From the Archives: Peanut Butter Banana Cream Pies

Now that spring is hesitantly asserting its presence in Michigan, we can start thinking about warm weather, which, here in the 4oz Kitchen, is synonymous with no-bake pie season. This is a recipe I originally made a couple of summers ago. These peanut butter banana cream pies fit perfectly in jam jars with their lids sealed tight, making them ideal for picnic supplies or road trip sustenance -- just make sure you keep them cool until you're ready to eat.

Step One of this crowd-pleasing recipe (members of said crowd with peanut allergies notwithstanding) was to prepare the vanilla bean pastry cream. Don't be fooled by the name, though; by the time it's done cooling, you'll have a light, sweet custard perfect for offsetting the heavier banana and rich peanut butter components of the pies. This vanilla custard is a great, versatile base that I've used in berry tarts as well as cream pies like this one. Whole vanilla beans are more expensive than a bottle of extract for sure, but the intensity and quality of flavor steeped out of the real deal can't be matched. (Sidebar: please excuse my dirty stove top. Those splatters are from the previous night's baingan bharta adventures). 

All the components of PBBCP ready to be assembled: vanilla bean pastry cream, Nilla wafer crumb crust, peanut butter filling, and, of course, the bananas. I think the most stressful part of this recipe was getting all of the banana slices safely tucked into their layers before they started to go brown and ugly. #freshfruitproblems





After a foundation of crust, the layers alternate between peanut butter, banana, and custard (I found that order worked best for spreading and tamping purposes). It was as easy as one, two, om nom nom.

When the layers reached the edge of the jars, I stopped filling to make sure the tops could screw on snugly. After capping my jars, I put them in the refrigerator so the pies could set until I was ready to pack them up for my picnic. When I brought them out to serve the next day, I also had some home-made whipped cream on hand to add as a topping once the jars were opened, and I packed the extra Nilla wafer crust crumbles to sprinkle on the very top for extra texture. 

A Friendly PSA: Remember that potassium is an important part of a balanced diet, plus we should all try to eat more fruits while they're in season. The fat in peanut butter is the good kind, and peanuts are a source of protein. Plus custard has calcium, and the cookie crust has grains...so these treats cover ALL four of the food groups in a fashion that is both portion-conscious and tasty. In short: Eat up! Your body will thank you.

Popovers: the savory, the sweet, the delicious

I've been on something of a popover bender recently. For the longest time, every time I tried to make these "simple" (most only have 4-5 ingredients) rolls, I was foiled; they never popped. I was left with dense, depressing results, and I was very discouraged. But this recipe I found on Epicurious for Gruyere popovers finally worked for me. The difference was all in the directions. The baking instructions detail how the milk must be heated and the pans pre-warmed in the oven before the rest of the ingredients are combined, portioned, and baked. I suspect this careful preheating is Rule One for proper popover preparation, and I've just been out of the loop. But now I'm in, and I'm loving these little guys. They're versatile crowd pleasers, and I've tried my hand at both a savory and a sweet variety to show you. The first project I made was the eye-opening Gruyere recipe, and then just this evening I tried a cinnamon and sugar version which also turned out well.

Here are are the main components of the Gruyere popovers. My OCD tendencies come in very handy when I'm baking: by reading the whole recipe first, I could prepare the dry mixture, whisk the eggs, and have the grated Gruyere ready to go, so that once the milk was heated, everything could go together quickly and smoothly without giving the batter time to cool.

All the ingredients in the mix. This is one of those batters that suffer if over-mixed, so the stellar instructions even made a point of assuring me that a few remaining lumps were okay.

I had enough batter for about 18 rolls, and I went ahead and grated about 50% more cheese than the recipe called for, so every portion got a generous topping. Okay, so this is your "before" picture, and here....

...is the after! Perfectly-popped popovers FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE. And the wait was totally worth it. These were amazingly good.

They were a little resistant to come out of the muffin tin, but I think that was mostly because of the cheese. In the future I'll make sure to be extra-liberal when I apply the non-stick spray to the pans beforehand. And the ones that stuck to the pans were natural volunteers for early tasting -- I immediately ate one (...or two) of them as they came out of the pan warm and in pieces. These are 12 of the survivors.

And these savory rolls are natural companions for fruit spreads like this rhubarb-hibiscus conserve I happened to have in my fridge. These would be a great contribution to a potluck or any kind of occasion where classy finger foods were required (I think there should be more of said occasions, for the record). 

So that was Successful Attempt #1, and the Gruyere popover experience propelled me into this next experiment with the sweet variety. 

Here are the ingredients for the cinnamon popovers I made tonight. I did quite a bit of baking for our family's Easter Dinner today, and that tupperware container happens to be filled with left-over streusel that didn't make it onto my chocolate bobka. I was actually going to wait to make these popovers until next week, but that extra streusel was calling to me, and these rolls are seriously so easy to make that I didn't balk at the idea of taking on one more recipe, even though I'd spent six hours in the kitchen the previous day. 

Not quite as organized with the ingredient preparation this time around (I think Saturday burned me out a little bit, so I was feeling less Type-A than usual), and do you see that red ramekin? That's what happens when I realize I'm one egg short for my recipe and I need to find a quick substitute. Thank God for the internet, right? Apparently baking two pies and a sweet bread used up 11 of the dozen eggs I'd fortified myself with on Saturday morning, so I only had one left when my popovers called for two. I subbed a flour/baking powder/oil/water mixture that seemed to be okay.

Like their savory brothers before, these sweet rolls turned out acceptably popped, though maybe not quite as much as the others. I blame the last-minute egg substitution. The recipe called for dusting them with confectioners sugar, but the streusel was a nice replacement. I also may have forgotten the vanilla (#honestyinthekitchen), but I didn't miss it when I did the habitual warm-out-of-the-oven taste test. 

I wish you could smell my kitchen right now. These would be the perfect easy (yet impressive) breakfast for overnight company, and I hope my co-workers are pleased when I bring them in tomorrow to share. Monday morning is always better with cinnamon and streusel, right? Right.

Thin Mint© Whoopie Pies

Last Sunday you did not get a post because I was on Spring Break in Nashville. But just because I didn't post doesn't mean I didn't bake. Sunday afternoon I was actually elbow-deep in chocolate and marshmallow fluff and mint extract, busy taking this recipe from epicurious for whoopie pies, this recipe for dark chocolate ganache, and Martha Stewart's fool-proof cream filling recipe, and adapting them all to satisfy the craving I've been having lately for Girl Scout Cookies - thin mints, to be more specific.

The chocolate cake sandwich pieces came straight from the epicurious recipe, and then I added 1/4 tsp of both peppermint and spearmint extract to the ganache and the cream filling to create that signature thin mintiness we all know and love. When we assembled the whoopie pies, we put the chocolate-mint ganache on one side of the chocolate cake pieces, mint cream on the other, and then sandwiched them together. The most difficult part of the process came down to deciding whether to use the "peppermint" or plain "mint" extract (which smelled more like spearmint). In the end, the choice was made to split the difference, and I think this worked out well.

I did a poor job of documenting again this time. I would blame my sous chef, who concocted some delicious mint juleps to sip while we were baking (the consumption of which may have distracted me from taking pictures of the baking process), but said sous chef was also responsible for solving my mint flavoring conundrum, so I should probably bite my tongue.

Anyway, here is the finished product. I highly recommend you try to make these some day soon.