why are there still bananas in my freezer?

I just made them into cookies!

 

I've been looking for something to do with the bananas in my freezer for a while now. No, not banana bread. That's too obvious. And not muffins either. That's just banana bread in a different form. I wanted to make them into cookies. Plus, the spoiled kids at work have been tugging at my apron strings begging for cookies.

Banana Cakies

(because although they look like cookies, they're super soft and cakey)

What you need:

• 3/4 cup butter
• 1 ½ cups sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 4 bananas
• 2 tsp baking soda
• 2 cups of flour
• 1 ½ cups almond flour
• pinch of salt
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp allspice
• 1/2 tsp cloves

What you gotta do:

Take the bananas out of the freezer. You can thaw them quickly in a bowl of warm water. In fact, you can even let them thaw while you do the next couple steps.

Cream the butter and sugar (I totally suggest replacing some or all of the white sugar with brown, I just didn't have any), and beat in the eggs and the vanilla.

In another bowl, mix together the flours, spices, salt and soda.

In a third bowl, mash your previously frozen bananas.

Taneasha and I have been discussing food that is not photogenic, and I'm thinking bananas need to go on the list. Her stuffed shells are winning at the moment though. I think they look awesome, like little brains. She thinks this is not a good thing. *shrug*

So, I was winging it with this recipe, and realized I had three bowls of stuff: a creamed butter, a bunch of dry, and a bunch of wet. This is a pretty common set up when making a cake. What the hell, lets make these cookies as if they were cakes.

Start by adding about 1/3 of the dry stuff to the creamed mixture. Stir it in completely.

Now, add 1/2 of the wet stuff (the bananamash), and stir it in completley.

Next third of the dry, the rest of the wet, then the last of the dry. Mix well after each.

If you want to fold in some chocolate chips here, I won't call you crazy.

You'll have a very soft and fluffy cookie dough. I do think it's mostly soft enough that you could spread this into a pan and make something cake-like; it's definitely thicker than your average cake batter, but it's also much softer than a typical cookie dough.

And I really wanted to make this into cookies. So I put it in the fridge.

An hour in the fridge can do wonders for cookie dough. It also gives your oven tons of time to heat up to 350.

Drop the dough by spoonfuls onto a parchment lined cookie sheet. Leave lots of room between them!

Bake them for about 14 minutes.

The dough spreads a lot, but the cookies maintain a nice puffy shape.

 They'll be super soft when they first come out of the oven, so give them a minute on the pan to cool off. Let them cool completley on a rack, but don't try stacking them. They're too soft and the tops and bottoms will stick together.

These things are perfect little mini cakes. Like the tops of cupcakes, just waiting to be frosted.

They are quite tasty on their own though, with a good bite of spice that makes them perfect to go with a cup of dark roast coffee.

The only problem is that tonight, as I was rooting through the freezer looking for dinner, I found more bananas. I think they're multiplying in there.

What's taking over your freezer??

Chicken Salad - Round 2

I love things that are rolled up or stuffed. Or both!

I'd been planning on making a chicken salad (cold dinner, too hot to cook) with Asian flavours all week... and then I started getting cravings for Sriracha. (which I, and others apparently, like to call "cock sauce" thanks to the lovely rooster on the bottle)

I knew what I had to do.

I know most people unfailingly put mayo in chicken salad no matter what other flavours are going in, but not me. And not just because my mayo had been in the fridge so long it had expired.

I've been making various versions of a peanut butter and sesame based salad dressing for a while now, and that's how this salad stays together. It's basically a vinaigrette, but with peanut butter as an emulsifier. Watch, you'll see.

Chicken Salad Rolls

The Dressing:

• 1/4 c peanut butter
• 1 tsp sesame oil
• 2 tbsp lime or lemon juice
• 2 tbsp rice vinegar
• 1 tsp fish sauce
• 1 tsp ginger
• 1 clove garlic
• sriracha to taste
• peanut oil

The "vinegar" part of this dressing can be replaced partially or entirely by citrus juice. My ideal is a combination of lime and vinegar, but all I had when I made the salad was lemon, so that's what I used.

