It's blog hop time again, readers! This month I'm hosting (in this post actually), but more on that later, for now though, let's have a little nostalgia:
I didn't grow up in the kind of house
where we got packaged foods in our lunch boxes. My brother and I
rarely, if ever, had canteen lunches and I didn't even realise that
white rice existed until Year 2 or 3. For a large period of my
childhood I felt deprived because of this healthy regime my mother
inflicted on us. I watched other kids pulling packets of chips and
cheesy biscuit snacks from their lunch boxes and sighed into my
carrot and brown-bread filled lunchbox.
Once, when my parents had to go away
for a weekend, I stayed at my friend's house. I remember opening the
lunch her mum had packed in raptures. This was the lunch (no joke):
- A piece of (store bought) iced
chocolate cake
- A handful of lollies
- An apple
Notice something about that list? Yeah,
there wasn't a sandwich... or anything savoury for that matter. There was cake instead. I was always jealous
of that friend's lunches. Her mum seemed to give her all the things I
dreamed of eating and my mum seemed intent on ruining my childhood
with healthy, fibre rich food that had little to no refined sugar. I
know, what a negligent monster, right?
Nowadays I baulk at the lunch that my
friend's mum gave me (which she probably saw as a special treat to
make me feel better because my parents were away and we were poor –
we were). Nowadays I am grateful to my mother, who denied me so much
to give me so much more. I have never been a fussy eater, I have never
struggled with my weight, I have so far had a very healthy life. The
foods I experiment with now come from the breadth of knowledge I have
from all of the flavours I've encountered in my life, flavours many children were not exposed to with their white bread and packet snack diets. I moved schools
at the end of that year. I lost track of that friend. Years later I met her again. She was overweight and paunchy, I felt sorry for her. I
realised what a gift I had been given by my mother.
As you might have guessed, we didn't
get a lot of treats in my house. Certainly not the same kinds of
treats that a lot of other children appeared to be having. However,
most nights, my mum would serve us dessert after dinner. Dessert
served the double purpose of being a treat and a bribe to finish our
vegetables. Usually, it was the only refine d sugar we got all day Most nights it was yogurt or ice cream, but SOME nights,
when the bananas in the fruit bowl were looking a little
questionable, Mum would make us caramelised bananas. Caramelised
bananas, which she prepared in a frying pan in a matter of minutes,
are and were inexplicably delicious. Soft, sweet and with a gooeyness
to them that is hard to describe, caramelised bananas were a serious
comfort food of my childhood. They are also very easy to make.
In a
week where I feel like my world is spinning faster and faster and
there's nothing for it but to hold on, grit my teeth and try to enjoy
it, caramelised bananas fitted the bill perfectly for this month's
Sweet Adventures Blog Hop... which I'm hosting (right now,
incidentally).
The theme for this month's hop is:
That means you can link up anything
sweet/desserty that requires
cooking in a pan and is posted during
this week (between 17
th June 9am AEST and 24
th
June 11:59 AEST). To join up, just post up your recipe and link it up
to this post following the instructions outlined below. I can't wait
to see what people make and to start to try these recipes in my new
kitchen (which I'll be using by the end of the week!!) I'm also on
the look out for ideas of stuff to prepare for another one of my side
projects (hello over-commitment) which is happening THIS SUNDAY at
Fair Harvest Permaculture (this is the poster I designed):
With the desire to create caramelised bananas as delicious as my mothers, I headed out to my favourite food haven,
Blue Ginger to be inspired... I didn't know what to serve WITH the bananas. Inspiration WIN:
Think about it, chai with caramelised bananas? Oh lordy. So, because this is a frying pan hop, I decided to make Chai crepes with my caramelised bananas. For this hop I used 2 kinds of frying pans (I know, what a suck up, right?) I used a deep, non-stick pan (for the bananas) and a crepe pan (for the crepes). If you don't have a crepe pan a normal non-stick pan will work almost as well.
