E Cooks: Banana Coffee Cake

It's been a long time since my daughter has helped me out with a recipe, so yesterday when E volunteered to assist me with breakfast, I eagerly set her to work measuring and stirring. I had the recipe all worked out on paper, so I didn't think there'd be much opportunity for her to contribute creatively. As she does with any endeavor, she asked a thousand questions: "What's the difference between baking powder and baking soda?" "Why do you add salt when cake isn't salty?" "Why do you call it 'flax egg' when there isn't any egg in it?" Though she often takes her interrogations to ridiculous extremes ("If we shot the batter into space..."), on this particular occasion she asked a lot of good questions that gave me the chance to educate her a little on baking--or at least the little I know about baking.

When it came time to add the banana to the cake, she stopped me with a question: "What, only one banana? It needs more than that or it's not really banana cake!" I had to agree, so I dutifully added another banana. And you know, the higher fruit to batter ratio just might have been what made this cake so incredibly delicious.



It's creamy. It's sweet. It's so creamy and sweet that I almost called it Banana Pudding Cake. The bananas melt down to a creamy layer that dissolves into the cake around it so that it's hard to tell where bananas end and cake begins.

All four of us--my crew plus E's friend G--were amazed at how good this was. D and I actually had the same articulate response: "Mmmmm. Ohhhh." In fact, this cake may have been too good: with 4 of us and only 6 pieces, there weren't enough "seconds" to go around. Perhaps it would be better to serve it as dessert after a full meal than to count on it as a filling breakfast because it will just make you want more!



Banana Coffee Cake
(printer-friendly version)

I like to use turbinado or demerara sugar for the topping because the coarse texture adds crunch, but feel free to use any natural (or brown) sugar.

1 tablespoon flax seeds, ground
4 tablespoons warm water
1/4 cup turbinado sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/3 cup soy yogurt
1/3 cup vanilla soymilk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/3 cup agave nectar
1 cup white whole wheat flour (or whole wheat pastry flour)
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 bananas

Preheat the oven to 375F and oil a pie pan or an 8-inch square baking dish.

Mix the ground flax seeds with the warm water and set aside to thicken.

Mix the turbinado sugar and cinnamon together in a small bowl. Set aside.

Combine the soy yogurt, soymilk, vanilla, and agave nectar in a bowl. Add the flax mixture.

Combine the flour, baking powder, and salt. Pour the soy yogurt mixture into the flour mixture and stir just until combined. Pour half of the batter into the prepared pan and spread to cover the bottom. Slice the bananas and place the slices over the batter. Sprinkle with half of the cinnamon-sugar. Spread the remaining batter over the bananas. Sprinkle with the remaining cinnamon-sugar. Bake for 25 minutes, or until cake appears set in the middle. Allow to cool for a few minutes before cutting into 6 slices and serving.

Makes 6 servings. Per serving: 211 Calories (kcal); 1g Total Fat; (5% calories from fat); 4g Protein; 49g Carbohydrate; 0mg Cholesterol; 308mg Sodium. Weight Watchers: 4 Flex Points.

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If you're looking for easy recipes that kids like to make as well as eat, take a look at some of our other E Cooks collaborations:

Banana Coconut Bars
E's Fruit Salad with Strawberry Sauce
Southern-Style Banana Pudding
Rainbow Stir-Fry

My other coffee (aka "breakfast") cakes:

Pineapple Coffee Cake
Coconut Chai Breakfast Cake
Sugar-Free Coconut Chai Breakfast Cake

E Cooks: Banana-Coconut Bars

The bananas were growing more spotty and fragrant by the hour, and my daughter E was experiencing a rare social slump (in other words, she was at home). I'm not a believer in signs from the universe, but I can spot a good opportunity when I see one, so I knew that if I was going to get E into the kitchen to cook something with me, this was the time. Lately she's been completely uninterested in helping me with any dish that involves eggplant, black-eyed peas, or any other vegetable (what a surprise), but I thought that if I could offer her something sweet to cook, she'd jump at the chance.

But for some reason, when I said "banana-coconut bars," she said "Yuck!" Maybe it was the word "bar," but I had to coax her into the kitchen with promises of her photo on the blog. (Unlike her mother, who has been known to dive under tables to avoid being photographed, E sees a camera and practically throws herself in front of it.) Whatever reluctance she had quickly dissolved as she decreed that I was allowed to do nothing, she would do it all. Well, everything except fetch ingredients and clean up afterward--I could do that!



