Banana + Nutella: Ice Cream + Whoopie Pies

Let's talk Nutella and bananas.  Why?  Because on their own, they're pretty darn good.  But together: magic.  Magic happens.

First up: Bananas.  Ah, what fond memories I have of bananas.  My dad eats one banana a day religiously, so growing up, there was always a wealth of bananas lying in the fruit bowl, ready for a quick snack.  Then, on my trips to visit family in tropical Taiwan, I learned about all of these different varieties of bananas, plucked fresh from the plants, putting the supermarket variety that we find here to shame--oh, the creamy richness!  mmmm.  Incidentally enough, there's a fascinating article about bananas in this month's issue of Saveur magazine, talking all about the history of the commercial banana trade, the other types of bananas there are around, and how richly entrenched the banana is into many of the world's cultures.

Plus, who doesn't have at least a few blackened bananas sitting in their freezer to be used at some later date?  I'm constantly shoving mine aside in the freezer to make room for ice creams and other frozen fruits, oftentimes cursing them as a bit of an annoyance because they take up so much awkward room.  And, who wants to be constantly making banana bread, as good as it is?  Not me, that's for sure.  So, as a project this weekend, I set out to figure out some new recipes to use up my frozen ripe bananas, using the perfect companion for them: nutella.

Oh, nutella, you blissfully smooth concoction of chocolate and hazelnut, you.  I know that David Lebovitz thinks that he's found a replacement for you, but in my book, thou art truly irreplaceable.  I would drink you with a straw if I could.  One of my favorite parts of traveling in Italy a few years ago when I was there (um, aside from the fact that I was in Italy--um, hello? what can beat that?) was waking up to a deliciously simple and guilt-ridden breakfast of soft, fresh bread with thick layers of nutella slathered on top.  Yeah, I want to go back to there, plz?

So, out of Italy- and tropics-inspired nostalgia and the need to clean out my freezer, I give you today a duo of banana and nutella desserts: banana+nutella whoopie pies and banana+nutella ice cream.

These banana whoopie pies, adapted from a Martha Stewart Living recipe, turned out to be a wonderful translation of banana as the fruit into banana as a cake form.  They are super moist--like, have-to-lick-crumbs-off-your-fingers moist and pack so much creamy banana flavor into them.  To help enhance the banana, I also threw in some ground cinnamon, and so the smell that filled the house as these were baking up in the oven was just positively divine.  Sandwiched between the cakes is some sweet nutella and cream cheese frosting, whipped until completely light, airy, and fluffy with a hint of the chocolate and hazelnut nutella coming through.

In doing research for nutella ice cream, it seemed as though most of the recipes out there are just a simple blend of nutella and milk/cream.  But, being the huge believer that I am in custard-based ice creams, I really wanted my version to benefit from triple the creaminess via the chocolate custard base, the nutella, and the banana.  And let me tell you--it does.  Even for a homemade ice cream, this version of banana-nutella ice cream achieves a rich, smooth, completely non-icy creaminess where you can basically dig a spoon into it immediately out of the freezer without having to wait for defrosting.  The subtle bit of banana, especially, really helps the texture go a long way underneath the sweet flavors of the nutella.

All in all, I am so happy with having found new ways to use up all of those leftover bananas in the freezer--I'm just sad that there are no more!  And, now, as for Italy...


[P.S. I also originally intended to make ice cream sandwich whoopie pies, with these banana cakes and banana+nutella ice cream, but time and laziness both got the best of me!  If you try it, you must tell me.]


Read on for recipe...

Passionate Whoopie Pies, or Musings on Dinosaur Eggs

Sunday was Easter, so I thought that today, we should talk about eggs.

Or, rather, I thought that we should talk about things that remind us of eggs.  Like, passion fruit.  Which is what I thought about this Easter.

I mean, come on--do you blame me?  Passion fruits (when they're not completely shriveled up) totally look reminiscent of eggs.  In fact, in my family, we always joke that they're like alien dinosaur eggs because of how weird they look when you cut them open.

So, of course it was natural for me to be thinking about weird looking dinosaur eggs during Easter (yes, that's just how my messed-up brain works--Kids: this is your brain on graduate school. Take note.).

Anyways, I also associate a feeling of down home simplicity and nostalgia with Easter, and so I thought nothing would be more fitting for our Easter celebration than combining dinosaur/alien eggs with homey goodness in the form of passion fruit whoopie pies!

I have been meaning to make whoopie pies for quite a while now.  It falls into that family of frosting-sandwiched-in-between-baked-goodness that I love so much, along with the also-nostalgic sandwich cookie or the high-class, snobby French macaron.  Whoopie pies are basically what would happen if you took a cupcake and converted into a sandwich form, which, in my humble opinion, is a genius move.

For my whoopie pie cakes, I used an adaptation of the recipe published a while ago in the New York Times. One concern I had when embarking on making whoopie pies were that the cakes would be super dry, which is how some of the proprietary ones that I've had are like.  And there's really nothing I can't stand more than dry cake.  Ugh.  But, my worries were for naught, because these cakes turned out beautifully moist and dense.  They were sooooo, sooooo good.  Like, I-almost-skipped-the-frosting good.  To kick up the chocolate quotient even more, I used black cocoa powder in addition to regular cocoa powder, which made the batter awesomely dark.  The cakes turned out super chocolate-y and ever so subtly sweet, which were perfect for the sweet, fruity frosting that I had planned.

For the frosting, I adapted a vanilla frosting recipe found here with vanilla bean and folded in passion fruit curd.  The result was a tantalizing flavor combination of citrus-y, tangy, and sweet passion fruit frosting, with  dark and moist chocolate.  Um... yes!  To make the passion fruit curd, I used a syrupy passion fruit nectar that you can find bottled in Asian supermarkets so that the passion fruit flavor would really come out robustly through the chocolate cake, though fresh passion fruit juice should also work as well.

These "passionate" whoopie pies went over really well at Easter.  I credit their success to the combination of moist chocolate cake that isn't too sweet and the surprising punch of passion fruit frosting in the center.  And, all in convenient sandwich form, too!  I made some little, two-bite size whoopie pies (or one bite, depending on how big your mouth is ;-P) that my mom took with her to her office.  Apparently, people lamented to her about only having one bite-size whoopie pie per person, and, honestly, I feel for them--I can't just eat one either!

Anyhow, I hope you all had a wonderful Easter weekend!  This week's going to be a super busy one for me: I'm running a workshop this coming weekend with many of the leading researchers in my field, which promises to be at once excellent fun but also crazy work leading up to it!  (Wish me luck surviving!)  But, I have some really, really exciting things in the works for the blog for next week.  Like, black cocoa.  Stay tuned for more about that in a few posts or so!

In the meantime, let's hear a "Whoopee!" for whoopie pies.  (and crazy, dinosaur-egg-looking passion fruits!)  :-D


Read on for recipe...