Banana Pudding

A few years ago we took a trip to Nashville and tried Banana Pudding for the first time.  It's an iconic Southern dessert that's simple to make and very comforting!

Recently for Matt's birthday dinner his wish was to have an old school glazed ham with pineapple and cherries. I served it with scalloped potatoes and black-eyed peas, and banana pudding for dessert. 

It was a great meal.  The banana pudding should be made in advance, so it's a great dessert for a dinner party.  The wafers soften in the custard and make a lovely-textured treat.  You can assemble it the day before for the best texture. 

I used this recipe from Smitten Kitchen as inspiration, but I didn't make my own vanilla wafers, I used store-bought Nilla Wafers. 

Making the custard is the most challenging part, but it's pretty simple.

Definitely try this simple, fun dessert! 

Here's how to make it:

Ingredients

6  egg yolks

3⁄4 cup granulated sugar
1⁄4 cup cornstarch1⁄4 teaspoon salt
3 1⁄2 cups whole milk
2 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon bourbon

4 ripe bananas

1⁄2 cup whipping cream

2 tablespoons sugar

2 tablespoons bourbon

Equipment:  8 6-oz ramekins or jelly jars for serving

Instructions

To make the custard, place the egg yolks, sugar, cornstarch and salt in a medium pot. Whisk them together, then whisk in the milk in a slow stream until combined.  Place the pot over medium heat and bring to a simmer while stirring.  I like to use a rubber spatula for this.  Keep stirring as it simmers for about 5 minutes until the custard thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon.  Once thick, remove from heat and whisk in butter, vanilla and bourbon. Place plastic wrap on the surface of the custard and chill for 4 hours or overnight.  

To assemble, place wafers in a layer in the bottom of each ramekin.  You can also make this in one big dish if you don't have individual serving dishes.  You may need to break some cookies to make a full layer, that's ok! 

On top of the wafers, dollop a layer of custard, then a layer of sliced bananas.  Repeat with a layer of wafers, custard and bananas until all the bananas and custard are used up.  Cover the dishes and refrigerate for at least 4 hours, but even better overnight.  

When ready to serve, whip cream with sugar and bourbon until soft peaks form.  Dollop whipped cream on top of puddings and place a Nilla wafer on top.  

Creamy, rich and not too sweet. This is a perfect dessert! Enjoy. 

Blueberry Peach Buckle

I can't believe I've never shared this recipe. It is so simple and delicious! You can have it for breakfast, a snack, or dessert.  It keeps well and freezes wonderfully. You can use fresh or frozen fruit and the rest of the ingredients are pantry staples. 

A buckle is essentially a cake filled with fruit and (optionally) topped with a crumble topping. Buckles, along with similar evocatively-named desserts like grunts, slumps and cobblers, are a great way to use an abundance of fresh fruit before it goers bad. 

At this time of year we still have a lot of fresh berries and stone fruits in the local markets. This recipe uses peaches and blueberries, but you could use any berries you like, or even plums. 

This recipe comes from The Joy of Cooking, and I've been making it for years.  I like to add oats to the crumble topping, but you can leave them out or skip the topping altogether (but I recommend it!)

Recipe (slightly adapted from The Joy of Cooking)

Buckle
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter, softened
1 cup sugar
1 large egg
1/2 cup milk
2 medium peaches, pitted and diced
1 1/2 cups blueberries

Crumble Topping
1/3 cup brown sugar
2 tablespoons flour
1/4 cup rolled oats
2 tablespoons butter

For the buckle, whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt. In a separate bowl mix together the butter, sugar and egg until fluffy.  Add the milk slowly and mix until combined. Stir in the dry ingredients until just mixed. The batter will be quite thick. Carefully fold in the peaches and blueberries. 

Spread the batter evenly in a greased 9-inch square baking pan.  

Mix the crumble topping ingredients together until combined and sprinkle over the buckle batter. 

Bake at 350 degrees for 50 minutes until a wooden skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean.  Cool 20 minutes before serving. 

Sour Cherry & Saskatoon Berry Tart

Summer fruits are here and I love it!  At the farmers market the other day I saw two things I can't find too often around here: Saskatoon berries and sour cherries.

