Banana Coconut Creme Brulee

A journalist contacted me this week and asked if she could use my crème brulée photos. Not that I need much prompting, but it got me thinking of crèmes brulées and I thought I could try out some new flavors.

I happened to have baby bananas in the house, along with some leftover shredded coconut from making lima bean curry. The mini bananas come from Guatemala. They are very sweet and flavorful. I caramelized them in sugar and used them as garnish. I flavored the custard with the shredded coconut, rum and banana extract. The result is a very pleasant dessert using ingredients that are available this season. Can't wait for spring to experiment with more flavors!

Panettone Bread Pudding with Coconut

  We had a family gathering.Made some All bread pudding recipes call for the same set of ingredients: dry bread, milk, cream, eggs and sugar. This particular version is both familiar and new at the same time. For the bread, I used panettone left-over from the holidays that got a little dry. I also added coconut cream to the traditional heavy cream to pump up the flavor.

We served the bread pudding at a large family gathering, alongside a deliciously decadent caramel-rum sauce. Check back tomorrow to get the recipe for the bread pudding sauce!

Mango Mousse

After making mango lassi, I add some leftover mango pulp and I had a tin full of ginger snaps from yesterday. I knew I was onto something decadent. I ran to the grocery store and got some heavy cream and some white chocolate. At the store, it occurred to me that the lemon apeels (lemon-flavored chocolate chips) would give the dessert more flavor than plain white chocolate.

So what could I make with all these lovely ingredients? The answer is an egg-free mango mousse flavored with lemon apeels and garnished with homemade ginger snap cookies.

Grilled Pineapple with Coconut Syrup and Mascarpone Cream Dessert

We hosted a dinner party at home this evening. I wanted to make a "summery" tiramisu parfait, as opposed to the "wintry" coffee tiramisu I made in the past. I found some beautiful sweet Maui Gold pineapple and decided to add a refreshing twist to the classic Italian dessert. I added some fresh mint from the garden, some coconut, mascarpone and crème fraîche.

I served a wide variety of sweet petit fours and other desserts along with the pineapple mascarpone desserts. I know it was a hit because there wasn't a bit left. When everyone went home, I gathered 14 empty parfait glasses. It looked like the guests washed the dishes themselves. I'm definitely going to make this again!

Double Chocolate Madeleine Tea Cakes with Mango Cream Cheese Frosting

The girls had a bake sale at school and needed some help preparing their contribution. Instead of buying cupcakes at the supermarket, I thought it'd be a good opportunity to teach them some valuable life skills. And by life skills, I don't just mean cooking; madeleines are so good that being able to make them qualifies as a life skill.

We decided to make a chocolate madeleine batter and add some mini chocolate chips. To balance with the chocolaty flavor, we topped the miniature sweets with a mango cream cheese frosting.

We ended up making a 150 of them for the bake sale but I think only about 100 of them actually made it to the bake sale! You can of course cut the recipe in half if you want to make fewer.

These are the mango cream cheese versions, the one in the middle are the cherry cream cheese ones.