Banana Coconut Cream Pie/Tart – with Dulce de Leche

Banana Coconut Cream Pie/Tart – with Dulce de Leche

This is a tropical modification of “Bananoffee” crossed with regular banana cream pie, with a coconut twist. In place of whipped cream or vanilla custard, I used a coconut custard. And wow, did it come out good — the carameliness from dulce de leche, the coconut custard, the bananas… mmmm.  And no baking required (though there is cooking involved).

INGREDIENTS

Crust:
2 cups graham cracker crumbs
2 Tb powdered sugar
1/4 cup toasted coconut
1/4 cup butter, melted

Filling:
1 1/2 cups Dulce de Leche, room temp or luke warm

(custard)
1/2 cup golden sugar
1/3 cup cornstarch
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 1/2 cups coconut milk
3 large egg yolks
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

enough ripe bananas to cover bottom of pie, cut into 1/4″ slices

Topping:
Fresh or dessicated coconut flakes

PREPARATION

For the crust:
Mix all crust ingredients in bowl until well blended. Press into bottom and up sides of 10″ pie or tart pan. Put into freezer to harden.

When crust is solid, spread on the dulce de leche. Place back into freezer.

For the custard:
Whisk sugar, cornstarch, and salt in heavy medium saucepan to blend. Gradually whisk in coconut milk. Whisk over medium heat until custard thickens and boils. Remove from heat and temper egg yolks, then add to the custard along with vanilla.  Return to LOW heat for 1-min. Allow to cool as you cut the bananas.

To finish:
Add sliced bananas to the pie to cover the dulce de leche, then top with warm custard. Spread custard to cover evenly, but slightly higher in the middle. The custard should be quite thick. Sprinkle with coconut flakes.

Cover and place in fridge to chill completely before serving.

Enjoy!

White Chocolate Cheesecake with Graham-Coconut Crust

Cheesecake (tart) with white chocolate, macadamia and coconut. Pure heaven.

White Chocolate Cheesecake

with Graham-Coconut Crust

This is a recipe I came up with on the fly

Crust:
1  1/2 cup graham cracker crumbs
2/3 cup toasted coconut (loose measure, not packed)
1 Tb sugar
1/4 cup butter, melted
2 tb coconut oil (or enough to moisten crumbs)

Filling:
1 8oz bar of Cream Cheese
2 eggs
1/3 cup sugar
1 ts Vanilla
50g white chocolate, melted (2oz)

Topping:
1 bar Ritter Sport White Chocolate with macadamia (or 50gm white chocolate and a handful of toasted macadamia nuts, coarsely chopped)
1 Tb sour cream
1 Tb sugar

Method:
Crust – Combine graham cracker crumbs, toasted coconut and sugar in a bowl. Mix melted butter and coconut oil, then add to the crumbs. Stir until well combined. Pack evenly into a tart or pie pan, forming up the sides, as well. Put into the freezer to harden.

Filling – Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C). In a glass or ceramic bowl, melt the white chocolate and cream cheese together (i use a microwave set on medium for about 1 minute). Heat until just warm enough to melt together, not too hot. Mix until all the white chocolate is incorporated into the cheese. Add the sugar and vanilla; mix well. Add the eggs and mix until uniform. Pour into the chilled crust. Bake immediately at 350°F (175°C) for about 35-min or until center is almost firm but slightly jiggly. Cool to lukewarm before adding topping.

Topping – Coarsely chop up the Ritter Sport bar.  Melt the bar, add sour cream and sugar;  stir well. While still warm and pie/tart is lukewarm, pour topping over the distribute the nuts evenly. Place into fridge and chill completely before serving.

Cheesecake – this is nice in a tart or std pie pan.

Piri-Piri Peanut Muffins (West Africa)

Piri-Piri Peanut Muffins — with a drizzle of honey on top, these muffins have a slight sweetness, a wee bit of spice, and whole lot of peanutty goodness.

PIRI-PIRI PEANUT MUFFINS

Ingredients:
3      c    Flour, all-purpose
2    ts    Baking Powder
1    c    Butter, softened
1    ts    Salt
1   rcp    Piri-Piri seasoning (below)
½     c    Sugar
4   med   Eggs, beaten
1    c    Milk
1½     c    Peanuts (unsalted), roasted and finely chopped
Honey, for topping (optional)

Piri-Piri Seasoning:
2     ts     Bird Chili powder (or Pequin, Cayenne powder)
¾      ts     Ginger powder
½     ts     Cinnamon
¼     ts     Clove powder

Preparation:
Preheat the oven to 400ºF (205ºC).

Sift the baking powder and the flour together.

In a separate bowl, cream the butter, salt, piri-piri seasoning, and sugar until the mixture is homogenous.

Next, mix in the eggs and milk. Combine the flour mixture with the wet mixture; mix until well blended. Fold in 1-cup of the peanuts.

