TWD: Black and more black Banana Loaf

It's been a busy couple of weeks and I'm just now getting around to posting my last 2 TWD's. Please forgive me, I'm a slacker and my mom was visiting, and well, I was lazy too.

I made the Black and White Banana Loaf (selected by Ashley of A Year in the Kitchen, one of my favorite food blogs) a couple weekends ago and as you can see from the pic, it wasn't so much Black AND White, as it was Black and then a little more Black! Apparently I got a little over zealous with the swirling part and I mixed the two batters a little too much. I intended to make this again and not swirl it so much, but time got away from me and all I have is this one sad little picture of a black banana loaf.

Many TWD's reported problems of the batter being very runny and thin, and I have to agree, the batter was extremely runny and when I was attempting to create the swirl, it just sort of mixed all together. Despite not looking very pretty, it tasted great and the chocolate and banana combo was really nice. I do want to make this again, 1. so I can redeem myself and prove that I can marble without overmixing, and 2. so I can eat more of it since it was so tasty.

Even with runny batter and not so great marbling, this was still a great recipe. I have yet to make anything from Dorie's book that wasn't great!! Buy the book if you haven't already, trust me, it's spectacular.

TWD: Summer Fruit Galette

This week's TWD recipe was selected by Michelle in Colorado Springs.

I must admit, when I saw that this week's recipe was yet another fruit dessert, I wasn't very excited. I'm more of a cookie, cake, chocolate chocolate chocolate kind of girl. But then I remembered how amazing the Double Crusted Blueberry Pie was, and how delicious Dorie's pie crust is, and my mouth started watering a bit.

For this dessert, I ended up using peaches, apricots and plums as part of Dorie's recipe called for; I skipped the nectarines and rhubarb. My original idea for this recipe was to make it tropical and use pineapple, mango, papaya and kiwi. I wasn't sure how kiwi would bake though and my husband said he doesn't like tropical fruits, so that plan got tossed out the window. I might try it sometime though because it sounds really good in theory, so if you've ever baked with kiwi before and it worked out well, please leave me a comment and let me know.

I used peach preserves on the bottom of the crust before adding the fruit. Dorie suggests ginger preserves, but I already had peach on hand and just used that. I also completely forgot to add the graham cracker crumbs on the bottom, which I think definitely would have helped since my fruit did seem particularly juicy. Dorie says that adding graham cracker crumbs helps to soak up some of the juice, and that's a tip that I am going to try to remember next time.

But I was so happy with how the Galette turned out, it was lip-smacking good with a dollop of whipped cream on top. We had dinner with some friends on Saturday night and I took this over for dessert and everyone raved about it. I will definitely make this recipe again.

My husband continually called my beautiful Galette a "Fruit Pizza" so I had to pinch him a few times and correct his error. Then he decided to call it a "gillette" as in the razor blades. Men!

TWD: Cherry Rhubarb Cobbler

This week's TWD recipe was selected by Amanda from Like Spinkles on a Cupcake. You can find the recipe here on her blog.

I'm not going to lie...I hate rhubarb. My grandmother always used to make strawberry rhubarb pies and when we were kids she would tell us it was just strawberry pie. Then you'd bite into a big chunk of rhubarb and...blech!! Thanks Grannie!

So there I stood in the grocery store with rhubarb in hand ready to face my fears and just make this cobbler, rhubarb and all. I had secretly hoped that the grocery store wouldn't even have rhubarb in stock because it's close to being out of season in this area...but darn them, there it was! So step by step through the produce section I kept saying to myself...you can do it, you can do it...but that little girl inside who always spit out the rhubarb chunks from Grannie's "Strawberry Pie" said...hold up! There's no way I'm eating rhubarb!

So I put the rhubarb back and grabbed some granny smith apples. And the little girl inside smiled and said...suck it, rhubarb! :)



This cobbler recipe was very good. I thought the addition of the ground ginger gave it a very fresh taste and the topping was very tender and soft inside and crumbly and crunchy on the outside. My husband even enjoyed it quite a bit, and he's not much of a fruit fan. With a couple scoops of vanilla bean ice cream, this was a perfect hot summer evening dessert.