Toaster Oven Banana Bread

One of my (many) favourite things about India is the abundance of fruit. Every day, farmers from the villages make the trek from their orchards and fields into the big cities before sunrise and set up their carts in markets and along the sides of roads, promising the very freshest produce. This is a far cry from the American South, where peaches canned in syrup and flavoured gelatin “salads” have been known to pass for fruit, much to my chagrin.  Here in Delhi, we buy fresh fruit in smaller quantities daily, rather than going to a grocery store once a week like we do in the US. Usually everything gets eaten, but this morning I realized that there were three bananas in the kitchen that had become a little too ripe, so I decided to make banana bread for my family.

Homemade Oreos

My brother is really picky (I told him this and he just said that he was going to start a blog and call it “My Sister Says Really Mean Things and Tries to Cover Them Up with Cooking”). He favours things like Funfetti cupcakes to from-scratch baked goods, so when I came across Smitten Kitchen’s recipe for homemade oreos, I immediately bookmarked it for future use.

Since he hates pumpkin desserts, I decided to make these in addition to the pumpkin cheesecake and bread pudding that I had planned for Thanksgiving. They turned out really well. I don’t like Oreos (it kind of grosses me out that something that claims to be filled with “creme” is vegan, and I can’t stand that they spell Double Stuf with only one ‘f’), but these are so good — the cookie isn’t too sweet, just like real Oreos, and the icing is exactly like the creamy icing in Nabisco’s version, only without the unhealthy and chemically additives.

These cookies ship well and would make a perfect addition to any holiday baking you have yet to do— especially if you flavoured the icing with a little peppermint!

Fall Staples

When other people say fall staples, they mean tights, scarves, and boots. I mean food. I love autumn because there are so many flavours that never really show up in the other seasons. Pumpkin, baked apples, butternut squash. Homemade soups like potato leek, pumpkin, spicy carrot, or butternut squash are all healthy and filling. I also eat a ton of fall-flavoured pastas in sauces made of browned butter with sage and rosemary. My girl Mindy Kaling (I can say this because she once tweeted at me), inspiration to women everywhere and comedy genius extraordinaire, is featured in a Healthy Choice commercial for pumpkin ravioli with sage and apple (which, full disclosure, I haven’t actually tried). Apple cider and lots of chai are key, too— plus you can spike them! My boyfriend and I had spiced vanilla chai and hot apple cider with Meyer’s dark rum last weekend in Athens and they were so, so good.

I love to play around with fall flavours in less traditional ways, too. I saw a recipe for pumpkin cinnamon rolls that looked amazing, and a few weeks ago I made pumpkin spice madeleines from a recipe I kind of threw together from a bunch I found online. You can find it below the cut. I love madeleines because they are scalloped and gorgeous, referenced in a great literary work (Proust’s Rememberance of Things Past), and cakey without needing icing. You could add a quick glaze to these if you really wanted to, but they don’t need it. Enjoy!