Sprung At Last

  • The Divorce
  • The Dating
  • Teen Tales
  • Dog Days
  • A Long Story
  • Cooking
You are here: Home / Archives for bananas

Cordon Rose Banana Cake

02.16.2015 by J. Doe // 1 Comment

The Child informs me she has discovered punk music; Green Day is now the soundtrack of choice for our morning drive to school. My own punk music – the Clash, the Sex Pistols, the Ramones – isn’t relevant, she says. I can kind of see her point: She never lived in Margaret Thatcher’s England or Reagan’s America, what do those bands have to say to her?

It makes me a little sad, but I guess I can’t expect her to rebel to the same music I did, and I’ll take Green Day over Taylor Swift any day.

In fact, I’ll take Green Day over Taylor Swift every day; music is the only bright spot of our daily forty-minute slog through Seattle’s dark, early morning mist. February in particular is dark and rainy, the time of year that reminds me that it truly is always darkest before the dawn. You would think that Seattle drivers are pros at this kind of weather, but they aren’t – whenever the sun comes out, now matter how briefly, they forget how to drive in the rain. When the rain inevitably begins again, usually just a few moments later, they have to re-learn the skills needed to drive in it, and as they do, they forget other useful driving skills, like signaling for lane changes or which foot pedal does what.

Most days, I simply swear a lot, but one particularly grim day, I start singing along to Jesus of Suburbia, using my own, made-up-on-the-spot lyrics about Seattle’s Bad Drivers of Suburbia.

My musical effort is received with stunned silence, then outraged sputtering.

OMG, Mom. No. You do not parody Green Day. Mom. WTF.

I burst out laughing, as her indignance continues.

Hashtag: The struggle is real.

I’m still laughing.

Hashtag: First world problems, I reply. I’m fluent in Hashtag.

You know my friends at school all think you’re the Crazy Jewish Mom, right?

She’s told me this before, but today she expounds on the subject at great length, and the thing in particular that she dwells on – the thing that gets all her school friends laughing about Crazy Jewish Mom – is my cooking, specifically, The Awful Fish Thing.

The Awful Fish Thing came from Marie Simmons’ cookbook The Good Egg. The recipe was called Scrambled Eggs with Crispy Potatoes and Salt Cod, and it sounded so good (eggs! crispy potatoes!). I made it for dinner exactly once, and I’m still wondering where I went wrong: There was barely enough egg to hold the other ingredients together, the potatoes didn’t crisp up at all, and the whole mess was woefully underseasoned.

It was, in a word, beige.

I presented it to The Child with this ringing endorsement: It isn’t quite what I expected, but I think it’s edible. If you don’t like it, there are chicken nuggets in the freezer.

I’ve been wary of that cookbook ever since, but in spite of this, I’ve not been forgiven for it.

It’s not the only thing I’ve ever cooked, I point out, and she eventually concedes that yes, the other kids do like my Eggnog Cookies and Fruity Pebble Cookies. The banana cake was popular, too: They divided up the piece that went to school in her lunch bag, and everyone liked it.

The banana cake was a wonderful discovery I made one weekend morning, when I found that, yet again, we could not eat a bunch of bananas faster than they could turn brown. I was in the mood for something that wasn’t my usual standby, Fannie Farmer’s Banana Bread, so I rifled through Rose Levy Beranbaum’s The Cake Bible, which I’ve owned since it was published in 1988 – the same year The Ramones’ Mania was released – and never ever used.

Yes, I am thoroughly ashamed of myself: The recipe for a banana cake that is nothing short of Nirvana sat on my shelf, undiscovered, for two decades. Finding it was a bit like finding money in the pocket of a coat you haven’t worn for a really, really long time.

The cake lacks the heaviness of the usual banana bread – it is all lightness, with a very fine crumb; dusted with powdered sugar, as I made it, it is a perfect tea cake, though it could also be frosted, as Beranbaum suggests, with a chocolate ganache, and would make a lovely birthday cake.

I set it out on the table and it disappeared speedily. Happily, the bananas continue to turn brown faster than we can eat them, and it’s delightfully simple to make.

 

Cordon Rose Banana Cake

Cordon Rose Banana Cake
 
Print
Author: adapted from Rose Levy Beranbaum, The Cake Bible
Ingredients
  • 2 large, very ripe bananas (about 1 cup, mashed)
  • 2 tbsp sour cream
  • 2 large eggs
  • 2 tsp grated lemon zest (from about 1 1/ 2 lemons)
  • 1½ tsp vanilla
  • 2 cups cake flour
  • ¾ cup + 2 tbsp sugar
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • ¾ tsp baking powder
  • ½ tsp salt
  • 10 tbsp unsalted butter, at room temperature
Instructions
  1. Preheat oven to 350 F.
  2. Prepare a 9-inch springform pan: line the bottom with parchment, butter and flour the parchment and pan sides.
  3. In a the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, blend together the flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, and salt, and set aside.
  4. In the bowl of a food processor, blitz the banana and sour cream until smooth. Add the eggs, lemon zest, and vanilla, and process just until blended.
  5. Add the softened butter and half the banana mixture to the flour, and mix on low speed until combined. Increase speed to medium and beat for 1-2 minutes; scrape down sides. Gradually add the remaining banana mixture in two batches, incorporating each addition for about 30 seconds before adding the next.
  6. Pour the batter into the prepared pan, smoothing the top. Bake 30-40 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean and the center springs back when pressed lightly.
  7. Let the cake cool for about 10 minutes in the pan, then loosen the sides and finish cooling on a rack. Dust the top with powdered sugar.
Wordpress Recipe Plugin by EasyRecipe
3.2.2802

