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| Banana Cake topped with cream cheese frosting and yellow banana sprinkles. |
We all do it. The day we use a tablespoon instead of a teaspoon when we've used the same recipe for years; hearing one thing when someone says something completely different; reminding everyone else about something then forgetting it ourselves. I guarantee there isn't a person alive who hasn't at some point had a mental blip, a senior moment, a temporary glitch in the matrix or whatever else you may want to call it. That split second where the brain decides it's taking a vacation just in time to completely screw up whatever it is that you're doing. Well thanks to my health issues right now I have them all the time.
This one, however, was fortuitous. I was making and baking with a couple of helpers for a DPAC charity event themed on bananas, monkeys, gorillas and peanuts. Yes, you're right, I don't really want to see any more of any of them for a while! 18 kilos of bananas, 2 kilos of monkey nuts, vast quantities of chocolate, cocoa and brown sugar, not to mention the peanut butter and the constant dilemma of smooth or crunchy? Big clue - never try to pipe crunchy with a star tip. Been there, done that, *interesting* result. One of those "oh, so *that's* why they say smooth" kind of interesting results.
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| Banana Cake Pops - chocolate cake with chocolate frosting made into a pop ball, dipped in white chocolate with yellow banana sprinkles. |
By day 3 I was already running on low having had one night of insomnia closely followed by a night of working until half past one in the morning because my cake wouldn't cook! Ok, so I chose to do a triple quantity of a cake that baked at a very low temperature for a long time. It wouldn't have been a problem if I hadn't decided to put it in the oven at 9-o-clock at night only to find that it simply refused to cook in the given time. Half past one it finally let me drag my tired and sorry backside off to bed. The next morning was not going to be fun.
I had set an alarm. Actually, I had set three and promptly slept through the first two! So now it's almost mid-day, my helpers are due any time now and I still haven't had coffee, let alone set foot outside the bedroom door! I limped downstairs and eyed the semi clean kitchen. At least all that time last night had been put to good use while I waited for the cake to cook, but I was still running behind. Right! Monkey Bread, with banana and without banana. How hard can it be? I refer you to the first paragraph...
I was jumping between 3 recipes, because one of them used yeast, which I wasn't going to do, one of them was baked in a jar, again not happening, and one of them used bananas. Of course! Ok, make a mix of dark and light brown sugars. Done. Add cinnamon. Done. Make biscuits. Not British biscuits. We're not talking about a thin, crisp wafer of sugary goodness here. We're talking about a thick, scone like savoury bread as served with gravy in America. Aha! I can take a shortcut! Bisquick. God's gift to the busy cook - admittedly I have my own, home made Bisquick, which is nicer, but it does the exact same job. Measure out four batches worth of Bisquick, add remaining ingredients, stir, knead, cut. Perfect!
Now, watch closely. One recipe said go right on and break the biscuits into 4 and roll in the sugar and spice mix. Another said use refrigerated biscuits. Enter brain fog stage left to ensure that logic dictates if they're refrigerated or broken they must be baked first, right? Right????
It was about batch 3 coming out of the oven and batch 4 going in that I started to have my doubts. I went back and re-read the recipes which said nothing about cooking the biscuits. Then again it said nothing about cooking the Graham Crackers before you make a Key Lime Pie base, either! Puzzlement ensued, brow was furrowed, and eventually I looked at the pictures and realised that it had done it to me again. Thank goodness I know how to make scones! I reached for the self raising flour, added butter, added milk and sugar and stirred for all I was worth - which wasn't very much by this point I have to add. Scone mix made, torn into bits, rolled into a bowl of sugar and spice and tossed into metal trays for adding of bananas or just sprinkling and baking.
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| Wrapped and ready to go in cellophane bags with yellow ribbon. |
I had set an alarm. Actually, I had set three and promptly slept through the first two! So now it's almost mid-day, my helpers are due any time now and I still haven't had coffee, let alone set foot outside the bedroom door! I limped downstairs and eyed the semi clean kitchen. At least all that time last night had been put to good use while I waited for the cake to cook, but I was still running behind. Right! Monkey Bread, with banana and without banana. How hard can it be? I refer you to the first paragraph...
I was jumping between 3 recipes, because one of them used yeast, which I wasn't going to do, one of them was baked in a jar, again not happening, and one of them used bananas. Of course! Ok, make a mix of dark and light brown sugars. Done. Add cinnamon. Done. Make biscuits. Not British biscuits. We're not talking about a thin, crisp wafer of sugary goodness here. We're talking about a thick, scone like savoury bread as served with gravy in America. Aha! I can take a shortcut! Bisquick. God's gift to the busy cook - admittedly I have my own, home made Bisquick, which is nicer, but it does the exact same job. Measure out four batches worth of Bisquick, add remaining ingredients, stir, knead, cut. Perfect!
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| The quickly disappearing Dutch Peanut Cookies - I had to make an extra batch for at home and more for the stall after eating half a batch on cake watch... |
Now, watch closely. One recipe said go right on and break the biscuits into 4 and roll in the sugar and spice mix. Another said use refrigerated biscuits. Enter brain fog stage left to ensure that logic dictates if they're refrigerated or broken they must be baked first, right? Right????