Saskatoon berries look a lot like blueberries, but they taste completely different. When they're raw they are a little bitter, but baked in this tart they taste nutty and delicious, and go great with the sour cherries.  They also keep their shape really well when cooked.

Sour cherries are amazing. I love sweet cherries but I've never used sour cherries before.  They are bright red on the outside but their juice is clear, not dark like sweet cherries.  They need to be sweetened but they have such a great cherry flavour.  I can't wait to bake more with them!

This is a super easy puff-pastry galette, but you can use the filling for a regular pie if you prefer.

I have a cherry pitter to pit the cherries, but you can use a knife if you don't have a pitter, and it's a lot less messy with sour cherries than sweet. 

Ingredients:
1.5 cups Saskatoon berries
1.5 cups sour cherries, pitted
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon lemon juice
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1 sheet frozen all-butter puff pastry, thawed
1 egg, beaten
1 tablespoon turbinado sugar (raw sugar) or granulated sugar

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

Mix the berries, cherries, sugars, lemon juice and corn starch in a large bowl until well combined. 

Roll out the puff pastry on a sheet of parchment on a baking tray and poke it with a fork all over.

Mound the berry mixture in the middle of the pastry and fold the edges roughly up over the filling.

Brush the outside of the pastry with the beaten egg and sprinkle with raw sugar.

Bake for 25 minutes until golden brown and crisp.  If juices leak from the tart, that's ok! 

Serve warm or at room temperature with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream. 

Skor Apple Dip

This is an incredibly easy 3-ingredient dish that will wow guests at any potluck or holiday gathering. 

It doesn't seem like much - just cream cheese, caramel and crushed skor bars.  But when you combine them and refrigerate overnight, it becomes a tangy, sweet and crunchy dip for apple slices. 

In a class dish or pie plate, spread the cream cheese into a thick layer. 

Cover the cheese layer with caramel.

Spread into an even layer over the cream cheese. 

Crush the Skor bars into small crumbs by placing them in a plastic freezer bag and pounding with a meat mallet or heavy pan. 

Spread the crumbled Skor bits over the dip, cover, and refrigerate overnight. The chocolate on the bottom will start to meld into the caramel a bit, but the top will stay crunchy.

Serve with sliced apples for dipping.  You could even try dipping pretzels or ladyfingers.

Believe me, people will love this!

Here's the (simple) recipe:

Ingredients
340 gram tub spreadable plain cream cheese
250 gram tub old fashioned caramel sauce (found in the refrigerated section of the grocery store in the produce aisle)
191 gram package mini Skor bars or 5 full size Skor bars, smashed into small pieces
1 lemon
6-8 apples for serving, sliced

Instructions
Spread the cream cheese in a thick layer in a glass baking dish or pie plate. 
Spread the caramel sauce over the cream cheese
Spread the Skor pieces over the caramel layer
Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate 24 hours
Squeeze the juice of the lemon into a large bowl and add a cup of water.
Slice the apples and dip the slices in the lemon water to prevent browning
Serve the dip surrounded by apple slices

Enjoy!

Birthday Cake Popcorn!

Fresh popcorn coated in white chocolate, cake mix and sprinkles makes an adorable, fun snack!

This is a great treat for a kids (or grownups) party, a school snack or just for fun.

The ingredients are easy to find in the bulk store or the baking aisle.

Here's what you need for this easy recipe:

Chewy Chocolate Brownies

This winter has been kicking my ass. I've been super busy with work and other stuff and haven't had as much time as I'd like to cook in my new kitchen (or to write blog posts).

For weeks I was craving brownies but didn't have the energy for baking. I tried to assuage the craving with a mug cake and even a Jos. Louis but it had to be brownies. 

The thing is, brownies are very easy to make. As long as you have the ingredients on hand you can whip them up in a few minutes and have brownies within the hour.

Luckily I had high-quality unsweetened chocolate in the pantry and the rest of the ingredients are staples so I was all set.

I've tried many brownie recipes over the years and read the debates about the merits of cake-y and fudgey brownies, but my preference is for a chewy brownie.  This recipe makes the perfect brownie for me.

