Tropical Pancakes

Does your family have a day on the weekend for making special breakfasts? Maybe you do brunch instead? Well, think about making these delightful pancakes and you'll enjoy the weekend even more.

I took two fairly basic recipes for pancakes from Marion Cunningham's The Breakfast Book, mixed them together, added some yogurt, substituted non-dairy soy creamer and non-dairy margarine for milk and butter, used white whole wheat and Irish Whole Meal flours (King Arthur Flour carries both) for part of the flour, added chopped pecans, finely chopped fresh pineapple, finely chopped banana, and chopped, pitted dates. What I ended up with were some of the best pancakes ever if you like tropical flavors.

It takes a few minutes to chop up the fruit and nuts, a few more to mix together the milk or soy milk and the yogurt, a few more to measure out the dry ingredients, more to melt the margarine or butter and mix it with the eggs and then the milk mixture. Hardly any time is needed to add the dry ingredients to the wet and barely mix them.

Cooking the pancakes probably takes the most time and that may just seem that way since you are standing at the stove with a pancake turner, watching the tiny bubbles form at the edges of the pancake and smelling the warming pineapple and banana fragrances. Then when you turn the pancake over, you see the golden brown sheen of the cooked side and you see the pancake rise and you know this is going to be soooo delicious! And it is!

I topped mine with some applesauce, but you can just as easily slather on some butter and syrup or mix up a syrup of sugar, water and orange juice, letting it bubble and thicken while you cook the pancakes. However you top them, enjoy the flavors of the islands.

Tropical Pancakes
based on Plain Pancakes and Buttermilk Pancakes by Marion Cunningham
in The Breakfast Book

2 eggs at room temperature
3/4 cup milk or soy milk or soy creamer, at room temperature
1/4 cup plain yogurt
4 tablespoons butter, or margarine, melted and cooled slightly
3/4 cup white whole wheat flour (or use regular whole wheat)
1/4 cup Irish Whole Meal Flour (or use regular whole wheat)
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup fresh pineapple, finely chopped
3/4 cup fresh ripe banana, finely chopped
1/4 cup finely chopped pecans
2 tablespoons finely chopped pitted dates

Beat the eggs in a mixing bowl until they are fully blended. Add the plain yogurt to the milk or soy milk and beat until combined. Let sit a few minutes, then beat into the eggs. Add the melted butter or margarine and beat until filly blended.

On a piece of waxed paper or parchment paper or in another bowl, combine the flours, sugar, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Stir into the wet ingredients and stir just until blended. Immediately gently stir in the pineapple, banana, pecans and dates.

Cook the pancakes on a lightly greased preheated skillet or griddle: scoop 1/4 cup of the batter for each pancake onto the griddle, using the cup to slightly spread the batter if necessary. Let pancook cook over medium heat until bottom is golden brown and the edges have rapidly breaking small bubbles. After flipping the pancake over, let cook until bottom is golden brown. Serve at once with toppings of your choice.

Makes enough pancakes for 4 people (usually).

Sorta Tropical

Even though we've not been having the winter we wanted...chilly and rainy every other day for months, there was enough chill and rain in January that a few sunny days are a treat. Recently it's been almost warm enough to put on a swimsuit and pretend you are in the islands. Maybe that's why the February Cake Slice Bakers recipe I chose was the Pineapple Upside Down Cake. It's sorta tropical, right?

A tender yellow cake layer with no oil or butter is served with what had been at the bottom of the pan now serving as the topping. In this case some pineapple juice was worked into the cake and that topping was sweetened by brown sugar, pecans and fresh raspberries as well as that delicious pineapple.

February is a busy month for me, especially the first few weeks of it, so I managed to rush my grocery shopping and purchase pineapple chunks instead of pineapple slices. No prob, I just make a design with the chunks and filled in the gaps with the pecans and raspberries. It looked like a jeweled mosaic and tasted great.

For such a pretty cake, this is also an easy and fairly quick one. Do allow a little time after you bake it for the topping to cool. Too hot brown sugar can really burn your tongue You can dress it up with different nuts and candied cherries are more typical in this recipe than raspberries, but imagine it with blueberries...that could be pretty delicious, too.

