Help Me Go Bananas

[Patrick S]

I have a few pounds of bananas sitting on the counter, getting speckled and ready to cook with. I love banana cake, and make it all the time, but I want to try something new. The idea of a banana 'blondie' bar cookie is intriguing. Or some kind of petit four with a banana cream. I dunno. Other than cake and bread, I havent done much with bananas. I'd love to here any ideas/recipes, not just for blondies or petit fours, but anything you consider bananalicious. Thanks in advance!

[TurtleMeng]

Hi Patrick

I have some recipes, a banana tart (it has sliced banana with a custard cream together and baked, and topped with whipped cream), a chocolate sponge cake with banana chunks and raspberry in it, and a banana chiffon cake with mashed banana. They are all from a Japanese book so I will have to translate if you wanna see any.

edited for typo

Edited March 4, 2005 by TurtleMeng (log)

[rooftop1000]

Bananas Foster MMmmm

...one evening i really wanted dessert I had 2 bananas...not much else sweet so I mushed together something resembling pie crust rolled it out and baked and made bananas foster and broke the crust into it. I truly became the kitchen Goddess to my husband that night

[M. Lucia]

one of my personal favorites (if you like steamed puddings):

Banana Cakes with Rum Sauce

and there's also:

Banana Pudding

Banofee Pie

Banana Bread Pudding

Ripert's Banana Souffles

Peanut Butter Beignets with Caramelized Bananas

Banana Chocolate Strudel

Banana Macaroon Cookies

Roasted Bananas with Rum Sauce or Dulce de Leche

Banana Tarts

[ludja]

I have an idea but not a recipe.

I had a great banana butterscotch two-crust pie in a restaurant once. When I looked for recipes afterwards, I found many that were single crust. Mostly they used a prebaked bottom crust and were then filled with a butterscotch filling without further baking.

I liked the pie enough that it's on my list to try and work out the two crust recipe sometime. One requirement, I guess, would be a butterscotch filling that can be baked and is then firm later on at room temp.

Not a baking project, but banana mousse or ice cream are nice as well. Profiteroles filled with banana ice cream and served with a chocolate or chocolate-rum sauce sounds good...

Edited March 4, 2005 by ludja (log)

[Gary]

This morning I was thinking about banana marshmallows. My concern would be their shelf-life... perhaps turning the marshmallows into a brown mess after a day or two. Just my 2 cents.

[hazardnc]

Does it have to be dessert? How about a banana chutney?

[Patrick S]

Thanks everyone!

TurtleMeng, the custard/banana tarts sound interesting. If and when you find yourself in a mood to translate the recipe, I wouldnt mind seeing it.

Rooftop1000, bananas foster sounds interesting and easy enough that I have no excuse not to try it.

M. Lucia, I'm certain that at least 1 of those recipes you posted are gonna get made, particularly the steamed banana cake (not entirely sure about the rum sauce though). That sounds really awesome. I'll probably try the banana macaroons, and maybe the banana souffle too. Thanks for all the ideas!

ludja, I have an ice cream maker that I haven't used yet, but when I do get around to using it, banana will be probably second on my list (just behind strawberry).

Gary, I like the idea of banana marshmallow too. I think you're probably right that it would be a brown mess after a couple of days though. Maybe there is an acceptably tasty banana extract/flavoring that would work?

hazardnc, what's a good way to use a banana chutney? I don't have much experience combining sweet and spicy, but this sounds interesting.

Thanks to all of you for helping me go bananas! I can't wait to get started!

[trillium]

Roasted banana ice cream with something warm and chocolatey and not too sweet is a favorite of mine.

regards,

trillium

[ludja]

Roasted banana ice cream with something warm and chocolatey and not too sweet is a favorite of mine.

regards,

trillium

←

Great idea to roast the bananas, trillium. This reminds me of another favorite--an unfrosted, a 'gateaux aux chocolate' style cake (i.e. rich, unfrosted chocolate cake) served with a warm, roasted banana sauce.

