fifteenth verse, same as the first: food post!
So, in honor of sabinelagrande's glorious return to Casa de Fangirl, I made a cake. I made a Banana Upside-Down Cake with Chocolate Peanut Butter Glaze. (I also made a meme, with help from leiascully and sabinelagrande. Woo!)
1. Banana Upside-Down Cake with Chocolate Peanut-Butter Glaze.
Once upon a time, I made this cake from this recipe. And we ate the cake and it was good. Very, very good. And then a few months ago I found this recipe for a caramel-walnut banana upside-down cake, and I bookmarked it, thinking that one day I would return and make it. Well, I did, sort of. In the notes on that post, Deb (the gal who runs Smitten Kitchen, and yes, these are SK recipes, because, well, you know me) mentions that the cake is delicious, but that the caramel walnut topping is a little too sweet and a pain to eat once it sets. I thought about it and decided I didn't really want to fight hardened caramel to eat a yummy slice of cake for breakfast the day after I made this, so I did some poking around in my cookbooks, looking for a suitable substitute topping. Deb suggested a coffee & chocolate glaze, and I've got recipes for several of those in my Sky High cake cookbook, but none of them spoke to me, not really. And then I happened to flip past the page that showcases those three layers of Chocolate Peanut Butter Heaven from the baking adventure of last summer, and I thought, "Chocolate + peanut butter + bananas = WIN."
A quick note: This glaze is sweet. If you're switching the topping from carmel-walnut to something else because you're concerned primarily about a sugar overload, well, this glaze is not for you. A dark chocolate & espresso glaze might be better. But I was less concerned with sweetness and more concerned with being able to cut my cake the next day without cursing, and I have to say, everything turned out splendidly. I will make this again. And again. And again. Baking the cake itself is basically like making homemade banana bread. It mixes together quickly and easily with little fuss and it bakes right up into a fluffy cake in about 45 minutes. The glaze is a little fussy, but only if (like me) you don't have a double-boiler and you've jerry-rigged one out of two saucepans that were never supposed to meet in quite that way. If you've got a double-boiler, I'm sure it's not problem at all.
And now, cake! First things first, though:
It doesn't go in the cake, but it sure is delicious.
These things do go into (or onto) the cake, though.
And here it is, in all its chocolatey-peanut-buttery glory.
I thought about cutting the glaze in half, but really, if you're going to make a chocolate-peanut butter glaze to cover your banana upside-down cake, you should just go ahead and make the whole recipe, because there's no bad there.
The recipe calls for this cake to be served with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream. Well, that's not how we do things here at Chez Erin and Mary. What do we serve this cake with? Why, peanut butter & chocolate chunk gelato, of course.
We apologize for nothing.
2. Baked Rigatoni With Extra Cheese
This recipe was lovingly stolen and modified from T, my Law School BFF (and a few other friends and relatives). T uses ziti, ricotta, shredded mozzarella and a jar of Paul Newman's Tomato Basil sauce. We used whatever the heck we had on hand, which ended up being rigatoni, cottage cheese, a ball of mozzarella and a jar of Classico Tomato Basil sauce, along with some crushed red pepper and grated parm, because that's how we like it. The ricotta is really the better cheese to use here, but either way, you end up with a 100% no-fuss dinner that has more cheese in one serving than you probably ought to eat in a week, and really, isn't that truly the goal?
Here's how this works. You pre-heat your oven to 375. You take one box of your favorite pasta (preferably a larger, tube-shaped pasta like rigatoni, ziti, or penne, though I could see this working pretty well with bowtie) and one jar of your favorite store-bought pasta sauce. (Yes, this is that kind of meal. Do I love to make my own pasta sauce? You bet your sweet marinara I do. But when it's approximately one-billion degrees outside and you've just made a cake and had a few bottles of Hornsbys-- or you've just had a long day at school/the office/in general-- I say, use the jar of pasta sauce and be merry.) You mix the uncooked pasta and the sauce together in a 9x13 baking dish.
You cover that with foil, put it in the oven, and bake it for about 30 minutes. Then you check the pasta. If it's tender (or at least well on its way to being fairly tender), you mix in your cheese. If you don't want to live every day like it's Hedonism Bot Day, you can do a half & half mix of two of your favorite cheeses (I'd recommend ricotta, cottage cheese, mozzarella or asiago), or you can just use one container of one cheese. If you, like us, have embraced your inner Hedonism Bot, take one regular-size container of Cheese A (we used cottage cheese) and one regular-size container of Cheese B (we used a whole ball of mozzarella) and stir them both into the baked pasta/sauce mixture, then top the whole thing off with some grated parm. Then, recover the dish and put it back in the oven for 15-30 more minutes (this will vary depending on how tender your pasta was when you checked it the first time) until the cheese is nice and melty.
