Thank banana's its friday - Belated

Mission: To make as many dairy free recipes as possible with banana.

My 'Thank Banana's its Friday' blog is a few days late this week. I was a little distracted  on Friday, my kitchen  sink developed a major leak so I couldn't use it. Then I had an unexpected visitor, my mum stayed over.   Not the best circumstances to have an overnight guest.  

Luckily my brother knew how to fix the problem, without having to buy a whole new sink.  So everything was fixed by Sunday.  

Blog should really be Thanks Banana's for Brothers.......


First Recipe:

 Banana GingerBread Cake

Duh....  I have no idea why it took me so long to try making Gingerbread with banana's.  I took  a Vegan Gingerbread Recipe and swapped the apple puree for mashed banana.

  I didn't have any treacle in my store cupboard, so doubled the qty of Golden syrup in the recipe instead. Despite the lack of treacle the gingerbread tasted great.  

You can't really fully taste the banana due to the ground ginger.  You could always reduce the qty to 1 tsp to make it more bananatastic, but personally I loved the kick of Ginger. The banana in the recipe is one of those ingredients that adds 'Je ne sais Quoi.  You can't taste it, but you would notice if it wasn't there.

If you are a gingerbread fan, you'll love this recipe.  Eat it on it's own with afternoon tea, or pour over dairy free custard to turn it into dessert.

Second Recipe:

Banana Shortbread Shortcake

I decided to try and make Banana shortbread.  Along with Whiskey and haggis, Shortbread is up there with Iconic Scottish foods.  Plus due to my IBS I can no longer really drink whiskey or eat haggis anymore.    

The end result wasn't a total success.  My attempt at Shortbread, turned into more off a shortcake.  The gingerbread worked because I swapped the banana for another ingredient.  With the shortbread style cookie, I was adding an extra ingredient.  In this case 1 large mashed banana, to the normal recipe.  

Vegan Scottish Style Shortbread

Forgot Rule 1 of baking - If you are adding an ingredient, you need to reduce the quantity of one of the others.  Or the recipe will not work.  

Banana can be substituted for both Sugar and fat.   If you want a low fat cookie reduce the vegan butter, however the cookie will be a bit softer. 

 If you want a low sugar cookie, swap the banana for part of the sugar.  I wouldn't swap out all the sugar, as it helps add the crunch or chew into a cookie.  I usually only swap 1/2 the quantity required.  

On the positive  side, they Tasted pretty good for a shortcake. They were too dry to eat on the there own, so I ended up cutting them in half and spreading them with jam or vegan butter.  They were also pretty good toasted.  

I'm going back to the drawing board on making banana shortbread though.....

Hopefully No more house related problems will occur this week and I can get back to making more bananatastic recipes xxxx