Categories // The Joy of Cooking Tags // baking, bananas, cake

Spiced Banana Pancakes

03.03.2014 by J. Doe // Leave a Comment

Mr. Faraway does a lot of driving. It’s about four hours to see me, but it’s also an hour just to get to Costco or Wal-Mart from his house. It’s a way of life I have trouble relating to: Costco is ten minutes from my house, and though I grant you it takes another half hour to park once I get there, I don’t have to circle the lot five times before I leave – it’s only ten minutes home for me. He can’t get home before the ice cream melts.

 

So, it’s really no surprise that his car habits are different than mine: I have a little car (zoom-zoom), where he drives a large limo-service type of car, designed for maximum passenger comfort, but not great with rapid acceleration or parallel parking. And, he keeps food in his car. You get hungry on road trips, and his life, at times, is nothing but road trips. So he keeps fruit in the car, in case he gets hungry.

 

It’s not a car, it’s a boat, says The Child. A banana boat: He’s always got bananas in that boat.

 

I think you can see where this is going.

 

So, The Child makes a request for breakfast one Saturday morning: She wants the Spiced Banana Pancakes that inspired us to buy Flour, Too. I say, I’m sorry, I don’t have any bananas, and she shoots a look at him that says, I know you have bananas in your car, you always do. And he does, so he goes to get them.

 

Like everything I’ve tried from this cookbook series, these pancakes were delicious and not complicated at all to make, though there were definitely some little tricks to them. You have to press down hard on them after you flip them over, to force out all the uncooked batter, or the pancakes won’t cook through. You definitely have to cook them fairly slowly, for the same reason.

 

I loved Chang’s trick of using a rack placed on a cookies sheet in the oven to keep the pancakes warm but also keep them from getting soggy.  It seems like one of those things I should have known, but never learned, and it’s especially useful here because these pancakes are very moist and heavy and will definitely be soggy if you try to serve a great stack of them any other way. The recipe doesn’t make a lot (just eight or nine medium-sized pancakes) – but they are very filling.

 

I found the recipe a little peppery for my taste, but I had recently bought some very potent pepper that I used, so that may have been the cause. You might want to cut the quantity, though.

 

Spiced Banana Pancakes

 

Spiced Banana Pancakes
 
Print
Author: Joanne Chang, from Flour, too
Serves: 4
Ingredients
  • 1 cup/140 g all-purpose flour
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • ½ tsp kosher salt
  • 1½ tsp ground allspice
  • ¾ tsp freshly ground black pepper
  • 2 tbsp packed brown sugar
  • 1 large egg
  • 1 cup/240 ml whole milk
  • 2 tbsp vegetable oil
  • 4 medium ripe bananas, cut into ½-in dice
  • 2 to 3 tbsp unsalted butter for cooking pancakes, plus more for serving
  • Maple syrup for serving
Instructions
  1. Preheat the oven to 200°F/95°C, and place a rack in the center of the oven. Put a wire rack on the baking sheet and place it in the oven.
  2. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, allspice, pepper, and brown sugar. In another medium bowl, whisk together the egg, milk, and vegetable oil until blended; add about 3 of the bananas (reserving the rest for serving). Make a well in the dry ingredients and pour in the wet ingredients. With a rubber spatula or wooden spoon, fold the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients just until combined. Don’t over-mix. It will be a thick, gloppy, lumpy batter. (Sounds delicious so far, doesn’t it?)
  3. In the skillet, melt about 1 tsp of the butter over medium heat. Sprinkle a few drops of water into the pan; if the water sizzles on contact, the pan is ready. Pour a scant 1⁄2 cup/120 ml of batter into the skillet and cook for about 3 minutes, or until the edges of the pancake start to brown and small bubbles begin forming along the edges and in the middle of the cake. With a flat metal or plastic spatula, carefully flip the pancake over; the first side should be golden brown. Cook slowly for another 2 to 3 minutes. Gently press the pancake in the middle with the spatula to flatten it out a bit and make sure the center is cooked through. Adjust the heat as needed so the pancake browns nicely but doesn’t burn on the second side. Remove the finished pancake from the skillet and place it on the wire rack in the oven to keep warm while you cook the remaining pancakes.
  4. Cook the remaining pancakes the same way, adding another 1 tsp or so of butter before adding the batter each time. For these pancakes, a slower and lower heat is better; once the pan has been seasoned by the first pancake, you should be able to cook the remaining pancakes on medium-low heat. Serve immediately with butter, maple syrup, and the remaining banana.
Wordpress Recipe Plugin by EasyRecipe
3.2.1275

 

 

Categories // The Joy of Cooking Tags // bananas, breakfast

Blueberry-Banana Baked Oatmeal

03.25.2013 by J. Doe // 5 Comments

One evening, The Child comes into my office. She seems pleased with herself, and tells me she used her Amazon gift card from Christmas to buy a book and a hat for herself.

