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A riff off my beloved David Lebovitz banana bread adaptation. No crusty muffin tops in sight since I underestimated how much the batter would rise and probably should’ve put 1/3 cup of batter instead of 1/4 cup in each one. So these ended up more like single-sized portions of banana bread, which ain’t such a bad thing.
While I don’t think an objectively perfect banana cake exists, I do think I am inching closer to my ideal. My Mr. Banana Cake is moist, fluffy, and ever so spongy. He is unhealthy only by necessity, sweet enough to satisfy a craving without giving me a sugar buzz, and enjoys being taken with a hot cup of coffee just as much as a cold glass of milk. He does not leave my fingers oily or my mouth parched and can be supplemented with nuts, a shot of expresso, or a handful of chocolate chips, though the banana-y essence should always shine. The aggregate of these parts is a banana cake I would gladly devote my life to.
I used the same recipe as usual, but substituted a second egg yolk for the two tablespoons of butter and didn’t miss them. I also separated the yolks and whites, whipping the latter until stiff before folding them into the batter just before putting it in the oven. As expected, this extra step added substantially more poofiness to the cake, like how a dog puffs up after a nice blowdrying session. Oh, and I took up Mr. Lebovitz’s suggestion, dissolving some instant coffee in boiling water and tossing that to the batter as well, but I couldn’t really taste it in the end product. Next time, I’ll definitely be incorporating a more potent coffee mixture. Perhaps that will take my banana cake to the next level. Then all I’ll have to do is wait for a ring.
More of Mr. Lebovitz’s banana cake. Expect more to follow — mushy brown bananas are starting to monopolize my freezer. Beware of the goo-ier cake consistency when using defrosted bananas instead of fresh ones. My mother certainly could have used the warning.
Banana “bread” doesn’t need much introducing, but while it’s been done countless times, it never devolves into a cliche. It’s effortless, affordable, and flexible: a classic through and through. This one by David Lebovitz is moist, slightly spongy, and definitely falls under the “acceptable for breakfast” cakes category. But to be honest, most cakes are breakfast material in my book.
In my family’s grocery-shopping heyday, Costco was a regular stop on our supermarket tour. We went way more than was reasonable for a family of four; considering they sell most of their stuff in bulk, it says a lot that we sometimes went thrice a week. In our defense, though, having a store located a mere traffic light away facilitates this kind of nonsensical behavior. As a child, I have very fond memories of the place, with its soaring metallic ceiling, aisles like corridors, and liberally-distributed food samples giving it the appeal of a Willy Wonka factory. Even as things have changed — the checkout lines don’t snake the way they used to, and no longer for sampling are the gourmet sausages and spinach pastry puffs — I still enjoy a leisurely stroll through the warehouse whenever I return home. For a single person, Costco does not hold much practical appeal, but there are the occasional items I do enjoy purchasing in excessive amounts. Like blueberries, by far my favorite berry and up there for fave fruit — just the right size for popping by the handful, with a mellow sweetness and the occasional tart explosion. Certainly, a pint will not do, especially if I am to get all the baking juices out of me before I go back to HK. These muffins came out looking more like chunky cookies and tasting more like dense, dryish cake, but the sight of all those bursted berries more than compensated for my lame baking skillz.
Healthy-ish Oatmeal Blueberry Muffins
Adapted from this recipe
Ingredients:
1 1/4 cups quick-cooking oats
1 1/4 cups AP flour
3/4 t baking soda
1/2 t salt
1 t instant chai
1/3 cup sugar
1 egg
1 cup low-fat yogurt
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 1/2 cups fresh blueberries
1. Preheat oven to 375F. In large bowl, stir together the rolled oats, flour, baking soda, salt, sugar, and instant chai mix.
2. In a med bowl, beat the egg with a fork, then stir in yogurt and olive oil. Make a well in the bowl of dry ingredients and gradually pour in the wet ingredients. Stir until just combined, being careful not to overstir. Gently fold in blueberries.
3. Spray muffin pan or silicone muffin cups with nonstick spray if desired. Fill muffin cups about 3/4 full.
4. Bake for 20-25 minutes, until tops are starting to brown and a toothpick inserted comes out clean. I baked mine for exactly 20 minutes.
Room for improvement: dissolve chai in boiling water first; 1/2 cup sugar instead of 1/3; bake at 400F instead of 375F for crispier tops; throw in a few tablespoons of melted butter for added richness and flavor.