Before we started, I found a recipe that looked easy enough and made a few changes to reduce the fat, sugar, and sodium. Waikiki Banana Bars came highly rated, and they were already vegan, a definite plus. So I substituted silken tofu for the shortening and tried to take them in a more tropical direction by using coconut and rum.

I was really surprised at the way the bars turned out. The banana, vanilla, coconut, rum, and cinnamon combine to create a totally new kind of taste, something I really can't describe. But they were good. D raved about them, and more importantly, E came very close to admitting she was wrong. Oh, she liked them--loved them, in fact--but she claims it was only because of her cooking expertise that they came out so delicious. Sheesh, what a prima donna!



Banana-Coconut Bars
(printer-friendly version)

These bars are dense and chewy, and they have a tendency to be tough on the outer edges of the pan, so be careful not to overstir the batter, which causes fat-free baked goods to toughen up, or to overbake them.

1/4 cup silken tofu, lite or regular
3/4 cup brown sugar or Sucanat
1/2 tablespoon vanilla extract
1/2 tablespoon rum (or 1/2 teaspoon rum extract)
2 large bananas, mashed
1 1/2 cups unbleached flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup sweetened flake coconut

For topping:
1/3 cup powdered sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350F and oil or spray a 13x9-inch baking dish.

Mash or blend the tofu until smooth. Add the sugar and blend with a fork until creamy. Add the vanilla, rum, and mashed bananas, and stir well.

Sift the flour, baking powder, and salt into a large bowl. Stir in the coconut. Make a well in the middle and pour in the banana mixture. Stir only enough to moisten the flour (over-stirring makes them tough). Pour into the baking dish and put into the oven. Bake for 25-30 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out dry.

Remove from the oven and while warm, cut into bars. Sprinkle the mixture of powdered sugar and cinnamon over the bars, reserving some to sprinkle onto the serving platter. Remove each bar and put it on the platter.

Enjoy warm or at room temperature. Leftovers make a great, quick breakfast.

Makes 12 nice-sized bars. Each contains 135 Calories (kcal); 1g Total Fat; (7% calories from fat); 2g Protein; 30g Carbohydrate; 0mg Cholesterol; 234mg Sodium; 1g Fiber.

Tags: vegan recipes vegetarian cooking food fat-free

E's Fruit Salad with Strawberry Sauce

I've got a couple of new bloggy happenings to announce today. First of all, some of you have already noticed the new format. I've spent all week redesigning the blog so that in addition to the bright, shiny new page header, it has a three-column layout that, I hope, will make it easier for people to find what they're looking for. All of the essential links--to the search box, the home page, the recipe index, my blog list, and Frequently Asked Questions--are easy to find right at the top of each page. If you're looking for different ways to navigate the site, such as by date of posting or by topic, look a little further down the sidebars, where you'll also find links to the answers to specific questions, like "What's that cake in the header photo?" and "What kind of camera do you use?" And you may have noticed that I now have an advertiser. Let's face it, someone needs to pay the enormous website hosting bills I'm accumulating! I'm very grateful to the BlogHer Ad Network for providing the ads and for assuring me that no meat products will be advertised.

The second new feature, heralded by the logo you see to the left, is something I've been hoping to do for a while, but it took a 10-year-old to finally put it into practice. A lot of parents come here looking for vegan dishes that their kids will eat, and I thought what better way to find out what works for children than to have an actual kid help with the creation and cooking of the recipes. My thought was to have my daughter, known here as E, choose the dish to be prepared and come into the kitchen with me to help tweak it to her taste and cook it.

Well, that was the plan. And I'd been thinking about it all summer without doing anything to get it going when E took the initiative and told me that she'd be making our dessert all by herself. And what's more, she'd be photographing it and writing up the recipe, and I wasn't allowed to help.



