Butterscotch banana loaf cake

Several nights ago I found myself watching ‘Louie’, Louis CK’s show. It was the one where he calls the grocers and orders, among other items, 6 bananas that are misheard as 60 hence he ends up with a lot of bananas. Totally not the point of the show but it got me thinking what I’d do had a large bunch of bananas landed in my kitchen. Little did I know what the cosmos had planned.

For several days now a winter/ tropical storm is bringing out my crave for winter foods and so far soups, casseroles, hot pots and baked apple cakes have already made an appearance in the kitchen and on my plate. The next morning I headed to the farmers market and without a banana thought in my head. Thats not strictly true, secretly I was hoping to find a rare bunch of ripe bananas among the green bunches always sold and as luck would have it I passed by a glowing stand radiating with bright yellow, some would say over ripe bananas past their best days. Perfect for baking, I thought.

At half the price I bought the lot and found myself standing in the kitchen surrounded with quite a few bananas. Whether it was a hunch, intuition, quantum physics or simply a coincidence, I had prepared in advance and had given the subject a little thought. So some I mashed, zip locked and froze for future use, some have now been transformed into a jam, now jarred, and some ended up in a Butterscotch banana cake that I like to refer to as ‘how I like to start the weekend’ cake.

The recipe for this cake was taken from Dan Lepard's latest cookbook.

A food columnist on The Guardian’s food channel, his latest cookbook arrived at my doorstep earlier this week and it’s a hefty one. With over 500 pages featuring hundreds of recipes from sweet to savoury, breads, cakes, tarts, candies and desserts it took me several hours to go over it and dress it up with technicolor ribbons marking all the ‘must bake’ recipes.

Turns out over- ripe bananas was just the place to start. And you never know which bananas tomorrow will bring.

Butterscotch banana loaf cake

Adapted from ‘Short & sweet: The best of home baking',

by Dan Lepard.

This cake begins caramelizing bananas before adding the sticky mixture to the batter. The result is a moist spicy banana toffee loaf that’s light and mildly sweet and pairs wonderfully with a cup of coffee, dunked in a bowl of custard or served with a dollop of sour cream.

For the butterscotch bananas:

2/3 caster sugar

50 ml water

2 bananas, sliced thickly

1-2 tbs unsalted butter

2 tsp vanilla extract or ½ vanilla stick, deseeded

a pinch of sea salt

for the cake:

½ cup caster sugar

¾ cup virgin coconut oil (or any other neutral flavoured oil)

3 medium eggs

50 g plain yogurt

1 cup all purpose flour

½ cup rye flour (of wholemeal/ spelt)

2 tsp of mixed spice ( I prepared a mixture freshly ground cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, Kampot and Melegueta pepper)

2 tsp baking powder

½ tsp baking soda

1. For the butterscotch bananas: pour the sugar and water in a large frying pan and bring to a boil. Continue to cook until the liquid turns to a rich caramel colour. Reduce the heat and add the bananas, butter and vanilla. Cook the bananas in the sauce until they’ve softened. Sprinkle the sea salt then set aside and allow to cool.
2. Preheat the oven to 180C and line a loaf pan with parchment paper.
3. In a bowl, sift the flour, rye flour, mixed spice, baking powder and baking soda.
4. In a separate large bowl mix the sugar, oil and eggs to a thick, yellow batter.
5. Add the caramelized bananas and yogurt and mix well.
6. Fold the flour mixture into the batter, not too much, just until incorporated.
7. Pour the batter into the loaf pan and bake for about 40 minutes. The cake is ready when it turns a tanned caramel colour and a skewer inserted into it comes out clean.
8. Release the cake from the pan and allow to cool on a wire rack.

Fried banana and Manouri crumble

The first of the summer fruit are here, a cause worthy of celebration and Shavu’ot is just around the corner, also marking one of the best holiday foods of the year.

The Jewish calendar is rooted in the farming calendar, which, in biblical times, depended only on natural precipitation, ie no green houses or out of season crops. Celebrations often mark annual agricultural cycle, on occasions such as planting, first fruit, grape harvest, grain harvest and the reaping seasons.

