This week I was asked to bring a dessert when we went over to the Papa’s for dinner. When I get asked, which I enjoy bringing a dessert, my mind starts racing.
My mind wonders if I should make something I’ve made in the past. Maybe take a risk and make something brand new. Should it be a cake, pie, crumble, cookie, ice cream, dessert bread? Single-layer. Double-layer, Triple-layer. Does it need a filling or a glaze? The possibilities are endless.
Then too, I must also take into account what I have in the pantry, refrigerator, or cabinets. If I choose a certain dessert that I want to make, and then don’t have an ingredient, do I then rethink or go shopping (just for the record, usually I’ll go shopping, in case you were wondering).
After a little thought, I decided I wanted to make a double layer cake with a fruity flavor. I finally settled on a banana cake, a recipe I had not made before. I’m not really sure why a banana cake other than I had been craving some banana bread, and one can never go wrong with banana and chocolate.
There was one ingredient I did have to go buy—buttermilk. There is a way to make it at home by adding vinegar, or lemon juice, to regular milk. It works in a pinch, but it isn’t as good as the real thing.
The recipe called for ripe bananas, which we had bananas, but not ripened ones. I had tried a recipe once that had me microwave the bananas to “juice” it. The bananas went in for 30-seconds, which was long enough to soften them up to get a good mash.
My last decision was how to pipe the icing. To do it as pictured in the recipe, or add a little ripple. In the end, I decided to go with what was shown in the recipe. Mainly the decision came down to the size of my piping tips. Only one was large enough to do anything close to what was pictured.
The end result, as one Papa put it, was so good he had to have some for breakfast the next day. Can’t get any better than that as a compliment!
Personal Reflections of a Middle-Aged Man 