Crock Pot Apple Pie Oatmeal

I know I'm a bit late, but Happy New Year!  What are your goals for 2012?  One thing I'm trying to do this year is to eat a more nutritious breakfast.  It is so easy to grab a pre-packaged granola bar when leaving for work, but with just a little preparation, you can have individual servings of a healthier breakfast ready quick in the morning.  


This Apple Pie Oatmeal is made in a crock pot and is frozen in 1/2 cup servings.  Stick 1 serving in the refrigerator the night before, and it should be thawed by morning.  What's better is that there is less than 1 teaspoon of sugar per serving, and it is full of flavor from the granny smith apples and cinnamon.  All I do is add 2 tablespoons of low fat milk, microwave, and add a sprinkling of cinnamon and spoonable Truvia and I'm good until lunch.  I'm going to try this recipe again soon using all Truvia and no sugar.  But for now this is a good start!  


Crock Pot Apple Pie Oatmeal adapted from Kalyn's Kitchen
Ingredients:
3 medium Granny Smith apples

¼ cup brown sugar

1 1/2 tsp. cinnamon

1 tsp fine sea salt (this is my absolute favorite!)

6 cups water (depending on how thick you like your oatmeal)

3 cup rolled old fashioned oats

milk and spoonable Truvia for serving

Roughly chop apples into ¼ to ½ inch pieces, leaving the skin on. 

Spray the slow cooker lightly with nonstick spray.  Then add apples, brown sugar, cinnamon, salt, and water.  Stir together and cook on high for 2 hours.

Add oatmeal and stir ingredients together, then continue to cook on high for an additional 1 to 1 ½ hours, depending on how soft you'd like the finished oatmeal to be.

Allow to cool, and then scoop ½ cup servings into silicone muffin tins.  Freeze, then remove from the muffin tin and store in freezer in a freezer bag. 

To serve, allow to thaw and then microwave with 2 Tablespoons of non fat milk.  Stir until you reach a normal oatmeal consistency.  Sprinkle with cinnamon and Truvia. 

When the oatmeal is done cooking, I scoop 1/2 cup portions into a silicone muffin pan and freeze.  

When frozen, remove the oatmeal pods from their muffin pan and store in zippy bags.

Then, just add a little milk, microwave and stir, and serve with cinnamon and Truvia. Voila!

Banana Bran Muffins

Banana Bran muffins??  A healthy recipe?!  Has this blog been taken over by a health nut?  Nope.  But now that I'm leaving early for work, I wanted to make something I could quickly grab on my way out the door to hold me over until lunch.  Store bought breakfast bars were getting old.  These came out quite good, but their shelf life is rather short.  I made these Thursday night and by Tuesday morning when I opened the airtight container, out came a spoiled smell.  So if you plan on making them and you don't feel like eating 12 muffins in a few short days, bring them to work and share with your co-workers!  I made them in a standard cupcake/muffin pan, but if they had been prepared in a jumbo muffin pan, the recipe probably would have only yielded around 6.  A much easier number of muffins to eat in a few days! :)  


Banana Bran Muffins, adapted from Food 4 Thought
Ingredients:

1 1/4 cup all purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 cup bran flakes
1 cup low-fat milk
2 medium ripe bananas, mashed
1 egg, lightly beaten
2.5 Tablespoons butter, softened
3 Tablespoons packed light brown sugar


Preheat to 350 and line a 12 cup muffin pan with paper liners.
In a  medium bowl, combine flour, cinnamon, baking powder and salt.  Whisk to combine and set aside.
In a separate bowl, combine the bran flakes, milk and mashed bananas.  Stir well and let rest 5 minutes. 
In a measuring cup, combine the egg, butter and brown sugar.  Add the banana mixture and mix just until mixture is smooth.  Add this to the flour mixture and stir to combine. Divide between 12 wells in the cupcake pan. 
Bake for 18-20 minutes or until golden brown.  Allow to cool 5 minutes before removing from the muffin pan to a wire rack to cool.