Pineapple Upside Down Cake
(adapted from Maida Heatter's Cakes)

You will need a large cake pan approx 10" (not loose bottomed), 12-inch pie plate
or a 10" in diameter cast iron skillet, which is what I used

Ingredients:

• 2 1/3 oz (5 1/3 tablespoons) unsalted butter or margarine
• 1/2 cup soft light brown sugar
• One 20-oz. can of pineapple in natural juice - slices or chunks
• 6-8 glace cherries or 10-12 fresh raspberries
• 1 cup sifted plain flour
• 1/3 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 eggs
• 2/3 cup granulated sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 6 tablespoons of pineapple juice from the canned pineapple

Method:

• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
• Melt the butter in a small pan and pour into the base of your pan, plate or cast iron skillet. I used margarine and it worked very well.
• Sprinkle the brown sugar evenly over the melted butter or margarine.
• Drain the pineapple, reserving the juice.
• Arrange the pineapple rings (or chunks in my case) in the pan on top of the brown sugar making a pretty design. You may not need all the slices. Fill in the gaps with nuts and cherries (or raspberries, blueberries, etc.).
• Now prepare the cake batter by sifting together the flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.
• Using an electric beater whisk the eggs together in a clean bowl until thick and creamy and then gradually add the sugar, still whisking until the mixture becomes thick and pale.
• Add the vanilla and pineapple juice and whisk until just smooth.
• On a low speed whisk in the sifted dry ingredients until just combined.
• Pour the batter over the fruit and bake for 45 to 50 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean. 
• Remove from the oven and immediately invert the pan, plate or skillet onto a clean plate. Wait for a minute or two to allow the topping to settle and then remove the pan. If you wish you can brush with melted apricot gaze but this didn't seem necessary. (Melt 3-4 tablespoons of smooth apricot jam to make the glaze.)
• Serve warm or at room temperature, plain as I did, or with whipped cream!

The other recipes this month to choose from included a poppy seed cake, a decadent chocolate cake and a coffee and cream sponge cake. 

An InLinkz Link-up

Leaving Southern Cakes

The Cake Slice Bakers have been baking for the last 12 months from The Southern Cake Book by Southern Living. Think lots of pecans, brown sugar and dairy products and you get the general idea. Since I grew up in the South I've enjoyed baking from this book. For the final recipe we got to choose any recipe in the book. I chose Hawaiian Sheet Cake and frosted it with the same easy 7-Minute type frosting I used last month. To tell the truth, I made the sheet cake last month, too, and served it up for the birthday party where I served the chocolate cupcakes, also frosted with that sticky, gooey, sugary frosting.

This cake is really moist and delicious and filled with good things. One of the reasons I chose it was because it was in the 'feed a crowd' section, but I also love the combination of bananas, pineapple and coconut, plus spices. It was a big hit with the crowd and with the birthday girl. I didn't get any photos beforehand and so I only have this one photo after most of the cake had been served. Trust me, it was good cake. I used a gluten free flour mixture and it has no dairy, so I was able to have a piece. The cake is fairly sweet and the soft icing was pretty sweet, so small pieces were enough. I used crushed pineapple packed in juice, not syrup, to cut down a bit on the sweetness and only used 1/2 cup of granulated sugar instead of 1 cup, but kept the full amount of brown sugar, because enough sugar is important to the chemistry of a recipe and I like the mellow flavor of brown sugar.

Next month we start a new book, so be sure to come back November 20th to see which book, OK?

Hawaiian Sheet Cake
Serves 15

3 cups all-purpose flour (I used King Arthur gluten free flour blend)
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground allspice
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
2 very ripe bananas, mashed (to equal one cup)
3 large eggs, beaten
1 cup flaked coconut
1 (8 oz.) can crushed pineapple, undrained
1/2 recipe 7-Minute frosting
various sprinkles and dragees and candies for decoration

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Use shortening to grease and lightly flour a 9 X 13-inch baking pan.

Mix flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and allspice in a large bowl. Set aside

Mix granulated sugar, brown sugar, oil, bananas, and eggs in a medium bowl. A whisk works well. Stir in the flour mixture, whisking until blended. Stir in the coconut and pineapple (including pineapple juice from the can) just until blended. Pour batter into the prepared pan.

