Breakfast, Not for the Faint of Heart

Sometimes, as a mother of a small herd of boys, the *boy thing* is more apparent than other times.

Take this morning, for example. It started out innocently enough. A friend of mine had recently made "Monkey Tail Bread" - which I should note is named for the County Fair Treat of frozen bananas, dipped in chocolate, rolled in peanuts. The name is much less creepy if you know that. She gave it good reviews, so I thought I would make it.

Well, you know me, I really hate to be bound by recipes and details. Plus the children had eaten one more banana than I realized, so I had to kimodify. Of course.

So I did some of my standard changes. I used butter instead of shortening, but used a little less. If I had had more bananas, I would've used even less or omitted it entirely. My children don't like nuts *in* things, so I substituted 1/2 cup peanut butter for the 1/2 cup chopped peanuts. I didn't substitute white whole wheat flour or flax for eggs this time, but I think I will next time. Because this was really a great recipe. I also decided I was too impatient to wait for a loaf pan to cook, so I spread the batter into a 9x13 pan and baked for only 30 minutes, and cut them into "muffin squares" - another common kimodification.

But the most significant change was the frosting. The recipe calls for 2 T. chocolate frosting with 1 T. peanut butter. Having just recently made a birthday cake requiring some black frosting, I had some chocolate-almond frosting, very black, left over in the fridge. I mixed that with 1 T. pb and drizzled it all loopy and crazy over the top of the finished pan. It was still quite black.

My oldest son, a Marvel Comic fan, decided my frosting looked like Venom Goo.

Wait, I stand corrected, the term is Venom Symbiote. You know, the space creature that crawled up SpiderMan and created Black Spider Man and then later Venom?

So ... I didn't make Monkey Tail Muffins.

I made Venom Cake for breakfast.

Cool, huh?

And, I must say, that -- for a SuperVillian -- it tasted VERY good.

Venom Breakfast Cake:

6 T. butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
2 bananas, mashed (only because I only HAD two :( )
1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips
2 tablespoons chocolate frosting (I used some black chocolate-almond I'd made for a cake)
1 tablespoon creamy peanut butter

mix pb in with wet ingredients.

1. Heat oven to 350°F. Grease bottom only of 9x13 pan (I use reusable silicone liners).
2. Beat butter and the sugar in large bowl with electric mixer on medium speed until fluffy. Beat in eggs and bananas until smooth, add peanut butter and again beat until smooth. Beat in flour, baking powder, baking soda, chocolate chips and salt just until mixed. Spread into into pan.
3. Bake 30 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool in pan 5 minutes; remove from pan to wire rack.
4. Place frosting in small plastic food-storage bag. Microwave on High 6 to 10 seconds or until pourable. Add peanut butter to bag; gently squeeze bag until peanut butter and frosting are well blended. Cut off tiny corner of bag. Squeeze bag to drizzle chocolate mixture over bread.

if you don't have leftover black frosting, I suspect melting dark chocolate chips and peanut butter would make a good dark and tasty drizzle. If you don't require it to be Venom Symbiote colored, peanut butter, cocoa powder, and sugar should work, if you don't have frosting on hand.

Options for making it healthier: (use some or all of these)

- add 2 more bananas and omit butter/shortening entirely
- replace 2 eggs with 2 T. flax seed, ground, and 1/4 c. water
- replace AP flour with white whole wheat
- omit frosting :( - or maybe the aforementioned 'frosting' of warm pb and powdered sugar and unsweetened cocoa powder would be a little healthier than regular frosting ...