Banana-rama

We’ve all done it: bought too many bananas at the market. We have every intention of eating the fruit before it turns soft and brown, but inevitably one or two bananas do not get eaten. I had a couple wilting away on my counter yesterday and decided to try out a recipe for banana muffins.

I first turned to Old Faithful, otherwise known as the Betty Crocker cookbook. This is my go-to for traditional, simple foods like baking powder biscuits, pot roast, and meatloaf. But when I found their recipe for banana bread, I was sorely disappointed. The recipe calls for Bisquick baking mix instead of flour and baking powder or soda. I am not in the habit of buying Bisquick, and so I was disappointed to see that they didn’t offer any alternatives. This reminds me of the time I was looking up recipes for Clam Chowder. I found one recipe that started out by saying “Open 2 cans clam chowder”. Seriously.

So I pulled out another old friend, How to be a Domestic Goddess by Nigella Lawson. The woman makes cooking and eating unbelievably sensual and fun, so I trust her recipes implicitly. I looked in the index, and sure enough, there was a recipe for banana muffins!

The ingredients: flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, vanilla, honey, butter, and bananas. That’s it! No eggs, no milk, no oil… I was intrigued enough to give it a try.

The batter was pretty dry, at first, and the recipe discourages over mixing. I turned it around in the bowl a couple of times until the wet and dry ingredients were mostly combined. It smelled and tasted great, and that was before I baked them! I’m a sucker for raw batter and dough…

I sprinkled a few chopped pecans on each muffin because nuts and bananas go together like ham and cheese; one just makes the other better! Plus, I just love a little crunch on the top of a muffin.

25 minutes later, I had these:

They’re a little dense, but very tasty. And there’s no processed sugar, so they’ve got to be pretty healthy, right?

Bottom line: if you’ve got black bananas and this book, make the muffins! They go great with coffee or a glass of milk, and they’re super quick and easy to make.

Creature Comforts

This weekend I made a cake for a friend’s daughter who turned 2. She is a berry fiend and fierce animal lover, so when it came to coming up with an idea for a cake it seemed natural to combine the two.

I started with a plain yellow cake recipe. Then I made Elisa Strauss’ buttercream icing and my own recipe for mixed berry mousse (I’ll post it next time).

I always pipe a dam of icing around the perimeter of the cake before adding the filling. It contains the filling and prevents it from seeping out later when you ice the cake.

This is the crumb coat stage; a very thin layer of icing over the entire cake to contain the crumbs and filling. Then I put it in the fridge for a couple of hours to set up before doing the finish icing and decorating.

My Sweetie & I played in the gumpaste together and made some critters for the top of the cake:

Add some mixed berries,

and voila! A fun cake

for a very fun little girl.

Creative Cake Day

I have been commissioned to make a cake for a bridal shower this weekend. Cake decorating is my passion in the kitchen; I almost can’t wait to get through the baking and assembly so I can play with decorations!

I’ve always enjoyed making representational cakes and thought this would be a great opportunity to make a wedding dress cake. Right now I’m taking a break from putting the finishing touches on the cake to write this. Sometimes it’s prudent to step away from whatever art you are creating, take a breath, and consider it with a clear head. I was about to put way to many sparkles on it and said to myself “Sonia, put down the petal dust and step away from the cake.”

I used Elisa Strauss’ recipe for chocolate cake from her book, Confetti Cakes. If you haven’t seen her work, go to her website and check it out. The cake has two surprises in it: sour cream and coffee. Interestingly enough, both flavors work well to bring out the flavor of the chocolate. I then filled the cakes with vanilla buttercream (also Strauss’ recipe) and set them to chill in the freezer while I rolled out the fondant.

I have a love hate relationship with rolled fondant. On a good day, it sets on the cake like a dream, creating a smooth matte finish on which to embellish with decorations. On a bad day, it’s sticky, stretchy, and full of air bubbles. Today was somewhere in between. Slightly sticky but pretty easy to work with, I had just enough to cover and decorate two 8-inch round cakes (about 3 pounds).

Fondant tip: grease your work surface with a vegetable based shortening like Crisco. It prevents the fondant from sticking and keeps it from drying out while you work with it.

I had a vauge idea of what I was going for with this design, but wanted to wing it on the details. Sometimes this creative process works for me, and other times it’s just chaotic. But today I was in the zone and it came out just as I imagined it would in my mind.

I decorated the cake with all edible elements: rolled fondant, glitter, dredges, and sprinkles. The finishing touch is a whisper of silver and white luster dist to highlight the accents. Unfortunately, the camera didn’t pick up on the subtleties, but trust me it sparkles!

This was an enjoyable way to spend the day. I hope she likes it!

Shortbread Shortcuts

I ran across this recipe for Espresso-Chocolate Shortbread at Smitten Kitchen. The pictures and description were gorgeous and so, with a dinner party to attend tonight, I decided to make the recipe.

When I bake, I like to keep things simple. Since shortbread is little more than butter, sugar, and flour it more than qualifies as simple! Since I’ll be sharing these cookies with a group, I decided to make them as appealing to a wide range of tastes as possible. So I omitted the espresso and used 1 Tablespoon of water instead. I also used mini chocolate chips.

The original recipe asks you to put the dough in a gallon-size plastic bag and press it into a rectangle. Then you let the dough chill, cut into squares and bake. I didn’t happen to have a Ziploc bag this big, so I decided to make a log of dough using a large piece of plastic wrap. Just drop the dough in, use the plastic to help shape it into a long rectangle, wrap, and press on the sides to help it square up.

After it has chilled, slice into 1/2″ slices. I could probably have cut these rectangles in half and ended up with more, smaller cookies. They are so rich and delicious that a person would probably be better off with a few smaller cookies and a nice cup of coffee or refreshing glass of milk!

I baked these for abotu 15 minutes, then checked them every 2-3 minutes until they started to brown around the edges. It’s hard to tell with shortbread; there’s no baking soda or powder, so they don’t grow during baking.

All in all, this was a simple recipe which yielded delicious results.