Bake at 350 degrees F for 40-45 minutes, or until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool completely in the pan on a wire rack. Run a knife around the sides of the pan and carefully invert the cake onto a serving platter. Frost with the 7-Minute frosting and decorate as desired.

An InLinkz Link-up

Goes With Hummingbird - Pineapple? Banana? Pecans? Cinnamon?

The Cake Slice Bakers are posting this weekend and the June Cake choices included a lovely blueberry coffee cake, a decadent caramel layer cake, a pretty pink lemonade cake, and my choice, the Celebration Hummingbird Cake. I've never made a Hummingbird Cake before. No one seems to know the origin of the name, but it has been a highly requested recipe from Southern Living Magazine for over 30 years. The recipe itself comes from the Southern Living Cake Book and to make it very celebratory they used Browned Butter Frosting and a Cream Cheese Custard filling, plus piping the icing in a basket weave for the cookbook photo. Not being in a crafty mood, I simplified my version.

The hummingbird cake is very moist because it has crushed pineapple and ripe bananas, along with the usual cake ingredients. It has just a touch of cinnamon and some crunch from toasted pecans. I only made one change to the cake part by substituting a stick of melted, browned butter for 1/2 cup of the oil. For the icing and filling of this delicious, decadent layer cake, I substituted my favorite cream cheese frosting. It has the cream cheese of the called for in the filling and I already used browned butter in the cake, so it's OK it's not in the frosting. The recipe for this wonderful cream cheese frosting is from a good friend and it is over 30 years old, too, so the timing is right. It is softer than the browned butter icing, has a small amount of sour cream which goes a long way to softening the super sweet effect you often get with confectioner's sugar icings. Pretty easy to work with, too.

My smart daughter was here helping with the cake creation and she suggested sprinkling some rum over the cake layers right before icing them to carry out the Caribbean vibe. It was brilliant! you caught just a hint of rum in most bites and a big hit of banana and pineapple. The pecans not only add crunch, but hey looked pretty on the top as decoration. Even though I put waxed paper strips under the edges to keep the icing off the plate edge, it was so delightfully gooey that the icing left tracks where the paper had been as I pulled the paper out. Lori's Cream Cheese Icing the kind of icing that you could just stand over the bowl and eat it with a spoon. Too rich to do it for long though.

I suspect I will be asked to make this one again. We had some friends over and I never did get a morning light photo...the cake was totally gone before I could get a shot. The photos I did get were with night time light. Don't worry too much about how it looks...just make this cake! You'll be glad you did.

Be sure to visit the other Cake Slice Bakers posts to see which of the month's choices they made.

An InLinkz Link-up

Happy Birthday to Me

I won't tell you the exact date, but I will tell you that my lovely and talented daughter has given me a trip to Seattle for my birthday so there will be few posts until next Monday. I'm really excited! We will be seeing Avatar in IMAX and I've been waiting to see it with her. I'll get to meet one or more of her friends, do some glass fusing, do some shopping and eating out and walking around her neighborhood. She and I are also slated to have breakfast with two of my favorite bloggers...Lynn of Cookie Baker Lynn (now a blogazine author at Simple Bites) and Peabody of Culinary Concoctions by Peabody, one of the most drool worthy sites you will ever find and home to excellent photography, too. Even if it rains...and it probably will...I will be having a blast!

As far as birthdays go, my take on it is every year I celebrate a birthday means that I have lived and experienced another year...and usually learned wonderful things and had fun with great people and often helped some other human beings along the way.

Bread has been baked, delicious dishes cooked and photographed and posts made on this blog. Other blogs have been visited, often with delight and laughter...most bloggers seem to be far funnier than I am. Walks will have been taken with Sweetie and the bread baker's dog. Project will have been undertaken and time spent in hardware stores (almost as much fun as cookware stores :) Books have been read and conversations taken place. This year has included a new haircut, too, after many years of more or less the same old same old. Life is a never ending source of amusement and fascination to me. Ever year I want another one, so here's to my next birthday, too!

Some days at work I get a surprise like I did today. I didn't bake my birthday cake, or even a Valentines cake, but I did get to bake a cake for Walter. He wanted a cake with pineapple and whipped cream. I went online and looked at a lot of pineapple cakes. Although some were similar, none were exactly like the one I ended up making, so I'm calling it Walter's Pineapple Cloud Cake.