It is not clear how and when this day turned into a fully blown lactic festival, marked with all things dairy. It is nothing short of a vegetarian fiesta bursting with anything fruit, veg and cheese from cheesecakes of sorts to quiche, pies flans, crepes and tarts celebrating the seasons’ offering.

The timing is excellent, following a long line of meat extravaganzas beginning in Passover and the traditional leg of lamb, to the traditional Passover BBQ, the Mimuna BBQ, independence day BBQ and finally, Lag Ba’omer, the night- time bonfire BBQ. For one guilt- free day meat is sidelined to the corner, and lambs, calves and chicks get to see another day. No death, dying or making sacrifices here, and all the better for it.

I recently tracked down Manouri cheese at the covered market, and whilst it is not a local cheese as such, it is local in the larger scale of thing, arriving from the relatively neighbouring Greece. The whey remaining from the production of goats’ or sheeps’ milk Feta cheese is cooked to a semi soft fresh white cheese with a texture reminiscent of ricotta. It is used in both sweet and savoury dishes, either fresh or cooked, and it really comes to life when fried. Unlike Haloumi cheese, there none of the (rather pleasing) rubbery- chewy texture. Instead, a crispy golden brown crust forms, protecting a soft and runny warm filling.

If you can’t get hold of Manouri, Haloumi cheese will make a good, yet slightly more savoury substitute.

Fried banana and Manouri crumble

Serves 2

Ingredients

2 bananas, sliced to 1cm thick rounds

100 gram Manouri cheese, crumbled

1-2 tsp good quality honey

Several mint leaves

½ lemon, zested

A pinch of cinnamon

A handful of pistachios, shelled and roasted in a dry pan

A knob of butter at room temperature, for frying

1. Heat a grill pan or a griddle over medium heat. When hot, brush the banana rounds with the melted butter on both sides and fry, about a minute on each side. Set aside.
2. In a clean pan, melt the butter. Add the crumbled Manouri cheese and fry, stirring frequently, until the cheese has a golden tan.
3. Place the fried bananas in a serving dish or 2 individual dessert bowls and top with the fried cheese crumble.
4. Using a spoon drizzle honey and sprinkle the lemon zest, mint leaves, cinnamon and roasted pistachios. Serve immediately.

Note: cherries will make an equally wonderful substitute, as would apples and pears, when in season. The addition of crushed gingerbread cookies would not go a miss either.

Brown butter, banana and walnut cookies

This is an ode to a cookie. Sometimes all one ever wants is a chewy, succulent and juicy cookie. A cookie that’s large enough to satisfy such a craving and last an entire cup of coffee, but without sliding down a slippery slope to hedonism. A cookie that’s not too flat, nor too tall, that manages to strike a balance between the chewiest of cakes and the crispiest of cookies. I walked around the city last week in search for my morning coffee and a cookie to satisfy my lust, yet day after day I came back with nothing.

Why it is that the universe thinks I should be baking the cookie of my dreams instead of finding a cookie and then fall for it is beyond me, but I am not one to sit around and wait for a cookie to possibly be everything I want in a cookie. I was left with no choice and decided to bake the cookie of my dreams myself. What began by browning butter (like most good stories do) ended up as these cookies.

I shared the first batch and that was followed by a second batch, though I had to double the quantity. I shared some more, then I wrote about them in my column and now I’m posting them here. They are simply too good to keep from the world and I think the world should know. The second best thing to eating these cookies straight from the oven is having the recipe for how to make them.

Lets call it my humble attempt at making the world a better place. One cookie at a time.

Brown butter, banana, and walnut cookies

Makes 12 large and satisfying cookies.