Now, without much further ado, here's
my recipe for this month's hop:
Chai Crepes with Caramelised Bananas
Serves 4
You need:
Crepes:
1 ¼ cups of plain flour
1 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp butter
1 ½ cups milk (I used almond milk, but
cow's milk will work too)
2 eggs
1 tbsp (or to your taset) of chai
elixir (or similar product, you could also use chair powder, but
straight chai tea WILL NOT WORK)
some extra butter or oil for frying
Caramelised Bananas:
You need 2-3 bananas
1/2 cup brown sugar
25g butter
½ tsp cinnamon powder
a pinch of nutmeg
1/8 cup water
You:
NB: Once upon a time, you had to be
very careful with adding wet and dry ingredients together in a crepe
batter because if you're hand mixing it, it can go lumpy really
easily. These days, however, with electric hand beaters, you can be
pretty slap-dash and the beater will work out most of the lumps for
you. If you don't have a hand beater or stand mixer, read this first
for some information on how to avoid getting lumpy batter when
hand-mixing.
Melt the butter over a low heat on the
stove or in the microwave.
Place the dry ingredients for the
crepes into a large bowl or jug.
Add the milk, eggs and elixir. Mix
together until there are no lumps with the hand mixer, add the melted
butter as you do this.
Cover the bowl or jug and refrigerate
for 30 minutes. (Can be refrigerated for up to 8 hours).
When ready to serve, prepare your
bananas first.
Cut your bananas in half length ways. If
you have quite large bananas, you could also halve them horizontally.
Place the sugar, water, butter, nutmeg and
cinnamon in a non-stick frying pan over a medium heat, mix occasionally, allow the butter
to melt and the sugar to dissolve.
Add the bananas, fry them until golden,
cooked through and caramelly. The liquid arounnd the bananas should
reduce to a caramel like substance. Remove from the heat and set
aside while you prepare the crepes.
Remove the batter from the fridge, give
it another quick mix with the mixer to ensure it's still well
combined.
In a crepe pan (if you have one) or a
frying pan (preferably non-stick), fry a little butter or oil.
Pour about ¼ of a cup of the mixture
into the pan, turn the pan on a slight angle to try and coat the
entirety of the bottom of the pan in batter.
Cook the pancake over a medium heat,
until it starts to bubble up or brown on the bottom, then flip. Try
using your a
flick of your wrist to flip the crepe without a spatula
if you're game, otherwise, flip it gently with a non-metal spatula.
Cook on the other side until golden, then remove from the pan and set
aside on a plate while you prepare the rest of the crepes in the same
manner.
When you have as many crepes as you
want, or the batter's all gone, reheat the bananas until the sauce is hot again. Serve the crepes with the bananas,
you can fold them however you wish, but I chose to fold them in half
and then half again, across the diameter, of the circle. Put the bananas where you like, on the crepes, in the crepes, on the side... it's up to you!
I served these with some crème
fraiche, but they're delicious on their own... or for a decadent
splash, ice-cream or mascarpone would be amazing.
This hop is open from 9am 17 June 2013 – 11:59pm 24 June 2013 [AEST Sydney time]. Please only link-up new posts published on or after 17 June.
IMPORTANT - The instructions below cover how to link up but if you aren’t sure of something leave a comment or send me an email and I will help where I can.
- Add a link to THIS POST from your post.
* You can create a text link or link the hop badge in your post. Save badge by right clicking on the image to ‘save as’.
* Providing a link to this post means others can view the instructions and join in!
- Click here for the Thumbnail List code – Copy the code and add it to the bottom of your post, you will need to do this in HTML view.
* Adding the code will create the thumbnail link list on your post so people can hop from one entry to the next.
- Click here to Enter the Hop – Make sure to enter the hop so you appear in the list too.
* On the entry screen, please add the link to your SABH post [NOT your homepage].
* Your entry will be submitted when you click ‘crop’ on your photo.
NOTE – your linked post WILL NOT appear straight away in the blog hop thumbnail list.To combat spam this is a moderated hop. Your post will be visible in the list after approved. Entries are approved in the order they are submitted during waking hours in Perth, after all, I'm not a vampire.
If you are on Twitter use the #SABH to tell the world about your post and follow us@SweetAdvBlogHop for new hop announcements and general deliciousness. Thanks for joining!
