banana brulée & ice cream

January 13, 2011
fudgy success with cookie + cream ice cream
Last night was probably the worst baking disaster of my entire baking career thus far. Worst than the time my chouquettes fell flat, the time the icing melted off the cake, and the time my cupcakes exploded. After I mixed and left (what I thought was) my loaf of lavender banana bread, 35 minutes later I took it out of the oven and realized: I forgot to add flour.
what i found when i opened the oven
After several minutes of panicking and self deprecation, my roommate Sarah decided to try the concoction I had made. She found a spoon, took the tiniest little scoop... and it was good. Even though it was pretty much just sugar and bananas at this point, I figured that I'd salvage what I could by taking the denser sections into ramekins, baking them until they bubbled, and served ice cream on top. Sure, this is not actually a brulée... but the sugar, bananas and spices came together strangely well sans flour so I'm calling this baking disaster-turned-success whatever the hell I want.
experiments with ramekins
sweet banana sugar mush
Note: In each of these pictures the brulée looks like straight chocolate. There was absolutely no chocolate in the recipe, but the mixture ended up tasting like hot fudge. Go figure.

15 comments:

  1. stop it. stop it right now. i will pay for you to fly to europe if you make this for me!!!

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  2. I linked back to your banana recipe and wow, those are gorgeous... Where did u get the lavender? Or did u pick it from a shrub? I have several... don't feel bad, I've left out many an ingredient..

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  3. love!! salvaging baking disasters is the most gratifying feeling ever.

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  4. Way to improvise!! That looks delicious!

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  5. Holy deliciousness! That is weird though...it totally looks all chocolately.

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  6. Jenni- I definitely accept your offer.

    Kalei's Best- I bought the lavender at a tea shop in Germany. You're normally just supposed to steep them for tea, but I chopped up the leaves as finely as I could then added them to to the bread :)

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  7. Yum. i heart your posts!

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  8. Haha how funny :) I love that it turned out so well it actually looks pretty good

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  9. oh wow! very very impressed that you turned this disaster into something that looks so incredibly delicious...i should try and do that more often! usually i'm so discouraged that i just throw the whole thing away!

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  10. That's so weird! But awesome! haha Sounds like you just invented a dessert. :P

    :o)Sarah
    restlessromantic.blogspot.com

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  11. wait, let me get this straight....

    lavender banana bread?!?! i must know more of this, please. i feel like my life is about to begin.

    even so, this looks absolutely fantastic, even without flour. at least you didn't do the mistake i almost did last week, almost forgot to add the sugar! oh silly me.

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  12. gotta love the resourcefulness. my mom's a caterer, and she's an amazing cook but she has a lot of problems with desert for some reason. on a few occasions the lemon souffle or pie or cake just was not servable. luckily she's famous for her "parfaits" which is basically just taking the aesthetically ruined desert and layering it with berries and whipped cream. this totally reminded me of that :)

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