CHOCOLATE BANANA BAKED OATMEAL

Way back in 2013, when I discovered my beloved funky monkey baked oatmeal, I commented on the wrong-feelingness of eating chocolate in the morning (and, indeed, 75% of the time I’ve made that recipe since, I’ve omitted the chocolate and coconut so it’s just banana-peanut butter), and speculated about using cocoa powder so that the base of the oatmeal itself was chocolaty, instead of being studded with chocolate chips. I never bothered to follow up on this idea, or I would have seen that my trusted baked oatmeal recipe source, Budget Bytes, already had a chocolate banana version in its archives. I only spotted it recently, while posting about banana coconut baked oatmeal, and I immediately knew it was the next logical step in my breakfast journey.

It’s hardly shocking to reveal that this oatmeal is objectively delicious, but I was still surprised that I enjoyed it so much. I’ve never been one to crave chocolate cake for breakfast, even in my carefree youth, so it took a few bites to overcome the twin disconnects of (a) eating something that looked and smelled like a brownie at 8 a.m., and (b) eating something that looked and smelled like a brownie but was barely sweet. Once I recalibrated my senses, however, I loved how the deep flavor of the cocoa shone through (use a good-quality cocoa powder, because it’s going to be the main flavor here), and how I felt fully as satisfied and energized until lunchtime as I do from any other oatmeal. If you do actually hunger for dessert first thing in the morning, this may be a good way to trick yourself into thinking you’re indulging. For me, it’s another fun riff to add to my baked oatmeal rotation.

The original recipe suggested a number of possible add-ins, including coconut and peanut butter, but to make sure I got plenty of protein to carry me through the morning, I went with sliced almonds. I toasted them for added flavor, but they still got largely overshadowed by the blast of cocoa. I appreciated their crunch, however, so they’ll be making a return appearance.

3 large or 4 medium ripe bananas
2 large eggs
½ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
⅓ cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon baking powder
2 cups milk
2½ cups old-fashioned oats
½ cup sliced almonds, toasted

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. In a large bowl, mash enough bananas to make 1½ cups.
3. To the bowl of mashed bananas, add the eggs, cocoa powder (I like to sift this in to eliminate lumps), brown sugar, vanilla extract, salt, baking soda, and baking powder. Whisk together until smooth. Add the milk and whisk again. Make sure there are no clumps of cocoa powder. Stir the oats and almonds into the bowl.
4. Coat the inside of an 8-by-8-inch casserole dish with nonstick spray. Pour the oat mixture into the pan.
5. Place the oats in the oven and bake for about 50 minutes, or until firm. Cut into six pieces and serve warm, with milk.

Serves: 6
Time: 1 hour
Leftover potential: Great. Oatmeal will keep for a week in a covered container; reheat individual pieces in the microwave each morning.

BANANA COCONUT BAKED OATMEAL

I’ve tried many, many kinds of baked oatmeal, but only a few have been worth repeating. Texture is my main criteria: I’ve found that I don’t really enjoy anything that involves chunks of non-pureed fruit, which rules out a lot of options, and in my opinion the recipes from Budget Bytes are the best (a bit fluffier and more custardy). My favorites by far are pumpkin and peanut butter banana (funky monkey without the coconut and chocolate), each of which I make at least monthly, with occasional forays into plain, banana walnut, or funky monkey for variety. It hasn’t happened yet, but it would be a sad day if I were ever to get sick of my old standbys, so I was thrilled when this new variation popped up a few weeks ago and was interested to see that it used coconut milk for added flavor. Of course I had to try it out.

I swapped in cardamom for the nutmeg (because I think cardamom should be in just about everything) and doubled the vanilla, figuring I might capture the quality of the coconut cardamom rice and tapioca puddings I love. It tasted delicious, although the texture was different than my regular baked oatmeals, denser and more solid. This one has a few more oats and less liquid—13.5 ounces is only about 1.7 cups, whereas all my other recipes use 2 cups milk—and I might try supplementing with an extra splash of dairy milk next time, but I came to appreciate the chewiness, and just added a bit more milk when serving. All of the others in my repertoire also contain nuts, and I was slightly worried the reduced protein in this one wouldn’t fill me up sufficiently (there was also only one egg instead of two, which I’m guessing might be an attempt to offset the coconut milk’s richness), but it wasn’t a problem. I’m pretty sure this is going to be making regular appearances in my breakfast rotation.

1½ cups mashed ripe bananas (3 to 4 large)
1 large egg
¼ cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
½ teaspoon cardamom
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
⅓ cup unsweetened shredded coconut
13.5 ounces canned coconut milk
3 cups old-fashioned rolled oats

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Oil the inside of a 2-to-3-quart casserole dish. (I like to use coconut oil spray.)
2. In a large bowl, whisk together the mashed bananas, egg, brown sugar, vanilla, nutmeg, baking powder, salt, and shredded coconut until evenly combined. Add the coconut milk and whisk again until smooth. Add the rolled oats and stir until combined.
3. Pour the oat mixture into the prepared casserole dish and bake, uncovered, for 45 minutes.

Serves: 6
Time: 1 hour
Leftover potential: Great. Will keep in the refrigerator for up to a week; reheat individual portions in the microwave.

FUNKY MONKEY BAKED OATMEAL

I feel like I preface every banana-related post with a disclaimer that I don’t really like bananas, but…I do have 10 (now 11) banana recipes on this site, so perhaps I protest too much. I certainly don’t like them enough to be a particular fan of Chunky Monkey ice cream or the peanut-butter-and-banana combo and its various “fat Elvis” iterations. (I am, however, a fan of both actual monkeys and actual Elvis, so that’s something.) What I do like is peanut butter, and I had been wondering for a while, in the midst of my baked oatmeal mania, if a peanut butter version could work. And I know banana adds a nice tenderness to baked goods, and I love coconut, and I certainly won’t turn down chocolate—even if I don’t normally eat it for breakfast—so when I saw this recipe at Budget Bytes (my go-to source for oatmeal inspiration), I knew I had to at least give it a shot.

