My Cooking Spot

When Girl Meets Kitchen



Roasted Banana Cake

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This delicious banana cake gets extra flavor from roasted bananas in the cake and brown butter in the frosting.

Roasted Banana Cake with Cinnamon Brown Butter Frosting

Some things are just magical.  Like avocados.  They have some kind of magical effect on me, they make me feel fantastic and they taste fantastic.

Roasting foods is another magical thing.  Roasted vegetables?  Waaaay better than regular vegetables.  Roasted chicken?  Waaaay better than regular chicken.

Which is why I roasted the bananas for this cake.  Because roasted bananas are magically better than regular bananas.  You can trust me, because I don’t actually like bananas plain, but the roasted bananas are really quite delicious.

Roasted Banana Cake with Cinnamon Brown Butter Frosting

You know what else is magical?  Brown butter.  Lawd have mercy, that stuff is good.

Which is why I used brown butter and cinnamon to make the frosting for this cake.  Brown butter frosting is the magical best.

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Easy Restaurant Style Salsa

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restaurant-style-salsa

Spring and summer is here and my favorite thing is chips and salsa. I really think that I have an addiction.  I love eating it all summer long. This recipe is so good, and crazy easy to make. I made it with canned tomatoes, but if I could, I would use home grown tomatoes.

I wish I grew my own tomatoes, because there is nothing like the taste of fresh out-of-the-garden tomatoes. For real! Mmmm, my mouth is watering just thinking about it.

But, since I don’t have fresh, I just used canned, and this salsa was totally delicious. You can make a ton of it, and as long as it is refrigerated, it should last up to two weeks.

Restaurant Style Salsa IMG_6506

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Gluten-Free Blueberry Rhubarb Crumble

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“The time has come,” the Walrus said, “To talk of many things:
Of shoes–and ships–and sealing-wax–
how rhubarb is the King…”
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Okay, so maybe that is not exactly what Lewis Caroll said in Alice in Wonderland but I am sure if he had to do it over, he would, especially if he had a bite of this scrumptious Gluten Free Blueberry Rhubarb Crumble.  There is something magical about Rhubarb time.  Perhaps what makes it special is that it is so fleeting.  Now you see it, now you eat it, now you wait until next year, gosh darn it!

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My childhood is full of rhubarb tales.  Memories rush in any time I take a bite, standing on a wooden stool, watching my mom carefully stir the pot of bubbling strawberry and rhubarb, its thick aroma filling the house with excitement as we waited to spoon it over ice cream.  Coming home from working on the ranch in my teens, I would step off the plane tanned by the sun, with my arms full of rhubarb stalks; I would hold them tight and present them like they were a bouquet, greeting my mom with their bright tart magnificence.  Then when I was older, I would take a jar of precious rhubarb preserves to college each fall.  When I was homesick and feeling low, I would pop open the seal to spread some “home” on a thick slab of sourdough toast, feeling much better about the world and my place in it.  Oh yes, rhubarb and I go way back.

Here is a quick, simple dish to start your own love affair with this tart little stalk.  Normally, I do strawberry to make it a little sweeter but I am in love with embracing its acerbity with blueberries, trust me it’s divine.  Make it now before the rhubarb time is gone!

 

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