. No need to modernize the martini for Mary. She's all about tradition.

Lady Edith - Lemon Drop Martini. She's a little bit of a sour puss sometimes, but she can also be quite sweet when she wants to be.

Lady Sybil - Peaches and Cream Martini. Sybil is sweet and beautiful, just like this martini. And since we know how much she loves those Irish lads, she'd ask for it with a bit of Bailey's Irish Cream.

Anna Bates - Nuts and Berries Martini. She's a strong lady, tough like a nut shell. But she's also very sweet and kind. So this martini fits her perfectly.

Daisy Mason - Shirley Temple. Because she just "wouldn't feel right" about consuming alcohol.

O'Brien - Guinness, straight from the bottle. C'mon, what else is she going to drink? She isn't frilly, she's Irish and she's bitter.

Thomas (because he's kind of one of the girls) - blood orange juice and vodka. Slightly sinister, but always dignified.

Kinky Refreshment

Kinky Refreshment 

1 oz. Kinky Liquor

1 oz. Pineapple Juice

4 oz. Lemon-Lime Soda

Lindsay's Toffee Martini

Toffee Martini

I tried a recipe for a toffee martini which contained equal parts vodka, buttershots, creme de cacao and almond milk. It was lacking both creaminess and nuttiness. So I tweaked it by adding in Bailey's and a little amaretto. The result was spot on.

1 part vodka

1 part buttershots

1 part vanilla almond milk

1 part creme de cacao

1 part Bailey's Irish Creme (Carolan's works too)

1 part amaretto

Lindsay's Brownie Batter Martini

I don't know if you could really call this a martini, but it is a thick, delicious treat. Bonus - it clocks in at less than 150 calories if you use light chocolate almond milk.

Lindsay's Brownie Batter Martini

1 oz cake vodka
4 oz chocolate almond milk

Shake in a martini mixer (no ice!), pour into either a martini glass or short glass, and enjoy.

Lindsay's Snowball, baby! Martini

This martini mixes the flavors of marshmallow, vanilla, and coconut. Totally delectable!

Snowball, baby! Martini

 1 1/2 oz. marshmallow vodka
1/2 oz. vanilla vodka
1 1/2 oz Malibu coconut rum
2 oz. vanilla almond milk (could use milk or cream, too)

 Shake in martini shaker and pour into glass.

Lindsay's Blueberry Muffin Martini

Recently, my cousin and I were trying to figure out what one could do with a crazy new fad liquor that tastes like buttered popcorn. I actually took some inspiration from Jelly Belly "recipes" on this -- to make a "blueberry muffin" with Jelly Belly jelly beans, put 2 blueberry jelly beans and 1 buttered popcorn jelly bean in your mouth. The point being, the butter flavor mimics a freshly buttered muffin. Why not try the same with your liquor? Since this one uses so little of it, you could pick up a sample bottle of it.

Blueberry Muffin Martini

1 part blueberry liquor
1 part vanilla vodka
1 part cake vodka (NOT Smirnoff Iced Cake)
Splash Buttered Popcorn liquor
Milk or cream to taste