Here's what you need:

3/4 cup butter (170 grams or one and a half sticks)
57 grams (2 ounces) unsweetened chocolate 
1/3 cup (43 grams) cocoa powder
2 cups (400 grams) granulated sugar
3 eggs
1 cup (128 grams) flour
1 tablespoon vanilla
Maldon salt (or other large-flaked salt) (optional)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Line an 8-inch square (preferably metal) baking pan with parchment paper or foil so the paper hangs over the sides making the brownies easy to remove once they're baked and cooled.

Melt the butter in a medium pot over medium heat and add the chocolate, stirring until melted.  Let it cool for a few minutes, then add the sugar and cocoa powder, stirring to combine.  Add the eggs, flour and vanilla and mix them in.  The batter will be extremely thick, dark and glossy.

Pour it into the prepared baking pan and spread the batter evenly. Sprinkle salt flakes over the top of the batter.  This is optional but I think it takes these brownies over the top!  You need to use Maldon salt or another large-flaked salt, not kosher salt or table salt.  Use about 1/2 a tablespoon to get a nice light sprinkling.

Bake the brownies for 35 minutes.  It will be tempting to taste them while they're warm but they will be so much better once you let them cool.  And even better if you chill them! For some reason these really shine straight out of the fridge!

Chill for an hour, then cut the brownies into small squares and serve. They have a deep chocolate flavour and a great chewy bite and the crunch of the salt on top makes them perfection.  So easy, you've got to make these!

Chocolate Chip Sour Cream Coffee Cake

I've enjoyed reading Deb Perelman's Smitten Kitchen blog for a while now.  All the recipes are beautiful, doable and always turn out delicious. So when I had a container of sour cream leftover from Christmas and guests popping by our new house for coffee, I knew just where to look for a coffee cake recipe. 

This Chocolate Chip Sour Cream Coffee Cake would use up all the sour cream, and I knew I had all the other ingredients on hand. Plus it uses cinnamon which is my favourite flavour in coffee cake. 

This cake is incredibly easy and delicious. The eggs are separated and whipped whites are folded into the batter, making the cake puff up beautifully as it bakes. 

Chocolate chips and cinnamon sugar are layered within the batter and strewn on top of the cake.

We were impatient and ate the cake warm from the oven, but it's even better once it's had a chance to cool and the chocolate chips form back into firm nuggets of chocolate.  The flavour was even better the next day.

You can find the recipe here:  Smitten Kitchen Chocolate Chip Sour Cream Coffee Cake

Make it and enjoy!  

Tart of the Month - Apple Pie

For Thanksgiving this year I was in charge of making apple pie. I know this is not technically a tart, but I prefer apple pie with crumble topping, rather than a double-crust pie, so it's very close to a tart.

I used The Food Lab's easy pie dough recipe to make the dough ahead of time and kept it in the fridge for a few days, then assembled and baked the pies the day of our dinner.

The dough is very easy to make in the food processor. I've been afraid to attempt pie crust in the past but I'm finding it pretty simple these days.  As long as you keep things very cold it isn't scary at all!

Here's what you need for two apple pies with crumble topping:

Tart of the Month - Bourbon Peach Icebox Cake

This is only very tangentially a tart.  Icebox cake has a "crust" in the form of cookies and a "filling" in the form of whipped cream and fruit, so I'm calling it my tart of the month so I don't have to turn on the oven!

Icebox cake is actually really easy to make.  A magic process takes place when you layer cookies with whipped cream. They take on a cake-like consistency as they moisten and become almost like solid cake when sliced. 

Tart of the Month - Mini Bumbleberry Tarts

Bumbleberry isn't a real berry. I thought everyone knew that but when I was searching for bumbleberry tart recipes, one of the search autofill results was "bumbleberry tree". So I guess some people think it's a magical berry!

Bumbleberry is a mix of several different berries, and it makes a wonderful combination in pie, tarts and other desserts.  

For these tarts, I used raspberries, blackberries, strawberries and blueberries. 

Here's what you need for these tasty tarts: