My sister stopped by the other day. She is like a raccoon. She only occasionally calls ahead, she never knocks, and she almost always leaves eating something.
(Obviously, I have limited experience with raccoons).
Unsurprisingly, she was hungry on this particular visit and grabbed a banana. I am unsure why as I have never seen my sister eat an entire banana in her life. She can be a very picky eater. As a kid eating at McDonalds, she would only order "chickenmcnuggetshoneyfriesandketchup." It was like her mantra. After dinner, she would proceed to lick the honey tubs clean and suck all the ketchup out of the little foil packets. There was a summer when all she would eat for days at a time was blocks of cheddar, virgin strawberry daiquiris, and vinegar & oil salads. And she always had a thing about mushy foods. Hence the inability to eat an entire banana.
So she starts to eat the banana from my kitchen, gets about two bites in and starts to make loud, lip-and-tongue-smacky noises. The following conversation ensues:
"This is so gross. Why am I eating this?" She opens her banana-ful mouth as if I need a visual aid to know what 'this' is.
"Cuz you wandered into my kitchen and it was the only thing you didn't have to pry the lid off a trashcan with your little raccoon hands to get?" I suggest.
"Suck it, bitch." She swallows dramatically, stopping just shy of massaging her trachea to get it down. "Why do you even have rotten bananas?"
"You suck it! I get them--" But I am cut off.
"Oh that's right, I forgot! You're a freak who eats spoiled food!" Jazz hands puncutuate the word 'freak.'
"What? Shut up!" I say with semi-mock indignance. "I buy them mostly to bake with; they have to be soft and--"
"I can see you in Kroger," she interupts again, "Holding a bunch of delicious yellow bananas like a dirty diaper and walking over to the produce guy..."Oh boy...you there! Grocery boy! (she has this thing where I become, like, Lady Stuckupington when she's making fun of me) Do you have any rotten fruit in the back I might have? These are simply too too fresh!"
Despite her mocking, my sister was right - I do have a thing for spoiled food. It's not so much that I like the taste but when you spend as much as I do on fresh fruits and vegetables, you learn to overlook a few brown spots. Most food falls into three categories for me: can-be-eaten-fresh, must-be-cooked-to-eat, and mash-it-up-into-a-muffin. Using this scale, I rarely have to throw food away. However, I do have a special place in my heart for moldy bread - something I inherited from my grandfather. Slightly stale, moldy bread makes the best PB&J sandwiches. I also like cookies slightly burnt and gummis, Twizzlers, and candy corn stale and hard.
My sister was also right about the bananas being pretty gross. I had 6 bananas in desperate need of baking. As my birthday is coming up, I was feeling in a cake-y sort of mood. I found this recipe at Allrecipes.com and veganized the heck out of it.
COCONUT-BANANA CAKE WITH PECAN COCONUT FROSTING
Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups white sugar
1 stick vegan margarine, very soft
2 tbs of flax meal
1 1/2 tsp of Ener-G egg
7 tbs warm water
3 ripe bananas, very mashed
1 tsp baking soda
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup of soymilk
1/4 tsp of apple cider vinegar (I use Bragg's)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup shredded coconut (I used a drier, unsweetened, organic kind but I'm sure the soft, sweetened, shreddy kind would be just as good.)
Instructions:
Pre-heat the oven to 350 and grease up two 9 inch round cake pans.
Put the soymilk and the vinegar in a small bowl and set aside to curdle. This is essentially buttermilk.
In another small bowl, mix the flax meal, egg replacer, and warm water until the egg replacer is completely dissolved. Set aside. This is the equivalent of 3 eggs. The original recipe called for 2 eggs but I mis-read it. It did not seem to adversely affect the cakes. If you're using real eggs, I'd only use two.
In a big bowl, cream together the veg marg and sugar. I used the whisk attachment for my hand mixer for all the mixing in this recipe. I felt less like a pioneer, but my right forearm didn't go numb from all the beating.
Add the "egg" in small bits so it all mixes uniformly.
Add the bananas and moosh up a little with a fork before beating it smooth with the mixer.
In another bowl, sift together the flour and baking soda.
Alternate adding the "buttermilk" and flour mixture into the banana-sugar-butter bowl. Mix slowly so the flour doesn't fly up out of the bowl into your face.
After all the flour is incorporated, beat in the vanilla.
With a spatula, fold in the coconut until evenly distributed.
Split the batter between the two pans and cook for 40-50 minutes. My crazy oven only needed about 39 minutes and the cakes still got a little over-done on the bottom.
While the cakes are cooling completely (I put mine on a wire rack after about 5 minutes in the pans), whip up the PECAN-COCONUT FROSTING:
Ingredients:
1 stick of vegan margarine, very soft
4 cups of powdered sugar
1 ripe banana, mashed
1 cup of chopped pecans
1 cup of shredded coconut
1 tsp vanilla extract
Instructions:
Cream together the veg marg and two cups of the powdered sugar.
Add the banana and mix well.
Taste the frosting and decide how much more powdered sugar you need. Using all four cups makes for a very frosting-y frosting.
While beating (I used my hand mixer for this too) slowly add the remaining two cups of sugar (or as much sugar as you want).
Add the vanilla and beat at a high speed until everything is smooth and looks like frosting.
With a spatula, fold in the pecans and coconut until evenly distributed.
When cakes are completely cool, frost the top of one with more than half of the frosting. Personally, I like it when layer cakes have more frosting in the middle than on top. Use the remaining frosting for the top of cake.
...and it was very, very good. It's soft and fluffy. The coconut and pecans give the whole thing a nice crunch. The over-browned bottoms balance out the super sweet frosting well too.
My sister hasn't tried this cake yet, but when she does, I have a feeling she'll be judging me out of the other side of her face. The side not full of delicious rotten banana cake.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment