cheap desserts Archives -

If you are my husband, you know that I have spent the last approximately 6 months perfecting this recipe. I have made this over and over and over and over, just slightly tweaking little things until I finally settled on this recipe that I personally love.

Let me preface this: I hated banana bread. Like the stuff used to make me want to puke. I LOATHED it. At least until I tried the Starbucks banana bread. It was sweet, not dry at all, and it didn’t reek of old bananas. That stuff was GOOD.

So, I decided to figure out how to make it myself.

Let me also add that this recipe is 100% dairy and lactose free if you use almond or coconut milk. I like to use the almond-coconut mix from Silk.

This recipe has a crusted outer side, and a moist and very soft inner bread. You can choose to add walnuts (Drew’s favorite) or totally leave them out (my favorite.)

My secret to sweet and perfectly moist, yet fully cooked bread?

Baby food.

Weird, right? Trust me! Read on.

Starbucks Copycat Banana Bread

Servings: 8-10
Time: 90 minutes
Difficulty: easy
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Ingredients

2 cups flour
1.5 cups sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 egg
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 tablespoons milk (use coconut or almond to make it dairy free)
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 bananas, peeled and completely smashed
1 tub of banana puree baby food (I use the 4oz tub or 3.5oz squeezy pouch)
(If you don’t have a tub, you can use 3 bananas.)
optional 1/2 cup walnuts

Instructions

1. Preheat your oven to 325°F.
2. Mix flour, salt, and baking soda together in a bowl. Set aside.
3. In a separate bowl, mix the egg, sugar, and oil until combined. Do not over-beat the eggs.
4. Add dry ingredients in and scrape the sides of your bowl several times while mixing.
5. Peel your bananas, and smash them with a spoon. Add the baby food puree to the ones you smashed and mix all the bananas together.
6. Add banana mixture, milk, and vanilla to the main bowl and mix well.
7. Mix in walnuts if desired (optional.)
8. Grease a bread pan, or a small Corningware dish. Pour batter into the dish.
9. Bake for 60-70 minutes, taking out when a skewer comes out clean when inserted to the middle of the bread. The top will brown rather early, but feel free to check with the skewer multiple times if you are worried about over-baking.

Enjoy!

Gather your ingredients, and preheat your oven to 325°F.
Mix your flour, salt, and baking soda together in a bowl.
In a separate bowl, mix the egg, sugar, and oil until combined. Make sure you do not over-mix, as beating the eggs too much can change the consistency of the bread at the end.
Add your dry ingredients in and scrape the sides of your bowl several times, as the sugar and eggs like to coagulate on the sides once you add your dry mixture.
Peel your bananas, and smash them with a spoon. Bananas that are very spotted, but not quite fully brown are my favorite to use. Of course, banana bread is great for using older bananas. You can also use newer, totally ripe bananas, but they will be much more difficult to smash. Once fully smashed, add in the pouch or jar of banana baby food to your banana mixture, and mix well.
Add your banana mixture, milk, and vanilla to the main bowl, and mix well.
Add in your walnuts if desired.
Grease a bread pan, or a small Corningware dish. My favorite is this 1.5qt Corningware casserole dish, because it makes a very long and short slice of bread. Pour your batter into the dish.
Bake for 60-70 minutes, taking out when a skewer comes out clean when inserted to the middle of the bread. Right at 65 minutes is perfect for our oven. The top will brown rather early, but feel free to check with the skewer multiple times if you are worried about over-baking.
Make sure you make this recipe when you have friends coming over, because it will make your house smell AMAZING. You’re welcome.

This is a weekly recipe in our house now, and the kids now beg often for some “buh-nuh-nan-na bread.”

Enjoy!

Shop my favorites from this post:

Okay, so I say lots of things are my favorite… but these really are my favorite. If you’ve been to ANY holiday that we have hosted at our home, I will have made these. I LOVE them, because I always have cream cheese, and I always have crescent rolls. And they’re CHEAP. A couple bucks for crescent rolls, a couple bucks for cream cheese, and you have yourself a $4 – $5 dessert.

cheesecake pin real

They’re also my favorite to make for meal trains, because they are so easy to make right alongside a main dish. As a very low-investment dessert, that’s always what I want when I am trying to multi-task.

I have tweaked my recipe over the past 4-5 years, and have decided this one is my favorite.

