Rob Goes Nanners

Freaking finally. It only took me three days to get this post up. Jeez, I need to start blogging earlier.

Our story begins with Rob deciding to make banana bars, because he wanted to get rid of some sour cream and some cream cheese. In his search for a means of doing so without just eating it straight, he came across http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Frosted-Banana-Bars/Detail.aspx and http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Cream-Cheese-Frosting-II-2/Detail.aspx, which appeared to make a delicious dessert sort of thing that had to be baked (thereby satisfying the New Year's resolution) and used both cream cheese and sour cream.

And then it went to heck. Sweet, delicious heck.

THE STARTING LINEUP

Yeah, we'll start on the right this time. And we'll also start out with the cake on this one. Compared to the last baking venture (the Apple Bavarian Torte with Streusel, or... um... clevernameclevername... Landa's Delight? Was Col. Landa Bavarian? Yeah, they ate strudel... I'll stick with it anyway, because Christoph Waltz is groovy and Green Hornet is coming out soon, but I digress), this was pretty simple prep-wise. But I digress again. Here are the ingredients:

1 greased pie pan (the recipe recommends a jelly-roll pan, which I didn't have. Also, I used demi-sel butter).
125 g unsalted butter
200 g white sugar
100 g brown sugar
2 eggs
1.5 tsp vanilla
Sour cream (~250 g)
250 g flour
2 g/0.25 tsp salt
5 g/1 tsp baking soda (I added about 1.5 tsp by accident/being a clumsy cook, as will be further evidenced later)
4 ripe bananas
Cinnamon
1 tsp honey
1 tbsp cocoa powder

Yeah... About those last few. I'm really not sure how much I added. Especially the cinnamon. Smell and taste liberally I guess? Won't be too hard to taste liberally I imagine.

FOREBODING PORTENTS

And now to the left!

First thing I did was cube the 125 g unsalted butter and mix with the sugar (white and brown) until it was, as I put it in the notebook, "smoothish." As you may have noticed in the picture, it was not smoothish. I have never been good at stirring in butter, and cubing it did not help matters here.

So soften your butter a lot, and don't cube it. It will make things easier.

Alternatively, use an electric mixer, because that's just much better.

Next, I beat in the eggs one at a time and added the vanilla and sour cream. I had to guess on the amount for the sour cream- I had 500 g and tried to spoon out about half. You end up getting some really runny batter, which had me a bit worried. Basically, things were off to a mediocre start in the asylum.

Then you assemble you some dry goods. Namely, you mix the flour, salt, and baking soda and try to avoid adding an absurd amount of baking soda like Rob did, because that was just dumb.

OH HEY GUYS THIS ISN'T SO BAD

Then you mix those dry goods that you just lovingly put together into the soupy batter. And strangely enough, it thickens it up nicely. Whodathunkit, right?

At this point, I peeled 3 bananas and mashed them as best I could before mixing them into the batter. Around this time, since I'm working with a gas oven, I preheated it to T5/T6, which is like 180 C?  Ah, close- 175 C or 350 F or 450ish K. Either way, heated up that oven. Heated her up quite nicely.

And then I padded for space to keep a layout that doesn't look like crap, which is a futile battle here methinks.

OH GOD KILL IT WITH MORE

Yeah, look up at that picture we just finished with. Look at the color of that batter. It's a nice yellowy tan, right? Reminds you of chocolate chip cookies and licking the bowl and saying, "Screw you," (with commas as penance to the English people) to salmonella?

Now look to your right.

That's kinda brown. And there's a story behind that. A story of Rob being stupid and ending up lucky.

So Rob makes this batter, gets the bananas in, and he decides that he's better than recipes. Recipes are for mere mortals (thanks, Dad). Rob is from a lineage of people who don't need no stinkin' recipes. Rob's dad can make chili that, if personified, would basically be Don Draper AND Roger Sterling. The recipe for that chili encourages going off the book and possibly off the grid.

And now s**t gets Greek and Shakespearean and Absurd.

See, Rob sees this batter and thinks, "This would be great with cinnamon. Maybe some vanilla. I won't write down if I put in vanilla, because I don't care about my blog-reading public." See, all 5 of you? Rob's a jerk sometimes. And Rob shakes in some cinnamon. Can't really taste it too well, so he adds some more. Still can't taste it, so he gives up. Then, with absolutely no reason to do so, he adds a teaspoon of honey. Why? Well, it's on hand, and everyone likes honey, right? Never mind that it's in too small a quantity to do any good and is basically just a waste of honey.

But these are innocent mistakes. These are just preludes to something bigger. These are Iago getting Cassio drunk. These are Iago and whathisface yelling at the other whatshisface about black rams and conjoined twin beasts.

Then Rob grabs the cocoa powder. And not like hot cocoa mix. Oh no. 100% baking cocoa (that he wishes Bev would stop using like she does, because he should have more left. This is why he now has a baking nook behind the plant where he stuffs all his kitchen business). And what's this? He's taking a large spoonful of it? Well, I mean, surely he'll just take a small spoonfu-

Nope, he went for the heaping tablespoon. Well, I mean, surely he'll realize that so much chocolate will be a bad idea before he puts it-

Oh geez. He just put in the whole thing. And now the batter is dark brown. And all you can taste is chocolate.

And that's why the recipe lists 4 bananas. He proceeded to mash up a 4th banana to temper the chocolate. More on this later. He then mixed this monstrosity together and shoved it into the oven out of his sight, like a kindergartener picking his nose and wiping it on the underside of his desk puppy that got into the trash.

BEATING THE BAJEEPERS OUT OF THE SWISS

And with that, he started on the frosting. And what did the frosting require?

250 g confectioner's sugar
1 tsp vanilla
125 g unsalted butter
480 g Petit Suisse

And he learned from that previous attempt at creaming things together and didn't cube the butter!

That did absolutely no good. He did his best on the whole mixing thing, threw in the vanilla, and sifted in the sugar (gradually of course) before giving up briefly. Around the time the cake came out of the oven, he gave it another shot and let it warm up and whisked the crap out of it. Didn't get it entirely smooth, but again, soften your butter and/or use an electric mixer, because damn.

PHIL WOULD BE PROUD

The cake came out of the oven after about 45 minutes- Rob had set the oven a bit low (like 160 or 170 C). After a bit, he gave up on the whole time thing and just checked the center of the cake with a knife. Maybe he was harking for a rat?

These attempts at referencing Shakespeare doing anything for you?

Anyway, the knife finally came out clean (though the damned spot wouldn't come out), and he let the business cool. For a long time. This is around when he was doing that re-whisking thing for the frosting. Ultimately, he thought the cake was cool enough to put on the frosting, which was mighty runny, so he had not too high hopes as he put it in the refrigerator so things could maybe set and thicken.

Rob was thoroughly mistaken. As you can see to the left, Rob had himself a nice little piece of it with breakfast (which is in the oven- a bit of bread that would then be buttered and jammed). The frosting thickened up nicely, and the dessert did the nice progression of flavors thing. You know what I mean? Of course not. The banana came in a bit stronger than I'd thought (maybe could have gotten by on 3), but the chocolate was still there, and they didn't really overlap on the palette- you work through one and the next flavor comes on in.

The frosting still has some butter chunks that you'll notice now and again, but that's not necessarily terrible, depending on how enriched your childhood was by sugar sandwiches and such.

It's still around, still delicious, and still very nanners.