Banana Bread Pudding

[This post was created ages ago, way, way before Ramadhan, about a week or two after my baking craze started]


   It's another episode of Let's Go Bananas.

Let's Go Bananas Episode 2

   I didn't plan this. It's the bananas. They made me do it! They screamed at my face, saying, "Why aren't you doing something to us! We're supposed to be eaten, not left on the counter to ripen!" 


   I stared back. I was the one who had asked Mum or Dad to get the bananas. I was in the mood for eaten fresh, ripe bananas. I put out a hand to pluck one banana off.


   "No!" They screamed. "If we're gonna be eaten, let us do it gracefully! Dress us up! Drown us in custard! Sprinkle cinnamon sugar on our flesh!" 


   Is it me or is it the bananas who have gone bananas?

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Ramblings

   Joy the Baker is a lovely site, filled with great recipes and beautiful pictures. I'd stumble across her blog quite some time ago but only started subscribing a few weeks ago. My favourite entries from her recipes are the Bake sessions, I love seeing her and Jill Donenfield baking and having fun together.


   Ever since I saw the video and the recipe for this pudding, I'd wanted to make it. I love puddings, I love bread puddings, I love bananas and I love cinnamon! It looked easy enough (gulp)... so I suppose things can't go that wrong, huh?


   Since I didn't have a pan the size of that which Joy used, I just used the regular 8 x 8 inch pan that I've always used. I suppose it meant that I'f have to adjust the temperature or something, but I'm not good at that so I just followed what Joy had put.


   I didn't reduce the amount of sugar this time, but I did add more bananas because I didn't have banana extract. I also omitted the bourbon since we don't drink alcohol (it's prohibited for Muslims, actually, but I'll write about that in another entry). 


   Did it work?

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THE Recipe

[Click HERE to view the original recipe]

Ingredients

10 slices of white bread

(toasted, buttered and sliced diagonally)

3 eggs

2 cups of milk

(I used bottled fresh milk)

1/2 cup granulated sugar

3 large bananas, sliced

1 tablespoon icing sugar (for topping)

1/2 tablespoon ground cinnamon (for topping)

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180C (170C for my oven).

2. Butter 8 x 8 inch pan (or whatever size works for you) and set aside.

3. Heat milk and sugar in a saucepan just until all the sugar is dissolved.

4. Whip the eggs in a bowl and pour in the milk mixture while continuously whisking the eggs.

5. Arrange the bread triangles in the baking pan. 

6. Sieve the custard into the pan, over the bread. 

7. Slip the slices of bananas in between the bread and deep into the custard.

8. Bake for 30-40 minutes or until the custard is set. Sprinkle with cinnamon sugar on top.

9. Eat it. It's good hot! 

Just bear in mind that your tongue might fall off if it's TOO hot. Know your tongue.

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Newsflash

TUMPAT, 18th July 2011: About fifteen slices of bananas voiced their dissatisfaction for topping the charts- or rather, topping the top part of a pan of bread pudding. Due to this, they were burnt until black and crisp, unlike their other hundred hundred or so friends who enjoyed themselves as they were cooked deep in the custard below.

   "This is truly unfair!" said one particular slice, which happened to be the end part of one banana. "Being rounder on one side makes it even more displeasing! My rounder part ended up being on top and the effect created became a joke among the clan!"

   The baker, while apologising profusely for her lack of judgement, looked grim. "It was that or ending up as plain bananas and not making it into the custard, which they didn't want! Really, these bananas- anyone would go bananas listening to them!"

   Readers are advised to make sure that the bananas are slipped deep into the custard, should they think of making banana bread pudding. If they have no such thoughts, beware if there are some beautiful, ripe bananas sitting on their counter. Anything can happen with bananas.

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The Verdict

   I'm afraid I misjudged the time chosen to make this. Everybody's still busily going about with their business, so the pudding is sitting patiently in the oven, waiting. For a first timer, it was quite good (of course I tasted it, just a few minutes after it came out of the oven, in fact!), so I'll try to make this again next time I have enough ingredients. 

   However..... it was delicious! I love the crispy top. The bananas I used gave a slightly sourish taste, which I was nice and contrasted the sweetness of the custard.

Brownie Day Part 2: Banana Brownies

Let's Go Bananas!!!

Pisang/Bananas

   I love bananas. When I was little, I used to be scared of eating raw bananas because the flesh seemed so soft that if they were too ripe, I felt that there would be little maggots in them. Yuck. Let's stop there.


   I have thankfully grownup and am no longer that silly little girl. I love bananas (that's the second time I said that!) I am sometimes overwhelmed by the many different types of bananas that we have in Malaysia. Pisang kebatu, pisang emas, pisang susu, pisang awak, pisang tanduk, pisang raja and many more.