I usually avoid overly sweet foods in the morning—no donuts or coffee cake or cinnamon rolls for me—and this was definitely richer and more indulgent-seeming than my usual fare. But it’s not as sweet as I expected, in fact not actually that sweet at all, except that it’s a logical disconnect for me to be enjoying chocolate at 8 a.m. (The occasional chocolate chip studded into each bite doesn’t seem too weird, but when I got to the bottom of the bowl and essentially had chocolate milk, it did feel like I was getting away with something.) It is, of course, delicious, and there’s a reason these are all classic flavor pairings. As an occasional “special treat” breakfast, it will definitely have a place in my regular oatmeal rotation. (I find it’s an especially welcome balm for the soul during my extra-hormonal week of the month.) And unlike a pastry or sugary cereal, it keeps me full and energized until lunchtime.
The first time I made this I was slightly dismayed because I couldn’t really pick up much peanut butter flavor, so the second time I increased the quantity to ⅓ cup and that seemed perfect. Natural PB is best, but if you only have the sweetened stuff, just leave out the brown sugar. Same thing with the coconut—I only had the big unsweetened flakes on hand and didn’t feel like making a special trip to the Whole Foods bulk section for the unsweetened shredded, but Trader Joe’s has a shredded coconut that is way less sweet than the tooth-aching Baker’s kind, and that worked just fine; but if you do find yourself with the Baker’s, just cut out the brown sugar and all should be well.
I keep thinking it would be cool to use cocoa instead of chocolate chips to make the whole thing feel even less desserty, so that the oatmeal itself was chocolate-flavored instead of having pieces of chocolate in it, but I don’t know if I want to mess around with that when this is already so good.

P.S. November 2013: Does this just sound too decadent for your everyday breakfast? I recently tried this as just a PB-banana version and it was excellent. Follow the recipe below, but use a generous 1/3 cup peanut butter and omit the chocolate chips and coconut.
P.P.S. February 2015: If you want a subtler chocolate presence, I have discovered that mini-chips are the perfect solution, scattering the chocolate more evenly throughout the oatmeal instead of in big chunks. 

3-4 medium bananas
2 large eggs
2 tablespoons brown sugar
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon baking powder
¼-⅓ cup natural peanut butter (unsweetened; salted OK)
2 cups milk
¼ teaspoon salt
2½ cups old-fashioned rolled oats
⅓ cup semisweet chocolate chips
⅓ cup shredded coconut (unsweetened or lightly sweetened)

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
2. Mash the bananas with a fork until they make a smooth puree (or you can leave it a bit chunky if you prefer that). Start with just three bananas and add another if needed to make 1½ cups. (If you’re short a little banana, make up the difference by using the corresponding amount of extra milk.)
3. Add the mashed bananas to a large bowl. If your peanut butter is firm, warm it slightly in the microwave so that it is more fluid and can mix in more easily. Add the peanut butter, eggs, brown sugar, vanilla, baking powder, and salt to the bowl. Whisk these ingredients together until smooth. Add the milk and whisk again.
4. Add the dry oats, chocolate chips, and shredded coconut to the bowl. Stir everything together until evenly combined. Lightly coat the inside of an 8-by-8-inch casserole dish with nonstick spray (I like to use coconut oil spray for this). Pour the oat mixture into the casserole dish and bake for 45 minutes, or until browned and firm.

Serves: 6-8
Time: 1 hour
Leftover potential: Great. Keep in a covered dish, scoop out a serving each morning, and reheat it in the microwave. Break it up a little with a spoon and pour cold milk over the top.

BANANA BAKED OATMEAL

More baked oatmeal! I love it so. It’s incredibly comforting to have a warm, delicious breakfast ready to go on a chilly morning. My standard version is just dandy, but it turns out that fruit (or vegetable, in the case of pumpkin) puree adds tons of moisture and nutrients, as well as flavor. This version, amped up with walnuts, a bit of brown sugar, and cinnamon—which of course  I augmented with a little cardamom—in addition to the mashed banana, truly is reminiscent of banana bread. The recipe is from Budget Bytes, which has proven to be a veritable cornucopia of intriguing-sounding baked oatmeal options. The first time I set out to make it I ended up veering into this separate (but very similar) version, because I had some leftover blueberries in the fridge that were getting past their prime. It smelled wonderful while baking, but I didn’t particularly love the result. Granted, for most of my life I’ve been mildly grossed out by bananas and haven’t cared for blueberries in baked goods, but I thought those days were behind me. I still don’t eat whole bananas on their own, but I like them in other formats, including cake, cookies, pancakes, and pudding. And blueberry buttermilk cake is one of my very favorite summer desserts! Yet I didn’t enjoy the flavor or texture of the blueberry banana oatmeal; it was quite damp and overpoweringly banana-y, and the blueberries didn’t break down at all, and I’m sure it was my error or hangup and no fault of the recipe, but bleah.

Yet banana oatmeal still sounded potentially tasty to me, so I decided to give the non-blueberry recipe a try and just ease off on the banana slightly. The original recipe called for four medium bananas or 1½ cups mashed, so I bought three small ones, got about 1¼ cups of puree, and made up the liquid deficit by adding ¼ cup extra milk. I don’t know if using a tiny bit less banana really made such a difference, but something must have done the trick, because I enjoyed this oatmeal. It’s fluffy, not too sweet, properly banana-bread-esque without overwhelming the flavor of the oats, and keeps me full all morning. I love that I now have three different baked oatmeal variations I can rotate among, especially since I started my new job last month and definitely need to have convenient, nourishing breakfast treats on hand so I can fuel up for another intense day of learning what the heck I’m supposed to be doing! I bake up a big dish of oatmeal on the weekends and it keeps me happily fed all week long.

