Caramelized Banana Cream Pie

Caramelized Banana Cream Pie - made March 7, 2015, original recipe

March 14 or 3.14 is Pi Day! Normally Pi(e) Day whizzes past me or I ignore it because I don't make pies very often or when I do, it's always my favorite standby of apple pie. This year, after binge watching one DVR'd episode of Cupcake Wars after another a little too often, just like the contestants make up their own cupcake combinations, I was inspired to make my own creation for Pi Day.

There's nothing new about banana cream pie but most recipes call for banana pudding as the filling of the cream pie. Since I am forever in love with the pastry cream recipe from the Culinary Institute of America, I knew that was the only filling I wanted in any kind of cream pie. I also knew I didn't want to fool around with a traditional pie crust and worry about getting the right amount of flakiness. Plus, for cream pies, I prefer a more hearty crust so I went with a graham cracker base.

For the banana part of the pie, I simply caramelized 2 firm, ripe but not overripe bananas with a little butter and brown sugar. Don't heat the banana-caramel mixture at too high of a heat or cook them too long. You don't want the butter to separate which can happen if you work with too high a heat and you don't want the bananas to get mushy. Saute them in the brown sugar caramel just enough to coat them and soften slightly but are still more firm than mushy. I sliced the bananas thickly so they would take longer to cook, long enough for them to caramelize slightly but not get overly soft.

Although this pie has several components, each component is really easy to make and come together nicely. As I had hoped, the flavors worked together. The graham cracker crust served as a good base for the pie, the caramelized bananas provided delicious flavor, the pastry cream - ah, the pastry cream - brought the creamy component, the toasted coconut was a nice texture contrast to the creaminess of the pie and the salted caramel balanced out the sweetness of the rest of the pie.

If you don't want too firm of a cream filling, cut back slightly on the cornstarch when you make the pastry cream or, if you refrigerate it first after you fill the pie, bring closer to room temperature before serving. This is best made and served on the same day for optimal flavor and texture.

I may not invent my own recipe and flavor combinations very often but I'm really happy with this one. Happy Pi Day.

Crust
1 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter, melted

Caramelized Bananas
2 large bananas, sliced into thick rounds
2 tablespoons butter
1/4 cup brown sugar

1/2 recipe of pastry cream
Toasted coconut and caramel sauce for garnish

1. Crust: Whisk graham cracker crumbs and sugar together. Mix in melted butter. Press mixture firmly to cover the bottom and sides of a 9" pie pan. Bake 8-10 minutes at 350 degrees and let cool completely.
2. Caramelized Bananas: Melt butter over medium heat in a large saucepan. Whisk in brown sugar until combined and melted with the butter. Place sliced bananas into mixture and cook gently over low heat, turning carefully until coated with caramel but not mushy. Remove from heat and arrange over graham cracker crust. Pour any excess sauce over the bananas. Let cool.
3. Make half recipe of pastry cream. Let cool to room temperature but do not chill. Spread over cooled banana layer, smoothing top. Sprinkle top generously with toasted coconut and drizzle with caramel sauce. Chill before cutting and serving.

Pistachio Cake for St Patrick's Day

Pistachio Cake - made March 1, 2015, recipe adapted from Tasty Kitchen

It’s March. Why is it March? Where did February go? I know it only has 28 days this year but c’mon, it should’ve lasted longer than a blink of an eye. But since I blinked and February is now gone, I’m trying to get ahead of March. St Patrick’s Day is coming up and while I’m not a believer in green food (my almost daily salad notwithstanding), or at least green desserts, I did look around for something befitting the occasion. I don’t drink so anything alcohol-based was mostly out, especially after my last and only debacle in purchasing beer.

This cake is a total cheat for St Patrick’s Day but since I’m not Irish and I don’t drink, I figure there’s no way I can be an authentic St Patrick’s Day celebrant anyway. I also abandoned my no-cake-mix principles and sold out simply because this produced a (mint)green-colored cake and that’s what I wanted. The green comes from the pistachio pudding mix in the batter. Everything else is standard cake mix doctored up in an attempt to make it not taste like cake mix.

