Maine meets Ireland on this day before St.Patrick’s Day. Whoopies Pies (of Maine fame) with Irish Cream / Bailey’s in the middle frosting. What’s not to love from this mid-week treat?
Browsing Tag
sweets
I seem to be the queen of finding random ingredients, and this week is no different. Have you ever heard of Banana JAM? I had no idea that you could make jam out of bananas, but you can and it’s pretty darn good. I had to buy a jar when I saw it in the shops and decided to make these here Monkey Pie Bars — Banana Coconut Crumble Bars. Amazingly rich banana flavor and toasted coconut. Perfect “tropical” flavors to warm up this cold March morning.
Banana Bread returns. The quintessential baked good of the pandemic — or maybe second to sourdough. The question actually is: is banana *bread* actually a bread? Why is it not a cake?
And why the name “Go Bananas, Mr. Foster!”? Well, Bananas Foster, the dessert, often made “table side” at restaurants (how 1970s), is lots of butter, lots of sugar — which when mixed together make a caramel-like sauce — rum to flambe and bananas, served with ice cream, is pretty much wrapped up in this banana bread. Well, minus the ice cream and I didn’t set the banana bread on fire. Also, if you ever went to a University of Maine sporting event, you will know that the black bear mascot is named Bananas the Bear. There is a little jingle/cheer that goes “Go! Bananas! Go-go Bananas!” So I have had that stuck in my head for days, so I combined Bananas Foster and Bananas the Bear. Go-go Bananas!
These are Almond Butter Cinnamon Chip Mini Cookies. A cookie will easily fit in the palm of my hand (like literally the palm part, not touching my fingers). They are wheat free / gluten free, butter free and despite taking all that fun stuff out, taste really yummy. Full of cinnamon and almond. They can also be made with mini chocolate or mini white chocolate chips.
It’s Valentine’s Day and while I do think that it is a commercial “holiday”, it is a good excuse to bake something so I went for this super-raspberry, super-red, super-delicious Raspberry Curd Tart. It’s really delicious and actually quite easy to make. It can be done all in one day, or you can make the filling up to 3 days in advance and the crust a day in advance, in case you don’t want to be pressed for time.