Since I wasn't expecting to bake today I didn't bring my mixer with me. It seemed best, since all the batter would be hand mixed, that I use cake mix from a box. I changed it a bit by using melted butter and Greek yogurt instead of vegetable oil. That provided both moisture and fat. Considering all of the whipped cream, it was probably gilding the lily, but should taste wonderful that way!

Speaking of the whipped cream, I'm here to tell you that a whisk will do the trick quite well, but my wrist was tired by the time I did two batches. If you are using an electric or stand mixer, you can beat it all at once and then divide it.

This cake is a vanilla cake baked in a baking pan (normally I would use a 9" x 13" pan, but this was going to the home of an ill man and I didn't want them to have to worry about keeping track of the pan). A can of crushed pineapple in juice is drained while the cake bakes, and the juice is used to moisten the baked cake while it is still warm. The remaining pineapple is folded into half of the whipped cream (one of my batches) and spread over the cake...it ends up being about an inch thick. Then the remaining whipped cream is spread over the pineapple mixture and given some pretty swirls. Once it has chilled for a while it is ready to eat.

Since I didn't have an opportunity to either cut a piece of this cake or to photograph or taste a piece, you'll have to go with my photo of the top of the cake and the assurance that it is a delicious cake, simple and elegant and light as a cloud!

Walter's Pineapple Cloud Cake

1 box yellow cake mix
1/2 pint Greek style yogurt, plain
2 tablespoons butter, melted and cooled
1 1/4 cups water
1 can pineapple in it's own juice (about 15 oz)
1 pint heavy whipping cream, chilled
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Prepare the cake mix according to package directions, but use the yogurt and butter in place of oil. Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven about 30 minutes, or until cake springs back when you poke the center.

While cake is baking, drain the pineapple, reserving the juice.

When the baked cake is removed from the oven, use a skewer to poke holes all over the top, about 1/2 inch apart. Pour the drained pineapple juice evenly over the cake, letting it seep into the poked holes. Set pan in the refrigerator to cool while you whip the cream.

In a large bowl whip the cream. Divide in half.

To one half of the whipped cream add the drained crushed pineapple and fold in with a spatula until well blended. Spread this mixture over the top of the cake and smooth the top evenly.

To the second half of the whipped cream, add the vanilla extract and beat that in until combined.
Place dollops of the whipped cream over the pineapple mixture on the cake and spread over the cake, making decorative swirls or peaks as desired.

Chill cake for at least an hour to combine flavors and set the whipped cream. Keep refrigerated if there is any left to store after serving.

Lime, Coconut and More French Toast

Lime zest is so pungent, my whole kitchen smelled zesty today. Loved it!

One of the joys of blogging is visiting other blogger's sites and finding things that you just have to try. Another joy is participating in events hosted by bloggers you admire. This post is about having both happen in a delightful way.

The talented and delightful Meeta of What's for Lunch Honey? blog is hosting a monthly Mingle with a Caribbeans theme. Making the mingle even more fun is that my very favorite Caribbean area blogger, Cynthia of Tastes Like Home is part of the Mingle due to her book. Do go to Meeta's blog and find out all about it. You might just have time to join in the fun.

Another blog to visit often is Susan's Wild Yeast. Once a week she hosts the equivalent of a playground for passionate bread bakers, an event called Yeastspotting. The most recent collection on Yeastspotting included a recipe for Lime French Toast by Jan of InnCuisine blog. Never being content to leave well enough alone, and inspired by Jan's own variations on the French Toast theme, I decided to make Caribe French Toast with a host of island flavors including lime, coconut, pineapple, vanilla, rum and banana.

This is a perfect dish for a brunch because most of the work is done ahead. It also looks very impressive when plated. So what makes up Caribe French Toast? A buttery syrup with both lime juice and zest, pineapple juice and a healthy dose of dark brown sugar is heated up in a pot, cooled and mellowed with coconut milk. It serves as the base for the bread to sit on.

Over the top you pour an egg rich custard flavored with vanilla, then sprinkle it with coconut.