Texture-wise I thought it was fine, nice and fluffy. I can’t say this was all that flavored with pistachio though so at most, I had a light green vanilla cake with good texture. To bring out more of the pistachio flavor, I recommend sprinkling toasted, chopped pistachios over the glaze. To make it even more befitting St Patrick’s Day, you can also tint some of the glaze with a little green food color. Lay down a white glaze first then drizzle stripes of green glaze on top of it to make the green stand out. 

1 18.25-ounc package yellow cake mix
1 3.4-ounce package instant pistachio pudding mix
4 eggs
1 1/2 cups water
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour a 10-inch tube pan or Bundt pan
2. In a large bowl, mix together cake mix and pudding mix. Make a well in the center and pour in the eggs, water, oil and vanilla extract,
3. Blend ingredients and beat for 2 minutes at medium speed until smooth.
4. Pour into prepared pan. Bake for 50-55 minutes or until cake springs back when lightly pressed. Cool in the pan for 15 minutes. Turn out onto a wire rack and cool completely.

Glaze
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar, sifted
enough whole milk to achieve runny consistency

1. Add milk tablespoon by tablespoon to powdered sugar until desired consistency is achieved. Pour over cooled cake. Let set and serve.

Recchiuti Confections

Recchiuti Confections - Pop Up Shop February 11, 2015

I mentioned awhile back that at work we have this marvelous institution called “pop-up shop” at work where (usually) local, small businesses display their wares for purchase. It’s a tremendously convenient way to be exposed to various products and local businesses and it’s from the pop-up shops that I’ve discovered Three Babes Bakeshop, Bootleg Creamery and now Recchiuti Chocolates, an artisan chocolatier from San Francisco.

I knew of Recchiuti Chocolates from years ago because its proprietor, Michael Recchiuti was the graduation speaker at the Culinary Institute of America in St Helena when I graduated with my certification in Baking and Pastry Arts. They were well known locally for their homemade marshmallows but I’ve never tried them since I don’t like marshmallows. Since then, however, they appear to have expanded their product line tremendously and they’re just as well known for high end chocolates. I’ve visited their store at the Ferry Building in San Francisco although I don’t remember buying anything then. Strange as this might sound, considering I probably have chocolate running through my veins, I don’t often indulge in high end chocolate.  One little piece typically packs more calorie punch than, say, a comparable-size brownie. Given the choice, I probably consume the same amount of calories but in a large portion in the form of a brownie. Yeah, I’m greedy like that. 

For this pop-up shop visit though, when I wandered in, one of the women manning the shop patiently answered all of my questions as I snapped pictures of their displays, mostly boxes of chocolates since it was so close to Valentine’s Day. They had the smaller boxes of 9 chocolates each ($26 a box) and larger boxes (forgot their price but much more expensive). She gave me a burnt caramel enrobed in dark chocolate to try and confided the women go for the smaller boxes while the guys buy the larger boxes. I surmised the women were buying for themselves (enforced portion control) and the guys were buying for the women (you can make a much grander gesture with a big box of chocolates over a small one). Smart guys. 

The burnt caramel sample she gave me was pretty good but I confess my palate isn’t so refined that I went into chocolate stratosphere. I can tell the difference between bad chocolate, good chocolate and even better chocolate. But whether I can taste the difference between great chocolate and spectacular chocolate is hit or miss, especially when it comes to dark chocolate since I’m more of a milk chocolate aficionado. Regardless, I bought their milk chocolate assortment in the 9-piece box (Sepia); no grand gestures needed for myself when I just wanted to try it.