   We had some overripe bananas in the fridge. Pisang kebatu, I think. We fried bananas dipped in batter and had them the day before, but there some left and Mum popped them into the fridge. I looked for recipes for which I could use them, and found this one. I'd just put the peanut butter chocolate brownies into the oven, but I was feeling all hyped up and I felt like baking something else. 


   Two kinds of brownies in one day? Fantastic! We could compare the flavour and texture (yeah, yeah) and see which worked better for our tastebuds. Most importantly, there'd be more to eat!

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Ramblings on the Recipe

You can see the banana chunks. Oh yum.

   It's wonderful what you can discover on the internet. Sometimes, whenever I get frustrated because I didn't have a particular ingredient needed for a particular recipe, I'd Google and then goggle at the vast amount of recipes available on the internet.


   Since we had a lot of chocolate in the house at the moment, I decided to go with this recipe. However, we only had one pack of butter left in the fridge, and I wanted to save that for something special. So I substituted the butter with margarine. I have read that margarine contains more water than butter, and whatnot, but I've grown up with margarine- we used to spread margarine on slices of bread and scatter the top with sugar. It's a lot cheaper than butter too. I also love the smell. If you don't like margarine, go ahead and use butter. No worries.


   The recipe called for 4 bananas, but it didn't say how big they should be, so I dunk in all the leftover bananas that we had (about 5 1/2 medium to small bananas). 


   And... as usual I reduced the amount of sugar. All that chocolate and bananas would contribute a lot to the sweetness, I thought, and I didn't the taste to be overwhelmed bu sugary-sweetness.


   I also used a bigger pan. The recipe suggested an 8 x 8 inch pan, but I used a much bigger one, about . I lowered the temperature to 170C to suit our oven, and started with 50 minutes so that I could decide how lone they needed to be baked. I'm prone to overbaking stuff, which usually results in burnt tops, hoho, so I had to be extra careful.

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THE Recipe

[Click HERE for original recipe]

Ingredients:

350g dark chocolate (or whatever works for you)

250g margarine or butter

4 eggs

5 1/2 medium sized bananas (about 1 1/2 to 2 cups i think)

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 cup castor sugar

1 tsp cocoa powder

1 tsp baking powder

Method:

1. Preheat over to 180C (170C for my oven). Line a baking pan using baking paper or foil.

2.Melt margarine (or butter) and chocolate in a heatproof bowl over a simmering pot of water.

3. While waiting for the chocolate to melt, mash the bananas and the eggs in a large bowl.

-I whisked the eggs for a bit before putting in the bananas. I used the whisk to mash the bananas. 

At first I thought of whizzing the batter in the blender to really crush the bananas, but I liked the look of the banana bits floating around in the egg batter, and felt that it'd lend texture and more flavour if I left it just like that. 

So I did.

4. Add the flour, sugar, cocoa powder and baking powder into the egg mixture and mix until well incorporated. It'd be a good idea to sift the dry ingredients first (which I didn't do).

5. Pour in the chocolate-and-margarine-or-butter mixture into the batter and mix well.

6. Pop the pan into the oven and bake for 50 minutes to 1 hour, depending on the size of your pan, your oven and how much you want the brownies to be cooked.

I set the oven at 50 minutes, and decided to stop there. 

7. What are you waiting for? Eat! (or take photos first, whatever works for you)

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The RESULT

This is what it looks like, just out of the oven.

   I truly love this recipe! At first it seemed that there was too much batter, so I instead of using an 8 x 8 inch pan I used one that was around 11 x 11 inch. However, it worked quite well and the most important thing is that we had more space to cut, which means more pieces of brownies! 

   I may have underestimated the amount of bananas. I thought I'd put quite a lot in, but maybe the bananas in the original recipe were large sized. You can still taste the bananas though, but if you want more flavour I suggest adding even more bananas.

   The margarine worked really well, I think. Next time I'll try using butter to test the difference. 

   The texture was crumbly and soft and just a little fudgy, which I liked. It was definitely different from the peanut butter chocolate brownies! I'm definitely making this again, hopefully when my sisters come home.

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Go crazy. Please.

   Therefore I suggest you go crazy and make two kinds of brownies like I did- only to see how different the two are. Honest. If you feel like you'll have too much brownies on hand, you can always put them on a nice plate and give some to your neighbours (which I planned to do at first but never did because we had just enough for the 5 of us!)

   When Dad saw the two batches of brownies, he said, "those brownies are going to SK Mulong (the name of his school) tomorrow!" So I packed some of each kind of brownies together with a piece of the victoria sponge (the whole family fasted the day after I baked the sponge so there was still quite a big piece left). Then, I did the same for Abang and Adik, who love taking baked stuff to school to show off to their friends (and share, I suppose, haha).

   So go crazy, if you can, and please the people who love you and you love. If they truly love you, they will eat the brownies whatever they taste like, but they will definitely love you because this recipe really works!