Paris, oh Paris!

Today's our fourth day here and my, how time flies! The weekend breezed by in a flash; D and I did some touristy stuffs in the city, took a short trip to Versailles to visit the magnificent Chateau,  moved into the apartment, my home for the next several months and by the time this entry is posted, I've had a great dinner at a neighborhood bistro nearby, took a short stroll back to the apartment and happily digging into my baked-from-scratch-with-all-French-ingredients

 cake that I had baked earlier this evening!

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Eat your ice-cream, drink your cake!

We are banana people. We love bananas. Every trip to the grocer's would not be without us paying a visit to the banana aisle. It's a must-do, almost like a ritual - regardless of whether we still have any bananas at home - not much thoughts into what we'd be doing with all the unfinished bananas - we simply adore this long, yellow and cheap (less than a buck a pound) fruit! As of last weekend, we had about almost week-old bananas lying on the kitchen island, with a not-so-glorious-yellow hue anymore. So what did we do when we went grocery-shopping during the weekend? We bought another bunch of 8 bananas!
"I'll make you this grilled bananas dessert I made for the guys.....you'll love it!", D said to me at the banana aisle.
"But we still have leftover bananas at home!", I said.
"Well, you need firmer ones for the grill.....just buy it. I'll make it for after-lunch dessert today. I promise you, you'll love the grilled banana dessert!".
It's already mid-week, we did the grilled lunch on Sunday but I've yet to taste his grilled dessert!
Enter this lots-of-ways banana cake. I don't understand why but I have tons of cookbooks yet I only gravitate towards this for my recent bakes. I love experimenting and trying out new recipes, perhaps it was simply poor execution on my part but most of the other recipes I've tried, especially those down-to-earth, comfort-bake types came out short, be it in tastes, texture or pure expectations.

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Spontaneity

Brown Butter Banana Coconut Cupcakes - don't ask me why but this is just one of those spur-of-a-moment urge that I had when I woke up this morning. I was simply feeling adventurous and without any recipes in hand, just eye-balled the ingredient ratios then whipped up a batch of these. So liberating to not follow any recipes for once!!

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Tuesdays with Dorie: Cocoa-Nana Bread

I am so excited! Today marks my debut with Tuesdays with Dorie. TWD is a group of baking-cum-blogging enthusiasts that started with only 6 members couple years ago and has grown to over 450-strong (and counting) today. Group members are all fans of Dorie Greenspan and each week, we would bake a member-selected recipe from Dorie's award-winning book Baking: From My Home to Yours then blog about our bakes on Tuesdays. I joined the group early this year and with a couple of test-bakes under my belt, I'm now ready to get onboard and share this week's pick by Steph of Obsessed with Baking: the Cocoa-Nana Bread  from page 46 of the book.

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A Different Take on Banana: Banana Parcels

I practised making loads of these Lepat Pisang, or Banana Parcels when I was taking Home-Science classes in high-school. Back then, once you get to secondary school (equivalent to high school in the States),  students will be placed in either one of the two available mainstream categories: Home-Science where they'd be taught the basics of food, cooking, sewing and craftwork or Commerce where they'd get a glimpse into the ever-so intriguing world of debits and credits. Which category you end up in was not so much a matter of direct, conscious choice. Come to think of it, a lot of important education and career-related decisions were pretty much "made" for us, not by ourselves or our parents but rather, by the sadly flawed and seriously discriminative education system of my home country which to me, has back-fired and created huge brain drain much more than the government cares to admit. Anyway, this post is not to gripe about the Malaysian education system. I am actually thankful for without the moutainous hurdles, the social and educational inequalities against minorities, I would not have resolved to complete my higher education in USA, graduating with honors, working hard, earning good living, paying property and income taxes to a country that I now proudly call my (new) home today. A country that appreciates talents, honors individuality, welcomes creative innovation and provides an environment that allows any determined person hungry for success to thrive. Most importantly, if it wasn't for the double-standards, I would not have learnt to make these banana parcels!
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Figanut Cupcakes.

I was clearing out the refrigerator crisper section yesterday morning and found a bag of figs.

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