Best Buttermilk Pancakes

For last week's Lemon Blueberry Buttermilk Pie, I bought the smallest size of buttermilk the grocery store had to offer, but I still had quite a bit leftover with nothing to do with it.  So what do you do when you have extra buttermilk on a Sunday morning?  Make buttermilk pancakes of course.  I used Aida Mollenkamp's recipe for Cakey Buttermilk Pancakes and I think I've found a new favorite pancake recipe.  No other from scratch pancake recipe I've prepared has come out this good.  Plus, you can prepare it the night before, re-stir it in the morning and pour it on your hot griddle for ready-to-eat pancakes in minutes.  Sunday morning breakfast heaven.

This scaled down version made about 5 or 6 good sized pancakes, enough for two people.  For the full scale recipe, visit Food Network's site here.

Favorite Buttermilk Pancakes adapted from Aida Mollenkamp

• 5/8 C all purpose flour
• 5/8 C well shaken buttermilk
• 1/4 C melted unsalted butter (plus more for greasing the griddle)
• 1 large egg, room temperature
• 1 tablespoon granulated sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder

In a medium bowl, whisk all ingredients together until combined and moistened thoroughly (some small lumps remaining are ok). Cover and store in the refrigerator to rest up to 12 hours before using. Right before using, stir briefly before using to loosen it up a bit - batter will have thickened up during rest time.

Heat a griddle over medium heat.  Melt 1 tablespoon butter on the griddle.  Being generous with the butter is what gives them their slightly crispy exterior.   Pour 1/4 cup batter for each pancake and cook until bubbles cover the top, about 3 minutes. Flip and cook until golden brown, another 1 minute. Repeat with remaining batter.  Serve immediately with maple syrup, powdered sugar, whipped cream, fresh fruit or anything else you can possibly think of.

SMS: Mom’s French Pancakes

My very first crepe experience was in Greece.  I know crepes are a French thing but there were crepe shops all over the place in all of the Greek cities we visited.  We tried them in a few cities there and they were all delicious.

My wonderful fiancee enjoying a crepe in Corfu

When I saw that Jaime of Good Eats and Sweet Treats, this week's host for Sweet Melissa Sundays, chose "Mom's French Pancakes" as our recipe, I knew I wanted to bake along.  When I saw the other bakers said they were easy and tasty, I was even more sold on the idea. :)

I made the recipe word for word from the Sweet Melissa book and it came together perfectly. And it was a cinch to make!  Very few ingredients and it all goes in a blender.  The swirling in the pan is what gave us some difficulty...

We used a 12 inch pan just as the book says, but we have a very hard time getting it to swirl across the whole pan without leaving holes.

Attempt #1

Attempt #2

We gradually got a little bit better as we made more, but I halved the recipe and only got about 6 crepes, so by the time we started improving our technique we were out of batter.

When we got to the end, we wanted a nice looking crepe so badly that we took a circle cookie cutter and cut it:

It made one itsy bitsy little crepe!  The butter is there for scale :)  It was a one-bite crepe.

Even if they weren't perfect looking, when spread with a little bit of strawberry jam and topped with homemade whipped cream, they were pretty tasty.  However, I did think the crepes themselves were a little on the bland side.  The jam and cream is what gave it all of the flavor.  Next time I might try adding a little bit of vanilla or almond extract?

Thanks for picking this recipe Jaime!  See Jaime's blog, Good Eats and Sweet Treats for the recipe or buy the Sweet Melissa baking book for all of the recipes.  Jaime, this made for a very lovely Sunday morning breakfast. :)  Be sure to visit the other participating SMS-ers blogs to see how their "French Pancakes" came out!  

Sweet Melissa Sundays: Cherry Almond Granola

When SMS was still pretty new, we made Melissa Murphy's Granola Breakfast Cookies.  When I made this granola for those cookies, I scaled the recipe down considerably and made quite a few substitutions.  This time around, I stuck to Melissa's original recipe much more closely.  I only left out the dates, and I added a little bit of flaxseed (about 1/2 cup).

It was hot here in Florida yesterday.  Since it was really too hot to be outside, we tried to stay indoors most of the day.  But for those few minutes that we were outside, it felt like we were standing inside a preheated oven.  There was no breeze, not even a slight one so all we could feel was the heat.  Whew!  But if you took a step inside my house, you'd think it was the middle of fall judging by the smell coming out of the kitchen.  The Granola with ginger, allspice, nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves, maple syrup and honey browning slowly in the oven let out the most delicious autumny smell.  I wish I could have taken a picture of the smell!  And the taste of the final product was delicious, too.  Not too sweet, and not too spicy.

