Banana Bread Brownie Bars

Getting off of the Hostess track…there was a pin a while back that looked pretty interesting. This one was for Banana Bread Brownies. I’m finding more and more that people on Pinterest are labeling things as “brownies” when they are really some kind of “bar”. I have no idea why they are doing this. To me, a brownie is a chocolatey, fudgy thing. Bars, I guess, are thin cake. Perhaps extra moist bars make them brownie-like in texture. I don’t know. Maybe you just get more hits with the word “brownie” than you do with “bar”. Anyway…The original recipe has them topped with Brown Butter Icing, but I chose to do them a little differently, with cinnamon cream cheese icing instead. If you want to work with the brown butter, feel free to pop over to Life’s Simple Measures for that recipe.

The photo on Pinterest looks like this:

Photo courtesy of Life’s Simple Measures

Ingredients:
 
1-1/2 c. sugar
1 c. sour cream
1/2 c. butter, softened
2 eggs
3 or 4 ripe bananas, mashed
2 tsp. vanilla extract
2 c. all purpose flour
1 tsp. baking soda
3/4 tsp. salt
1/2 c. chopped walnuts (optional)
Directions:
1.  Heat oven to 375F.  Grease and flour 15×10-inch jelly roll pan.  For the bars, in a large bowl, beat together sugar, sour cream, butter, and eggs until creamy.  Blend in bananas and vanilla extract.  Add flour, baking soda, salt, and blend for 1 minute.  Stir in walnuts.
 
2.  Spread batter evenly into pan.  Bake 20 to 25 minutes or until golden brown.

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First, I greased and floured the jelly roll pan.

Then I mashed three overripe bananas.

Once all of the ingredients were mixed together, the batter was spread in the pan. I did not use walnuts in my banana bars. (She said it was optional!)

And then it baked for 20 minutes.

Once it had cooled completely, I topped it with the cinnamon cream cheese frosting.

Recipe:

8 oz. of cream cheese (room temperature)

1 stick of butter (also room temperature)

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp ground cinnamon

3 cups of confectioners sugar

Place cream cheese, butter, vanilla extract, and cinnamon in mixing bowl and whip, gradually adding confectioner’s sugar until fluffy.

Then it was cut into squares. These bars were the bomb! They are very moist and almost melt  in your mouth. I usually put cinnamon in banana bread when I make it, but this recipe didn’t call for any cinnamon in the batter. The icing made up for that in spades. This is one for the goodie rotation, people. Yum.

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Category : Baking, cooking, Food, Homemade, Kids, Pinterest, Recipes
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