That’s great, I tell her, and ask what book she got. It’s a hardcover thing she wanted – some new release from her favorite series – and she’s excited about it.

I do realize she must have some money left – it was a large gift card from my father.

A little, she tells me, not much. The gift wrapping was expensive.

Gift wrapping? I inquire.

Yes, she tells me. The gift card was a present, so I made sure that what I got with it was gift wrapped. It took me a while to write something on the card, too.

I can’t wait to get it, she says.

I tell my father about this, and he’s very pleased. Awesome, he says: She gets it. She gets that gift-giving isn’t about the stuff, it’s about the ritual – the reading of the card, the unwrapping of the box.

I love my own rituals, too – most important my morning ritual of a large, strong cup of coffee each morning, in a quiet house – no tv, no music, and usually, nobody else awake. I don’t do anything in particular with the time, but my day is always a little bit off if I don’t have that slow, quiet time at the beginning – even if it’s just five or ten minutes.

I like my coffee with something, often a muffin, or on the weekend, a bagel. But lately I’m trying to watch my weight, and I find the best way to do that is to avoid the baked goods – though I do love them – and start my day with some oatmeal. It keeps me full through lunch, so that I don’t start eating things I shouldn’t.

I loved the Apple-Cinnamon Baked Oatmeal I tried recently, but since I had a hankering for some blueberry muffins, I switched it up a bit with some blueberries and bananas. The banana and oatmeal combo is a real winner – mellow, filling, and hearty; the blueberries add flavor and lighten the overall texture up just enough. It’s a nice, warming start to the day, and, like it’s Apple-Cinnamon cousin, doesn’t require any additional sweetening to be delicious.

IMG_9429

 

Blueberry-Banana Baked Oatmeal
 
Print
Prep time
15 mins
Cook time
40 mins
Total time
55 mins
 
Author: adapted from epicurious
Ingredients
  • 2 cups rolled oats
  • ½ cup toasted walnuts, chopped
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 1½ tsp cinnamon
  • ½ tsp salt
  • ⅓ cup maple syrup
  • 2 cups milk
  • 1 large egg
  • 3 tsp unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly
  • 2 tsp vanilla
  • 2 ripe bananas, cut into ½-inch pieces
  • 1½ cups blueberries (can be frozen)
Instructions
  1. Preheat the oven to 375°F. Generously butter the inside of a 9-inch square baking dish.
  2. In a bowl, mix together the oats, walnuts, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt.
  3. In another bowl, whisk together the maple syrup, milk, egg, butter, and vanilla.
  4. Arrange the bananas in a single layer in the bottom of the prepared baking dish. Sprinkle the berries over the top. Cover the fruit with the oat mixture. Slowly drizzle the milk mixture over the oats. Gently give the baking dish a couple thwacks on the countertop to make sure the milk moves through the oats.
  5. Bake for about 40 minutes, until the top is nicely golden and the oat mixture has set. Remove from the oven and let cool for a few minutes.
Wordpress Recipe Plugin by EasyRecipe
3.2.1230

 

Categories // The Joy of Cooking Tags // bananas, blueberries, breakfast, oatmeal, recipes

  • « Previous Page
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • Next Page »

Connect

  • Bluesky
  • Email
  • RSS
  • Substack

Subscribe to hear more from Sprung at Last

Loading

Top Posts & Pages

  • Momofuku's Ginger Scallion Sauce
  • Blueberry Focaccia
  • Rhubarb Sour Cream Muffins
  • Fannie Farmer's Banana Bread
  • Tuna and White Bean Salad

Recent Posts

  • Herbert Hoover’s Sour Cream Cookies
  • Ricotta, Lemon, and Blackberry Muffins
  • Deborah Madison’s Potato and Chickpea Stew
  • Richard Nixon’s Chicken Casserole
  • A Room at the Inn, Part 5

Tag Cloud

apples baking bananas beans biking breakfast candy cheese chicken child support comfort food cookies dating dessert divorce holidays Idaho IVF jdate kitchen disasters marriage match.com meat okcupid orange pasta pets pixels prozac random thoughts recipes reflections Seattle single single parenting snack soup The Alumni The Departed The Foreigner vegan vegetarian vintage recipes weekend cooking Wisconsin

About Me

If you’re just jumping in, you might have some questions, which I’ve tried to answer here.

Legalese

Legal information is here
Web Analytics

Copyright © 2025 · Modern Studio Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in