Thanks so much for picking this recipe and hosting this week, Wendy!  I'm sure the recipients of my little granola gift packages will want to thank you!  Check out Wendy's blog, Pink Stripes, for the recipe.  And click here to see the list of this week's SMS participants.

Sweet Melissa Sundays: Sweet Chai Muffins

I don't normally drastically alter a recipe, especially not the first time I'm using it. Sometimes I'll make fairly minor substitutions or combine parts from different recipes, but I don't generally change a recipe all that much the first time around. This weekend for Sweet Melissa Sundays, however, I seem to have changed that a little bit.. partially on purpose and partially by accident. Chaya of Sweet & Savory, our host this week, chose Orange Blueberry Muffins with Pecan Crumble from the Sweet Melissa book. While I am an enormous blueberry fan (there was a long period of time where I literally ate them every single day), the fiance is not, and on top of that, I didn't have enough time to go get blueberries. Plus, neither of us are really in to Orange in our sweets. But I really wanted to make more of Melissa's muffins! We loveddd the Pear Cranberry Muffins with Gingersnap Crumble, and unfortunately I didn't have a chance to make either the Fresh Peach Muffins or the Carmalized Onion, Sage, and Chedder Muffin when they came up (both of which I had really wanted to make!).

Rather than forgo SMS this week, I changed up the recipe a bit so that it was something I already had all the ingredients for and that the fiance would enjoy. I started with Melissa's Sweet Muffin base recipe (p.5-6). After reading everyone's notes on the SMS site, I heeded their advice and cut back on the dry ingredients and upped the liquid a wee bit. I halved the recipe, so I used 1 1/4 C Flour and 1/4 C heavy cream and 1/4 C milk. Also, I added 3 Tablespoons of Big Train Vanilla Chai:

I had planned on making the Pecan Crumble (everyone on the boards raved about them!). But it turns out I had used all of my pecans up and had none left. So, I just went with a cinnamon+brown sugar+granulated sugar topping.



The end result was great. A nice light breakfast muffin. The chai flavor was subtle but there - the spice was not overpowering at all. Cinnamon-sugar sprinkled on top added a nice crunch. And I think the more liquid, less flour change to the recipe was necessary. These muffins came out a little crumbly, but not too heavy or dry. This recipe is definitely a keeper.



Check out Chaya's blog for the recipe for Orange Blueberry Muffins with Pecan Crumble! And see the SMS blogroll to see how the recipe came out for everyone else (maybe theirs actually had orange, blueberry, and pecan like it was supposed to!).

Sweet Melissa Sundays: Sweet Potato Bread with Cinnamon Glaze

Besides terrible, terrible (terrrrrrrrrible) allergies, this time of year is pretty great. The semester is rapidly coming to a close, its bathing suit weather again, and today is my wonderful fiance's birthday! The one thing that isn't so great about this time of year (besides the horrendous mind-bogglingly debilitating seasonal allergies. Spite you, tree pollen.) is the un-availability of yummy fallish ingredients. I searched and searched for canned sweet potato! But it was nowhere to be found. I thought of Pumpkin as a yummy substitute but that is out of season and nowhere here in Florida at the moment either. Not really having enough time to think about how to buy sweet potatoes and make them on my own, I bought a can of Bruce's Yams in Syrup, and opted to drain all the syrup from the can. Not really thinking about it, I bought a 15 ounce can (since I planned to halve the recipe and prepare it in a loaf pan).... but straining the syrup from the can left me with less than 15 ounces. Oh well, I had to make due on my tight schedule. I just decreased the amount of all the other ingredients I put in as well. This was kind of a winging-it kind of recipe for me. The only real change, besides messing around with the amounts of ingredients, was to use only cinnamon in the batter instead of all of the spices Melissa called for.



Also, I chose to do a cinnamon confectioner's sugar glaze instead of the Cinnamon-Rum-Orange Glaze the original recipe called for. We aren't big fans of orange and we don't have any rum. My glaze went something like this:
Cinnamon Glaze
3/4 C confectioners sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tblspn butter, room temperature
2-4 tsp hot water
1/2 - 1 tsp vanilla, to taste
Beat all ingredients together until smooth. Pour half of the glaze over the still-warm loaf (I allowed it to cool for 20 minutes before topping with the glaze). Wait about 10 minutes, allowing the glaze to harden slightly, and then pour the remaining glaze over the loaf. This way you get a nice thick layer of the glaze. I used a pastry brush and painted the glaze on to the sides of the loaf as well.





