smitten kitchen » Bananas

banana bread crepe cake with butterscotch

deb — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 21:10:00 +0000

If this site could have a single prologue, it would go like this: It all started out so innocently. Because doesn’t it always? I wanted something simple but got carried away. A search for a lasagna I could love became a Mount Everest of a Lasagna Bolognese; a hankering for a great game-day snack became a mash-up of Welsh rarebit and pull-apart rye bread; and a hunt for a quiche that could serve a crowd became a 4 1/2 year vendetta until I triumphed over those 137 square inches of buttery flaky shell. Okay, I’m being a little dramatic. I’m likely scaring away people who just wanted something simple to cook (I promise, the next recipe will be so simple, you might, like me, weep and wonder where it’s been every rushed weekday night of your life thus far.)

In this case, I started daydreaming about the place where a simple crepe would intersect banana bread and from there, I couldn’t stop. Well, I had to stop for a week because my book’s first pass pages came back (guys? It looks so pretty, I can’t wait to show you) and when they dragged it from my apartment (I, um, wasn’t done yet), I found that my cooking mojo had left with it. If you’d like a delightful recipe for banana flatcakes (what I affectionately called the first flop), I’ve got one. Then, I was so low on groceries, I had only the exact number of eggs I needed for the recipe, and like something out of a bad comedy skit, I managed to smash the egg on the outside of the mixing bowl, all of my hopes of getting this recipe to you in a reasonable frame of time dribbling down the side and puddling on the counter. (If this ever happens to you, promise me you won’t leave the kitchen in disgust, if only because cleaning up that egg an hour later is only going to double your grump.) Then my son demanded the last speckled banana, the one I’d been saving to try the crepes again (the nerve!), and it was a few days before the next batch were ripe enough to use.

I am, if little else, the queen of excuses right now.

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monkey cake

deb — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 23:29:25 +0000

I’m pretty serious about birthday cakes. When I think of someone being presented with some shortening spackled quarter sheet cake from a discount grocery chain on their birthday — a day they only get to celebrate once a year! Which is like forever if you’re a kid or perhaps the sort of grownup who didn’t get the memo that at the age of 34, birthdays are really not supposed to be a big deal anymore — it makes me sad. Not judgmental-sad, because lord knows I could barely eke out this cake on Saturday, and it’s supposed to be, like, my calling, but empathetic-sad because I totally blame lousy, intimidating recipes for making the two-layer + frosting task seem not worth it to go it at home. I hope to make it as easy as possible for everyone to get the fluffy, towering, butter-laden imperfectly frosted, slightly crooked homemade cake they deserve for making it through another year. Or, perhaps, one’s entire life to date, for the first birthday set.

Of course, the joke is on me because who went without a homemade birthday cake this year? Yup, you’re looking at her. Who else? Yup, the husband. It turns out, babies keep you really busy. But we don’t bear grudges, in fact, I figured if I could only get my act together for one single birthday cake this year, it might as well be a cake for the monkey. I may or may not have started planning this in June. I may or may not have spent 45 minutes last week practicing doodling monkeys so I could get it right. I admit nothing.

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caramel walnut upside down banana cake

deb — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 13:10:57 +0000

Oh, look what I went and did now. Really, I must be stopped–this is out of control. One afternoon I saw a recipe for Caramel Walnut Upside-Down Banana Cake in Gourmet and it was one of those moments when you pause and repeat all of the words to yourself slowly, trying to imagine how someone managed to fit all of these glorious elements into one 8-inch pan (they didn’t, but more on that later)–kind of like the Hazelnut Brown Butter Cake of two weeks ago. It immediately went on my Cook This list. The next day, I casually picked up the ingredients for the cake, just in case an opportunity presented itself where a Caramel Walnut Upside-Down Banana Cake’s services would be called upon. (Hey, these things happen when you run the Smitten Kitchen.) But then it never did and by the end of the weekend, the bananas, they were calling to me and the cake and a few hours later, here we were:

Those bananas get me every time. I have an affection for bananas that most sane people reject–call it freckle empathy–and having them around but trying not to a) eat or b) bake jacked-up banana bread with them is torture. To put it another way: I feel like the chimpanzee in this video and the bananas? They never win.

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jacked-up banana bread

deb — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 23:00:50 +0000

Confession time again! You see these babies? The brown, spotty, past their prime and about 36 hours from luring in fruit flies bananas? I love them. They’re my absolute favorite. I know, I know how gross that is. I know, I know that most people would pick those up only to walk them over to the trash. I know, I know you’re horrified that I could love something so rotten, and for all of these reasons, I am forced to live my life as a closeted freckled banana eater.

The list of people who know my secret are as follows: Alex, but he married me anyway; my mother-in-law, who was about to throw some old bananas out one day and I gave myself up, yelping “wait!” at the last moment; the lady at the bodega where I get my yogurt and fruit each morning, who watches me sift daily through the bright, yellow ones on top for the sordid, unlovable ones at the bottom of the pile; Molly, who I confessed my banana sin to in a moment of cream cheese-frosted camaraderie; and now you. Go easy on me, please.

... Read the rest of jacked-up banana bread on smittenkitchen.com