1 to 1½ cups mashed ripe bananas (about 3 to 4 medium)
⅓ cup brown sugar
2 large eggs
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
½ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
2 to 2½ cups milk (depending on how much banana you use; milk and banana together should total 3½ cups)
2½ cups old-fashioned rolled oats
¼ teaspoon cinnamon
⅛ teaspoon cardamom
½ cup chopped walnuts
Canola or coconut oil

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. In a large bowl, whisk the mashed bananas together with the brown sugar, eggs, salt, vanilla, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt. Whisk in the milk, then stir in the oats. Roughly chop the walnuts and stir them in as well.
3. Oil the inside of an 8-by-8 glass baking dish. Pour in the oat mixture. Cover with foil (optional) and bake in the preheated oven for 30 minutes. Remove the foil (if using) and bake for another 15 minutes, or until the center is solid and the edges are slightly golden brown.
4. Serve warm or cold, topped with milk, yogurt, fruit, or whatever else you like.

Serves: 6 to 8
Time: 1 hour
Leftover potential: Great; will keep, covered, in the refrigerator for a week; reheat individual portions in the microwave. Note that the oatmeal may turn slightly gray as the banana oxidizes, but it will still be safe to eat.

CHOCOLATE OR BANANA BISCOFF WHOOPIE PIES

I had big plans for all kinds of wild cooking experiments to perform while I was unemployed, but then I only ended up being out of work for two weeks. (Yay, but also, sigh.) Making ricotta and crafting my own flour tortillas will have to wait, but I did manage to get together with my (also unemployed) friend S to bake some whoopie pies. I’ve always been a huge fan of sandwich cookies (probably more so than I’m a fan of actual sandwiches), but having to make a cookie and a filling always seems like too much of a pain for me to try at home. With a second pair of hands and a free afternoon, however, it was the perfect kitchen adventure.

We settled on whoopie pies fairly quickly (it helped that I’d received a mini whoopie pie pan for Christmas and was itching to try it out), but when it came time to choose which kind to make, I instantly became overwhelmed by all the available options. S suggested this chocolate Biscoff recipe from Gimme Some Oven, and since I hadn’t gotten around to trying Biscoff yet, I figured why not kill two tasty birds with one stone? (For those who don’t know, in the food blog world, Biscoff is the new Nutella. It’s a Belgian spread made from ground cookies called speculoos, which are gently spiced buttery biscuits.)

To maximize the adventure, we also started toying with the idea of making a second variety of whoopie pie. I was taken with these banana caramel ones from Annie’s Eats, but making another type of cookie, another type of filling, and a caramel to go into the filling sounded too crazily ambitious an undertaking. Then I mused that banana cookies would probably taste pretty great with Biscoff filling, and a plan was hatched: Make a double recipe of the filling and then both types of cookies. That way, we could get a little variety but keep our process manageably streamlined.

Our decision was even more spot-on than we could have suspected, because that Biscoff cream cheese filling is seriously one of the most delicious things I’ve ever made. I can’t even explain it, because I’ve tasted Biscoff cookies and haven’t really been into them (they’re sort of a lighter gingersnap). I tasted a bit of the spread when we cracked the jar open and liked it better; it tasted vaguely like graham crackers. But mixed with cream cheese (which I normally don’t even enjoy that much), sugar, and a bit of vanilla, it became transcendent. Something about the tart cream cheese balanced out the sweet, nutty cookie perfectly. I could happily eat it straight—and I did, to clean out the bowl—but it was dynamite with the cookies. The chocolate cookies were the best overall, tender and not too sugary, but the flavor overshadowed the filling somewhat (after tasting one, we went back and added more filling to the rest, since we had some extra); it was in the banana version that the Biscoff flavor really shone. I’d make either kind again in a heartbeat. They weren’t even as difficult to put together as I’d expected, although ours definitely turned out a bit “rustic” in shape. Really, the only problem is that I can’t stop eating them! Not only is the flavor great, but the texture of the big, soft, fluffy cookies with a layer of frosting in the middle is also wonderful—like portable, handheld cake. I’ll reserve them for special treats, but I’ll certainly make them again…even though my next bout of unemployment will hopefully be far in the future.

Chocolate Biscoff Whoopie Pies

Cookies:
1⅔ cups all-purpose flour
⅔ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1½ teaspoons baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
½ cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup packed dark brown sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup milk

Filling:
8 ounces cream cheese, softened
½ cup Biscoff spread (aka speculoos cookie butter)
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup powdered sugar

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Line baking sheets with parchment paper or silicon mats.
   
2. In a medium bowl, sift together, flour, cocoa, baking soda, and salt.
3. In a large bowl, beat butter and sugar with a mixer on low until just combined. Increase speed to medium and beat for about 2 minutes. Add egg and vanilla and beat for two more minutes. Add half of the flour mixture and half of the milk and beat on low until incorporated. Repeat with remaining flour and milk and beat until combined.
4. Drop batter on baking sheet in tablespoon-sized clumps, each about two inches apart. Bake for 10 minutes, or until cookies spring back when pressed gently. Remove from oven and cool for about five minutes before transferring them to a rack to cool completely.
5. Meanwhile, make the filling: Using an electric mixer, cream together cream cheese and Biscoff spread on medium speed until combined. Add vanilla and powdered sugar, and mix on low speed until sugar is incorporated. Stop mixer, and use a spatula to scrape the sides of the bowl. Increase speed to medium and mix for 1 more minute until well combined.
6. Once cookies are cooled, match them into pairs by size/shape. Spoon or pipe the filling onto the flat side of one cookie in the pair, and then top with the other cookie to make a whoopie pie. Repeat with remaining filling and cookies.

