Not Yo' Mama's Banana Pudding

On Friday, I had some friends over at lunchtime to listen to music played on vinyl records.  Every so often, we have these parties at my house, they bring the pizza, and I provide the beverages and the music.

My dad was a radio personality (disk jockey) from the 1950’s through the 70’s and he would bring home records that were old or not the format that the station played.  My sister and I reaped great rewards when our dad worked at a country music station in the 70’s, because he would bring home all the rock music for us.

When our dad passed away, my sister and I went through boxes containing thousands of records and kept ones that sounded interesting or that we had played in our youth and we sold the rest.  For curiosity sake, I saved some records sung by interesting artists like: John Wayne, Marylyn Monroe, and Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen.  There are also some interesting titles like the Al Smith Hit: I Picked a Booger when I Picked You (it must be a country song).

My wife and I also have about fifty old LP (Long Play vinyl record albums for readers under 30 years of age) that we collected in our youth.  Our group’s lunch parties consist of eating pizza, listening to music and chatting.

I decided for last Friday’s gathering to make a dessert to share.  About two years ago, I made a Paula Deen dessert: Not Yo’ Mama’s Banana Pudding, after seeing it demonstrated on the FoodNetwork on TV.  I hunted through my saved recipes and could not find the recipe printout, so I found the recipe on the FoodNetwork.com site.  I have included the direct link to the recipe at the bottom of this post so you don’t have to watch the video to get the recipe.

I knew that I would be making this dessert one day, so I already had the two packages of Pepperidge Farm Chessmen cookies in our pantry.  On a recent trip to the store, I purchased the cream cheese, pudding mix and a very large container of Cool Whip.

Friday morning I got out our 9x13 inch glass-baking pan and lined the bottom with the Chessmen cookies.  The cookies just covered the bottom of the pan without having to cut any to fit.  Next, I sliced seven bananas into the pan covering the cookies on the bottom.  I didn’t worry about getting an even banana/cookie covering, but just loosely spread out the bananas over the cookies.

I used the paddle attachment of our Kitchen Aid stand mixer to combine the package of cream cheese and can of condensed milk until creamy.  In a medium sized metal bowl I mixed added the pudding mix and two cups of milk.  The directions say to use a hand mixer on the pudding mix, so I got out our mixing wand with a whisk attachment and started mixing.  I quickly discovered that because the sides of the bowl were too short, I was throwing pudding mix all over the kitchen.  I switched to an old fashion hand whisk and had the pudding mixed in about two minutes.

I used the whisk to fold the cream cheese/condensed milk mixture into the pudding (not the same order as the recipe), then I added about 2 /3 of the container of whipped topping because I had purchased a 16 ounce container and the recipe calls for 12 ounces.  I folded all the ingredients together being careful not to over mix the filling.

I spread the filling over the bananas in the pan and then covered the top with more Chessmen cookies.  Because the pan has sloping sides, I had to break some of the cookies in half for one end to cover the filling.  I covered the pudding with plastic wrap and placed it in the refrigerator until I was ready to serve it.

Our group enjoyed our time of eating and chatting.  Once we had consumed the pizza, I brought out the banana pudding.  One person asked me if my wife made the dessert for us.  “No, I made it!”  I replied.  I found that to keep the pieces served from being mangled, you need to cut around each cookie for a serving.  This is because the cookies on the top and bottom don’t directly line up.  We all enjoyed a nice cool piece of banana pudding.

This cool and creamy dessert would be great on a warm summer afternoon.  Even though the filling is made with vanilla pudding, the overall taste when eating the dessert is of banana.  My wife and I enjoyed a piece of this dessert after our dinner that night and I took several squares to some of our neighbors to enjoy – like one of my 45 records by John Ono Lennon: Instant Karma.

Find the recipe here: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/paula-deen/not-yo-mamas-banana-pudding-recipe/index.html

Adventures In Food: Author: Kerry Howell

Best Carrot Cake Ever

My wife recently asked about making a carrot cake.  I was up to the challenge and volunteered to make it.  I looked in my Alton Brown book: I’m Just Here for More Food – Baking, and found a promising recipe, but it did not have raisins or walnuts so we ruled that one out.  My wife checked through our recipe files and found several carrot cake recipes, but not the one that she used to make.  That sent me to the internet to find the best recipe I could.

On the Allrecipes.com site, I found a recipe for the “Best Carrot Cake Ever”.  That is quite the name and I was interested to see if the final product could live up to it.  The recipe didn’t include any information on frosting so I went back to my Alton Brown baking book and found his recipe for Better Cream Cheese Frosting on page 130.  I knew that I would be making some cream cheese frosting, so on my last visit to the store I purchased two packages of cream cheese.

I started by washing, peeling and grating about ten carrots to make six grated cups.  I started to grate with our box grater, but quickly switched to the food processor with the grater plate.  I placed the six cups of grated carrots in a medium bowl, added the cup of brown sugar and one cup of raisins, and stirred them together.  I covered the carrot mixture and per the recipe left it to sit for an hour.

While planning to make the carrot cake, I read in the Alton Brown book that carrot cake is actually a muffin, and to use the muffin method when mixing the ingredients.  The muffin method consists of sifting all the dry ingredients together, mixing all the wet ingredients together, and then combining the dry and wet together, but leaving the mixture lumpy.

I was not too excited about sifting the flour, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon together, then I read in Alton’s book, that he uses his food processor to mix the dry ingredients.  I already had the food processor out, so I washed the bowl and used the blade to mix everything together.  It took about three minutes and I had to scrape the inside of the bowl once to get some of the flour off the wall so it would integrate.  When I finished, I had a very well mixed set of dry ingredients that I transferred to a large mixing bowl.

With the dry ingredients mixed, I started on the wet ingredients.  I decided to use the food processor for this step.  Into the food processor bowl, I added the eggs, white sugar, vegetable oil, and vanilla extract and mixed it for about two minutes.  What a great job the food processor did on all the ingredients.  I added the sugar as part of the wet ingredients per Alton’s book that the sugar dissolves and easily integrates into the wet portion.

Using a large spatula, I stirred the wet portion into the dry.  I stopped just before everything was well mixed and added the crushed pineapple, walnuts, and the carrot mixture.  I stirred just enough to combine the ingredients and stopped mixing.

I had already prepared two ten inch aluminum cake pans with shorting and flour, so I poured the cake batter into both pans trying to get each pan with the same amount (I could have weighed each one, but I was not being that exact).

I baked both cake pans on the center rack of our oven at 350 degree for forty-five minutes and they emerged cooked to perfection.  I cooled the pans for about ten minutes on top of the stove, then used a knife to go around the side of each pan to loosen the cakes.  I turned each cake over onto a cooling rack and removed the pan.  My wife and I went for a walk so the cakes would have a chance to fully cool before I worked on the frosting.

I mixed the frosting in our stand mixer using the beater bar.  The recipe consists of two boxes of cream cheese, one stick of softened butter, 1/2-teaspoon of vanilla extract and nine ounces of confectioners ’ sugar (I used powdered sugar and it worked fine).  I mixed until it was cream, and then put it in the refrigerator for ten minutes to cool.

When it was time to frost the cakes, I cut a piece of parchment paper a little larger than the bottom of the cakes and set it on our cake plate, and then I put one of the cake rounds on the parchment paper.  I frosted the top of the first round, and then I dropped the second round on top and finished frosting the top and sides of the cake.

After dinner, my wife and I both enjoyed a piece of the carrot cake.  The verdict from my wife is that this is indeed the best carrot cake ever.  It was very moist inside and had a nice course texture with the carrots, nuts, raisins, and the pineapple.  We could really pick out the taste of the carrots, which is often masked in other carrot cakes.

This cake is on my list to make again, I do not think I would change anything in the way I make it, as you cannot improve on perfect.

Find the recipe here: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Best-Carrot-Cake-Ever/Detail.aspx

Adventures In Food: Author: Kerry Howell

Bread Pudding

We pondered what to do with the leftover loaf of Italian Pugliese bread after we made the fondue the other night.  My wife thought that bread pudding sounded good, so I sent her off to find a suitable bread pudding recipe.  She ended up finding one on allrecipes.com that we modified based on some of the posted comments.

We were surprised that many of the bread pudding recipes don’t give a volume measurement for the bread.  For instance: use 6 cups of bread, but instead they have semi ambiguous measurements: use six slices of bread.  So, I looked in The Deen Family Cookbook and Paula Deen’s recipe uses a full loaf of French bread – 16 to 20 inches long cut into one-inch cubes.  We decided to use the full loaf of pugliese cut into one-inch cubes.

My first tasks, was to get out our 8x8 inch glass Pyrex baking pan, cut the bread into cubes, and fill the baking pan.  The recipe calls for an optional 1 /2 cup of raisins and I used up a small amount of regular raisins and then the end of a box of golden raisins that equated to a handful (talk about ambiguous measurements).  I lightly shuffled the bread cubes to distribute the raisins so they would not all fall to the bottom of the pan.

Then in a medium bowl, I mixed the four eggs, 1 cup of milk, 1 cup of whipping cream, 1/3-cup of white sugar, 1/3-cup of brown sugar, 1 teaspoon of cinnamon, and 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract.  I used our hand mixing wand to whip the custard mixture until it just started to get frothy (I didn’t want to make whipped cream).

I melted two tablespoons of butter in the microwave and sprinkled it over the bread cubes then poured the custard mixture over the bread.  I used a spatula and pressed all the bread cubes down into the custard mixture so that all the bread was saturated. 

Now I turned on the oven to 350 degrees.  While the oven warmed, the bread had time to sit and fully absorb all the custard each little cube could hold.  When the oven was hot, we put the pan in the center of the oven and set the timer for forty minutes.  The recipe calls for baking for forty-five minutes, but I didn’t want it to over bake.

After the forth minutes were up, I checked and the center was still very soupy, so I put the pan of pudding back into the oven for another five minutes.  I checked again and this time my wife agreed that the center was not quite cooked, so we placed it back in the oven for another five minutes.

After fifty minutes, the bread pudding was completely cooked without burning.  A few of the raisins on top were a little dark, but the bread was just fine.  We let it cool to set for about ten minutes, then served ourselves a piece and added a little vanilla ice cream.

The bread pudding was very light and moist, it had a slight cinnamon flavor, but I would have liked it to have a little move vanilla flavor.  I said to my wife that we could just finish the pan, but she has better restraint than I do, so we will have it tomorrow.


Find the orginal recipe here: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Bread-Pudding-II/Detail.aspx

Adventures In Food: Author: Kerry Howell