I managed to snap a couple of shots of her as she sliced the first ingredient, but after that (and several warnings about the sharpness of the knife) it was all up to her. She came up with her own unique preparation of fruit salad using the fruit we had on-hand and some strawberries we'd frozen earlier this summer, took the photo below, and emailed me her instructions. Here they are exactly as she wrote them, with a few notes from me in brackets:



E's Fruit Salad with Strawberry Sauce

Fruit salad:

1banana
2 honeydews [mom's note: 2 slices of a very large honeydew]
1 apple
1 peach

Sauce:

put 6 or more [frozen] strawberries in microwave
cook on high for 1:00
mash up with fork
add sugar [not too much!]
add lime or lemon juice
stir well
[pour over chopped fruit and serve]
[makes about 3 servings]



E's Tip: Always test your fruit first to make sure it's good!

Thanks, E, for a delicious fruit salad and for getting us started with E Cooks. We'll be going into the kitchen together and coming up with another kid-tested recipe soon!

Tags: vegan recipes vegetarian cooking food fat-free

Southern-Style Banana Pudding

A few weeks ago, E. and I had lunch together at a local restaurant that serves "Southern Style" food. At the end of the meal, E. spied the dessert cart, which contained, among other tempting dishes, banana pudding. E. had never seen banana pudding layered between vanilla wafers before, but I told her that my mother had made it a lot when I was growing up. She looked at me as though I must be the worst mom on earth and said, "Why haven't you ever made it for me?"

Poor deprived E! Her mother is so busy trying to cook healthy foods that she forgets to make the traditional childhood desserts. In my own defense, I had pretty much forgotten about banana pudding until E. pointed it out. But once she'd seen it, I had to promise her that we'd make a vegan version of it soon.



So at the grocery store yesterday, when I found a huge bag of overripe bananas for a dollar, I knew just what I wanted to do with some of them. The only trouble was finding vegan vanilla wafers; I looked through all six of the different brands in the store, and every one of them contained either eggs or milk or both. I finally settled on using something a little less traditional, but apparently vegan: Earth's Best Organic "Letter of the Day" Cookies:



When E. got home from school, we got to work making this delicious dessert together. Of course, I just had to try to make it a little more healthy: I reduced the sugar and used a little pure stevia powder, an herbal sweetener with no calories. To make up for the bulk of the sugar, I had E. mash half a banana and add it to the pudding. If you'd like to make this using the full amount of sugar, I've included instructions at the end.



Southern-Style Banana Pudding
(click for printer-friendly version)

1/4 cup cornstarch
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon pure stevia extract powder
3 cups soymilk (or other non-dairy milk)
1/2 banana, mashed
2 teaspoons vanilla
1/8 teaspoon rum extract (optional)

about 5 ounces vanilla cookies
2-3 bananas

Mix the cornstarch, sugar, and stevia in a medium saucepan. Stir in the soymilk and begin heating on medium heat. Cook, stirring constantly, until the mixture thickens and boils. Add in the mashed banana and cook, stirring, for one more minute. Remove from the heat and stir in the vanilla and rum extracts.

Line the bottom of a 1 1/2-quart baking dish with vanilla cookies. Slice one of the bananas to cover the cookies. Pour about half of the pudding over the bananas. Repeat the layers of cookies, bananas, and pudding, reserving some of the cookies and placing them around the edge of the dish. Refrigerate until completely chilled. Serve and enjoy!



To make the full-sugar version, make the following changes: Use 3/4 cup of sugar and do not add a mashed banana to the pudding.

You may also use artificial sweeteners; just add the amount that equals 1/4 cup of sugar and proceed with the regular directions.

Makes 6 servings. Each serving, using Earth's Best cookies, fat-free soymilk, and reduced sugar, contains 290 Calories (kcal); 5g Total Fat; (15% calories from fat); 2g Protein; 61g Carbohydrate; 0mg Cholesterol; 132mg Sodium; 1g Fiber.

If you'd like to lighten this up even more, you can leave out the cookies or reduce them to a single layer. Each serving, without cookies and with reduced sugar and fat-free soymilk, contains 184 Calories (kcal); trace Total Fat; (1% calories from fat); 2g Protein; 45g Carbohydrate; 0mg Cholesterol; 44mg Sodium; 1g Fiber.

Tags: vegan recipes vegetarian cooking food fat-free

Rainbow Stir-Fry

I had planned to write about a pasta dish today, but I'm under strict orders to post this recipe immediately. I don't really mind; in fact, I'd love to use the phrase "guest post by my daughter" right now, but the truth is, E. likes to cook the food, photograph it, and eat it, but she doesn't want to write about it. It's too much like all those reports she has to do for school.

