The Leftover Jumbanana

Jade and I have a love/hate relationship with leftovers. I mean we don't like throwing away leftovers but neither do we like consuming excessive quantities of them. Below are 4 items I found in dire need of using:-

Item A: 1/2 a tub of sour cream near expiry date left by Violet (current flatmate)
Item B: More bananas than anyone can count left by BC (also current flatmate)
Item C: A 250g bar of Nestlé's cooking chocolate bought on unknown date left in drawer by ex-flatmate
Item D: 1/2 a bottle of pouring/whipping cream nearing expiry date

So what does one do with such excessive fridge refuse? I initially intended to make a sour cream coffee cake but we only had high grade flour thanks to our bread-making household. As I read the description of high grade flour, I noticed that the manufacturers recommended making banana bread with it. So I decided to make banana the main ingredient instead of sour cream.

After what felt like an eternity of Googling, I managed to find a recipe procured from David Lebovitz and tweaked it, producing this:

Chocolate Chip Banana Over The Top Cake 


For the bottom of the rectangular, around 12 inches long pan:
2 ripe medium bananas

a few drops of lemon juice

For the cake:
1 1/2 cups (210 g) flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

3/4 cup (150 g) raw sugar

2 tablespoons (30 g) melted butter, salted or unsalted

1 large egg

1 large egg white

1 cup (250 g) banana puree (about 2 bananas)

1/2 cup (120 g) sour cream, regular or low-fat

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 bar of cooking chocolate roughly chopped/broken up

Chocolate Ganache and Cake Topping:
As many bananas that will cover the top of the cake

200 ml of cream (however much there was left in the bottle of 500 ml cream)

1/2 a 250g bar of cooking chocolate (100g) + about 3/4 a 250g bar of Whittakers Dark Orange Chocolate David was munching on and deigned to contribute (I sieved out the orange bits as I don't like orange chocolate myself but couldn't help leaving some in)

1. Grease the bottom of the pan with butter and line them with thickly sliced bananas. Sprinkle some lemon juice on them.

2. Mix all the dry ingredients for the cake together, make a well and pour in the wet ingredients. I used 2 eggs instead of a whole egg and an egg white since I had less than the required amount of sour cream.

3. Bake at 180°C for about 33 minutes (do the toothpick test!). Or if you're using a square 8 inch pan, bake for 40 minutes and it should come out brown and warm.

4. Leave to cool and use a knife to separate the sides of the cake, emptying it bottom side up out onto a plate like so (or if you're lazy just leave it in the pan and decorate it):

5. Thickly slice the bananas, enough to cover the top (or bottom) of the cake and squeeze more lemon juice on it.

6. Prepare the chocolate ganache. Heat the cream over low heat and melt the chocolate chunks. Stir until smooth and drizzle over the top of the cake.I had so much ganache I completely covered the cake. Sprinkle with some icing sugar and you have yourself a successful by-product of leftovers!

Boyfriend protested he would never touch leftovers and expired food but eventually managed to down three of these!

Recipes of the week

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Balls

From Joy the Baker

My first taste of cookie dough was in Ben and Jerry's Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream, and ever since then, I've been hooked. Most of the time they taste delicious, albeit artificial, (like Kit Kat Cookie Dough) and sometimes I can't get over the rawness of it. When I tried Baskin Robbins' chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream in Sydney, it had a really eggy taste to it that put me off. Still, I like the sound of cookie dough and any recipe with it always catches my eye.

Nutty White Chocolate Blondies

From Chow

In five words: big chunks of white chocolate.

Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins

From Jamie Cooks It Up

What attracted me to this recipe was the use of mayonnaise to make these sweet muffins. I've heard of zucchini, chili and bacon used in chocolate recipes, but not mayonnaise. Apparently the mayonnaise gives the muffins a moist texture. The recipe even says you can substitute mayonnaise for salad dressing if you don't have a tub of mayo handy. 

Banana Caramel Cupcakes

From Bakers Royale

Continuing with bananas, these cupcakes look and sound absolutely delicious. There are a number of ingredients involved but these are readily available in your pantry (with the exception of heavy cream for the filling). This recipe seems similar to the banana cupcakes Natalie and I baked that were meant to be accompanied with a toffee icing. But this one is a lot harder to assemble, but I would presume to be a lot tastier. 

David Leibovitz's Chocolate Chip Cookies

From Serious Eats

Chocolate chip cookies so famous it needs an equally famous chef's name in front of it. But I don't know who David Leibovitz is (although his name sounds familiar). I may have heard of him from watching Top Chef or this recipe has been circling around the food blogosphere. I think it's the latter. Everyday a recipe for chocolate chip cookies would feature on FoodGawker or TasteSpotting, with posters claiming theirs is the chunkiest, richest, sweetest, chewiest chocolate chip cookie. On the same site, there is a taste test to see which are the best chocolate chips to use for chocolate chip cookies. To me, chocolate chip cookies are plain and boring, and are not something I would bake. But if it's David Leibovitz's Chocolate Chip Cookies, I just might.

Banana magnet

The sight of ripe bananas beckon us to do something with them. We turned brown spotty bananas into cute little cupcakes.