(Roast bananas at ~ 350 deg F for ~ 20 min. Peel and mash bananas. Add rum, sugar, cream and vanilla and serve warm with cake.)

[ludja]

This might be kind of strange but how about banana incorporated (smoothly) into some kind of cheesecake? Maybe a ricotta style pie or tart?

[hazardnc]

Banana chutneys are found in both African and Caribbean cuisines. Here's a link AfriChef's banana chutney

I am in love with salty/sweet/hot combos. My two all time favorite hot sauces are Jump Up and Kiss Me and Goin' Bananas - the Hot Sauce with a-Peel!

Use the banana chutney to compliment curries - especially island curries. I bet it would be great on top of cream cheese, too!

[M. Lucia]

M. Lucia, I'm certain that at least 1 of those recipes you posted are gonna get made, particularly the steamed banana cake (not entirely sure about the rum sauce though). That sounds really awesome. I'll probably try the banana macaroons, and maybe the banana souffle too.  Thanks for all the ideas!

←

I haven't made it in years, but I love that banana cake- especially if you like sticky toffee pudding.

I was also intrigued by the banana souffle, and I'm looking forward to whatever concoctions you come up with.

[KatieLoeb]

One of the best desserts available in Philadelphia is the Molten Chocolate Cake with Bananas at Matyson. It's a standard issue molten in the middle Chocolate cake with sliced Bananas on top that are sprinkled with sugar and then carmelized like the top of a creme brulee. If that weren't enough, they then top it with a scoop of house made Brown Sugar ice cream. Ohmigosh!

This dessert is like a party in your mouth. Contrasts of flavors, textures, temperatures, etc. all at once. It's mind boggling. I have dreams about this stuff...

[Swisskaese]

Here is a challenge for you. The recipe is rather involved:

Banana Chocolate Tart with Caramel and Chocolate Sauces

Here is one that is less challenging:

Banana Chocolate Chip Souffle

As always Patrick, I can't wait to see your results and your amazing photos.

And here is a cheesecake recipe for Ludja:

Chocolate Wrapped Banana Cheesecake

Edited March 4, 2005 by Swisskaese (log)

[TurtleMeng]

OK, let me try to translate this. All metric, hopefully not a problem

crust--

125 g cake flour

125 g butter

70 g confectioner's sugar

1 egg yolk

15 g almond flour

"almond cream"

65 g butter

40 g fine sugar

1 egg

55 g almond flour

10 g flour

10 g lemon juice

3 bananas

banana liqueur 10 g

300 g whipping cream

15 g sugar

cocoa powder

Preheat to 170 C. Use a 18 cm tart pan.

For crust--cream butter and sugar, add yolk, and almond flour, cake flour, use a spatula to mix into rectangular-shaped dough, wrap and refrigerate at least 1 hr.

rolle out crust and fit into mold, refrigerate 15 min.

"almond cream"--cream butter, add sugar, add egg in additions, add almond powder and cake flour, mix until "pale", cream like, add lemon juice

Pipe the cream into the crust (from here you can see the little photos in the page I scanned--if they are readable).

place banana slices concentrically in the tart, tightly overlapping.("11")

bake about 1hr. after it's done you can brush the banana liqueur on. remove from pan.

put the tart bottome on top and sift some confectioner's sugar onto the rim (shown in "13")

beat the cream with sugar to soft peake, pipe with a round tip as shown in "14"

sift cocoa powder on

[Patrick S]

Thanks for taking all the time to translate the recipe and post the pictures too! The recipe looks delicious.

[Patrick S]

one of my personal favorites (if you like steamed puddings):

Banana Cakes with Rum Sauce

←

Made the banana cakes tonight. They are easy to make, and unmold well. They are extremely moist and buttery. One thing I like about these cakes is the large ratio of banana to other ingredients. One thing I've found with fruit-flavored cake recipes is that they almost always contain too little fruit for my taste. This is true of almost all of the lemon and strawberry cake recipes I've tried anyway. This banana cake doesnt have that problem. In fact, there is about as much banana by volume as there is flour and sugar combined. And that makes for a bananalicious cake.

