Category: Desserts

Cranberry Banana Bowl

I did it again. Another bag of bananas on sale at a local convenience store, another impulse buy. This time I asked the clerk to weigh the bag to support my argument for the purchase when I got home. “Five point seven pounds,” I explained as I walked in the door before Jerri could roll her eyes in disbelief. “We can share some bananas with the neighbors and still enjoy a bargain dessert or two.”

Problem solved. Our neighbors got a few bananas, Jerri was more understanding of my enthusiasm than I expected, and she invented a new dessert that is also a wonderful breakfast side dish: Sliced bananas in cranberry sauce. She made it with cranberry sauce left over from Thanksgiving. For some reason, the sauce did not jell as much as usual. The cranberries in what was basically a heavy syrup went beautifully with the bananas.

My guess is that she used a little too much water when she made the cranberry sauce. If you follow her recipe but use an extra quarter cup of water, you should have about the right consistency.

I decided to see if commercial canned cranberry sauce would work. I started by spooning some cranberries from the can over the sliced banana. The sauce was too thick, so I added a tablespoon of water to a half cup of sauce and heated the mixture enough so I could stir it together. It was very sweet, so I added a teaspoon of lemon juice.

The result was pretty good but not as tasty as the combination made with the homemade sauce. A little more lemon juice might help.

Now, the recipe for two servings:

1 large banana
1/2 cup juicy cranberry sauce

PROCEDURE:

Cut the banana into one-eighth-inch slices. Gently mix the cranberry sauce with the banana slices. Enjoy.

NOTE: One of the most important things I learned from this experiment was that Jerri’s cranberry sauce has more flavor and is not as sweet as the commercial version. Maybe this is because commercial cranberry sauce is sweetened with high fructose corn syrup instead of sugar or possibly it’s just sweeter than I prefer.

Sometime you might want to arrange a taste test. Make a batch of cranberry sauce using Jerri’s recipe, cool it and then compare the flavor with the commercial sauce. The one you prefer really doesn’t matter, but you should be able to distinguish the difference.

Jerri’s Banana Pudding

When I brought home a large bag of bananas, Jerri sent me off with a disapproving look and orders to buy a package of vanilla wafers. She was going to make banana pudding. I can endure a few scowls if I know that banana pudding will be on the menu, so it was with a light heart that I ventured out into the cold.

I felt like I did when Mom sent me out to fill the woodbox or shovel the path to the chicken coop when she was making vanilla pudding with vanilla wafers and bananas next to her on the counter. Work it might be, but my reward was being put together in the kitchen. Not only did her banana pudding taste wonderful, it looked beautiful.

Jerri’s does too. Here is a photo of the one Jerri made for me because I was thoughtful enough to bring home some extra bananas. To be honest, she admitted that she had been thinking it was about time for another banana pudding.

INGREDIENTS:

1 1/2 cups sugar
4 T cornstarch
1/2 tsp. salt
4 cups whole milk
2 large eggs
4 T butter
2 tsp. vanilla
4 – 5 ripe medium bananas
1 package of vanilla wafers

PROCEDURE:

Break two large eggs into a one quart bowl and allow them to come to room temperature while you cook the pudding.

Mix the sugar, cornstarch and salt together in a three-quart saucepan. Stir the milk into the dry ingredients gradually and put the pan over medium heat. Stir frequently while the mixture comes to a simmer. Reduce the heat to low and stir continuously when the pudding starts to thicken. Cook the pudding until it is thick and starts to bubble. Cook another two or three minutes over very low heat to make sure that the cornstarch is cooked. Remove the pan from the heat.

Beat the eggs until they are lemon colored and use a small measuring cup to dribble about a half cup of hot pudding into the eggs while beating vigorously. Whisk this egg mixture gradually into the pudding while bringing it back to a simmer over low heat. Cook for another two minutes, stirring the pudding constantly.

Remove the pan from the heat, add the butter and vanilla and stir until everything is blended together. Cover and begin to assemble your banana pudding.

Layer the bottom of a two or two and a half-quart soufflé dish with vanilla wafers. If you wish, you can break a few wafers into pieces to fill in the spaces between the cookies, but it is not necessary.

Next, put a layer of sliced bananas over the wafers. Spoon a generous layer of hot pudding over the first two layers. Repeat until you are almost to the top of your soufflé dish, ending up with a layer of pudding.

Line the inside of the soufflé dish by pushing wafers into the pudding. Finish by crushing three or four wafers and sprinkling the crumbs over the pudding. If you want to be artistic, do like Jerri does and put a wafer in the center. Allow the pudding to cool for fifteen minutes, then put it in the refrigerator and serve it well chilled.

NOTES: If you make the pudding in a two quart dish, you will have some vanilla pudding left over. This is a very good thing, since it makes a nice simple dessert or snack that is delicious by itself or with fresh or canned fruit.

You can use low fat or skim milk to make this pudding, but the texture and flavor will suffer. Replacing part of the milk with a quarter cup of cream or a half cup of half and half will improve the result. If you are very concerned about eating too much butterfat, take a smaller serving of the pudding.

Like my mother, Jerri makes her own vanilla pudding. There are mixes of course, but don’t try to make this dessert with instant pudding. The hot pudding reacts with the fresh bananas and vanilla wafers to create a marvelous flavor that you will never get with that instant stuff.

Plus, have you looked at the ingredients added to make instant pudding thicken? When I encounter banana pudding made with mixes, covered with whipped topping and who knows what else, I always think of some lines from a song by Tom Lehrer.

In “It Makes a Fellow Proud To Be a Soldier, ” he tells of his old mess sergeant whose “taste buds had been shot off in the war.” The unfortunate sergeant’s cooking reminded him “of all the marvelous ways they’re using plastics nowadays.” As with all satire, there is truth in the humor.