Et voilà! Dinner is served.
Tonight we're doing Throw Everything into the Crock-pot and See What Happens. I think it will be delicious.
1. Banana Upside-Down Cake with Chocolate Peanut-Butter Glaze.
Once upon a time, I made this cake from this recipe. And we ate the cake and it was good. Very, very good. And then a few months ago I found this recipe for a caramel-walnut banana upside-down cake, and I bookmarked it, thinking that one day I would return and make it. Well, I did, sort of. In the notes on that post, Deb (the gal who runs Smitten Kitchen, and yes, these are SK recipes, because, well, you know me) mentions that the cake is delicious, but that the caramel walnut topping is a little too sweet and a pain to eat once it sets. I thought about it and decided I didn't really want to fight hardened caramel to eat a yummy slice of cake for breakfast the day after I made this, so I did some poking around in my cookbooks, looking for a suitable substitute topping. Deb suggested a coffee & chocolate glaze, and I've got recipes for several of those in my Sky High cake cookbook, but none of them spoke to me, not really. And then I happened to flip past the page that showcases those three layers of Chocolate Peanut Butter Heaven from the baking adventure of last summer, and I thought, "Chocolate + peanut butter + bananas = WIN."
A quick note: This glaze is sweet. If you're switching the topping from carmel-walnut to something else because you're concerned primarily about a sugar overload, well, this glaze is not for you. A dark chocolate & espresso glaze might be better. But I was less concerned with sweetness and more concerned with being able to cut my cake the next day without cursing, and I have to say, everything turned out splendidly. I will make this again. And again. And again. Baking the cake itself is basically like making homemade banana bread. It mixes together quickly and easily with little fuss and it bakes right up into a fluffy cake in about 45 minutes. The glaze is a little fussy, but only if (like me) you don't have a double-boiler and you've jerry-rigged one out of two saucepans that were never supposed to meet in quite that way. If you've got a double-boiler, I'm sure it's not problem at all.
And now, cake! First things first, though:
It doesn't go in the cake, but it sure is delicious.
These things do go into (or onto) the cake, though.
And here it is, in all its chocolatey-peanut-buttery glory.
I thought about cutting the glaze in half, but really, if you're going to make a chocolate-peanut butter glaze to cover your banana upside-down cake, you should just go ahead and make the whole recipe, because there's no bad there.
The recipe calls for this cake to be served with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream. Well, that's not how we do things here at Chez Erin and Mary. What do we serve this cake with? Why, peanut butter & chocolate chunk gelato, of course.
We apologize for nothing.
2. Baked Rigatoni With Extra Cheese
This recipe was lovingly stolen and modified from T, my Law School BFF (and a few other friends and relatives). T uses ziti, ricotta, shredded mozzarella and a jar of Paul Newman's Tomato Basil sauce. We used whatever the heck we had on hand, which ended up being rigatoni, cottage cheese, a ball of mozzarella and a jar of Classico Tomato Basil sauce, along with some crushed red pepper and grated parm, because that's how we like it. The ricotta is really the better cheese to use here, but either way, you end up with a 100% no-fuss dinner that has more cheese in one serving than you probably ought to eat in a week, and really, isn't that truly the goal?
Here's how this works. You pre-heat your oven to 375. You take one box of your favorite pasta (preferably a larger, tube-shaped pasta like rigatoni, ziti, or penne, though I could see this working pretty well with bowtie) and one jar of your favorite store-bought pasta sauce. (Yes, this is that kind of meal. Do I love to make my own pasta sauce? You bet your sweet marinara I do. But when it's approximately one-billion degrees outside and you've just made a cake and had a few bottles of Hornsbys-- or you've just had a long day at school/the office/in general-- I say, use the jar of pasta sauce and be merry.) You mix the uncooked pasta and the sauce together in a 9x13 baking dish.
You cover that with foil, put it in the oven, and bake it for about 30 minutes. Then you check the pasta. If it's tender (or at least well on its way to being fairly tender), you mix in your cheese. If you don't want to live every day like it's Hedonism Bot Day, you can do a half & half mix of two of your favorite cheeses (I'd recommend ricotta, cottage cheese, mozzarella or asiago), or you can just use one container of one cheese. If you, like us, have embraced your inner Hedonism Bot, take one regular-size container of Cheese A (we used cottage cheese) and one regular-size container of Cheese B (we used a whole ball of mozzarella) and stir them both into the baked pasta/sauce mixture, then top the whole thing off with some grated parm. Then, recover the dish and put it back in the oven for 15-30 more minutes (this will vary depending on how tender your pasta was when you checked it the first time) until the cheese is nice and melty.
Et voilà! Dinner is served.
Tonight we're doing Throw Everything into the Crock-pot and See What Happens. I think it will be delicious.