It was about batch 3 coming out of the oven and batch 4 going in that I started to have my doubts. I went back and re-read the recipes which said nothing about cooking the biscuits. Then again it said nothing about cooking the Graham Crackers before you make a Key Lime Pie base, either! Puzzlement ensued, brow was furrowed, and eventually I looked at the pictures and realised that it had done it to me again. Thank goodness I know how to make scones! I reached for the self raising flour, added butter, added milk and sugar and stirred for all I was worth - which wasn't very much by this point I have to add. Scone mix made, torn into bits, rolled into a bowl of sugar and spice and tossed into metal trays for adding of bananas or just sprinkling and baking.
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| Devil's Food Cake with Peanut Butter Frosting Cupcakes - these were first to sell out! |
Ok, that was those done. But what the heck was I going to do with 4 batches of fresh baked biscuits? Have you ever seen just how much cooked biscuit is actually involved in 4 batches? It's what the British would serve to a family of 8 x 4 batches, and that's if they have 2 each. One of my biggest bug bears is wasting food I will *not* allow this much good food go in the bin, so I started thinking while I got on with other things like replacing the Dutch peanut cookies that I had previously nibbled on while I cleaned and watched cake not baking.
My love of inventing combined with my having read pretty much every antique cookbook I could ever lay my hands on (including Mrs Beaton's Household Management) leapt to the rescue. I re-mixed the sugars and cinnamon, added a cup or two of water and set this on the stove to boil. Meanwhile, I tore up the biscuits and put them in a couple of big mixing bowls. The syrup was poured over the biscuits and pounded together with the bread, but it wasn't enough, the mix was still dry. Not to worry, I have lovely mushy banana over here that's practically nectar, so that went over and was stirred in; still dry bits. Finally I emptied in a couple of cartons of buttermilk that I had bought in an "I'm not sure if I need these but just in case" moment the previous day. There, perfect! I left it all to soak for a while.
When I was a child there was a wonderful confection made in pretty much every house at some point or other, and always on sale at the bakers. It made use of stale bread (not the scraping the mould off type, just the it's a little too dry even to toast type), milk, dried fruit, mixed spices and sugar. The bread was soaked in milk overnight - a technique that goes back to pre-Tudor times at least - then squeezed out and mixed with spices, dried fruit and sugar before being sprinkled with more sugar and baked. It used relatively expensive ingredients to jazz up something that would otherwise have been thrown away to make a dense, sweet slab of confection known as Bread Pudding. Unlike its fancy relative, Bread and Butter Pudding, this was a heavy, solid thing, known to keep out the cold, put hairs on chests and no doubt many other things. I have a sneaking suspicion it may also have been used as a poultice! But for all that it was a cheery thing, hot or cold, and full of sweetness and spice. Perhaps the only reason it survived to the 21st Century.
Taking up a batch of smaller foil dishes I dished out the batter, tapping it down well and liberally covering the top of it with more sugar and spice, and using up some peanuts on top of half the dishes (we had plenty to spare at that stage). A quick look at temperatures for bread pudding and off the dishes went into the oven.
My first helper of the day arrived and sniffed the air excitedly, dropping loud and heavy hints about being available as a test candidate. The bread pudding having not long come out of the oven I handed him a dish of the stuff and told him he was the guinea pig for the day! Around about mouthful two or three he muttered "if himself ever gets bored with you, you know where I am" and he shuffled off, focussed on his dish of pudding to avoid losing any to me and my tasting spoon!
Oh well, at least it was a success! It sold well, too, along with slabs of banana cake covered in cream cheese frosting, banana cake pops, chocolate monkeys filled with a mixture of marshmallow, peanut butter, grape jelly and banana, monkey lollypops, chocolate bananas and banana chocolates, banana pate de fruit, banana cake with walnuts and rum soaked sultanas (from Nigella), devils food cake cupcakes frosted with peanut butter frosting and shiny yellow frosted banana cupcakes, banana mallow fingers with white chocolate (declared the nicest vegan white chocolate the lady had ever eaten no less, peanut cookies, sugar cookies in banana and monkey face shapes, chocolate and peanut butter flavours and even banana flavour hot chocolate on a stick in a choice of white or dark chocolate. The monkey bread (with or without banana) was a great success, too!
I have to admit, I did set one aside for myself to enjoy after the fair was over and some semblance of normality had returned. I swear, you'd think it was a proper recipe, not just a quick rescue! It was just what I needed, too; a winter pudding for a rainy night when all you want is comforting spices and nursery food. It went down obscenely well with a large G&T!
I'm sharing my recipe below for those of you brave enough to try it. Just read the instructions carefully and bear in mind that the ingredients are more *ish* than precise. Feel free to tweak it! The cups were just convenient given that the Bisquick recipe was in cups, they were to hand when I wanted an equal quantity and half that quantity.
