Banana Cake with Caramel Frosting

May 19, 2016

It’s kind of crazy that I’ve never made banana cake before, because it’s something that my extended family made quite a bit when I was growing up.

But it was always with cream cheese frosting, and then a few years ago my sister had a brainwave and threw this caramel frosting on instead.  And a legend was born. (I may be being melodramatic)

Now don’t get me wrong, I really like banana cake with cream cheese frosting (pretty much anything with cream cheese frosting, for that matter).  But there is something about this sugary, crackly caramel frosting that just adds the perfect depth and complement to the moist, dense cake.  The fact that it’s crazy easy is just the icing on the cake…so to speak.

This is also a cake that is perfect to make the night before, because this frosting really seals in the moisture of the cake.  And, of course, use up the billions of browning bananas sitting on your counter.

I haven’t eaten a banana in probably six months, but I still buy them like clockwork, with the best intentions.  This is a thing everyone does, yes?

Humor me…

My Favorite Unleavened Bread Recipes

Mar 12, 2016

With the Passover and Days of Unleavened Bread coming up, I thought it would be fun to go back through and gather all of my favorite unleavened recipes into one place.  It’s easy to get stuck in a rut, and I totally forgot about some of these that were favorites a mere three or four years ago!

Slightly Sweet Unleavened Bread

I just found this recipe last year, thanks to my sis.  I fell totally in love with it as a super easy, fast, all-purpose unleavened bread to keep on hand.  It’s dense but not dry, satiating, has a hint of sweet from the brown sugar and honey, and is ready in a half hour from start to finish. It was also just as good leftover as fresh out of the oven (which is NOT always true of unleavened bread recipes).  Plus, you can mix it up by hand and pat it out on the baking sheet, so very low-maintenance.

Cottage Cheese Rolls

This has always been my family’s go-to recipe during the Days of Unleavened Bread. I never could understand why people would want to eat matzo, because it’s like eating cardboard. These, on the other hand, are moist and buttery and chewy and flavorful and FULL OF AWESOME.  They are a little more time consuming though, but highly recommend for something like Night to Be.

Jam Diagonals

I was OBSESSED with these as a kid, I would try to sneak as many as I could without my mom seeing.  Problem was, they were gone so fast.  Not only are these desserts perfect for any spring brunch, Mother’s Day, bridal shower, etc., they’re unleavened to boot.  And basically the most delicious thing ever.

Pear Cake with Honey Glaze

Jan 2, 2015

Isn’t it great that breakfast means you can have all kinds of dessert-y things but it’s totally fine because it’s breakfast? Like, people would find you weird if you ate chocolate cake for breakfast, but coffee cake? Totally cool.

This is one of those super-good-desserts-but-also-totally-appropriate-for-breakfast recipes. It’s adapted from an apple cake I made a while ago—I remember thinking at the time that I just HAD to try it with pears (one of my favorite fruits), but never got around to it. This winter break I found myself with several insanely juicy and fragrant Harry & David pears and knew right away what I must do with them.

This cake really is the best of both worlds. It’s my kind of dessert—lightly sweet, hearty, a mix of warm and comforting flavors. But it’s also really quite healthy. I use white whole wheat flour entirely, which not only gives it lots of fiber but also a wonderful nutty flavor and great texture. It’s made with oil, I cut back on the sugar the original recipe calls for, and it’s full of fruit and nuts as well. As breakfast goes from time to time, you could do worse.

Look at these guys…aren’t they gorgeous?!

Mom’s Famous Lasagna

Jan 26, 2014

Lasagna is a very personal thing. In general, most people think their mom’s/grandma’s/wife’s/pick your relative’s lasagna is the absolute best thing in the world, and all other lasagnas are vastly inferior. I certainly fall into this camp. I’m don’t think I even ate any other lasagna except my mom’s until I was…in college? And then I was so disappointed by it that it only reinforced my opinion.

I stand by that opinion, though, and have had friends reinforce it over the years. When I make this, I often get exclamations of “This is so good! It’s even better than my mom’s…though don’t tell her I said that!”

This lasagna recipe is really easy to put together, and it gets its awesomeness from a couple ingredients that are outside the norm. Instead of a homemade marinara or a jarred tomato sauce, it uses a specific Hunt’s canned four-cheese sauce, which gives it a special flavor. And rather than the traditional ricotta, it uses cottage cheese. Yeah, I know it sounds weird. I think we started doing that when I was a kid and I didn’t like ricotta and my mom wasn’t too crazy about it either. But what we discovered is that the little curds in the cottage cheese end up melting and take this to a whole other level of gooeyness (instead of the graininess of ricotta).

The result? Tangy, cheesy, fragrant, spice-filled awesomeness. I love it fresh out of the oven, with the steam still coming off it. My dad loves it as leftovers, when the cheese and sauce have had a day or two to hang out and get married in the fridge. Either way, it’s out of this world. [My mom informs me that it was originally my Aunt Susan’s recipe that we tweaked over the years, so kudos to her as well!]

No-Bake Cookies…a.k.a. Haystacks

Jun 27, 2013

Sometimes I forget how much I love these cookies. When I mentally flip through desserts I want to make, somehow I never think of these. Maybe it’s because the first couple times I made them, they never set up. I had this delicious, totally liquid, gooey mess, but no actual cookies. I finally figured out that I wasn’t boiling the mixture for long enough, which meant it would never set up.

ANYHOO…gooey cookie mess is all in the past, and these cookies are glorious and delicious and chocolatey and peanut buttery and awesome.

I made them last weekend because some friends had just bought a house and were moving, so I wanted to contribute to the “moving day lunch” but couldn’t actually help them move due to my bum hip. It was gross and humid this weekend, so turning the oven on didn’t sound fun, and a few of the people were gluten-intolerant, so I needed something gluten-free. After thumbing through and discarding a bunch of recipes, I all of the sudden thought of these. They were perfect for the occasion, and a great blast from the past as well.