In a bowl, combine the peanut butter, juice and / or vinegar, fish sauce, ginger, and garlic.

A microplane grater (or citrus zester) is the ideal thing for ginger.

If you can't find fish sauce, or if you're kinda scared of it (lots of people are, it's okay to admit it, and admitting your fear is the first step to overcoming it) you are free to leave it out, but it really is what's missing in all the home made Asian food that never quite tastes the way it does in the restaurant...

Whisk together the stuff in the bowl, and keep whisking as you drizzle in the peanut oil.

Drizzle until you have a slightly thicker than usual salad dressing.

Use a bit of carrot or rice wrapper to taste it. Mine needed a bit more sour, so I squeezed in another tbsp or so of lemon juice.

If you want to put this onto a green salad, I'd suggest doubling the oil and vinegar amounts. What you have here should be pretty thick.

The Salad:

• 2 c cooked chicken
• 2 carrots
• a few radishes (daikon, if you can find it)
• 1/2 c cashews
• 1/2 c cilantro
• 1/2 c basil
• 2 green onions

Yes, there is a pretty high veggie and herb content in this salad. Damn tasty, and makes for a full meal. I couldn't find decent bean sprouts, but some of those would be nice in this if you have them.

Start with the nuts.

Toast the cashews in a dry pan over medium heat. Shake them around in the pan until parts of them start to turn golden. You should also be able to smell them.

Next, the sesame seeds... yes, I know they're listed in the next batch of ingredients, but they're in the pic in this section so toast them now while you have an already hot pan.

Dice all your veggies to about the same size, chop the chicken, and chiffonade your basil.

Thow it all into a bowl, mix it, pour the dressing over top, and mix again. Or just mix once. Up to you.

Now, at this point, you have a perfectly viable chicken salad. You could eat it as is for lunch or dinner. You could serve it with some fried rice (I haven't made fried rice yet, have I? I need to do that soon) or some noodles. You could roll it up in lettuce like I did with the last chicken salad.

Or you could roll it up in rice wrappers.

Have I mentioned that I love food that is rolled up and stuffed?

The Rolls:

• rice wrappers
• sesame seeds
• sriracha

Now, you've already toasted your sesame seeds, so we've got that covered.

Next is the rice wrappers. If you've ever had Vientamese "salad rolls" you know what I'm talking about. Rice wrappers are these lovely stretchy things that you can wrap around all kinds of fresh food to make a hand held salad.

They're a really fun ingredient to play with, and though they look delicate, they are fairly resilient and can stretch quite a bit.

The set up: you need rice wrappers, a dish of water (pie plate works), a plate to work on, and a plate for your finished product. Hmm... I didn't seem to take a pic of the set up, but this is almost everything...

What you see on the plate there is a dry rice wrapper. They start out crispy, but with a little moisture will soften quite nicely.

Dip the wrapper into the water in the pie plate. All you need to do is get it wet, but you need to get all of it wet.

Lay the moistened wrapper on the working plate, and wait about 15 seconds. It will suddenly be flexible and extremely pliable.

Put a small-ish amount of chicken salad in the middle of the wrapper. Too little and you won't get a nice proportional roll, too much and, though it will roll up, the filling will fall out when you try to eat it.

You're going to roll this up just like you would a burrito. Start by folding the edge closest to you over the filling.

Then, fold each of the sides in.

Then, lift the filling and roll it away from you until you have a perfectly stuffed, beautifully rolled, chicken salad.

Sprinkle the rolls with the toasted sesame seeds. If you don't want to dip your rolls directly into hot chili sauce (Taneasha now understands why she keeps seeing me chop jalapenos with bare hands; relatively high tolerance for capsaicin), you can make another batch of salad dressing, or a bit of hoisin instead.

One thing to note about rice wrappers: they will dry out in the fridge if you have leftovers. They won't revert back to their original dry state or anything, but they will lose their stretch and pliability, and are much more likely to fall apart. 

To prevent them from drying out too much, roll each roll in a dampened paper towel before you put it in a container. Even if they do start to lose their structural integrity, you can just tear the wrapper into pieces, dump it all into a bowl and eat it with a fork.

What kind of rolled up or stuffed food do you like?