Things to Do During Ramadan # 8: Make Date Banana Bread

On my quest to use dates in as many things as I can, I made date banana bread yesterday. My family loves banana bread so I decided to try to make it with dates for the first time. It was delicious, alhamdulillah.

My base recipe came from Banana Date Nut Bread from the Deenbros.com site.

I basically followed the directions except:

Sugar: The recipe calls for 1 cup of sugar. My oldest daughter said it sounded like you'd get diabetes from that so I only used 1/2 cup of sugar. You could probably use even less than that as dates and bananas can be very sweet on their own and I did see recipes calling for no sugar.

Butter: The recipe calls for butter but in quick breads, I generally use vegetable oil, which is what I used. 

Dates: The recipe calls for chopped dried dates, but I used our moist medjool dates. I put them in a bowl of water and microwaved for about 2.5 minutes, then I let them stand in the water til they were even mushier.  After that, I put the dates and water in the blender. Now, the next time through, inshaa Allah, I won't add in all the water that I had in the bowl as it made the date-water mixture very soupy. But I still poured it in the banana bread mix and it came out moist and delicious!

Now with my Date Banana Smoothie, I am 2-0 on date recipes this Ramadan!

Read More

Things to Do During Ramadan # 7: Make a Date Banana Smoothie

During Ramadan, I go bonkers over recipes that include dates. Not everyone in the family likes dates, but I love them.  The first time I had a date shake, I was hooked.  Last year I bought a blender so ever since then we've been making all kinds of shakes and smoothies. (We didn't have a blender for years).

After surfing online to find a date banana smoothie recipe, I basically just threw one together myself as I didn't have some of the other ingredients that made the recipes I saw a little more exotic.

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup dates or about 4-5 medjool dates (pitted)
• 1-1/2  cups milk (I used almond soy milk though)
• 2 teaspoons chia seeds (optional, but one of the recipes I looked at called for them and I had them on hand so I used them. The recipe did advise soaking the chia seeds, but this was last minute so I threw them in anyway)
• 1 banana

And that's it! In my recently old sugar addict days I would have dumped way too much sugar in there but now I enjoy smoothies and shakes with no sugar at all! If it is not sweet enough, you could add a bit of honey or, sometimes, if a smoothie isn't sweet enough, I'll add another banana.

I saw some recipes that called for adding yogurt (my daughter said that just didn't sound right, lol, so I trusted her as she is my expert smoothie maker, having surpassed me in the art of smoothie/shake making). 

What to Do

Place everything in the blender (my blender recommends adding the liquid first) and blend. I probably needed to blend it a bit more as I had a lot of date chunks at the bottom of my glass (but they were still delicious to eat by themselves at the end.

My refreshing date banana smoothie at the end of a day of fasting:

Read More

Things to Do During Ramadan #6 - Make Crescent Shaped Cookies!

Yesterday as we prepared for Ramadan, the kids and I made crescent moon and star shaped cookies. It was a fun activity. I always mean to do it every Ramadan but it's been years since we have gotten around to making them again.  The kids had fun!

We used a soft cutout sugar cookie recipe from one of my favorite recipe sites, Sally's Baking Addiction. I imagined that they were going to be difficult to make, but they were pretty easy.

The ingredients were pretty basic things I generally have on hand:

• 3/4 cup  unsalted butter, slightly softened to room temperature
• 3/4 cup  granulated sugar
• 1 large egg, at room temperature
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1/4 teaspoon almond extract (I didn't have this, but they were still very tasty!)
• 2 and 1/4 cups (281g) all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

You can get the recipe from the link above. One of the things that she stressed was to make sure that you chill the dough, and she recommended rolling it out first before chilling.

I had originally intended to ice them with colored frosting but I couldn't find the colors that I wanted, so we colored the cookie dough!

We ended up making stars as well (because I had a star cookie cutter). For the crescent moons, I used a plastic biscuit cutter.

We made the crescents by using the round cutter and overlapping circles (my daughter's idea)

Then it was time to ice them. I rarely frost cookies so I happened along another site that suggested making an outline shape with the icing first, filling in some of the inside and spreading with a knife.

Our finished products!

It was mostly my teenage daughters, seven year old daughter and I making the cookies, but my 11 year old son joined in to help ice a few as well.

I hope, in shaa Allah to do more baking this Ramadan as the kids really enjoyed it.

Read More

Half Moon Cookies

Source: In Our Kitchen

HALF MOON COOKIES

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Line cookie sheets with parchment paper

Makes approximately 30 cookies

Cookie Ingredients

1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup shortening
1 egg
2 cups cake flour
3 heaping tablespoons cocoa powder � the better the powder the better the cookie
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup milk

Cookie Preparation

1. Cream the sugar, brown sugar, and shortening.
2. Add egg and mix until combined.
3. In a separate bowl, stir together flour, cocoa, salt, baking soda, and baking powder until cocoa is distributed throughout.
4. Add this to the wet ingredients and alternate with milk a little at a time and mix until thoroughly combined. This mixture will resemble a thick cake batter.
5. Scoop and drop onto lined cookie sheet. If you shake each cookie slightly is will allow the batter to settle down.
6. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes and remove from oven. Before placing on a wire rack to cool let the cookies sit on the pan for a minute or two.

FROSTING INGREDIENTS

4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter
1/4 teaspoon salt
2-1/2 cups confectioners� sugar
3 tablespoons hot milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 ounce bittersweet chocolate, melted (reserve this for the chocolate frosting)

FROSTING PREPARATION

1. Combine all ingredients except the cocoa.
2. Beat until smooth.
3. Divide this mixture in half.
4. Add melted chocolate to half of the frosting and stir well.
5. Keeping  the frosting slightly warmer than room temperature allows for easier spreading.

• Half Moon Cookie Recipe 2 (Saveur.com)

Read More