The result was quite good, considering all the estimating I did with the ingredients. The bread was very moist and not too sweet. The spicy cinnamony glaze's sweetness complementing the bread nicely. I bet this would be good with whole wheat flour too.


Breakfast for the birthday boy... he got his tradition b-day breakfast, cinnamon buns, yesterday :)

Be sure to visit the SMS Blogroll to see how this one turned out for the other members. And see the host, Lorelei's blog - Mermaid Sweets, for this week's recipe.

...have you thought about Mother's Day yet? I am offering my devoted blog readers twenty-five percent off a purchase at TheSmartBaker.com. 25% Off! That's the highest discount we've done so far, but its for a limited time only (offer good until Wednesday, May 5th, 2010). Just type in MD2010 during check-out in the "Coupon Code" spot. Our clever Measurement Conversion aprons come in Burgundy, Red, Pink, Navy Blue, Forest Green, and Black and are monogrammed with your choice of Initial free. And now you can get a Measurement conversion kitchen towel to go along with it and complete the gift! Your mother will definitely appreciate it :) (offer excludes custom orders).

Less-than-an-hour Cinnamon Bun Bliss

When family is visiting and you have a bit of time to kill in the morning before everyone is awake, what do you do? Prepare this recipe for Quick, Delicious Yeast-Free Cinnamon Buns, of course! My First Kitchen's Buttermilk Cinnamon Rolls is a fast, easy way (no yeast required, yey!) to get warm, homemade cinnamon buns on to the table and ready to eat in under an hour. They don't puff up like yeast cinnamon buns and they aren't as flaky as the more time intensive, laborious variety, but they do get you that ooey-gooey doughy, cinnamon-sugary, cream cheese frosted goodness you look for in a good cinnamon bun recipe. I'd go as far as to say that this might be my new go-to recipe for cinnamon buns for a while. All without having to wait for yeast to make the dough rise and get frustrated when it doesn't. Sweet indeed.



Less-Than-An-Hour Cinnamon Bun Bliss, adapted from My First Kitchen
makes anywhere from 7 - 12 depending on how you roll out your dough and how thick you slice your rolls!

Ingredients:
dough:
2 3/4 cup all purpose flour, plus extra for dusting
2 tbsp sugar
1 1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp. fine sea salt
5 tablespoons refrigerated buttermilk powder
6 tbsp melted butter
3/4 cup water, room temp

filling:
4 tbsp. melted butter
3 tbsp. sugar
2 tbsp. cinnamon
pinch of salt

my favorite cream cheese cinnamon bun frosting recipe:
2 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
4 tblspn unsalted butter, softened
1.5 c confectioner's sugar
1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract

Preheat to 425°F. Butter a small baking dish (a pie plate, or loaf pan would probably be sufficient). In a bowl, whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, buttermilk powder and sea salt.
Stir in the butter and water.
The dough will be very sticky, so put a very generous amount of flour on to your counter or work space. Plop your sticky dough on to this surface and give it another generous dusting of flour on top.
With floured hands, gently knead the flour into the dough (adding more flour if necessary) until the dough is fairly smooth and without cracks
Using a rolling pin, roll dough out into a .5 inch thick rectangle.

In a small sauce pan, melt the butter for the filling. When it is completely melted, add the sugar and whisk. Finally add the cinnamon and stir. Using a pastry brush, spread on to the dough doing as close to the edges as you can, but leaving a small border on one of the long ends of the dough rectangle.
Roll the dough from the longer side, keeping it as tight as possible as you roll it up. Cut the dough in to sections about 2 inches thick.
Place the rolls in a lightly greased pan, and bake for about 17-20 mins, or until the edges have just begun to turn golden.

While it is baking/cooling on the rack, make your cream cheese frosting. Beat cream cheese and butter together until mixed and fluffy. Add sugar, mix until incorporated. Add vanilla and stir to combine. Spread on still-warm-from-the-oven buns.

