Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Tuesdays with Dorie—Black-and-White Banana Loaf

Black-and-White Striped Banana LoafBananas, a touch of rum and lemon, and chocolate combine in this delicious banana loaf.

A while ago I saw a blog post about zebra cake. Farida, from Farida's Azerbaijani Cookbook posted about a zebra cake she carefully made by adding a tablespoonful at a time of white batter and chocolate batter. When I went to make this Black-and-White Banana Loaf for Tuesdays with Dorie, it seemed like the right time to try it out. However, I failed to double-check the method and just did layers of white and chocolate batter instead. Although this gave me a neat looking striped cake, I’d love to try making it again using Farida’s technique. Here’s another person who gave zebra cake a try and put her results and method on Flickr.

This recipe made 12 cupcakes using Square Shaped Cupcake Liners by Wilton. I also baked half in white party cups. Since these party cups had straight sides, they worked better for showing off the stripes because the stripes were more even. I baked them for 30 minutes.

Campfire Banana Splits
We’ve been spending a lot of time around a campfire this summer. And although s’mores are the most popular, my personal favorite are campfire banana splits, another take on bananas and chocolate.

1 large banana, unpeeled, stems removed
chocolate pieces (use your favorite)
mini marshmallows
whatever else you’d like (crushed oreos, coconut, Smarties, nuts)

Spray aluminum foil.

Slice the peel of the banana from one end to the other, and slice the banana inside into chunks. Stuff the banana with chocolate, marshmallows, and whatever else you want. Wrap with the aluminum foil.

Place on the grill or right in the coals of the fire.

Leave in long enough to melt the chips and the marshmallows.

Recipe

Ingredients for Black-and-White Banana LoafYou can find the recipe for Black-and-White Banana Loaf in the book Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan. To see how the rest of the TWD group fared with this week's recipe, click here and then click on each blogger! Thanks to Ashlee from A Year In The Kitchen who chose the recipe for this week.
Black-and-White Striped Banana LoafTasting Notes
These were delicious with the chocolate and banana flavor in each bite. We took these camping and enjoyed them as part of our breakfast. I'll definitely be making these again!

Recipe for Next Week (August 12)
Blueberry Sour Cream Ice Cream on page 434 chosen by Dolores of Chronicles in Culinary Curiosity.





37 comments:

Anonymous said...

What a great idea! I love them!

chocolatechic said...

I tried to zebra mine too, but my chocolate was just so much heavier than the white part.

Anonymous said...

How cute are those! The stripes are perfect! And I LOVE the campfire banana split idea! I'm going to have to try that!

NKP said...

Wow, I love the first shot of the striped cake on a stick, sticking out of a banana. You are amazing.

Susie Homemaker said...

Ummm, here's the thing. We all took a vote and decided you have to go.
You are making the rest of us look stupid.
So I looked around the room, and everyone voted you off the TWD island. I tried to stop it, to protest, but then I smacked myself into agreeing with the other (mes) in the room.
I will certainly miss you. It's been fun.

Nancy/n.o.e said...

cute little baby zebras!

Nancy

marae said...

your striped cakes are so fun!! i did mini ones as well and they were definitely great to eat. the marbling was awesome to play around with.

Anonymous said...

Don't worry...we won't let them vote you off the island. LOL.

Square cupcakes? This might be going too far...cupcakes are round and shapely and sweet and cuddly and curvy and cute and lend themselves to smileys...square cupcakes are a whole different ballgame...LOL!

Everything looks wonderful, post is wonderful, photos are wonderful, you are wonderful...we all look forward to tuning in each week. When are you coming home anyway? This is really disheartening that you are doing all these marvelous things over campfires and in someone else's kitchen! Those are supposed to be handicaps!

Anne said...

Those zebra cakes look wonderful! I always love reading your posts- beautiful and informative. Nice job Shari!

The Food Librarian said...

so darn cute! seriously cute and creative!!!

Jules Someone said...

I like the stripes. They're cool!

Tara said...

Those were so cute!!!

CB said...

I know you know how I feel about cupcakes - CUTE! add in zebra stripes and its even cuter. Great job!
Clara @ iheartfood4thought

Rigby said...

Very clever! I may try this technique next time!

Heather B said...

I love the zebra cakes! Too cute!

Anonymous said...

love the zebra striped cupcakes, very cute. and i've never seen a zebra cake like farida's. can't wait to see how yours comes out if you decide to give it a try. :)

PheMom said...

I am loving the layered look as cupcakes! Very cool. I love that you are doing the campfire banana splits too - I was just talking to a friend about how long it has been since I did that - we always called them banana boats!

Linda said...

the zebra effect on your little cakes is gorgeous...

I'm salivating over your campfire banana split recipe!!!!

Linda

Engineer Baker said...

Love the layers, and thanks for the tutorial link. Too cool.

Eleganza Strings/ The DeLadurantey Family said...

You get our votes!

Anonymous said...

They're beautiful, just beautiful.

Jacque said...

Showoff!! LOL :)

Those are just too cute to eat. Great job! I'm so glad you linked to Farida's post, because I wanted to try it but couldn't remember who did it. SO, thanks!

Tammy said...

Wow, I love that layered look! I am going to have to try to copy it!

Clumbsy Cookie said...

So cute to make it stripped instead of swrirled! I love the adorable pop on the first picture!

Mari said...

Thanks for the linkage! I'd never come across Farida's blog before! The zebra cake method is amazing! Can't wait to give it a try!

Anonymous said...

LOVE those campfire banana splits!! Wow, what a creative and great idea. I'll take a banana split any way I can get it. What's not to love...

Anonymous said...

How perfect!!!

Unknown said...

Beautiful layers, and the square shape too!

Mary Ann said...

Could you do anything cuter?! I love what you did with this. I aspire to your level of creativity!

Michelle said...

Love the zebra pops...such a cool idea and so fun!

Anonymous said...

OH, I've been bookmarking those zebra cake pics, too. Amazing. What a cool idea!

Liliana said...

I love those zebra stripes! What a great idea. Thanks for sharing Fraida's blog!

Michelle H said...

Those muffins look amazing! :o)

Kana said...

I love your rendition of the banana bread!

food makes me happy said...

Wow, this is totally doable for me,
Definitely have to give it a try!

HangryPants said...

These look great! I noticed you used silicone cup cake "pans" and was wondering whether you would recommend them? They seem like a great solution to muffins that stick to their paper liners.

Thanks,
Heather

Shari said...

Thanks everyone for stopping by!

Heather (hangrypants) - I used silicon cupcake liners and they worked great! The cupcakes came out of the liners easily (and I didn't bother spraying them before baking either). I highly recommend them. They look cute too!

-Shari