Yields: 24-36 whoopie pies
Time:  1½ hours
Leftover potential: Good. I didn't try freezing them because I thought they would get too hard and I knew we wouldn't need to store them for very long because they were getting eaten so quickly, but they were a bit sticky at room temperature, so I kept them in the fridge, which worked well.

Variation: Banana Biscoff Whoopie Pies

2 cups all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
½ cup mashed banana (about 1–2 bananas)
½ cup sour cream
½ cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
½ cup granulated sugar
½ cup light brown sugar
1 large egg
½ tsp. vanilla extract
1 batch Biscoff filling (see above)

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Line baking sheets with silicone baking mats or parchment paper.
2. In a medium bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt; whisk to blend, and set aside.
3. In a small bowl, combine the mashed banana and sour cream.
4. In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat the butter and sugars on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Blend in the egg and vanilla. With the mixer on low speed, add in the dry ingredients in three additions alternating with the banana mixture, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients. Mix each addition just until incorporated.
5. Drop batter onto prepared baking sheets in tablespoon-sized clumps, spacing a couple of inches apart. Bake until the cookies are just set and the bottom edges are starting to brown, about 10 to 12 minutes. Let cool on the baking sheets for 5 to 10 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
6. Once the cookies are completely cooled, match them up in pairs by size. Spoon or pipe filling onto the flat side of one cookie of each pair, and sandwich the cookies together, pushing the filling to the edges. Store in an airtight container.

BANANA PUDDING

After getting hooked on homemade pudding, I started looking for new pudding recipes. I’d already bookmarked the usual suspects, vanilla and chocolate—which make up the vast majority of available recipes—as well as my childhood faves, butterscotch and pistachio, but it was surprisingly hard to find other options. In trying to narrow my search, I was brainstorming my way through the Jell-O instant pudding varieties and remembered banana pudding. Literal banana-flavored pudding, not the Southern dessert made with vanilla pudding, sliced bananas, whipped cream, and Nilla Wafers. I do remember my (most definitely not Southern) mom making this occasionally when I was a kid, and although I liked the flavors together, I was never really a fan of all that lumpy stuff interrupting the nice, smooth texture of my pudding. I preferred the fake-banana flavor of the instant variety, so I thought it would be fun to try to replicate that with real banana. Unfortunately, 99 percent of the “banana pudding” recipes on the Internet are for the Southern-style version, and of the remaining 1% that are actually banana flavored, most seem to call for banana extract rather than an actual banana. After a dogged search, however, I finally found what I was looking for—at least, sort of—at Homesick Texan. It was still a version of the Southern dessert, but lo and behold, there was a pureed banana in the pudding itself!

I ended up improvising to an uncharacteristic degree with this one. I tinkered with the procedure to make it more similar to the other pudding recipes I’ve made (adding the egg midway through the cooking time rather than at the end), but my main changes were to the banana cooking method; since my oven was broken, I couldn’t roast the banana as the recipe asked me to. My original plan had been to use a ripe frozen banana instead (I always have some in reserve for banana pancakes), because when defrosted again they become almost totally liquefied. But then I happened to acquire some non-frozen ripe bananas from work that week, and I couldn’t resist gilding the lily. I’d had great success with adding rum to my vanilla pudding, so what about taking a cue from bananas Foster and putting rum in my banana pudding too? And if I was doing that, I should really go whole hog and sauté my banana in butter and brown sugar, right? I don’t even like bananas all that much, but I can’t resist a caramelized banana. I also, afraid there wouldn’t be enough banana flavor, used two small bananas instead of one large one.

For the most part, I think my plan worked pretty well, but I’d like to experiment a bit more in the future. I went easy on the brown sugar (just 1 tablespoon, I think) in sautéing the banana, fearing the finished pudding would be too sweet, but I didn’t end up getting much caramel flavor and almost wished for more sweetness at the end. The caramelizing also created some textural challenges; as the pureed banana mixture cooled while I heated the milk, the sugar resolidified and I had to whisk it like the dickens to break up the chunks after adding it to the pot, so either this isn’t the best method, I need to sauté the banana simultaneously while heating up the milk so it doesn’t get a chance to cool, or I need to learn to live with some lumps in my banana pudding. The latter may well be the case; I always think of bananas as being smooth and soft, but they have some fibrousness to them and never break down entirely in baked goods, so it’s probably unrealistic to expect them to do so here. I suspect the reason that I didn’t find many pudding recipes using real banana is that it’s nearly impossible to get a totally smooth end product resembling the creamy, pillowy artificially flavored Jell-O version. I even strained mine to be sure and still ended up with small grainy flecks. But if I can live with pistachio pieces in my pistachio pudding, why not banana pieces in my banana pudding? Or did I simply use a bit too much banana?

Texture issues aside, the flavor was quite good. I thought it tasted a smidge flat (it needed more brown sugar, a pinch of salt, or both), but A, who was absent for the initial tasting session and ate his portion after I went to bed, loved it so much that he wrote a note to me on the bathroom mirror singing its praises, so it’s possible my expectations were just too high. Even though it wasn’t my favorite of the puddings I’ve made so far, it was certainly worth making again. I’d like to try some variations to see if I can improve it, though—once with the frozen-and-defrosted banana to see if that makes it smoother, once (if my oven is ever repaired) with roasted banana as written, and once again with the caramelized banana but more brown sugar. The best thing about pudding is that it always seems to taste good even if it’s too thick or too thin or too lumpy, so I’m happy to devour any number of “failed” batches in the name of science. I’ll keep you posted!

1 large ripe banana or 2 small ripe bananas
1–2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons brown sugar (optional)
2 cups milk (1% worked just fine for me)
⅓ cup white sugar
3 tablespoons cornstarch
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon rum (optional)

1. Place the unpeeled banana(s) on a parchment-paper lined sheet and roast in the oven at 400 degrees for 15 minutes or until skin blackens; then peel banana and lightly mash with a fork. Alternatively, peel and slice the banana(s) and sauté in 1 tablespoon butter over medium heat with the 2 tablespoons brown sugar, then puree with a food processor, blender, or immersion blender until smooth.