Whenever I have a box of chocolate, whether I receive it as a gift or buy one for myself, I typically just go for the flavors I like and disregard/give away the rest. Based on the descriptions the lady gave me, I figured I would only like about 4-5 chocolates in the 9-piece box since the others were tea-flavored and I don’t like tea.  But I was committed to all 9 pieces so I could properly evaluate the Sepia box. Which is another reason there’s some time between when I first bought the box and when I finished it. I had a dietary budget of no more than 1 chocolate per day so it took 9 days to evaluate all of the Sepia. I was originally committed to writing detailed notes about what I thought about each flavor. Now that I've finished them all (it took more than 9 days since I forgot to eat one every day), I'm backing off from that because, in all honesty, my taste buds are not that refined when it comes to high end chocolate. I know, I'm disappointed in me too. But my tastes are very simple and some of the different infusions did nothing for me and even the ones I liked I don't know that I thought were uber-special, more from the lack of refinement in my chocolate palate than anything to do with the high end chocolates themselves. I liked the caramel and the hazelnut the best. I liked the tea-infused ones the least. And that's about all I can say.

Sesame Nougat

Sesame Nougat: milk chocolate caramel ganache atop a crunch sesame nougat disk

Honeycomb Malt

Honeycomb Malt: toasted barley malt infusion blended in a white chocolate ganache highlighted with house-made honeycomb

Peanut Butter Puck

Peanut Butter Puck: creamy peanut butter blended with milk chocolate and flecked with fleur de sel

Lavender Vanilla

Lavender Vanilla: 70% dark chocolate ganache infused with locally grown lavender buds and whole vanilla beans

Spring Jasmine Tea

Spring Jasmine Tea: delicate jasmine blossoms and green tea infusion blended with pure dark chocolate

Bergamot Tea

Bergamot Tea: 70% dark chocolate blended with a Ceylon tea and bergamot oil infusion

Butterscotch Caramel

Butterscotch Caramel: dark brown sugar enhances the deeply cooked caramel, giving way to "scotch-ness" baptized with a salty shower of fleur de sel

Star Anise and Pink Peppercorn

Star Anise & Pink Peppercorn: star anise and pink peppercorn infusion blended with milk and dark chocolate

Piedmont Hazelnut

Piedmont Hazelnut: A whole toasted hazelnut cast in a milk chocolate gianduja (chocolate and hazelnut paste)

Speculoos Cookie Sandwiches

Speculoos Cookie Sandwiches - made dough February 21, 2015 from Love and Olive Oil

I love Biscoff cookies. Which is funny because I only discovered them when I was traveling for work and they’re what was served to us on the airplane. How many airplane snacks can you say you got hooked on? Me? One. I don’t see them in grocery stores that much but discovered the Speculoos version of them at Trader Joe’s last year. I buy a box once in a blue moon but, because I have a tendency to want to eat them all, once in a blue moon means every 6 months or so.

I was intrigued by this recipe that promised to be the homemade version of Biscoff or Speculoos cookies. I’m not gonna lie – I was skeptical. Really? But the picture on the original blog was pretty so I fell for it. It doesn’t hurt to try it, right? If it fails, my 6 months were coming up and I was due to buy another box of Speculoos anyway.

One thing that made me leery was the number of spices in this cookie dough. Which is counterintuitive because Biscoff cookies are basically a spice cookie so yes, they have to have spices in them. But you’re talking to someone who thinks a recipe using cinnamon and nutmeg is already spiced enough. This one also had ginger and cloves and pepper and lions and tigers and bears, oh my. But I dutifully went with it because that’s what good recipe lemmings do. I will admit I did skip the black pepper though, not because I was being rebellious (sort of) but because the only black pepper I had was the kind you coarse grind with a pepper mill and I didn’t want chunky pepper in my cookies.

The lure of the original Biscoff cookie for me isn’t just the taste, however. It’s also the crisp, crunchy texture. Those as well as Oreos are two of the rare cookies that I like crisp rather than chewy (shortbread being a close third). I knew I had to make these fairly thin and bake fully to achieve a crisp texture. You don’t know how twitchy I got in not underbaking these but I held back and baked them for as long as I dared without burning them. I did time these (also a rarity) because you can’t go by the color since the cookie dough itself is dark colored.

