My mom threw birthday parties on a budget like have never been thrown before. Being a summer baby, the backyard was often transformed in the month of August into whatever had been dreamed up for the big birthday event. Rolls of newsprint turned into water colour painting stations along the fence, paper across the garage door transformed into an old fashioned fishing game with prizes, water stations, sand stations, family friends dressed as hippy love clowns, and an old refrigerator box decorated, cut, and transformed into a puppet stage to name a few. These were just the beginnings of what would develop into my love a throwing a great party.

Over the years I have planned more than a few elaborate parties from a James Bond scavenger hunt that culminated at the shooting range, to a white trash birthday party that involved fake tattoos, po’ boy sandwiches, and karaoke at the Rosslyn Hotel. And this year the party was a backyard drive-in movie screening of The Breakfast Club that included dressing up as the characters, Captain Crunch, ham and cheese, sushi, and pixie sticks. We endured the humid post-rain mist in the backyard as the weather did not cooperate, and enjoyed the athlete, the princess, the brain, the criminal, and the basket case just the same. With John Hughes’ tragic and coincidental passing less than a week after the party, it was a fitting tribute. I “fake bobbed” my red locks, put on my biggest fake diamond studs, brown skirt, pink top, knee high boots, and fancied myself the red head heroine of my youth, Miss Molly Ringwald…aka “the princess” Claire.

With “Breakfast Club informed treats”, and mandatory truffle popcorn on the menu, the only big decision left to make was the birthday confection. Despite the yawn factor of cupcakes shops on every corner, I have in years gone by established a bit of a cupcake queen reputation. My usual recipes are one of two…NYC’s Magnolia Bakery’s Traditional Vanilla Birthday Cake with Vanilla Butter Cream Frosting or Ina Garten’s Coconut Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting.

With a desire to try something new, I tracked down a highly rated recipe that covered cream cheese frosting, citrus notes, rich carrot cake, chocolate and coconut requirements. All the elements of the perfect “old man dessert” standards that I love best… Carrot Coconut Cupcakes with White Chocolate Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting!

The cakes were moist and tender, and the creamy frosting, though bordering on a glaze with my addition of a teaspoon of lemon juice and an extra cup of icing sugar, set well in the fridge and was delicious and delicate. A sugary maraschino cherry on top for the brain “Brian Johnson” who is NOT a cherry, and may or may not have motioned to Claire, was the perfect addition. After all, love is in the details.

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.

It was at my first book club meeting that I met with an Indian sweet that I would never refuse: coconut cardamom burfi.  Kheer as finger food.  The attractive fragrance of cardamom, the light crunch of pistachio, the creamy colour.  All there.

The recipe is from a great Australian TV series called Food Safari.  Each episode is a look at the cuisine of a specific culture.  The burfi recipe was from the show on India.

Coconut Cardamom Burfi—even a video to help you get started!

My interpretation?

I do weigh out 200 g of coconut—I use unsweetened.  A local supermarket sells 250-g bags and I have a tiny $10 kitchen scale, so it’s pretty simple.

For us here in North America, I use one can of Eagle brand condensed milk.

When cooking the mixture, I find that it takes around 10 minutes.  The change is quite subtle, but you will notice that the mixture seems drier and wants to come together as a large mass rather than something spreadable.

They are the perfect addition to your Christmas baking.  Who doesn’t want to eat snow every now and again?