Blended Frozen Bananas, the Ultimate Dessert

What’s like ice cream but cheaper, healthier, vegan, and easy to make yourself? It’s not a trick question. It’s bananas! No, actually. Try this, and die a thousand deaths of delight, only to be reborn a phoenix of culinary ingenuity.

OK, enough purple prose. Peel at least two bananas, preferably ripe, but the older they are the sweeter the end product. Break them into smaller pieces, maybe two or three each, and freeze. Once frozen, cut into thin slices and put into blender or food processor. If you’re making a lot, it’s probably best to not start with the blender more than three quarters of the way full. You can add the rest once you get going.

Now comes the only tricky part. The first time I tried this I wasn’t careful and nearly broke my mini food processor. So go slow, on the lowest setting, and add a little water if you need to. Remember frozen bananas are pretty hard, so this is not easy for that little motor.

When you get the bottom mixed a little, use a spoon to mash it up a little. Then mix a little more.

Repeat until the consistency is starting to change, and when it’s about half gelato-looking stuff and half baby-food-looking stuff, push the bigger chunks toward the bottom.

If you’re like me, when you get here, and it’s mostly mixed up, you add two large dollops of Nutella. Oh yes.

Check out the video. Mesmerizing, no? When it’s nice and creamy, get it out of there and back in the freezer if you really want it to taste like ice-cream. At this point I was literally licking the rest off the blender blade, which I do NOT recommend.

Here’s what it looks like after about a half-hour in the freezer, which made it nice and frosty. This is two bananas, so keep that in mind. When I’m eating this stuff, and this is the third time in the last week, I’m thinking… THIS IS ONLY BANANAS. Well, in my case there’s also Nutella, but you get it.

Will it ever go bad? Maybe, but I doubt it. Is this the perfect dessert? You tell me. My new goal is to always have frozen bananas in the freezer.

Diary Comic: Hotdoggin’ It

and…

‘Nuff said. Zach: “You should quote me as saying that this is really good root beer. Then you should have a montage of you eating a hotdog.” Check and check.

New Comic: Fool’s Rice

This assignment was about using outside inspiration, and the plot points were dictated by random flips in a reference book. In my case, Zingerman’s Guide to Good Eating. It’s a little nothing of a comic, but I hope you enjoyed the whimsy. The physical size is a piece of copy paper folded “hotdog style” as my roommate Kevin would say. The second “page” of comics here is actually a two page spread, and I struggled with how to present it, so click to see it bigger. For your additional edification, dear readers, a photo of the pot rendered in such loving detail above:

Valentine’s Day Cupcake Tour

The cupcake trend has hit DC with full force. Forget donuts and frozen yogurt, there are at least 4 popular boutique cupcakeries within city limits. For Valentine’s day this year, I figured that the lady and I would do our best to try some of them out. Here’s the route we took, and all the pictures. (She also tweeted the whole way, if you’re into “new media.”)

We started at Baked ‘n Wired. One of my bosses wrote an article about the cupcake obsession, and picked out this place for making “the only just-right cupcake.” (First, watch the accompanying video, it’s great! Second, AU students who have taken photography should note the photo credit at the top of the article.)

I thought it was amazing. I got a “chocolate satin” cupcake, and apparently I was making a lot of strange noises as I demolished the thing. The icing was extremely creamy and luscious, but the flavor of the cake itself was huge. Without being overpowering or too buttery, it was really delicious.

Next we walked over to Georgetown Cupcake, which I’ve heard is more in the Magnolia Cupcake tradition, and it is ripped apart in the above-linked video. Frank Bruni loved this place. I went to Magnolia when I went to New York over a year ago. I took these pictures there, and remember waiting a long time but really enjoying it. Unfortunately, there was a really long wait at Georgetown, and we spotted a kid we really dislike in line, so we decided to go elsewhere.

We walked to Hello Cupcake in Dupont. We took our cupcakes home for later, and it did make a nice dessert. I mean, let’s be serious, it’s hard to not like a cupcake! The Baked ‘n Wired cupcake was more fresh, but the Hello cupcake (I got a peanut butter blossom) was more classic tasting. B+W was definitley the winner, and I really reccomend it, even at $3.50 a pop. I’m still curious about Red Velvet over in Penn Quarter, but I’m sure I’ll get there sooner or later.

Two Quick, Easy (and Healthy?) Meals

I’ve never really been crazy enough to cook meals because they are HEALTHY, but recently I’ve been noticing myself cooking and eating meals that are indeed what some would call “healthy.” These meals are usually healthy by virtue of being fresh, unprocessed, vegetarian and sometimes mostly-raw. But let’s be serious: meat is expensive, and raw meals can be delicious and usually don’t require that much work. And while I’m not trying to lose weight, it seems that I’m not the only one find him or herself eating this way. Did you see that article in last week’s food section about less people dieting and more people just enjoying good food? I think that’s really super, but the article stops short of talking about people who aren’t dieting, i.e.: the not-so-middle class. I’d like to think that this national trend extends to people who aren’t able to spend more money at farmer’s markets and Whole Foods, but really, it doesn’t. Obviously there are big changes needed here (many in legislation like the Farm Bill), but in the mean time I’ll still be enjoying pita pizzas, zucchini and carrot pasta, and shrimp in cous cous.

Soup’s On: Late Summer Minestrone

Just a quick note: I’m a bit late on this, but last in last week’s NYT food section, I cut out the recipe for Mark Bittman’s “Late Summer Minestrone.” It’s easy enough to saute veggies and then add a lot of water, but I’m not sure I’ve ever had a minestrone so light and so sweet. The flavor reminded me how delicious zucchini flavored water is (don’t knock it till you’ve tried it). It also occurs to me that is nothing like the soup I had in Florence, but then again I think this is another thing entirely. Now that fall’s approaching—and it made a bit of gesture today—we all have to step up our soup game, and that’s REAL.