These came out larger than I expected because they spread a bit and, disappointingly, they also lost some of their shape. When they went into the oven, they had distinct flower-scallop shapes that would have made cute little flower sandwich cookies. When they came out, the “flower” part was lost and they were vaguely round shapes with blunted scallop ends. Martha Stewart fail. Oh well, it’s not the first time something I’ve made doesn’t look the way I wanted it to. We just dust off our First World problems and soldier on.

The original recipe called for a chocolate cream filling (click on the post title to go to the original recipe if you want that filling) but I’ve mentioned before that I don’t like to combine cookie butter with chocolate as they’re two dominant flavors that compete more than they complement each other, at least to my picky taste buds. Just like when you have some friends you enjoy spending time with separately but together they make for a headache-inducing gathering, chocolate and cookie butter need to stay apart. Instead, I sandwiched the cookies with – tada – cookie butter! What better way to emphasize the Biscoff cookie flavor than with the cookie butter they’ve spawned?

This is another one of those times where I set all baking modesty aside and say, holy smokies, that was a brilliant move. I love these cookies. I love the filling in these cookies. I love the cookies sandwiched with the filling. They really do taste like honest-to-goodness Biscoff cookies, crispy-crunchy and all. The flavor was there, the texture was there – what more could I ask for? Plus it smelled delicious. I had a taste test cookie but, in a fit of virtue, took the rest into work without snagging a second cookie. My resolve weakened as the morning progressed but I waited too long to return to the cookie plate and by the time I gave into my inner cookie monster, the cookies were gone. Sigh. Time to make another batch.

1/2 cup butter, cold, cut into 1/2-inch cubes

1/3 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup light brown sugar
1 teaspoon molasses
1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
2 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon finely ground black pepper, optional
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 large egg
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour

Cookie butter for filling

1. Place butter cubes in a large mixing bowl or the bowl of a standing mixer fitted with a paddle attachment. Add the sugar, brown sugar, baking soda, salt, and spices and beat on medium speed for 30 seconds or until evenly incorporated. Add vanilla and egg and beat on medium speed until combined, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed. Add flour and beat on medium speed until all the dry flour has been incorporated.
2. Press the dough together into a ball and flatten slightly into a disk shape. Wrap tightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes or overnight.
3. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
4. On a lightly floured surface, roll the dough out to 1/4-inch thick. Cut out cookies with desired shape cutter and arrange on parchment or silicone mat-lined baking sheets, leaving about an inch of space between cookies. 
5. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes or until the cookies just start to darken around the edges. Let cool on the baking sheet for 10 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
6. Frost the bottom halves of half the cookies with cookie butter and place the other halves on top (bottom side of the cookies facing the frosting) to sandwich the cookies together. Store airtight.

Restaurant Review: Sam's Chowder House

Sam's Chowder House - dinner on February 19, 2015

I’d never been to Sam’s Chowder House before and apparently it’s a fairly recent addition to the restaurants on University Avenue in Palo Alto. Although I don’t know how recently because I tend to avoid going to that area for dinner because finding parking is always a hassle. In fact, I’d avoided the area for so long that I forgot how much of a pain parking was. I got there 15 minutes early but it took me over 20 minutes to find a parking spot so I ended up being late. Oh yeah, that’s why I don’t like to go to dinner in that area.

The interior is bifurcated – there’s one eating area to the left and another to the right but you can’t look from one into the other so the restaurant appears smaller than it is. On the right was a live “band”, i.e. a couple of musicians playing instruments. We had a table on the left side which I preferred. I don’t mind music playing but meeting friends for dinner is a very social thing for me and I like chatting and catching up, hard to do if you have to compete with music.

Clam Chowder

The menu has a good variety of entrees, mostly seafood as you would expect from the name but there’s also a burger if you’re inclined to turf more than surf. Prices are all over the place. The low end is under $20 but you can also get lobster pasta, complete with a crab cracker for the lobster shell and a bib to preserve your clothes, for $40. I hovered over a few different choices but finally settled on the lobster roll. I’ve always liked the concept of a lobster roll (lobster + bread) but rarely have it as most places clutter the lobster with – ugh – mayonnaise or some equally unappetizing sauce. I’m a plain girl all the way.