2. Place the milk, white sugar, and cornstarch in a saucepan, mix well with a whisk, and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until just before it boils. Add the mashed banana and whisk until as smooth as possible.

3. Beat the egg in a separate dish. Very gradually add 1 cup of hot pudding, stirring constantly, and then add egg mixture back to the pot of pudding on the stove.

4. Bring pudding to a boil, stirring constantly, and boil 1 minute or until thickened.

5. Remove pudding from heat and mix in the vanilla, 1 tablespoon butter (I skipped this here since I’d already sautéed the banana in butter, but you could do both for a richer pudding), and rum (if using).

6. Press pudding through a fine-mesh strainer to remove any stringy banana pieces.

7. Divide pudding among four ramekins or airtight containers, cover surface of pudding with plastic wrap if you don’t like pudding skin, and chill.

Serves: 4
Time: 1 hour
Leftover potential: Will keep in the fridge for a few days.

BANANA OAT BRAN PANCAKES

I have found The One—or perhaps I should say the Four or Five, because that is how many of these spectacular pancakes I can put away in one sitting, and let me tell you, there have been several sittings. But what I mean is the One True Pancake Recipe, which, not being a very big pancake fan, I had not even really suspected existed for me. Although I’d dutifully dabbled in a couple of earlier candidates, it was more because I like the cozy, homespun idea of making pancakes on a lazy Sunday morning than because I like the pancakes themselves. And not being a very big banana fan either, I’m surprised to find myself raving about a second banana-based recipe in the space of a month, but here we are.

I stumbled across this recipe at In Praise of Leftovers while searching for ways to use up the enormous bag of oat bran left over from making multigrain rolls. Normally I balk slightly at buying buttermilk, but I’m slowly being won over by the fact that everything I make with it turns out extra-delicious, and besides, I already had some in the fridge left over from the aforementioned banana cake. All the other ingredients were pantry staples, and the process was simplicity itself (no egg separating, mixer, or blender required). The resulting pancakes are ultra-moist and fluffy, only delicately banana-flavored, and not too sweet. The oat bran imparts a savory, nutty quality and a barely-detectable crunch. I like that the texture is much more like a “normal” (tender, pillowy) pancake than some of the whole-grain varieties I’ve tried, but you’re still getting some fiber from the bran plus some fruity goodness from the banana. You can go ahead and put syrup on them if that’s your thing, but I must protest that these are even more fan-effing-tastic with strawberry or blueberry jam instead (jamcakes!). I also happened to have some blueberries on hand, so I dropped them into a few of the pancakes I was making for A and that addition was quite well received. I imagine that chocolate chips (inside) or Nutella (outside) would not be amiss either, if you’re the type who can stomach dessert-like treats for breakfast. But me, I could just eat them plain. I’ve made them twice in two weeks already and, with ripe bananas in the freezer and buttermilk and plenty of jam in the fridge, I know it won’t be long before I do it again. Consider all other pancake recipes officially retired.

POSTSCRIPT, JANUARY 2012: I just realized I've completely forgotten to document one important improvement I habitually make to this recipe: adding vanilla extract to the batter. Because everything is better with vanilla! I've edited the recipe below to reflect this change.

1 cup all-purpose flour
½ cup oat bran
1 pinch salt
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon baking soda
2 eggs
1½ cups buttermilk
½ to 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 very ripe banana, mashed

1. Heat up a griddle over medium heat.

2. Combine dry ingredients in a large bowl.

3. Whisk eggs, buttermilk, and vanilla together in a medium bowl. Add buttermilk mixture and mashed banana to dry ingredients, stirring just until blended.

4. Drop ¼ cupfuls of batter onto hot griddle (I like to add a little bit of butter to the cooking surface and let it melt first). Flip the pancakes after bubbles have formed, and cook until browned.

Serves: 3–4
Time: 30 minutes
Leftover potential: Pancakes can be frozen between sheets of waxed paper in an airtight container and reheated on a warm griddle (I microwave them just enough to defrost the interior, then cook on a griddle until the outside is warm and crisps up slightly).

BANANA CARDAMOM CAKE

Banana makes baked goods so tasty and moist, but I never quite know what I’m supposed to do with its usual manifestation, banana bread. It seems too sweet for a snack or a meal component, but not, well, desserty enough for dessert. Banana cake, though, is something I can get on board with, especially when it takes just 10 minutes to stir together. This beautifully simple recipe from Hogwash results in something magical: not overly sweet (not much sweeter than some banana breads, really) but with the springy, tender crumb structure of cake, which makes it undeniably dessert. I have a fancy banana cake I bake for A’s birthday, with rum and brown sugar and chocolate ganache, but this is an everyday cake, lightened by buttermilk and mellowed by cardamom (I’ll admit that as a cardamom obsessive I expected more of an overtly cardamom taste, but it plays more of a supporting role here and that’s OK—either that or my cardamom is getting old and weak), needing no frosting or other accompaniment (although you could gussy it up with whipped cream if you wanted to). And did I mention it’s incredibly, incredibly easy to make? You could whip this up on the spur of the moment if you had unexpected company, or, like me, you could just throw it together on a Tuesday night when the craving for cake hits you. I have a feeling that craving will now be striking fairly often, so I’d better stock up on ripe bananas.

Vegetable oil spray
1¾ cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon ground cardamom
¼ teaspoon salt
2 very ripe bananas, well mashed
1 cup sugar
1 cup buttermilk
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
½ cup vegetable oil

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Spray a 9-inch cake pan with the vegetable oil spray and set aside.

