Kyle Wang
Finally! Halloween is the time of the year for everyone to get their spook on! Halloween is a tradition of designing your house as if it were haunted, creating mysterious foods that frightens ghosts, and wearing costumes to express your spookiness. Even though COVID might prevent you from trick-treating or having a halloween party, making fearsome desserts can still show the halloween spirit. What I have done to maintain that halloween spirit is to bake a halloween inspired dessert: Pumpkin Banana Bread. I added my own spin of adding pumpkin and peanut butter into the banana bread, which I used food network’s recipe: https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/banana-bread-recipe-1969572
Prep time: ~15-20min
Cook time: 45min-60min
Difficulty: Easy
I usually make banana bread whenever I have over-ripened bananas, and the story behind cutting sugar and not butter is that my parents don’t like overly sweet desserts. I too don’t like sugar-heavy desserts so I like to adjust the sweetness of the bread. I say that this recipe is doable for all because it just requires measuring and mixing together ingredients and an oven.
Here are my ingredients:
- 1tsp. Vanilla
- 1tsp. Baking soda
- 1tsp. Baking powder
- 1tsp. Cinnamon
- 3 bananas
- ¼ Pumpkin
- 1tbs. Milk
- 2 eggs
- 2cps Flour
Optional: (Crunchy Peanut butter)
*I boiled the pumpkin beforehand for 4 minutes so mashing would be easier.
Equipment:
- 2 bowls
- Spoon
- Silicon Spatula
- Loaf Pan
The first step is to preheat your oven at 375 degrees!
Starting with the dry ingredients. In one bowl mix cinnamon, flour, baking powder, and baking soda. Please mix slowly so you won’t spill flour on yourself. PS: I had a big white smear on my black shirt because of this.
Then, in the other bowl mix the wet ingredients together: eggs, pumpkin, banana, milk, and sugar. Mix until it looks combined like this. Make sure to mash it until preferred clumps. (I like mine with little chunks of banana)
Then mix the dry into the wet thoroughly so you won’t see any flour. Then pour it into a baking loaf. Bake at 375 degrees for 45-50 minutes.
*Optional* After pouring in the batter in the loaf pan, swirled peanut butter at the top of the batter. This can add a touch of sweetness and some crunch too if your are using the one with nuts.
Finally, this is the end result. My Pumpkin Banana Bread. Delicious!
Rating: My parents and my aunt were the ones who critiqued my dessert. They all agree that it was a weird combination of pumpkin and banana, but all of us ate it all for breakfast to not waste it. My parents and my aunt rated the bread a 3 out of 5 stars, which I think is pretty good since I adjusted a few things. My aunt said, “ It did have a Halloween inspired taste from the pumpkin, but I think the peanut butter didn’t need to be there.” Both my parents said, “ It tasted alright, but it’s just not my type of dessert.” So overall, I think this recipe worked out and I will do it again for the next halloween!
I hope this can inspire anyone who feels that their Halloween might be less fun because of COVID. You are able to make spooky desserts and can put anything that makes it Halloween-themed, such as what I did by adding pumpkin, or you could add candy or red icing to make it look like blood.