Tip: You can use different sized dishes to create different thickness levels of cream cheese. Personally, I like a very thick layer of cream cheese, but Drew likes them when there is more flaky parts. You can play around and decide what size works best for you (and also how many squares you will need.)

Sopapilla Cheesecake Squares

Servings: 15-20
Time: 35 minutes
Difficulty: easy
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Ingredients

2 packages of 8oz cream cheese, room temperature
2 cans crescent rolls
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 tablespoons vanilla
1/4 cup melted butter, unsalted
1/2 cup sugar, mixed with 2 tablespoons cinnamon (if using unsalted butter, I add a couple pinches of salt to the mixture)

Instructions

1. Preheat your oven to 350°F.
2. Grease your baking dish. (13×9 is recommended.)
3. Unroll one can of crescent rolls, and spread it across the entire bottom of the pan. Pinch any seams, and make sure all areas are covered.
4. (Optional) Bake for a few minutes (usually 4-5) or until layer is just starting to rise and look less doughy. I let them get slightly golden, then remove them from the heat.
5. In a stand mixer (or by hand) mix together cream cheese and sugar until well combined. Scrape the bottom at least once.
6. Spread the cream cheese mixture evenly over the baked crescent roll. There most likely will be some lumps of cream cheese left- that is fine.
7. Roll the second crescent roll over top of the mixture, and pinch any seams together.
8. Pour melted butter over the top, and spread evenly with a brush or spoon.
9. Mix together sugar-cinnamon mixture in a bowl.
10. Sprinkle sugar-cinnamon mixture evenly over the top of the butter. Some parts will still be gooey, some will just look like sugar.
11. Bake 24-25 minutes, or until the top begins to brown.
12. Let cool first in the fridge, or eat warm. It is highly debated on which is better, but I think they are better cold!

Enjoy!

1. Gather your ingredients, and preheat your oven to 350°F. Make SURE that you leave out your cream cheese to come to room temperature. I typically take it out of the fridge 1-2 hours before prepping. This makes your cheesecake mixture blend SO much easier.

2. Grease your baking dish. I make sure to spray my dishes really well, because the squares just really seem to come out better when cooking spray has been used.

I usually use a 13×9″ glass pyrex or cake pan. I do occasionally make these in my round pyrex deep-dish, but to get a nice, even layer of cheesecake, I recommend a 13×9″.

3. Spread your first layer of crescent rolls over the bottom of the pan. Pinch together any seams.
4. Bake the first layer of crescent rolls until just barely brown. This is optional, but personally I think it makes them SO much better. I like to give the bottom a little extra baking time, just because I like these to have a fully baked bottom. If you don’t choose to prebake, they will still be baked in the regular cooking, but will likely be bit more doughy.
Thus, this isn’t 100% necessary, but I think it makes them so much better.

5. Mix together your cream cheese and sugar in a stand mixer. You can beat by hand, but cream cheese is rather hard to get lumps out of- so my KitchenAid really comes to the rescue for this recipe.

One of my favorite things about this recipe (and Henry’s) is that there are no eggs- so licking the spoon & bowl as much as you want is TOTALLY fine.

He knows every time that I make these that he will get to lick the bowl, and he stands and watches me as I make the mixture every single time.

6. Spread the mixture evenly over the baked crescent roll layer. There will still be small lumps of cream cheese- that is perfectly fine, they will bake well.

7. Roll the last crescent roll evenly over your cream cheese mixture. Pinch together any open seams. I like to try to pinch the corners to the pan a little bit too- it keeps the butter from rolling down the sides when you pour it on.

8. Spread your butter evenly over the crescent roll. I choose to use unsalted butter, and add a pinch of salt to my cinnamon sugar. You can use salted butter, but in my experience I feel it gives the squares too salty of a taste.

9. Mix your cinnamon and sugar together, and sprinkle evenly over top of the butter. There will be dry places and wet & gooey places.

10. Bake for 24-25 minutes, or until the top begins to brown and feels more firm to the touch. If you prefer a more chewy/gooey style, you can shave off 3-4 minutes. There isn’t really a way to underbake these, as long as you make sure the top layer of crescent rolls are fully baked.

And voila! I could eat an entire pan of these in one day, and full disclosure: I have. They’re addicting and SO good for sharing with friends.

Enjoy!

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Tag: cheap desserts

Starbucks Copycat Banana Bread | Dairy Free

Starbucks Copycat Banana Bread

Sopapilla Style Cheesecake Squares | Meal Train & Comfort Food

Sopapilla Cheesecake Squares