2. Whisk the flour, baking powder, cardamom, and salt together into a mixing bowl and set aside.

3. Mash the bananas in the bottom of another mixing bowl. Add the sugar, buttermilk, eggs, and vanilla, and whisk until well blended. Add the dry ingredients and the oil, and gently fold the batter together with a spatula, just until no dry spots remain.

4. Pour the batter into the pan and bake the cake on the middle rack for 35 to 40 minutes, or until lightly browned at the edges and just barely beginning to crack in the center.

5. When the cake is done, let it cool for about 10 minutes. Run a small knife around the edge. Using oven mitts, place a cooling rack on top of the cake pan and flip the cake and the rack together. Remove the cake pan, so the cake is upside-down on the rack. Place a serving plate upside-down on the bottom of the cake, and flip the plate and the rack together, so the cake is now right side-up on the serving plate.

Serves: 8
Time: 1 hour
Leftover potential: Good. We stored ours in the fridge for about three days and it was good even when eaten cold.

ROASTED BANANA ICE CREAM

I’m not a big fan of raw bananas (in fact, overly ripe ones kind of gross me out), but they can be really good in cooked desserts—particularly when any sort of caramelization is involved. So when I opened up The Perfect Scoop for the first time and saw this recipe, I immediately knew it had to be one the first I tried. Bananas cooked with brown sugar and butter? Yes please! The smell of them baking was amazing, and if they hadn’t been as hot as molten lava when I pulled them out of the oven, I would have been powerless to resist cramming them into my mouth right then and there instead of throwing them into the blender with the rest of the ingredients. I’m not sure the resulting ice cream is quite as delectable to me as those caramelized bananas seemed, but it’s unique and plenty delicious, with a concentrated banana flavor that seems almost more banana-y than real bananas. A little of it goes a long way for me; I nearly couldn’t finish the two-scoop bowl pictured above and have found that the ice cream actually tastes best when you sneak just a spoonful or two straight from the container. It lasts all week that way, too!

Despite its intense flavor, this ice cream is actually relatively light, made with whole milk instead of eggs and cream (or even half-and-half, like the first two ice creams I tried). But the bananas lend it a deceptive creaminess and heft, as the peanut butter did for my first ice cream (whereas my second ice cream, the lemon one, turned out fluffier and grainier). It doesn’t matter much to me one way or the other—taste is more important to me than texture in this context, and I’m still just so amazed that I can create anything resembling ice cream in my own kitchen that I’m not concerned with attaining that “real” ultra-creamy ice-cream texture; if I were, I’d switch to custard-based recipes—but it’s interesting to see how different ingredients affect the outcome. Kitchen chemistry!

Like the others I’ve tried, this non-custard-based recipe is ridiculously easy to make, especially considering all the deliciousness it yields—just bake, blend, churn, freeze, and eat. Better still, it cost next to nothing to make: I rescued the ripe bananas from being consigned to the trash in my office kitchen on Friday (the company provides us with fresh fruit and there are always leftovers at the end of the week), the whole milk was 99 cents at Trader Joe’s, and I already had the sugars and a lemon. With its rich flavor and use of an always-available fruit, this will make an especially nice wintertime ice cream (perhaps with a tablespoon of rum added to the mix?). I’d also be interested to try it with chocolate chips or chocolate sauce to cut/complement the banananess.

I now have my very own copy of A Perfect Scoop in my hot little hands (it's on sale on Amazon, ahem), so expect my ice cream experiments to continue until the weather gets too hot for our freezer to keep ice cream frozen!

3 medium-sized ripe bananas, peeled
⅓ cup packed light brown sugar (I used dark, because that’s what I had)
1 tablespooon butter, salted or unsalted, cut into small pieces
1½ cups whole milk
2 tablespoons granualted sugar
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
1½ teaspoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
¼ teaspoon coarse salt

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

2. Slice the bananas into ½-inch-thick pieces and toss them with the brown sugar and butter in a 2-quart baking dish. Bake for 40 minutes, stirring just once halfway through, until bananas are browned and cooked through.

3. Scrape all the contents of the baking dish (the bananas and the thick syrup) into a blender or food processor. Add the milk, granulated sugar, vanilla, lemon juice, and salt and puree until smooth (be sure you close the lid tightly first!).

4. Chill the mixture thoroughly in the refrigerator, then freeze it in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions. (If the mixture has thickened during chilling, just give it a little stir to thin it back out before pouring it into the ice cream maker.)

Yield: About 1 quart (6–8 servings)
Time: 50 minutes, plus chilling and processing time
Leftover potential: Good

BANANA CAKE WITH CHOCOLATE GANACHE (A'S BIRTHDAY CAKE)

From-scratch cakes aren’t hard to make, but I only seem to do it about once per year: for A’s birthday. I’m just not much of a cake fan, particularly when there are cookies and candy around. Every now and then, however, cake really hits the spot—and this one was so good, it made me want to bake cakes all the time.

I made the banana cake, lifted from this recipe at The Smitten Kitchen, for A’s last birthday and mentioned it in passing here, but wasn’t quite satisfied enough to write a full post. That’s because I mucked up the frosting—the original recipe was a caramel-walnut-banana cake, but the Smitten Kitchen verdict was that the banana cake was the best part, and besides, A wanted chocolate banana cake. So I picked a new-to-me recipe for fudge frosting off the Web and it totally failed, leaving me no choice but to whip up an emergency batch of standard chocolate frosting from the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook. Nothing wrong with that, but when I tasted the cake it became clear that it was crying out for a more bitter counterpoint, like a dark chocolate ganache. I spent the ensuing year secretly (and, occasionally, not-so-secretly) hoping that A would pick banana cake for his birthday again so I’d have an excuse to take another shot at this cake. And he did.