Banana Biscuit Pudding (Printable Version)
Ingredients:
1 batch Bisquick biscuits as per the box, cooked until pale but risen, cooled and broken into pieces
Half a cup soft dark brown sugar
Half a cup soft light brown sugar
2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
1 cups water
2 bananas very well smashed and if possible frozen overnight and defrosted (it helps get the juice out)
quarter to half a pint of buttermilk
To finish:
Half a cup of soft dark brown sugar
Half a cup of soft light brown sugar
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
Method:
Mix together the sugars and spice with the water in a heavy based pan and put on the stove top with a medium heat, stirring until the sugar is dissolved. Leave it then to come to the boil for 1 or 2 minutes.
Pour the syrup over the broken biscuits and stir well. Add the banana and mash completely into the mixture. The buttermilk should be added until the mix resembles wet concrete - not very attractive, I'll admit, but it's the closest approximation I can think of! You want it to move, almost like a cake batter, yet be wet and solid at the same time. You don't want any dry pieces. If you have any add a bit more buttermilk, or if that is finished, just plain milk will do until it all comes together into a smoothish batter with no biscuits evident. When you spoon it into a pie dish or similar you want it to land in soft lumps, but be capable of settling and smoothing when you tap the container down on the counter a few times. Fill your dishes no more than two thirds, as even now the pudding has a little puffing up to do with all the steam it is going to generate. Mix together the last of the sugars and spice and sprinkle thickly over the top of the pudding. Bake at 180C/160C for fan ovens or 350F/320F for fan ovens, or Gas Mark 4 for between 75 and 90 minutes until firm to the touch and brown on top. A cake tester should come out clean. Let it cool for about 30 minutes or so and serve at room temperature, cut into slices or squares.
Some people like it hot, some like it cold, some with custard, it's your choice. Some recipes suggest soaking the bread in water and using an egg, but I always found that milk worked just fine in the original, and the syrup seems to have negated the need for any egg to richen the pudding!
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| About those mallow fingers, I must post a recipe some time. It's vegan marshmallows, made, then melted so you still get the fluffiness in there. Mixed with white chocolate and shaped. Once they were set I covered them in stripes of white chocolate just for some extra chocolateness. Really easy and delicious, too. One lady bought the lot. |
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| Banana cup cakes with banana frosting. |
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| Before we started - bags of mallow fingers with white chocolate, stuffed monkeys and monkey lollies, cupcakes in pink boxes and pate de fruit with monkey bread and more banana bread. |
Taking up a batch of smaller foil dishes I dished out the batter, tapping it down well and liberally covering the top of it with more sugar and spice, and using up some peanuts on top of half the dishes (we had plenty to spare at that stage). A quick look at temperatures for bread pudding and off the dishes went into the oven.
My first helper of the day arrived and sniffed the air excitedly, dropping loud and heavy hints about being available as a test candidate. The bread pudding having not long come out of the oven I handed him a dish of the stuff and told him he was the guinea pig for the day! Around about mouthful two or three he muttered "if himself ever gets bored with you, you know where I am" and he shuffled off, focussed on his dish of pudding to avoid losing any to me and my tasting spoon!
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| More views of the confectionary and cakes available with the largest of the banana cakes in the corner followed by smaller ones with chocolates and cookies in bags. |
Before the event, on the left were the Nigella banana cakes, then the banana cake with cream cheese slabs (the large containers) and the puddings - with or without peanuts and the banana cake pops.
Banana Biscuit Pudding (Printable Version)
Ingredients:
1 batch Bisquick biscuits as per the box, cooked until pale but risen, cooled and broken into pieces
Half a cup soft dark brown sugar
Half a cup soft light brown sugar
2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
1 cups water
2 bananas very well smashed and if possible frozen overnight and defrosted (it helps get the juice out)
quarter to half a pint of buttermilk
To finish:
Half a cup of soft dark brown sugar
Half a cup of soft light brown sugar
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
Method:
Mix together the sugars and spice with the water in a heavy based pan and put on the stove top with a medium heat, stirring until the sugar is dissolved. Leave it then to come to the boil for 1 or 2 minutes.
Pour the syrup over the broken biscuits and stir well. Add the banana and mash completely into the mixture. The buttermilk should be added until the mix resembles wet concrete - not very attractive, I'll admit, but it's the closest approximation I can think of! You want it to move, almost like a cake batter, yet be wet and solid at the same time. You don't want any dry pieces. If you have any add a bit more buttermilk, or if that is finished, just plain milk will do until it all comes together into a smoothish batter with no biscuits evident. When you spoon it into a pie dish or similar you want it to land in soft lumps, but be capable of settling and smoothing when you tap the container down on the counter a few times. Fill your dishes no more than two thirds, as even now the pudding has a little puffing up to do with all the steam it is going to generate. Mix together the last of the sugars and spice and sprinkle thickly over the top of the pudding. Bake at 180C/160C for fan ovens or 350F/320F for fan ovens, or Gas Mark 4 for between 75 and 90 minutes until firm to the touch and brown on top. A cake tester should come out clean. Let it cool for about 30 minutes or so and serve at room temperature, cut into slices or squares.
Some people like it hot, some like it cold, some with custard, it's your choice. Some recipes suggest soaking the bread in water and using an egg, but I always found that milk worked just fine in the original, and the syrup seems to have negated the need for any egg to richen the pudding!
