Every time I go into Starbucks, the banana bread tempts me.  The moist fruit “bread” on the other side of the looking glass tricks me into thinking she might not be cake.
But, for all intents and purposes she is.  Made in some industrial kitchen and made to look like all the other slices of SB banana bread around the world.
I only give in when I’m at airports.  After an uncomfortable flight to/from who knows where, I want some familiarity.  I want some cake.

Not (yet) at a point where I bake a whole loaf of banana bread for myself, I found an excuse to bake one for others when some ladies were coming over for wine and conversation.
To the internet I went to search out a recipe that used butter and not oil.  I’ve found in the past that with quick breads (quick cakes?), oil can sometimes make things, well, oily.
Lo and behold, what do I come across? A recipe from The Best of Bridge.

Growing up in 80s Alberta usually meant your mother referred to either The Best of Bridge or Company’s Coming cookbooks for her cooking projects.  BoB seemed more for entertaining, CC for specific items (Muffins and More, anyone?).  I often remember flipping through my mom’s BoBs, comparing the pictures of the BoB ladies from year to year — Did she cut her hair? Did that one colour her hair? — and being transfixed by the handwriting script used in the books.  The non-sequiturs and jokes at the bottom of each recipe were always over my young head.  “Taxes are what old people worry about.”  At that time, a picture was not required for every recipe and olive oil was a fancy ingredient.

For these sentiments, my search would end at this “Best Ever” banana bread.  And pretty best ever it was.   A soft, dense middle.  A crunchy, sweet crust.  OTT with a slathering of soft butter.  The airport treat of my dreams.

Best Ever Banana Bread
Adapted from The Best of Bridge

0.5 cups butter
0.5 cup white sugar
0.5 cup brown sugar
1.5 cups mashed banana (about 3 very ripe)
2 eggs, well beaten
1.25 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
0.5 teaspoon salt
0.5 teaspoon cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add bananas and eggs and beat until well mixed. Mix dry ingredients and blend with banana mixture, but do not overmix. Pour into a lightly greased loaf pan. Bake 55 minutes to 1 hour; test for doneness (toothpick inserted in middle comes out clean) and cool on rack for 10 minutes before removing from pan.

The difference between a tax collector and a taxidermist is the taxidermist leaves the hide.

Vietnam still holds me.  I miss the food, I miss the weather, I miss the people, I miss the noise, I miss the energy.

So when an opportunity arises for me to somehow connect back to it, I grab on.

At the last book club meeting I hosted, we were discussing a book that took place partly in Cambodia.  And for my purposes, Cambodia is close enough to Vietnam to make a culinary cheat leap when deciding what to make for snacks.  The book does mention a character often eating a baguette sandwich… which of course is Vietnamese banh mi by any other name.  So really, I wasn’t cheating all that much.  And when I found the perfect recipe for a banh mi mise en place, the menu was shaping up perfectly.

While the chicken was well flavoured from the marinade, the standout ingredients were the pickled carrots and fresh bread.  I kept to the recipe closely with the exception of the onions, daikon, lime (a member’s allergy caused me to use lemon), and the salad.  I marinated the carrots for about 6 hours and everyone raved about them.  I placed a special order at Cobs for the small baguettes.  They were all chewy, golden goodness.

Unexpectedly, banh (loosely, bread/cake) became another theme of the evening.  While walking aimlessly one night in Hue, I decided to try a sweet I had seen a few times in display cases.  Simply labelled “banana cake,” it had the look of an upside-down cake; caramelized bananas atop a moist, white cake.  The flavour, however, was more like a bread pudding.  When I started searching for a recipe, I found that the cake I had tasted and had wanted to make for book club was called banh chuoi nuong.

Like any good bread pudding recipe, eggs and milk make over stale bread.  And like many good dessert recipes from tropical climates, coconut and banana have leading roles.

After a few bites, you immediately understand why banh is such a widely used prefix in Vietnamese cooking.  Everything it touches turns delicious.

Banh Chuoi Nuong

8 bananas

2 day-old/stale French loaves (not baguettes)

2 eggs

1.25 cups sugar

2 cups milk

2 cups coconut milk

4 tablespoons melted butter

1 tablespoon vanilla

0.5 teaspoon cinnamon

Slice bananas and mix with flour, 0.25 cup sugar, 2 tablespoons of the butter, and cinnamon.  Beat eggs with the remaining cup of sugar.  Then add coconut milk, milk, vanilla, and remaining butter.  Remove crusts from bread.  Slice into 0.5-inch slices.  Grease a 9-inch glass pie plate.  Quickly dip the bread slices in the egg mixture and lay the slices into the bottom of pan to create the first layer.  Squish bread down as much as you can.  Add half of the banana slices.  Repeat bread layer, squishing down again.  Finish off with the rest of the banana slices.  You may have leftover bread and banana slices.  Bake at 350 degrees F until golden, about 45 minutes.

Let cool completely.  Serve at room temperature.  A scoop of vanilla ice cream wouldn’t hurt it.

Having a name that rhymes with banana meant I had to decide early on if I was going to be its friend or faux.

I chose friend.