Fill your greased and flour-dusted muffin pans about 2/3 full with the batter. Sprinkle the tops of each muffin with the remaining peanuts.

Bake at 400ºF (205ºC) for 12- to 14-minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Serve the muffins warm.  These are particularly tasty with a bit of honey drizzled over the top.  Leftover muffins can be frozen with good results.

Makes 24 large or 36 medium-sized muffins.

Hungarian Poppy Seed Moon Cake (Makosbeigli)

Hungarian Poppy Seed Moon Cake – An authentic Hungarian recipe from June Meyer. These cakes predate Christianity as the poppy was dedicated to the Moon goddess. Opium-sleep. Every family has its own version, and recipes are handed down through generations by the women.

June Meyer’s Authentic

Hungarian Poppy Seed Moon Cake

(Makosbeigli)

(Recipe is reproduced here with permission from June Meyer)

Makes 4 cakes.

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Here is a recipe for Poppy Seed Moon Cake. I learned to make it from my grandmother and mother who were from Austria-Hungary. Every family has its own version of Mond Kuchen. These cakes predate Christianity as the poppy was dedicated to the Moon goddess. Opium-sleep. The seeds are still called “Moon seeds” in German. The recipes are handed down by the women. The Moon cakes are now usually made around Christmas time when all the fancy baking is done.

Poppy seeds can be purchased in bulk from a German Deli that specializes in imported spices. They should finely grind the seeds for you. You can also grind your own seeds in a coffee grinder. Grind the seeds well. It will make a big difference in the texture. You should not use the poppy seeds that come in small jars. They would be too expensive and not fresh enough.

These cakes can be wrapped in foil and stored in the freezer after they are baked.  Hope you enjoy this cake.

Regards, June Meyer.

Kirk’s Notes:  I got my bulk poppy seeds at a natural foods market that had a large bin full of them.  You can also source them from a bakery supply or perhaps even an Indian foods market.

Oh, and if a poppy seed bagel can be detected by a tox-screen, then eating these babies might raise a few eyebrows down at the lab.  So, you probably don’t want to eat these within 4 days of a tox-screen.

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Poppy Seed Filling

1 pound of freshly ground poppy seeds (finely)
2 cups of sugar
1 cup BOILED milk
¼ cup melted butter
2 teaspoons of grated lemon zest

Mix filling in bowl using only ¾ cup of boiled milk; it should be thick. If not spreadable use the rest of milk. Divide into 4 portions, one for each dough roll-up.

Kirk’s Notes:  I had a difficult time getting all the seeds to grind to a smooth paste, even with my spice grinder. But I got most to blend and still ended up with a nice spreadable paste.  There was still a little crunch to the texture, but that may not be such a bad thing. 

I made the filling ahead of time and kept it in the fridge until I was ready to prepare the dough (the next day).  It stiffened up when cooled, but I found that briefly microwaving the filling (to lukewarm) made it spreadable again.

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Cake Dough

4 cups flour
4 Tablespoons sugar
1 cup lukewarm water
2 eggs slightly beaten
2 cakes yeast reg. or dry
½ cup soft butter
1 teaspoon salt

Crumble yeast in bowl, add water and sugar stirring till mixture liquifies. Blend flour and butter with wire pastry blender. Mix well, mix in eggs, salt and yeast. Mix until dough is smooth and leaves side of bowl clean.  DO NOT LET RISE.

Divide into four portions and roll each out in a rectangular shape spread with filling and roll up like Jelly Roll. Place in greased baking pans. BAKE AT ONCE in a 350ºF (180ºC) oven about 30 to 45 min. or until brown.

Kirk’s Notes:  I live in a hot and humid climate, so I found I needed to add about ¼ to ⅓ cup more flour to get the dough to leave the side of bowl clean. I still had a rather soft dough, so I refrigerated it about 30-minutes before rolling out… and it worked just fine (and did not rise).

I rolled the dough out on parchment paper so as to aid in rolling it up into a strudel and lifting into the baking pan later. Each portion was rolled to a 10″ x 12″ rectangle.

The lukewarm portion of filling was spread over the chilled dough.  I left about a ¾” border on three sides and about 1¼” boarder on the trailing edge of rolling (one of the 10″ sides).  I used the parchment to help roll it up into a strudel.

The rolls were placed into their pans seam-side down; this was achieved by lifting the roll using the parchment with the strudel seam-side up. Lay the strudel to one side of the pan, and then cut the parchment paper close to the edge of the strudel (pan-side).

Then when it is rolled off the parchment, it will be seam-side down and in the center of the pan.

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Makes 4 cakes.

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Hungarian Moon Cake – ready to bake

Hungarian Moon Cake – baked

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A special thanks to June Meyer for keeping this and other Hungarian heirloom recipes alive. For more authentic Hungarian recipes, please click the link to June Meyer’s page on the right sidebar.  Enjoy.