So I'll just have to be content with the fact that my darling daughter and wonderful husband got in the kitchen and actually cooked dinner two nights in a row. I've been having some back trouble that makes it painful for me to stand too long on the hard tile of our kitchen floor, so for the past two nights, D. and E. have come to the rescue. The first night I helped out by telling them which ingredients to use and how much to add to make our fall-back meal, a fast and easy soup, but last night they did it all themselves, with the help of E's favorite cookbook Kids Can Cook: Vegetarian Recipes. They adapted the recipe for Asian Stir Fry--adding tofu and cutting fat--and did an excellent job.

E. wanted me to let you know that she did all the chopping (except for the ginger root), chose the set-up for the photo, and even clicked the remote shutter release (after I chose the angle and focused the camera). And I wanted to let you know that I asked them to reduce the oil in the recipe but failed to notice that it had over 1/4 cup of soy sauce and extra salt. So, to my taste at least, it's very salty. But good. And colorful! Best of all, when E. makes a meal, she tends to eat it, even the ingredients she says she hates like bell pepper. I strongly advise all parents to get their kids cooking; it just may turn them into vegetable lovers!



Rainbow Stir-Fry

1/2 package extra-firm tofu, drained and cut into cubes (about 8 ounces)

Marinade:

• 1 tablespoon soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon water
• 1/2 teaspoon sesame oil

1 large onion, sliced
1 large green pepper, thinly sliced
3 carrots, peeled and sliced
1/2 head purple cabbage, thinly sliced
1 cup celery, thinly sliced
2 tablespoons minced ginger root
1 teaspoon salt (reduce if necessary)
1/4 cup soy sauce (reduce if necessary)

Marinate the tofu in the marinade for about 15 minutes. Heat a non-stick skillet and sauté the tofu until brown on all sides. Remove from pan and set aside.

Put the onion and green pepper into the pan and stir-fry for three minutes. Add the carrots and cabbage and cook until cabbage begins to wilt, about 7 minutes. Add the remaining ingredients and the tofu, stir well, and cook 3 more minutes. Turn off the heat and serve over rice. Serves 4.

Tags: vegan recipes vegetarian cooking food fat-free Eat to Live

Surprise Gyoza

What surprise lurks in the heart of this Japanese gyoza dumpling?

Surprise! It's peaches and pluots. And it's my entry in the Sugar High Friday Surprise Inside event, which Alanna was sweet enough (get it?) to let me enter late.

This one's easy; in fact, taking the photos took much longer than making this simple dessert. Plus, I had the help of my assistant, the lovely Ms. E., in putting them together, so it can truthfully be said that even a child can make these.

Peach and Pluot Gyoza

1 peach, peeled and diced small
1 pluot or plum, diced small
1 tsp. agave nectar or sweetener of choice (see note)
1/2 tsp. corn starch
1/8 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tbsp. wine of choice (I used Pinot Grigio)
1/2 tsp. lemon juice
about 20 gyoza wrappers (or potstickers or wonton wrappers)

Note: I added a little stevia to the filling to make it sweeter, so you may want to consider adding a little more sweetening, depending on the sweetness of the fruit.

Put the diced fruit into a microwavable bowl and add all ingredients (except the wrappers). Nuke for 2 minutes, stirring after one minute.

Set a steamer basket over water that comes just below the bottom of the basket. If you're using a metal steamer, spray it lightly with non-stick spray. Remove one wrapper at a time, keeping the rest of the stack covered with a damp cloth. Place about 1-2 teaspoons of fruit filling on the wrapper, brush the edges with water, then fold one edge over the fruit. Press it together to seal, starting from the bottom (close to the fold) in order to keep the juices from running out. Stand it up on the fold, press it down slightly to form a flat base, and crimp the edges a little to form ruffles. (If you're using wonton wrappers, you will form a triangle and may not be able to get the same ruffled effect.) Put it on its bottom in the steamer and repeat with the other wrappers. Bring the water to a boil, and steam for about 7 minutes. Remove from the steamer and keep them in a covered container--they do dry out quickly if you're not careful.

Makes a nice afternoon snack for...um...let's say 3 people. E. said, and I quote, "5-stars, kid-friendly, recipe of the week!"

Tags: vegan recipes vegetarian cooking food fat-free SHF23