Ingredients

100 g butter, diced

1 cup AP flour

½ tsp salt

½ tsp baking soda

½ tsp baking powder

¾ cup raw cane sugar

1 egg

1 ripe banana, pureed

1 tsp (real) vanilla extract

1 cup walnuts, chopped roughly

½ cup dark chocolate chips, optional

1. Prepare the brown butter: Place the diced butter in a heavy skillet over a medium flame, stirring it frequently with a whisk. Once melted the butter will begin to bubble and it is at this point you need to watch it from burning. Brown butter turns to a dark, charred butter in seconds. Once the air fills with a nutty sweet the butter is ready. Transfer the brown butter to a small bow, in order to stop it from browning any further. Set aside and allow to cool to room temperature.
2. In a bowl, mix the flour, salt, baking soda and baking powder.
3. In a separate bowl, place the brown putter and the sugar. Using a hand or electric whisk, beat until you have a smooth and creamy mixture. Add the egg and beat well until the mixture is light and airy.
4. Mix in the pureed banana and the vanilla extract to combine.
5. Add half the flour mixture and mix for 15 seconds. Add the remaining flour mixture and mix just until combined.
6. Fold the walnuts and chocolate chips, if using, into the batter. Cover with cling film and place in the refrigerator for at least 6 hours (and up to 5 days).
7. Preheat the oven to 190C and line a baking tray with parchment paper.
8. Using an ice cream scooper, scoop the cookie dough to balls and place on the tray, well spaced apart.
9. Bake for 12-14 minutes, turning the baking tray halfway through. The cookies are done when the edges turn golden brown.
10. Remove from the oven and allow to cool for 5 minutes before transferring to cool on a wire rack.
11. Store at room temperature in an airtight container for up to 3 days.

Sweet n' Spicy Banana

Several weeks ago I decided I needed to get my hands on some vintage cookbooks for a good read of recipes from another era, some psychedelic color schemes, and seizure inducing food styling. Turns out, not quite easy with a limited budget and less then helpful 2^nd hand bookshop keepers.

After a long and unsuccessful day scouting dusty and sometimes moldy cardboard boxes I was ready to give up. But, as goes with these things, I need’nt have looked far. An entire shelf of vintage cookbooks at my parents’ house was gathering dust, having gone unused for the past few decades, most of which date back to the 60’s and 70’s. That’s another dimension in cookbook universe time. There were books of all kinds; an ambitious thin paperback that aims to capture ALL of Asian cuisine, from Japanese, to India via Korea, Burma and Hawaii, another lists all possible American pie recipes, a Hungarian cookbook that calls for beef dripping in most of the dessert recipes, candy making, bread making, pasta making… There were the cookbooks that come with space- age appliances, like the electric non stick crepe pan my father bought when I was wee, newspaper clippings and community project cookbooks.

Important historical, cultural and anthropological evidence set aside, this is an excellent resource for ideas. I cannot look to the future since I cannot afford any new cookbooks at the moment, so the past is just as good, and maybe even better...

Where else would i have stumbled upon a Hawaiian baked ham and bananas recipe, coconut and caramel included? I still need to give that one a go, but I also had plans of my own. After giving the recipe a facelift, a nip and a tuck, this is my version of a banana and ham dish. Sweet, savory and tangy you need to watch out, it bites. Oh, and it works...

Sweet n' Spicy Banana

(Serves 2 as a side dish)

Ingredients:

2 Bananas

1 red bell pepper, seeded and diced

A handful diced smoked ham (optional!)

1 Tsp peeled and finely chopped fresh ginger

A handful of chopped fresh Coriander leaves (or substitute with chopped scallion)

1 red chili, seeded, cut into short strips and snipped into pieces

½ Tsp Sriracha sauce (optional)

2 Tbs lime juice

½ tsp caster sugar

2 Tbs Soy sauce

Olive oil

Roasted sesame seeds, roasted shelled peanuts, coconut flakes; either one or a mixture of.

in a medium salad bowl combine the red pepper, smoked ham (if using), ginger and chili. Slice and fold in the bananas, along with the coriander and the limejuice. Add the soy sauce, sugar and olive and toss gently. Adjust seasoning and sprinkle with the roasted sesame seeds, peanuts or coconut flakes, if using. Serve immediately.