Banana Caramel Cream Dessert (sort of...)

So, every so often, while the men folk are out and about going to priesthood meetings, my friend Aleece (of the drive-by breading fame) and I gather ourselves together, play duets on the piano, and eat good stuff. She typically makes something and I typically make something and there's usually over-eating involved (at least on my part). 

I found this recipe a couple of weeks ago and I was looking for an excuse to make it, because I've been looking for an excuse to use my crystal dessert glasses (6 bucks at Ross??) which I've had for well over a year and had yet to be used. This was a good occasional to do all of these things!

I made all of the elements of this dessert in my own kitchen, and then I packed everything into a laundry basket, very carefully checking things off of the list in my brain, and carried it over to Aleece's house so that the desserts could be assembled there.

Guess who forgot the bananas.

Luckily, Aleece had an abundance of blueberries. 

It turns out this is good with both bananas AND blueberries.

Banana Caramel Cream Dessert

Ingredients~

Vanilla Pastry Cream (recipe below)

Bananas

Good quality caramel sauce, or dulce de leche.

Fresh whipped cream (I used 3/4 cup heavy whipping cream and 1 Tablespoon powdered sugar)

Graham Cracker crumble (recipe below)

Vanilla Pastry Cream

2/3 cup sugar (can be reduced to 1/2 cup if you prefer desserts less sweet)

1/4 cup cornstarch

1/2 teaspoon salt

3 cups whole milk

2 eggs

2 Tablespoons butter

1 Tablespoon vanilla extract

Directions:

In a medium bowl,  beat eggs with a fork to combine.  Set aside.

Mix sugar, cornstarch and salt in a medium saucepan.  Gradually pour in milk, while whisking, to make a smooth mixture.  Cook over medium heat, stirring almost constantly, until the mixture thickens and boils.  Continue to cook and stir one minute. 

Pour several tablespoons of the hot mixture into the bowl with the eggs and immediately stir well.  Pour warmed egg mixture into the pan with the rest of the hot milk mixture.  Return to a slow boil, and cook one minute, stirring constantly. 

Remove from heat and stir in butter and vanilla.  Set aside to cool.  When the pan has cooled, place in the refrigerator to fully cool.  If desired, lay a piece of plastic wrap on the top surface of the pastry cream to prevent a skin from forming. 

Graham Cracker Crumble

1 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs (about 10 full sized crackers)

1/3 cup butter, melted

1 Tablespoon sugar

Directions:

Crush crackers in a large ziplock type bag.  Pour crumbs, sugar and melted butter into a bowl and , stir until fully combined.  Pour into a 9"x13" casserole dish and press into a even layer.  Bake at 350*F for 10-12 minutes, until light brown.  Allow to cool.

Dessert assembly~

1.  Spoon about 2 tablespoons graham cracker crumble into individual serving dishes.  Use a small glass to press the crumble into a firm layer.

2.  Add a layer of pastry cream into each dish.  For easy assembly, fill a large ziplock type bag with the pastry cream, snip off the end and fill the dishes from this bag. 

3.  Add a few slices of banana.

4.  Top bananas with a layer of whipped cream.

5.  Add some graham cracker crumble and a drizzle of caramel (scoop caramel or dulce de leche into a small ziplock bag and snip off the end for easy application).

Repeat layers 2-5

Serve immediately or refrigerate up to 3 hours.  Top with a slice of fresh banana just before serving.

Note: If you make 6 desserts, you will have pastry cream and graham cracker crumble left over.  If you want to make more desserts, or one large trifle dish, you will have enough pastry cream and graham cracker crumble for 10-12 individual desserts.  For a large trifle, or more than 6 individual desserts I would double the amount of whipped cream listed above.  

Recipe Source- Final recipe by Glorious Treats.

Vanilla pastry cream recipe adjusted from class notes from a college cooking class I took in 1997. 

Alterations:  You can use box pudding or (heaven forbid...) Cool Whip instead. But only if you want to be super lazy and not have amazing pastry cream and whipped cream. I mean, heavy cream and powdered sugar together??? COME ON!

Let's talk about pastry cream. It is essentially pudding, but more delicious than powder out of a box. Here is the thing about pastry cream though, the reason you put part of the hot mixture into the eggs before putting all of the eggs into the entire hot mixture, is to temper the eggs. If you dump it all in quickly, then the eggs will cook immediately and you'll get scrambled eggs coated in pastry cream.

Now, in a perfect world, or maybe just a world where I'm not in a hurry or being impatient, then I should end up with smooth pastry cream. I was being impatient when I made this, and so I ended up with a few pieces of cooked egg in my cream (pictured above...). I didn't put enough of the hot mixture into the egg mixture and I didn't let it sit together long enough. I would give it about a minute or so to warm up and for the eggs to get used to the temperature.

Never fear though! If you DO end up with a few lumps of egg in your pastry cream, just strain it. So easy. See?

And when you get to the point where you have a perfectly smooth pastry cream, pat yourself on the back because you just made pudding without a box.