SMS: Raised Waffles

Busy Busy Busy lately! As usual. School is nearing final projects time, the holidays are near, our aprons came out in the magazine, wedding planning, working... But since waffles was this week's recipe for Sweet Melissa Sundays, I made time in the schedule for a nice breakfast. :) I chose to forgo the brown sugar bananas because the waffles sounded good enough by themselves! Perhaps in the future I'll make the banana topping.



I made the recipe as is - the only difference is that I added a bit of cinnamon to the battle to go along with the nutmeg. It was actually a cinch to throw the ingredients together. Everything besides baking soda and eggs was mixed together the night before, and in the morning it was quickly ready to go into the waffle maker. I was a bit scared because it called for yeast, but I think it went ok. Did anyone's batter rise? The recipe didn't say that during the 8 hour room-temperature sitting period it was supposed to increase in volume... so when mine didn't I wasn't really discouraged. Did any one else's?



The waffles were delicious. I know Sweet Melissa said this recipe is not intended for a belgian waffle maker, but thats all I had... and they came out just fine. Perfectly fluffy and soft on the inside with a crispy outside. And when topped with powdered sugar, syrup and whipped cream - even better!!!! Daniel said of the waffle recipes we've made, this was "one of the best waffles so far".



Yum yum! Perfect Sunday morning breakfast. (We even have several left over for freezing, re-toasting, and topping with ice cream!) :) Check out Lauren of Fried Pickles and Ice Cream for the recipe or buy the Sweet Melissa Baking Book. And take a look at the rest of the SMS bakers' posts as well!!

And if you're bored, take a look at www.Salt101.com. It's fun!

SMS: Pear Muffins with Gingersnap Crumble

Typical Sunday morning... when it first started. I woke up far too early and was unable to go back to sleep, Daniel and the dog were still sound asleep and cuddling, so I came downstairs to start baking. After my dry ingredients were mixed together and set aside, and the pears were diced.... we got the phone call that we had to leave. Why? Because we went to the hospital to go welcome our new nephew into the world!!!!!! Baby boy is beautiful and healthy and mommy is doing well. It is a very exciting day here in this family!!!!!!!!!!!!

So muffins seem a little boring in comparison! But I'll post them anyway. :)
I made the muffins exactly as the recipe says, minus the cranberries (we just were not feeling it). I cheated and bought pre-made old-fashioned gingersnap cookies at the store. The only change I made to the crumble was to omit the extra ground ginger - my gingersnap cookies were gingery enough.



The muffins are excellent. And the crumble is extra excellent. In fact, I think it is now currently my favorite crumble recipe. It's going to be my go-to recipe for crumble for a while (maybe with a little bit of cinnamon mixed in).



Thanks to Jennifer of Maple N’ Cornbread for choosing this week's treat and posting the recipe on her blog!!! Make sure you visit the rest of the Sweet Melissa Bakers to see how their muffins came out.

Sweet Melissa Sundays: Fail! Sticky Buns - the Cinnamon Bun Variation

This week for Sweet Melissa Sundays, Jen of Not Microwave Safe chose Sticky Buns with Toasted Almonds as our recipe. Woo!! At the end of the recipe, Sweet Melissa included directions for a Cinnamon Bun variation. Well, since there is a bit of an OBSESSION in this house with Cinnamon Buns, I decided to go with those.

No matter which variation, sticky or cinnamon bun, there is yeast involved. And me and yeast do not get along. I don't know what it is! I'm going to blame it on the extreme heat and humidity here in Florida, even though I know the reality is that I just don't know what I'm doing. :( Someone needs to come over here and teach me, I want to get over this yeasty hurdle!! As I expected, it didn't rise. It never does for me! When I put them in the steamy oven to proof, some did puff up a little bit, which got me VERY excited, as it is the most success I've had with yeast EVER... but not all of them did... and they certainly didn't double in size. Oh well, I thought, I've made cinnamon buns before which didn't rise properly and were still mucho delicious. So I popped 'em in the oven for their 45-50 minute bake time. I ran to the supermarket and told Dan to check on 'em. When I got back, there was still 5 minutes left on the timer, and they were totally Too-Toasty!!!! Only 40 minutes, and these puppies were OVER DONE. I was SO upset! I frosted them anyway, and sampled, but the result was a tooooo-dry, too-done bun!! I noticed on the message board that Melissa of Lulu the Baker's only baked 25. I wish I had check them about half way through because I possible could have salvaged them!