I hadn’t made ganache before, but I’d heard it was easy, and it certainly lived up to that reputation. In the comments on the cake post, Deb recommended this ganache recipe as a nice pairing for the banana cake, so I used that as a starting point. I omitted the coffee, because we are not coffee people and I didn’t have any around or want to buy any, and I increased the cream just slightly. Then, although Deb said it hadn’t worked for her with this particular ganache, I used the lazy heat-cream-and-pour-over-chocolate method (well described in this Orangette post about a very similar cake) because the words “double boiler” in a recipe are always a huge turnoff for me. I slacked even more by heating my cream up in the microwave rather than on the stove. When it looked like my chocolate wasn’t melting into the cream enough, I even popped the whole bowl of cream and chocolate into the microwave for 10 seconds. Despite all these shortcuts, the ganache came together just fine—easy to spread over the cake, just the right amount to cover, firmed up admirably to a texture somewhere between fudge and frosting (so prettily glossy I had trouble photographing it!), and tasted amazing (use the best-quality chocolate you can, of course; I used the last of my fancy Callebaut chocolate chips from last year’s birthday gift card to Surfas).

In short: I will strenuously urge myself not to wait an entire year before making this cake again. Sure, it’s a great way to celebrate a special occasion, but it’s also simple enough for everyday eating. The cake itself is a cinch to make and well worth buying cake flour and a small bottle of rum for. It would probably be just dandy on its own, dusted with powdered sugar, garnished with strawberries, dolloped with whipped cream, or maybe with chocolate chips mixed into the batter—but why not make ganache when ganache is so ridiculously easy to make?


1¾ cups cake flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
¾ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
½ cup sugar
½ cup (packed) golden brown sugar (I used dark; no big deal)
2 large eggs
1 cup mashed very ripe bananas (2 to 3 large)
3 tablespoons sour cream
1 tablespoon dark rum
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 ounces semisweet chocolate chips or finely chopped chocolate
⅓ cup heavy cream

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Sift flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt into a medium bowl.

3. Using an electric mixer, beat butter and both sugars in a large bowl until blended. Beat in eggs one at a time, then mashed bananas, sour cream, rum, and vanilla. Beat in dry ingredients in two additions just until combined. Spoon batter into a buttered 9-inch cake pan.

4. Bake cake until tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 40 minutes. Place pan on a cooling rack and let sit for 15 minutes. Invert cake out of pan onto rack and cool completely.

5. Place chocolate in a medium mixing bowl. Either on the stovetop or in the microwave, heat cream until it is steaming and about to boil. Pour cream over chocolate and whisk until most of the chocolate is melted; then cover and let stand for 5 minutes. Stir or whisk gently until the mixture is completely smooth. Drizzle or spread over cake and let cool.

Yield: One 9-inch cake
Time: About 2 hours (including cooling time)
Leftover potential: High. I keep leftover cake in the fridge and eat it cold, washed down with a glass of milk. A even had some for breakfast.

COCONUT BANANA MUFFINS

Lately, at my office, we are awash in overripe bananas. The company provides fresh fruit for us throughout the week, but I think someone has been buying too many bananas, because every Friday, there are dozens of speckled brown ones left over, and everyone starts trying to persuade everyone else to take some home, make banana bread over the weekend, and bring it in on Monday morning (there aren’t too many cooks in my department, but a lot of enthusiastic eaters). I’ve never been a huge fan of bananas or banana bread, but I also can’t resist the siren song of free, perfectly good fruit in danger of going to waste. If my freezer wasn’t already insanely full, I’d take every last one of those poor orphaned bananas and save them for a rainy day. As it is, when last Friday rolled around and no one seemed to be stepping up to the banana-bread-making plate, I figured I’d better take a shot at it.

I got it into my head that what I really wanted was coconut banana bread, and I found this recipe at Baking Bites that seemed to fit the bill. Actually, I wanted coconut banana muffins, because I like muffins so much better than loaves of bread—they’re cute, they’re perfectly portioned and portable, and they stay fresh longer. Usually I try to follow a recipe exactly on the first try, particularly when I’m planning to feed it to other people, but I knew that quick-bread recipes usually translate pretty well to making muffins, as long as you decrease the baking time. I took an even bigger risk by deciding I didn’t want to fool with buying a can of coconut milk and then only using a little bit of it. The original blog post mentioned you could use plain milk, but the flavor would be less coconutty. Then I had a brainwave—I have coconut extract in the cupboard, so why not add a little of that to amp the flavor back up?

I’m relieved to say that my experimentation worked perfectly and the muffins were awesome. I made some plain ones, too, from the Baking Bites basic banana bread recipe, because I know there are weirdos who don’t like coconut, and they were certainly good, but the coconut ones were the clear favorite—the container I’d brought was cleaned out by the end of the day. (Luckily, I’d hoarded a few at home in the freezer for A and me.) The flavors were perfect together, and the coconut ensured an extra- tender texture. I will admit the muffins were on the verge of being too sweet for me—if I were to make these regularly (and I’ll hazard a guess that they will indeed replace the tasty-enough-but-slightly-fussy banana-nut muffins as my go-to banana-bread recipe), I would experiment with either reducing the sugar slightly or using unsweetened coconut (although the unsweetened coconut I’ve seen is always dry—would that detract from the moistness of the muffins?). Still, that’s a mild complaint; in all other respects, these are a slam dunk.

2½ cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 cup mashed banana (2 medium-large bananas)
½ cup coconut milk (or ½ cup milk and ¼ teaspoon coconut extract)
¼ cup butter, melted
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup shredded coconut

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and lightly grease two muffin tins or line them with cupcake wrappers.

2. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon.

3. In a large bowl, whisk together sugar and eggs until well combined, then whisk in the mashed banana, coconut milk (or plain milk and coconut extract), butter, and vanilla.

4. Pour dry ingredients into wet ingredients and stir until just combined, making sure no streaks of flour remain. Stir in shredded coconut.

5. Pour batter into muffin cups, filling them about two-thirds full. Bake for about 30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean (or with only a few moist crumbs attached). Remove muffins from tins and cool on wire racks.