It sits in the fridge overnight so that the bread can soak up the flavors, then bakes to a golden brown.

While the toast bakes, you make a warm banana and pineapple topping. If you desire, you can even doll it up a bit more with some rum and/or candied ginger. Sweetie said that this was world class and he really liked the haunting note that the coconut milk provided. It's a bit on the sweet side, so you could reduce the brown sugar amount or serve with something salty like bacon on the side. The soft and custardy French toast has crisp coco nutty crust and the fruit topping finishes the Caribe flavors perfectly. Take a bite and you'll feel those warm breezes on your cheek. What could be nicer?

Caribe French Toast

¼ cup (4 tablespoons) butter
½ cup brown sugar
2 tablespoons corn syrup or treacle
finely minced zest of 3 limes
juice of 3 limes (about 1/3 cup)
1/3 cup juice from drained crushed pineapple (see Compote below)
½ cup canned coconut milk
2 eggs
3 egg whites
1 cup milk
½ tablespoon vanilla
¼ cup flaked coconut
1/2 loaf French bread, cut into inch thick slices

Spray a 9×13 inch baking dish with non-stick cooking spray.

In a medium saucepan over low heat combine the butter, brown sugar, corn syrup or treacle, lime zest and juice, and pineapple juice. Cook about 5 minutes, until the butter and sugar have melted. Remove from heat and stir in coconut milk. Cool. Pour into the baking dish.

In a mixing bowl, mix eggs, egg whites, milk and vanilla. Blend well (I whip this with an electric whisk attachment on my mixer). Arrange the bread slices in one layer over the lime mixture and pour the whipped egg and milk mixture over the bread. Sprinkle with the coconut. Cover and refrigerate overnight.

Remove from refrigerator 30 minutes prior to baking and allow to return to room temperature.

Bake uncovered at 350 degrees F for 30 minutes or until golden brown. If needed, place under broiler to give the coconut a slight toasting. Watch so it doesn't burn.

Place 2 slices of the baked Lime French Toast on each plate. Top with Pineapple Banana Compote (recipe follows), and garnish with a bit of sifted confectioners’ sugar.

Pineapple Banana Compote
1 large banana, sliced
¼ cup (4 tablespoons) butter
½ of a 15 oz can crushed pineapple in juice, drained (use some of the juice for the French Toast), then add back in 2 tablespoons of the juice and stir
2 tablespoons dark rum (optional)
¼ teaspoon minced crystallized ginger or powdered ginger (optional)

In a saute’ pan, melt the butter. Over medium high heat cook the banana in the butter until golden and softened. Add the pineapple and stir to combine well. Heat just until the pineapple is warm. Stir in the rum and ginger (if using). Serve over Caribe French Toast. Leftovers can be used over waffles, pancakes, or ice cream.

If you know how to do flaming rum, you could bring the plates to the table, dusted with confectioners sugar and garnished with a lime slice, then flame the topping and scoop flaming spoonsful of it over the toasts.

This is going to be an entry in Meeta's Mingle and, as a tribute to Jan, in Susan's Yeastspotting.

Dancing Taste Buds

One of my all time favorite treats is lemon curd. It is sweet, but tangy. The texture is smooth and like a soft custard. It is rich and addictive, too. I'd never made variations, although I'd read about blood orange curd and tangerine curd and lime curd.

Recently my local grocer had a special on a big bag of teeny-tiny little green key limes - the photo above is a very close close-up. They may be small, about the size of a golf ball or even smaller, but they have a BIG flavor. I just knew that I could make a great key lime curd if I tried. The recipe is exactly the same as for the lemon curd, except that you use 1 tablespoon, packed, grated key lime zest and 1/2 cup key lime juice. It was surprising how many little key limes it took to make 1/2 cup, but there are still some left for other recipes. The unsweetened juice really got my taste buds dancing.

Once I knew I' d have key lime curd, the next question was what to make to hold it and go with it. Since I had a few egg whites left over from making the curd, meringue nests were an obvious choice. I piped the meringue in pretty small nests, so a serving ended up being two personal pavlovas to a plate. The meringue nest held a dollop of lime curd, some diced fresh pineapple and juicy white peaches, diced. A little more lime curd on top completed this rather sweet dessert.