Lobster Roll and fries

But I wanted to try the lobster roll at Sam’s so I quizzed the waiter on what “exactly” comes in the lobster roll. He said lobster, butter and celery. Awesome. Hold the celery and you’ve got a deal. Which he did. The roll came out toasted and supporting some lobster meat dipped in butter. I’m not big on butter on my lobster although I can accept it just fine. It was good although, given how plain it was (but no, I had no regrets about skipping the celery), it was really just like eating lobster dipped in butter with some bread. No complaints but I wasn’t so over the moon that I’d have to have it again.

Lobster Pasta

Had better luck with the dessert we ordered. My friends and I had narrowed it down between the apple crisp served warm with vanilla ice cream or the molten chocolate cake, also served warm with vanilla ice cream. The molten chocolate cake ended up winning because it turned out the apple crisp had raisins in it. We know I believe raisins are grapes being punished by the culinary gods so the crisp was a non-starter. The molten chocolate cake came with huckleberry sauce but I don’t like my chocolate with any kind of fruit sauce so I asked them to put it on the side which they obligingly did. And sing hallelujah, the molten chocolate cake really did come with a molten center. Chocolatey goodness all around.

Molten Chocolate Cake

Sam’s Chowder House was a good place to try and had fairly decent food although I don’t know if the pricier entrees are really worth the cost. 20 minutes to find parking definitely doesn’t make me a repeat customer but that’s not their fault.

Alton Brown Pancakes

Alton Brown Pancakes - made February 21, 2015 from Baked by Me

I’ve gotten so used to eating at work that weekends keep catching me off guard. Meaning I wake up on Saturdays and realize I don’t have much in the way of “real food” in my larder.  Usually I get my workout in first then fit food-gathering into my usual list of weekend errands to do. Fortunately I rarely wake up hungry so I can hold off that first meal long enough for me to exercise, shower and get to a food source before noon. I know, that sounds a little pathetic but I’ve gotten used to it.

Last Saturday, I had no compelling errands I had to run and I’d deliberately kept the day open so I could work on – ugh – my taxes. When I buckle down to all that paperwork, it’s best to have a long stretch of time to get it all done at once so I don’t confuse myself on what I’ve already captured and what I haven’t. That meant I really didn’t want to go out just to forage for food. I had enough leftovers for 1 dinner-type meal but I’ve never been a 1-meal-a-day sort of person and didn’t want to subsist on sugar the rest of the day (Really. Mostly.). So I decided this would be a good time to make honest to goodness breakfast food and have it for – you know – breakfast.

I went with this modified version of Alton Brown’s pancakes because I had all the ingredients on hand thanks to keeping my baking larder stocked. I love pancakes because they’re so easy to make and well, I just love pancakes. The trick to a good, fluffy pancake is to minimize the mixing. It’s okay to leave some lumps in the batter. They generally cook right out although you do have to break up any egregiously large flour lumps. Mix sparingly, spoon into the center of a hot frying pan or on a griddle and cook slowly. These rose high enough to guarantee fluffiness but you also want to be careful not to cook them over high heat. The outside will burn before the inside is cooked all the way through. I always see golden-colored pancakes when other people make them and blog about them but mine are more of a medium to dark brown on a good day. “Golden” ends up being raw in the middle when I take them off the heat too soon. Fortunately, it’s not hard to make good pancakes and that’s what these were – good pancakes. 

1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon kosher salt
3 teaspoons sugar
2 cups all-purpose flour
4 tablespoons melted butter + 2 egg yolks, whisked together
2 cups buttermilk + 2 egg whites, whisked together

1. Combine dry ingredients. Add wet ingredients and stir lightly with a fork or just a few strokes with a whisk. Do not overmix.
2. Lightly spray a frying pan or griddle with nonstick cooking spray over medium-high heat. Ladle the amount of batter for the size of pancake you want and cook slowly, flipping over when edges look cooked and bubbles have formed in the middle of the pancake. Cook other side until golden to dark brown and pancake is cooked through. Serve warm with butter or syrup.