I had every intention of telling you a story about me as my next post, but after making heaven, I'm afraid it's a food blog instead. Today I made:
I don't normally give you recipes and all if it's a recipe I got from Pinterest, like this one is. But today I'll make the exception because this is so good I want you to make it now! Ok, probably not many of you have frozen sliced bananas in your freezer like I do, so you can't make it now, but get chopping.
Ingredients:
1 and a half medium sliced and frozen bananas
3 T (that means tablespoon) unsweetened cocoa powder
2 T cream (I used whole whipping cream, yum, any extra will become whipped cream)
1/2 tsp (that means teaspoon) vanilla extract
The recipe says it makes two servings, no, I'm eating both right now. This makes about one big scoop of ice cream. And I mean Z big, so probably 2 scoops for the average ice cream eater. Well I grabbed my ingredients, washed my blender, took my pictures and was ready to go. This comes from a website that says Magic One-Ingredient Ice Cream, but that's a major lie, isn't it? If I only used one ingredient it would either be already made ice cream, or frozen bananas. I bet frozen and blended bananas doesn't taste too bad, but how can they claim one ingredient when you need more? Maybe they just mean if you have frozen bananas there are many ways you can make them into ice cream.
I forgot the next step. A very important step: read the directions. I saw the word: blend, and that's what I did. I mixed and I blended and *poof* the cocoa powder filled the blender. What you should do to prevent that mess, although it was funny and cool to see, is blend just the bananas first, then add everything else and blend until creamy. If you are patient, you can now freeze your ice cream, but if you are like me, after you lick the spoon off you will be licking out as much as possible from the blender and then devouring the rest of the chocolate ice cream within your reach! Yes, I put my tongue in harm's way and even licked out the area around the blade. I have an old blender that comes apart into several pieces. That means the blade has also been dulled from years of use, so don't worry, my tongue is fine. With this result I have to give a Grade: A++, ok, two pluses might seem extreme, but I can see myself forgoing buying store chocolate ice cream and just making a quart of this myself instead. No joke, this surpasses some store bought chocolate ice creams. And since bananas are so cheap I bet I could make a quart of this ice cream for a couple bucks or less.
I was afraid that 3 T of cocoa powder would be too much, it really looked like a lot, but don't worry, this is still very sweet and super chocolatey! The sweetness from the bananas keeps the ice cream from being too dark, although I like 60-80% dark chocolate. Above 80% starts getting too dark for me. I think the German blood in me allows me to appreciate dark chocolate perhaps a bit more than some other people do.
Last night as I relaxed watching Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and catching up on episodes of Bones my sweet tooth kicked in. Once again I turned to Pinterest for a quick snack idea involving bananas. The link on the pin takes you someplace that doesn't seem to be at all related to bananas but the idea was written on the pin so the link on the title above will take you to the pin and not the website. You cut up a banana, pour on the honey, and sprinkle on cinnamon. They show a lot of cinnamon in their photo but I used less and was perfectly pleased so I imagine the amount of cinnamon used it up to you. I used a lot of honey, though, so I could really dip those slices and drown them in honey.
I was very, very pleased with the results. What a quick, easy, and super tasty way of satisfying a sweet tooth as well as getting potassium into your diet. I obviously am at no risk of running out of potassium from the number of bananas I've been eating, but for anyone looking for a way to make bananas palatable this is a great way to try! When I was younger I loved the crisper bananas with green still on them and the yellow ones, or *shudder* bananas with spots were just vile to me. So if you are like that or have kids you are trying to get to eat a banana, this is a healthy and easy way that just might work. I can't make any promises of course, kids are fickle. I give this snack a Grade: A and this will be a go-to snack when I have yellow or spotted bananas sitting around waiting for me to eat or freeze them.
 |
| This picture was taken after the mac and cheese had been sitting for nearly an hour, so if it looks a little dry, that's why. |
Fear not, I won't let you leave without letting you know how to make the mac and cheese I raved to D about. Remember, the titles are the links to recipes I get online. If I post an "original" recipe, meaning one I didn't get from the internet (although it may already be out there) I will post the recipe here for you.
The name isn't lying! This is super creamy and cheesy mac and cheese. It calls for half of a can of evaporated milk and 1-2 cups of shredded cheese. Well, I love cheese, so I used more. First you cook the noodles by themselves, and I learned that 5 minutes of boiling 12 oz of noodles wasn't quite long enough. I'm used to cooking the individual servings of Easy Mac in the microwave for 3 minutes so I thought 5 minutes was pushing it, guess not. They were still cooked, but the noodles were slightly tougher than I would prefer. Aside from that little hitch, everything else was really easy. I shredded what was left of the 8 oz. block of sharp cheddar and got a little over 2 cups of cheese. Remember to keep the burner on when adding the shredded cheese to help it melt. I got all of the 2+ cups of cheese to melt into the pot and added the entire can of evaporated milk to keep things from getting too dry.
I love this recipe! I did not add salt or pepper since I figured the cheese would have plenty of salt already in it. I would say that this super cheesy, amazingly creamy mac and cheese could use something extra for flavor, though. I love it just as it is but if anyone knows a spice or herb that would make this even more amazing I would love to hear it! I think chopped up ham would add that extra flavor, but I imagine a dash of some spice could do that, too. Again, another Grade: A recipe. This makes a nice big pot of mac and cheese and for a college student living on her own it will last me about 5 meals since I eat way too much of it in one sitting. I would like to experiment with different cheeses to see how that changes the flavor. This recipe is certainly a make again, though.
*Edit-I just added salsa to it and it is magical! Wow, I will definitely make this again. Hopefully next time D is over so I don't eat the whole pot myself in a week.
The blogger says the seasoning is the key to this recipe and obviously I missed that. She has seasoned salt and my spice rack does not have that. Some people also look at this as a healthier version of mac and cheese because it doesn't use the cheese powder packet, no. This is not healthy. So if you are looking for healthy this recipe is not it, but if you want creamy and cheesy you came to the right spot. 4 T of butter does not count as healthy in my book. My sister is a fan of butter in recipes. She accidentally doubled the amount of butter in peanut butter cookies for me last weekend, but I ate those cookies faster than I've ever eaten cookies before, so it was a winning idea.
There you have three more winning ideas and some pitfalls you can avoid when trying them. Happy cooking! I'll tell you about the excitement in the biology lab when I get a chance to sit down long enough this weekend. Have a great Friday!
It all looks so very good!
ReplyDelete