When I dog-earred this pound cake recipe from Nicole Rees via Serious Eats, I had every intention of making pound cake loaves that were true to form. The tender, golden crust and moist, rich crumb spoke to me this rainy morning, and having superfluous sticks of butter in my fridge did not hurt. After removing the loaves from the oven and letting them cool, I eagerly prodded the cakes out of the loaf pans, only to discover that they would not budge. Even after knifing clean the sides, the cakes resisted removal. And when the tops of my loaves finally did break free, the lower halves did not follow, remaining stubbornly clung to my insufficiently-buttered pan bottoms. So much for proper pound cake. But, rather than mope around and proclaim the failure of a lost cause, this blog entry by David Lebovitz on the non-difference between banana bread and banana cake sprung to mind. Who needs pound cake in bread-shaped form, anyway? So I scraped everything out and packed it all — tops, bottoms, pan crumbs — into a casserole dish and baked this collection of former pound cakes for an additional 10 minutes. Dress with some makeshift chocolate ganache to hide the blemishes and voila, the end product bears a strong resemblance to the classic yellow cake with chocolate frosting, which, like blessed few things in life, never goes out of style.
One of my new year’s resolutions is to learn how to make a good loaf of bread. Over the years, I’ve developed a deep appreciation for the comfort and singular satisfaction that bread can bring, but it’s only recently that I’ve decided to take action and try to usher bakery-quality bread to my own doorstep. Thinking baby steps, the first bread I’m hoping to master is none other than the no-knead bread propounded by Mark Bittman and Jim Lahey. Unfortunately, the inaccessibility of a conventional oven has made things interesting. Good thing I am up to the challenge.
This is my second attempt at making no-knead bread (or almost no-knead bread, as I gave the first one some 10-15 kneads). I did as I was told, but before I put it into a little toaster oven (sad, I know), a friend and I decided to envelop the dough in an aluminum foil igloo in the hopes of enclosing the bread in a space that would hypothetically resemble and function like a dutch oven.
My precious, in its igloo, waiting patiently for the oven to preheat:
Unsuccessfully attempting to recreate the dutch oven effect:
At 250C (the highest temperature setting on this darn thing, which of course was another issue), I baked it for about 30 mins with the foil on and 15 with it off. Since I was in a rush, I did not let the bread brown properly, but I figured since it already looked sadly deflated, it wasn’t worth saving:
Of course, the bread still gave off a great aroma and was pleasantly flavorful (though I think substituting some beer and a tablespoon of vinegar for some of the water does improve the taste substantially). But I’m not sure how else to create the ‘dutch oven’ effect with such a small oven — suggestions, however out there, would be great. Since the bread was sitting on a pyrex plate, it did develop a nice crusty bottom, so maybe somehow sandwich it between two pyrex plates with aluminum foil draped around it?
Word on the street is that the latest manifestation of David Chang’s genius, Momofuku Bakery and Milk Bar, is no pushover. As a baked good fiend, ‘David Chang’ and ‘bakery’ in the same sentence is sweet music to my ears. But for now, I suppose I can only salivate from afar and live vicariously through you lucky bastards who trod its hallow ground.
While I’m sure he’s not the first person to employ the compost cookie concept, that particular one stuck out to me the most when I glanced at the menu (check this review out for some solid pics). Momofuku’s compost cookie supposedly contains foodstuffs like pretzels and potato chips, to go along with butterscotch and chocolate chips. While I unfortunately can’t vouch for the cookie’s taste (Ed Levine seemed underwhelmed by it), I at least find the concept attractive for its hypothetically economical-environmental use of ingredients.
As such, I was delighted to discover that I had a number of ingredients on hand that would work well for a batch of cookies I planned to bake for my students: I thought, proudly and a bit smugly, that these could be compost cookies in theory as well as in practice. Since the ingredients produced a beautiful banana, chocolate, and coconut riff, I anointed them my “bananonut” cookie creation.
An approximated recipe (is that an oxymoron?):
3/4 stick butter
1/2 cup sugar
3T coconut milk
2 ripe bananas, i’m told that’s about 1 cup
1.5t vanilla extract
2 eggs
2 cups flour
2t baking powder
1/2t salt
100g chocolate, broken
1.5 cups oats
for topping:
desiccated coconut
Mash bananas. Whisk in vanilla extract and two eggs. Cream butter and sugar and combine mixture with banana-extract-eggs. Combine dry ingredients except for oats and chocolate. Stir in dry ingredients about 1/4 at a time, until just incorporated. Toss in oats and chocolate, or whatever else you have on hand. 1T drops on baking sheet. Bake at 375F for 10-15 mins. Makes ~36 cookies.
Pre-baked:
Post-baked:
Last weekend, I dragged a few of my fellow mates to the 2008 Hong Kong International Food Expo, my first ever food expo experience. As soon as we stepped off the train, we got swept away in a sea of people, all of whom were apparently headed for the same destination. It was insanely crowded, but in equally insanely organized fashion…we were herded through corridors and underground tunnels, up escalators, down stairs, weaving again and again. And just when we’d thought we finally arrived, we’d turn the corner to find yet another maze carefully laid out, demanding to be followed, and even more hordes of people making their way in front of us. I suppose we all blindly trusted that there would indeed be a pot of gold at the end of this circuitous, claustrophobia-inducing rainbow.
