The perfect cold and rainy Sunday snack

Today was drizzly and chilly outside, and after church we always have a snack. Usually it's cold cereal to make my life easier, but today I had banana bread on hand and my toes were cold. So I whipped up some cocoa on the stove to go with the banana bread. It was perfect. So yummy. Delicious. So I had to share.

First, this banana bread is really good. Really good. (Even one of our missionaries, Elder Nester, told Lance that they had been getting a lot of banana bread lately and that MINE was the best. Woot woot!) And to boot, it's really hard to mess up. I've made it with several variations: nuts and chocolate chips, margarine, shortening, butter, egg replacer, whole wheat and all-purpose flour and it has been great every time. And I don't always melt the butter. And sometimes I just dump it all in together. So moist! Should we just get on with it already? Ok:

Whole Wheat Banana Bread (I got this from my friend, Annah Clark, who got this from the Penzy's Magazine)
1/2 c butter or marg
1 c sugar
2 eggs, beaten
3 ripe bananas, mashed (1 c)
1 c all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 c whole wheat
1/2 c hot water
1/2 c chopped walnuts or pecans

Melt butter and blend in sugar. Mix in eggs and bananas until smooth. sift both flours with salt, cinnamon, baking soda. Add dry ingredients alternately with hot water. Stir in chopped nuts. Turn into greased 9x5 loaf pan. Bake @325 for 1 hr, 10 mins (check at 45 mins.)
Me again: depending if I used butter or shortening, the dough is runnier or thicker. If it's runnier, I divide this into two loafs and if it's thicker I stick with one. (I just like to cut down on the baking time, sometimes....)

And now the cocoa: Now that there's a lot of us, it's so easy to just make cocoa on the stove. And if we are making some for Chad, this is really easy to make dairy free by using rice milk. And, I can control how much sugar or splenda I put in it, which is always a plus.
As soon as I drunk this, I was reminded of camping out with David and Cristy's family and drinking hot cocoa and Tang with our breakfast during those cool mornings. That was so fun!

Favorite Hot Cocoa (from the Hershey's cocoa box)
1/2 c sugar
1/4 c cocoa
dash salt
1/3 c hot water
4 c milk
3/4 tsp vanilla

Mix sugar, cocoa and salt in saucepan; stir in water. Cook and stir over med heat until mixture boils; boil and stir 2 mins. Stir in milk and heat. Do not boil! Remove from heat and add vanilla.

Ok, does anyone have the problem of turning the heat too high all the time? I do. I have a rule: only med heat unless I"m boiling water. I didn't follow the cocoa directions either, I just kept it on med heat and stirred until it was heated through. It was yummy. And perfect.

Happy Sabbath!
Rosey