The toffee sauce I used was EASILY my favorite part of this dish.

Okay this crumble was pretty awesome too.

So, as pretty as my dessert dishes are, they don't make for showing layers very well, but you get the idea.

This is a GREAT dessert for spring or summer! Very light and sweet :) I had leftovers of all of the components and so I did make it with the bananas, the next day, at home. I couldn't tell you which I liked more, the bananas or the blueberries. They were both quite good.

Recipe Source: Glorious Treats and I got my toffee/caramel sauce recipe from here (I left out the salt for this dessert's sake)

Boston Cream Cupcakes

I got this wonderful book about a year ago called "A Baker's Field Guide to Cupcakes" and I had yet to actually make something out of it. Luckily, my mom likes Boston cream pie so it was a good excuse to make the Boston cream cupcakes. I highly recommend this recipe and I recommend the entire book! It's got some great looking cupcakes, for every occasion, with really easy instructions.

There's 3 different recipes to create this whole thing so GET EXCITED! Don't be intimidated by that. It has a lot of steps but these are really quite easy to make and to put all the DELICIOUS elements together :)

Yellow Cupcakes:

Ingredients

12 paper liners

1 1/2 c all-purpose flour

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 c unsalted butter, at room temperature, cut into small pieces

3/4 c sugar

1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

2 large eggs

1/2 c milk, at room temperature

1. Preheat oven to 350, place liners in cupcake pan.

2. Whisk flour, baking powder, and salt together in a small bowl, set aside.

3. In a large bowl, on medium speed, beat butter until creamy, about 2 minutes. Add sugar gradually, beating until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Beat in vanilla. Beat in eggs one at a time, mixing completely after each one. Add the flour mixture in 4 additions, alternating with the milk. Begin and end with the flour.

4. Divide batter into liners, and bake for about 18 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center shows a few moist crumbs.

5. Cool pan on rack for 5 minutes, then remove cupcakes to cooling rack.

Pastry Cream:

Ingredients

1 1/2 c milk

1 vanilla bean

4 large egg yolks

1/3 c sugar

3 tbl all-purpose flour

Pinch of salt

1. Place milk in a medium size nonreactive (whatever the heck this is, I have no idea. I just used a regular pot) pot. Split vanilla bean down center and scrape all the seeds into the milk. Add the vanilla bean to the milk as well. Bring to a boil over medium heat. Remove from heat, but keep warm. Let bean steep for 15 minutes.

2. Meanwhile, whisk the egg yolks and sugar together in a large bowl until creamy. Whisk in flour and salt until smooth.

3. Remove the vanilla bean from the milk. Reheat milk until it just comes to a simmer. Pour about one quarter of the warm milk over the egg yolk mixture, whisking gently. Add remaining milk and whisk to combine. Immediately pour mixture back into the pot and cook over low-medium heat. Whisk continuously until thickened, about 8 minutes, but do not let it boil. The pastry cream should be thick enough to mound when dropped from a spoon.

4. Allow pastry cream to cool; stir frequently to release heat. When almost at room temperature, scrap into airtight container and refrigerate for at least 4 hours or until thoroughly chilled. This can be made up to 3 days ahead. (word to the wise: when you put this in the fridge, put it in a bowl and cover it with plastic wrap, with the wrap actually pushed against the whole top of it. This will keep it from developing a weird film on top)

Ok now let me tell you what I did for this. I don't have access to vanilla beans in Tyler. As wonderful as Tyler, Tx is, I have yet to find a place that sells that kind of stuff. So I used 1 tsp of vanilla instead. Instead of letting it sit for 15 minutes (I had no bean to steep...), after the milk and vanilla came to a boil, I let it simmer until I had the egg mixture done. Since it was still so heated up when I added it all together, it didn't take 8 minutes to reach the correct consistency, it took about 1 minute. These are just notes to keep in mind in case you ever do this :)

Ganache (the easiest, most finger-lickin part):

Ingredients

2/3 c heavy cream

10 oz semisweet or bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped (if you just use chips then that eliminates the chopping part!)

1. Place cream in a medium saucepan and bring to a boil over medium heat.

2. Remove from the heat and immediately add chocolate into cream. Cover and allow to sit for 5 minutes. The heat of the cream should melt the chocolate. Gently stir the ganache until smooth. If the chocolate is not melting, place over very low heat, stirring often, until melted.

3. The ganache is ready! :) Lick the spoon/spatula/whatever...

Now to put all this wonderful goodness together!!!!

1. Place pastry cream in a bag fitted with a tip that's about 1/4 in. at the opening. Insert into the center of each cupcake, like so:

Squeeze to fill. As soon as the top of the cupcake begins to expand and crack, ease up - the cupcake has taken as much filling as it can. If any oozes out, wipe it away before glazing.

This is what they'll look like!

Reheat ganache if necessary to bring it to a fluid state. Use a small offset spatula to apply about 1 tbl to the top of each cupcake. Bon appetit!!

I know it seems like a lot, but seriously this tastes like an eclair in cupcake form. So good! Enjoy :)