As the start of my day, sliced over ice cream, or mashed into muffins, few fruits rival the toothsome give of a banana’s starchy-sweet flesh for me.

And for that reason, it makes an excellent ingredient for a pie—especially, ahem, a Cream pie.  Nestled between layers of crust and cream, banana slices retain their shape yet can be easily cut with a knife.  Cream pies also tend to be a favourite of mine because they require little, if any, baking.  I ate many cream pies growing up that were nothing more than instant vanilla pudding poured into a store-bought crust.  Slice some bananas and reach for the Reddi-Whip, and you’ve got your classic no-bake banana cream pie.  I’ve not let that kind of ease go completely, but with the task of bringing dessert to a friend’s and wanting that dessert to be a banana cream pie, I looked for something slightly more arduous.

Knowing that my hosts were chocolate fans, I narrowed my search to finding a chocolate-banana cream pie.  The one I found was outstanding.

Many no-bake pies are made with crumb or pastry crusts that have been quickly baked and then cooled before the cream filling is added.  This was truly no-bake in that it was simply melted butter and chocolate added to chocolate crumbs and then cooled until firm.  The chocolate became the magic binder that only added to the decadence of the pie.  Layers of banana and a vanilla pastry cream are to be expected, but atop a layer of chocolate ganache?  Sinful.  For nostalgia’s sake, I bought a can of “Real Whipped Cream” to accompany the topping of sliced bananas.

While perhaps sacrilege to some, for those of us in the room that were slightly intoxicated and singing 80s rock tunes with PVR karaoke, the canned cream was more than fine.  I provided backing to Livin’ on a Prayer while slicing the pie and then joined the silence during Paradise City as we all became enthralled with my pie’s creamy goodness.  So much so we threw caution to the wind, went for seconds (which finished off the pie), and declared Love in an Elevator one of the greatest songs of all time.

While the light of day tends to change your opinion on some things… there is still no question for me that this pie is top notch.

Black-Bottom Banana Cream Pie

The recipe came from Bon Appétit.  A vanilla pastry cream recipe is provided, however I made the one I learned in my recent baking course.  It’s so good you will want to make extra just to eat out of a bowl with a spoon.

Next time around, I likely will put all the ganache on the bottom instead of marbling it.  I made the pie one day ahead of time.

Vanilla Pastry Cream

50 g sugar

20 g unsalted butter

300 g whole milk

60 g whipping cream

30 g cornstarch

1 whole egg

1 g salt

5 g vanilla

Combine butter, cream, milk, and sugar in a saucepan and bring to a boil over medium heat.

In another bowl, whisk cornstarch, egg, and salt so that all the cornstarch dissolves.

Slowly whisk (to temper) the boiling cream mixture into the cornstarch mixture.

Return to the heat, bring to a boil again and cook for 1 minute.

Remove from heat and stir in vanilla.

Pastry cream needs to be cooled before using.  To prevent a skin, sprinkle sugar on the top and then tightly cover with plastic wrap.

This makes enough for one pie.

While this is usually the time of year that I prefer to rise and shine to fresh spring fruits and berries, yogurt, and lighter fare, the presence of chill and snow on this Canadian May Long weekend called for something different entirely. I can recall many memorable breakfasts from much warmer, or dare I say hotter versions of this holiday Monday. A balmy cowboy camping adventure in the Alberta deserts of Dorothy, Alberta, complete with wandering baby goats, french toast on the campfire, fireflies, garter snakes, and a blistering sun comes to mind. With that blistering sun hiding today, what better on a chilly holiday morning than the simple pleasure of a hot bowl of oatmeal with extra goodness in the form of banana, maple, warm cream, and sugar?

It starts with good quality steel cut oats, a fresh banana, real maple syrup, and a little time to tend to the stirring. I have been making a variations of this breakfast treat since discovering the recipe in Australian chef Bill Granger’s Bill’s Sydney Food cookbook, of Bill’s restaurant fame. As an aside, Sydney is one of my favorite gastronomical cities in the world, and Bill Granger’s cookbooks are the most used and loved on my plentiful cookbook shelf.

The surprise of adding thinly sliced bananas is they will literally melt into the oats and add a natural sweetness without adding a fruity texture. This mornings treat was simpler than Bill’s more elaborate version in an effort to not consume my sugar allotment for the day, but for brunch guests, or indulgent days, this can be made even better with the addition of warm buttered apples on top.

Banana Maple Oatmeal for Two

2 cups water

1/2 cup steel cut oats

pinch of salt

1 thinly sliced banana

1 tbsp maple syrup

1/2 cup of cream warmed

brown sugar to top

In a small pot bring water and salt to a boil. Gently add steel cut oats to boiling water, stirring to keep them from sticking to the bottom. Reduce heat to medium and simmer to thicken for 10 minutes. Stir in banana slices and cook to desired thickness stirring regularily, for another 10-15 minutes. Stir in maple syrup and serve with warm cream and brown sugar.

To add the yummy buttered apples, thinly slice apples and fry them in unsalted butter with a sprinkle of caster sugar, and turn when they are soft and golden.

Now go and enjoy the chilly morning with a hot cup of tea and a blanket, because you know what Michael Jackson says:  “A blanket’s a gift.”