The Cake of Many Flavors

Big mistake.  I love to take creative license with almost every recipe I use, when I use one.  This time it was a bad idea, but cook & learn. 

I started making a banana bread, did not have nuts.  I thought, “What would Elvis do?”  I added a half cup of peanut butter.  Then thought, “Chocolate & bananas, good, chocolate and peanut butter, good” so I added a couple of tablespoons of cocoa powder.  I had about 1/2 cup of freshly homemade strawberry syrup in the fridge without any long-term plans, added that as well.  Need to add that I use less sugar then the recipes call for when I bake to lessen SUGAR SHOCK!  Needless to say, it was disappointing.  Not horrible, but confusing.  After I tried a couple of sad bites.  I tried to figure out what the problem was, but decided it was because one bite you could slightly taste peanut butter, the next bite you could just taste some strawberry, maybe if you tried real hard.  So decided I had too many flavors combined to have anyone taste really stand out and with the semi-sweetness, eatable but very mediocre.  Whoops, forgot about the yogurt to replace half of the oil and the cup of whole wheat flour. 

Put most in the freezer, will not share this one with anybody.  If I get a desperate sweet attack, I can take a piece out of the freezer to prevent me from making an ice cream run.  Needless to say I am not posting the recipe.

Had Better Luck with Chicken and Pasta  The original recipe was Penne with Chicken and Mushrooms, which consisted of: 1 oz butter, 1 Tb of olive oil, 1 clove garlic, 2.5 oz prosciutto, 9 oz chicken, any meat, 4.5 oz sliced mushrooms, 1 peeled & sliced tomato, 1 Tb tomato paste, 1/2 C white wine, 1 C cream, served on 1 lb penne pasta.My recipe consisted of: 1 med sliced onion, 1 can of cream of chicken soup (or cream of mushroom), 1/2 C white wine, 1/2 C milk, 1/2 C water, 2 Tb tomato paste, 1 lb of chicken, 1/4 C parmesan & romano cheese, 1/2 tsp of garlic powder on 1 lb of bowtie or farfalle pasta.  Technically it is probably a completely different chicken pasta recipe, but the original gave me the idea for mine.  Thankfully, no pictures.  Made another chicken & pasta dish with mushrooms a few weeks ago with similar ingredients, no tomato paste or onions and substituted the bowtie pasta with whole wheat capellini.  Again used the cream of chicken soup instead of cream of mushroom which could have been used.