A fraction of the insanity that was the food expo queue.
Thinking we had at last escaped the crowd and would be duly rewarded with lots of tasty food samples, we stepped inside the hall only to realize that we had entered into an even more densely-bodied zone. Discouraged but not immediately deterred, we got down to business, wandering off in search of food. The expo was organized into different categories — rice & noodles, organic/health foods, baked goods, snacks, kitchen appliances, etc. The first thing that caught my eye upon entering was a jerky stand, which offered a selection of beef, pork, and chicken jerkies (of varying levels of spiciness). I tried a sample and the pork jerky was pretty darn good…both salty and sweet/caramelized.
There were a bunch of nifty appliances also on display, several of which I was almost suckered into buying because they’d just be so fun to own. Like this one:
Who wouldn’t want to have their own donut maker? You could even use it to make savory things, like donut-shaped egg omelets or individually portioned frittatas. I thought this was also a pretty cool contraption, even though it wasn’t for sale. The machine is doing what looks almost like a julienne of dried squid, chopping it into more finger-friendly sized portions:
We dug into these freshly made, stuffed mochi balls. I had the green tea one that was stuffed with lotus paste. I prefer red bean paste, but s’all good.
Few Chinese can ever have enough teas…
And there were also LOTS of baked goods. I’m not entirely sure what these are, but I think these pastries are stuffed with a sweet peanut, soft brittle-like concoction.
By this point, I was all alone (not that I blame anyone for abandoning me). I noticed that a lot of people around me were digging into cones filled with pastel-colored fro yo, and eventually located the source of these whimsical treats: magic yogurt.
Starting with a basic fro yo that I imagine is similar to Pinkberry’s, frozen fruit is blended and then shoved through the fro yo base to produce the flavor of one’s choice. I went with a New Zealand blueberry and lychee combination.
Due to the frozen fruit, the consistency of the fro yo ended up being a cross between traditional frozen yogurt and an icee, which was blissfully refreshing. Neither flavor overpowered the other and the slight lychee aftertaste put a broad smile on my face.
My one take-home purchase: a jar of molasses-injected organic peanut butter. This stuff rocks. I tried a sample of this and fell in love with the combination of the grainy texture and the syrupy vanilla sweetness…it’s mildly addicting. Even though I’ve been told organic peanut butter is potentially lethal because of some invisible mold. But the person who told me that was am Amherst alum, so maybe she was just trying to give me bad feng shui.
This reminds me — I remember a few years ago, I saw a jar of cashew butter at a random supermarket. For some idiotic reason, I decided not to buy it, even though I had never tried it before and love cashews in every form. Since then, I have been on the lookout for another jar of cashew butter, but have yet to find one. If any of you out there know of a place where I can find it, please do share! Even if I can only get it in the States, at least I’ll have the comfort of knowing it’ll be there when I get back 
.
In sum, I was pretty disappointed with my food expo experience, but I think that was due largely to misplaced expectations on my part. What I expected was a tasting extravaganza, while other people came prepared with huge backpacks, bags, and even suitcases. Certainly, some of the foods displayed were intended to be dabbled in, not necessarily purchased, but what I hadn’t anticipated was the amount of staples, of the more traditional Chinese foods, that would be sold at bargain, bargain prices: that was what attracted most everyone else to the food expo. I paid a premium for my pb, but a lot of the other stuff, especially packaged goods, were ridiculously cheap, even by Chinese standards. Had I known, I definitely would have readied myself to stock up on a year’s supply of instant you-name-it’s (instant shark fin’s soup, anyone?) and the like. For myself, attending the expo was purely a form of entertainment, not an act of pragmatism, and that may have been where I went wrong.
Despite the way things turned out, I do think the food expo brought to my attention yet another segment of the food community with whom I can identify, at least in part: people who kind of just like seeing what’s out there, curious folk interested in the latest kitchen gadgets or newest flavors…or maybe people who simply enjoy being around large quantities of stuff to eat and connecting with others in their voyeurism and consumerism of food (thought they may not articulate it as such). It was also an opportunity to see food presented in a different kind of physical space and atmosphere. Though it’s not something I’ll be returning to soon, I certainly feel more in tune with the food culture in HK after being there, so all was not lost. Plus, I got a kick-ass jar of peanut ‘better.’ Whoever invented peanut butter should be sainted or knighted or something like that. It’s such a versatile, accessible, and satisfying food product. Plus, this one only has four ingredients: roasted peanuts, sugar, molasses, and pure vanilla. Sounds like a slice of heaven to me.