If I made this again, I'd use fruit that was more tart, to offset the sweetness of the meringues. I might even include a bit of melted bittersweet chocolate on the bottom of the nests before adding the curd and fruit. If you make this, remember to leave the meringues in the oven to cool and crisp up, and to only fill the nests when you are ready to serve them as soon as they are made. Just like the dancing of ballerina these were named for, Anna Pavlova, they are delicate, airy and ethereal.

Meringue Nests

4 egg whites

1/4 cup sugar, preferably super fine granulate sugar

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Prepare a baking sheet by cutting parchment paper to fit. Set aside

Place the room temperature egg whites in the bowl of a stand mixer (if possible) and beat on medium with the whisk attachment for a minute, then increase to high speed and beat until meringue begins to take shape. Gradually add the sugar, about a tablespoon at a time and beat until meringue is stiff, about five minutes. Add the vanilla extract and beat just to incorporate.

Place the meringue in a pastry bag with either a plain or serrated tip and pipe a nest the size you like. (Mine were about the size of the bottom of a 1/3 cup measure and I made 30 small meringue nests.) Leave about an inch between nests.

Bake in preheated 250 degree oven for about 45 minutes. Be careful to not overcook them. They should remain white, not become brown (as mine did). Turn the oven off and leave them in the oven until the oven is cool. Carefully remove the nests from the parchment paper and store in an airtight container at room temperature. Note: Meringues are difficult to make in humid weather and will not keep very well if it is humid.

Soft and Strong and Yellow

It's almost the end of the time to post for the LiveSTRONG Day event, A Taste of Yellow, Hosted by Barb at Winos & Foodies. It has also almost been long enough from the event for me to write a bit about Nora Warwick, who lost her battle with cancer on Easter Sunday, just a few weeks ago.

Nora was married to Sweetie's cousin and for many years we saw very little of each other. By the time I met Sweetie, they were in the happy position of seeing their daughters married. Funds were scarce for travel at the time, so it wasn't until the celebration of Tom and Nora's 50th anniversary that I met any of their family.

What a delightful group they are! Tom gives Nora a lot of the credit because she was truly the one in charge of the house and did a wonderful job of keeping all those balls up in the air, working as clerk for the local town for many years, directing an art gallery, serving as a Girl Scout leader, forging and maintaining a large group of close friends, and making time to have fun together as a family, too. She had a ready smile, a wonderful sense of humor and a true interest in new things, people and places. She knew how to have a good time. She has left a huge hole in her families lives and in her community.

Unfortunately, Nora is but one of a huge number of people whose lives have been blighted or ended by various kinds of cancer. I rejoice daily that my own mother is a survivor of lung cancer. It still hurts that a loved niece was taken by ovarian cancer while still young. Treasure your relationships because we never know when cancer will claim someone we love.

So my Taste of Yellow is a variant of a recipe I found in Mollie Katzen's book Sunlight Cafe'. It is full of delightful recipes for all sorts of breakfast foods. Even though I just posted a muffin recipe, as I was looking through this cookbook, this muffin grabbed me. I like the fact that I had most of the ingredients (all except the crystallized ginger, so I substituted a healthy dose of orange zest), that it sounded like something that Nora would enjoy with tea, and that it was yellow. Nora and Tom lived since the late 1950s in Florida, so the addition of orange flavor seemed perfect.

These muffins are on the soft side. Apparently Sweetie likes his muffins this way...it was impossible to stop him from eating one for 1/2 hour after they came out of the oven, and it was tricky taking photographs because he wanted to eat them all. We had a few with dinner and they went very well with leftover pork roast and some green beans that I dolled up with mushrooms and a little bacon.

Pineapple Coconut Orange Muffins
Adapted from a recipe in Mollie Katzen’s Sunlight Café cookbook

2 tablespoons sugar
1 ½ cup shredded coconut
2 tablespoons grated orange zest – colored part only
2 ½ cups unbleached all-purpose flour
¾ teaspoon salt
1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon powdered ginger
2/3 cup coconut milk (I used lowfat from Trader Joes)
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons canned crushed pineapple in juice, undrained
1 large egg
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Spray a 12 cup muffin tin with nonstick baking spray. Set aside.