I didn't make the rum sauce, partly because I'm not crazy about rum, but mainly because I already had some good caramel sauce on hand.

Edited March 6, 2005 by Patrick S (log)

[lemon curd]

Patrick - as usual you are #1 with how absolutely amazing your baking looks! Great job!

[ludja]

...

And here is a cheesecake recipe for Ludja:

Chocolate Wrapped Banana Cheesecake

←

Thanks swisskaese; it sounds good!

[M. Lucia]

Made the banana cakes tonight. They are easy to make, and unmold well. They are extremely moist and buttery. One thing I like about these cakes is the large ratio of banana to other ingredients. One thing I've found with fruit-flavored cake recipes is that they almost always contain too little fruit for my taste. This is true of almost all of the lemon and strawberry cake recipes I've tried anyway. This banana cake doesnt have that problem. In fact, there is about as much banana by volume as there is flour and sugar combined. And that makes for a bananalicious cake. 

I didn't make the rum sauce, partly because I'm not crazy about rum, but mainly because I already had some good caramel sauce on hand.

←

I am so glad you liked them. I also liked the moistness and the high ratio of banana, which also allows me to tell myself this is a somewhat healthier dessert (ok, just let me keep dreaming), and the caramel sauce looks great.

Looking forward to more banana concoctions!

[cakewalk]

As always, the cakes look great. More than great, in fact. But I have one question that is always lingering in the back of my mind (pardon me if this sounds very silly, and if it's off-topic, as it most likely is), but: what do you do with all the cakes you make? I love to bake, and I bring stuff in to work, to shul, to the concierge downstairs in my building, etc. (I also eat a fair amount of it, but I really try to avoid that.) And I don't bake even a tenth of what you seem to bake. Do you have a bakery? Do you freeze a lot of it? Does it hold up to freezing? And still -- you have to defrost it some time! And you just seem to keep baking more. I'm serious. How do you get rid of all those cakes? (Do you have a mail-order business?)

[Patrick S]

As always, the cakes look great. More than great, in fact. But I have one question that is always lingering in the back of my mind (pardon me if this sounds very silly, and if it's off-topic, as it most likely is), but: what do you do with all the cakes you make? I love to bake, and I bring stuff in to work, to shul, to the concierge downstairs in my building, etc. (I also eat a fair amount of it, but I really try to avoid that.) And I don't bake even a tenth of what you seem to bake. Do you have a bakery? Do you freeze a lot of it? Does it hold up to freezing? And still -- you have to defrost it some time! And you just seem to keep baking more. I'm serious. How do you get rid of all those cakes? (Do you have a mail-order business?)

←

I give away as much as I can at work or to my family. I'm single-handedly responsible for wrecking the diets of dozens of people. Of course I eat some too, but usually not more than a serving a day. There have been times when I've thrown away quite a bit, but that makes me feel guilty so I try to avoid that.

[Patrick S]

For a while I couldn't decide between the banana cheesecake and the banana souffle. But I ended up listening to the angel on my shoulder and tried the much, much lower fat souffle. Okay, that's not entirely true -- I had actually set out some cream cheese to soften, when I realized I didnt have anything to make a cheesecake crust with. So, it was more of a matter of not wanting to go to the store for the second time in one day, and wanting to atone for having splurged this weekend.

I'm happy to say that the souffles were great, and I'm sure I'll make them again. The only fat in the souffle is a single yolk, plus the butter in the ramekins. But they taste rich. Actually they seem rich and light at the same time. I like the sugar/buttery crust that forms on the inside of the ramekins. I did substitute lemon juice for the lime juice, because I didnt have any limes.

[M. Lucia]

Perfect souffles!

I love souffles like this because they really let the natural flavors shine through. I do something similar with apricot puree when I want a clean light (redemptive) dessert. Despite their reputation, I think souffles can be quite user friendly and are satisfying and light, and I make both sweet and savory ones often.