Banana Cupcakes with Vanilla Buttercream

(Recipe adapted from 'Cupcakes' by Sue McMahon)

Ingredients:

For the cupcakes

• 100 g butter, softened
• 100 g light soft brown sugar
• 100 g self-raising flour
• 2 medium eggs (we used 1)
• 1 ripe banana, mashed (we used 2)
• A dash of cinnamon

For the buttercream

• 175 g butter, softened
• 350 g icing sugar
• 3 Tbsp boiling water
• Few drops of vanilla essence

Method:

For the cupcakes

1. Preheat the oven to 190 degrees C.
2. Beat the butter and sugar together in a bowl until the mixture is light and fluffy.
3. Add the eggs and flour to the bowl. Beat until the mixture is smooth, then fold in the mashed banana.
4. Divide the mixture between the paper cases and bake in the centre of the oven for 12 to 15 minutes until the cakes have risen and are just firm to the touch in the centre.
5. Remove the cakes from the oven and transfer them to a wire rack to cool.

For the buttercream

1. Beat the butter in a bowl to soften it.
2. Add the icing sugar, boiling water and vanilla essence, and beat until the icing is very smooth and pale in colour.

Makes 12 cupcakes.

Print-friendly recipe here.

The icing had a superb consistency, making it very piping-bag-friendly. The cupcakes on the other hand, were quite flat and moist. Probably because of the extra banana we added in place of egg.

Quick fix

If you want something sweet, cold and can be eaten in a mouthful, try these Bite-Sized Ice-Cream Sundaes. Despite being the holidays, I'm sometimes too lazy to pull out ingredients from my pantry and instead, want something that's fast and simple, i.e. a quick fix.

Only three ingredients are used to create these treats. I had the most trouble with melting the chocolate to the right consistency. Everytime I proceeded to dunk the treats into the chocolate, it would melt the ice-cream ball and create a drippy mess. This resulted in me running back and forth between the freezer and the kitchen counter to prevent the ice-cream from melting and the chocolate from hardening. I could only dip each treat into the chocolate one at a time and I couldn't cover them fully.

Having said all that, I would make these bite sized sundaes again. I just need to make these quick fixes faster.

Monkey's diet

We've always known that bananas go well with chocolate, and chocolate goes well with peanut butter, and peanut butter goes well with bananas. But we never thought we'd chuck it all together into one concoction.

After baking a batch of funfetti cupcakes, we had a redundant jar of peanut butter, pack of dark chocolate chips and bananas to violate. And that we did, with the following recipe.

It was very rushed. We quickly checked the ingredients and didn't bother reading the method. Once you have the urge to bake, you can't get rid of the feeling. You can only satisfy it!

Peanut Butter-Chocolate Chip Banana Bread
(Recipe adapted from Sugar Plum)

Ingredients:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 medium ripe mashed bananas
• 1/2 cup peanut butter
• 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened, divided
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup milk
• 3/4 cup semi-sweet or dark chocolate chips

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 180 C.
2. Line a 9-inch loaf pan with baking paper.
3. In a medium sized mixing bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
4. In a large mixing bowl, using a mixer on medium speed, beat together banana, peanut butter, 2 tablespoons butter, granulated sugar and brown sugar until creamy, for about 2 minutes.
5. Beat in eggs and vanilla extract until combined.
6. Reduce mixer speed to low and beat in milk and flour mixture until just combined.
7. Stir in chocolate chips and pour batter into prepared pan.
8. Bake for 50 minutes or until golden brown.
9. Cool for 20 minutes before running a knife around outside edges, removing, and transferring to a wire rack to cool before slicing.

Print-friendly version of recipe here.

Apologies for the poor quality photos. We were in such a rush that we didn't have enough time to take better photos when the bread was fresh out of the oven.

Elvis in a cupcake

Nat and I had a sudden craving for bananas. After experiencing "cupcake withdrawal" from last week's baking session, we decided to bake banana cupcakes. I found a recipe that added chocolate. That was a bonus!

The cupcakes were moist and the banana flavour was stronger than the chocolate, but it didn't overpower. I guess for that reason, we decided to add more with peanut butter frosting. And besides, cupcakes just aren't the same without a bit of icing on top.

Eating these cupcakes reminded me of how good chocolate, bananas and peanut butter are together.

Banana-ful bread

We had just finished our peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies and being the intrepid (or maybe just greedy) bakers that we are, decided to raise another sweet creation from the oven and this is it in all it's brown glory:

(okay, maybe the picture doesn't do it justice- but we like to blame it on the camera, sun, wind, and the moisture from the air rather than admit we're bad photographers)

Wonderfully moist and banana-ey!

Egg-Free Banana Bread
(Adapted from this recipe)
Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup butter/margarine
• 3/4 cup organic cane sugar
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp sea salt
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 large ripe banana
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 tbsp milk
• 1 tbsp honey (or as much as you like)

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 160° C.
2. Lightly grease 8 x 4 bread loaf pan.
3. Cream butter (or margarine) and sugar in large bowl.
4. Slowly sift in flour, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon.
5. Mash banana in separate bowl and then add in to large bowl and mix.
6. Add vanilla extract.
7. Pour batter into greased pan.
8. Bake for 60 minutes or until knife comes out clean.
9. Allow to fully cool before slicing.

Print-friendly version of recipe here.

And voila, the awesome-est banana flavour you'll ever taste! We only used one banana and even people who do not monkey about with their criticism showed much appreciation for this amazing burst of flavour ie. Jade's dad.