But oh well! Lesson learned! A) Don't leave the boy to check on the buns (just kidding, he was just following instructionssss, it's not his faultttttt) B.) Never trust the baking time in recipes - always check early!

I think after I get a yeast lesson, I'll try these again because they SMELLED like they really could be delicious!

Head on over to Jen of Not Microwave Safe to see the recipe! And make sure you see how the rest of the Sweet Melissa Sunday Bakers fared!








Too toastyyyyyy!

SMS - Eep! And Strawberry Shortcake Crumb Muffin Recipe

I'm glad that SMS is not very demanding and only requires you to, at a minimum, participate once a month. Unfortunately, this will be my first time not participating for two weeks straight! I know, I'm terrible! I'll be up and running again soon, I promise. I haven't forgotten about you SMS, life is just getting in the way right now! For now, I leave you with a recipe I promised you a long time ago, that a reader just reminded me I never posted (Thanks, Linda!)

Way back when I was entering my muffin recipe into the Mimi's Cafe contest, I promised that I'd post the recipe I came up with in the future. Well, here it is - sorry it took so long, it completely escaped my mind!

Strawberry Shortcake Crumb Muffins

Ingredients:
1 3/4 C all purpose flour
1/4 C cornstarch
1/2 C sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 C buttermilk
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/4 C butter, melted
10 strawberries, washed, dried & sliced

3/4 stick unsalted butter, melted
1/4 C packed light brown sugar
1/4 C granulated white sugar
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1 C + 1 tblspn flour (+extra if needed)

Muffins:
1. Grease & flour a standard muffin/cupcake pan. Preheat the oven to 425F.
2. Whisk together flour, cornstarch, sugar, baking powder & salt, & set aside. In another small bowl combine the melted butter, buttermilk, vanilla & beaten egg. Stir in to the flour mixture. Stir just to incorporate, do not overmix - it will be lumpy.
3. Pour into the muffin pan, filling each cup about 2/3 full. Gently insert the strawberry slices into the batter so that they are vertical (they will stand up and down in the batter).
Sprinkle with crumb topping.
4. Bake 15 - 18 minutes, or until the crumb topping is browned, and a toothpick inserted into the muffin comes out clean with only moist crumbs.

Crumb:
1. Whisk together the butter, sugars, cinnamon and salt until smooth.
2. Stir in the flour with a whisk, then stir with a butter knife to create the crumbly texture. Add more flour as needed to create the correct crumb size.
3. Sprinkle on to muffin tops - crumb topping with dry up and crisp in the oven.

Sweet Melissa Sundays: Banana Bread

Before I begin blogging this week's tasty SMS recipe, I want to shout from the rooftops for a minute.... guess what?... I'M ENGAGED!!!!!!!! It happened Friday night, my Daniel proposed. I am the happiest girl on the planet right now. :) I'm sure I'll continue to be blabbing a lot about it in the future.

Whew! Sorry, I just had to brag for a minute. Ok, now to this week's recipe, chosen by sweet Joy Hot Oven, Warm Heart. She chose well, because this was delicious. I omitted the apples because I'm a bit of a banana bread purist. Unless it's peanut butter of cinnnamon, I don't like a ton of stuff going on in my banana bread. The only other change I made was to add a little sugary crunch topping:


Banana Bread Sugary Crunch Topping:
2 T Granulated Sugar
2 1/2 T Brown Sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
~ 1 heaping T chopped walnuts

After preparing the banana bread according to the recipe, I sprinkled enough of the above topping to coat the top of the banana bread (I had some topping left over). The topping added a nice slightly crunchy topping to the otherwise soft banana bread.

I really enjoyed this week's recipe! I've never put nutmeg in a banana bread batter before, but in this recipe it was great. It was JUST the right amount. Enough to be noticeable, not enough to be overpowering. The only thing I have to say about this banana bread is that my regular recipe is much more moist. Not that this recipe is dry, it is not! But my go-to recipe produced a much moister product. But it was still Delicious, Thanks for this week's pick, Joy! Be sure to check out the other SMS'ers take on Sweet Melissa's Yummy Bread!!!!!