Combine the coconut, sugar, and orange zest in a large bowl. Rub the mixture together with your fingers to distribute the orange oils. Add to that the flour, salt, baking powder and ginger. Combine to mix thoroughly.

Measure the 2/3 cup coconut milk into a 4-cup liquid measure, then add the pineapple with its juice and the egg and vanilla. Beat gently with a fork or a small whisk to combine.

Slowly pour this mixture, along with the melted butter, into the dry ingredients. Using a spoon or a rubber spatula, stir from the bottom of the bowl until the dry ingredients are all moistened. Don’t overmix; a few lumps are okay and some might be pineapple pieces.

Spoon the batter into the prepared muffin cups. If you like really big muffins, only use 10 of the cups and fill them to the top. I prefer to have smaller muffins and a couple more of them.

Bake in the middle of the oven for 20 – 25 minutes, or until lightly browned on top and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Remove the pan from the oven, then remove the muffins from the pan and place them on a rack to cool. Wait (if you can) at least 30 minutes before serving.

Yields 10-12 muffins

Waiter, We're Tropical Grillin'

The gas grill has gotten a workout this summer. Grilled salmon, pork, chicken, Italian turkey sausages, ribs, plus pounds and pounds of summer squash have all been grilled by Sweetie. He presents quite a picture sitting by the grill with Merlin the cat on his lap, smoke swirling up from the grill, and a good book drawing his attention away from the food...but never for too long.

One day he came in while the pork roast was still cooking away and held out a tray of bannana halves that he has cooked on the grill. They were warm and sort of gooey in a good way, like caramel but a little firmer. The flavor was smoky and sweet and very tropical.

When Jeanne of Cooksister announced that this month's Waiter event was "Waiter, there's something in my... meatless barbecue", the grilled bananas immediately came to mind. Should I make grilled bannana financiers? Grilled bannana bread? Grilled bannana and peanut butter sandwich? A tart with grilled bannanas and mango curd? Too many possibilities.

Then decision was easy once we purchased some fresh pineapple. Grilled bannanas and grilled pineapple spears would go perfectly with some coconut pineapple ice cream garnished with a little toasted coconut. Tropical grillin' at it's best. The hot bannanas and pineapple contrasted nicely with the cold sweet ice cream and slight crunch of the toasted coconut. The great thing about this recipe is that it will work anytime you have ripe bannanas and some good fresh pineapple and the weather is OK for grilling. You could also grill other kinds of fruit to add to the fun.

A mention should be made about the ice cream. I used some store bought pineapple coconut light ice cream and it was very good. The part that I didn't anticipate is that the hot fruit melted quite a lot of the ice cream. If I did this again, I would make scoops of the ice cream and then freeze the scoops on a try in the freezer until they were very solid. That way the ice cream would start out hard and the hot fruit would soften it nicely instead of melting it into pools. Live and learn. I wrote the recipe with the addition of freezing the ice cream balls.

Tropical Grilled Fruit over Ice Cream with Coconut

1 pint HaagenDaz Rich and Light Pineapple and Coconut ice cream (or a flavor of your choice)

3 medium bannanas, sliced lengthwise, skins left on

1 tsp. light olive oil or salad oil

3 spears fresh pineapple

1/4 cup sweetened shredded coconut

Scoop the ice cream into balls. Place on a cookie sheet and freeze until firm. Leave in freezer until after fruit has been grilled.

Lightly brush the cut side of the bannanas with the oil. Place the bannanas and pineapple on a tray.

In a small cast iron skillet or heavy bottomed pan, toast the coconut, stirring often, until most of the coconut is lightly toasted. Set aside.

Over medium heat, grill the bannanas, cut side down first, and the pineapple spears, turning once as soon as the first side carmelizes where it touches the grill, about 4-5 minutes. Continue grilling on the second side until the bannanas are softened and the pineapple carmelizes where it touches the grill. The bannana skins will hold the softened bannanas like little boats. Return to the tray and cut the pineapple into chunks.

Remove the ice cream balls from the freezer and place two or three in a bowl. Place pieces of the grilled bannana and chunks of the grilled pineapple in the bowls and sprinkle with the toasted coconut. Serve at once. Serves 3 or 4.