Yield: About 16
Time: 45 minutes
Leftover potential: High. Stored in the freezer, these will keep for weeks.

BANANA-WALNUT CHOCOLATE CHUNK COOKIES

I’m trying not to post any more recipes without photos, but I dropped the ball on this one. Initially, I was too disappointed with the way the cookies turned out to take loving macro-lens pictures of them; the photo on the Martha Stewart site had led me to expect big, fat, cakey cookies, whereas mine spread thin and browned a lot. Then I tasted one, and from that point on I was too busy eating them to take pictures; between hormonal me, banana-loving A, and a few of our grateful friends, we made short work of them in a matter of days. Despite the less-than-perfect appearance of my cookies (which, until I’ve tried this recipe a few more times, I’ll chalk up to my own inept execution), this is a fabulous recipe that you need to know about immediately, photo or no photo. Postscript, August 2010: I've made this recipe many more times and the result remains rather homely, but reliably delicious; I'm finally adding a photo.

There are so many genius things about this recipe: it combines the flavor and moistness of banana bread with the awesomeness that is the classic chocolate chip cookie, and of course banana and chocolate pair naturally together. The flavor of the banana isn’t pronounced, but the tenderness it adds to the cookie is unmistakable. These aren’t too sweet, and the oatmeal (which I am such a sucker for in baked goods), nuts, wheat flour, and banana lend a wholesome aspect. The coarse salt (don’t substitute table salt!) adds little zings of savoriness. While you can use chocolate chips instead of chopping up a block of chocolate, the irregularly sized chocolate chunks add interest and incorporate the chocolate more fully through the dough.

I’m not even a banana fan and I loved these cookies. (To demonstrate how rarely I buy bananas: the one I used for this recipe was rescued from the depths of my freezer, and when I thought about it, I realized it was left over from when I made banana cake for A’s birthday in April!) A, who adores the banana/chocolate combo, was wild for them and would like to insist that I make them again, right now, please.

1 cup all-purpose flour
½ cup whole-wheat flour
1 teaspoon coarse salt
½ teaspoon baking soda
¾ cup (1½ sticks) unsalted butter, softened
½ cup granulated sugar
½ cup packed light-brown sugar
1 large egg
1½ teaspoons pure vanilla extract
½ cup mashed ripe banana (about 1 large)
1 cup old-fashioned rolled oats
8 ounces semisweet chocolate, coarsely chopped into ¼-inch chunks
½ cup coarsely chopped walnuts (about 2 ounces), toasted

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

2. Whisk together flours, salt, and baking soda in a medium bowl; set aside.

3. Place butter and sugars into a large bowl (or the bowl of an electric stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment) and mix on medium speed until pale and fluffy. Add egg and vanilla and mix on low speed until combined. Mix in banana, then gradually add flour mixture and mix until combined. Stir in oats, chocolate chunks, and walnuts by hand.

4. Using a 1½-inch ice cream scoop (or a heaping tablespoon), drop dough onto baking sheets lined with parchment paper, spacing about 2 inches apart. Bake cookies, rotating sheets halfway through, until golden brown and just set, 12 to 13 minutes. Let cool on sheets 5 minutes, then transfer cookies to wire racks and let cool completely.

Yield: About 3 dozen
Time: Anywhere from 30 minutes to 1 hour, depending on how many cookie sheets you can fit into your oven at once
Leftover potential: High—duh, they’re cookies. Martha notes that the cookies can be stored in airtight containers for up to 2 days; I will add that they will keep for weeks in the freezer and taste just as great straight from the freezer as they do defrosted. At room temperature you get the nice, soft texture, but I found the banana flavor to be more prevalent in the frozen cookie.

BANANA-NUT MUFFINS

I had 4 ounces of leftover cream cheese sitting in my refrigerator (after making Tortellini With Mushroom-Cheese Sauce a couple of weeks ago), and I needed something to go with the curried coconut vegetable soup I was planning to make for dinner, so on Sunday afternoon I figured I’d whip up a half-recipe of these muffins.

I got the recipe from P (along with a delicious sample of the finished product) a few months ago; she got it, I think, from AllRecipes.com. The first time I made it, the muffins tasted OK, but were flat and ugly and misshapen. This time, they were high and fluffy and golden and perfect. I don’t know what made the difference, but they turned out well enough now for me to recommend the recipe. Nothing fancy here, flavor-wise, just banana, pecans, and cinnamon (the quantity of cinnamon perpetually surprises me—a tablespoon seems like an awful lot—but it tastes good). The only novelty is that the cinnamon, nuts, and brown sugar are placed in a thin layer in the middle of the banana muffin, which is kind of visually cool, reminiscent of geologic formations. But the point is: yum.

Postscript, December 2009: I never made these again. I rarely make banana muffins anyway, and for those rare times when I do, I think I like these better.

½ cup unsalted butter
8 ounces cream cheese, softened
1¼ cup white sugar
2 eggs
1 cup mashed bananas (about 2)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2¼ cups all-purpose flour
1½ teaspoons baking powder
1½ teaspoons baking soda
¾ cup chopped pecans
2 tablespoons brown sugar
2 tablespoons ground cinnamon

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly butter 2 muffin tins.

2. In a small bowl, mix together chopped pecans, brown sugar, and cinnamon.

3. Cream butter and cream cheese together. Gradually add white sugar and continue beating until light and fluffy. Add one egg at a time, beating well after each addition. Stir in mashed bananas and vanilla. Add flour, baking soda, and baking powder. Mix until batter is just moist.

4. Fill muffin cups just one-third full. Sprinkle pecan mixture over batter and top with remaining batter.

5. Bake until tops of muffins are just golden and an inserted knife comes out clean, about 10–15 minutes.

Yield: 2 dozen
Time: 30 minutes