This week’s Tuesdays With Dorie selection is Lots-of-Ways Banana Cake. Dorie encourages substitutions, so basically if you have spotty bananas and minimal pantry staples, you can make this cake. I especially like the name of this recipe for the TWD. Every Tuesday we see the recipes from Baking lots of different ways, and through the group I have learned lots of excellent substitutions and been inspired by many ideas. Of the lots-of-ways to make this cake, I made a plain banana cake. I had planned to add coconut and blueberries, but I sampled the batter and decided it was perfect as-is.
I didn’t get around to baking the cake until Monday night, so haven’t eaten enough to assess its Deliciousness score (which I must remedy shortly), but it is only a 2 for Effort. Josh will think I’m making him sound picky for saying this, but bananas are the only fruit he eats consistently (unless the fruit is in a baked good), so I buy lots of them and inevitably some spot up and need to be stashed in the freezer before we finish them. And to be fair, I’m picky about the ripeness of the bananas (I like a hint of green) and stop eating them about halfway through their ripeness cycle.
Many thanks to Kimberly of Only Creative Opportunities for choosing a recipe that reduced the frozen banana stash. You can find the recipe here on Kimberly’s site and visit the TWD site for lots of banana cakes.
Last week Tuesdays With Dorie made almost-candy bars and this week we pretty much made cake. The official name of the recipe is Cocoa-Nana Loaf and it is in the breakfast section of the book, but I think the amount of sugar and chocolate in it qualifies it as cake. Not that any of this stopped me from eating it for breakfast, though I had to add some Clementine oranges and yogurt (non-fat plain yogurt complements it beautifully) in order to feel okay about eating something so chocolaty before 10 AM. On day two of this bread, I decided two things: I like it better in the afternoon and also chilled, which I thought gave it a nice fudgy texture. 
I made just a few little changes: I subbed in three tablespoons of yogurt for butter (I do this a lot with quick breads and happened to have a stick of butter with three tablespoons missing), reduced the white sugar by a quarter cup, and replaced ¼ of the total flour, which was two cups, used with whole wheat flour. I considered leaving out the chocolate chips since there was so much cocoa powder, but Josh voted for them and I’d specifically told him to buy them earlier that evening, so they stayed. It seemed to take forever to bake (an entire episode of “Project Runway” plus an episode of “Models of the Runway”) and I might have overdone it just a touch.
Due to the incredible easiness of this recipe, the bread was definitely worth trying (anytime I can simultaneously make dinner and mix up batter without either suffering is great) and I have enjoyed it, but next time I have aging bananas I will likely make something else. Like Dorie’s Classic Banana Bundt Cake – love that one! This recipe rated a 7 for Deliciousness and a 2 for Effort, giving it an EDR of 3.5. Many thanks to Steph of Obsessed With Baking for giving us an excuse to have chocolate for breakfast. You can find the recipe here on Steph’s site and visit the TWD blogroll to see if the other bakers enjoyed the chocolate/banana combo.
This week’s Sweet Melissa Sundays treat was Mom’s Apple Banana Bread. Judging from the recent recipe choices, I think everyone is ready for fall: first the Applesauce Spice Bars, now this apple banana bread, my boyfriend’s mom even served an apple pie at lunch today. Anyway, I love banana bread and I also love apple desserts, so the odds for this treat being a big hit for me seemed pretty high; I made a full recipe of it in four mini-pans in anticipation of several mornings of yummy bread. Unfortunately, I was not fond of this bread and Mr. Penpen wasn’t either. The bread had very prominent (and wonderful) apple-spice aroma and that was the initial flavor I tasted, then a bit of an aftertaste of banana, which seemed a little intrusive to my palate. I should have just eaten the brown sugar apples with yogurt for breakfast, since they were amazing on their own.
Many thanks to Joy of Hot Oven, Warm Heart for giving me the opportunity to try a new banana bread recipe, click HERE on her site for the recipe. I also have to thank Joy for kindly emailing me a recipe for Pupcakes (the name of her blog is very appropriate she is very warm and friendly, not to mention everything she makes looks fabulous). To see the pupcakes and enter my very first give-away, stop by tomorrow (there will be a real cake, too). And be sure to check the SMS blogroll to see what the other bakers thought of this recipe; judging from the Problems & Questions section, I have the heretical opinion of this treat.
I had wanted to try this recipe for over a year. Seriously, I bought the More from Magnolia cookbook last winter and marked the recipe, which is apparently the most popular dessert at the bakery after Magnolia’s vanilla cupcakes. Then when we visited the actual bakery – twice – on our vacation to New York last May and tasted the banana pudding, the desire to make it myself was validated. But I avoided making it, as it yields a gigantic quantity (serves 12-15!) and calls for an astonishing three cups of heavy cream. However, being in multiple online baking groups has taught me a few things, among them: I don’t need to make an entire recipe and I shouldn’t be afraid of a little heavy cream. So when I had leftover Nilla Wafers and condensed milk from my (mini) SMS Lemon Icebox Cakes, I knew just what I was making. (I did end up having to buy a second box of Nilla Wafers, though, since Mr. Penpen kept snacking on them.)
The combination of bananas, Nilla Wafers, vanilla pudding, and whipped cream pretty much makes this recipe is the epitome of comfort food. It’s delightfully sweet and creamy, and though the instructions say it should be consumed within eight hours of preparation, Mr. Penpen and I were in agreement that it’s even better after a couple days when the flavors have melded together and the Nilla wafers have softened up (just avert your eyes from the bananas, they get a little brown).
The ingredients are one 14-ounce can sweetened condensed milk, 11/2 cups ice cold water, one 3.4-ounce package of instant vanilla pudding, 3 cups heavy cream, one box of Nabisco Nilla Wafers, and 4 cups of sliced banana. You can find the recipe (exactly as in the book) here, on Recipelink. I made a third of the recipe and got five healthy servings out of it. This recipe gets an 8.5 for Deliciousness and a 2 for Effort, giving it an EDR of 4.25.
And that’s a picture of the two of us on a sugar high outside the Magnolia Bakery in Greenwich Village.
